Teradata caps its HQ move with $525M acquisition

Miami Twp.-based Teradata announced its $525 million acquisition of marketing software and cloud computing services company Aprimo on Wednesday.

Bruce Langos, Teradata chief operations officer, said about 400 new employees will join the company when the acquisition is complete in early 2011.

Shares of Teradata (NYSE:TDC) fell Wednesday 96 cents to close at $42.10.

Derrick Wood, an analyst with San Francisco-based Susquehanna Financial Group, said investors may have been surprised by Teradata acquiring a company that falls outside it usual data domain. Wood said there may be a risk the acquisition could undercut Teradata’s relationship with some customers, but it also could position the company to compete more completely with Oracle and IBM.

Wood also thinks the acquisition lowers the likelihood of Teradata being acquired, at least in the next few quarters.

Michael Nemeroff, an analyst with Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities, said the stock might have been “off” Wednesday because investors no longer see Teradata as a potential takeover target.

“I think longer term this will be a good acquisition for (Teradata), as marketing resource management seems to be a pretty hot area in software, even if it is a little further afield than Teradata’s traditional data warehousing products,” Nemeroff noted in an e-mail to the Dayton Daily News.

Langos said the lease on Teradata’s new Austin Landing headquarters at 10000 Innovation Drive is longer than its previous Miami Village Drive lease, which he said was seven years with an option for an additional three years. He would not say exactly how long the new lease is.

“We’re here in Dayton, and we’re not going anywhere,” Langos said.

Cloud computing is based on using shared servers, delivering software and services over the Internet.

Teradata has about 400 Dayton-area employees and more than 7,000 worldwide.