Autodesk Inc, the world’s second biggest supplier of computer aided design applications, has managed to beat down the price of its previously announced Discreet Logic Inc acquisition following the latter’s disastrous first quarter results. San Rafael-base Autodesk will now offer just 0.48 of its own shares for each share in Discreet, the Canadian developer of digital image creation software, a discount of 8.6% on the original exchange ratio of 0.525. The original deal was announced back in August this year, following numerous consecutive quarters of revenue growth at Discreet. Two months later, in mid-October, Discreet issued a surprise profits warning which cut 23% from the company’s share price in a single day. The actual results, when announced, subsequently showed earnings of $0.05 per share (one third of original estimates) and revenues down by 29% to $27.4m. At the time of the warning, the company blamed a whole range of problems including slower-than-expected sales in Europe and general market anxiety in North America causing delays in capital spending. On Wednesday, Carol Bartz, Autodesk CEO said: With the short-term business environment changing, we need to provide terms that are beneficial to shareholders of both companies.” However, both companies agreed to an increase in the termination fees payable if either of them were to back away from the deal at a later date. The shareholders of both companies have yet to vote on the merger.
