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Archive for January, 2010

Oracle-Sun Merger Foes Head East

Posted in boic, tagged , , , on January 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good article from PC World.

“With the European Commission seen as virtually certain to approve Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems in just a week, those campaigning to prevent the deal encompassing Sun’s MySQL database unit have shifted their efforts to regulators in Russia and China.

MySQL founder Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius said in a statement Monday that the Commission, Europe’s top competition regulator, showed weakness when it struck a deal with Oracle last month that paved the way for an unconditional approval of the acquisition of Sun. Widenius left MySQL in 2009 and might have been part of a group of possible bidders for the unit should it have been ruled an impediment to the merger.

“The European Commission showed courage and competence during most of the investigation but looked very weak in the end,” he said in the statement, adding that China and Russia “are powerful, self-confident and open-source-friendly countries and they have every right to do a better job on this than the E.U.”

Oracle still has not obtained clearance from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). FAS said last week that it has extended the deadline for its ongoing probe of the deal.

Widenius’ helpmysql.org campaign has over 600 supporters in China and more than 800 in Russia. Widenius said it will now work closely with its local supporters to support the work of the competition authorities in those two countries and will step up its efforts to collect signatures from local MySQL users. Worldwide, the campaign has gathered 30,000 signatures of support since its launch on December 28.

Barring any last minute surprises, the European Commission is set to rule in favor of the deal on January 27. It said as much last month, after Oracle made pledges enforceable only through private lawsuits, not by the Commission, to protect MySQL as an independent open source database competitor to Oracle’s core database product for a minimum five years.”

Read the complete article here.

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Green-tech mergers, acquisitions and capital raises fell in 2009

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on January 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting CleanTech article from LA Times business blog.

“The number and value of green-tech mergers, acquisitions and capital raises in the U.S. dropped in 2009, according to a new report.

Overall, there were 248 deals — 188 capital raises and 60 acquisitions — worth a total of $9.5 billion, according to New York-based investment bank Peachtree Green Advisors. The volume of transactions was down 14% from the 289 deals recorded in 2008, and the value dropped 4% from the $9.9 billion that year.

The distribution, storage and efficiency sector had the most transactions, with 90, or 36% of the aggregate. Biofuels saw the steepest decline, with just 27 deals in 2009, compared with 69 in 2008.

The wind industry had deals with the highest value, a combined $3.1 billion, or 32% of the total transaction dollars from 2009. The amount was more than a billion dollars higher than the 2008 total, a 52% boost.

With $2.1 billion, or 22% of the total, the distribution, storage and efficiency sector came in next. The solar and bio sectors each represented 20%.

Deal value in the solar category plunged to $1.9 billion from $3.5 billion in 2008, in part because of the recession, the cost of developing utility-scale solar farms, tight credit and investor concerns.

And capital investment in solar slid 62%, to $1.2 billion from $3.2 billion, while volume fell 31%, to 47 deals from 68. The amount of funding funneled into the wind industry saw an “astounding” 907% upswing to $2.3 billion from $224 million the year before, when there was tightening credit, declining prices for natural gas and oil and the upcoming presidential election, according to Peachtree.

Across all sectors, the overall declines were offset by huge bundles of funding — more than $30 billion to be used in 2009 and beyond — from the Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to Peachtree.”

Read the full article here.

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Dollar Crisis Looms if US Doesn’t Curb Debt: Experts

Posted in boic, tagged , , , on January 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from CNBC.

“The United States must soon raise taxes or cut government spending to curb its debt, and failure to act will risk a crippling dollar crisis as investor confidence ebbs, a panel of experts said on Wednesday.

“It has got to be done. It will be done some day. It may be done with enormous pain. Or it may be done more rationally,” said Rudolph Penner, a former head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office who co-chaired the 24-strong Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States.

President Barack Obama’s administration will present his budget for fiscal 2011 early next month amid intense pressure to live up to election campaign promises not to raise taxes on middle class Americans, while confronting a record deficit.

As a result, Obama is expected to focus on long-term fiscal discipline, while maintaining policy support for an economic recovery in the near-term as the country rebuilds after its worst recession since the Great Depression.

The two-year study by the panel, assembled by the highly respected National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration, said that the White House had some time on its side to restore growth, but must then act.

“In the next year or two, large deficits and more borrowing are unavoidable given the severity of the economic downturn. However, action ought to begin soon thereafter,” they said.”

Read the full article here.

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Apple Earnings Preview: Another Blow-Out Expected

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , , on January 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from Seeking Alpha.

As I promised in November, below is my updated Q1 2010 earnings estimate for Apple. My previous estimate can be viewed here. Due to numerous analysts’ calls for strong iPhone sales, this update increases iPhone unit sales from 8.8 million to 10 million. With subscription accounting, this increase in iPhone sales does not have much of an effect on GAAP EPS, but it does give non-GAAP EPS a nice bump. Also, after a review of recent trends, I reduced non-iPhone margins from 33% to 32%. Overall, my GAAP EPS estimate for Q1 decreased modestly from $2.44 to $2.41 on $12.7B in sales while non-GAAP EPS increased from $3.67 to $3.97 on $16B in sales. The Street GAAP EPS estimate has remained at $2.04 on revenues of $11.9B.

It continues…

Based on current accounting practices, for the year ending September 2010, Apple could post EPS of $9.70. If they transition from subscription accounting starting this quarter, Apple should earn $17.70. About $3.60 of this is from prior deferred iPhone revenues, so I am looking at FY10 non-GAAP EPS of around $14 on revenues of $55.6B. Additionally, I expect their year end cash position to be somewhere north of $45B. Depending on how you want to calculate EPS (e.g. with cash, without cash, GAAP, non-GAAP EPS etc), forward P/E will be somewhere between 10 and 15. Forward EV/FCF will be about 12.”

Read the full article here.

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Clash of the technology titans

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from Fortune´s Brainstorm Tech Blog.

“The biggest computing and networking companies in the world are getting bigger – and former partners are now fierce rivals. Is tech’s new strife good for customers?

The largest technology companies in the world are at war.

Sure, the executives who run Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and others appear to play nice: Cisco touts the “regular dialogue” between its CEO, John Chambers, and IBM’s chief executive, Sam Palmisano. Ann Livermore, an HP executive vice president, spoke at Oracle’s annual customer event in October and extolled the virtues of their partnership. And because large customers buy software, gear, and services from all the tech giants, their staffs must work together to get computers and networks up and running.

Don’t be fooled by the handshakes and air kisses. Increasingly these titans are invading one another’s territories in a bid to grab as much of the $1.5 trillion in projected 2010 worldwide corporate tech spending as they possibly can — and it’s going to get bloody.

Customers have cut their tech purchases, and when they do loosen their purse strings, they are buying software and services that help them run their systems more cheaply. To boost sales and profits in this low-growth environment, technology companies are bulking up by buying companies in entirely new businesses.

The endgame? Each aims to steal business from rivals by promising customers one-stop shopping for most, if not all, of their computing and networking needs.

Battling for each other’s turf

Corporate software maker Oracle (ORCL), under pressure from competitors that rent software and deliver it over the Internet rather than installing it on-site, is pushing into computer hardware with its planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (JAVA). When the deal closes (it still faces regulatory hurdles), Oracle will find itself battling partners IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL), and HP (HPQ), all of which also sell servers.

HP, whose legacy personal computer and printer businesses aren’t growing the way they used to, spent $13.9 billion in 2008 to acquire EDS, a specialist in managing and integrating corporate systems. That happens to be IBM’s biggest business. HP also has announced plans to buy 3Com (COMS), a maker of networking gear. (Take that, Cisco!)

Cisco (CSCO), in turn, has announced its own plans to enter the server market. (Take that, HP!) Dell is picking up Perot Systems for $4 billion to take on HP and IBM in services. IBM, meanwhile, has been quietly bulking up in software, hardware, and services: In the past six years it has spent $20 billion on 90 companies.

“It’s the industrialization of IT,” says Pacific Crest Research’s Brent Bracelin. “In the new world that will come about in the next three to five years, you’ll buy the entire stack. Will you buy it from IBM, from Cisco? From HP? That’s what the battle is all about.”

Fighting to dominate a new world order

Tech mergers in the name of world domination aren’t new. (Remember Compaq’s purchase of DEC, or HP’s acquisition of Compaq?) But this wave is also being driven by a coming change in technology. “We’re at an inflection point,” says Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels.

He describes a new generation of technology — call it smart computing — in which servers, computers, and networks come together to form a platform on which new applications are built. These new applications aren’t installed on machines in the workplace; instead they live in data centers and are delivered to users’ phones, laptops, and other devices via the Internet.”

Read the full article here.

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