Thoma Bravo snaps up Qlik

Several $1 billion+ acquisitions dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, Naspers' latest investment and the JSE fine imposed on two Huge Group directors were the main local ICT stories.

* Mixed interim numbers from Labat Africa, with revenue down 2.7% but back in the black.
* Excellent year-end figures from Ansys, with revenue up 66.7% and profit up 94%.
* Good year-end numbers from Cartrack Holdings, with revenue up 20.4% and profit up 24.8%.
* American Tower acquired Eaton Tower's SA base station tower portfolio.
* Naspers made a $60 million investment in US education-technology firm Udemy.
* The JSE has fined two directors of Huge Group - Anton Potgieter and James Herbst - each R300 000, as they caused Huge Group to breach paragraph 5.69 of the listing requirements.
* New JSE cautionaries by Amecor and MTN Zakhele.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Blue Label Telecoms, Prescient and Stella Capital Partners.
* The appointments of David Rozzio as SA country GM of HP; and Guy Whitcroft as interim CEO of Westcon Southern Africa, following CEO Paul Conradie suffering a stroke two months ago. The appointment is until Conradie has made a full recovery and is able to take up the day-to-day reins of the company once again.
* The departure of Thibault Dousson, SA country GM of HP (takes up a new role with HP in the EMEA region).

* Mediocre year-end figures from Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, with revenue down 14% and profit down 43%.
* A full-year loss from NetOne (Zimbabwe).
* The appointment of Seydou Kane as Africa region GM for Eaton, the power management specialist.
* The departure of Shane Kilfoil, Africa region GM for Eaton.

The JSE has fined two directors of Huge Group.

* Chipone Technology (China) acquired Exar's integrated memory logic subsidiary for $136 million.
* IBM bought EZSource, an Israel-based application discovery company that helps developers modernise mainframe applications for digital business.
* OpenText purchased Recommind, a provider of e-discovery and information analytics, for $163 million.
* Salesforce.com acquired Demandware, a provider of software that is used by businesses to run e-commerce Web sites, in a deal worth $2.8 billion.
* ServiceNow bought BrightPoint Security, a cyber security company.
* Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm, purchased data analytics firm Qlik Technologies for $3 billion.
* Tyler Technologies acquired ExecuTime Software, a provider of time and attendance, and advanced scheduling software solutions.
* Vista Equity Partners bought Marketo for $1.79 billion in a move that will take the marketing software and solutions company private.
* Vista Equity Partners also purchased Ping Identity, a firm that manages employees' digital identities.
* A strategic partnership was formed between CSC and Racemi, in a move designed to accelerate enterprise migration to the cloud.
* A US judge found Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners under-priced their 2013 $24.9 billion buyout of Dell by about 22%, and they may have to pay tens of millions to investors who opposed the deal.
* The US Justice Department said Deloitte Consulting has agreed to pay $11.38 million to resolve allegations it submitted false claims under a US government IT services contract.
* Oracle was sued by a former senior finance manager, who claimed she was terminated in retaliation for complaining about improper accounting practices at Oracle's cloud services business.
* Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft have agreed to an EU code of conduct in Europe to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours.
* Microsoft is selling about 1 500 of its patents to Chinese device maker Xiaomi.
* Panasonic will close its unprofitable television screen manufacturing business, leaving Sharp as Japan's sole TV panel maker.
* The Philippines' two telecoms operators, Globe and PLDT, are to divide up the assets of what nearly became a third rival in the market, Vega Telecom, which is owned by food and drinks company San Miguel. It will be split 50-50 by the two companies in a takeover deal worth $1.5 billion. The move comes two-and-a-half months after Telstra ended talks with San Miguel over a possible joint telecoms venture. Globe and PLDT will jointly manage the acquisition, but will also take over most of the company's 700MHz spectrum. The government will take back some of Vega's spectrum, opening up the possibility there will be a third rival later on.
* Softbank intends to sell $7.9 billion worth of Alibaba stock, reducing its stake in the latter to about 28%.
* Good quarterly numbers from Semtech.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Ambarella, Analogic and TiVo.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Ciena, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Avago Technologies, Box, Broadcom, Daktronics, Guidewire Software, SecureWorks and Workday.
* The appointments of Christian Fredrikson as CEO of Fingerprint Cards; and Ilan Levin as CEO of Stratasys.
* The resignations of Tony Fadell, founder and CEO of Nest Labs, now an Alphabet unit; Christian Fredrikson, CEO of F-Secure; and Jorgen Lantto, CEO of Fingerprint Cards.
* The retirement of David Reis, CEO of Stratasys.
* The departure of Matt Erickson, co-founder of Zayo.
* A planned dual IPO in Tokyo and New York in July from Line, which is likely to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion.
* A satisfactory IPO on the NYSE by Cotiviti Holdings, a developer and seller of analytics-driven payment accuracy solutions primarily aimed at the healthcare sector.

South Africa:
* At least 33% of software installed on South African computers is not properly licensed, according to the BSA/ Software Alliance.

EMEA/Africa:
* Annual smartphone sales in Africa and the Middle East are expected to grow by a CAGR of 15% to reach 238 million units by 2020, according to Pyramid Research, surpassing the 204 million unit sales in North America and the 201 million unit sales in Latin America.

Worldwide:
* The number of Internet of things (IOT) connections worldwide will overtake mobile phone connections in 2018, according to Ericsson. The company's latest Mobility Report says overall connections will number 27.5 billion by 2021, with the IOT accounting for 15.7 billion of that total. By comparison, the number of mobile phone connections is expected to reach 8.6 billion.
* In Q1 2016, worldwide server revenue declined 2.3% year-over-year, while shipments grew 1.7% from the first quarter of 2015, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide hardcopy peripherals market decreased 10.6% year-over-year on shipments of 23.11 million units in 1Q16, according to IDC. Inkjet printers experienced a year-over-year decline of 11.1%, while the laser market declined 10.5% year-over-year.
* Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market decreased 3.6% year-over-year to $12.4 billion in Q1 of 2016, according to IDC. Worldwide server shipments decreased 3% to 2.2 million units in 1Q16 when compared with the same period in 2015.
* The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network market segments increased 4.5% year-over-year in 1Q16, while declining 10.7% on a sequential basis, according to IDC.
* Worldwide enterprise video conferencing and telepresence equipment showed mixed results in 1Q16, with overall video conferencing equipment revenue decreasing 21.1% quarter-over-quarter, but increasing 2.3% year-over-year, according to IDC. Total worldwide enterprise video equipment revenue in 1Q16 was over $495 million, down from about $628 million in 4Q15. The total number of video conferencing units sold in 1Q16 (101 391) decreased 8% quarter-over-quarter, but increased 9.9% compared to 1Q15.
* Smartphone shipments are expected to grow 3.1% in 2016, which is a substantial slowdown from the 10.5% growth in 2015 and 27.8% in 2014, according to IDC. Shipments are expected to hit 1.48 billion in 2016 and grow to 1.84 billion in 2020.
* Worldwide tablet shipments are expected to decline for the second straight year in 2016, dropping 9.6% compared to 2015 volumes, according to IDC. The tablet market in totality has seen its peak, and will face 'down years' in 2016 and 2017, followed by a slight rebound in 2018 and beyond, driven by the detachable tablet growth. At present, the detachable category only accounts for 16% of the market, but it is expected to reach 31% in 2020.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.8% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.4%
* S&P 500: No change
* FTSE100: Down 1%
* DAX: Down 1.8%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.1%
* Hang Seng: Up 1.8%
* Shanghai: Up 4.2%

International:
* Toyota Motor is in talks to buy two robotics divisions from Google parent Alphabet.
* More information regarding the links between Huawei Technologies and an Israeli firm, Toga Networks, which is developing a range of software and equipment related to networking, storage and information security, including encryption.

South Africa:
* The name of MTN's new CEO.

Forbes has released its 2016 Global 2000 list, which is based on a composite score from equally-weighted measures of revenue, profit, assets and market value. The list includes in the top 100:
* 8: Apple (up from 12)
* 12: AT&T (up from 27)
* 15: Verizon Communications (up from 22)
* 18: China Mobile (up from 20)
* 18: Samsung Electronics (same)
* 23: Microsoft (up from 25)
* 27: Alphabet (up from 39 as Google)
* 35: Comcast (up from 46)
* 41: IBM (up from 44)
* 44: NTT (up from 58)
* 69: Softbank (down from 62)
* 73: Deutsche Telekom (down from 70)
* 82: Oracle (up from 88)

Other major movements include:
* 130: Orange (up from 196)
* 166: HPE (HP was 96 before the split)
* 174: Alibaba (up from 269)
* 188: Facebook (up from 280)
* 201: Tencent Holdings (was 304)
* 236: Amazon (up from 458)
* 276: HP (was 96 before the split)
* 423: PayPal (new entrant)
* 776: ZTE (was 869)
* 800: JD.com (was 898)
* 840: Lenovo (was 447)
* 925: Yahoo (was 467)
* 1 190: CA Technologies (new entrant)
* 1 222 Skyworks Solutions (was 1 357)
* 1 354: Juniper Networks (new entrant)
* 1 617 Citrix Systems (new entrant)
* 1 623 CSC (was 1 363)
* 1 945 Tech Mahindra (was 1 729)
* 1 995 Palo Alto Networks (new entrant)