Goldman Sachs
Fair enough: Any big telecom player like Nokia
But who's willingly going to pay the $76.31-per-share price? Even with the company's shares down from their 52-week high, at that price I'm not convinced a big fish will take the bait.
The stock is expensive. Research In Motion projects sales of $1.4 billion for 2005 and has a market capitalization of $15 billion. That means the stock is trading for a whopping 11 times sales. Compare that with rival palmOne
Based on subscriber estimates for 2005, a corporate buyer would have to shell out about $3,400 per subscriber. My own back-of-the-napkin calculations, by contrast, suggest that the value of a Research In Motion subscriber is less than $1,000. To say the least, the market has priced all the good news -- plus much more -- into the company.
It's not as though there are no risks facing Research In Motion. Despite its early market lead, the widespread deployment of data-friendly 3G wireless networks will prompt technology leaders such as Microsoft
Few things move a company's shares like takeover talk. Goldman's analysts report is just that -- talk that investors can afford to overlook right now.
For related Fool Takes, see:
Fool contributor Ben McClure doesn't own shares of any companies mentioned in this article.