Effectively saying that it is for sale at the right price, Concurrent Computer Corp, in rejecting the unsolicited bid from Harris Computer Systems Corp (CI No 2,614), the Oceanport, New Jersey company said it was still willing to consider a business combination with Harris, and that it rejected the bid by allowing it to expire because it did not appropriately reflect the fundamental value of Concurrent’s business. Concurrent is doing some $180m a year but it lost $39.8m in the year to last June, and the offer valued it at only $29.6m. In the quarter to December 31, Harris reported sales of $13.3m and net profit of $15,000. Concurrent saw $1m net profit on $37.8m sales. Concurrent told Reuters the two companies were not currently in talks, but said Concurrent was still willing to consider offers from Harris or other companies that was in the best interest of stockholders, giving due consideration to its customers and employees, but was not currently in any talks. It said its share price had been artificially depressed lately after the sale of a large institutional investor’s stake in the company – it is trading at around $1.125 but has been as high as $2.50 in the past 12 months. Concurrent uses the MIPS Technologies Inc R-series RISCs in its real-time Maxion multiprocessors where Harris Computer Systems is moving over to the PowerPC RISC.
