Cisco Buys Webex, But Does The Software Work?
The news is already everywhere that Cisco (CSCO) is buying web videoconferencing company Webex (WEBX) for $3.2 billion. Webex shares are up 22% to $56.50 on the news. But, how good is the Webex technology? Webex is not really growing…
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The news is already everywhere that Cisco (CSCO) is buying web videoconferencing company Webex (WEBX) for $3.2 billion. Webex shares are up 22% to $56.50 on the news.
But, how good is the Webex technology? Webex is not really growing very fast for a successful company. Revenue in 2006 was $380 million compared to $308 million in 2005. Net income was down slightly to $48.6 million from $53 million in 2005.
TechCrunch makes the observation that Webex software is "expensive and bulky". The tech news site also points out that Webex has a number of competitors, many with better products.
Cisco is paying a big multiple for a company that may not have the best products in its field.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.