Software

Capital Calls: U.S. CEO pay

12 Apr 2021

Concise views on global finance: The median big-company boss is ending up with $13.7 mln for the 2020 pandemic year, a payout that's heading for a record.

Gaming weakness puts Ubisoft on M&A last life

9 Apr 2021

Shares in the “Assassin’s Creed” publisher have languished since a failed takeover by Vivendi in 2018. Despite a pandemic boost, CEO Yves Guillemot’s $10 bln group suffers from dour profitability. That leaves him open to attack by rivals like Activision Blizzard or Tencent.

Box KKR deal kills two birds with three stones

8 Apr 2021

Activist Starboard Value wanted a sale of the $4 bln cloud-services group and board changes. Now KKR will invest $500 mln in convertible preferred stock, which Box will use to repurchase regular shares. Governance improvements are a plus, but it's a complicated way to buy time.

Atos’ April Fool surprise is no laughing matter

1 Apr 2021

The French IT group’s shares fell 14% after it flagged accounting problems at two U.S. units. The 1 bln euro hit to its market value looks harsh given they bring in only 11% of sales. Fears of more financial bugs will stymie CEO Elie Girard’s efforts to close the gap with rivals.

Capital Calls: Elon Musk, LeBron James

1 Apr 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Endeavor, Ari Emanuel’s entertainment group, is hoping the Tesla boss’s stardust will help a second attempt at an IPO; the basketball star’s stake in the Red Sox is a foil to Steve Cohen’s Mets deal.

Hitachi’s $9.6 bln buy defies some global logic

31 Mar 2021

The Japanese group is paying a huge 38 times forecast EBITDA for U.S.-software firm GlobalLogic. That’s only partly justified by the target’s superfast growth in a hot “digital transformation” market. Boss Toshiaki Higashihara will need serious synergies to eke a decent return.

Robinhood IPO comes with forest of perils

30 Mar 2021

The U.S. retail brokerage has expanded its user base and profile fast. But its main revenue, payments from market makers, is under pressure from regulators and rivals. Other parts of the top line are under pressure too. It’s hard to square that with a $30 billion valuation.

Capital Calls: BlackRock’s Archegos angle, SPACs

30 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The fallout from the collapse of Bill Hwang’s family office gives regulators reasons to focus on funds, not fund managers; and bosses of blank-check companies don’t take investor questions.

Review: “A World Without Email” is a long way off

26 Mar 2021

Tending to electronic communication takes a third of our working day, making us miserable and less productive, Cal Newport argues. Virtual to-do lists are useful hacks to regain control. Yet even if email is defeated, interruption by pervasive digital messages seems here to stay.

Capital Calls: Twitter time-wasting, News Corp

25 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Congressional hearings on Big Tech get ever less productive; meanwhile, the parent of the Wall Street Journal snaps up Investor’s Business Daily.

Capital Calls: Leon Black, Happiness index

22 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Apollo’s founder still has his imprint on the Museum of Modern Art and Dartmouth College; people are proving surprisingly resilient in the pandemic, a recent poll suggests.

Capital Calls: New York, Allegro exit

17 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The Big Apple reigns in a new ranking of global cities, but the prize isn’t what it was; shareholders in Polish e-commerce group Allegro sell down early.

Big Tech’s data virtue-signalling has casualties

16 Mar 2021

Apple and Google are making it harder for marketers to track individual users. It’s a no-brainer: the changes will cement their dominance and please privacy-focused regulators. But mobile-game developers and the rest of the $330 bln online advertising sector will feel the pain.

Stripe’s $95 bln pop raises bar for payments hype

15 Mar 2021

The privately held group run by the Collison brothers raised money at almost triple its last valuation. It seems rich even next to listed peer Adyen. Investors in the companies are betting on a decade of breakneck growth. Rising competition means they can’t all be winners.

VW drives for second place in Tesla-led tech race

12 Mar 2021

Boss Herbert Diess wants to steer the $128 bln German automaker into the thick of the fast-growing market for in-car software. Closing the gap on Elon Musk’s outfit will be tough. But even a podium finish behind the leader would jump-start Volkswagen’s analogue valuation.

Panasonic turning dial too far on $6.5 bln deal

10 Mar 2021

After paring some sprawl, the electronics giant may now buy the rest of supply-chain software developer Blue Yonder. The faster-growing tech would help lift profitability, but at a hefty price of 40 times forecast EBITDA. Some $2 bln of erased market value speaks to the overload.

Microsoft nears dot-com valuation in Gen-Z world

26 Jan 2021

The rise of rapidly growing cloud software has underpinned the firm’s advance to a $1.8 trln market cap. That implies a valuation that approaches a 20-year high. Yet it is downright quaint based on comparable companies like Amazon. Even so, warning bells are ringing.

Corona Capital: Satellites, Shoes

15 Jan 2021

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: SoftBank pours cash into satellite startup; and footwear winners and losers.

Corona Capital: Target, IPOs keep coming

13 Jan 2021

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: Retailer Target gets an extra sales boost from its earlier e-commerce efforts, while buy-now-pay-later company Affirm continues one of 2020’s less-hated features – a smoking hot IPO market.

Corona Capital: Bond bonanza, Albertsons

12 Jan 2021

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: U.S. companies' bond issuance in 2020 hits records across the board; and America’s No. 3 grocer continues to take advantage of the shopping habits created by Covid-19 lockdowns.