Cisco made an offer to acquire Splunk for more than $20 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Shares in
Splunk
surged more than 10% on Monday on a report that
Cisco Systems
made a takeover offer of more than $20 billion for the data analytics software company.
Cisco (ticker: CSCO) made the offer recently and the companies are not in active talks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Splunk (SPLK) stock jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading following the WSJ report. The stock, which is down 1.05% in the year to date, rose 10% in premarket trading on Monday.
Cisco and Splunk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In November last year, San Francisco-based Splunk announced that chief executive Doug Merritt had stepped down from the role after six years following a series of disappointing earnings reports. The company named chairman Graham Smith as interim CEO.
Founded in 2003, Splunk makes software used by companies’ information technology and security operations to monitor and analyze data. Last year, Splunk announced that private-equity firm Silver Lake was investing $1 billion.
Cisco, which is set to report its latest results this week, has been expanding its software and services. The company already has a data-security partnership with Splunk.
Shares of Cisco slipped 0.8% in premarket on Monday. The stock has dropped 15% so far this year.
A takeover of Splunk would have marked Cisco’s biggest acquisition to date, surpassing its 2006 acquisition of cable TV equipment maker Scientific Atlanta for about $7 billion.
Write to Lina Saigol at lina.saigol@dowjones.com
