Discount 95% when doing your analysis and you will get a more accurate valuation of the company. Acquisitions are primarily for the purpose of enriching insiders at the expense of common shareholders. Why? Acquisitions means managers get special bonuses, they get to build new fiefdoms and get promotions to VP, artificially inflate corporate prospects etc.. The more Acquisitions a company makes the more you should stay away from investing in that company.
Negative. The most successful company ever was built 100% on acquisitions. Acquisitions can either be good or bad depending on the manner in which is undertaken and how the terms are structured.
In the 90s Cisco did tons of Acquisitions and they seemed to do ok. If you bough 100 Shares in 1990 at $25 per share and just held it and did nothing else, today you would have 28,800 shares and been paid back your original investment in dividends 6 times over.