The one thing that everyone knows about Zoom (Nasdaq:ZM) is that it has been a beneficiary of the virtual nature of office interactions since the onset of the pandemic. It is nice that worked out for them but, what do they do for an encore? For one, they want to expand their business lines, and to this end they want to buy Five9 Inc., a provider of could-based call center software. The management of FIVN has signed off on the deal, pending stockholder approval. But that approval may be tricky. ISS, the leading stockholder advisory service, is counseling FIVN stockholders to vote "no." ISS is concerned about the stock-swap nature of the deal. Five9's stockholders aren't going to get any cash. They will turn in their shares of Five9 and receive shares in the combined company according to a fixed ratio. ISS says that the shares of Zoom are, the those of the combined company will be, too volatile to make this fair. This objection raises a lot of fur...
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In understanding the history of this pandemic, US edition, the Biogen meeting in Boston is several months back in the rear view mirror, but looms ever larger as it is studied. In late winter 2020, Biogen -- NASDAQ listed, and indeed a NASDAQ 100 component -- hosted a conference. I'm sure sure what the specific subject of the conference was, but it involved flying specialists in from Europe, from countries that were already contending with severe outbreaks of Covid-19. If you like irony you can find it in the fact that a company known for its IP portfolio in bio-med technology acted so naively. The conference proved to be a super-spreader event. In retrospect, it has "pandemic" written on it in neon. A lot of people from all over the US and the world gathered together in confined spaces to meet. Only a small number of them had any of the virus in their system when they got together, but many seemed to have had it when they went their separate ways -- again, to place...
I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and italicize the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. Further, I cannot help the fact that in the list as below currency issues keep coming up. That is a fact about the year, not I think about my biases. All that said, here is this year's list. January 2013: The tablet/smartphone wars. Announcement of the BlackBerry 10 from Canadian concern RiM. Concurrently, RiM changes its name to BlackBerry. This will be their big final bid to remain a player on the level of Apple and the Android group. It will fail. February 2013: Currency as policy. A G-20 finance ministers' meeting in Moscow, Russia, focuses attention on competitive devaluations. Japan escapes explicit censure at...
It was in October 2011 that David Einhorn presented a slideshow to the Value Investing Conference. I frankly haven't kept close tabs on the consequences: what has happened to the stock price of Green Mountain (NASDAQ: GMCR). The two year stock price chart is available here. GMCR was on its way down, off its September 2011 peak price of $110, before Einhorn said anything. For GMCR, the fall was horrid. The price was below $30 by the start of the new year 2012. It didn't start recovering for more than a year. In September 2012, its patent on its K-cups expired. This was a critical part of Einhorn's original argument : the intellectual property was the moat keeping competitors away. Those neat little pods let you brew coffee one cup at a time in your kitchen, (or in a hotel suite) and people were willing to pay premium prices for that convenience. After September 2012 had passed and the patent protection was lost: at least that loss had been further discounted into pr...