M&A Hangover Results in 5 Percent Decrease in Cloud Stocks

The Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index benefited greatly the week of Dec. 9, 2011, from the hype around SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors. Unfortunately, that hype didn’t translate into continued cloud stock momentum — the 20 cloud and SaaS providers we monitor fell an overall 4.72 percent for the week ending Dec. 16, 2011. The index is still up an overall 17.25 percent from Jan. 1, but the more growth, the better — especially when not a single company we track posted a gain worth talking about this past week.

Before we take a closer look at the week’s biggest losers, it’s our standard disclaimer: We only maintain the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index to match cloud hype against real-world performance. We don’t offer specific financial advice, and whether you buy, sell or hold is up to you and you alone.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the week’s biggest loser, healthcare SaaS provider Athenahealth (ATHN), which sunk a full 19.42 percent from last week to $49.37 per share. Apparently, some analysts spotted a slight underperforming streak in ATHN’s recent history, which seems to have prompted a sell-off.

Next up was VMware (VMW), which sunk 11 percent even to $85.82 per share as investors lost faith in the company’s future earnings potential. Finally, fellow virtualization specialist Citrix (CTXS) dipped 10.08 percent to $64.08 per share, as President and CEO Mark Templeton’s sale of 167,776 shares Dec. 12 prompted a weeklong downward slide.

And that, as they say, is that. Not a great week, but the Index still has two weeks left in 2011 to pick it up a little bit. Come back this time next week — that’s the day after Christmas, I know, but still — for another regular update.