Every Silicon Valley techie knows that Google (GOOGL) Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a holding company, named "Alphabet," to oversee Google's many growing business lines (many of which don't align with Google's core operations). While some investors and tech analysts speculate that Alphabet's conception is meant to address potential (current and future) antitrust issues.
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Google To Acquire Twitter?
Every so often, Wall Street financial firms and investment banks blindly announce acquisition rumors as if they are facts. This mainly occurs in the tech and biotech sectors, where M&A rumors run amuck. And while these claims are often unfounded, investors nonetheless pile into the alleged "buyer" and "seller" companies.
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Diageo, An Unknown Goldmine
Yesterday I offered an analysis and prospectus of adult beverage conglomerate Brown-Forman (BF-B), one of the largest alcohol distributors in the world; it is also one of our meticulously selected growth stocks. Today I will focus on its bitter rival, Diageo (DEO). Just as Coca Cola (KO) competes with PepsiCo (PEP), and McDonald's (MCD) battles Burger King, Diageo is conducting all out war with Brown-Forman.
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What If Yahoo Had Acquired Facebook?
Nearly nine years ago, Facebook (FB) discussed an acquisition agreement with Yahoo (YHOO). Unprecedented at the time, a high-riding Yahoo sought to purchase the young social network for $1 billion. Like most tech acquisition offers, Yahoo hoped to leverage its size and capital advantages in order to buy Facebook before the company realized its full potential.
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Yelp Needs Help
The Wall Street rumor mill has been working overtime during the past month. Just a week after shares of Salesforce (CRM) popped double-digits following a report that the company was preparing to sell itself for $55 billion, shares of Yelp (YELP) jumped nearly 30% for the same reason.
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Alibaba Back On Track
Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba (BABA) first issued its record $25 billion IPO on the NYSE in September 2014. At the time, there was much fanfare from anxious investors eager to buy shares of the company. However, since then, Alibaba's public sentiment has fallen. Since its IPO, Alibaba's share price has mostly fallen, reaching a historic low of $79.54 per share on May 5th.
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Microsoft To (Likely) Acquire Salesforce
One of the Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories, Salesforce.com (CRM), which provides enterprise cloud computing services for customer relationship management, has put itself up for sale. The company, which began as a small, niche software startup, has quickly evolved into a formidable software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Today, Salesforce is the leader in the $20B customer relationship management market.
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