Getting a Handle on Twitter’s Value; Investors Must Look Beyond the Basics to See Just How Expensive Twitter Really Is; diluted market value of $31.7 billion means Twitter trades at 33 times 2014 sales estimates

Getting a Handle on Twitter’s Value

Investors Must Look Beyond the Basics to See Just How Expensive Twitter Really Is

MIRIAM GOTTFRIED

Updated Nov. 7, 2013 6:03 p.m. ET

The wait is over, and the market has spoken, or rather, tweeted. But when it comes toTwitter‘s TWTR +72.69% size, and valuation, the message is easily garbled. After pricing late Wednesday at $26, shares of newly public Twitter opened at $45.10 Thursday. According to most financial databases, that means the micromessaging service has a market value of $25 billion. That is open to debate. Read more of this post

BlackBerry’s Best Hope Is Without BlackBerrys

BlackBerry’s Best Hope Is Without BlackBerrys

BlackBerry Ltd., shunned by buyers even at a record-low takeover valuation, may find that its best shot of survival is to abandon smartphones and bet its future on software. A $4.7 billion buyout of BlackBerry fell through this week and shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. opted instead to infuse the company with cash to counter a burn rate that had been on pace to use up most of its stockpile by the end of next year. Jefferies Group LLC said it’s also unlikely that Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry will find takers for any of its pieces. Read more of this post

Lenovo to Sell Phones in Markets Where IPhone Seen Costly

Lenovo to Sell Phones in Markets Where IPhone Seen Costly

Lenovo Group Ltd., the largest maker of personal computers, said it will triple the number of markets in which it sells smartphones by focusing on emerging economies where Apple Inc.’s iPhone is seen as too costly. “We have seen the first wave of success in Asian countries,” Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing said in an interview yesterday. “We provide affordable products for emerging markets. That’s very important. For those markets, the iPhone is probably not the best-selling product, Lenovo can be much more competitive.” Read more of this post

Is Alibaba’s Big Data Big Enough?

November 7, 2013, 5:53 PM

Is Alibaba’s Big Data Big Enough?

Alibaba’s foray into the world of fund management—through a money-market fund-like investment product called Yu’E Bao, or leftover treasure—has so far been a huge success. The lingering question, however, is how exactly it works. One of Yu’E Bao’s appeals is that it gives customers the convenience of a demand deposit—they can withdraw their funds whenever they like—with returns similar to wealth-management products or other longer-term deposit options like CDs, which typically lock the funds for three to six months. Read more of this post

Henry Blodget: If You Think Twitter’s IPO Price Is Silly, You Don’t Get It

If You Think Twitter’s IPO Price Is Silly, You Don’t Get It

HENRY BLODGET NOV. 6, 2013, 10:59 AM 15,674 28

Twitter’s IPO is ready to price, and, predictably, many pundits are going on about how stupid investors are to buy the stock. Twitter is losing money, these pundits observe. It’s a social network, like the disastrous Facebook. Twitter hasn’t proven anything yet. Twitter investors are so deluded and ridiculous, these pundits roar, that they’ve already agreed to buy Twitter stock at $25 a share! (A $17 billion valuation.) Whatever you do, don’t get taken in by this. Anyone who bashes Twitter because it’s “losing money” or “is like Facebook” or hasn’t “proven anything” is the most dangerous form of market pundit: Articulate enough to sound knowledgeable to someone who knows absolutely nothing, but so unsophisticated that he or she can’t be bothered to ask why some of the smartest investors in the world are so excited about Twitter. In case you’re curious about the latter — why so many smart investors are so willing to pay up for Twitter, and why the stock is likely to trade much higher than the IPO price (probably into the mid $30s or $40s) — here are some of the key points. (And to be super-clear: This isn’t investment advice, and I couldn’t care less if you buy the stock. I in fact think you shouldn’t buy the stock, because I think stock-picking is generally a stupid strategy, especially for individuals. I’m just trying to help you understand why OTHER smart investors are buying the stock).

Why so many smart investors are so excited about Twitter Read more of this post

Twitter isn’t profitable. And neither are these other huge public companies

Twitter isn’t profitable. And neither are these other huge public companies

BY DAVID HOLMES 
ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013

In the weeks leading up to Twitter’s IPO, the biggest critique leveled at the company is its lack of profits. It’s not exactly a frivolous complaint. And today that grievance was aired even louder after news broke that Twitter was likely to price its IPO between $25 and $28 a share, leading to a market value of up to $16 billion. Crazy, right? How can a company be valued so high when it isn’t even, you know, turning a profit? Well, that all depends on how much you expect Twitter to grow in the coming years. Plenty of observers, like Business Insider’s Henry Blodget, think judging a company on current profitability alone is shortsighted, and that Twitter’s projected future growth makes it a bargain at $28 a share. Blodget compares Twitter to LinkedIn, another social network operating at a loss at the time of going public that’s been consistently profitable now for the past 10 quarters. If nothing else, Twitter’s lack of profitability hardly makes it unique among giant tech companies. In the graphic below, NYU’s Simran Khosla charts the net income of 12 big public companies over the past ten quarters. Some, like Apple, never posted a loss during this period. Others, like Pandora, have almost never been profitable during this time. That means that if Twitter does begin to turn a profit by 2015, as analyst reports compiled by Bloomberg predict, it will still be ahead of plenty of other hyped public companies:

Twitter: It can help overthrow dictators. But can it make money?

Sure, Twitter has great power and reach, but can it make money? Wall Streeters are concerned

By Associated Press, Published: November 6

NEW YORK — It can help overthrow dictators. But can it make money? Protesters famously used Twitter to organize during the Arab Spring three years ago. President Barack Obama announced his 2012 re-election victory using the short messaging service. Lady Gaga tweets. So does the pope. But for all its power and reach, Twitter gushes losses — $65 million in the third quarter, nearly three times more than it lost a year ago. Read more of this post

How your accounting software could convince your bank to give you a loan: Intuit CEO explains

Michael Bailey Deputy editor

How your accounting software could convince your bank to give you a loan: Intuit CEO explains

Published 07 November 2013 11:08, Updated 07 November 2013 12:12

Accounting software vendors must tread carefully in the era of big data – the information they collect is highly private – however Intuit, the provider of Quickbooks, has launched a division where it claims customers’ books can help them get business loans from otherwise unwilling banks. Read more of this post

46.6% Chinese willing to buy smartwatches: Report

46.6% Chinese willing to buy smartwatches: Report

Updated: 2013-11-06 13:43

( technode.com)

Read more of this post

The New Mobile Advertising Ecosystem Explained

The New Mobile Advertising Ecosystem Explained

MARCELO BALLVE NOV. 6, 2013, 5:40 PM 3,453

Mobile advertising has carved out a significant share of overall digital ad revenues faster than many expected. But increased spending hasn’t made the mobile ad ecosystem any less complex. Ad networks, ad exchanges, real-time bidding platforms, and many other self-styled mobile ad “solutions,” seem to offer everything to everyone, including the best data, the best and most varied targeting technologies, and access to the most premium sites and apps. Read more of this post

An Offer From Amazon to Its Most Bitter Rivals; The giant retailer announced a program to pay independent bookstores to sell its e-books and popular reading devices

November 6, 2013

An Offer From Amazon to Its Most Bitter Rivals

By DAVID STREITFELD and JULIE BOSMAN

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon is going to the people who dislike and fear it the most — independent bookstore owners — and offering to work together to fulfill the needs and desires of their customers. The retailer on Wednesday announced a program where stores can sell its popular reading devices. The booksellers would get a small payment on each sale and a commission on all e-books that the reader buys in the next two years. Read more of this post

Waze CEO: Israel will have many more billion dollar exits

Waze CEO: Israel will have many more billion dollar exits

Noam Bardin: The combination of strong products workers and high tech in Israel will make it possible to achieve more unicorn companies.

6 November 13 16:14, Tzahi Hoffman

“In the past ten years, 39 companies joined the unicorn club (companies that achieved an exit of over $1 billion). Only one Israeli company belongs to this club, and it is Waze,” Waze CEO Noam Bardin told a meeting of Tmura – The Israeli Public Service Venture Fund. Waze was acquired by Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) for $1 billion earlier this year. Read more of this post

YY CEO: Monetizing Mobile Is Easier than Previously Thought

YY CEO: Monetizing Mobile Is Easier than Previously Thought

By Tracey Xiang on November 7, 2013 

On the earnings conference call for Q3 2013, David Xuelin Li, CEO of YY, said they found that it’s easier to monetize on mobile than previously thought. Small screen doesn’t seem a problem with YY users, he concluded, and there’s little difference for users to buy virtual items on mobile devices from on PCs. YY also saw increasing traffic on mobile and there are from three channels, said Li. One is from the existing PC platform; the second is YY’s game portal; the third is organic increase of new users who start using YY’s products from mobile devices. Read more of this post

Kelley Blue Book, Price Bible for Used Cars, Heads to China

Kelley Blue Book, Price Bible for Used Cars, Heads to China

Joint Venture Aims to Tap Chinese Secondhand Auto Sales

COLUM MURPHY

Nov. 7, 2013 3:02 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI—U.S.-based auto researcher Kelley Blue Book and Chinese online automotive-marketing company Bitauto Holdings Ltd. BITA -0.83% are combining forces to give Chinese consumers used-car pricing data, plugging a hole in the development of the world’s largest car market. Kelley Blue Book, operator of the widely used KBB.com website, and Bitauto each will hold a 40% stake in the joint-venture company. China Automobile Dealers Association, an industry group, will hold the remaining 20%. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Read more of this post

With all eyes on Twitter IPO, Israel’s Wix heralds new chapter for startup nation

With all eyes on Twitter IPO, Israel’s Wix heralds new chapter for startup nation

After its own successful initial public offering, the DIY website creator hopes to transcend the traditional Israeli high-tech strategy and forge a global company.

By Dina Kraft | Nov. 7, 2013 | 3:00 PM

NEW YORK – High above Times Square on Wednesday in a boxy windowless conference room at the Nasdaq building, executives from Wix – Israel’s newest multimillionaires – were finally looking a bit relaxed. The closing bell (really a button) was only about an hour away and their stock was trading at a steady $16.50 a share – exceeding original expectations. Champagne glasses were scattered among laptops as congratulatory calls, texts and emails poured in from around the world. Read more of this post

Digital banking: Third time lucky; Banks that have no branches are making a surprising resurgence

Digital banking: Third time lucky; Banks that have no branches are making a surprising resurgence

Nov 9th 2013 | PARIS |From the print edition

BEHIND the smoked glass of a nondescript building in central Paris young people in open-necked shirts interact with Twitter and other social-media networks. This has the feel of a start-up, but in fact it is an outpost of BNP Paribas, one of France’s biggest banks. Hello Bank!, with its catchy name and irritating punctuation, represents one of the most voguish trends in banking. It is trying to entice customers to abandon expensive bank branches and do most if not all of their banking on their mobile phones and tablets. Read more of this post

The end of traffic jams? Dutch test new GPS system; By letting drivers know in time that they should change lanes and drive at a certain speed, researchers hope they can prevent traffic jams forming

The end of traffic jams? Dutch test new system

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 – 22:18

AFP

THE HAGUE – Researchers in the Netherlands will next year test a GPS navigation system aimed at preventing the international curse of motorway traffic jams by telling drivers which lane to move to. Tests will be carried out as early as April on a 75-kilometre (around 50 mile) stretch of motorway passing through the Netherlands, from Germany to Belgium, which is popular with freight lorries. Read more of this post

Berkshire’s Verisk Heads for Record Plunge on Revenue Slump

Verisk Heads for Record Plunge on Revenue Slump

Verisk Analytics Inc. (VRSK), the supplier of actuarial and risk data to banks and insurers, headed for the biggest drop since its 2009 public offering after revenue missed analysts’ estimates as growth slowed in the health segment. Verisk slumped 8.4 percent to $62.12 at 10:02 a.m. Shares of the Jersey City, New Jersey-based company advanced 22 percent this year, compared with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 24 percent climb. Third-quarter revenue of $438.6 million fell short of the average $444.8 million estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 13 analysts. Sales tied to health care at the decision-analytics operation climbed 6.2 percent from the third quarter of 2012 to $73.6 million, the company said in a statement late yesterday. That compares with a 21 percent increase in the second quarter. “We’d expect this slowdown to generate some concerns and questions,” William Clark, an analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods, said in a research note following Verisk’s earnings report. “Certainly something to keep an eye on.” Net income for the quarter rose 16 percent to $96.4 million on growth in its insurance and financial-services business, Verisk said in the statement. “Our health-care business delivered growth that was below our plan,” the company said in the statement. “But we remain enthusiastic about our longer-term outlook.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Marci Jacobs in New York at mjacobs63@bloomberg.net

Blockbuster Video-Rental Chain Will Shut All U.S. Stores

Blockbuster Video-Rental Chain Will Shut All U.S. Stores

Blockbuster LLC, the video-rental company owned by Dish Network Corp. (DISH), will close its remaining 300 U.S. stores, ending an era for a chain that was once a ubiquitous part of American shopping centers. Blockbuster will shut the outlets by early January and discontinue its DVD-by-mail service by mid-December, Englewood, Colorado-based Dish said today in a statement. Each Blockbuster store has eight to 10 employees, so the move is expected to cost about 2,800 jobs. Dish will keep the licensing rights to the Blockbuster brand and use it to sell other services. Read more of this post

Seven Ways Marketers Would Fix Twitter; Ad Executives Speak Out About How the Messaging Service Can Win Them Over

Seven Ways Marketers Would Fix Twitter

Ad Executives Speak Out About How the Messaging Service Can Win Them Over

SUZANNE VRANICA

Updated Nov. 6, 2013 7:47 p.m. ET

As Twitter Inc. prepares to make its stock-market debut, a fundamental question looms: Can the messaging service turn its army of followers into a moneymaking business? Although the service and its 140-character messages has become part of popular culture, many marketers still view Twitter as experimental. It doesn’t have enough scale for some marketers, and some advertisers want more information about Twitter’s users and more proof that ads on the service work. Over the past year, Twitter has taken steps to be more advertiser friendly, such as adding new services. Read more of this post

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Invest in Twitter

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Invest in Twitter

FARHAD MANJOO

Nov. 6, 2013 7:30 p.m. ET

Twitter Inc.’s rise has been a remarkable story. Both because it was beset by chaos (see Nick Bilton’s new book for the operatic details) and because, despite the chaos, Twitter has somehow managed to become a legitimate, even straitlaced business, its IPO is a good time to congratulate the firm on its unlikely success. But it isn’t a good time to invest in Twitter when it starts trading Thursday. Here are three reasons to sit this one out: Read more of this post

Twitter Vies to Open Door for Consumer-Web Companies’ IPO Plans

Twitter Vies to Open Door for Consumer-Web Companies’ IPO Plans

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) has the potential to pry open the door for consumer-Internet initial public offerings after it slammed shut following Facebook Inc. (FB)’s troubled share sale last year. Zulily Inc., an online seller of apparel for moms and babies, and digital-education service Chegg Inc. are set to debut next week. Care.com Inc., owner of a site used to find babysitters, plans to hold an IPO early next year, people familiar with the matter said in August. Read more of this post

Vote of Confidence in Linio, Mexico’s Version of Amazon.com

NOVEMBER 6, 2013, 3:26 PM

Vote of Confidence in Mexico’s Version of Amazon.com

By VINOD SREEHARSHA

The Mexican venture capital firm Latin Idea Ventures said this week that it had made its first investment in an e-commerce company, Linio, a Mexico City start-up that, like Amazon.com in the United States, sells a wide array of products. The investment, announced on Tuesday, was a sign that Latin Idea, founded in 2000, is growing and poised to make significantly larger investments as Mexico’s nascent start-up scene gains momentum. Read more of this post

China becomes Evernote’s biggest market outside the US as its userbase doubles in six months

China becomes Evernote’s biggest market outside the US as its userbase doubles in six months

November 4, 2013

by Josh Horwitz

Today Evernote revealed that the company has passed the 8 million registered user benchmark in China, effectively doubling its userbase in the country since last May. In an interview with DoNews (hat tip Technode), Evernote China managing director Gu Yi stated that China has now become Evernote’s largest market outside of the US, surpassing Japan to take the number two spot. Read more of this post

From Martians to Japanese Eye-lickers: Media Mania Is Nothing New

From Martians to Japanese Eye-lickers: Media Mania Is Nothing New

Oct 30, 2013 Opinion North America

Seventy-five years ago today, Martian invaders landed in Grovers Mill, N.J., marched death machines across the Hudson River and destroyed much of New York City. Or so many people thought as they listened to Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The reasons this story – and the subsequent media reports of it — gained such traction may offer insights into contemporary media obsessions and the misunderstandings they can cause. Read more of this post

India’s Telecom Rules Could Derail Potential Deals; Telecom Commission Recommends Fee on Mergers and Acquisitions

India’s Telecom Rules Could Derail Potential Deals

Telecom Commission Recommends Fee on Mergers and Acquisitions

R. JAI KRISHNA and KENAN MACHADO

Updated Nov. 6, 2013 8:52 a.m. ET

NEW DELHI—India approved new rules on acquisitions of cellular companies Wednesday, in a move analysts say could increase the cost of buying phone companies in the world’s second largest telecommunications market. India’s Telecom Commission—the government’s top telecommunications policy-making body—recommended that any company acquiring an Indian cellular company be asked to pay a fee to the government on top of what it pays for the company. The fee will be connected to the current value of the bandwidth which the target company holds. Read more of this post

Wal-Mart Online Price Error Leads to $100 Can of Lysol

Wal-Mart Online Price Error Leads to $100 Can of Lysol

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s (WMT) website was selling kayaks for about $11 and computer monitors for about $9 earlier today owing to a technical error that led the world’s largest retailer to shut down its online store for maintenance. The pricing abnormalities were caused internally, said Ravi Jariwala, a Wal-Mart spokesman. “We’re working quickly to correct” it, he said in a telephone interview, adding that there would be “intermittent site unavailability” until then. Read more of this post

U.S. Investors Brush Aside Fears About Chinese Internet Companies

NOVEMBER 6, 2013, 12:06 PM

U.S. Investors Brush Aside Fears About Chinese Internet Companies

By PETER THAL LARSEN

For American investors, love of technology has conquered a fear of China. Shareholders are snapping up shares of Chinese Internet companies going public stateside. It is a striking contrast with the recent past, when accounting scams and poor governance prompted many to shun Chinese stocks. The travel booking website Qunar, which doubled in value on its first day of trading last Friday, is the prime example of the new boom. The same week, shares in the local listings group 58.com – billed as China’s Craigslist – jumped almost 50 percent on their debut. Read more of this post