Firm that spent billions on M&A now selling for peanuts

Companies that spent billions on poorly timed acquisitions in recent years are now offloading those assets at knockdown prices.

- Ben Scent

Alibaba Group announced last week that it will sell the Chinese department store chain Intime to a local apparel group for $1 billion (about R18 billion).

The price is around 30% of the company's valuation when Alibaba bought it during the heady days of 2017. The internet giant said it will book a $1.3 billion loss on the transaction.

The deal came a day after BlackBerry said it would divest its Cylance endpoint security unit to software startup Arctic Wolf for $160 million plus a small amount of stock. That's a far cry from the $1.4 billion BlackBerry paid when it agreed to buy the business in 2018. Under BlackBerry's ownership, Cylance reported substantial losses and its revenue fell over 50%, according to Royal Bank of Canada analysts.

The moves show how companies that were major acquirers during the boom times may sober up and regret those purchases only a few years later.