Confluent (CFLT) Stock Surges on IBM’s $11 Billion Takeover – What the $31 Cash Offer Means for Investors on December 9, 2025

Updated: December 9, 2025

Key takeaways

IBM has agreed to acquire Confluent (NASDAQ: CFLT) for $31 per share in cash, valuing the deal at about $11 billion and offering roughly a 34–35% premium to Confluent’s pre‑deal trading levels. ^[1]
Confluent stock closed at $29.87 on Monday and is trading around the same level today, leaving only about a 3–4% “merger‑arbitrage” spread to the IBM offer. ^[2]
After the deal announcement, multiple banks (Wells Fargo, Truist, Needham, UBS, RBC, Oppenheimer, William Blair, Piper Sandler) downgraded Confluent to Hold/Neutral‑type ratings and moved their price targets to the $31 deal price, while Citizens still carries a bullish $36 target. ^[3]
Fundamentally, Confluent is still growing quickly: Q3 2025 revenue rose 19% year‑over‑year to $298.5 million, with Confluent Cloud revenue up 24%, and non‑GAAP EPS of $0.13 beat expectations. ^[4]
Independent technical and Wall Street forecast services now characterize CFLT mostly as a “Hold” / “Hold or accumulate” story, with short‑term upside capped by the $31 cash offer unless a competing bid emerges or the deal fails. ^[5]
Shareholder law firms including Monteverde & Associates and Kahn Swick & Foti have opened investigations into whether $31 per share is an adequate price, signaling that some investors view the offer as potentially too low given Confluent’s growth and strategic position in AI‑driven data streaming. ^[6]

Important: This article is for information and news purposes only and is not investment advice.

Confluent stock today: trading near the IBM offer

As of mid‑day on December 9, 2025, Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ: CFLT) is trading around $29.87 per share, almost flat versus Monday’s close after a dramatic one‑day move. ^[7]

That price matters because IBM has agreed to pay $31 in cash for every CFLT share, so the stock now behaves less like a typical growth name and more like a merger‑arbitrage situation. The spread between the market price (≈$29.9) and the offer price ($31) is about 3.6%, roughly the market’s implied compensation for:

the time until closing (IBM and Confluent guide to mid‑2026), and
the risk that regulators or shareholders block, delay, or change the terms of the deal. ^[8]

Market data today show: ^[9]

Last price: ~$29.9
Offer price: $31 (IBM cash)
Market cap: ≈$10.4–10.5 billion
52‑week range: $15.64 – $37.90
Volume Monday: ~144 million shares, ~29% one‑day gain after the deal news

In other words, for new buyers the question is no longer “how high can CFLT go as a standalone cloud stock?” but “is the IBM deal going to close on time and on terms?”

Inside IBM’s $11 billion Confluent takeover

Deal terms and strategic rationale

IBM announced on December 8 that it will acquire Confluent in an all‑cash transaction valued at about $11 billion, paying $31 per share for all outstanding common stock. ^[10]

Key deal metrics:

Price: $31 per share, all cash
Enterprise value: ~$11 billion (including debt) ^[11]
Premiums:
- ~34% premium to Friday’s close of $23.14 ^[12]
- ~35% premium to Confluent’s 30‑day volume‑weighted average price (VWAP) as of December 5 ^[13]
Expected closing: mid‑2026, subject to regulatory approvals and shareholder vote ^[14]
Break‑up fee: around $453.6 million payable by IBM if the transaction is terminated under certain conditions. ^[15]

Strategically, IBM is framing Confluent as the data “railroad” for AI – a platform that moves real‑time data between applications, clouds and on‑prem systems, which IBM wants to combine with its AI software (including watsonx) and recently acquired HashiCorp. ^[16]

IBM argues that:

AI projects live or die on high‑quality, real‑time data
Confluent’s Kafka‑based cloud and platform products give IBM an “always‑on” data backbone across hybrid and multi‑cloud environments
Together they can deliver a “smart data platform” for enterprise generative and agentic AI. ^[17]

Deal support and probability of closing

A critical detail for investors: according to Needham and William Blair research summaries and IBM’s own disclosures, shareholders controlling about 62% of Confluent’s voting power have already signed voting agreements in favor of the deal. ^[18]

RBC and other analysts note that with such a large block pre‑committed, another bidder is unlikely to emerge, and the main remaining risk is regulatory review rather than shareholder rejection. ^[19]

Wall Street reaction: downgrades, but modest residual upside

From Buy to Hold: ratings reset around the $31 offer

Before the IBM announcement, Confluent was widely viewed as a high‑growth, AI‑levered infrastructure name with a consensus “Buy” rating and an average 12‑month price target around $29–$30 – not far from where IBM ultimately bid. ^[20]

Since the takeover news, most major brokers have downgraded CFLT to neutral stances and pegged their price targets to the deal price:

Wells Fargo: Overweight → Equal Weight, target $31 ^[21]
Truist: Strong Buy/Buy → Hold, target raised from $29 to $31 ^[22]
Needham: Buy → Hold, citing the stock’s move near the offer price and the strong 34% premium IBM is already paying. ^[23]
UBS: Buy → Neutral, target lifted from $29 to $31 ^[24]
RBC Capital: Outperform → Sector Perform, target raised from $30 to $31; RBC explicitly says it doesn’t expect another bidder. ^[25]
Oppenheimer: Outperform → Perform; calls the IBM price “reasonable”. ^[26]
William Blair: Outperform → Market Perform, also pointing to the IBM deal and locked‑up votes. ^[27]
Piper Sandler: Overweight → Neutral, noting that Confluent now trades close to the $31 consideration. ^[28]

MarketBeat’s aggregation now shows 1 Strong Buy, 10 Buy, 22 Hold and 2 Sell ratings, for an overall consensus of “Hold” and an average target of about $28.66 (a leftover, pre‑deal number that sits slightly below the actual bid). ^[29]

Remaining bulls and technical views

Not everyone has thrown in the towel on upside beyond IBM’s check:

Citizens reiterated a Market Outperform rating and $36 price target, focusing on Confluent’s leadership in real‑time data streaming, an estimated $100 billion total addressable market, and AI as a key growth driver. It also highlights CEO Jay Kreps’s role on Anthropic’s board as a strategic AI advantage. ^[30]
Technical site StockInvest describes CFLT as “Hold/Accumulate” after Monday’s 29% jump, citing strong short‑ and long‑term moving‑average buy signals but an overbought RSI (~78). Its model expects trading on December 9 in a band of roughly $29.18 to $30.56 and notes strong volume as a positive sign. ^[31]

Separate forecast aggregators still show legacy fundamentals‑based targets:

StockAnalysis: 33 analysts, average rating “Buy”, 12‑month price target $29.52 (about 1% below the latest price). ^[32]
Public.com: consensus “Buy” from 28 analysts and average target $28.93, essentially equal to the current price after Monday’s pop. ^[33]

Taken together, the freshest research is clear: most of the Street now sees CFLT as fairly valued around the IBM offer, with limited incremental upside unless something about the transaction changes.

Earnings backdrop: a fast‑growing, still‑unprofitable cloud business

The IBM deal didn’t happen in a vacuum. It came shortly after better‑than‑expected Q3 2025 results, which showed Confluent making steady progress on growth and profitability.

For the quarter ended September 2025, Confluent reported: ^[34]

Total revenue: $298.5 million, +19% year‑over‑year and slightly ahead of Street estimates (~$292–293 million).
Subscription revenue: $286.3 million, +19% YoY.
Confluent Cloud revenue: $161 million, +24% YoY, underscoring strong momentum in its SaaS offering.
Non‑GAAP EPS:$0.13, beating consensus by roughly $0.03 (about a 30–34% upside surprise).
GAAP metrics: still a net loss (GAAP EPS ≈‑$0.19) and GAAP operating loss in the low‑$80 million range, but both improving from the prior year.

Guidance also showed progress, though not without caution:

Q4 2025 revenue guidance: ~$296 million at the midpoint, below analyst expectations of around $305 million, signaling some macro‑driven spending uncertainty. ^[35]
Q4 2025 non‑GAAP EPS guidance: ~$0.10 at the midpoint, above consensus (~$0.09).
Full‑year 2025 guidance: revenue $1.113–1.114 billion (slightly under Street estimates near $1.15 billion) and non‑GAAP EPS $0.39–0.40 (ahead of ~ $0.36 consensus). ^[36]

In 2024, Confluent had already delivered 24% revenue growth to about $964 million, with net losses narrowing by roughly 22% year‑over‑year. ^[37]

The growth story is also supported by third‑party validation:

In November 2025, Forrester Research named Confluent a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Streaming Data Platforms, Q4 2025. Confluent received the highest possible score in 14 evaluation criteria, including messaging, processing, governance, developer experience, event‑driven agents, platform management, resource optimization, fault tolerance, performance architecture, innovation, roadmap and partner ecosystem. ^[38]

And product‑wise, Confluent continues to push deeper into analytics and AI:

At its Current 2025 event, it announced general availability of Delta Lake and Databricks Unity Catalog integrations within Tableflow, making it easier for customers to turn streaming data into analytics‑ready tables in hybrid and multi‑cloud environments. ^[39]

These fundamentals help explain why IBM was willing to pay a sizeable premium – and why some shareholders and law firms are questioning whether that premium is high enough.

Shareholder investigations: is $31 per share enough?

Shortly after the deal announcement, shareholder‑rights law firms began scrutinizing the transaction.

Monteverde & Associates, branding itself as “The M&A Class Action Firm,” disclosed an investigation into whether Confluent’s board secured a fair price for shareholders in agreeing to the $31 cash offer. ^[40]
Kahn Swick & Foti (KSF) – led by former Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti – likewise announced it is investigating the “adequacy of price and process” in the proposed sale, highlighting that Confluent investors will receive $31 in cash per share if the deal closes. ^[41]

These announcements don’t mean the deal will be blocked, but they do indicate that a portion of the shareholder base believes Confluent might be worth more than IBM is paying, especially given:

its leadership ranking in Forrester’s Wave,
accelerating cloud revenue, and
the broader AI data‑infrastructure boom.

For traders, the investigations are part of the calculus behind that remaining 3–4% spread between the market price and IBM’s offer:

If the deal closes as structured, shareholders end up with $31.
If regulators or courts push for changes, or if another bidder unexpectedly appears, there could be some upside optionality.
If the deal collapses, the stock could reprice back toward pre‑rumor levels – in the low‑to‑mid $20s – and then trade again on fundamentals. ^[42]

Confluent stock forecast after the IBM deal

With a cash offer in place, traditional “12‑month price targets” become secondary to a few central questions:

Will the IBM–Confluent deal close, and when?
Could a competing bid emerge or the price be improved?
What is the downside if the deal fails?

Here is how different types of forecasters are currently framing Confluent:

1. Fundamental analysts

Legacy models from StockAnalysis, Public.com, and others cluster around $29–$30 price targets and “Buy” ratings, reflecting pre‑deal expectations for mid‑20s revenue growth, improving margins and long‑term AI leverage. ^[43]
The newest broker research, however, mostly pins fair value at $31 and labels the stock a Hold/Neutral, assuming the deal closes as planned and leaving little expected upside from today’s price other than the carry of the spread. ^[44]

2. Technical/short‑term forecasts

StockInvest’s technical model, updated after Monday’s huge move, still sees a positive trend with buy signals from moving averages but concludes that at current levels, CFLT is best treated as a Hold/Accumulate name. It expects a short‑term trading range between roughly $29.2 and $30.6 near‑term and notes support in the mid‑$20s if the stock corrects. ^[45]

3. The bull case vs. the deal price

Bullish analyses (for example, from Citizens and various AI‑themed research pieces) emphasize Confluent’s role at the core of real‑time data streaming for AI, a large TAM (~$100B), and improving profitability as reasons the company could have traded above $31 in a “normal” market. ^[46]
That said, IBM’s offer came just weeks after a Q3 print where Confluent beat earnings and revenue but guided cautiously on future revenue, and the stock had previously sold off sharply after Q2. ^[47]

For now, the market is largely siding with the deal, but the presence of shareholder investigations and at least one prominent $36 target show the debate is not entirely settled.

What to watch next

If you follow or trade Confluent stock, the story from here is less about quarterly beats and more about M&A milestones:

Regulatory approvals
- Watch for updates from U.S. and foreign competition authorities reviewing the IBM–Confluent combination. Regulators have become more active around large tech and data deals, though early commentary suggests this one is seen as a strategic expansion rather than a monopoly threat. ^[48]
Shareholder votes and legal developments
- Keep an eye on filings and court dockets related to the Monteverde and KSF investigations. Settlements or additional lawsuits could affect timing, though usually not price unless a court finds procedural issues. ^[49]
Updated analyst notes
- As more brokers formally incorporate the IBM deal into their models, expect more neutral ratings and $31 price targets – unless someone explicitly prices in a higher bid or significant deal risk.
IBM commentary
- IBM’s own earnings calls and AI strategy updates will now include Confluent. Since IBM expects the transaction to be accretive to core earnings within about a year of closing and supportive of free cash flow thereafter, any change in this outlook could shift how investors value the combined entity. ^[50]

Bottom line

On December 9, 2025, Confluent stock is essentially trading as “IBM plus deal risk”:

Most of the fundamental AI/data‑streaming upside has been crystallized into IBM’s $31 per share bid.
The remaining upside from here is primarily the 3–4% spread to that offer, plus a small chance of a sweetened bid or competing suitor.
The downside, if the deal fails, is a re‑rating back toward Confluent’s standalone valuation – which, based on pre‑deal trading levels and still‑building profitability, is likely meaningfully below today’s price but supported by strong growth and a newly validated strategic role in AI data infrastructure. ^[51]

For existing shareholders, the question is whether that modest spread and any residual optionality are worth the risk versus simply locking in a large one‑day gain. For would‑be new investors, Confluent has shifted from a pure high‑growth software bet to a merger‑arbitrage trade tied to IBM’s execution and regulators.

Again, none of this is a recommendation to buy or sell CFLT or any other security – only a synthesis of today’s news, forecasts and analysis around Confluent stock.