“Excuse me, do these effectively hide my thunder?”
Dr. Tobias Fünke. A medical visionary as the world’s first certified Analrapist (analyst + therapist) and thespian. And yet, his fashion has never really caught on: until now. For the Never-Nude in all of us, may we present the Junderpants: Read the full story
“Excuse me, do these effectively hide my thunder?”
Dr. Tobias Fünke. A medical visionary as the world’s first certified Analrapist (analyst + therapist) and thespian. And yet, his fashion has never really caught on: until now. For the Never-Nude in all of us, may we present the Junderpants: Read the full story
“Excuse me, do these effectively hide my thunder?”
Dr. Tobias Fünke. A medical visionary as the world’s first certified Analrapist (analyst + therapist) and thespian. And yet, his fashion has never really caught on: until now. For the Never-Nude in all of us, may we present the Junderpants: Read the full story
Once upon a time, there were two Brits named Gabriel Radzikowski and Sara Lilly living in flats in Bath. Lilly was a ‘local director’ at Barclays and Radzikowski…dabbled in various areas. At one point, Radzikowski could no longer afford to pay the rent and knowing his neighbor worked at a bank, figured he’d easily be able to secure a loan, no questions asked. Unfortunately and much to Gabe’s surprise, Lilly did not vouch for him and “use her position” to get him the money. Lacking the necessary funds the landlord required each month, Radzikowski was forced to move out of his flat and was “taken in by a local Polish couple.” And it’s while he was staying with Robert and Maria Jurczak that Gabe realized he had a choice to make. He could either a) take the bank’s rejection of his application for the loan, which probably had less to do with Ms. Lilly than it did his lack of a job in the traditional sense, in stride and move on or b) he could do what anyone else in such a position would do and say “Fuck this shit; you refuse my loan? I kidnap your dog and put him on ice, bitch.”
Radzikowski choose the latter and got to work with a plan that went something like this:
Step 1: Steal dog (a Yorkshire Terrier named Bilbo Baggins) in the middle of the night.
Step 2: Call owner, Ms. Lilly, and tell her she’ll get her dog back if she pays a “reward.” Do not feel the need to disguise voice or get someone else to make the call. By claiming name to be “Martin,” she’ll never know.
Step 3: When she says she knows it’s you, “insist she’s incorrect,” that it’s Martin, and hang up.
Step 4: Keep calling “reiterating the threat and demanding £500 or she’ll never see the dog again”
Step 5: Dump the dog in an icy pond
Step 6: When Lilly and the police ultimately find Biblo and you are accused of blackmail and intimidation, tell them you’ve been framed by the Barclays director
Step 7: When prompted for a reason as to why she would frame you, tell the authorities, she had done so because you “had once turned down her offer of £100 to spent the night with her.”
Step 8: ???
Step 9: Profit
Neighbour kidnaps bank worker’s dog and dumps it in icy pond in revenge for Barclays refusing him a loan [Daily Mail via BI]
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
Financial pundit Jim Cramer, host of the CNBC TV show Mad Money, went ballistic today when discussing LinkedIn’s initial public offering, saying that it marked the beginning of a new dot-com bubble that will end as badly as the one 10 years ago.
“This is the most outrageously overvalued, ridiculous thing that I’ve seen since CBS Marketwatch or TheGlobe,” he said.
Cramer also compared the IPO to TheStreet.com, the site that he cofounded. Like LinkedIn, Cramer said, TheStreet was a “sliver” IPO, where only a small number of shares became available on the public market, driving investors into a frenzy. But, the interviewer asked, if LinkedIn’s stock price eventually comes back down to Earth, won’t that lead to more reasonable pricing of other Web companies expected to go public, like Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon? Cramer responded that LinkedIn will probably remain overvalued as long as there’s only a limited amount of stock available.
“We’re going to do another one of these things where we destroy everybody,” Cramer said. He later added, “This is exactly the playbook from 1999.”
So is Cramer right to be worried? Well, I was still in high school during the first dot-com era, but VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall tells me that this doesn’t begin to compare to the hype last time around. Matt also sounds more optimistic about LinkedIn’s long-term potential, as you can see in his post about the IPO.
[via Business Insider]
Tags: bubbles
Companies: linkedin
People: Jim Cramer
Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals
Or at least one of the things on a wish list that includes a revealing 12-month wall calendar, Zamboni rides, a full deck of cards, karaoke night, an invite to the manse for spaghetti with anchovies, the opportunity to submit designs for the tattoo he’ll be getting on his lower lumbar region, a remastered DVD of home video footage that features his conception, birth, and 3rd place finish in the 8 and under 25m butterfly, a lock of chest hair, one year as his foster child, and higher fees: a new fund.
SAC Capital Management LLC, the $14 billion investment firm founded by Steve Cohen, is opening a fund specializing in quantitative trading, its first new fund in six years, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The hedge fund will be managed by SAC’s 20 teams of so-called quant traders, who buy and sell stocks based on signals from computer models, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm is private. Current investors asked SAC to open the fund, which will launch in the third quarter, the people said. Quantitative investing makes up about 15 percent of the roughly $35 billion, including leverage, that the firm manages.
SAC Said to Open Quant Fund as Main Fund May Close to New Money [Bloomberg]
Article courtesy of Dealbreaker
Shares of Intel (INTC) are up 38 cents, or 1.6%, at $23.93 following yesterday’s upbeat investor day meeting, during which CEO Paul Otellini and his team laid out for analysts how the company can profit from “cloud” computing and the smartphone and tablet wars.
As I noted yesterday, Intel made the case that mobile devices require more and more server resources, a plus for Intel given its healthy business in selling server microprocessors. The company also presented a time-line for its “Atom” mobile chips that suggested that future versions of the chips will not lag the company’s desktop chips by the typical two-year time frame, which might help Intel to close the gap at some point with chips from ARM Holdings (ARMH).
Today, Street research reflects those encouraged by Intel’s move, and those for whom it just wasn’t enough:
Bullish!
Glen Yeung, Citigroup: Reiterates a Buy rating and a $27 target price. He notes the company’s full-year revenue forecast included a model for $1.9 billion of software and services revenue, which is more than the $1.74 billion he’s been modeling. He also notes gross margin is expected to be at the upper end of Intel’s targeted range of 55% to 65%. As regards Intel’s Atom chip, the roadmap is on a fast track, but the 32-nanometer version of the chip, code-named “Saltwell,” will still lag 28-nanometer chips by ARM, he argues. But the 32-nanometer part at least, “puts Intel within striking range of making headway in the smartphone market, and allows them to pilot a design with partners. The 22-nanometer “Silvermount” chip, coming in 2013, “will benefit from Intel’s tri-gate technology, where the greatest performance gains occur in low power settings.”
Uche Orjii, UBS Investment Research: Reiterates a Buy rating and a $28.50 price target. Among the things he came away with was that ARM may have a hard time breaking into the PC market, given lack of legacy compatibility for applications; Intel will use its 22-nanometer Atom chips for a server line at some point; Intel’s “software ecosystem can well support porting of native ARM apps.”
Christopher Danely, JP Morgan: Reiterates an Overweight rating and a $25 price target. He writes that the PC markeontinue to be the driver for most of Intel’s revenue. He doesn’t buy Intel’s forecast, however, that PC growth in units can rise to a rate of 14%, year over year. “The PC market has been benefitting from emerging market growth for many years.” He sees more of a long-term growth rate of 11%, he writes. Danely “loves the higher dividend,” which Intel intends to increase from a 33% payout ratio as a measure of free cash flow to 40%. “We expect Intel’s dividend to remain above 3% going forward, well above the average yield of 1.8% for our semi universe.”
N. Quinn Bolton, Needham & Co.: Reiterates a Buy rating and a $26 price target. The company “is seeing strong growth across all businesses, is investing to lead across all segments of computing and continues to return exceptional value to shareholders,” he writes. “We come away from the analyst day encouraged that the company is taking all the right steps to maintain its manufacturing lead and to become a player outside traditional computing form factors. As the growth of mobile connected devices and embedded computing explodes, Intel will present an excellent value proposition to its customers.”
Tristan Gerra, R.W. Baird & Co.: Reiterates an Outperform rating and a $29 price target. The “Medfield” Atom processors suggest the company’s got the goods to compete with ARM. “Medfield’s benchmark tests highlight a very
competitive power envelope with ARM-based architectures.” He concludes, “Intel’s strong fundamentals, core manufacturing strength, flawless execution of late, and end-market diversification (notably ultra-mobile) next year warrant multiple expansion, in our view.”
Bearish!
Alex Gauna, JMP Securities: Reiterates a Market Perform rating and a $27.50 target price, describing the event as “well executed but uneventful.” The company did a good job of showing “commitment” to pursuing the advantages it has in process technology. However, its pursuit of the smartphone and tablet markets look “as disjointed as ever.”
Christopher Caso, Susquehanna Investment Group: Reiterates a Neutral rating and a $21 price target. “We left the INTC analyst day with a view that INTC clearly understands the market shifts that are underway in the PC and mobile markets, and it is actively taking steps to position the company to maintain a leadership position, particularly in low power, where it is currently behind. However, our concern is not that INTC will not outperform the competition, but rather that the playing field is becoming more level, which will make it difficult for INTC to enjoy its current pricing and margin premium, even if it does maintain a performance advantage.”
Stacy Rasgon, Sanford Bernstein: Maintains a Market Perform rating and a $24 price target. The company’s financial targets imply revenue growth exceeding 15% per year through 2013, he writes, which is “aggressive” compared to his own estimates and the consensus. Rasgon questions the logic Intel applied to emerging markets, in which more and more people are earning the money they need to buy the PC in a shorter amount of time, which, the company argues, portends continued PC growth in those markets. “However, we are unsure whether or not prior relationships (observed in developed markets) will continue to hold to such a degree, as a multitude of different form factors (e.g. tablets and, potentially more importantly, smartphones) exist today (and did not when PC penetration was inflecting in current developed markets a decade or so ago).”
Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily
Folks, I must admit that in the debate over “mobile payments,” I’ve been out of touch, of late.
Today, for example, I neglected to mention a longish note — 29 pages — that came out late Monday from Morgan Keegan, assembled by Tavis McCourt, who follows Apple (AAPL), as well as some colleagues of his, Matt McKee, who follows communications technology, and Roberd Dodd and Robert Ladyman, who follow transaction processing.
The note’s interesting, so I thought I’d mention it, even though I missed my chance earlier.
The authors offer the view that there is “substantial” potential for near-field communications (NFC) chips embedded in a phone as a mobile “digital wallet.”
But the obstacle is that the status quo is likely to prevail, basically because of the risk of fraud.
Merchants are likely to take awhile before they will move to NFC. Why? Because the most likely method of funding a mobile wallet, by tapping into a bank account, called “ACH,” doesn’t actually clear the funds till an overnight update happens, unlike traditional debit cards, where money is cleared right away. Which means merchants can be left hanging when there are insufficient funds.
Unless the banks can underwrite/insure the funds to protect against fraud, in a cost-effective manner for merchants, than the status quo will prevail, which means digital wallets will just be a thin layer riding on top of the current payment system of the “networks” — Visa (V), MasterCard (MA), etc.
And in that system, Visa and MasterCard still make most of the money. Which means little actual direct share of profit for Apple, Google (GOOG), and other smartphone vendors.
“The mobile payment opportunity is more of a cost burden than a real benefit” to Apple and others, they write. Putting an NFC chip in a handset can cost $2 to 4$ per handset, they note. Apple and others might not get any share of the actual transaction dollar amount, they argue.
One real beneficiary of any NFC buildout might be VeriFone (PAY), which already sells terminals for credit-card processing. They’ll have to supply merchants with point-of-sale terminals for the buildout of NFC. Morgan Keegan rates VeriFone’s shares Outperform.
The Morgan Keegan note echoes a lot of skepticism voice Monday by Toni Sacconaghi with Sanford Bernstein, who follows Apple. Among his concerns is that putting those NFC terminals in retail locations could take five years or more to happen.
And then putting an NFC chip in the iPhone could add $450 million to $900 million to the cost of goods for the thing Apple’s 2012 fiscal year, which could lower Apple’s gross margin by 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points. Then, too, it’s unclear if Apple and others could command a meaningful cut of the transaction, as McCourt and company point out.
Sacconaghi concludes we won’t see NFC in Apple’s next iPhone: “We do not expect the iPhone 5 to feature an NFC-based payments solution, and instead expect Apple to evaluate and come to market with partners or a complete solution later, perhaps when NFC infrastructure is more established.”
Then again, BoyGeniusReport’s Jonathan Geller speculates today Apple might actually be planning already to implement NFC terminals in its own retail network.
Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily
Tradeshift calls itself a social network for business but its main service is currently free, web-based invoicing. The company just landed $7M in funding from Notion Capital.
Notion Capital is the venture fund of the founders of MessageLabs, which was sold to Symantec for $700 million in 2008. Tradeshift previously received seed funding from PayPal.
The company was started by a group of developers who created the e-invoicing system for the Danish government. 50,000 businesses currently use the invoicing service to send, receive and manage e-invoices, purchase orders and credit notes. Customers include the UK’s National Health Service and the Irish and French governments. Tradeshift allows customers like these to receive electronic invoices from all of their suppliers. Customers can also leave comments and status updates on invoices so suppliers don’t have to call a customer and ask where their money is.
Tradeshift is free and will monetize its platform via applications and financial services for users. Later this month the company plans to launch an app store delivering a range of business apps like credit checking suppliers, accounting integration and time sheet invoice creation, developed both by its own team and the Tradeshift developer community.
Although electronic invoicing has been around for a long time, Tradeshift claims that no other company provides free invoicing that is entirely web-based. Invoicing companies typically charge per transaction.
Tradeshift was founded in 2009, has 30 employees and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Companies: Notion Capital, Tradeshift
Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals
Pageonce, which helps manage financial accounts and bills through your smartphone, just announced that it has raised $15 million in a new round of funding.
It seems like the Palo Alto, Calif. company has become more focused over time. When it first launched a couple of years ago, Pageonce offered a centralized website for users’ online identity, allowing them to access all of their Web accounts in one place. N, ow it’s all about a mobile app that the company promises will become the “wallet of the future.”
With the Pageonce app, users can track all their money and bills, receive bill alerts, and get the big picture of all your transactions through reports. The current concept sounds similar to popular personal finance site Mint, but a spokesperson argued that the company “addresses a broader audience” because it’s about “about simplifying money and bills for daily use for everyone, rather giving lots of granular details, budgeting and goals.”
The company has now raised $25 million. The round was led by new investor Morgenthaler Ventures, with participation from Pitango ventures and Pageonce’s chairman Liron Petrushka.
“The Pageonce ‘wallet’ is a natural mobile play and a great bet to be a financial services category leader,” said Morgenthaler partner Rebecca Lynn in a press release. “With over 4.5 million users, they have already demonstrated a knack for simplifying the complex task of managing money and bills for their users.”
Tags: bills, wallet of the future
Companies: Morgenthaler Ventures, Pageonce, Pitango Ventures
People: Liron Pitrushka, Rebecca Lynn
Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals