Tag Archives: technology

Twitter Tackles Facebook, Google, Yahoo To Win NFL Streaming Rights

Twitter ( TWTR ) made an end run around Facebook ( FB ), Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) subsidiary Google, Verizon Communications ( VZ ) and Yahoo ( YHOO ) to capture digital rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, a deal Twitter announced early Tuesday. Now the real work begins, says Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. analyst James Cakmak. While “winning the deal is one thing, executing to optimize the product experience is another,” Cakmak wrote in an industry note. The NFL has streamed selected games in the past, but this is its first season-long streaming deal. It’s also a high-profile foray into live programming for Twitter. Given Twitter’s focus around live events and Twitter CFO Anthony Noto’s prior position as the NFL’s CFO, “We see this as an opportunity to leverage the Periscope acquisition and achieve success around live programming and promotion of the conversation around it,” Cakmak wrote. He added that “the $10 million price tag paid by Twitter is less than anticipated, considering Yahoo paid $20 million for a single game last season, which averaged slightly over 2 million viewers per minute. But at this price, we see this as the perfect option for Twitter, with very limited downside.” ‘Bold Moves’ Required By Twitter Stifel analyst Scott Devitt called Twitter’s latest hunt for new users “an aggressive and potentially expensive move by Twitter to reinvigorate user growth and engagement, but bold moves are required to turn the business, so we will wait to fully pass judgment.” The deal poses “no risk” for the NFL, since “it gets its check while continuing to broadcast on network TV and can go back to market in two years, offering streaming rights to the highest bidder, just like it is doing here on the heels of the one-off deal with Yahoo last year,” Devitt said in research note. Last season, Yahoo paid $17 million to stream a game from London and also broadcast on network TV in the teams’ home markets, according to Bloomberg. On U.S. television, NFL commands the highest per-game price for any sport, Bloomberg said. In the most recent broadcast deal, CBS ( CBS ) and Comcast ’s ( CMCSA ) NBC each paid about $45 million a game for five Thursday night contests for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, according to Bloomberg. Under the new deal, Twitter will live-stream the football games to the public for free at the same time they are being shown on NBC, CBS and the NFL Network, the NFL said in a statement. “This is about transforming the fan experience with football. People watch NFL games with Twitter today. Now they’ll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in the statement. Reports quoted Devitt as saying the digital rights Twitter attained also include the Sunday morning U.K. International Series, which in 2016 will pit the Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Indianapolis Colts in Week 4, the Los Angeles Rams vs. New York Giants in Week 7, and the Cincinnati Bengals vs. Washington Redskins in Week 8. Twitter stock rose last week on reports that MasterCard would be interested in working with social media services Twitter and Facebook to build up their payment services. Twitter stock was down a fraction in midday trading in the stock market today , near 17. Yahoo stock was down 2% midday Tuesday, and Alphabet stock was down almost 1%. Facebook stock was up a fraction. Twitter reported that user growth slowed for the fourth consecutive quarter in Q4 and guided its Q1 revenue below consensus estimates, raising concerns that usage may be peaking and prompting buyout rumors. Average monthly active users rose 9% year over year in Q4 to 320 million. Wall Street had expected 323 million. Growth has cooled from 18% in Q1, to 15% in Q2 and 11% in Q3. For 2016, eMarketer expects Twitter to generate $2.61 billion in worldwide ad revenue, down 11% from eMarketer’s earlier prediction of $2.95 billion.

Valeant Wraps Up Financial Review, Promises To File 10-K In Time

Beleaguered drug giant Valeant Pharmaceuticals ( VRX ) was trading higher Tuesday after it announced that it had finished its accounting review and would file its 2015 annual report in time to avoid a credit default. Valeant formed an ad hoc committee to review its books late last year, after a scandal led to the end of its unusual relationship with specialty pharmacy Philidor. The committee has already announced some minor adjustments to 2014 and Q1 2015 earnings, but working out the details has delayed the filing of the 10-K annual financial report past the March 30 deadline set by Valeant’s bank credit agreement. After that, it had 30 days to file — until April 29 — before going into default. Since Valeant’s debt load is swollen from years of rapid-fire acquisitions, concerns about the credit default helped cut the stock price in half last month, when Valeant issued  Q4 results and 2016 guidance  well below Wall Street estimates. But on Tuesday, Valeant said that it expects to file the 10-K by the April 29 deadline. “After conducting more than 70 interviews and reviewing over 1 million documents, the ad hoc committee has not identified any additional items requiring restatements beyond those matters previously disclosed,” Valeant Chairman Robert Ingram said in a statement. “We believe it is appropriate to transfer responsibility for any continuing work to the board’s independent directors.” Valeant stock was up more than 8% in morning trading on the stock market today , near 28. The stock is still down some 89% from its all-time high above 263 touched last August, and it still has a ways to go before getting back to normal. The company is looking for a new CEO as activist investor William Ackman moves to take over the board, while director and former CFO Howard Schiller has refused to relinquish his position.

Workday May Hit $5 Billion In 5 Years As Financial Software Rises

At the rate Workday ( WDAY ) is growing its core human capital management (HCM) software, combined with its new financial management products, analysts Ross MacMillan and Matthew Hedberg can see Workday’s path to $5 billion in yearly sales by 2021. The company just hit it first billion-dollar year, closing its fiscal year ended Jan. 31 with sales of $1.16 billion. The pair of RBC Capital Markets analysts on Sunday raised their price target on Workday stock to 92 from 72 and affirmed their outperform rating. Workday stock rose a fraction Monday to a 2016 high, making its seventh consecutive up-day, closing at 78.92. Last week, Workday stock broke out of a cup-with-handle at a 75.60 buy point. Workday wasn’t alone Monday. Rival ServiceNow ( NOW ) rose 3.6%  to 64.28 on a bullish report from William Blair on its long-term fundamentals. Bigger enterprise software rivals Salesforce ( CRM ), Oracle ( ORCL ) and SAP ( SAP ) all slipped a fraction. RBC’s MacMillan and Hedberg drew confidence by comparing Workday to PeopleSoft in 2001, four years before its HCM and financial management (FM) software businesses were acquired by Oracle for $10.4 billion. PeopleSoft co-founder David Duffield, who fought the Oracle takeover, went on to co-found Workday. “A look back at PeopleSoft is striking,” they said. “Workday today has (less than) 25% of PeopleSoft’s customer count in 2001, yet Workday has (more than) 50% of PeopleSoft’s revenue at that time. This is particularly interesting, given Workday has yet to generate any meaningful financial management revenue today and which (according to management) was (more than) 50% of PeopleSoft’s revenue at the time of acquisition by Oracle.” In other words, the RBC analysts say, Workday has plenty of room to grow. “Success in financials would support a path to $5 billion,” they wrote. “While financials (are) not the focus in this note, we think the path to $5 billion revenue remains underpinned (split less than 50% HCM, more than 50% FM) which we think can be realized in the next 5-plus years.” For its fiscal 2016 ended Jan. 31, Workday revenue rose 48% to $1.16 billion. It lost 1 cent per share minus items, a huge improvement from a 33-cent loss in fiscal 2015. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect a Q1 per-share loss minus items of 2 cents, on revenue up 35% to $339 million. They expect adjusted profit to break into the black in Q3.