SCOTT AUSTIN'S THE WEEK IN VENTURE CAPITAL

 

Cash comes into play in VC acquisitions
现金交易隐现风险投资收购
Commentary: Dell's move caps nice run of exits for startups
Dell 之举为创业公司做出绝佳的退出榜样

 

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Whenever I read about a company paying tons of cash to acquire another, I always wonder how the millions or billions of dollars is delivered.

当我读到新闻，说某某公司花成千上万的现金去收购另一家公司时，我总是很纳闷，那几百万、几亿的美元是如何支付的。

 

I imagine the acquired company getting one of those over-sized posterboard checks in order to handle all the zeros. Perhaps Ed McMahon shows up at the headquarters to deliver the check. Or maybe they just get several metallic briefcases filled with g-notes, or large canvas bags with dollar signs on them.

被收购的公司，估计会得到一张比白板还大的支票，不然支票上可填不下那么多0。说不定Ed McMahon在总部里就是用那种支票呢。或者，他们拿到的是很多硬梆梆的塞满钞票的手提箱，甚至是标着美元符号的大帆布袋子？

 

No matter, in the past few weeks a string of venture-backed companies have won the cash sweepstakes. We're talking significant acquisitions in the venture industry -- punctuated by Monday's $1.4 billion acquisition of network-storage device maker EqualLogic by Dell Inc. -- that have enriched investors with straight-up cash.

无论如何，过去一周里，多家有风险投资背景的公司在这场现金游戏中赌赢了。比方说风险投资行业中的重要收购 --周一，Dell以1.4亿美元收购了网络存储设备制造商EqualLogic —— 这让投资者们赚得盆满钵溢。

 

In an industry that is desperate for some big-time exits, these all-cash deals are welcome news for venture capitalists and their limited partners, the pension funds, university endowments and other large pools of capital that back venture capital funds.

在这个迫切期待全身而退的行业里，现金交易总能令人感到欢天喜地，风险投资商这么想，它那些有限合伙人，养老基金、校友基金会及其他风投基金融资者，也这么想。

 

As noted in this space, venture capitalists need to unclog their congested fund portfolios, especially since the IPO market hasn't entirely warmed up. More than 1,400 companies originally funded during the tech-bubble years of 1999 and 2000 still exist in VC portfolios, and it's now taking longer than ever -- an average of nearly seven years -- for a start-up to get acquired after its first equity round of financing.

就像我在本文中写到的那样，风险投资商希望早点搞定他们那些乱七八糟的基金账户，尤其是在目前股票融资市场还未完全回暖的情况下。有超过1400家的公司在1999、2000年的网络股泡沫阶段完成了首轮融资，但至今仍躺在风投公司的账户上。对现在的一家创业公司而言，从首轮融资到最终完成被收购，平均要花7年左右，这比以往任何时期花的时间都要长。

 

This is allowing cash-rich corporations to pick from a glut of IPO-ready companies that have matured through the years. EqualLogic, for instance, was founded in 2001 and toiled early on in an overheated network storage market that proved too difficult for many start-ups. But its investors stayed patient, funding it with $52 million over three rounds and building it into an attractive IPO candidate. In fact, EqualLogic was just 48 hours from taking its IPO on a road show before Dell came in with an offer it couldn't refuse.

这就给了那些现金充裕的大公司以机会，在一大堆近年来逐渐成熟、做好上市准备的公司中做出选择。比方说EqualLogic，成立于2001年，在那个网络存储市场过热，创业公司屡战屡败的时代，它可是吃尽了苦头。但投资人一直很有耐心，通过3轮、5200万美元的募资，使它成为备受瞩目的预备上市公司。事实上，Dell摆出诱人收购条件的时间，只比EqualLogic的IPO路演早了48小时。

 

The $1.4 billion deal is considered the largest all-cash acquisition of a U.S. venture-backed technology company in history. There's no record book for these sorts of things, but VentureOne, a research firm owned by Dow Jones & Co. that has tracked venture capital investments and exits since the early 1990s, couldn't find any such deals bigger than this one.

这笔1.4亿美元的交易，创造了美国风险投资以全部现金介入高科技公司收购的历史最高纪录。这类交易没有实际纪录，但VentureOne找不出比这再高的交易来。VentureOne是道琼斯旗下的一家研究公司，它从上世纪90年代初成立时就在关注风险资本投资。

 

To put it in perspective, it's more than twice the size of what's considered the second largest such deal, the 2003 acquisition by IAC/InterActiveCorp of travel site Hotwire Inc. for $665 million, or the next largest deal, last September's $625 million purchase of email security company Postini Inc. by Google Inc.

从长远来看，它的规模是历史上第二大此类交易的两倍还多，那还是在2003年，IAC/InterActiveCorp用6.65亿美元收购旅游网站Hotwire Inc.。规模第三的交易发生在去年9月，当时Google以6.25亿美元收购了邮件安全公司Postini Inc.。

 

While we've never seen a deal the size of EqualLogic, in just the past month there have been six other all-cash acquisitions worth at least $100 million, four of them for more than $200 million. (See chart below).

当我们惊讶于类似于EqualLogic这种规模的大手笔时，上月已经有6笔数额超过1亿美元的现金收购交易了，而且其中还有4笔超过了2亿美元。（附表）

 

And by some accounts, they've given venture backers powerful returns on investment. In EqualLogic's case, its investors -- Charles River Ventures, Fairhaven Capital, Focus Ventures and Sigma Partners -- will likely see about 20 to 25 times their investment. Charles River, for instance, which owned 29.9% of the company at the of the company's August filing, will bring roughly $420 million on top of a $16 million investment.

通过核算，类似的公司给风险投资人带来了丰厚的回报。在EqualLogic身上，它的投资人 —— Charles River Ventures, Fairhaven Capital, Focus Ventures 和 Sigma Partners得到的收益，可能会有20到25倍之多。比方说Charles River Ventures，8月份的EqualLogic 档案显示它拥有公司29.9%的股份，这意味着它用1600万的投资获得了4.2亿的收入。

 

A deal this size can carry an entire venture fund. Most of the top firms typically have only two or three home-run investments that pay back most of the fund; the rest is cream on top. Fairhaven Capital, which held 16.1%, will see roughly 20 times its total investment, which was just under $10 million. The deal will more than pay back the investment of Toronto Dominion Bank, the sole limited partner of the firm's $150 million inaugural fund.

达成这种规模的交易往往需要付出整支风险基金。大部分顶级公司只有2到3笔自己管理的投资，靠这为风投基金赚回大部分的钱，其他的则是蜻蜓点水似的撒出去。拥有EqualLogic 16.1% 股份的Fairhaven Capital，用不到1000万美元的投资换来了20倍左右的收益。同样，对有限合伙人 Toronto Dominion Bank 而言，它旗下1500万美元的创始基金也早已收回了成本。

 

More importantly to the venture capital industry, cash makes limited partners very happy. Venture funds distribute the proceeds from exits to their limited partners in the form of cash or stock. Stock usually can be sold immediately in the open market, and gives a limited partner the option of trying to capture appreciation on the stock. But as Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, writes in an insightful posting about the subject on his blog, limited partners "have had numerous problems over the years getting stock distributed to them that declines in value, sometimes significantly, before they can sell it." See the entry here.

现金让有限合伙人感到满意，这才是对风险投资业更重要的东西。退出后，风险基金往往将收益以现金和股票的形式分发给有限合伙人。股票往往能在公开市场上迅速变现，而且有限合伙人得到的期权可以锁定股票收益。关于这个话题，管理Union Square Ventures 的Fred Wilson 博客上的文章写得富有远见：“由于拿到的股票出现贬值，有限合伙人近年来面临数不清的问题，有时更要命的是，在他们卖出之前，股票就贬值了。”

 

This all-cash deal parade is bound to continue as large corporations like Dell, Google, Cisco Systems Inc., and Microsoft unleash their massive cash piles. According to a recent report from Boston Consulting Group, S& 500 companies had a total of $700 billion of cash on their balance sheets as of the second quarter of this year. That compares to $320 billion combined during the height of the tech boom in 2000, and the share of deals paid in cash has increased to nearly 75% from 58% in 2000. In the study, Boston Consulting Group found that cash-only deals produced far better returns for acquirers than deals that rely on stock or a mix of stock and cash. See the report.

Dell, Google, Cisco Systems Inc.,Microsoft...只要这些大公司手中成堆的现金没花光，这种现金交易的盛宴就会继续下去。波士顿咨询集团最近的研究报告指出，标普500指数公司今年二季度末的资产负债表上有总共700亿的现金，而2000年网络股泡沫时，类似的数字只有320亿。而且以现金交易的股票，已经从2000年时的58%上升到了75%。波士顿咨询集团通过研究发现，现金收购的收益率要远远高于股票/现金组合收购。

 

Simply put, cash is king.

抛砖引玉，现金为王。

 

附表
Cash acquisitions of venture-backed technology companies since October:
10月以来，有风投资本支持的高科技公司现金收购案

 

Nov. 6 - ING NV is buying online brokerage ShareBuilder Corp. for $220 million in cash, after the start-up raised $68 million in venture capital, the last round coming in 2002.

 

Nov. 5 - Dell Inc. announces it agrees to buy network-storage device maker EqualLogic Inc. for $1.4 billion. Venture investors had funded EqualLogic with just $52 million.

 

Nov. 5 - Symantech Corp. says it is acquiring security start-up Vontu Inc. for $350 million, ten times the amount invested by VCs.

 

Nov. 1 - Cisco Systems Inc. agrees to buy policy-management software provider Securent Inc. for $100 million. It's unclear exactly how much venture backers invested, but a regulatory filing reveals just one round worth $6 million.

 

Oct. 31 - Iron Mountain Inc. agrees to pay $158 million for software marker Stratify Inc., a company that survived the tech bust and raised some $40 million in venture capital.

 

Oct. 23 - Cisco is buying WiMax equipment maker Navini Networks Inc. for $330 million, a price tag that will unlikely give investors a fantastic return after they invested some $195 million since 2000.

 

Oct. 10 - ICAP PLC pays $238 million (includes $9 million in stock) for financial software company Traiana Inc., another tech-bust survivor that was funded with $40 million. 

 

Scott Austin is an assistant managing editor at Dow Jones who oversees VentureWire, a daily publication covering venture capital and start-up companies.