See 3PAR S-1
See April 2006 story from TheDeal.com
Tags: ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital
]]>Even though things could have been better, we won’t shed any tears for those lucky enough to get in on the $29 share price, and certainly not for parent company EMC Corp. After paying just $635 million for VMware in 2003, EMC's post-IPO 87% stake was worth a cool $16 billion. —David Shabelman
See Aug. 14 story in TheDeal.com
Tags: VMware, virtualization, ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital
]]>Spirent reported that its results had suffered from consolidation in its customer base. It also parted with the usual convention on these polite calls of citing "weak industry conditions." Spirent named names. It said that orders from Alcatel-Lucent, the company formed through last year's $11.6 billion merger of Lucent Technologies Inc. and Alcatel SA, had decreased some 29% in the recent quarter. That compares with a 32% increase in orders from Nokia Siemens Networks — a rate of growth that Spirent also found disappointing — and order growth of 99% from Juniper Networks Inc.
A 29% drop in orders in any industry is, well, quite a drop. But in the telecom industry, which is racing to introduce new products and expand into new markets and is basically at the core of a fundamental shift in the way people everywhere live and work and entertain themselves — that kind of a drop in orders is more than a little confounding. As Tech Confidential reported a few weeks ago, Alcatel-Lucent's disappointing second-quarter results show that the merged company hasn't exactly hit the ground running. The fact that the company has reduced spending dramatically suggests we may still not have heard the worst of the story. —Andrea Orr
Go to LightReading item on Spirent
Go to recent Tech Confidential blog entry on Alcatel-Lucent
Tags: Alcatel-Lucent, telecom
]]>That might well be true in the long-term. PE firms are reloading their war chests, with Fortress Investment Group LLC raising $5 billion, Advent International Corp. scooping up $1.3 billion and Apollo Management LP planning a new $15 billion fund. In tech, meanwhile, PE players are pushing deeper into services and business processing outsourcing, where globalization is driving growth and cross-border deals.
Shorter term, the hefty spreads on a number of buyouts suggest the markets feel less sanguine about the prospects for M&A. —Alain Sherter
See Aug. 3 story from The Deal magazine
See BCF's quarterly technology finance update
See arbitrage situations from TheDeal.com
Tags: private+equity, m&a, mergers
]]>In case you didn’t think a Web site that helps people reconnect with former classmates, colleagues and military pals could be a successful business, much less an IPO candidate, think again.
Classmates, now billing itself as a social networking site, had more than 50 million registered accounts as of June 30 and 2.7 million paying accounts. Its revenues in the first quarter of 2007 totaled $42.4 million; the site generated $152.1 million in all of 2006. It is on the cusp of profitability, losing $250,000 in the first quarter after making $171,000 for all of 2006.
A Classmates IPO would be a boon for United Online, operator of discount Internet service providers NetZero and Juno. The Woodland Hills, Calif.-based company acquired Classmates for $100 million in 2004, when it had half as much revenue as it has today. —David Shabelman
See October 2004 story from TheDeal.com
Tags: ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital
]]>By contrast, shares of VMware parent EMC Corp., which is spinning out 10% of the unit in the initial public offering, are down 1.3% in afternoon trading. That said, the storage software maker has already gotten good mileage on the offer. —Alain Sherter
See story from TheDeal.com
See post from SeekingAlpha
Tags: VMware, virtualization, ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital
]]>However, Devitt speculates that the unit could be worth as much as $15 billion to eBay in a spinout if it shifts away from transactions as the sole source of revenue and toward more of a consumer credit business. Devitt pegs the probability of eBay being proactive and spinning out the unit at less than 50%, although pressure from its shareholders may eventually force its hand.
One of Tech Confidential's favorite eBay-related blogs, onlyebay.blogspot.com, also discussed a potential spinoff last week. —David Shabelman
]]>Most prominently, Viacom Inc. filed a $1 billion complaint against Google Inc.’s YouTube. And Google, which claims it’s protected under the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, countered over the summer that Viacom was “built on lawsuits.” At the conference, Viacom general counsel Michael Fricklas will provide a view of this precedent-establishing case in his keynote on “Intellectual Property” — a construct worth $650 billion a year to the U.S. economy.
No stranger to piracy controversies himself, Edgar Bronfman Jr. seems likely to use his keynote interview, “Capitalizing on Emerging Opportunities,” to address the transformation of his Warner Music Group from a traditional music company to a music-based content company. The WMG chairman and CEO may also comment on legal action that Universal Music Group, which he used to run, has taken against News Corp.’s MySpace. That complaint, like Viacom’s against YouTube, charges that much of the social networking site’s content “is the ‘user-stolen’ intellectual property of others.”
Convergence 2.0 isn’t just about conflicts between old and new media, however. While the realm of TMT, or technology, media and telecom, has been a hotbed of private equity activity, recent credit market turmoil could change all that. One issue to be directed at Convergence 2.0 dealmakers is whether this turmoil has leveled the playing field, at long last, for strategic players.
Not that financial sponsors are running away. Providence Equity Partners, for its part, just invested $100 million in a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. (The JV was set up six months ago to transmit their movies and television shows over the Internet.) Providence’s 10% share confers a $1 billion valuation on the venture, which has yet to obtain a name, much less put up a Web site. So it’s no surprise experts on The Deal’s “State of Convergence” panel will be asked if the investment represents an act of prescient investing or a return to bubble blowing.
Other panel subjects for timely, insightful dissection include broadband’s “third pipe,” online video, mobile content and the new advertising models. We know it’s going to be an enlightening day. And we’ll do our best to keep it civil. —Richard Morgan
More information on the Convergence 2.0 conference
See March 13 story on TheDeal.com
See The Deal's June 2007 Convergence Special Report
]]>
Rao has spent 15 years in the speech recognition world, and he believes TravellingWave will not compete directly against the larger players in the market, such as Microsoft Corp., Nuance Communications Inc. and Google Inc. who are making bets on voice mobile search. He hopes to license the software to a handset maker or carrier, and he says the funding will also allow the company to launch the software as a download available to all device holders.
Angels participating in the round include Jim Judson, a partner Seattle law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Geoff Entress, a principal with Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group; Bill Miller, formerly with OVP Ventures and a former general manager of Microsoft’s Advertising Business Unit; and Colin Wong, founder of investment firm Prosperati and formerly with Google. The angel round adds to a total of $150,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation. Rao reports that the NSF grants made it possible for the company to stick with angels for its Series A round, rather than knock on the doors of VC firms. TravellingWave's first product should be out within a year, at which point the company will likely seek additional funding. Given the consolidation happening among speech recognition players, TravellingWave may become a target. —Stacey Higginbotham
See TravellingWave press release (.pdf)
See March 14 story from TheDeal.com
]]>
For now, though, Novell can breathe a sigh of relief. The company celebrated on Monday by buying Orem, Utah-based Senforce Technologies Inc., a provider of endpoint security management technology, for undisclosed terms. Senforce was backed by vSpring Capital, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, American River Ventures, Rocket Ventures and EsNet Group. —Cheryl Meyer
See Aug. 13 story from Forbes.com
See. Aug. 13 press release from Novell.com
See April 14, 2004, story from TheDeal.com
See Aug. 13 story from Bloomberg.com
See Aug. 12 story from FT.com
See Aug. 10 story from MercuryNews.com
See August 2004 story from TheDeal.com
Tags: VMware, virtualization, ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital
]]>Led by former tech entrepreneurs and execs, Carmel Ventures is one of Israel's most active tech VC firms, with $372 million under management. Earlier this year, it led a $5 million round in C-nario, which makes software systems for complex video displays used to advertise in large public spaces, such as airports and convention centers.
Kontera uses keywords on a publisher's Web page to link to relevant ads. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers Inc., who had previously invested $7 million, also are participating in the current round. —Mary Kathleen Flynn
See Kontera press release
See April 2006 story in TheDeal.com
Tags: online marketing
]]>RF Micro all but shut down its dealmaking after March 2005, when it announced that it was exiting the wireless LAN chip business. The news amounted to an admission that its $133 million acquisition three years earlier of WLAN startup Resonext Communications Inc. was an abject failure.
Certainly, the WLAN market was a tough one at the time, and the Sirenza deal is much different from the Resonext acquisition. RF Micro is acquiring an established supplier of radio frequency chips to a broad swath of growing markets. But investors are sure to watch this deal closely to make sure RF Micro hasn't once again bitten off more than it can chew. —Olaf de Senerpont Domis
See press release from RF Micro Web site
See March 2005 article from TheDeal.com
Tags: networking, wireless, deals, m&a, mergers
]]>The company, which brings together hundreds of lifestyle Web sites and which Monday unveiled a sophisticated search tool, raised $18.5 million in venture funding last year. Investors include Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Walden Venture Capital and Information Capital.
Two hundred million dollars is a lot of money, and with the recent downturn in the credit market, it could be a difficult amount to raise — especially once people look under the hood, as the bloggers at TechCrunch have, who concluded that Glam is more ad network than content site. But iVillage’s large $600 million valuation in its sale could have other VCs thinking big as well. —David Shabelman
See December 2006 story in TheDeal.com
See TechCrunch blog
Tags: vc, venture+capital, web 2.0
]]>Worry no more. By the time MercadoLibre went public at 11 a.m., the Dow was in recovery mode, and MercadoLibre was off to the races. At last check, its shares were up an astounding 40% at $25.12.
Although we took a critical approach in our coverage of MercadoLibre earlier in the week, its successful debut is not surprising. Investors don’t want to miss out on what could be the next eBay Inc. or Google Inc., even though that’s highly unlikely. MercadoLibre serves markets that haven't even begun to reach critical mass as far as Internet usage. With eBay as its largest shareholder, MercadoLibre gets added credibility.
As Ben Holmes, editor of IPO research firm Morningnotes.com LLC, points out, despite uncertainty as to what’s going to happen with the broader market, MercadoLibre has found a segment of the market to feel optimistic about. “When you look at Latin American cultures, very few people in the U.S. understand they’re very Western and are much like us culturally in that they want better lives and luxuries,” Holmes said. “But the middle class in those countries is growing at a rate that our middle class hasn’t seen since the beginning of the 20th century. So what you’re buying is not the fundamentals — the revenue growth — you’re buying the opportunity, just like they did with eBay in 1998.” —David Shabelman
See Aug. 9 story in TheDeal.com
See Aug. 8 story in TheDeal.com
See Aug. 7 story in TheDeal.com
Tags: MercadoLibre, ipo
]]>