Positive news fails to lift shares as Salesforce.com (CRM.US) extends its losing streak to eight consecutive trading days

Salesforce.com (CRM.US) announced late Thursday that it would acquire a data protection provider, but the news failed to lift its stock on Friday.

The enterprise software company will buy Own Company for about $1.9 billion in cash, not including the value of the roughly 10% of Own Company's outstanding shares that Salesforce already owns. "As digital transformation accelerates, our mission has expanded from preventing data loss in the cloud to helping customers protect data, unlock business insights, and accelerate AI-driven innovation," Own Company's CEO Sam Gutmann said in a press release.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's 2025 fiscal year, which ends in January. The company said it does not expect the deal to change its financial guidance provided in late August.

Salesforce expects the deal to increase its free cash flow in the second year after the transaction closes. Despite the acquisition announcement, Salesforce's shares fell 0.87% to $243.97 on Friday and extended its losing streak to eight days, the longest since 2008, according to data from Dow Jones Market Data. The stock has been in a downtrend since Aug. 28.

Shares fell on the day the company reported better-than-expected revenue and profit, and have been down every trading day since then. On Aug. 28, analysts Karl Keirstead and Seth Gilbert of UBS raised their price target to $275 from $250 and reiterated a "neutral" rating. They noted that Salesforce management's cautious outlook for growth in the second half, along with a downgrade from Workday, a human resources and financial software company, meant that the outlook for software investors was unclear.