Author Archive

• Gomez acquisition ‘harbinger of things to come’
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | December 23rd, 2009 at 9:40 am

  

  "Gomez could have gone public," said Ira Cohen, managing partner, Updata Advisors Inc., which represented Compuware Corp. (NASDAQ:CPWR) in its October acquisition of Internet analytics developer Gomez Inc. for $295 million cash. Compuware "knew that buying Gomez would be a game-changer, and they were willing to pay a price that pretty much equated with an IPO," said Cohen, who predicts the deal will be a "harbinger of things to come" in the new year as the IPO market continues to heat up.

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• Tim Armstrong: ‘AOL was missing that spark’
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | December 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

  

  "AOL was missing that spark of innovation," Tim Armstrong tells The Deal about the corporate culture he found when he joined AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) as CEO in March. To rekindle the creative flame, Armstrong set up AOL Ventures, which is charged with investing in startups, incubating projects initiated by employees and growing recent acquisitions, including Patch, Bebo, Truveo and Userplane.

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• Citi stock down, but TARP repay sign of strength
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | December 14th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

  

  Citigroup Inc.'s (NYSE:C) stock closed down over 6% Monday in reaction to the announcement that the bank will repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, $20 billion, but analysts say the news is good over the long term. As The Wall Street Journal put it, "Once the knee-jerk selling and the taxpayer is out of the way, Citi will be free to become a fat cat once again, and that should be good for the stock over the medium to long term."

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• AOL CEO Tim Armstrong on content and competition
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | December 10th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

  

  "We have one of the largest ad businesses on the Internet today, " Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL), told The Deal Thursday. We spoke with Armstrong on the floor of the NYSE Euronext moments after he rang the opening bell to celebrate the company's first day of public trading independent of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX).

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• Facebook prepping for IPO? Twitter too?
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | November 25th, 2009 at 12:31 am

  

  
  Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dampened hopes that the venture capital-backed social networking startup would go public any time soon when he told reporters that an IPO is still "a few years out."

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• A123Systems third-quarter earnings preview
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | November 10th, 2009 at 8:33 am

  

  A123Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:AONE), which makes lithium-ion batteries, reports its first earnings as a public company Tuesday after the bell. One of only 10 venture capital-backed companies to brave an IPO this year, A123Systems' performance and Wall Street's reaction to it are being closely monitored by investors and other VC-backed companies considering public debuts.

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• NYSE Euronext’s Cutler on hot week for IPOs
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | November 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm

  

  Hyatt Hotels Corp. is one of six initial public offerings anticipated this week, making it the most active week in IPOs since that of Sept. 21, when seven companies went public.

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• More strong tech earnings expected this week
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | October 26th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

  

  Better-than-expected quarterly earnings from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) earlier this month bode well for technology firms announcing results this week, say analysts from Jefferies & Co.

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• Microsoft first-quarter 2010 earnings preview
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | October 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm

  

  Microsoft's Friday morning earnings announcement will end a jam-packed week that has included launching Windows 7, opening its first retail stores, unveiling a revamped online store that sells PCs and striking a search deal with Twitter.

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• DOJ to file concerns about Google Books Friday
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | September 18th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  

  On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to outline a range of concerns it has about an October 2008 settlement that Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) struck with publishers over the rights to distribute digital copies of certain works, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The DOJ will likely submit its concerns in a filing to the Southern District of New York, which must decide whether or not to approve the agreement files, after the close of market.

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• Jefferies analysts more positive on Yahoo!
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | August 13th, 2009 at 7:37 am

  

  "Now that heads are cooler, we're revisiting our investment thesis on Yahoo!, addressing key issues we heard from investors and showing that while Yahoo! is not out of the woods yet, positive momentum will start building again around the story and the stock," say Jefferies & Co. analysts in a research note early Thursday morning.

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• RRE's Jim Robinson on IPO-ready companies
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | July 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am

  

  Despite the recent flurry of venture-backed companies that have gone public, there aren't many more waiting in the SEC's wings. Among the few in the IPO queue is disk storage provider Nexsan Technologies Inc., which updated its prospectus in June, despite the chilly IPO climate.

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• StarVest's Farrington: Profitability key to IPOs
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | July 15th, 2009 at 9:50 am

  

  One of the biggest changes in the environment for initial public offerings over the last 18 months is that institutional investors are more focused on profitability and less focused on growth, says Deborah Farrington, a partner at StarVest Partners. The New York venture capital firm is the biggest investor, besides Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, in NetSuite Inc. (NYSE:N), which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in December of 2007, shortly before the IPO market shut down.

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• Chrome OS compromises Schmidt's Apple role
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | July 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

  

  When Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced its new Chrome operating system earlier this week, the move put the search company in direct competition not only with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) but also with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), further complicating -- one might even say compromising -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt's position on Apple's board.

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• LogMeIn to follow last week's four IPOs
  Mary Kathleen Flynn, The Deal | June 30th, 2009 at 8:19 am

  

  Venture-backed LogMeIn Inc. is expected to go public later this week, following four companies that made public debuts last week, the most active week for IPOs since that of April 21, 2008.

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