Deal’s Off: SAS Institute Says No To Acquisition By Broadcom

SAS Institute says it is ‘not up for sale,’ and a Wall Street Journal report says that Broadcom’s potential $20 billion acquisition deal with SAS has been shelved.

It appears that business analytics and data management software giant SAS Institute doesn’t want to become part of Broadcom after all.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday that SAS Institute has ended acquisition talks with San Jose, Calif.-based semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom .

An SAS Institute spokesperson told CRN on Tuesday that Jim Goodnight, co-founder and CEO of SAS, has sent a message to all employees in which he said, “We are not up for sale.” SAS remains focused on furthering innovation to serve its customers, the spokesperson said.

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Broadcom did not respond to a CRN request for comment by press time.

In recent years, Broadcom has been on an acquisition spree aimed at becoming a power player in the business software market. Broadcom acquired infrastructure software developer CA Technologies in late 2018 for $18.9 billion, cybersecurity software vendor Symantec in late 2019 for $10.7 billion, and storage networking specialist Brocade Communications in 2017 for $5.5 billion.

The Wall Street Journal originally reported Monday that Broadcom was in talks to acquire SAS Institute, citing sources familiar with the matter. That deal was expected to be in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion, including assumed debt and adjusted for cash on hand.

That deal was reportedly slated to be finalized in the next few weeks. But the Journal on Tuesday reported that the SAS Institute’s co-founders, Goodnight and John Sall, changed their minds and have decided not to sell their company to Broadcom.

Broadcom has a market capitalization of nearly $200 billion.

Cary, N.C.-based SAS Institute was formed as a data analysis software project at North Carolina State University where the company’s founders were professors and students.

The company was founded in 1976 and has expanded into a broad product line of data analytics and data management offerings from its flagship SAS Viya visual analytics software, to data integration and governance tools, to Internet of Things analytics software--along with business analytics applications for specific industries and tasks such as fraud detection and risk assessment in financial services.

Privately held SAS Institute said earlier this year that its 2020 revenue was about $3 billion.