Bruce Cazenave, CEO of Vancouver, Wash.-based Nautilus Inc., was in town on Wednesday to visit employees and managers two days after his company acquired Brooklyn Park-based Octane Fitness.
Since the $115 million deal was announced on Monday, Nautilus' stock (ticker: NLS) has risen more than 25 percent, and analysts at Wunderlich Securities and D.A. Davidson have raised their 12-month price targets for Nautilus.
Cazenave said they looked at more than 100 companies over the last 18 months before zeroing in on a deal with Octane. The company's news release and conference call with analysts emphasized the strong operational and cultural fit between the two companies.
So Cazenave's visit on Wednesday was less about alleviating any fears associated with an acquisition and more a show of support.
Cazenave said in a phone interview that his message to employees was: "Tell us what you need to do [to] keep making it happen."
He also said Nautlilus might not be done making deals. He is intent on continuing a strategy for continued growth.
Number of SEC filings was down in 2015
Journalist Michelle Leder closely tracks the filings that public companies make to the Securities and Exchange Commission on her website Footnoted.com. Leder roots through company filings to find hidden disclosures and early signs of trouble in the routine and not-so-routine filings companies make.
At the end of the year, Leder recapped SEC filings activity. The SEC received 662,936 filings in 2015, which was down fewer than 1 percent from 2014, according to numbers she received from data analytics firm Intelligize.
While overall filings were down, Leder wrote that the record amount of merger and acquisition activity in 2015 meant that there was a big increase in M&A related filings to the SEC last year.
Analysts initiate coverage on Datalink
Canaccord Genuity analysts initiated coverage last week on data center solutions and services provider Datalink Corp. with a "buy" rating and a 12-month price target of $9 per share. The analysts believe Datalink is well-positioned to capitalize on industry trends in data center consolidation and public and private cloud migration. "We believe Datalink has the technology expertise and customer/partner alignment to benefit from these [industry] trends," they wrote.
