Tech firm buying spree

Google's acquisition of a drone maker and Zebra's purchase of the enterprise business of Motorola Solutions were the international ICT highlights of the last two weeks.

At home, the ruling re the social grants tender and its impact on Net 1 UEPS Technologies, and the disposal by Reunert of its Nashua Mobile subsidiary subscriber base were the stories that dominated the local ICT media space.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Business Connexion, with revenue up 5.5% but profit up 121.3%.
* Good interim numbers from Sekunjalo Investments, with revenue up 7.4% and profit up 20.9%.
* Good year-end figures from Datacentrix, with revenue up 18.8% and profit up 15%.
* A negative trading update from MTN that shows a subscriber drop in SA and an overall subscriber growth of only 1.1% in Q1.
* Altron's R80 million acquisition of the remaining shares of Altech NuPay it doesn't already own.
* Dimension Data bought Nexus, a US IT solutions provider with annual revenue of $450 million.
* Reunert announced its Nashua Mobile subsidiary is disposing of its MTN and Vodacom subscriber base back to the operators for R2.26 billion (plus VAT); and is in discussions re its Cell C subscriber base.
* The Constitutional Court ruled the SASSA tender must be reissued, creating immense pressure on Net 1 UEPS Technologies, which had previously been awarded the tender.
* The High Court found Wireless Business Solutions guilty of using radio frequency spectrum without paying the required licence fees in a case brought before the court by ICASA.
* Bula Document Solutions is to be liquidated following a High Court decision in a case brought by Ricoh SA, which is owed almost R19 million.
* A new JSE cautionary by Business Connexion.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Amecor, Morvest Business Group and Telkom SA.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Poynting Holdings.

* VimpelCom has settled its long-running dispute over the ownership of the Algerian mobile network it acquired when it bought Orascom Telecom in 2010 in a $6 billion deal.
* The appointments of Gilles Lepetre as SAP Africa's MD for all French-speaking countries in Africa, and Lucy Quist as MD of Airtel Ghana.
* The resignations of Keith Matthews, MD of BT's African operations, and Philip Sowah, MD of Airtel Ghana.

According to a 24/7 Wall Street independent review of employees, nine CEOs were identified that had the worst reputations.

* Cadence Design Systems acquired Jasper Design Automation, a provider of formal analysis multiple verification solutions.
* Cognizant Technology Solutions bought itaas, a US video solutions provider.
* Comcast (Fandango) purchased MovieClips, whose network includes a Web site and 25 YouTube channels, in a move designed to boost Fandango's film-related content.
* Dropbox acquired Hackpad, a document-sharing start-up, and Loom, a photo-sharing start-up.
* Facebook bought Moves, a fitness-tracker app.
* FICO acquired certain assets of Karmaslhere, whose software makes it easier for companies to analyse large amounts of data processed by Hadoop.
* Google snapped up Titan Aerospace, a maker of solar-powered drones, and several patents from Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry).
* Tech Mahindra purchased FixStream Networks, a big data start-up.
* The $350 million acquisition by Telus of Mobilicity, two of Canada's mobile operators.
* Twitter bought Gnip, a social data provider.
* The $3.5 billion acquisition by Zebra Technologies of Motorola Solutions' enterprise business unit, which makes rugged mobile computers and tablets.
* The investment by BlackBerry in NantHealth, a healthcare IT firm.
* The disposal by Cable Wireless Communications of its 55% stake in Monaco Telecom to a private investment vehicle controlled by Xavier Niel, a French entrepreneur. The deal was worth EUR321.8 million.
* A judge dismissed a lawsuit against Twitter that alleged a fraudulent stock sale immediately prior to its IPO.
* Zain is facing a $4.5 million lawsuit that stems from its 2007 acquisition of an Iraqi mobile network operator.
* Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel have agreed to pay a total of $324 million to settle a conspiracy lawsuit.
* A seven-to-one stock split by Apple.
* Ericsson is to split its network unit into two; with one called Radio and focusing on mobile telecoms equipment, and the other called Cloud and IP.
* NTT DoCoMo is putting its 26.5% stake in Tata Teleservices up for sale.
* Fujitsu and Panasonic are to form a new company in Q3 as part of their plan to combine their chip design and development operations.
* Tata Consultancy Services and Mitsubishi are to form a Japanese software services provider.
* Excellent quarterly results from Alibaba.
* Very good year-end numbers from Tata Consultancy Services.
* Very good quarterly figures from Infosys and Open Text.
* Good quarterly numbers from Amazon.com, Amphenol, China Unicom, Comcast, Cree, F5 Networks, Informatica, Juniper Networks, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Netflix, Rambus (back in the black), SanDisk, Skyworks Solutions, Syntel, TSMC, VMware and Wipro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Adtran, Altera, Apple, Avnet, Baidu, Canon, DST Systems, FICO, Google, Linear Technology, Logitech International (back in the black), Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, VeriSign, Verizon Communications, Zain and ZTE (although profit tripled).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, IBM, Lexmark, LG Display, Microsoft, NTT DoCoMo, Rogers Communications, TeliaSonera, Xerox and Yandex.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AT&T, with revenue up but profit down; Cadence Design Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Celestica, with revenue up but profit down; China Mobile, with revenue up but profit down; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; CommVault Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Cypress Semiconductor, with revenue down but profit up; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; Equifax, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue down but profit up; Facebook, with revenue up but profit down; Ingram Micro, with revenue up but profit down; Intel, with revenue up but profit down; Maxim Integrated Products, with revenue up but profit down; Millicom Cellular International, with revenue up but profit down; Sanmina, with revenue up but profit down; SAP, with revenue up but profit down; Saudi Telecom, with revenue down but profit up; Xilinx, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from KPN, Teradyne and Unisys.
* Quarterly losses from AMD, Fairchild Semiconductor HCL Technologies, Pandora Media, Polycom, ServiceNow and Zynga.
* The appointments of Chris Beard as interim CEO of Mozilla; Richard Lowe as CEO of Airvana; Giuseppe Recchi as chairman of Telecom Italia; and Rajeev Suri as CEO of Nokia.
* The resignations of Randy Battat, CEO of Airvana (stays on as chairman); Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of VKontakte, Russia's largest social network; Vic Gundotra, Google's social networking boss; and, Mark Pincus, founder and chief product officer of Zynga (stays on as chairman).
* The retirement of Joseph Dunsmore, chairman, CEO and president of Digital International.
* A planned IPO from Viom Networks, an Indian telecom infrastructure company owned by the Tata Group.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by Weibo, a social media platform for people to create, distribute and discover Chinese-based content in the People's Republic of China.
* Satisfactory IPOs on the NYSE by Paycom Software, which provides a cloud-based human capital management software solution delivered as software-as-a-service; and Sabre, which provides technology solutions to the travel and tourism industry in three segments: Travel Network, Airline and Hospitality Solutions, and Travelocity.

South Africa:
* According to Effective Measure's research report entitled "Computer Brand Perceptions", almost 30% of computer owners in SA prefer Dell, followed by HP (26%) and Acer (25%).

EMEA/Africa:
* According to IDC, PC shipments in EMEA reached 21.8 million units in Q1 2014, a 1.1% decline over the same period last year.
* According to the World Economic Forum's 2014 Network Readiness Index report, Mauritius tops the list for Africa at number 48, followed by Seychelles at 66, and SA at 70. Finland remained at number one, with the UK at nine, and the US at seven.

Worldwide:
* According to Digitimes Research, global tablet shipments dropped 30% sequentially in Q1 to 58.56 million units, although up 4.6% on the equivalent period last year.
* Digitimes Research found global smartphone shipments up to nearly 277 million units in Q1.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.8% (highest-ever weekend close at almost 49 000)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.9%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.1%
* S&P 500: Up 2.6%
* FTSE100: Up 1.9%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+11.1%), Huge Group (+14.1%), MICROmega Holdings (-16.5%), Morvest Business Group (+54.2%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (-12.4%), Sekunjalo (+8%) and Vodacom (-10.6%)

International:
* The official filing of an IPO by Alibaba.
* The buyer for Lufthansa's IT infrastructure unit, in a potential deal that has already interested Atos, HP and IBM.
* A buyer for Square, a mobile payments start-up.
* The possible sale of Colt Telecom (UK).
* The possible sale by Brazil's TIM of its cellphone towers.
* The acquisition of a majority stake in Telekom Austria by America Movil following an agreement between the later and OIAG, an Austrian state holding firm.

Africa:
* Further acquisitions by HIS Holding of telecommunications towers in Africa, following the raising of $130 million for expansion purposes.
* The possible sale by Orange of its Kenyan subsidiary, despite statements to the contrary.

South Africa:
* Further developments re Telkom and MTN.

According to a 24/7 Wall Street independent review of employees, nine CEOs were identified that had the worst reputations. To be considered, companies had to have a minimum of 500 reviews. Of the more than 225 companies with more than 500 comments, 24/7 Wall Street identified the nine CEOs with the lowest favourable reviews, ie 40% or lower:
* Number four: Ursula Burns of Xerox
* Number seven: Bill Nuti of NCR
* Number eight: Jeffrey Yabuki of Fiserv