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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Twitter Never Fails To Fail
For those familiar with Bethany McLean's The Smartest Guys In The Room, the forthcoming comparison will make sense; for those unfamiliar with her book, regarding Enron's executive leadership, the following analogy may fall on deaf ears. In any case, allow me to preface all further Enron remarks by first decrying the company's actions. While its employees were, for the most part, incredibly intelligent, Enron epitomizes all that was, and still is, wrong with corporate America.
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Why "Cult" Is A Dirty Four-Letter Word
What are the stock market’s most notorious “cult stocks,” and how do we identify them? While most investors consider “cult” to be a dirty four-letter word, the corporations that comprise this category have performed incredibly well over the past years. Whereas previously beloved companies like Yelp and Twitter (TWTR) have fallen 44.1% and 21.1% over the last two years, cult stocks like Ambarella (AMBA), Netflix (NFLX), Tesla (TSLA), Chipotle (CMG), and Amazon (AMZN) have experienced near triple-digit gains.
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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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Corrupt Costolo Out Of Time
In what was one of the more unusual events on Wall Street last week, Twitter’s (TWTR) Q1 earnings report was leaked before the closing bell. Ironically, the results were made public via a series of tweets from Selerity, a data science firm. The tweets revealed that Twitter missed revenue expectations by more than $20 million and also cut quarterly and annual guidance. Not surprisingly, Twitter’s stock price plummeted more than 20%.
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$2.8 Billion In One Year
Slack, a relatively new messaging and communications application, specifically aimed at increasing business efficiency, has announced that it recently raised $160 million in new funding at a valuation of $2.8 billion. Its investors include big VC names like Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures. To date, Slack has raised $340 million of working capital to fund expansionary business strategies.
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Taco Bell's Brilliant App
Today, society focuses on making the smart, smarter; the thin, thinner; and the quick, quicker. Embracing this trend, Taco Bell’s (YUM) new mobile application aims to make ordering fast food even faster. About a week ago Taco Bell “blacked out” its social media pages in an attempt to raise awareness for its new app, displaying the simple Twitter (TWTR) hashtag "#OnlyInTheApp."
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