Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘boic’ Category

Bill Gates Says Recovery Will Take Years

Posted in boic, tagged , , , on January 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from ChannelWeb.

“Looking for glimmers of hope for a near-term economic recovery? Well, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates isn’t going to sugar coat things for you.

In a Monday morning interview on Good Morning America, Gates suggested that the smoldering effects of the worst recession in decades will continue to impact the economy for the foreseeable future. “When you have a financial crisis like that, it’s years of digging out,” Gates said in the interview.

Although there have been signs of economic improvement in recent months, as well as a collective sense of optimism in the IT industry that spending could rebound this year, there’s little concrete evidence to indicate that this is anything more than wishful thinking. And if unemployment remains high, the dreaded ‘S’ word — stagflation — could begin to creep into discussions about the economy.

Gates said even when the economy does improve the government will have to institute systemic changes in order for any real rebound to take root. “The budget’s very, very out of balance and even as the economy comes back, without changes in tax and entitlement policies, it won’t get back into balance. And at some point, financial markets will look at that and it will cause problems,” Gates told Good Morning America.

Gates’ struck a similar chord last week in his annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Although the acute financial crisis is over, the economy is still weak, and the world will spend a lot of years undoing the damage, which includes lingering unemployment and huge government deficits and debts at record levels,” Gates wrote in the letter.

Of course, none of this is fundamentally different from what Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have been saying about the economy since it began tanking in September 2008. Ballmer has presided over several of the weakest quarters in Microsoft’s history, and on several occasions has called the economic situation “the toughest Microsoft has ever faced.”

Read the whole article here.

Read Full Post »

2009 venture investments lowest since 1997, cleantech fell 52 percent (MoneyTree report)

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, tagged , , , , , , , on January 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good VentureBeat article.

“Now that 2009 is over, we can add up the numbers on how much venture firms invested in startups during all of 2009 — and, well, it was a lot less than in the past. Over the course of the year, VCs invested a total of $17.7 billion in 2,795 deals, the lowest total since 1997, according to the MoneyTree Report from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

On the bright side, the worst hit came from numbers that we’ve already reported on, since investments really plummeted during the first half of this year. Funding went up in the third quarter, and more-or-less held steady in the fourth. The amount invested went down from $5.1 billion in the third quarter to $5.0 billion in the fourth quarter, but the numbers of deals went up from 689 to 794. So VCs were making smaller bets, but they placed more fo them. Another reason for optimism: There were more seed and early-stage deals in Q4 than in any other quarter this year, so new ideas are still getting money.

Two of the industries we spend a lot of time covering at VentureBeat took a big funding hit in 2009. Internet-specific companies received $2.9 billion dollars, down 39 percent from 2008. Cleantech fell even further to $1.9 billion, a decline of 52 percent. Meanwhile, VCs put more money into biotech ($3.5 billion) than any other sector, and even then, biotech saw a 19 percent drop from 2008.

NVCA President Mark Heesen acknowledged the drop in a statement released with the report, saying, “The venture industry had no choice but to slow the investment pace in 2009.” But he also offered an optimistic view of the year to come.

“Now that the economy has begun to show signs of improvement, we expect to see dollars flow more freely back into those sectors that offered the most promise before the recession began — clean technology, life sciences and IT,” Heesen said. “The seed and early stage pipeline needs replenishing across all industries and the health of the startup community in the next decade will be dependent upon more robust first-time financings. 2010 should be the year to begin that process in earnest.”

Read the complete article here.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »