Snap shares just made a comeback — but the turnaround may be short-lived
Snap shares just made a comeback — but the turnaround may be short-lived.
Still, some strategists see a choppy road ahead for the stock that’s declined nearly 25 percent since its initial public offering five months ago.
Snap, since rallying up toward $30 per share in March shortly after its $17 IPO, has been making “nothing but a series of lower lows and lower highs since,” said Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Jaffray.
The stock’s trend has clearly been downward since it began trading.
Longer-term, you need a close above $15, or $16, to reverse that downtrend,” Johnson said Monday on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Kip Paulson, who in his bullish note published Tuesday morning raised his rating to “overweight” from “neutral” though leaving his $15 price target unchanged, wrote that the bulk of Snap’s locked-up shares are now free for trading, and thus “much of the negative impact should now be behind the company.”
As beaten-up as the company is at these levels, said Boris Schlossberg, managing director of foreign exchange strategy at BK Asset Management, he wouldn’t go so far as to short the stock simply because of what he sees as the potential for mergers and acquisition activity in the future. “Snap, as weak as it is, is still the only viable social platform that Google can take out, and then participate in display advertising.
Between the two of them, Google and Facebook have 20 percent of the global advertising budget. “They could just come in, soup it up, and subsidize it for years to come until they figure out how they can monetize the advertising off of it,” he added.
IPic Entertainment plans a mini-IPO
IPic Entertainment plans a mini-IPO.
The movie theater-casual dining chain iPic Entertainment on Tuesday said it plans to file a Regulation A+ initial public offering — making it the latest in a string of small companies hoping to raise funds through a so-called mini-IPO.
The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company, which operates 16 locations in 10 states, wants to raise up to $30 million in the late fall of this year from the online investment company Banq.
It’s the third restaurant company to announce such a process in the past month, following Bobby’s Burger Palace and Fatburger owner Fat Brands Inc. Regulation A+ offerings enable small companies to raise money from customers and other small investors, and were made legal as part of the 2012 JOBS Act.
Such companies typically cannot get the attention of institutional investors who are vital for traditional IPOs.
Currently, iPic operates 121 screens at its locations and has five locations under construction, “with a pipeline of additional sites in various stages of development,” the company said in its announcement.
The company was founded in 2006.
TriPoint Global Equities LLC, owner of Banq, will act as the lead managing selling agent and bookrunner for the offering.
iPic plans its offering for “late fall 2017” and then will be listed either on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq and be subject to their requirements for reporting.
The company plans to use proceeds from the offering for working capital and “general corporate purposes,” including remodeling existing locations and adding new units.
Narrativ helps publishers make more money when they drive sales
Narrativ helps publishers make more money when they drive sales.
Sure, affiliate links are a common business model, where publishers get a cut of the business that they’re sending to retailers.
There are even companies like Skimlinks and VigLink that automate this process.
It turns these links into an advertising unit called a SmartLink, where different retailers can bid in real-time for each click.
The company has raise $3 million in funding from investors including Talis Capital and New Enterprise Associates.
She argued that SmartLinks are a more effective form of promotion than banner ads (which are intrusive and can be stripped out by ad blockers) and native advertising.
“Narrativ advertising is real content.” In other words, the product doesn’t require writers and editors to do anything different — it automatically transforms the product links that they were going to include in their articles anyway into SmartLinks.
And since the bidding happens in real-time, they get to avoid “link rot” when a product link changes.
“For the first time, we control when a product featured in content drives traffic to Dermstore.” (Here’s a bit more detail about how Dermstore is using Narrativ.)
Beyond plain vanilla links, Chen also said that Narrativ works with other units like product galleries.
Minibar Delivery alcohol marketplace picks up $5 million in funding
Minibar Delivery alcohol marketplace picks up $5 million in funding.
Minibar Delivery , a marketplace for wine, beer and spirits, has today announced the close of a $5 million funding round led by Corigin Ventures, with participation from Female Founders Fund, Winklevoss Capital, LaunchCapital and RiverPark Ventures.
Minibar Delivery launched back in 2013, trying to give liquor stores an ecommerce outlet and users the ability to buy booze with the click of a button.
The company has since expanded to 37 markets across the country and has started to test shipping for new markets.
Shipping essentially allows Minibar users outside those 37 markets to place an order on the platform and receive their order via the mail.
Liquor stores have back-end control over their inventory and prices, and users have the option to shop by liquor type, brand, or even stores in their area.
Liquor stores, in turn, handle order placement, picking, packing and delivery.
Minibar Delivery cofounder Lindsey Andrews says that a big portion of minibar deliveries are wines, and the company is working with vineyards nationwide to offer shipping for their wines and broader access to wine for users.
“We’ve been growing quickly, but the majority of the population hasn’t heard of Minibar,” said Andrews.
“Part of the challenge is getting the word out there and letting consumers know that wine, spirits and beer are moving into ecommerce.” Competition in the space hasn’t slowed down a bit, with bigger players like Postmates and Amazon moving more aggressively into alcohol delivery.
Dixon Tech eyes Rs5,000 crore turnover in three years, prepares for IPO
The Noida-based Dixon is looking to raise Rs700 crore from the initial public offering (IPO), the proceeds of which will be used for expansion of the company, which manufactures appliances like washing machines, LED TV, lighting products and mobile phones.
We are targeting the first week of September.
We have got the approvals from Sebi for DHRP,” Dixon Technologies CMD Sunil Vachani told PTI.
The IPO would also fund the company’s new plant in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, for manufacturing LED TV and LED bulbs besides paying off debt and expansion of other facilities.
“One of the reason for IPO is to fund the projects of backward integration.
In FY 2017, Dixon had a turnover of Rs2,400 crore.
“We are almost growing over 20% and next year, we hope to have a turnover of Rs3,500 crore,” he added.
The company had started manufacturing mobile phones two years ago and has a capacity of 10 million units per year.
Dixon, which has a capacity of 9 million LED bulbs per month, is also exporting its lighting products to around 20 countries in the Middle-East and Africa among others.
Besides, the company also provides repair & refurbishment services of mobile phone, TV panels and Set Top Boxes.
IPO would only exacerbate Studio City ownership maze
If an IPO does take place, it will be very difficult to figure out who owns what and how much.
Studio City is 60% owned by Melco Resorts & Entertainment.
Given all this corporate mess, who is going to buy shares?
You won’t even really know what you’re getting exactly, so it’s very difficult to put a price on the shares rationally.
It doesn’t cost much to file a private document with the SEC, say something about offering shares when market conditions are right, and give no general price points or estimates on the number of shares being offered.
Melco International Development is in a lot of debt that will need to be paid off between 3 and 8 years from now at rates between 5% and 8.5% fixed.
The Hong Kong company, which owns 51% of the Nasdaq-listed company, has over HK$30 billion in total debt, over 100% of its market cap, though HK$26 billion of that is fixed so if they can pay it all off over the next 8 years they’ll be in good shape.
So while rolling chip volume was $1.344 billion in 2016 and mass market table drop was $2.480 billion, mass market is actually much smaller than it looks.
On an annual basis, rolling chip volume would be about $8 billion, making Studio City Macau annualized gaming volume about 75% VIP and only 25% mass market, roughly.
Investors can expect the corporate structure surrounding the ownership of Studio City to be streamlined and simplified at some point.
Rocket Internet’s Glossybox acquired by UK ecommerce platform player, THG
Rocket Internet’s Glossybox acquired by UK ecommerce platform player, THG.
Glossybox, a BirchBox clone launched by the Samwer brothers back in 2011 to deliver willing consumers a monthly subscription of beauty products, has been acquired by UK online retailer and ecommerce platform operator, The Hut Group (THG).
Glossybox had raised $72 million from four investors over its six year or so run, according to Crunchbase.
The number of beauty subscription boxes has grown in recent years, as more companies jumped on the product subscription bandwagon.
THG has several subscription box products of its own, such as its lookfantastic brand Beauty Box, although it also offers subscription box offerings beyond the beauty space, such as its MyGeekBox and PopInABox brands.
The company couches the Glossybox buy as a strategic move to further extend its international reach — with the latter active in 10 markets: the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.
Glossybox has not disclosed subscription numbers recently, but THG reckons there’s room to grow the brand by plugging it into its proprietary ecommerce platform-plus-marketing infrastructure.
It also said it intends to invest in Glossybox’s Berlin base — evolving it into a “tech-hub” for the Group.
Commenting on the acquisition in a statement, Matthew Moulding, founder and CEO of THG, said: “This is another significant investment for The Hut Group.
In Glossybox, we have acquired a great brand, with a solid and engaged customer base that, once powered through our platform and marketing infrastructure, should be capable of further significant growth.” While Caren Genthner-Kappesz, CEO of Glossybox, described THG as “the right strategic partner to drive our business forward”.
Tech developers get military help
Tech developers get military help.
But he’s not yet convinced the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental office is the long-term solution and might overlap with other advanced technology offices.
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, for example, dates to the 1950s and the space race, while various armed forces branches also have their own research arms.
Since opening its first office in California’s Silicon Valley, the unit has awarded $100 million in government contracts to 45 pilot projects.
And, under the military’s traditional purchasing process, the contracts would have likely taken years longer to reach the point they’re at now, by which time the technology would have become obsolete, he added.
The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental office, by drastically simplifying the bidding process, is awarding contracts within four months.
Tanium in Emeryville, Calif., has been awarded $12.7 million to help the military better manage its information technology and cybersecurity operations.
For now, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental office appears to have President Donald Trump’s support.
But Thornberry, the House Armed Services chairman, said he’ll be looking for the unit to make more compelling arguments. “That’s what we’ve got to get our arms around.”
Angry Birds Maker Rovio Said to Plan IPO at $2 Billion Value
Angry Birds Maker Rovio Said to Plan IPO at $2 Billion Value.
Games maker to list as early as next month, raise $400 million Company is searching for new growth after Angry Birds success Rovio Entertainment Oy is planning an initial public offering as early as next month that could value the maker of the Angry Birds mobile games and movie at about $2 billion, said people familiar with the matter.
Rovio could raise about $400 million from a local market listing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details aren’t public.
No final decisions have been made and the company could also choose to stay private for longer, they said.
Carnegie Bank A/S, Danske Bank A/S and Deutsche Bank AG are among banks advising on a potential listing, the people said.
Representatives for Rovio, Carnegie, Danske and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Rovio, based in Espoo, Finland, reported revenue growth of 34 percent for 2016 to 190.3 million euros ($225 million) and earnings before interests and taxes of about 17.5 million euros compared with a loss in the previous year.
The company, like many game makers, has been searching for new growth after its initial success with the Angry Birds mobile game.
The company sold parts of its business to Kaiken Entertainment, a startup led by former Chief Executive Officer Mikael Hed and other company veterans, in March.
The sale — which included Rovio’s TV animation studio, book publishing business and some non-Angry Birds properties– was part of a reorganization at the company.
How to Launch a Real Estate Tech Startup Even If You Are Not a Techie
But non-tech founders often struggle However many would-be start-up founders without a technology background feel they cannot effectively launch a technology-based company.
The Technical Co-Founder – this can be a good option if you can find someone who is equally committed to the venture and is able to work for equity or mainly equity for a while during the early stages (assuming as in most cases that a budget for full-time salary is not available).
The rates will often be lower than working with a more established company and for some entrepreneurs the right freelancer could be a good way to get an initial product or prototype built.
And of course a firm with experience developing products in the real estate domain is a plus.
While a good development firm can be a great asset for a founder, as the company matures investors often like to see at least the core team (CTO, VP Engineering) hired in-house to ensure long-term alignment.
There are some service firms (like my firm Venture Aviator) that will consider a hybrid fee/equity-based model and serve as a long-term technology partner, which also addresses the alignment issue.
Technology development will probably be the most expensive cost (either in terms of cash or equity) to your venture during the early stages of its growth.
It is essential to ensure you have a technology team/partner that will communicate well with the product owners (so you get the product right), the marketing team (so the right marketing “hooks” are built into the product design) and with each other (so the software development process is efficient).
Development Methodology – the most common contemporary approach for new product development is “Agile” or some derivative of it.
It’s a great time to start a real estate tech company.
De-jargoned: What is initial coin offering
In the world of cryptocurrencies, initial coins offerings (ICO) are used to raise money for business purposes.
In ICO, the company creates digital tokens, which are in cryptocurrencies.
The tokens are issued based on the amount that the company wants to raise.
It then sells these cryptocurrencies in an initial offer.
In a way, ICO is similar to an initial public offer (IPO).
In case of an ICO, tokens are generated and a price is set on those tokens.
The tokens are on a blockchain and derive their value based on demand.
Anyone can invest in an ICO.
The newly created tokens can then be exchanged with existing popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum or even with a fiat currency like dollar or rupee.
They can also be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Getting to know Amy: How our team looks to bring bots into the fold
As the CEO of a startup, I’ve always tried to set aside time to get to know each new team member as they come onboard.
Who was Amy?
He was referring to Amy.ai, the new chatbot we were trialing to schedule staff and client meetings.
Over the last few years bots have been created to do everything from tell you the weather, manage your personal finances, to help your team communicate more efficiently.
Our team tries to limit the amount of time spent in team meetings to one to two hours per week, but add client phone calls, and back and forth conversations into the mix, and setting up meetings quickly becomes a drain on productivity.
Using Amy has really cut the amount of time spent calculating time differences and trying to find times that work for everyone involved.
Keeping up to date with media coverage on the move As a marketing startup, our team needs to be up to date with breaking news, and be able to check media results for our clients in real time, even when on the move.
Considering the amount of bots available for integration with other popular messaging apps like Slack, Kik, Telegram and Facebook messenger, many have been wondering why Whatsapp have been so slow to join the party.
While this has never become a problem, it can be tough to remember to note down every small expenditure when meeting clients, or organizing events, and keep track of different accounts and payments, especially when you have a million other things going on.
As such, we’ve begun experimenting with messenger bots on our Facebook pages.
Biotech Wunderkind Raises $1.1 Billion To Fund Pharma Startups
Vivek Ramaswamy, a former hedge fund partner who went on to engineer one of the biggest biotech initial public offerings in history, has a new source of cash: his investment vehicle, Roivant Sciences, just raised $1.1 billion from investors including the Softbank Vision Fund and Dexcel Pharma.
Roivant has invested in a series of spinouts, including Arbutus (viral diseases), Axovant (neurology), Myovant (women’s health and endocrine diseases), Dermavant (dermatology), Enzyvant (rare diseases), and Urovant (urology).
The new funding will go toward creating another ‘vant, called DataVant, focused on accumulating siloed data to help judge the odds of success for drugs in clinical trials.
Ramaswamy was a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30, and was on the cover of Forbes in 2015. “The ball’s in our court, but I hope we’re going to be doubling down or tripling down on the business model in the coming months if not the coming years,” Ramaswamy says.
David Hung, who took sold Medivation to Pfizer for $14 billion, recently took the helm at Axovant.
Hung’s second-in-command at Medivation, Lynn Seely, took the helm at Myovant.
Jacqualyn Fouse, the former chief financial officer at Celgene, was recently appointed the executive chairman at Dermavant.
Ramaswamy’s big idea is approaching it’s first public test.
Next month, investors expect data from a pivotal trial of Axovant’s Alzheimer’s drug, intepirdine.
Saudi Arabia: Location for State Oil IPO Could Be Critical to Future
Saudi Arabia is weighing its options in listing its state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. on either the New York or London stock exchanges.
There remains considerable debate within Saudi Arabia on where the country will place 5 percent of Saudi Aramco for sale in an initial public offering (IPO).
Saudi Aramco’s advisers were pushing for London, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who chairs the Supreme Council for Saudi Aramco and will make the final decision— has been in favor of listing in New York.
Saudi Aramco’s IPO is one of the most complicated in recent memory, but it is critical to get right because it sits at the center of the economic reform plan Vision 2030.
Saudi Aramco has been lobbying for London because of concerns about the laws and disclosure rules in the United States.
If Saudi Aramco couldn’t secure a premium listening, it would be ineligible for some of London’s share indexes, such as the coveted FTSE 100.
That proposal would exempt those entities from some of the rules for qualification under the normal premium listing, such as shareholder requirements.
Though the proposal is pending approval, critics claim that the FCA specially designed the new category to attract Saudi Aramco Saudi Aramco could choose to list in both countries, but doing so would be even more complicated and could delay the IPO, currently planned for next year.
Saudi Arabia is also planning on listing on its domestic exchange, Tadawul.
But this a thorny issue since Saudi Arabia uses Tadawul to make initial public offerings of parts of its leading companies, often at discounted rates, to Saudi Arabian citizens as a wealth distribution mechanism.
Sleeperbot is the best place to host your fantasy football league this season
Sleeperbot is the best place to host your fantasy football league this season.
Sleeperbot, which has raised about $2M in seed funding from Birchmere VC and Expa, and boasts hundreds of thousands of users, calls itself Slack for sports.
These discussions happen in channels – some of which are created by the company and are general topics like fantasy advice, and some are created by users – like an Eagles fan club.
And now they are adding another feature that is sure to make it even more useful for sports fans – fantasy sports.
Starting with NFL this season, Sleeperbot is adding support for season-long fantasy sports right inside its app.
This move makes total sense because season-long fantasy sports, unlike daily fantasy sports, is a very social activity.
Most people play in leagues with friends they have known their whole life – and the social/chat element can be just as important as the actual gameplay.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense for casual player to use sites like ESPN or Yahoo fantasy anymore – who wants to make a trade in one app then switch to iMessage or GroupMe when its time to talk to the rest of the league when you can do it all from one place?
Users open the app 4-5 times a day and spend 3-5 minutes per session – and on peak game days average users can spend up to 30 minutes in the app talking sports with their friends.
Sleeperbot’s free NFL fantasy product launches this season, and other sports will roll out later this year.
Meet Brittany Laughlin, Partner at Lattice Ventures
I always think of investing as a very long term activity, and that really supporting the entrepreneurs at the early stages is key in order to get them to the next level of funding.
The philosophy at Lattice is making sure that the early stage entrepreneurs get the support, the connections, the talent, and the long-term perspective that they need to be successful over a long period of time.
VN: What do you like to invest in?
BL: I have a lot of experience working on investments at Union Square Ventures, and then with Lattice Ventures over the past year.
VN: What do you look for in companies that you put money in?
BL: We are early stage investors, and we like to be the first institutional check in the business, so we don’t have hard and fast metrics.
So they’ve actually taken on a lot more capital before they get to that next level of funding.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs so I always wanted to be close to entrepreneurs and people who were excited about building new ideas and businesses.
That was a huge inspiration to start Lattice to be an entrepreneur friendly business, not just a competitive, “Let’s take every term we can from entrepreneurs,” type perspective.
VN: In a typical year how many startups do you invest in?
Here’s the panicked text Mark Zuckerberg sent before Facebook’s historic IPO
Our revenue projection has gone down so much we now think we might go public at less than $50bn if things continue,” the text said, according to the Financial Times.
Facebook is the most successful social media platform in the world, but the days leading up to the IPO were less than convincing.
In May 2012, Zuckerberg and co. started a pre-IPO roadshow to win the favor of investors.
Things got off to a “rough start” after investors were forced to watch a 30-minute video pitch.
Zuckerberg also got flack for wearing his signature hoodie instead of a snazzy business suit.
“Mark and his signature hoodie.
He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much, he’s going to be him,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said on Bloomberg TV.
“I think that’s a mark of immaturity.” Facebook was treading water by the time the $104 billion IPO came around.
But after a “huddle” with execs, Zuckerberg chose to move forward, texting his wife, “The IPO is on.” Her reply, “Yay.” Unfortunately, Zuck was right: Things were going really badly; investors ended up suing him for violated securities laws by not disclosing that the move from desktop to mobile was affecting revenues.
Andrew Clublok, a Facebook legal representative, is now arguing that it isn’t possible to quantify those risks and that the social giant’s revenues quickly rebounded.
YogaWorks’ Second Attempted IPO — Here’s What You Need To Know
You don’t have to know the difference between Downward Dog and Chaturanga to assess the investment opportunity of YogaWorks.
The 30-year-old chain filed for an initial public offering Thursday after having pulled its first attempt in mid-July.
Round two will put up 7.3 million shares between $5.50 and $6.50, a significant adjustment from the previous price proposed between $12 and $14.
But its primary focus is in-studio classes.
YogaWorks’ 49 studios at the end of 2016 represented a four-year CAGR of 19.5 percent, and through additional acquisitions, management hopes to penetrate the existing markets in nearly every U.S. city.
“We plan to strengthen our presence in existing markets and selectively enter new markets predominantly by acquiring independently owned yoga studios.
… We believe that acquisitions of existing studios and their thriving student bases can be an effective, profitable and risk-mitigating way to enter a new regional market versus building a new studio and waiting for attendance to ramp up over time.” YogaWorks targets studios with annual revenues between $500,000 to $700,000, and it expects a return on invested capital within two to four years of opening a new studio.
In 2015, it acquired 17 studios through the $12.2 million purchase of four chains, and the same studios brought in $11.7 million the following year.
Financials Management reported net revenue of $55.1 million in 2016, representing a CAGR of 10.9 percent from 2012.
In the quarter ending June 30, the firm posted revenue between $12.3 million and $12.6 million — as much as 7.5 percent below the comparable quarter last year.