SEATTLE — Dell Inc. is walking away from a bidding contest with rival Hewlett-Packard Co. for data-storage maker 3Par Inc.
Dell said Thursday that it won’t match HP’s offer to pay $33 a share for 3Par, or about $2.07 billion. Dell’s decision came barely an hour after 3Par announced it had received Dell’s revised offer of $32 a share and then the even stronger bid from HP.
In a statement, 3Par said Dell’s revised offer contained new terms that it found unacceptable, including a multi year reseller agreement with Dell that would remain in effect even if 3Par were to be bought by another company.
The board of 3Par deemed HP’s offer superior. It’s 83 percent above Dell’s first offer and more than three times what 3Par stock was trading at then.
“We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” said Dave Johnson, Dell’s senior vice president for corporate strategy.
Shares of 3Par increased 80 cents, or 2.5 percent, to close at $32.88 Thursday after trading as high as $33.84 as investors expected Dell to match or beat HP’s $33-a-share offer.
Dell shares jumped 15 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $12.29, while shares of HP, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., increased 21 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $39.42.
Dell, which is based in Round Rock, Texas, made the first offer for 3Par on Aug. 16, at $18 a share. As part of an agreement between the two companies, Fremont, Calif.-based 3Par must pay Dell a $72 million termination fee.
HP and Dell, two of the world’s largest personal-computer makers, were looking at 3Par as a way to build up their data-center and “cloud computing” businesses, delivering software, data storage and other services to customers over the Internet.
