LinkedIn rakes it in

The international ICT market was dominated by LinkedIn's superb IPO.

At home, it was another very quiet week, with the publication of only a handful of financial results - some very good ones from Reunert and Vodacom stand out.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Reunert, with revenue up 2% but profit up 97%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Vodacom, with revenue up 4.5% and profit up 90%.
* Full-year losses from African Cellular Towers and Ansys.
* A 12-month loss from Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue also down 13%. Year-end now changed to 30 June.

* Mixed year-end figures from Safaricom, with revenue up 10.5% but profit down 13.2%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Orascom Telecom Holding, with revenue up 5% and profit significantly up.
* IBM has opened a branch office in Dakar, Senegal.
* Abou Doma has been appointed CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding.
* Naguib Sawiris has resigned as executive chairman of Orascom Egypt.

* Autonomy acquired Iron Mountains' digital division, in a move intended to strengthen the former's cloud offering. The deal was worth $380 million.
* KKR, a major private equity company, bought a 92% stake in Versetel, a German telecommunications organisation, in a deal worth more than EUR250 million.
* SanDisk purchased Pliant Technology for $327 million, in a move that will speed up the former's entry into the business of providing low-power, faster storage for organisations.
* Skyworks Solutions acquired SiGe Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor company that would provide the former with increased wireless connectivity offerings. The deal was worth $210 million.
* Symantec bought Clearwell Systems, a company that helps governments and corporations archive, analyse and process data, in a deal worth $390 million.
* Toshiba paid $2.3 billion for Landis+Gyr, a leader in smart grid metering.
* VMware bought Shavlik Technologies, a provider of cloud-based information technology management software and services to SMEs.
* Yahoo acquired 5to1, an online advertising alliance consisting exclusively of major media publishers.
* Tencent Holdings invested in eLong, an online travel agent. (Naspers is a major shareholder of Tencent.)
* Good quarterly numbers from Analog Devices, Autodesk and Intuit.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Aruba Networks (back in the black), Brocade Communications, Dell (although profit significantly up) and HP.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Foxconn, with revenue up but profit down; and Salesforce.com, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed year-end numbers from Vodafone, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Quantum.
* The appointments of Joseph Clayton as CEO of Dish Networks; Augie Fabela as chairman of VimpelCom; and Jo Lunder as CEO of VimpelCom (was chairman).
* The resignations of Charlie Ergen, founder and CEO of Dish Networks (stays on as chairman); and Alexander Izosimov, CEO of VimpelCom.
* An excellent IPO by LinkedIn on the NYSE, with the opening share price more than doubling on its first day of trading.

Look out for further developments regarding the joint cautionary by BCX and UCS.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* International:
* The possible acquisition of Sprint Nextel by CenturyLink.
* The IPO of Yandex, the Russian search engine.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the joint cautionary by BCX and UCS; and the cautionary by Gijima last Friday.

* A total of 428 million mobile communications devices were sold worldwide in Q1, according to Gartner, with Nokia retaining the number one slot, but with a smaller market share. Samsung retained the number two position and Apple took over the number four slot from Research In Motion.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.9%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-20%), Ansys (-11.8%), FoneWorx (-12%), Huge Group (+16.4%), IICA Technologies (-14.3%), Labat Africa (-20%), Paracon (+8.8%), Poynting Antennas (-20%), TCS (+50%) and UCS (-20.4%)

Barron's recently published its annual Barron's 500 survey, prepared by Holt, a unit of Credit Suisse, which ranks publicly traded companies in Canada and the US, in order to identify companies with superior financial performance, using three equally-weighted measures: sales growth in the last fiscal year, adjusted for divestitures; median three-year return on investment based on a cash-flow calculation the firm calls CFROM; and the change in CFROI in the latest fiscal year relative to the three-year median.

From a technology perspective, Apple came in at number four (59 last year); Western Digital at number six (325 last year); RIM at eight (same as last year); SanDisk at 13 (a new entrant); Broadcom at 17 (249 last year); EMC at 18 (247); Texas Instruments at 24 (416); and Seagate Technology at 25 (487). Other new entrants this year included Cognizant Technology Solutions, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.