HubSpot stock sinks as Alphabet reportedly sours on acquisition

HubSpot stock sinks as Alphabet reportedly sours on acquisition

HubSpot stock sinks as Alphabet reportedly sours on acquisition

By Lucia Maffei

Shares of HubSpot Inc. plunged in Wednesday afternoon trading after Bloomberg reported that Google parent company Alphabet put the brakes on its rumored acquisition of the Cambridge-based marketing firm.

On Wednesday HubSpot’s stock (NYSE: HUBS) closed down 12.22%, giving the company a market capitalization of $25.06 billion.

When rumors of a potential deal first emerged in April, the markets were valuing HubSpot about $30 billion.

According to the Bloomberg report, Alphabet has decided against acquiring HubSpot, saying the companies didn’t even reach the due-diligence stage, according to “people with knowledge of the matter.”

Representatives from Alphabet and Google did not immediately respond to separate requests for comment from the Business Journal.

The idea of a multibillion dollar takeover of HubSpot generated interest because of potential synergies between HubSpot’s software and Google’s productivity-software suite.

But analysts recently told the Business Journal that a deal of such magnitude would likely face regulatory challenges because of international antitrust scrutiny.

HubSpot is one of the Bay State’s largest public companies by total revenue, which last year climbed 25% to $2.17 billion. These numbers pale in comparison to Alphabet’s, whose 2023 total revenue came to approximately $307 billion.

This year the Boston tech scene witnessed another merger that didn’t happen, albeit one that was at a much more advanced stage. Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) walked away from its plan to buy Bedford-based iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) for $1.45 billion after failing to obtain regulatory approval in Europe.

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