Seth Gilbert, 10-17-2007
Yahoo’s earnings are out. After the close of markets Tuesday, Yahoo launched this quarter’s wave of tech earnings announcements (along with Intel and IBM which also reported). One headline reads “earnings slip again” another says earnings “encourage investors.” That’s about right. With the first 100 days of CEO Jerry Yang’s new tenure now finished, watchers aren’t’ yet sure what to make of Yahoo’s present state… or future prospects. Some are still concerned while others are seeing the glass half full; maybe even getting fuller.
To the numbers: the trend was positive and analyst consensus expectations were beaten.
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Seth Gilbert, 10-16-2007
Corporate M&A activity is a little like addictive behavior. Once a company sets down the road to grow by acquisition, chances are they won’t stop at just one hit. For Discovery Communications, parent of TV’s Discovery Channel, TLC and others, the M&A road leads to a convergence of TV and internet initiatives. It seems they’re on it and happy to pay the tolls along the way.
Monday, Discovery Communications announced they’d agreed to buy privately held How Stuff Works, the informative and educational website property for a price reportedly near $250m.
HowStuffWorks is very much what their name describes. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 10-11-2007
Electronic Arts, again under John Riccitiello, is a different animal than they were before he left in 2004. As a company, they’re now getting more streamlined, more efficient. They’re increasing their focus on alternative revenue streams (casual gaming, dynamic games, online gaming). They’re also increasingly breaking out a pen to sign a partnership or opening the checkbook to acquire assets.
Not even a weeks ago, EA bought SCI – bringing technology tools for online gaming. Now they’re acquiring content assets with the purchase of VG Holdings Corp. (“VGH”) – the owner of game studios Bioware and Pandemic.
Announced Thursday afternoon, EA will pay up to $620m in cash plus allocate up to $155m in equity for delivery subject to performance milestones. EA will also loan VG Holding Corp up to $35m through closing.
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Seth Gilbert, 10-9-2007
Like the old maxim of killing two birds with one stone, sometimes a small change can fix several problems. Tuesday, GE’s NBC Universal unit said it would pay $925m for Oxygen Media, the woman-centric cable TV network. $925 may not be a small change but NBC is certainly hoping it will be one of the especially effective stones.
If the promise of the deal is realized, in one move the acquisition could both breathe new life into an occasionally faltering Oxygen, recharge NBC owned Internet property iVillage and fortify NBC’s mission-critical cable property portfolio.
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Seth Gilbert, 10-5-2007
The video game Halo 3 earned $300m at the cash registers during its first week of release. It earned more than $170m in its first day. That easily trounced the all time best opening day box office returns for the movie industry (Spider-Man 3 earned $59.8m (source: Box Office Mojo)). That makes Microsoft’s announcement today to spin off Halo’s creator, Bungie Studios, seem curious at first glance. On a second look, it’s not actually that surprising.
Game Development is a little bit like movie production and venture capital. For every hit, there are dozens of failures. Companies spend extreme sums of time and money developing projects all the while knowing full well that many of the efforts will ultimately have to be supported by a few leaders in the portfolio. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 10-2-2007
With the market for Internet video exploding, so to is the market opportunity for companies providing back-end enabling technologies, notably encoding/transcoding and distribution/streaming services. Investors are taking note.
One of the players, Utah-based Move Networks has just raised an additional $34m in a Series B financing. The Reg D securities filing was dated September 24. According to PE Hub (which has first-look access to the public record document thanks to parent company Thompson Financial’s service relationship with the SEC) prior investor Steamboat Ventures appears to have led the round. (Steamboat Ventures, which is named after the Mickey Mouse character Steamboat Willy, is the Walt Disney Company’s venture capital arm).
The new capital brings the total investment in Move Networks to about $45m. Hummer Winblad and Steamboat previously invested $11.3m in a Series A round that closed in December 2006.
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Seth Gilbert, 09-25-2007
Friday, place-shifting TV technology company Sling Media announced a deal to stream NFL games to DirecTV customers. The move away from consumer hardware and software and into business to business services came as a surprise. Even more surprising is Sling’s Monday evening announcement. The company announced it will sell itself to DirecTV competitor Echostar (operating of Dish Network) for approximately $380m.
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