(By Balachander) Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has agreed to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for around $689 million in cash and stock and that the enterprise cloud computing company lowered its earnings forecast.
Founded in 2007, Buddy enables companies such as Ford (NYSE: F), Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), L'Oreal, Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT), Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) and Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) to manage social media and advertise in sites like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Twitter and YouTube, among others.
San Francisco, California-based Salesforce.com expects the deal to cut non-GAAP earnings per share by roughly 14 cents to 15 cents in the second half of the year ending January 2013.
The company now expects non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $1.45 to $1.49 from prior expectations of $1.60 to $1.63 for year ending 2013. Revenue is now projected to be between $2.990 billion and $3.025 billion from $2.97 billion to $3.00 billion projected earlier.
Under the terms of the agreement, Salesforce.com will acquire Buddy Media for about $467 million in cash and $184 million in stock, and $38 million in vested salesforce.com options and restricted stock units.
The company expects the deal to close during its third quarter ending October 31, 2012.
Recently, Buddy Media announced a deal with WPP to power social ad buying for GroupM agencies. In February, it disclosed the acquisition of Brighter Option, a Facebook ad management software provider.
CRM stock, which has been trading in the 52-week range between $94.09 and $164.75, ended Friday's regular trading at $130.99.