It would appear that tacking “cloud” onto your product list is not proving to be a panacea for IT company woes.
Citrix, a US cloud computing company, is making a final attempt to sell itself as a whole before it embarks on asset sales, according to people familiar with the matter.
Citrix, which had attracted the interest of private equity investors before it agreed in July to give a man called Elliott a seat on its board of directors, is having new conversations with buyout firms.
Apparently the outfit is looking to hardware makers like Dell who might want to create a product and cloud package.
Citrix announced in July it would explore strategic alternatives for its GoTo family of products, including videoconferencing and desktop sharing service GoToMeeting. However, a sale process for these assets has not started yet because Citrix wants to see if it can still sell itself at a satisfactory valuation, according to the sources.
If Citrix does not sell itself it will sell or spin off its GoTo products, and other methods to asset strip itself.
Citrix provides communications software and networking solutions for businesses. It reported net income of $251.7 million in 2014, down from $339.5 million in 2013.
Earlier this year, Elliott called on Citrix to sell some units, cut costs and buy back shares to make up for six years of underperformance. In addition to the GoTo business, Elliott has called for Citrix to explore the sale of NetScaler, which helps speed up Web-based applications.
Elliott clinched a deal with Citrix in July that gave Jesse Cohn, one of its senior partners, a seat on the company’s board. Citrix also said it would start a search for an independent board member, mutually agreeable to Citrix and Elliott.
It also said at the time that Chief Executive Mark Templeton was retiring and that it would search for a new CEO.
Earlier this month, Citrix said it would repurchase up to an additional $500 million of its common stock.
