The Grinch Who Stole Q1
Tech Crunch has been making the rounds and the projections for Q1 2009 online advertising are bleak: continue reading...
At one point or another in the past few years, I’d owned shares of:
- aQuantive (acquired by MSFT for $6B)
- 247/RealMedia (acquired by WPP for $649M)
- Doubleclick (taken private for $1.1B - then acquired by Google for $3.1B)
- Fast Click (acquired by Valueclick) continue reading...
The following is a perpetual-work-in-progress. Once you start to compile a list of mergers and acquisitions, you realize why it’s nearly impossible to have a complete list. We are quite confident that the following is a very good, comprehensive list of the largest, more notable deals… but it is not - and no list will be - fully complete because there are too many countries around the world and too many industries to report (it is highly possible that the Wall Street Journal or Financial Post, for example, has such a list… but it would be thick and unwieldy).
We have included: continue reading...
Just because the tide is rising, does not mean all boats will rise.
Valueclick rose quite a bit in the euphoria surrounding online ad networks, to $35/share. I was so close to shorting the darn thing, because anyone who knew the market well knew that VCLK’s business was very different to that of 24/7 Realmedia, aQuantive or Doubleclick. The company’s stock fell back to $25 since rumors calmed down… and today, after announcing its latest results (22% spike in earnings) and cutting 2007 guidance, the company’s shares are down another 20%. continue reading...
After a 8% spike on Friday - fuelled by MSFT paying an 85% premium for AQNT - today Valueclick rose an additional 11%. I owned this stock (and others in the space) in the past and sold it when it first doubled from $1o to $20. I saw a strong momentum in digital advertising stocks again, but focused on so-called best of breed players and doubled up on AQNT. This paid off quite well on Friday.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out, that like TFSM and AQNT, VCLK will benefit from M&A hype. Of course, both TFSM and AQNT did sell eventually. I did not buy TFSM again, having made a nice return in the past, I also did not buy VCLK this time around… and at a $3.3B market cap, I probably won’t. continue reading...
My biggest fear, all right, that’s an outright lie.
Let’s try again: something that worries me is seeing another bubble creep up. Frankly, I was one of the rare types that benefitted from the bubble. Not quite like Google did… obviously, but as our competitors faltered it created an opening for my old company. Translation, my old company exited for $13.5M in 2005 after launching in 2000 while our largest competitor rose $17M in financing in 1999 and shut down in 2000. That being said, as a web entrepreneur now, no one wants to see things pop. continue reading...
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