The Techee

One of the foremost gaming companies from South Korea is acquiring one of Hong Kong's major gaming companies. It's Netmarble from Korea buying  SpinX Games , a Hong Kong games maker that specializes in social casino games. Netmarble has agreed to buy SpinX for 2.5 trillion Korean Won, an equivalent sum of $2.2bn in cash . It's a major exit for a company founded barely 7 years ago. SpinX Games was founded in 2014 to create social casino-like games to serve global users. At that, it's been very successful, with hit titles to its name such as  Cash Frenzy and Jackpot World . The company brought in over $400mn in revenue last year, $432mn to be precise. At $432mn in revenue, Netmarble is paying about 5x revenue to buy SpinX. That multiple is usual with gaming acquisitions of this caliber.  Netmarble is one of South Korea's largest gaming companies with many big titles ( Marvel: Future Fight , BTS World , et al). It's a publicly-traded company, worth the equivalen

A media company founded by superstar actress Reese Witherspoon has sold for a large amount to a company still in its infancy that hasn't even been named yet. That company is Hello Sunshine , a media company that produces content distributed across various platforms; movies, TV shows, podcasts, et al. Hello Sunshine has been sold to a newly-formed media venture t hat's backed by investment capital from Blackstone , the private equity giant.  The venture is led by ex Disney honchos Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs .  As it is, the Blackstone-funded venture is acquiring a majority stake in Hello Sunshine from a group of external investors while anchor shareholders like Witherspoon and her founding partners will roll over and retain their equity stakes in the newly-formed venture. Officially, the deal's financial terms weren't disclosed, but a report from The Wall Street Journal says it's a $900mn deal. According to the report, the Blackstone-funded venture will pay $500mn

The UK's antitrust agency has launched a probe into Facebook's latest acquisition, that of chatbot platform Kustomer Inc , which Facebook agreed to buy last November for a reported $1bn. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Friday, the 30th of July, released a statement  indicating it had opened an inquiry into Facebook's purchase of Kustomer, regarding if it'll result in "a substantial lessening of competition" within the market Kustomer operates in. Such probes aren't out of the norm and are routine for big acquisitions. For Facebook, it speaks to the fact that antitrust agencies are watching the company's moves, especially regarding acquisitions. To note, two of Facebook Inc's biggest products outside the main Facebook platform, Instagram and WhatsApp , were acquisitions. In fact, it's primarily acquisitions that have propelled the company's growth. As with such probes, the UK will first seek comments from the public

It's a big day in the fintech world. There's been a major acquisition with a major American fintech company, Square , buying Australia's foremost fintech startup, Afterpay , a 'buy now, pay later' lender. Square has reached an agreement to buy Afterpay for a whopping $29bn , marking one of Australia's biggest buyouts. It's a big deal that a startup founded barely seven years ago is selling for $29bn.  Square will pay the $29bn all with shares. It means that shares of Afterpay, which are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange, will be exchanged for Square stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Afterpay is Australia's foremost 'buy now, pay later (BNPL)' lender in online retail. For the uninitiated, the 'buy now, pay later' business is a relatively young one providing alternatives to credit cards for consumers to shop online. It provides loans for consumers to shop online and then pay back in installments. Usually, credi

Tech behemoth Amazon has dropped its latest quarterly earnings report like many companies in this period. Notably, the company posted $100bn in sales for the third quarter in a row in Q2 this year. Amazon's earnings report also made note that it was fined nearly $900mn for alleged privacy violations in the EU. Among the many pieces of information shoveled into Amazon's latest earnings report include the growth of an unlikely part of the company's business - online advertising . Usually, Amazon is known for online retail and cloud computing (AWS) but the company has an ad business that's getting stronger day by day. The earnings report shows that Amazon's "Other" business segment, which is primarily advertising, brought in $7.9bn in sales in Q2, representing 87% year-over-year growth. This indicates that Amazon is building more strength in the online ad business that's dominated by Google and Facebook. Amazon's ad business includes advertising b

Tech behemoth Amazon is for the nth time in the crosshairs of the European Union (EU). The latest saga in that arena is that Amazon has been fined a record-breaking amount for alleged privacy violations, according to an SEC filing from the company. Amazon has been fined the sum of €746 million ($888mn) by the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) for not complying with data privacy laws. It's the largest fine imposed under Europe's data protection law.  The fine originates from the CNPD accusing Amazon of processing customers' personal data in violation of the EU's famous-cum-infamous General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws.  In June, it was reported ( WSJ )  that the Luxembourg data protection agency had sanctioned Amazon's privacy practices and proposed a fine topping $425mn to the EU's other two-dozen or so national data protection authorities. Now, it appears that the final fine is much larger than that.  Before now, the bigges

The CEO of French telecoms giant  Iliad S.A. has made a bid to take the company private by buying out the shares he doesn't own. Xavier Niel by name, he already controls the majority of the company's shares and has sought out to buy the minority he doesn't own. Niel himself owns roughly 71% of Iliad's share capital. Additionally, a few other shareholders owning roughly 4% of the company have agreed to tender their shares in Niel's offer. It means he just has to pony up the cash for the remaining 25% , and he's made an offer with a high premium. Niel has bid to  pay 182 euros per share for the rest of the shares of Iliad S.A. The bid represents a 61% premium to the company's closing share price the day before it was announced and a 53% premium to the company's average share price over the past month, it said.  Moving to take his telecoms empire private represents a major change of strategy for Niel, who started it about two decades ago and took it pub

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken a swipe at Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) after regulatory hiccups in China have affected many Chinese stocks listed on US markets and American stockholders holding them. The SEC has issued new guidance on Chinese companies seeking to list shares in the US, requiring them to make certain disclosures to investors or otherwise refrain from listing in the US markets. First of all, usually, Chinese companies listing in the US don't actually sell shares of the operating companies but that of shell companies with contractual relationships with the operating companies. These shell shares, known as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) , are used to circumvent restrictions on foreign ownership of Chinese shares imposed by the country's government. Now, the SEC in a statement has made it clear that Chinese companies seeking to list in the US must provide clear descriptions of the shell operations involved in such listing

Months after getting spun out of SAP into a separate public company, Qualtrics , a major provider of online survey software, has made a major acquisition. It's agreed to buy Clarabridge , a startup that does similar work to Qualtrics in the field fondly referred to as "customer experience (CX)". Qualtrics will pay $1.1bn all with shares to buy Clarabridge. The acquisition is a major strategic play for the company, pairing Qualtrics' customer survey business with Clarabridge's similar business of measuring customer sentiment from various sources like social media posts and customer support calls. Basically, Qualtrics is in the business of weighing customer surveys directly and Clarabridge in the business of doing so indirectly . Pairing both businesses represents a major strategic play for Qualtrics. In an investor presentation, Qualtrics said that Clarabridge has $100mn in annual revenue, implying an 11x multiple that it's paying to buy the company. That&#

The founder of embattled electric car startup Nikola Corp. has been formally indicted on fraud charges by the US Justice Department months after resigning from the company. Trevor Milton by name, he's been accused of securities and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud and mislead investors. Milton is accused of misleading investors by making false statements regarding Nikola's products and capabilities. Notably, most of the investors allegedly misled were on the retail side. The DOJ alleges that Milton made false claims regarding "nearly all aspects" of Nikola's business. Milton founded Nikola in 2014 and led it through a public listing via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) last year. The DOJ threw an apparent jab at SPACs in his indictment, asserting that he made 'many' of his false and misleading claims  during a period where he would not have been allowed to do so under rules that govern traditional IPOs were he

In this season of earnings results and we at The Techee  reporting on them, we're here with a beat on Shopify , which has released its earnings statement for the second quarter (April-June) of this year. In Q2, Shopify beat revenue expectations from analysts and as well achieved a major financial milestone by crossing $1bn in quarterly revenue for the first time. Shopify had $1.1bn in revenue in the quarter, up 57% year-over-year. Net income for the same period was $897mn , most of which was due to a $778mn gain in equity investments, likely from Shopify's stake in Affirm , a major 'buy now, pay later' lender. As usual, most of Shopify's sales ( $785mn ) came from "Merchant Solutions", which groups additional services the company offers atop recurring subscriptions charged to online retailers. Sales from subscriptions came at $334mn in the quarter. Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), representing the total worth of transactions made on the Shopify platform,

It appears that this Covid era has led to a boom for companies that work on  antibodies , which are protective proteins produced by the human immune system to tackle foreign substances, usually viruses. Antibodies are very useful in the research and treatment of viruses such as Covid. There are companies that specialize in antibodies and one of them, BioLegend , was recently bought for a whopping $5.3bn . Now, another such company, Teneobio , is getting bought for a big amount. Teneobio has agreed to be acquired by Amgen , an American biotech giant. Amgen is paying $900mn upfront for the company, then an additional $1.6bn in cash contingent on the company hitting certain milestones. It sums up to a $2.5bn deal . Teneobio is a clinical-stage biotech startup working on antibodies aimed at treating cancer, autoimmunity, and other infectious diseases. As it's still in the clinical trial stage with no viable product yet, it appears that Amgen is betting big on Teneobio's trials b

In this earnings season, companies all over are dropping their latest quarterly results and we're here equally reporting on them. We've touched on social media companies Snap Inc and Twitter , electric carmaker Tesla , and iPhone maker Apple . Now, the next is chipmaker AMD Inc . AMD has dropped its earnings for the second quarter of 2021, showing strong prospects as revenue doubled year-over-year and net income more than tripled.   Details AMD posted $3.9bn in revenue in Q2, up 99% year-over-year and 12% from the preceding quarter. For the same period, the company's net income was $710mn , up 352% year-over-year and 28% from the preceding quarter. Doubling its revenue and nearly quadrupling net income indicates AMD has a strong yet fast-growing business. It's bound to grow even more as the company is set to complete its acquisition of rival chipmaker Xilinx . AMD makes money selling high-performance chipsets used in computers, consoles, data centers, and the likes

In this season of earnings results, many companies have begun dropping their latest quarterly earnings report and we've covered some. First was social media companies Snap Inc and Twitter , then electric carmaker Tesla  and for some reason, these three delivered very positive earnings reports. Now, the latest to join the spree of delivering positivity to investors with their earnings is iPhone maker Apple . It's dropped its earnings report for the quarter ended June 26, 2021, showing strong sales as revenue from its Services segment reached an all-time high. Details Apple reported $81.4bn in sales in the quarter, up 36% year-over-year. Net income for the same period was $21.7bn , nearly double year-over-year. As always, the iPhone contributed the most to Apple's revenue out of all the company's products. iPhone sales in the quarter came at $39.6bn , up 50% year-over-year. Revenue from Apple's Services segment has hit a quarterly record of $17.5bn . The segment in

Lordstown Motors , an embattled electric car startup, seems to be finding hope in the current markets. It's secured a funding lifeline after running into major cash woes in its operations. To recall, Lordstown  warned last month that it didn't have sufficient capital to fund the commercial production of its electric truck and thus risked jeopardy of its efforts. But now, the company appears to have secured a $400mn funding commitment, regulatory filings show.  According to the filing, a New Jersey-based hedge fund named  Yorkville Advisors has committed to purchase up to $400mn of Lordstown stock over the next three years, as the publicly traded electric-car startup would get the money to fund its operations. Lordstown and Yorkville have entered into a binding equity purchase agreement for the latter to buy Class A common stock of Lordstown for at least $7.48 a share on the public markets over the next three years. Lordstown stock (NASDAQ: RIDE) currently trades for under $

It's the earnings season and companies here and there are dropping their latest quarterly earnings report. In that vein, Tesla , the famous electric carmaker, has dropped its, showing its most profitable quarter yet as a company. Tesla reported   $12bn in revenue in Q2, nearly double year-over-year. Net profit in the quarter was $1.1bn, the highest on record for Tesla. Tesla is selling more vehicles than ever to customers and thus making more money. The Model 3 and Y vehicles make up the larger part of its sales, as they are of lower cost compared to the more premium Model S  and X  cars. As it posted very positive earnings, Tesla though had some not-too-positive news, especially the delay of the launch of its Semi truck from this year to 2022. The company blamed the delay on limited battery availability. For the Cybertruck , Tesla vaguely said it's "making progress on the industrialization". After unveiling the truck in 2019, the company said it would make it to

A certain private equity firm is on a spree making big deals in the tech industry. That firm is Thoma Bravo , which has reached a deal to buy Medallia , a publicly-traded tech company that makes survey software for enterprises. Thoma Bravo has agreed to pay $34 per share to take Medallia (NYSE: MDLA) off the public markets into its hands. That price sums up to $6.4bn and a 20% premium to Medallia's closing share price on the 10th of July, the day before rumor acquisitions of the company began swirling. Medallia debuted on the public markets in 2019 and is now being acquired barely two years later. Its $34-per-share acquisition price is about 60% higher than its IPO debut price of $21 two years ago. Under Thoma Bravo's ownership, Medallia will continue to function as usual with a growth strategy. The ultimate aim for private equity firms like Thoma is to grow its portfolio companies and flip them for a higher price in the future, either through a sale or an exit on the public m

PerkinElmer , a publicly-traded medical devices and diagnostics company, had made its biggest acquisition yet. It's  agreed to buy   BioLegend , a privately-held company that makes antibodies and reagents for biomedical research. PerkinElmer will pay the sum of  $5.3bn  in cash and stock to buy BioLegend, marking the company's biggest acquisition in its existence. It's a major play that PerkinElmer is making, as it says BioLegend expects to have $380mn in sales in 2022, implying a multiple of about 14x to buy the company. BioLegend was founded in 2002 and has been based in the state of California for a long time. It has more than 700 employees, most of whom are based in the US. BioLegend shined during the Covid pandemic as the company provided antibodies and other tools used for biomedical research tackling the virus. Now, just about a year later, it's culminated in a big exit for the two-decade-old company. PerkinElmer has taken financing from Goldman Sachs to finance

Jam City , a mobile games studio with a bevy of hits, has withdrawn its plans to go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). It's called off its earlier-agreed with DPCM Capital (NYSE: XPOA), a SPAC formed by ex-Uber executive Emil Michael. The reasons for calling off the merger are uncertain and unspecific. Vaguely, both firms said in a joint statement that it is "the best path forward...in light of current market conditions." Now, DPCM Capital will have to find a new merger target. Originally, DPCM and Jam City sought to combine in a deal valuing the latter at $1.2bn . As part of their combination, Jam City was supposed to use money from DPCM to finance a $175mn purchase of Canada-based mobile game publisher Ludia . Now, it's unclear if that acquisition will go through. It may be that Jam City has sought to remain privately-held, or it's found an alternative path onto the public markets. The company could seek a traditional IPO in

It's the season of earnings results, this time for the 2nd quarter of 2021 ended last month June. In that regard, Twitter , the famous social media company, has published its earnings report, showing a strong rebound from the lows of the pandemic era. By The Numbers  In Q2, Twitter posted its strongest revenue growth since 2014, as its sales went up 74% year-over-year. In comparison, its sales in Q2 last year was down 19% over the year. Twitter posted $1.2bn in sales for the quarter and a net profit of $66mn, compared to an adjusted net loss of $127mn in Q2 last year.  As usual, most of Twitter's sales came from advertising and a minority from data licensing and other sources. Revenue from the US made up more than half of the company's quarterly sales. Twitter ended Q2 with 206 million average monetizable daily active users (mDAU), up 11% year-over-year. Forecast For the next quarter (Q3 2021), Twitter is forecasting sales of between $1.2bn and $1.3bn. That's compared

Rivian , the electric car startup backed by big money to make a dent in the EV world, has added to its cash coffers with even more money. It's raised a fresh funding round of $2.5bn led by Amazon, a previous investor and major strategic partner to the company. Amazon led and was joined by Ford, D1 Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price, Coatue, Dragoneer, Fidelity, and hedge fund Third Point. With the round, Rivian has now raised a total of $10.5bn to date. Rivian raised the fresh funds as it nears vehicle production. It originally planned to put vehicles into production in 2020 but delayed it to 2021 July, then recently delayed it again by a few more months. Obviously, taking vehicles from concept to production is really hard. This year January, Rivian raised a $2.65bn funding round from investors. Adding this new round, the company has raised over $5bn this year alone, money that'll come in handy as the company says it's planning to set up a second manufacturing facility in th

Snap Inc , the company behind the famous Snapchat app, is back again posting strong earnings results, this time for the second quarter of 2021. The company's revenue for the quarter soared high over the year as it also grew its user count by a good margin. Details: Snap reported $982mn in revenue in Q2 '21, up 116% year-over-year. As revenue grew, the company's net loss went down by 53% year-over-year to $152mn. For user count, Snap reported having 293 million daily active users at the end of Q2. That figure was up 23% (+55 million) year-over-year. User growth for the Snapchat app was maintained across the globe on both the iOS and Android platforms. Recently, Snap had major milestones including the launch of Spotlight , a short-form video content feature rivaling TikTok. Dangling out $130mn to creators on Spotlight as of this May, the company says average daily content submissions more than tripled from Q1 when it launched to Q2' 21.  In Q2, Snap's biggest move f

The trucking division of ride-hailing giant Uber has struck a deal to acquire a major company that makes software used to organize shipping and logistics operations. Uber Freight will buy Transplace from its current owner, private equity firm TPG Capital, for a price of $2.25bn. The price tag is split into $750mn of Uber stock (NYSE: UBER) and $1.5bn in cash. It's one of Uber's biggest acquisitions on record, shortly after the company's near-$2bn purchase of online grocer Cornershop . Uber Freight is a gem for Uber, one of its few remaining divisions outside ride-hailing after the company sold most of its non-ride-hailing businesses to outside owners. Uber Freight matches freight carriers with businesses looking to ship goods across destinations and as well provides software to help manage shipping and logistical operations. With Transplace, Uber Freight is buffing up its business with a long-established software company (founded in 2000) in a bid for profitability, the

After entering a definitive agreement last December, CRM software giant Salesforce has completed its acquisition of Slack, the popular workplace communications tool, for which it paid $27.7bn  in a mix of cash and stock. Officially, Slack has been taken off the public markets and is now a privately-held division of Salesforce, which coughed up $15.6bn in cash and $12.1bn of common stock to buy the company. Slack is Salesforce's biggest acquisition on record. To show the seriousness of Salesforce's Slack purchase, the company paid a multiple of 31x Slack's revenue ($903mn) in its most recent fiscal year despite the company being unprofitable on a net basis. More so, Salesforce took a $10bn loan facility to finance the cash portion of the purchase, implying it really wanted the deal. Salesforce has historically expanded with acquisitions and is no stranger to big ones. Before Slack, it paid $16bn to buy Tableau Software in 2019, then its biggest acquisition on record that j

FTX , a famous online exchange for crypto derivatives, has closed a big new round of funding with a big valuation to match. The funding round is a major validation for the exchange which was founded barely two years ago and has seen huge success. FTX has raised $900mn in funding at a valuation of $18bn, the company said . The funding came from a group of many investors, including SoftBank, Coinbase Ventures, Insight Partners, Mary Meeker's Bond, and hedge fund tycoons Alan Howard and Paul Tudor Jones. Since launching in May 2019, FTX has grown rapidly as a hub for people to buy and sell derivatives based on cryptocurrency instruments. Such derivatives include stuff like futures or stock tokens, some of which are controversial and their legalities questioned in a handful of countries, including the US where FTX doesn't allow residents to trade directly on its platform. FTX says it has over 1 million registered users averaging $10bn of daily trading volume. The company serves ev

Riskified , a fraud detection startup serving e-commerce companies, is the latest tech company that's filed for an initial public offering (IPO). The Israeli company has unveiled an F-1 filing with the US SEC as required for foreign companies seeking to list in the US. Riskified provides fraud detection software to online retailers that use it to help curtail fraudulent transactions. The niche of fraud prevention in online retail is one that's birthed many successful companies, Riskified being one of them. In its IPO, Riskified is offering 17.3 million shares at a price point between $18 and $20, implying proceeds of between $315mn-$350mn. Additionally, the company's co-founder and current CTO Assaf Feldman is selling 200k shares in the offering to get between $3.6mn-$4mn. Riskified is targeting a valuation upwards of $3bn from its public offering. As usual, a company's IPO filing provides great insight into its business with specific information on its revenues. Let&

After wrapping up a year that sent its stock soaring absurdly high, videoconferencing company Zoom  is putting that stock into use as currency to make a splashy acquisition. It's agreed to buy Five9 , a provider of contact and call center software hosted on the cloud, for the sum of $14.7bn . Zoom is paying for Five9 entirely with shares. The $14.7bn price tag represents 14% of Zoom's current market cap of $107bn. As it is, Five9 is Zoom's first billion-dollar acquisition and a very big one at that. Five9 is a publicly-traded company that Zoom is taking into private hands. The company is paying a 13% premium to Five9's closing market cap on Friday, the last trading day before the deal was announced. Zoom's acquisition makes sense for a post-pandemic world where it's expecting the use of its videoconferencing software to drop down significantly. The Covid-19 pandemic drove many people and corporates globally to pick up Zoom and exploded the company's revenue