Shares of software maker Adobe rose Thursday in heavy trade after reports surfaced Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may be interested in buying the company. On Friday, shares of Adobe gave back $1.70 per share of the $3 gain the shares received the day prior to the takeover report.
The report came from The New York Times’ “Bits” blog. It said Balmer and Adobe head Shantanu Narayen recently met to discuss strategies for the two companies working together to take on Apple in the cell phone market.
In the meeting, the idea of Microsoft purchasing Adobe came up.
Speaking in Madrid, Ballmer held to the company’s no-comment response.
“If you are going to do something, you say nothing. So I’ll be entirely consistent with standard CEO operating procedure,” Ballmer said.
A statement from Adobe said the company shared millions of customers with Microsoft and “the CEOs of the two companies do meet from time to time. However, we do not publicly comment on the timing or topics of their private meetings.”
Adobe Systems Inc. is based in San Jose, Calif. and is well known for its Photoshop image-editing program and Flash application-technology used in websites and videogames. The company has feuded with Apple because the company refuses to allow Flash in its iPhone and iPad mobile devices.
The deal would make sense for Microsoft since the company is still developing software applications for the Windows 7 phone.
Yun Kim, an analyst with Gleacher, said a merger would be beneficial for Adobe. The company is planning to grow its annual revenue from $3 billion last year to $5 billion over next couple of years.
“Their business is not going as well as people thought,” Kim said.