LinkedIn Corp

LinkedIn’s stock, which traded at $269 in February 2015, fell to one of its lows of $101.11 in February 2016.

Salesforce continued its spree in December 2016 with its acquisition of Twin Prime, a startup focused on machine learning.

Oracle’s Marketing Cloud allows customers to run marketing campaigns and manage data related to those campaigns on web, social, mobile, and email.

Out of 43 analysts covering LinkedIn’s stock, 37 have issued “buy” recommendations, and six have issued “hold” recommendations.

Cisco is expected to announce its fiscal 3Q15 earnings on May 13. Cisco expects its year-over-year revenue growth to be 3%–5% in the quarter.

Twitter revised its guidance upwards, partly on better-than-expected 1Q14 performance and partly due to better expectations for its advertising business and inclusion of Gnip.

On the insistence of its shareholders, Salesforce has backed away from its prior decision to buy Twitter (TWTR).

The third quarter of 2014 was by far the best for SiriusXM in terms of market penetration as well as increasing revenues.

The technology sector in general is facing headwinds because the U.S. dollar is strengthening. Facebook earned about 54% of its revenues from international markets in the last quarter. As a result, a strengthening U.S. dollar impacts its revenues and margins.

There were about 25 hedge funds with Twitter in their top ten holdings in the first quarter. A total of 177 hedge funds also added to their positions in TWTR.

Twitter’s Project Lightning will let users view a collection of tweets with images and videos of a specific event without following individual accounts that have tweeted on the event.

Facebook (FB) is expected to announce its Q4 2014 earnings on January 28, 2015. In this series, we’ll analyze how the last quarter of 2014 could turn out.

Oracle Cloud at Customer is Oracle’s focus on providing companies’ CIOs with enterprise software deployment choices.

Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. David Karp founded Tumblr. He had been leading the business at Yahoo as well. Now, he will report to Simon Khalaf.

Salesforce’s interest in Twitter was driven by interest in the social media space. But opposition from shareholders led Salesforce to back away.

Last week, LinkedIn announced that it agreed to acquire lynda.com—a leading training video site—for $1.5 billion. LinkedIn needs more user engagement.

Microsoft (MSFT) is scheduled to release its fiscal 4Q16 and 2016 earnings after the Market closes on July 19, 2016. For fiscal 4Q16, Estimize expects Microsoft to report revenue of $22.1 billion.

Since 2011, nearly 140 private companies related to AI technologies have been acquired with more than 40 acquisitions taking place in 2016 alone.

Eweek.com stated that Microsoft held 15% share of global enterprise SaaS revenues, while Salesforce held 14% in 2Q16.

Facebook has proven to be a game-changer by introducing the world to the concept of social networking, something quite unheard of in the Y2K era.

IBM’s acquisitions to boost Watson Since its inception, IBM (IBM) has been betting heavily on Watson, its cognitive computing platform, to steer the company toward much-needed growth. As expected, Watson was IBM’s highlight in 2016 and is expected to be in 2017 as well. Considering IBM’s acquisitions to equip Watson in the healthcare space, namely […]

Adobe’s (ADBE) successful switch to a web-based subscription model from traditional licensed software has benefitted its share price.

In fiscal 1Q17, Microsoft’s gross margin stood at ~61.7%, as compared to ~64.7% in fiscal 1Q16. Intelligent Cloud contributed ~34% to total revenues.

IBM announced its partnership with Cisco in late June 2016. It will enable both companies to develop a suite of cloud-based workplace tools and apps.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is often questioned about Facebook’s high-priced acquisition of WhatsApp, which generated revenue of only $20 million in 2013.

Another factor in Salesforce’s opposition to the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal is data. LinkedIn’s acquisition would provide Microsoft with access to large data sets,

In 3Q15, Facebook’s (FB) return on equity or ROE was 8.8%, compared to 16.2% in the same period last year and 13.3% in 3Q13.

According to Gartner’s recent research report the CRM space, Salesforce continues to lead with a 19.7% market share.

Morgan Stanly downgraded LinkedIn from “overweight” to “equal-weight” on March 16, and on March 17, its stock fell by 4.6% for the trailing-five-day period.

Oracle is scheduled to report its fiscal 1Q17 results on September 16. Analysts expect revenues and non-GAAP EPS to be $8.7 billion and $0.58, respectively.

In 2016, Salesforce stock has shed close to 30% of its value. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, Salesforce stock fell by ~13% in January 2016.

Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google and Amazon (AMZN) are going for each other’s jugular in the home automation systems market.

In addition to its partnership with Paperless Post, Yahoo (YHOO) also launched contact cards in Yahoo Mail to increase user engagement.

The Apollo Global-Rackspace (RAX) deal is the latest deal indicating the growing interest of PE firms in the technology space.

So far in 2016, we’ve seen several acquisitions in the cloud space, and these deals indicate growing competition and consolidation.

Social media stocks performed well last year, with the Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL) up 65% from January 2013.

By adding BeyondCore to its portfolio, Salesforce aims to strengthen its CRM offerings with predictive data analytics and AI capabilities.

In the last year, Microsoft’s stock has risen by ~17%. However, since early 2016, it has exhibited volatility.

In response to the antitrust issues raised by Salesforce, the European Union’s competiton chief stated that she would “keep a close eye on how companies use that data.”

Facebook (FB) recently announced that it’s acquiring Oculus VR, the maker of a virtual reality headset, for a valuation of $2 billion.

As Facebook (FB) has avoided selling ads on WhatsApp, it could use facial recognition technology from FacioMetrics to make the app more attractive for paid business-to-customer communication.

Slack is an enterprise workforce collaboration application and could be the next acquisition target for Microsoft.

LinkedIn expects its Talent Solutions segment to grow by 25%–26% YoY (year-over-year) in 2016 compared to growth of 30% YoY in 2015.

Facebook beat analyst estimates for both revenues and EPS. The company reported revenues of $5.8 billion, compared to estimates of nearly $5.4 billion.

Looking at Oracle’s recent bond deal and its cash reserves, it won’t come as a surprise if Oracle announces more acquisitions after NetSuite.

As of March 21, 2016, Twitter (TWTR) has generated returns of -67.1% for the trailing 12 months and -7.8% in the trailing-one-month period.

Salesforce.com (CRM) posted its fiscal 1Q18 numbers on May 18. It announced revenue of $2.39 billion—higher than analysts’ estimate of $2.35 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, announced that he’ll consider monetizing the service when the number of users crosses the 1 billion mark.

According to Rodman & Renshaw’s Raghuram Selvaraju, Valeant’s underlying assets are not fairly valued by the market and the company is capable of making a turnaround.

Although the Dow Jones Index fell 0.7%, the tech-heavy NASDAQ (IXIC) index fell 1.4%. This was the second big tech stock sell-off in 2014.

Here, we’ll talk about international markets for Twitter. These markets take on increasing significance with every quarter.

Uber was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. Since its inception, the company has gone through multiple rounds of funding.

With cloud computing, instead of keeping an organization’s data on its own server or updating applications, you use a service over the Internet from a remote location to store your information and use applications.

People have been asking me over the past few weeks what my views are on the Twitter IPO (TWTR) as well as my view on Twitter as a general business.

After Microsoft’s announcement, LinkedIn’s stock rose 47% to $192.21 while Microsoft’s stock fell 2.6% to $50.14 on June 13, 2016.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Adobe (ADBE) have teamed up to strengthen their marketing software businesses.

Salesforce.com is a leader in the customer relationship management industry. The company has built its moat on the back of its network effect and strong brand.

Salesforce’s acquisition spree Earlier in this series, we discussed Salesforce’s (CRM) recent acquisition of Sequence. We also looked at why companies such as Salesforce and IBM (IBM) are increasingly drawn towards the digital agency space. Of late, Salesforce has been on an acquisition spree. Since 2006, Salesforce has made 44 acquisitions, according to Crunchbase. In the past […]

AppDynamics has managed to grow 50% on an annual basis. Moreover, 75% of AppDynamics customers make purchases based on a subscription-based model.

With its huge cash reserves, Microsoft (MSFT) would be one of the top beneficiaries of President Trump’s proposed tax reductions.

Last week, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Simplygon in the AR (augmented reality) space.

Salesforce pioneered SaaS, and since its launch, Salesforce has developed an impressive mix of cloud-based offerings.

Calendar 2016 marks the second year on record in which tech deals accounted for the majority of M&As. Prior to 2016, 2000 saw the highest number of deals.

Salesforce (CRM) reported fiscal 3Q17 adjusted earnings per share of $0.24, ahead of the consensus of $0.21.

The Harbor Capital Appreciation Fund Investor Class (HCAIX) has had a terrible 2016. It’s the second-worst performer YTD among the 12 funds in this review.

The expected growth in SaaS explains the rising competition and the rise in acquisitions by leading players in the space.

Twitter trades at lower multiples than its peers Earlier in this series, we discussed rumors of Twitter’s (TWTR) possible acquisition and how Salesforce (CRM), Google (GOOG), and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) could be contenders. In this part, we’ll compare Twitter’s value proposition with that of other companies in the social media space. As of […]

On September 30, 2016, Salesforce again made the news when it raised objections about the deal between Microsoft (MSFT) and LinkedIn (LNKD).

Twitter could be a viable alternative Earlier in this series, we discussed ongoing rumors of Twitter (TWTR) becoming a part of Salesforce (CRM). In 2012, Salesforce entered into a partnership with Twitter, under which the latter was feeding data related to social media into Salesforce’s analytics systems. Twitter is not the first social media company […]

Twitter’s ad revenue growth is slowing down Earlier in this series, we discussed Salesforce’s (CRM), Google’s (GOOG), and The Walt Disney Company’s (DIS) interest in Twitter (TWTR). We also learned that it is the movement of advertising dollars towards the social media space that has put Twitter in the limelight. Twitter’s primary source of revenue […]

Earlier in the series, we discussed the concerns T. Rowe Price has raised in regards to Oracle’s (ORCL) buyout of NetSuite.

Oracle’s SaaS (software-as-a-service) and PaaS (platform) revenues grew 48% to ~$2.8 billion in fiscal 2016, as compared to ~$1.9 billion in fiscal 2015.

Much like Google (GOOG), Facebook has remained successful in capitalizing on the user shift to mobile.

In May, Microsoft announced that it would be closing its MSN Chinese web portal in June to focus on providing software and services for Windows 10 devices.

The BeyondCore acquisition is likely to fuel the competition between Salesforce and Microsoft.

Microsoft (MSFT) issued Aaa/AAA rated high-grade bonds worth $19.8 billion through seven parts on August 1, 2016.

Salesforce’s Quip acquisition is symbiotic to both the companies.

Facebook’s (FB) mobile ad revenues are primarily driven by increased number of users and brand marketers on its platform.

The Harbor Capital Appreciation Fund Investor Class has tanked by 3.5% YTD in 2016, making it the second-worst performer YTD among our 12 funds.

Facebook’s (FB) mobile monthly active users (or MAUs) constitute about 91.5% of its total MAUs, which stood at 1.65 billion in 1Q16.

On June 29, 2016, Oracle (ORCL) announced a bond sale of $14 billion. The company’s investment-grade bond sale is split among five tranches.

Microsoft holds $108.3 billion worth of earnings overseas, which accounts for 4.7% of the total overseas cash held by S&P 500 companies.

LinkedIn’s major business division, Talent Solutions, faces macro headwinds in the EMEA and APAC regions.

Earlier in 2016, Cisco completed the acquisition of European video conferencing startup Acano for $700 million in cash.

LinkedIn has been focusing on sponsored content and shifting away from display ads to sponsored updates.

LinkedIn generates a major portion of its revenue from the Talent Solutions segment, which accounted for 65% of the total revenue in 1Q16.

Microsoft (MSFT) announced the acquisition of LinkedIn (LNKD) for $26.2 billion in cash on June 13, 2016.

Social media platform Twitter (TWTR) is going through its toughest phase since its launch in July 2006. Twitter’s issues include a volatile stock price, stagnating user growth, the departure of key executives, and core product issues.

Microsoft’s offer follows the current trend of massive acquisitions in the software space.

On June 16, 2016, Microsoft announced that it acquired Wand Labs, a messaging app developer.

Before Microsoft made an offer of $26.2 billion for LinkedIn, Salesforce had submitted a bid for the company.

Microsoft plans to fund the $26.2 billion LinkedIn acquisition with debt. This naturally raises a question about a change in rating for Microsoft.

With LinkedIn under its umbrella, Microsoft will get immediate social graph access without going through the pain of designing and developing it.

The chance of regulators blocking the transaction is pretty low given that LinkedIn (LNKD) and Microsoft (MSFT) don’t compete directly.

Microsoft primarily generates its cloud revenues from Office 365, Dynamics CRM, and Azure, its cloud-computing platform.

On June 13, 2016, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its plans to acquire LinkedIn (LNKD) for $26.2 billion in cash, its largest acquisition to date.

Microsoft paid a 50% premium to LinkedIn’s June 10 closing price. At 7.5x revenues and 75x EBITDA, Microsoft is paying a lot. LinkedIn is a unique property.

For LinkedIn (LNKD) and Microsoft (MSFT), the gating item should be the SEC’s approval of the proxy statement. Regulators might take a closer look.

Microsoft (MSFT) is buying LinkedIn (LNKD) for $196 per share in cash. The companies are guiding for an end of 2016 close.

LinkedIn will be a standalone entity within Microsoft. This transaction is part of Microsoft’s plan to focus on cloud-based offerings. It wants to rely less on PCs.