RCN Telecom catches the Wave

Technology IPOs and some IPO filings dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the CEO change at Net1 was one of the main talking points.

* Excellent full-year figures from ISA, with revenue up 74.2% and profit up 53.9%.
* Good year-end numbers from Huge Group, with revenue up 13.6% and profit up 42.6%; and MICROmega Holdings, with revenue up 13.7% and profit up 35.6%.
* Mixed year-end numbers from MiX Telematics, with revenue up 5.1% but profit down 34.5%.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue down 5.8% and profit down 77.8%.
* A full-year loss (2015) from TCS, with revenue down 32.2%.
* A positive trading update from M-FiTEC.
* Negative trading updates from PBT Group and TCS.
* Jasco Electronics acquired Reflex, a specialist in the IT managed services market, for R39.78 million.
* Citrix is upping its focus on Africa, and the South African office will now look after English-speaking countries on the continent.
* SA's mobile operators have agreed to buy wholesale open access spectrum from the government in exchange for a deal that allows them to keep their existing spectrum for another 11 years. The six operators - Cell C, Liquid Telecom, MTN, Multisource Telecom, state-owned Telkom and Vodacom - said they would buy at least 30% of the planned wireless open access network.
* A new JSE cautionary by MICROmega Holdings.
* The appointments of Herman G Kotz'e as CEO of Net1 UEPS Technologies; Zuko Mdwaba as GM of SAS SA; and Kyle Whitehill (ex-CEO of Vodafone Qatar) as CEO of Neotel.
* The retirement of Serge Belamant, CEO of Net1 UEPS Technologies.

* The Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority has slapped a fine of $8.5 million on MTN Rwanda for failing to comply with licence obligations. Crystal Telecom, a listed public company, owns a 20% stake in MTN Rwanda, while the MTN Group owns 80%.
* Xerox has opened its first showroom and service centre in Zambia.
* The first regional Red Hat Open Innovation Lab has opened in London and will serve Red Hat clients in the EMEA region.
* The appointment of Rakesh Parbhoo as CEO of Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa.

Xerox has opened its first showroom and service centre in Zambia.

* Asure Software acquired iSystems Intermediate Holdco and Compass HRM, both of which are involved in HCM solutions.
* Callidus Software bought RevSym, a new cloud solution focused on the management of revenue and incentives in the world of ASC 606.
* CDK Global purchased Auto/Mate, a privately held company that provides a suite of dealer management systems products.
* Cellnex, the acquisitive Spanish tower company, acquired 2 239 mobile towers owned by Swiss telecoms company Sunrise for £394 million.
* CSRA bought NES Associates, a specialist in defence telecom, infrastructure and applications architecture and implementation services.
* ESCO Technologies bought the assets of Morgan, a global utility solutions provider.
* Microsoft purchased Hexadite, a cyber security firm, for $100 million.
* Rackspace acquired TriCore Solutions, an applications management company.
* RCN Telecom bought Wave Broadband for $2.37 billion, in a move that creates the sixth largest US cable operator.
* Finnish mobile game maker Supercell has acquired a majority stake (62%) in London-based game studio Space Ape.
* Telia has snapped up Finnish cloud services provider Nebula Top OY in a deal worth EUR165 million.
* Accenture has made a minority investment in Nomis Solutions, a provider of analytics-driven pricing and profitability management solutions to retail banks. The companies have also formed a strategic alliance.
* Ebix has made a $120 million investment in a majority stake in Indian payment provider ItzCash.
* Red Hat acquired Codenvy, a provider of agile and cloud-native development tools.
* Private equity firm Silver Lake has made a $400 million investment in Unity Technologies, a company that makes development tools for video game creators.
* Snap bought Ctrl Me Robotics, a drone start-up.
* SoftBank has made a $4 billion investment in Nvidia, making it the fourth largest shareholder in the company.
* SoftBank also made a $100 million investment in Brazilian ride-hailing app 99.
* Nokia and Apple have settled their patent lawsuits and agreed on a multi-year patent licence deal.
* The International Trade Commission has issued a final ruling in favour of Diebold Nixdorf in its patent infringement case against Korea-based Nautilus Hyosung. The ruling bars Hyosung from importing or installing a significant number of bank and retail grade automated teller machines in the US because those products infringe Diebold's patents.
* GENBAND has announced it is to merge with Sonus to create a leader in next-generation communications networking, a 50/50-owned new company led by Raymond Dolan, CEO of Sonus.
* Altice will unify its sprawling empire of cable and telco assets under the Altice brand. This includes its operations in Europe and the US, such as SFR, Suddenlink and Cablevision.
* Vodafone will merge its Malta unit with Melita, a Maltese telecoms company. Vodafone Europe will have a 49% stake.
* Very good quarterly figures from Take Two Interactive Software and Veeva Systems.
* Good quarterly numbers from Marvell Technology Group (back in the black) and ViaSat.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Agilent Technologies, Cheetah Mobile, ePlus and NetApp (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Cellcom Israel.
* Mixed quarterly figures from CSRA, with revenue down but back in the black; HP, with revenue up but profit down; Intuit, with revenue up but profit down; Lenovo, with revenue down but back in the black; and Partner Communications, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from 8x8, Brocade Communications, DXC Technology, Gridsum, International Game Technology, Nutanix, Pure Storage, QAD, Splunk and Westell Technologies.
* The appointment of Liang Jun as CEO of LeEco, a Chinese Netflix-to-Tesla-like conglomerate.
* The resignation of Jia Yueting, founder and CEO of LeEco (stays on as chairman).
* The retirement of Thomas Carson, CEO and president of TiVo.
* An IPO filing in India from Dixon Technologies India, an electronics goods maker.
* An IPO filing in the US from Sea (ex-Garena), Southeast Asia's most valuable technology start-up.
* A very good IPO in London by Alfa Financial Software, the UK's largest technology listing since that of Sophos in 2015.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Appian, a provider of a low-code software development platform as a service that enables organisations to rapidly develop powerful and unique applications.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Smart Global Holdings, a memory chipmaker.
* A disappointing IPO on the NYSE by US cable operator Wideopenwest.

South Africa:
* If SA joins the Information Technology Agreement, its economy would be $770 million larger in the 10th year than it would be otherwise, amounting to an additional 0.17% growth, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Worldwide:
* The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market continued growing in Q1 2017, up 42% year-on-year to reach $11.4 billion, according to Canalys. Amazon's AWS maintained its dominance, holding a stable global market share of 31%. It was followed by its strongest hyper-scale rivals: Microsoft, Google and IBM.
* Global sales of smartphones to end-users totalled 380 million units in Q117, a 9.1% increase over Q116, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide shipments of personal computing devices, comprising traditional PCs (a combination of desktop, notebook and workstations) and tablets (slates and detachables), are forecast to decline from a total of 435 million units in 2016 to 405.2 million units in 2021, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.8%
* FTSE100: Up 1.3% (an all-time high reached during the week)
* DAX: Down 0.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.3% (an all-time high reached during the week)
* S&P 500: Up 1.4% (an all-time high reached during the week)
* Nasdaq: Up 2.1% (an all-time high reached during the week)
* Nikkei225: Up 0.5%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.8%
* Shanghai: Up 0.6%

International:
* India's largest e-commerce firm, Flipkart, acquiring cash-strapped rival Snapdeal.

South Africa:
* Further information on the government-backed WOAN project.

Forbes has published its 2017 'Most Valuable Brands' listing. From a technology perspective, it includes (with value changes):
* 1: Apple up 10%
* 2: Google up 23%
* 3: Microsoft up 16%
* 4: Facebook up 40%
* 6: Amazon up 54%
* 10: Samsung up 6%
* 12: A&T up 12%
* 13: IBM down 20%
* 14: Intel up 13%
* 15: Cisco up 8%
* 18: Oracle up 4%
* 19: Verizon up 12%
* 27: SAP up 10%
* 38: Accenture up 8%
* 42: HP down 4%
* 55: eBay down 3%
* 71: Netflix up 16%
* 73: Sony up 10%
* 79: T-Mobile up 11%
* 84: Adobe (new entry into top 100) up 18%
* 88: Huawei up 9%
* 97: Panasonic down 3%