HubSpot (NYSE:HUBS) shares plunged 12% on Wednesday after a report said Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) isn’t going forward with plans to buy the software company.
According to Bloomberg, Alphabet was in talks with HubSpot earlier this year, “but the sides didn’t reach a point of detailed discussions about due diligence,” the report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Regulators in the U.S. and abroad have pushed back on deals that large technology companies have proposed recently. Amazon abandoned its planned acquisition of robot vacuum maker iRobot, and it took Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) 20 months to close its purchase of game publisher Activision Blizzard.
HubSpot develops software that companies, mostly small and medium-sized businesses, use to automate marketing and reach prospective customers. Buying HubSpot would have helped Google grow revenue from business software, alongside cloud infrastructure, as well as other non-cloud businesses under the Alphabet umbrella.
Google’s cloud unit reached profitability in 2023 after years of hefty investment.
HubSpot has been growing more rapidly than Google of late, with the company reporting revenue growth above 20% for the past six quarters and in excess of 30% prior to that. Sales in the first quarter increased 23% to $617.4 million.
HUBS shares recovered $13.68, or 2.8%, to $505.99 Thursday morning, where GOOGL shares subsided $1.49 to $191.17.
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