Elevation Salvation: HP To Buy Palm for $1.2 Billion
Well, it's official: Palm will not go bankrupt. Nor will it be Palm for much longer. The troubled PDA maker today agreed to be acquired by HP for $1.2 billion, or $5.70 per share. That's a 23% premium to Palm's closing price today, and a 54% premium to where Palm was trading when I last wrote about its prospects. The technorati already is trying to figure out the strategic purpose of this deal, with early consensus being that HP wants Palm's well-regarded OS to serve as the basis for an upcoming tablet. I don't pretend to know, although that makes sense (HP certainly isn't looking to acquire the throngs of Pre owners because, well because there aren't throngs of Pre owners). What I can say, however, is that this deal is terrific news for Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that had invested more than 25% of its $1.8 billion debut fund into Palm. No one at Elevation is going to pretend this is a homerun, or even a single, but it certainly is a save.
