In its latest SEC filing Novell Inc says it intends to sell the 6.1 million shares of Santa Cruz Operation Inc stock it holds, and the 9.95 million Corel Corp shares it holds. In 1995 Novell Inc wanted to get rid of its Unix properties just as fast as it could, and in a virtual firesale let the technology go to Santa Cruz Operation Inc for the equivalent of $84m in royalties to be paid until 2002 plus 16.9% of SCO stock thought to have been worth some $60m at the time. This for an entity valued at $360m when Novell took Unix over from AT&T Co’s Unix System Labs a couple of years earlier. The 6.1 million SCO shares Novell got were in the $5 doghouse for months before the deal and only jumped to $11-$12 on rumors that SCO was making the deal. They opened yesterday at just $3.87, valuing Novell’s holding at a lowly $23.6m. No wonder Novell says it will take a year or more to off-load its holding. It may take longer than that though. Even SCO doesn’t seem to think its stock will see significant movement until Intel Corp’s 64-bit Merced processor comes on stream and it can ships the 64-bit version of UnixWare designed to run on it. In 1996 Novell sold WordPerfect to Corel for the equivalent of $197m instock (around 20% of Corel) and license fees at a huge loss compared to the $855m it paid for the business in June 1994. Novell’s Corel shares were worth some $21.98m at Tuesday’s opening price of $2.21.
