Tag: acquisition Page 1 of 2

MoPub is Now With Twitter

On 10/09/2013

Over everything else that’s been going on today (my resignation from BlackBerry only putting one of the smaller cats amongst my own pidgeons), I nearly missed a rather remarkable deal: Twitter is buying MoPub for – according to unconfirmed sources – $350m in stock. Not too shabby, huh?

Why’s that then? Well, we have all been following Twitter’s attempts to turn its growing user base into dollars for (arguably) too long. Their previous (and current) initiatives may have gained somewhat over previous attempts but they still do not really stack up in terms of revenue to what their powerful network (which has famously made regimes tumble down) would suggest it could do.

They have been looking for an ad exchange for a while (the signs were on the wall then) and MoPub looks like a good fit: they are a truly “mobile first” company as was, arguably, Twitter (they have had more mobile usage from Day 1 than most other networks). They run a real-time ad-exchange, meaning the offer of an open space is being created the moment a page loads, an app opens, something happens – in real time (check here for a better explanation). It is basically like Google AdWords for mobile, with the nifty variation that they couple all sorts of mobile inventory and sources into one output. Rather sweet. This of course makes even more sense for Twitter than it might for some other folks as Twitter is “changing” by the second depending on waves of popularity – and, as I said before, a lot of it is on mobile – and it will be more still in the future. So this dynamic nature coupled with the mobile-centric view of MoPub will, I suspect, have been the part that made Twitter part with that much of their stock.

As to this being an all-stock deal (if what TC reports is true): Twitter is probably one of the better pre-IPO stock to hold, I suppose… 😉

$13m for Idle Screens?

By Volker

On 08/06/2010

In 1

Taiwanese handset maker and Android maven HTC has bought French idle-screen specialists Abaxia for $13m (or so industry sources say). Abaxia says it increases ARPU

by putting services at a zero-click distance to the user and pushing services directly to the front screen.

Think push notifications to a J2ME feature phone. Abaxia works with carriers and OEM to optimize the interface across multiple devices from different suppliers, which seems an apparent benefit to carriers as it will allow them to make their on-device brand communication consistent throughout the handsets available through them. That an OEM should then buy the company could therefore surprise…

And as to the use of idle screens? Hm, I am not totally convinced: an idle screen is, well, idle. I may be tempted to jump to it if an app sends me something from a friend (because, hey, it’s a friend in need) but I am not sure if the same attention can be garnered from the latest and greatest service offer from your operator. This is however what Abaxia claims it excels in. According to its website, the company helps

to drive not only data revenue but […] to recover failing voice ARPU and secure advertising ARPU.

And here, well, show me the money. I have yet to see a convincing solution for this, and I am not sure if an attempt to capture the idle screen is the way to go.

However, when it comes to interface improvements, it might just work. So all might not be lost. And, in any event, congratulations to the teams at Abaxia and HTC!

Will Vodafone acquire T-Mobile UK?

By Volker

On 30/06/2009

In 1, Deals

There have been press reports (in German) according to which Vodafone is pondering an acquisition of T-Mobile UK. The reporting paper, FAZ, is not only fairly conservative but also the most prestigious German newspaper, so there would appear to be some substance in this.

The paper reports that the board of Deutsche Telekom, the owner of T-Mobile, was facing increasingly critical sentiment on its UK investment: they are said to have sunk a painful £13bn into the UK arm since their acqusition in 1999. Investment bank Sal Oppenheim’s estimated sales price of €4.5bn would at least ease some of that pain.

The UK market is hotly contested and one where a lot of the large international conglomerates are represented, namely with Vodafone, Telefonica/O2, France Telecom/Orange and Hutchison Whampoa’s 3. The strong competition would also appear to ease concerns of merger control restrictions (Vodafone would become a clear market leader in the UK): they could argue quite reasonably that there was more than capable competition in the market besides their acquisition.

Vodafone CEO Colao is apparently interested in acquisitions. T-Mobile suggested though that it is very early stage. Stay tuned…

YOC buys Bluestar Mobile

By Volker

On 01/06/2009

In 1

Consolidation in the mobile marketing space: German mobile marketing group YOC, a publicly listed company with revenues in Q1/2009 of c. €6m announced it has acquired Bluestar Mobile, the people known to British readers as the guys behind all the wonderful girls of the Sun on mobile (and, no, they also work with others such as the Guardian, Motorola or Bacardi). No price was disclosed. However, since YOC trades in the prime segment of the Frankfurt stock exchange, it will have to provide some details of the transaction in due course…

YOC is a giant in the German mobile marketing market (the vast majority of its revenues comes from its home market) where it runs campaigns for a lot of the marquee brands, including Mercedes, Sixt, Walt Disney, Coca Cola, T-Mobile, Sony, etc. However, its international revenues were rather small: its biggest foreign market was the UK with €400k revenues in Q1. Bluestar, which had built a nice business (according to YOC’s PR “profitable from inception”), will nicely add to YOC’s activities.

It seems the two follow virtually identical business models – full-service mobile marketing firms that run everything from concept, planning and execution of campaigns via inventory management and ad-serving solutions to creation and operation of mobile internet portals.

When you look at YOC’s share price, the strategy appears to work: whilst the German small-cap index dropped more than 40% in the last year, YOC’s stock rose by nearly 20%. All good then!

Mobitween bought by Zed

By Volker

On 09/09/2008

In Deals

Every reader of this blog will have realized for some time that I am a fan of mobile Flash and the good folks at Mobitween (just see here and here), the mobile Flash pioneers from Paris. And, boy, would I have wanted to work with them some more but, alas, it seems this will remain wishful thinking as they have been the first prey of D2C giant’s Zed M&A fund: yes, they have been acquired.

The deal – unfortunately for me, I guess – makes a lot of sense to Zed, who have been raising their revenue numbers to heights so dizzying they would nearly make the initial investments comprehensible… (if only the initial investors had seen anything of that success; but well…): Zed famously claims to make up to 85% of their revenue with

predominantly in-house produced generic content, and when it comes to speed and efficiency, mobile flash in general and the guys at Mobitween in particular have no match.

So, well done them, and let’s hope Flash will continue to roll as it started to promise, so that we can all marvel at dramatically reduced time to market and, consequently, hopefully a vastly improved content offering all around (oh, and buy Zed shares if you can).

Super-Glu!?

By Volker

On 01/02/2008

In Deals

It is the conference season, so I am falling a little behind but this is one that needs to be recorded here: The good folks from Glu announced that they would acquire AIM-listed 3D games specialist Superscape for $36 million (which however includes $11m in cash Superscape is still having in its savings account). On $7.2m revenue for the 6 months ending July 2007, this would equate to a revenue multiple of c. 1.7 (based on flat sales and a purchase price from which the cash at hand is deducted) which should be substantially higher than Glu’s c. 0.6 (awaiting the announcement of their 2007 results).

Glu has been hit brutally following their announcement of their Q3 results, falling from somewhere around $10.40 per share to $4.19 tonight based on worse than expected growth and earnings. They had recently announced expansion into China – a market with numbing growth numbers but also hard commercial parameters – through the up to $40m acquisition of MIG, which however failed to help their share price.

Now, Superscape adds market share in more familiar pastures, namely in the US where 98.4% of its revenue are generated, and this may well have been the main reason for the buy: it will cement Glu’s position in this key market. I am however not sure if there is more to this deal than that because the remaining parameters of Superscape do not look too good: the company focussed on the niche 3D sector, which did not fly as predicted (or should one say demanded) by the carriers. It is loss-making (and has been for a while if not forever). It grows less than Glu (as remarked by an analyst (report courtesy of MoCoNews).

Even if the deal rationale was synergies (reducing headcount as all they would really need from Superscape is their Moscow development facilities [which are a rather impressive operation as I could learn a few years back during a visit] and shut down their US and possibly UK offices), one would have to ask if this was the right deal. Superscape lost more than $2.8m on $7.2m revenue, so it is rather questionable if they could swing this into profitability quickly. I would posit that Glu would be rather capable of fighting for revenue and market share if it would not have to look at cost (their roster of titles is pretty impressive and they have been on an aggressive growth path), so would they not have been better advised to look for a profit-boosting acquisition as this seems to be their Achilles heel? Prove me wrong, Greg, please!

Handmark gets its hands on Astraware

By Volker

On 07/01/2008

In Deals

One is a leading content provider for the niche smartphone market, the other a leading games developer for the niche smartphone market (Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc), now they will become the leading content publisher for the niche but quickly growing smartphone market. Enter the reported acquisition of Astraware by Handmark.

Handmark publishes smartphone versions of e.g. Tetris and Scrabble and also runs the Pocket Express mobile news service. Astraware does the same for Bejewelled, Zuma and Chuzzle but also has a sizable portfolio of generic games and applications. They also have their coding hands in iPod games. As a lot of high-end smartphone stuff is retailed through shops where Handmark has a decent footprint, the two should improve margins on Astraware titles immediately. Presumably their distribution footprints for the remainder (e.g. is Astraware a Microsoft Gold Partner and embeds lots on Windows Mobile devices) also provide for some synergies.

Unfortunately nothing was reported on deal terms but, on the merits, this makes sense. Good luck, guys!