Twitter flies high after IPO

The key international news of the week was the excellent IPO by Twitter on the NYSE, although there were several other good IPOs and a handful of small acquisitions.

At home, the resignations of Gary Morolo of Datacentrix and Glenn Fullerton of MB Technologies stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* Good Q1 numbers from Net 1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 10.6% and profit up 71.9%.
* Satisfactory interim numbers from Mix Telematics, with revenue up 8.7% and profit up 5.8%.
* Very good year-end figures from Sekunjalo, with revenue up 24.9% and profit up 67%.
* MB Technologies acquired a 51% stake in GAAP Point of Sale, a provider of asset management solutions.
* Poynting Holdings purchased African Union Communications for R49.5 million.
* Barry Dwolatzky, director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering, and Mteto Nyati, MD of Microsoft SA, were named co-winners of the IITPSA 2013 IT Personality of the Year award.
* Sal Laher, CIO of Eskom, won the 2013 Visionary CIO award.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Poynting Holdings.
* The appointments of Pete Backwell as interim chairman of Datacentrix; and Pieter Rorich as acting CEO of MB Technologies.
* The resignations of Glenn Fullerton, CEO of MB Technologies; and Gary Morolo, chairman of Datacentrix.

* Good half-year numbers from Safaricom, with revenue up 17.1% and profit up 44%.
* Airtel bought Warid's Congo SA.
* Etisalat purchased Vivendi's 53% stake in Maroc Telecom for $5.6 billion.
* The first commercial technology research facility has opened in Africa. IBM's Research Lab in Nairobi is its 12th lab worldwide.
* Hitachi Data Systems will open an office in Kenya to serve East Africa.
* KT Corporation and the Kenyan government will form an IT services company.
* The Tanzanian government will secure the full ownership of Tanzania Telecommunications. Currently, 35% is held by the government, and the remainder by Airtel Tanzania.
* The appointments of Fiona Cullen as Savvis's MD of the EMEA region; David Drummond as Acer's VP of the MEA region; and Avishai Marziano as CEO of Cellcom Liberia.

Sal Laher, CIO of Eskom, won the '2013 Visionary CIO' award.

* Amdocs acquired Celcite management Solutions, a provider of self-organising/self-optimising networks and network management solutions, for $129 million.
* Autodesk bought UK-based Delcam, a supplier of advanced CAD/CAM and industrial measurement solutions, for $277 million.
* Cisco purchased Insieme, its majority-owned data centre technology start-up, for $863 million.
* Groupon acquired Ticket Monster, the Korean subsidiary of LivingSocial, for $260 million.
* Intel bought Kno, an ed-tech start-up.
* OpenText purchased GSX, an e-commerce company.
* The PFP Group acquired Telefonica's stake in its Czech subsidiary, for EUR2.5 billion.
* KKR, a private equity company, made a $296 million investment (5%) in Marvell Technology, a chipmaker.
* Netgear has lost it patent lawsuit against Ruckus Wireless.
* Motorola Solutions has settled its IP dispute with Round Rock.
* Telecom Italia will sell its Argentina unit and some tower assets.
* Very good quarterly figures from Interactive Intelligence (back in the black) and SBA Communications (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Cognizant Technology Solutions, Gartner, Lenovo, Sapient, Sykes Enterprises and Verisk Analytics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from BCE, Cablevision Systems (back in the black), Capgemini, Convergys, Genpact, Qualcomm, T-Mobile US and Zebra Technologies.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Atos, Inmarsat, Nvidia, Telefonica, VimpelCom and Windstream.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Amdocs, with revenue up but profit down; AOL, with revenue up but profit down; AVG Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Consolidated Graphics, with revenue down, but profit up; Deutsche Telekom, with revenue up but profit down; Qualys, with revenue up but profit down; and Swisscom, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Acer, CenturyLink, EarthLink, FireEye (but revenue up over 100%), Groupon, Guidance Software, HTC, Imperva, Leap Wireless, Liberty Global, Novatel Wireless and Tellabs.
* The appointments of John Chen as executive chairman and interim CEO of BlackBerry; and Jim Wong as CEO of Acer.
* The resignations of Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry; Yogesh Malik, CEO of Telenor India; Erik Swan, co-founder and CTO of Splunk; and JT Wang, chairman and CEO of Acer.
* A planned IPO from payment start-up, Square.
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Twitter.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Barracuda Networks, a provider of security and storage solutions.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Mavenir Systems, a provider of software-based telecommunications networking solutions.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Wix, an Israeli start-up that helps people build Web sites.
* A good IPO in Paris by Numericable, a French cable company owned by private equity groups Carlyle and Cinven.

International:
* The future of BlackBerry following the collapse of its potential sale deal.
* The names of the five or so executives that are on the shortlist for the CEO position at Microsoft. The list includes Alan Mulally (Ford Motor Company) and Stephen Elop (ex-Nokia CEO).

Africa:
* A possible buyout by Orange of some of Vodacom's interests in Africa if AT&T does a buyout deal for Vodafone.
* A possible investment by Vodacom in BeMobile (Botswana).

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the potential Neotel/Vodacom deal, and regarding Telkom and the recent Competition Commission rulings.

* Global IT spending will reach $2.14 trillion in 2014, up from a projected $2.04 trillion in 2013, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.2% (although reached a record high during the last week)
* Nasdaq: Down 0.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.9%
* Top SA share movements: Huge Group (-8.3%), MICROmega Holdings (-9.1%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+8.4%), Poynting Holdings (+9.2%), SecureData (-11.1%), Sekunjalo (+7.3%) and Telemasters (-8.3%)

Last week, the Sunday Times published its annual Business Times Top 100. The following were significant from a technology perspective:

Top 100 companies over five years:
* 2: EOH
* 4: Mix Telematics
* 7: Pinnacle Technology
* 12: Naspers
* 14: Metrofile

Top 50 companies over one year:
* 2: Mix Telematics
* 3: AdaptIT
* 5: MICROmega
* 13: EOH
* 23: Naspers

Worst companies over one year:
* 1: Gijima
* 5: Jasco
* 12: ConvergeNet Holdings

Worst companies over five years:
* 3: Gijima
* 6: ConvergeNet Holdings
* 14: Digicore