Knee-deep in high rollers

Multiple multibillion-dollar acquisitions - including Western Digital's buy-out of SanDisk - dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, acquisitions by Adapt IT and EOH were the main local ICT stories.

* Mixed interim numbers from Datatec, with revenue up 10.1% but profit down 26.4%.
* A positive trading update from MTN.
* Adapt IT spent R216.8 million acquiring CQS Investments, a value-added distributor of a combination of its own and third-party (CaseWare, ACL and Confirmations.com) intellectual property software solutions for audit, data analytics, controls monitoring, risk management and financial reporting to financial professionals, corporates and the public sector. CQS Investments, which has the reputation of being a leader in this niche market, also services clients in Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana and Zimbabwe through a direct and a distributor network.
* EOH bought Mehleketo, a provider of full turnkey rail automation and technology solutions, coupled with the design, build and management of operational nerve centres for the rail industry.
* Naspers made a $1.2 billion investment in Avito, the top online classifieds platform in Russia, in a deal that makes it the majority stakeholder.
* The announcement of a R1 billion rights issue by Stella Capital Partners.
* Mxit will close down.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Huge Group.
* The appointments of Mlamli Booi as CEO of Sentech; and Paolo Masselli as group CEO of Britehouse.

* Mediocre half-year numbers from Econet Wireless, with revenue down 17% and profit down 52%.
* Bharti Airtel has sold around 8 300 towers (it has 14 000 in total) in Africa for $1.7 billion. The deal included transactions in seven countries. Agreements to sell towers have lapsed in four countries, while the process is still ongoing in two countries.
* MTN has been rated the most valued, admired brand in Africa.

MTN has been rated the most valued, admired brand in Africa.

* American Tower Corporation acquired India's Viom Networks for $1.2 billion (51%).
* CyberArk bought Viewfinity, a privilege management and application control software provider, for $30.5 million.
* Diebold purchased Wincor Nixdorf for EUR1.57 billion, in a move designed to create a manufacturer of cash machines and security systems, with about $6 billion in sales.
* Private equity firms Exponent and Electra acquired PhotoBox, the photo printing company. The deal was worth £400 million.
* Infosys, a consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services provider, bought Noah Consulting, a provider of advanced information management consulting services for the oil and gas industry.
* Ingram Micro purchased Brazil-based Grupo AC~AO, one of Latin America's top providers of critical value-add IT solutions.
* Semiconductor equipment maker Lam Research acquired rival KLA-Tencor for $10.6 billion.
* PTC, an IOT developer, bought Qualcomm's Vuforia business.
* Sony purchased Toshiba's image sensor business for $164.7 million.
* TierPoint, the cloud services provider and data centres operator, acquired Windstream's data centre business for $575 million.
* Trend Micro bought HP's TippingPoint, a company that 3Com acquired in 2004 for $430 million. 3Com was subsequently sold to HP for $2.7 billion in 2009.
* Western Digital purchased SanDisk for $19 billion, in a move that aims to expand its business, which makes flash memory storage chips used in smartphones and mobile devices.
* Payment technology company Wex acquired Electronic Funds Source, a provider of fleet cards to transportation companies, for $1.1 billion.
* Google made a $60 million investment in Mobvoi, a Chinese company that previously was used by the former to bring its Android Wear platform to China.
* Vivendi made an additional investment in French game publishers UbiSoft Entertainment and Gameloft.
* A strategic partnership has been announced between Inmarsat, the London-listed group that provides global communications through a fleet of satellites, and the China Transport Telecommunication & Information Centre, in a move designed to deliver satellite communications through China and the One Belt, One Road area.
* VMware announced that together with EMC, it was forming a jointly owned company under the name of Virtustream, which is the company EMC bought for $1.2 billion.
* Very good quarterly figures from Fortinet and Mellanox Technologies.
* Good quarterly numbers from Amazon (back in the black), ARM Holdings, EFI, Google (Alphabet), Juniper Networks, Manhattan Associates, Syntel and VMware.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amphenol, China Mobile, Citrix Systems, EE, Equifax, Ericsson, Lam Research, Orange, Rambus, Rogers Communications, SAP, SK Hynix, Sky, Verizon Communications and Wipro.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Altera, CA Technologies, Celestica, Cypress Semiconductor (but back in the black), eBay, Entegris (but back in the black), Flextronics, IBM, LG Display, Netgear, Polycom, QLogic and Texas Instruments.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Alliance Data, with revenue up but profit down; AT&T, with revenue up but profit down; China Unicom, with revenue up but profit down; Datalink, with revenue up but profit down; DST Systems, with revenue up but profit down; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; KLA-Tencor, with revenue down (fractionally) but profit up; Microsoft, with revenue down but profit up; Millicom, with revenue down but profit up; Synaptics, with revenue up but profit down; Verisign, with revenue up but profit down; and Yahoo, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Am'erica M'ovil, Cree, Maxim Integrated Products, NetSuite, Pandora Media, Qlik Technologies, ServiceNow, Stratasys and Unisys.
* The appointments of Rodolphe Belmer as deputy CEO of Eutelsat (as from December) and as CEO of Eutelsat (as of March); Robert Calderoni as interim president and CEO of Citrix Systems; and Richard L Leza as interim president and CEO of Exar.
* The resignations of Louis DiNardo as president and CEO of Exar; Michel de Rosen, CEO of Eutelsat (as of March); and Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix Systems.
* A planned IPO in London next month from UK-based IT infrastructure and services provider Softcat.

EMEA/Africa:
* PC shipments in EMEA reached 18.4 million units in Q315, posting a 23% decline on the year, according to IDC. The market was weakened by ongoing currency fluctuations affecting a number of countries, as well as political instability in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, while channel players across the region focused on the depletion of Bing inventory in preparation for shipments of new products for the Q4 holiday season. Shipments of Windows 10 machines started to increase in September, but due to the free upgrade programme offered by Microsoft, demand for new devices did not pick up significantly and allowed retailers to focus on sales of Windows 8 products remaining in stock.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide notebook shipments started seeing growth in September, after over six months of inventory digestion, according to Digitimes Research. The growth was stimulated by Microsoft Windows 10 and Intel Skylake's launch. The research estimates worldwide notebook shipments grew 6% sequentially in Q3, but there was still a 9.1% decline year on year.
* RFID is thriving, reaching total sales of $10.1 billion in 2015, with a large scope ahead for continued roll-out in many established markets and growth in new markets, according to IDTechEx Research. The study found 38% of the 2015 market value is for the tags themselves, with a total of 9.1 billion tags sold in 2015, up from 7.8 billion tags in 2014.
* Global desktop shipments are expected to decline 15% year on year in 2015 and some brand vendors may see their shipments drop over 20%, according to Digitimes. This comes as the demand from emerging markets such as China was weaker than expected, while the Windows 10 free upgrade plan is expected to have limited effect on triggering a replacement trend, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.6%
* Nasdaq: Up 3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 3%
* S&P 500: Up 2.1%
* FTSE100: Up 1%
* Nikkei225: Up 0.4%
* Hang Seng: Up 2.9%
* Shanghai: Up 0.6%

International:
* The outcome of Microsemi's cash-stock offer of about $2.2 billion to acquire fabless semiconductor company PMC-Sierra. Microsemi's offer comes a few days after Skyworks Solutions agreed to buy PMC-Sierra in an all-cash transaction of about $2 billion.
* The possible sale by Deutsche Telekom of its Dutch subsidiary.
* The acquisition by Liberty Global of Cable & Wireless Communications for about £3.7 billion.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding the Neotel/Vodacom deal.

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