Juniper Networks shareholders have given a resounding thumbs up to being snapped up by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), paving the way for a staggering £11.06 billion merger.
On 2 April, Juniper held a special meeting of stockholders to vote on the HPE acquisition. More than 265 million shareholders backed the deal, with a mere 258,000 naysayers voting against it. This means less than one per cent of Juniper shareholder votes were against the merger, demonstrating massive support for the acquisition.
Both companies want to seal the deal before we officially ring in 2025.
In January, HPE, based in Spring, Texas, announced plans to acquire Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper for £31.60 per share in cash, valuing the deal at around £11.06 billion.
Juniper is set to bring its colossal service provider, enterprise campus networking business, and highly praised Juniper Mist AI portfolio to HPE.
HPE is keen to acquire Juniper’s AI-native networking business, which will accelerate its portfolio shift towards higher-growth offerings and bolster its high-margin networking business.
Juniper’s long-standing leader and CEO, Rami Rahim, will steer the company’s networking business, reporting to HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri.
Neri said the deal aims to shake up the “status quo” in the networking industry.
“We believe the combination of HPE and Juniper Networks will radically change the networking industry—not by eliminating products from either portfolio—but by creating greater choice in this sector,” Neri said in February. “The incredible thing about a combination like this one is that there are strong offerings on both sides, and by bringing them together, we will be accelerating value and flexibility for all of our customers.”
According to research firm IDC, Cisco Systems held a 47 per cent share in the Ethernet switch revenue market as of the second quarter of 2023, compared with seven per cent for HPE and three per cent for Juniper.
Cisco’s combined service provider and enterprise router revenue share for the second quarter of 2023 was 36 per cent, compared with ten per cent for Juniper, IDC reported.
Neri said the merger will put the pedal to the metal for HPE to capture the red-hot AI market opportunity.
He said the combined company will deliver a modern AI-driven networking fabric to train and deploy AI applications while pivoting our HPE portfolio mix to higher growth and higher gross margin market areas.
“Juniper Networks complements our amazing HPE Aruba Networking portfolio in Campus and Branch and turbocharges the opportunity to accelerate growth in the AI, Data Center, Service Provider and Cloud segments,” he said.
