Author Archives: Scalper1

Affymetrix Vaults To 8-year High After Receiving Rival Takeover Bid

Shares of genetic-analysis company Affymetrix ( AFFX ) jumped to an eight-year high in midday trading Friday after receiving a rival bid for its proposed $1.3 billion sale to Thermo Fisher Scientific ( TMO ). A newly created company called Origin Technologies, led by a group of former Affymetrix executives, offered $16.10 a share in cash for the company, topping the $14-a-share offer that Affymetrix accepted back on Jan. 8. Origin’s President Wei Zhou, a former senior vice president at Affymetrix, also started up genomics company Centrillion Technology back in 2009, and said that Origin has the option of combining with Centrillion after acquiring Affymetrix. “Should Origin ultimately combine with Centrillion, Origin-owned Affymetrix and Centrillion would offer an unparalleled range of microarray and DNA-sequencing technology products and services for customers,” said Origin’s press release. Affymetrix stock had been trading near 14 since the Thermo Fisher deal was announced. When Origin’s press release came out at noon Friday, the stock popped 14% to around 16. Thermo Fisher stock was up about 1.5% in midday trading on the stock market today . Thermo Fisher is trading within 2% of its all-time high, with a decent Relative Strength Rating of 74, though earnings and sales growth shrank to single digits last year. Affymetrix’s growth has also been in single digits lately, but Leerink analyst Dan Leonard wrote at the time of the deal that “Affymetrix’s growth could accelerate once the business leverages Thermo Fisher’s broader customer and geographic channels.” Affymetrix gets an IBD Composite Rating of 70 and Thermo Fisher a 75.

How Will We Watch TV Next, And Will Apple Or Comcast Rule It?

Apple ( AAPL ) has the future of TV all wrong, says a Barclays analyst who follows the cable TV industry and who’s upbeat on Comcast ’s ( CMCSA ) X1 service platform. Apple, Alphabet ‘s ( GOOGL ) Google, Comcast and others are vying to be the gateway to entertainment, says Kannan Venkateshwar, a Barclays analyst, in the report. He expects a battle to unfold as both pay-TV companies and technology rivals aim to be the “aggregator of aggregators,” the one-stop shop consumers go to for all forms of content. Apple rolled out its fourth-generation TV hardware in late 2015, but it’s been stymied in content talks with media giants and has shelved plans, at least temporarily, for a web-based TV service. “According to Apple, television will become a collection of applications. We believe the world is likely to move in a different direction, with an aggregator of aggregators, which then directs traffic to all other apps,” Venkateshwar wrote in the report. “In our opinion, those that control the ‘last mile’ and the relationship with the consumer, like Comcast, are in a much better position to be the aggregator than technology platforms like Amazon ( AMZN ), Google or Apple.” In September 2015, Apple introduced new TV hardware, including a Siri-controlled remote control, and added an app store to the platform. “We believe the future of television is apps,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. Pay-TV companies, though, may be poised to build up relationships with media and entertainment companies, speculates Venkateshwar. “Companies like Comcast are able to aggregate every stream of content used by a consumer (TV, DVR, video-on-demand, gaming, etc.) while technology platforms like Apple can only aggregate subscription VOD content,” he said. “While it may be difficult for companies like Comcast to compete with the likes of Apple on the metric of user experience, we think the resources being put behind the vision at present seem to be moving in the right direction, with the evolution of the X1 platform being a prime data point.” Comcast expects half of its 22 million video subscribers to be using X1 set-top boxes by the end of 2016. While X1 currently does not support a Netflix ( NFLX ) app, under Venkateshwar’s vision it would have to. The X1 entertainment platform provides access to live broadcast, on-demand video and DVR-stored content. In November, Comcast partnered with 30 broadcast and cable networks to bring short-form Web clips to X1 set-tops as part of its video-on-demand (VOD) lineup. IBD 50 company Alphabet gets a best-possible Composite Rating of 99 from IBD, looking at earnings growth, stock performance and a raft of other measures. Comcast has an 88, Amazon a 68 and Apple a 66. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Cash King Apple Leads All Companies In Stock Buybacks, Dividends

Apple ( AAPL ) led the S&P 500 in stock buybacks and dividends in the fourth quarter, as the information technology sector overall led the field. Companies in the S&P 500 spent $136.6 billion on share buybacks during the fourth quarter, up 5.2% year over year, says a report from FactSet Research . It was the sixth-highest quarterly amount since FactSet began tracking the data at the start of 2005. As the top spender, Apple repurchased $6 billion worth of shares in Q4. Apple was also the leader in Q3 stock buybacks , at a whopping $15.3 billion in repurchases. The information technology group led all industry sectors in the S&P 500, with $33.2 billion spent on buybacks in Q4. Four of the top 10 companies were in the information technology sector, as FactSet defines it: Apple, Microsoft ( MSFT ), Oracle ( ORCL ) and Visa ( V ). Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary sectors led buyback spending in Q4. https://t.co/tTsQkCDffj pic.twitter.com/Zn2aeo46yL — FactSet (@FactSet) March 18, 2016 Following Apple for second place was United Technologies ( UTX ) at $5.1 billion, then Microsoft at $3.6 billion and Oracle at $3.25 billion. In Q3, Microsoft spent $4 billion in buybacks, while Oracle spent $3 billion. Apple also led in quarterly dividends, with a cash distribution of $2.97 billion. Microsoft was close behind at $2.86 billion, followed by General Electric ( GE ) at $2.3 billion. General Electric came in sixth place in stock buybacks, at more than $3 billion. Share repurchase programs are a popular way of returning capital to shareholders, tending to boost a stock and per-share earnings, while dividends put cash in the hands of shareholders. In 2015, there were 70 activist campaigns in which a dissident objective was to return cash via dividends and/or buybacks, up 37% from 2014, Factset said in its report. This represented the highest total since FactSet began tracking the data in 2005. Of the 70 campaigns, activists were successful in 31, which was a record high.