AT&T pays billions for DirecTV

AT&T's multibillion-dollar acquisition of DirecTV and Google's $1 billion acquisition of Twitch were the key international ICT stories last week.

At home, the long awaited announcement of the Vodacom/Neotel deal and the bid by Telkom for BCX stole most of the local ICT space.

* Mixed interim numbers from Reunert, with revenue up 13.5% but profit down 7.5%.
* Very good year-end numbers from ISA, with revenue up 49.9% and profit up 33.7%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Vodacom, with revenue up 8.3% and profit up 3.3%.
* Positive trading updates from Ansys and Huge Group.
* Vodacom will spend R7 billion to acquire Neotel, subject to the fulfilment of several conditions, including regulatory approval. Neotel is 67% owned by Tata Communications (India), which in turn is looking to totally exit the telecommunications sector. In the last quarter, Tata Communications reported a net loss that was attributed to an impairment charge pending this proposed sale.
* Telkom SA purchased Business Connexion for R2.67 billion. This is the second such move by the former, with the first being scuppered by the Competition Tribunal back in 2007. Assuming the deal is approved, I would expect Telkom Business to be integrated with BCX's operation going forward.
* Internet Solutions made an additional 49% investment in AlwaysOn, a WiFi hotspot provider, taking its shareholding to 100%. The original stake was acquired in 2009.
* FGP made a 30% investment in ICTWORX, a technology skills training company. Tim Modise, who leads the FGP Group, will become chairman of ICTWORX.
* Amecor sold off Secequip, a 79% owned subsidiary, to Divine Inspiration, for about R30 million.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Amecor and TCS.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Business Connexion.
* The appointments of Henry Ferreira as an executive director of Pinnacle Holdings; and Pierre Spies as CEO of AxizWorkgroup.

* Africell bought a majority stake in Orange Uganda.
* Vodacom's DRC dispute with its partner, CWN, has been 'sorted' following a court ruling in the former's favour.
* Etisalat has offered to buy out the minority shareholders of Maroc Telecom.

Vodacom will spend R7 billion to acquire Neotel.

* AT&T acquired DirecTV, the number one US satellite TV provider, for $48.5 billion.
* Cisco purchased ThreatGrid, a provider of technology that offers dynamic analysis of malicious code and security threat technology.
* Cobham, a British defence specialist, bought Aeroflex, a wireless communications company.
* F5 Networks acquired Defense.net, a provider of cloud-based security services for protecting data centres and Internet applications from DDOS attacks.
* Flexiant, a cloud vendor, purchased Tapp, a cloud brokerage service provider.
* Google bought Divide, a mobile services company whose software allows corporations to manage the personal smartphones that consumers increasingly use on the job.
* Mentor Graphics acquired Nimbic, a provider of Maxwell-accurate, 3D full wave electromagnetic simulation solutions.
* Microchip Technology purchased ISSC Technologies, a wireless products maker.
* Oracle bought GreenBytes, a storage start-up.
* PayByPhone, a mobile payments provider, acquired Adaptis Solutions, a UK cashless payment processor that focuses on the parking and transport markets.
* Twitter purchased SoundCloud, an audio hosting and sharing start-up.
* YouTube (Google) bought Twitch, a streaming video service, for $1 billion.
* Overland Storage merged with Sphere 3D, desktop virtualisation technology developer, to form a global virtualisation and data management software company.
* Two Mexican tower operators merged, ie, MMIF and Digital Bridge. It will create the second largest independent tower business in that country.
* ZeniMax Media, a video game publisher, is suing Oculus, a virtual reality start-up, alleging theft of trade secrets.
* Alcatel-Lucent is suing Sophos and its subsidiary Cyberoam for patent infringement.
* A settlement was reached, worth $324.5 million, regarding hiring claims brought by employees against four companies: Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel.
* Yahoo Japan is no longer planning to buy eAccess from Softbank in a $3.2 billion deal that was part of a reorganisation of the latter's assets. However, Softbank will still merge its two small telecoms subsidiaries, eAccess and Wilcom, into a new company to be known as Ymobile.
* Excellent quarterly results from Westell Technologies (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Marvell Technology Group and TiVo (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Intuit.
* Good year-end numbers from Lenovo. In Q1, EMEA sales rose 39%.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Analog Devices.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Renren.
* Mixed full-year figures from Vodafone, with revenue down but profit up following the Verizon buy-out.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Compuware, with revenue down but back in the black; HP, with revenue down but profit up; NetApp, with revenue down but profit up; and Synopsys, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Aruba Networks, Brocade Communications Systems, Gilat Satellite Networks, Mentor Graphics, Salesforce.com, ViaSat and Weibo (despite revenue up almost threefold).
* The start of Bill McDermott's tenure as the sole CEO at SAP.
* A planned IPO from Zain Iraq.
* An IPO filing by Good Technology, a mobile software security services provider.
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq from GoPro, the wearable camera maker.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by JD.com and currently the largest Chinese company to list in the US; it raised $1.8 billion.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by SunEdison Semiconductor, a spin-off from the solar technology company SunEdison.

EMEA/Africa:
* EMEA integrated systems revenue jumped 58% in 2013 to $1.8 billion, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Inkjet technology will continue to dominate the worldwide continuous-feed print market beyond 2014, according to IDC.
* The global M2M market totalled $1.4 billion in 2013, up 6% from the previous year, according to Infonetics Research.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.6% (highest-ever weekend close, and during the week the index broke the 50 000 barrier for the first time)
* Nasdaq: Up 2.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.7% (highest weekend close this year)
* S&P 500: Up 1.2% (highest-ever close)
* FTSE100: Down 0.6%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (+8.4%), BCX (+11.2%), Gijima (-7.7%), ISA (-9%), Poynting Holdings (-11.7%), Reunert (-23.4%) and Telemasters (-20%)

International:
* The acquisition by Lexmark of ReadSoft, a Swedish document and business process company.
* The outcome of the auction for Bharti Airtel's African infrastructure. Helios Towers Africa is planning to bid for this and is seeking $500 million for this purpose.
* The acquisition by Yahoo of RayV, a video streaming start-up.
* A joint venture between Citic Telecom (Hong Kong) and Reliance Communications' undersea cable assets.
* A possible sell-off by Alcatel-Lucent of a small cyber security unit to Thales.

Africa:
* Further developments regarding Vodacom's DRC investments.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the Vodacom/Neotel and Telkom/BCX deals.

Forbes published its 2014 Global 2000 listing based on four metrics: sales, profit, assets and market value. From a technology perspective, the following are included:
* 15: Apple, which was number one in the market value category (was 15 in 2013);
* 22: Samsung, which was number one within the South Korean companies present in the list;
* 23: AT&T, the highest ranked telecommunications company;
* 26: Verizon Communications;
* 28: China Mobile, which was number one within the Hong Kong companies present in the list;
* 32: Microsoft, which was fourth in the market value category;
* 35: IBM;
* 38: Vodafone, which was third within the UK companies present in the list;
* 52: Google, which was third in the market value category;
* 378: MTN, which was number three within the South African companies present in the list; and
* 857: Naspers, which was number seven within the South African companies present in the list.

Further interesting observations from this latest listing will be carried in next week's column.