Juniper shareholders easily approve HPE's $14bn acquisition

Over 265 million Juniper Networks shareholder votes were in favour of the deal, compared with just 258,000 who voted against the merger.

Juniper Networks shareholders overwhelmingly voted in favour of being acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, clearing the way for the blockbuster $14 billion merger that will make waves throughout the networking industry.

On 2 April , Juniper held a special meeting of stockholders to vote on being acquired by HPE. Over 265 million shareholders voted in favor of the deal, compared with roughly 258,000 who voted against the merger.

This means less than 1 per cent of Juniper shareholder votes were against the merger, showing significant support for the acquisition.

Both companies said they hope to officially close the deal before the end of calendar year 2024.

C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company, said partners are excited about the HPE Juniper combination and the opportunity to bring a new era of AI network solutions to customers.

"The pieces and parts are all there with where HPE and Aruba are going with AI complimented by the momentum Juniper brings with Mist AI," he said. "The strategy is there. The partner opportunity is there. It is all going to come down to executing on the HPE Juniper vision with a consistent go to market strategy for the channel."

HPE-Juniper acquisition

In January, Spring, Texas-based HPE said it planned to acquire Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper for $40 per share in cash for a value of around $14bn.

Juniper is bringing its massive service provider and enterprise campus networking business, as well as its acclaimed Juniper Mist AI portfolio, to HPE.

HPE said it looks to gain Juniper's AI-native networking business that will boost its own portfolio shift toward higher-growth offerings and strengthen its high-margin networking business.

Juniper's longtime leader and CEO, Rami Rahim, will lead the combined company's networking business, reporting to HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri.

Neri: Merger will ‘radically change the networking industry'

Neri said the deal aims to disrupt the "status quo" in the networking industry.

"We believe the combination of HPE and Juniper Networks will radically change the networking industry—not by eliminating products from either portfolio—but by creating greater choice in this sector," Neri said in February. "The incredible thing about a combination like this one is that there are strong offerings on both sides and by bringing them together, we will be accelerating value and flexibility for all of our customers."

As of second-quarter 2023, Cisco Systems held 47 per cent share in the Ethernet switch revenue market, according to research firm IDC, compared with 7 per cent for HPE and 3 per cent for Juniper.

Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue share for second-quarter 2023 was 36 per cent, compared with 10 per cent for Juniper, IDC reported.

Neri said merger will accelerate the ability for HPE to capture the red-hot AI market opportunity.

"[We will] deliver a modern AI-driven networking fabric to train and deploy AI applications, while pivoting our HPE portfolio mix to higher growth and higher gross margin areas of the market," said Neri. "Juniper Networks complements our amazing HPE Aruba Networking portfolio in Campus and Branch and turbocharges the opportunity to accelerate growth in the AI, Data Center, Service Provider and Cloud segments."