Let the Good Times Roll!

GRMN withdrew from the Tele Atlas bidding war with Tom Tom and they did it with a drum roll, disco lights, and a retro band by extending their existing LTA with Navteq by another six years (through 2015) with an option for another four years. I think that management deserves a MAJOR Golf clap for this move.

Tom Tom not only ended up paying up for Tele Atlas (taking cash and earnings away from the competition), but they worked out a mechanism to continue reaping their current Gross Margins without the headache of a distracting integration process with a non-profitable mapping operation. Sure, they may have some downside because they lose synergy with timely map data/hardware integration, but I personally think that this issue is overrated.

GRMN is up 20% in pre-market. Let the good times roll.