Good Monday Morning. Pfizer, first thing this morning, said it has decided to drop the idea of splitting into two public companies, and that was just the first dose of bad news for shareholders. The 58-story building in today’s feature photo is starting an unexpected, pronounced lean in downtown, earthquake-prone San Francisco. There is a reason why Georgia Tech is hard – no margin for error in this business.
Daylight – It’s Monday morning, so we might as well get it out of the way – “Bad News Bears,” a pre-teen little league baseball flick with Walter Matthau and Tatum O’neal, became the brand name for any sports team that fumbled and failed. Bad News Yahoo is becoming the same for any tech company that can’t do anything right to the point that you shake your head. I’m sure you heard Yahoo posted on Tumblr that hackers breached at least 500,000 users’ information back in 2014. This isn’t a case of “I forgot.” It’s an M&A hack strategy – stay silent and ride out the storms when due diligence comes. A company like Verizon most likely would not have touched Yahoo with a 10-foot pole with this kind of lingering liability, but now Yahoo thinks it has Verizon on the hook, right in the middle of a sale. It’s Bad News Business. Yahoo’s heartfelt message to customers – change your password. By the way, Verizon could walk away from the deal, as Yahoo is in territory that far exceeds a material breach of agreement. Yahoo is betting storms never last. Bad News Bears do.
Culture – Speaking of movies, since it is already the fourth day of the fall season, I am running a little behind here, but will go ahead and put out our “Entrepreneurs Must See” movie list. First, I am going to add “Sully” to the “Must See on TV” list. I am a sucker for docudramas.
For Entrepreneurs, I do think Clint Eastwood, as director of “Sully,” illustrates how not to complicate the story – frame it simple and straight, and try not to get to too cute.
1. “Snowden” – Is any absolute right bound to become a wrong? Oliver Stone directs this thing and shows he is back on the job, as you can tell he likes this material of privacy rights, spying, etc. He has been off his game since “Any Given Sunday.” The opposite story-teller of Eastwood is Stone, which makes it complicated, intriguing and ultimately entertaining. Entrepreneurs will enjoy “Snowden,” as Edward Snowden is ultimately a disruptor in national security. I agree with Oliver Stone. It is not a close call. He is a hero in his own right and, by the way, one of the smartest guys ever in CIA. He is the chief tech designer of our IT national security network, a big detail the media left out.
2. “La La Land” – A lot of people think Entrepreneurs live here, so go see for yourself. The movie is about “that moment” when you are so close to making it big that you know it. It stars Emma Stone, and she is not complicated. If she is in a movie, go see it for the sheer acting talent. Since the story is told mostly through music, John Legend has a role singing and acting and delivers big. Speaking of big, this “La La Land” director is betting the house that Millennials are ready for a classy, quality movie about their dreams and hard work. We’ll see.
3. “Moonlight” – Not a major motion picture release and will, unfortunately, have limited showings in mostly white liberal theaters, but every Entrepreneur should see “Moonlight” – a rarity because of how you can make a story personal and poetic. The movie describes a young man, growing up in Miami over the course of three life stages. However, it’s heavy, strikingly quiet and requires energy, so don’t go see this movie on a Friday night after work.
4. Billy Lynn’s “Long Halftime Walk” – It’s all about the human spirit and how one can be pushed into the fame lane. First major motion picture ever shot in what I believe is called 4W, illuminating 120 frames per-second versus the standard 24 frames per-second in major motion pictures. Haven’t seen this movie in its entirety yet, but from what I have seen, it feels like the whole movie is in the whole room.
M&A – Shares of Twitter have been popping all weekend since Salesforce intentionally leaked out it was in talks to buy the social media firm that has been struggling with growth. Couple of things – the talks are only in the early exploration stage, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and CEO, is not crazy about selling his baby to Salesforce, which Salesforce is considered by some in the social media elite crowd to be a Silicon Valley vamp, buying up nine companies already this year. The leak is to put pressure on Dorsey to get to the negotiation table. Dorsey might have other thoughts, as he may have nailed a gusher revenue stream in its small, but promising data-licensing division that lets companies mine the billions of tweets that are flowing through the service each day for information. A lot of upside with better execution, as right now it’s a siphon service – you buy the hose and siphon and shift through tweets until your heart is pleased. The other side of the coin is his user base only grew one percent last month, and SnapChat is the declared darling disruptor to Facebook. The deal is Twitter should sell. Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is still frustrated because he lost LinkedIn to Microsoft, so he will way overpay. This will allow Dorsey to focus 100 percent on his other company, Square.
Live Rounds – Friends of the Earth reports which restaurants are still selling public animal meats loaded up on antibiotics, even though shareholders and customers both say “no” to doing it. Panera is the golden child with an A+. A fat F goes to KFC, Olive Garden and one surprise: Starbucks. With Starbucks’ customer base, this is not good for the company, and its PR strategy Friday and all weekend was to stay quiet. Subway was most improved, as it went from an F to a C+. It made the commitment to improve after Jarrod went to jail. Sixteen of the top 25 fast food joints got an F+, everything else from IHOP to Applebee’s. End on a positive note – McDonald’s got a C, as it cleaned up its act with chicken (including the McNuggets), making it free of antibiotics.
Hot – Bill Siegel has stepped down as head of NASDAQ Private Market (which he joined via the SecondMarket acquisition) in order to join cyber-security startup SecurityScorecard as CFO.
Investment Banking – Fortune‘s latest 40 Under 40 list was released and two financiers, Goldman banker Kim Posnett and hedge fund manager Ides McKeever, are on it.
Deal Stream>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
IPO – Tintri, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of VM-aware storage for virtualization and cloud environments, has filed confidential, ‘testing the waters” IPO docs with the SEC, according to multiple sources. Word is that current plans are for an early 2017 offering. My best guess this is all a beauty contest to be bought.
Coupa Software Inc., a corporate spend management platform, has set its IPO terms to 6.7 million shares being offered at between $14 and $16 per share.
Valvoline Inc., a branded automotive lubricant company being spun out by Ashland Inc., raised $660 million in its IPO.
Exits – Bain Capital back in the games as it is considering a sale process for Consolidated Container Co., a packaging company that could be valued at more than $1.5 billion.
Hill-Rom has acquired Tridien Medical, a maker of patient positioning and other medical devices, from Compass Diversified Holdings.
Venture Capital – Finally, the exact details. Airbnb raised $555 million in new equity funding at a $30 billion valuation.
Linio, an ecommerce marketplace for Latin America, has raised $55 million.
Gfycat, a user-generated content platform, has raised $10 million in seed funding.
Anodot, a business incident detection and analytics startup, has raised $8 million in new VC funding.
Aceable, a mobile app for driver’s ed, has raised $4 million in Series A funding.
Private Equity – Accruent, a provider of real estate, facilities and asset management software, has acquired Verisae Inc., a provider of IoT cloud software that that connect facilities and assets to maintenance and service networks.
Housatonic Partners has acquired Accurate Monitoring LLC, a provider of intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring services to hospitals and surgical groups.
J.C. Flowers & Co. has agreed to acquire a control stake in ELMC Group LLC, an underwriter of medical stop-loss insurance.
And that’s what’s ahead, Cliff
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The post Bad News Bears of Business, Must See Fall Movies for Entrepreneurs, Twitter in the Popper, Starbucks’ Surprise F Rating. appeared first on Oxford Entrepreneurs.