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Posts Tagged ‘Gerbsman Partners’

A123’s smash-hit IPO could herald more green debuts

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I think that we last week saw a start of a new boom, A123 soured on the IPO, and many candidates are waiting in line. Here is piece on the issue from Reuters.

“SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 24 (Reuters) – A 50 percent leap in the shares of lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems Inc (AONE.O) on their first day of trading looks likely to jumpstart the market for clean-tech share offerings.

The Watertown, Mass.-based A123 Systems is now worth over $1.9 billion, a striking valuation for a company that has yet to make a profit and still needs large-scale commercialization.

Industry executives and experts said A123’s success shows investors have an appetite for green technology companies that lose money, but have tremendous potential.

So the stock’s first day jump, which is the second-best performance for a debut stock in 2009, should encourage more venture capital-backed clean technology companies to go public, they added.

“This is an interesting time for the market because there are several (clean-tech) companies that have been growing very nicely,” said Faysal Sohail, managing director of venture fund CMEA Capital, which is an investor in A123.

Sohail declined to comment specifically on A123, but said the whole environment is creating opportunities for clean-tech companies and expects 2010 to be a busy year for green IPOs.

“They are real companies with substantial revenue and growing at a very fast clip,” he said.

CMEA Capital also backs companies such as Silicon Valley solar manufacturer Solyndra and biofuel company Codexis, which many see as likely candidates for the IPO market.

Other green companies deemed ripe for an IPO include smart grid network company Silver Spring Networks, electric carmaker Tesla Motors and solar thermal company BrightSource Energy.”

Read the full article here.

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Tech Titans Holding $260 Billion In Cash

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »

As the economic slump is fading off, tech titans have amassed cash for possible takeovers. Here is an opionion further explaining this from 24/7 Wall Street Blog.

“The economy is obviously getting better, so long as you are not one of the unemployed or about to lose your job.  Now with more than a 50% rally from the March lows and a Dow Jones Industrial Average challenging the 10,000 level, suddenly everyone wants to put on their investment banker hats again and look for buyers and buyout candidates after deals are announced.  This week’s Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) deal for Perot Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: PER) was a $3.9 billion acquisition versus $12.7 billion in cash and equivalents held at the end of the quarter.  The Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) deal for Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) is valued at $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.  We went back through our list from September 2, 2009 where we noted that outside of the financials  in the 20 largest US companies had a cash hoard of $335 billion that could be used for mergers and acquisitions, and that is not accounting for lines of credit, stock or debt that could be sold, and other means of financing a deal.  While nowhere near all of the cash will ever be used, many companies could pay big dividends before any tax changes.

So we wanted to look through the technology sector and after we looked through the top 100 markets caps in our 24/7 Wall St. Real-Time 500 we added a few new additions in the tech sector that still had over $5 billion in cash.  Out if the $335 billion from those in the top twenty, we broke out Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL).  Even after a huge rally, $335 billion and then some could go a very long way for strategic and bolt-on acquisitions as a positioning strategy for the next decade.  Now, going further down the list of the top 100 companies with $5 billion or more in cash from tech companies alone adds in Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO). When we tally up all the cash, there is over $260 billion available from these few tech companies that could be deployed for mergers, acquisitions, or the good old dividends.  Again, that is before tallying up credit lines, factoring, debt sales, and other financing methods.

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) had almost $25 billion in cash and long-term investments.  Now that it has migrated away from just selling PCs and printers, we think that there will be a rather long lull before H-P tries to match its big buyout of EDS even if Dell is tip-toeing into IT-services and consulting with Perot.  But in the end, what we think may not matter.  Nearly $25 billion in cash when you know you will be profitable ahead leaves a lot of room to go out make purchases.

QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) was the 29th largest company as of Wednesday with a $74.12 billion market cap. If you tally up its cash, short-term and long-term investments, it is sitting on almost $15 billion in cash and equivalents as of last quarter.  After all the lawsuits that the Jacobs team are settled, it might consider a way to deploy capital to get around future patent cases.  If only it was possible, although anything is possible.”

Read the full article here.

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A123’s IPO Already Bringing Hope to Other Cleantech Startups

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on September 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a cleantech story by way of Bnet.

“Hours ahead of battery maker A123 Systems‘ initial public offering, optimism is already running high that the company will crack open a stagnant market and convince investors that they should also buy into other stock offerings.

A123 made an 11th-hour call yesterday to raise the price its opening price by 23 percent, to a range of $10 to $11.50. If the company gets traction it will bring in about $250 million. That’s not bad, for a firm that lost $40.7 million in the first half of the year. Its revenue was only slightly higher, at $42.9 million.

But A123 is well positioned. It started off selling batteries into the power tool market. That led to electric cars — which are not yet common on the road, by any means. The expectation is that electric vehicles will multiply rapidly in coming years; even if they don’t, A123 is also starting to make batteries for utilities, to store excess capacity from solar or wind power farms.

Battery technology also takes a long time to perfect, meaning newer competitors could take years to catch up to A123, offering some stability. So as startups go, it’s a good company to attract attention from the stock markets during a protracted downturn. The question is whether others can follow in A123’s footsteps.

I’d say “yes”, and here’s why: Investors seem to be wising up to what actually works in cleantech. When A123 first filed for an IPO last year, it was in a group of other renewable energy companies, including Imperium Renewables, a biodiesel maker. That company burned through a massive amount of cash very quickly, and is now in no position to have an IPO, or do much of anything else.

Ditto for dozens of other biofuel companies, including corn ethanol busts that did go public, like Verasun and Pacific Ethanol. But, as with the internet boom, all this simply meant that investors were still getting their bearings. It wasn’t yet evident which areas of cleantech would make for the best bets.”

Read the full story here.

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Dell diversifies with $3.9B deal for Perot Systems

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We see this as a good sign for the investment community, the willingness to invest and seek opportunity is a very good indicator that the VC industry is warming up. As M&A serves as an option to IPO, this deal and a score of other show that there is light in the end of this downturn tunnel. This article is by way of The Day.

“Dell Inc. will spend $3.9 billion for the technology services company Perot Systems Corp. in an attempt to expand beyond the PC business and compete more aggressively with Hewlett-Packard Co., which recently bought another tech-services company founded by H. Ross Perot.Dell said Monday it will offer $30 per share in cash for Perot Systems – a 68 percent premium over its closing price Friday.

Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot Sr., now 79, serves as chairman emeritus of Perot Systems, which he founded in 1988. According to an April regulatory filing, Perot and related trusts controlled at least 25 percent of the company’s stock, though it was not clear who is the beneficiary of those shares. The company did not respond to a request for comment on Perot’s stake.

Perot had already made a fortune from founding Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 and selling the company to General Motors Corp. in a 1984 deal worth $2.5 billion. Hewlett-Packard bought EDS last year for $13.9 billion as it, too, tried to augment its services offerings and diversify beyond hardware.

In a conference call with analysts, Dell’s founder and CEO, Michael Dell, said Perot Systems will serve as an “anchor” acquisition for a global information-technology services business.

Plano, Texas-based Perot Systems would bring Dell more than 1,000 customers in several sectors, including the U.S. military and the Department of Homeland Security. About 48 percent of its revenue comes from the health care industry and 25 percent from government. Last year Perot Systems earned $117 million on sales of $2.8 billion.

Dell’s services business is more basic than those of its larger competitors; Perot Systems would add more lucrative consulting and systems-integration services to Dell’s lineup.

”This would, at least from a product standpoint, put them definitely more competitive with HP and IBM,” said Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

Read the full article here.

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Secrets of Success – an excerpt from “ Good Guys Wear BLACK – the Life and Times of a Crisis Manager “

Posted in Intellectual capital, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Secrets of Success – an excerpt from “ Good Guys Wear BLACK – the Life and Times of a Crisis Manager “

Over the past 40 years, I have learned and hopefully executed the characteristics for success, outlined below, in good and turbulent times. They are tried and true.

1.  Have Ethics and Integrity – Be Dependable and Responsible

2.  Attitude – Always, Always be Positive

3.  Desire – Have the desire to do the Best You Can

4.  Consistency – Be consistent in good times and challenging times

5.  Ability – Keep on learning- develop new skills – continue your education – listen and most important, it is OK to say “I don’t know” and “I need help”.

6. Take Action and Risks – Don’t be afraid to make mistakes- that is how you learn, that is how you grow

7. Communicate – Communicate – Communicate – People will tell you when to stop communicating and more important, keep interested parties in the loop and you will be respected by all.

8. Listen – one of the hardest things to do, however we all learn something and grow when we listen

9. Always focus on #1 above, nothing else matters.  Have ETHICS and INTEGRITY. Be DEPENDABLE and take RESPONSIBILITY for your actions.

In today’s Turbulent Times, hopefully the guidance above will provide a road to success, performance and happiness.

Best

Steve Gerbsman

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