UPDATED 23:57 EDT / MARCH 13 2017

INFRA

Report: Citrix hires Goldman Sachs to scout possible buyers

Cloud computing and networking firm Citrix Systems Inc. is reportedly working with The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to find itself a buyer.

Bloomberg cites anonymous sources in its story, which claims the company has hired Goldman Sachs to sound out possible buyers. This isn’t the first time Citrix, which is valued at $13 billion, has reportedly tried to shop itself around. It made a similar move back in 2015 under pressure from the activist investment firm Elliott Management Corp., a major shareholder in the company, but that failed to garner any interest.

Elliott Management is the same investor whose machinations eventually forced EMC Corp. to sell itself to Dell Technologies Inc. in a tech industry record $67 billion deal. Elliott declared its 7.1 percent stake in Citrix in June 2015, and after failing to find a buyer for the company entered into a “standstill agreement” that led to strategic and operational reviews. It’s believed that pressure from Elliott also led to Citrix’s decision last year to spin off GoTo, its collaboration software business that includes the popular GoToMeeting app.

Now, Bloomberg said, Citrix is open to the idea of a buyout from a private-equity investor, though the report noted that the company’s high valuation may make this difficult. As such, a possible sale of specific assets may also be on the table.

An alternative option could be to find another tech company to buy Citrix. Microsoft Corp. has long been rumored as a possible buyer of Citrix because of the companies’ longstanding partnership on remote desktop collaboration. If Microsoft is interested, negotiations would probably be friendly, since Citrix Chief Executive Kirill Tartarinov is a former executive of the Redmond-based company.

In any case, investors reacted positively to the news, as Citrix’s share price shot up by almost 7 percent, to $84.93, in the hours after the news report. Citrix declined to comment.

Photo: citrixsystems/Flickr.com

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