| To: richardred who wrote (3936) | 5/14/2015 5:31:04 PM | | From: Paul Senior | | | | | TWTR. I have come to the same opinion about TWTR as you two. Joined you today with a small tracking position. Intending to add more if/as stock falls with no adverse news. |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3936) | 5/16/2015 8:53:57 AM | | From: richardred | | | | RE-TWTR/ICAHN update Take note of his original statement.
>snip “Twitter is great,” Mr. Icahn announced in his first message on Twitter. “I like it almost as much as I like Dell.”
Carl Icahn Invests $100 Million in Lyft
By MIKE ISAAC and ALEXANDRA STEVENSONMAY 15, 2015
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A Lyft car in San Francisco last year. Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
For years, Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber, has been the loudest public voice on how ride-hailing start-ups will upend the transportation industry.
Now comes Carl C. Icahn.
Mr. Icahn, one of Wall Street’s most outspoken activist investors and aggressive Twitter users, announced on Friday that he had invested $100 million in Lyft, the fast-growing ride-booking start-up and single largest competitor to Uber in the United States.
Along with an additional $50 million from other investors that Lyft did not disclose, the new investment is an extension of a $530 million round that the start-up raised in March, which values the company at $2.5 billion.
“There’s room for two in this area,” Mr. Icahn said in a phone interview on Friday. “What I’m saying is there is a secular change going on with the way people are getting around, and with urbanization, it means more people living in urban areas.”
John Zimmer, Lyft’s president and co-founder, said the company planned to use the capital to continue growing in the United States, while honing the company’s smartphone app. The company, which is based in San Francisco, has previously hinted at international expansion, though Lyft has not announced any plans to move abroad.
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“They reached out to us and I found the opportunity very compelling,” the investor Carl Icahn said of Lyft’s pitch to him. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times Lyft and Uber have been raising money at a breakneck pace. To date, Uber has raised more than $5 billion, and is currently in discussions to raise another $1.5 billion, a person with knowledge of the talks has said, potentially valuing the company at $50 billion — 20 times that of Lyft’s current valuation.
More surprising is Mr. Icahn’s involvement, which underscores how institutional investors like hedge funds and mutual funds are all looking to invest in privately held tech companies. Mr. Icahn rarely invests in closely held start-ups and will be a strange bedfellow to some of his Lyft co-investors, particularly Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Mr. Andreessen once called Mr. Icahn an “evil Captain Kirk,” a reference to the “Star Trek” character.
The two seem to have set aside their differences. Speaking about his spat with Mr. Andreessen, Mr. Icahn said, “I never said he wasn’t a smart guy.”
“To hold a grudge on Wall Street you have to be a fool,” he added.
With the Lyft investment, Mr. Icahn has negotiated a board seat for Jonathan Christodoro, a managing director of Mr. Icahn’s hedge fund, Icahn Enterprises. Mr. Christodoro will join Scott Weiss, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who also sits on Lyft’s board.
The $100 million investment came about through a connection between Mr. Christodoro and Mr. Zimmer of Lyft, who both did their undergraduate studies at Cornell University. Lyft then called to pitch Mr. Icahn.
“They reached out to us and I found the opportunity very compelling,” Mr. Icahn said in the interview.
Mr. Icahn has long invested in public tech companies, often having contentious relationships with his portfolio companies. Once labeled a corporate raider for his abrasive style, Mr. Icahn typically buys up stakes in public companies and then rattles the board for change, pushing for bigger windfalls for investors and often getting his way. He has hounded Apple to buy back more shares and make use of its cash hoard. In April, after Apple agreed to buy back $30 billion of stock under pressure from Mr. Icahn, his response was that the company could do “a lot more, sooner.”
Last year, Mr. Icahn pushed for a partial spinoff of the electronic payments business PayPal from its parent, eBay, spurring a vitriolic war of words with the company. EBay later decided to split PayPal and its marketplace unit into two different companies. In 2012 and 2013, Mr. Icahn called Netflix shares undervalued and pushed for a sale.
He has also faced off against Edward J. Zander, the former chief executive of Motorola, pushing him to find ways to give more back to shareholders. And Mr. Icahn engaged in a grueling battle with Michael S. Dell to prevent Mr. Dell from taking his computer company private at what was deemed too low a price.
As much an entertainer as a serious investor, Mr. Icahn is well versed in using the media — and more recently, social media — to help prevail in his battles. He was among the first hedge fund managers to use Twitter to make his voice heard.
“Twitter is great,” Mr. Icahn announced in his first message on Twitter. “I like it almost as much as I like Dell.”
nytimes.com |
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| To: Trader2015 who wrote (3941) | 5/22/2015 2:55:20 PM | | From: Ahda | | | | GURE is ripe for takeover. really?
Gulf Resources, Inc. is a holding company. The Company, through its subsidiaries, engaged in manufacturing and trading bromine and crude salt, and manufacturing and selling chemical products used in oil and gas field exploration, oil and gas distribution, oil field drilling, wastewater processing, papermaking chemical agents and inorganic chemicals. The Company operates in three segments, including bromine, crude salt and chemical products. The Company conducts operations through its two wholly owned China subsidiaries, Shouguang City Haoyuan Chemical Company Limited (SCHC) and Shouguang Yuxin Chemical Industry Company Limited (SYCI). Through SCHC, the Company produces and sells bromine and crude salt. Through SYCI, the Company manufactures and sells chemical products. |
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| To: Ahda who wrote (3942) | 5/22/2015 4:46:27 PM | | From: Trader2015 | | | | This is exactly the type of microcap company to be taken over. Market capitalization says this company is worth about 114 mil. Seriously? Company has 111 mil in Cash as of 3/31/15. Tangible Book value is $ 8.07. And their revenue is expected to be 125 mil this year. Read about the Natural Gas potential in their Bromine Wells. I am just sharing. Do your own Due Diligence. Of course I own a few shares. I think much more upside.
Just sayin. |
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| To: Trader2015 who wrote (3943) | 5/23/2015 7:36:39 PM | | From: richardred | | | | RE- My personal preference is still not to invest in Chinese companies. Reasons in link. I wish you success in your investment. If I miss it . Let the board know how you made out.
Message 28492052
I's much rather speculate in companies that Chinese companies might acquire here. I've had one success of Chinese company buying a division of an American company. That was Datascope- DSCP. The DSCP division was one of the first acquisitions by a Chinese company that I can remember. The company was ultimately acquired by Getinge.
Message 24430951
Message 24390346
Message 25369452 |
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| To: Trader2015 who wrote (3945) | 5/24/2015 9:03:38 AM | | From: richardred | | | | Plain and simple you have the power to do what you want. From my prospective without knowing your personal situation objectives . Why would you want to add more shares in a company you are doubting? Myself, I'd stick with a company I was more confident in. You already have shares in the company to participate in an upside move. From an earlier post. Seems like you know what value is . In Speculating in Takeover Targets. These days Top line growth and the Hunter companies objectives play a bigger role. This more so than value and shareholder enhancement , IMO. There are plenty of fish in the investing sea to diversify your money.
Good luck to you
RR
P.S. My caveat -Listen to what everybody has to say, but do what you think is right yourself. |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 5/25/2015 12:38:09 PM | | | | | | Charter Near Deal for Time Warner Cable at $195 a Share
by Alex Sherman Ed Hammond
Bloomberg
10:03 AM CDT, May 25, 2015
Charter Communications Inc. is near an agreement to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for about $55.1 billion in cash and stock, according to people familiar with the matter.
Charter will pay about $195 a share, with $100 in cash and the rest in its own stock, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The deal could be announced as soon as tomorrow, they said. Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter is trying to buy, will also be merged into the combined entity, they said.
Charter, the fourth-biggest U.S. cable company, is making its second move on No. 2 Time Warner Cable after its early 2014 bid was rejected and Comcast Corp. swooped in with a competing offer. Charter, whose largest shareholder is billionaire John Malone, got another shot when the Comcast deal fell apart in April because of regulatory scrutiny.
Spokespeople for Charter and Time Warner Cable declined to comment.
The price is 14 percent above Time Warner Cable’s closing price on May 22. Shareholders will have the option to accept as much as $115 a share in cash and less Charter stock, the people said. The deal value of $55.1 billion is for Time Warner’s equity. Charter also will assume debt in the transaction.
Surprise Entry
Dealmaking is heating up in an industry facing waning demand for traditional pay-TV packages and competition from Netflix, Amazon and other online services. While many analysts predicted a tie-up between Charter and Time Warner Cable, French cable billionaire Patrick Drahi made a surprise entry in the U.S. market on May 20 by agreeing to buy a smaller rival. While in the country, he also met with Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Rob Marcus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Liberty Broadband Corp., the Malone entity that holds the stake in Charter as well as shares of Time Warner Cable, will buy $5 billion of new Charter stock at the current price to help fund the deal, said the people. The transaction also has a breakup fee of $2 billion, which anticipates a possible bid by Drahi’s Altice SA and antitrust concerns, they said.
The Time Warner Cable deal enables Charter to almost quadruple the number of its cable subscribers, gaining 12 million customers in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
Bright House Deal
Charter has also been renegotiating its offer to buy billionaire Si Newhouse Jr.’s Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion. That agreement had been in jeopardy because it depended on Comcast closing its merger with Time Warner Cable, which has the right to match or block the deal because of a longstanding arrangement to negotiate programming and other deals for Bright House.
Cable providers have been expanding their Internet offerings to help offset the loss of cable subscribers. By opposing the Comcast merger, regulators have showed they are taking a hard look at deals that give companies too much power over broadband Internet, which is increasingly becoming the way that people watch TV.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler called Time Warner Cable’s Marcus and Charter CEO Tom Rutledge recently to dispel notions that industry mergers won’t be approved by regulators, a person with knowledge of the calls has said. Wheeler told the CEOs that any transaction would be judged on merit, and there was no flat ban on cable combinations, the person said.
Mergers may give cable companies more leverage when negotiating contracts with television networks, which could keep cable TV prices down for consumers.
Investors have been anticipating more deals. Cablevision Systems Corp., the No. 5 in the industry, rose 17 percent on May 20, the day Altice agreed to buy a controlling stake in Suddenlink Communications, the No. 7.
bloomberg.com |
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