Year: 2017

Amazon to purchase Whole Foods for $13.7 Billion

Dan Uff June 16, 2017 0

(FoxBusiness): E-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) announced Friday it will snap up struggling grocery chain Whole Foods Market (WFM) for $42 per share in an all-cash deal valued about $13.7 billion including debt.

"Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades – they’re doing an amazing job and we want that to continue," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement.

Under the deal, Whole Foods will continue to operate stores under its independent brand and the company’s CEO and founder, John Mackey will remain in his position. Mackey said the partnership allows the Austin, Texas-based food retailer to continue efforts to bring high-quality foods and convince to its customers across America.

The deal, subject to approval by regulators and Whole Foods shareholders, is expected to close in the second half of this year.

News of the acquisition sent Amazon shares up nearly 3%, its biggest gain since January as Whole Foods leaped 27% in their biggest rally since 2009 to $42.35.

At the same time, data from Dow Jones showed investors wiped out roughly $55 billion form the market value of other grocery names including Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Costco (COST) and Kroger (KR), which cut its full-year earnings guidance on Thursday, extended losses, falling 13% Friday.

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Dan Uff June 14, 2017 0

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Apple Leaves Intel in the Dust

Dan Uff June 14, 2017 0

“A key reason why the pace of Mac hardware updates has slowed in recent years can be placed in the hands of Intel. As they fell behind releasing new silicon, Apple was left without the parts they needed to do proper refreshes,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “True, Apple did allow the Mac to languish way beyond the release of new Intel parts.”

“That takes us to this year’s iPad Pro refresh, with Apple’s A10X Fusion chip. It’s an interesting design, with six cores, three of which operate at high power, and three of which operate at low power to improve battery life. The GPU has 12 cores,” Steinberg writes. “But none of that matters, except how it impacts performance. Here, performance for single core tasks is 30% faster than the previous version, according to Apple. For multicore tasks, it’s 82% faster. More to the point, Apple claims that the new iPads are ‘more powerful than most PC laptops.’ Intel take note!”

“If you consider the pace of growth, it won’t be long before Apple’s chips speed way beyond the best Intel has to offer,” Steinberg writes. “Even if the Mac doesn’t make another processor switch, a future iPad or a convergence computer of some sort may do things far quicker than you might expect.”

Read more in the full article here.

It’s official: Verizon owns Yahoo! Marissa Mayer resigns

Dan Uff June 13, 2017 0

Verizon Communications Inc. today completed its acquisition of the operating business of Yahoo! Inc.

Verizon has combined these assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath, a diverse house of more than 50 media and technology brands that engages more than a billion people around the world.

The Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail and more, with a mission to build brands people love.

Marni Walden, Verizon president of Media and Telematics, said in a statement, “The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company. The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.”

Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL, is now CEO of Oath, which is part of Verizon’s Media and Telematics organization. He has been leading integration planning teams since the Yahoo transaction was announced in July 2016, and Oath begins operation today as a global leader in digital and mobile. See www.oath.com for further information.

Armstrong said in a statement, “We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms. Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners.”

Armstrong is also leading efforts to continue to build the industry’s most advanced and open advertising technology solutions, with brands such as ONE by AOL and BrightRoll that span across mobile, video, search, native and programmatic ads.

Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo. Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.

Read more in the full article here.