Chevron said it would buy Hess in an all-stock deal worth $53 billion, in the latest sign of consolidation in an oil-and-gas industry flush with cash.
The U.S. energy giant said buying Hess would upgrade and diversify its portfolio, adding a large oil asset in Guyana and bolstering its U.S. shale operations. Chevron also highlighted the attraction of Hess’s assets in the Gulf of Mexico and its natural-gas business in Southeast Asia.
When Eyal Waldman thinks of his youngest daughter and her boyfriend, he sees them dancing.
“Danielle and Noam loved dancing, and I hope they continue dancing somewhere up there,” Eyal Waldman told MarketWatch.
Danielle Waldman and Noam Shay were killed at a music festival in southern Israel last week, part of a campaign by the Hamas terrorist group that has led to further bloodshed.
Danielle’s father — an Israeli tech executive who co-founded Mellanox, which became the largest acquisition in Nvidia Corp.’s NVDA, -3.16%
history — spoke with MarketWatch as Friday turned to Saturday in Israel, in hopes of increasing attention on the hostages who are still held in Gaza as well as to memorialize his daughter, who was 24, and Shay, who was 26.
“They loved to celebrate life,” Eyal Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend, before adding “they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”
Courtesy of Eyal Waldman
Danielle Waldman — who was born in Palo Alto, California, but moved back to Israel with her family at age 4 — and Israeli native Shay were students who met six years ago in the army, and her father said they had been inseparable since. They attended the Supernova music festival in early October with friends, and were killed while attempting to escape Hamas terrorists in a car that Eyal Waldman found bullet-riddled near the festival’s location.
“Danielle and Noam have done nothing bad to anyone, and they were murdered only because they were Israelis,” he said.
Eyal Waldman, a onetime Israeli combat fighter, founded Mellanox in 1999, and sold it 20 years later to Nvidia for $6.9 billion. He is known internationally for attempting to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians through his work in technology — Mellanox hired Palestinian tech workers in Gaza, Nablus and the West Bank town of Rawabi, which led to a “60 Minutes” appearance.
“We wanted to make peace, to work together, to bring prosperity to the Palestinian people, the same as we have in Israel,” he said. “I brought even Apple AAPL, -1.03%
to open a design center in Rawabi and I brought other companies to open design centers in Rawabi.”
The death of his daughter and Shay and the scope of the attacks and counter-attacks dominating headlines in recent days have not changed Waldman’s hope for peace in the future, he said, but not the near future. He believes this time, the violence “took us back several years, if not decades.”
“We need time to build the trust, if at all, between the two nations and start working together to be able to talk about peace,” he said. “Until then, we will continue protecting ourselves in a very direct manner in Gaza and everywhere else around Israel.”
Waldman also said he would continue to try to hire Palestinians and work with them to be a part of the Israeli tech ecosystem, as long as they state “that they are working for peace, and they are not supporting — not financially and not in any other way — any terror actions, or any actions that are not civilian economics between the two nations.”
“Our hands are always reaching out for peace. But at the same time, before we do this, we need people to understand that Israel is strong, Israel is united, and we will never let anyone harm the citizens of the state of Israel again.”
Waldman was thankful for U.S. aid and was forceful in discussing the need to find hostages that were still missing. One of Nvidia’s current employees was kidnapped, according to an email that Chief Executive Jensen Huang sent to employees that was obtained by Insider, which reported that the employee was also at the Supernova music festival.
Nvidia has more than 3,000 employees in Israel mostly working for Mellanox, which makes networking gear that connects Nvidia’s high-performance data-center products. In an emailed statement, an Nvidia spokesman said “our focus now is working with our Israel leadership to ensure our employees and their families are safe and well cared for. We will then turn our focus to shoring up [the company’s] execution if necessary to ensure continued operations of our business.”
Waldman said the return of hostages is top of mind.
“What’s important now is to focus on bringing back the hostages, and that is the No. 1 priority for the State of Israel and for the international community,” he said.
Continuing to worry about others while suffering his own tragedy is a trait that Eyal Waldman seems to have passed down to his youngest daughter. He said that he had received a note from another festival attendee who was wounded in the eye in the initial attack. That victim told him that Danielle Waldman had stopped to attend to her and make sure she was safe before attempting to escape in a car that was later believed to have been attacked by Hamas terrorists with rifles.
“They loved to celebrate life,” Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend.
“And they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”
Microsoft’s acquisition of videogame company Activision Blizzard won approval from U.K. competition authorities, clearing a path for the companies to close the $75 billion deal after a lengthy struggle with regulators.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said Friday that the proposed deal no longer poses a major threat to competition in cloud gaming. The shift comes after Microsoft offered to restructure the deal by forfeiting cloud-streaming rights for “Call of Duty” and other popular Activision franchises in much of the world.
Exxon Mobil Corp. confirmed Wednesday an agreement to buy shale driller Pioneer Natural Resources Co. in an all-stock deal valued at $59.5 billion, or $64.5 billion including debt.
“Pioneer is a clear leader in the Permian with a unique asset base and people with deep industry knowledge,” said Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Darren Woods. “The combined capabilities of our two companies will provide long-term value creation well in excess of what either company is capable of doing on a standalone basis.”
Pioneer shares rose 1.9% in premarket trading, while Exxon’s stock fell 1.3%.
Under terms of the deal, Pioneer shareholders will receive 2.3234 Exxon shares XOM, -0.42%
for each Pioneer share PXD, +0.76%
they own. The companies said that based on the Oct. 5 closing prices of $108.99 for Exxon’s stock and $214.96 for Pioneer’s stock, the deal values Pioneer shares at $253.23 each, or a 17.8% premium.
The deal combines Pioneer’s more than 85,000 net acres in the Midland Basin with Exxon’s 570,000 net acres in the Delaware and Midland Basins. Combined, the companies will have an estimated 16 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the Permian.
Exxon, Pioneer merger provides an estimated combined 16 billion barrels of oil equivalent resource in the Permian.
Exxon Mobil Corp.
Exxon said the merger will increase its lower-cost-of-supply production and short-cycle capital flexibility. From Pioneer’s assets, the company expects a cost of supply of less than $35 per barrel.
Exxon said the deal will accelerate plans to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the Permian, as the company plans to use its own plans to accelerate Pioneer’s net-zero emissions plan by 15 years, to 2035.
The deal is expected to immediately add to Exxon’s earnings per share and free cash flow when it closes, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2024. The merger is expected to result in “significant” synergies.
Siebert Williams Shank analyst Gabriele Sorbara expects the deal, which “fits perfectly” for Exxon, to generate about $2 billion of synergies over the next decade. Sorbara also sees an “inflection to improved well productivity” in the second half of 2023 and beyond, which isn’t currently reflected in analyst expectations, so it boost the benefit to Exxon.
While Sorbara expects some scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, but believes “the deal should ultimately close,” without the receipt of a competing bid.
Citi was lead financial advisor to Exxon, and Centerview Partners was financial advisor and Davis Polk & Wardwell was legal advisor. For Pioneer, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Petrie Partners and Bank of America Securities were financial advisors and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP was legal advisor.
Exxon’s stock has rallied 12.7% over the past 12 months through Tuesday and Pioneer shares have slipped 3.5%. In comparison, the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF XLE
has climbed 11.6% and the S&P 500 index SPX
has advanced 21.4%.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co. said Sunday it will buy Mirati Therapeutics Inc. in a deal valued at up to $5.8 billion.
The pharmaceutical giant announced it will pay $58 a share for Mirati, for a total equity value of $4.8 billion. Mirati stockholders will also receive one non-tradeable Contingent Value Right for each share they hold, potentially worth $12 a share in cash, representing an additional $1 billion of possible value.
Mirati shares closed Friday at $60.20, with the company’s market cap at about $4.21 billion.
Mirati develops commercial-stage oncology therapies, and through the deal, Bristol Myers Squibb will add lung-cancer medicine Krazati, among others, to its portfolio.
“We are excited to add these assets to our portfolio and to accelerate their development as we seek to deliver more treatments for cancer patients,” Giovanni Caforio, Bristol Myers Squibb’s chief executive and chairman, said in a statement. “With a strong strategic fit, great science and clear value creation opportunities for our shareholders, the Mirati transaction is aligned with our business development goals.”
The deal is expected to be dilutive to Bristol Myers Squibb’s non-GAAP earnings per share by about 35 cents a share in the first 12 months after the transaction closes. The merger is expected to close by the first half of 2024.
Bristol Myers Squibb, with a market cap of about $118.4 billion, has seen its shares BMY, +0.43%
sink 21% year to date. Mirati shares MRTX, -3.49%
are up 33% this year. The S&P 500 SPX,
in comparison, has gained about 12% in 2023.
Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, -1.67%
is reportedly nearing a deal to buy energy-exploration company Pioneer Natural Resources Co. PXD, +10.45%
for $60 billion, a combination that could shake up Texas’ storied and oil-rich Permian Basin.
It’s also bound to attract attention from the Biden Administration’s antitrust enforcers, including Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, given the paramount political importance of oil and gasoline prices.
“You can be sure that the FTC will give this acquisition a serious look,” Stephen Calkins, former general counsel at the FTC told MarketWatch, adding that the agency has long paid special attention to the oil and gas industry at the behest of Congress, which has long been sensitive to anything that may increase prices at the pump.
The high cost of living after several years of historic inflation is one of President Joe Biden’s most important political vulnerabilities ahead of the 2024 election. A recent poll by Investors Business Daily showed only 24% of voters approve of his economic record.
The president has campaigned on gasoline prices specifically, telling an audience in Maryland last month, “I’m going to get those gas prices down again, I promise you.”
But any decision to challenge a merger must be based on the facts of the market in question and whether it would present a threat to competition that could lead to higher prices for consumers or other adverse effects.
Frederick Lawrence, director and energy analyst at Capital Alpha Partners told MarketWatch that there is much greater competition in the market for oil exploration and production, where Pioneer is a major player, than in other segments of the industry including gasoline stations, pipeline operators or refining.
Independent oil companies produce roughly 85% of natural gas and 65% of oil in the U.S., he said, and that fact will make it difficult for the Exxon acquisition to meaningfully reduce competition in oil exploration.
“People just think about big oil and they forget that there’s a very healthy independent community out there competing,” he said. “That said, this is Exxon Mobil we’re talking about, the 800 pound gorilla of the upstream oil value chain, so it’s important to acknowledge they’ll get more scrutiny.”
Investors should be prepared for the deal to take longer to consummate than a similar acquisition in another industry, Lawrence added, pointing to a recent deal between private equity firm Quantum and natural-gas producer EQT that was slowed because of additional information requests from the FTC.
The deal was ultimately consummated in August, nearly a year after it was announced.
Former FTC official Calkins said that investors should also be prepared for the FTC to get creative as it studies the deal, noting that Biden administration antitrust enforcers “have been receptive to unusual theories of competitive harm” and will study the impact of the merger on downstream businesses, like refiners and gasoline retailers.
The agency will also scour the deal for “any part of the business where there’s an anticompetitive story,” Calkins said, noting that large complex mergers often involve the transfer of a more obscure but valuable asset that could illegally boost an acquiring company’s market power.
Meanwhile, the FTC also has to contend with an already heavy workload, with ongoing cases against well-resourced companies like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.59%
“The FTC right now is doing a lot of litigating,” Calkins said. “There is a resources question of whether they have the ideal number of staff with the right skill set to add to their already full plate.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. is close to a deal to buy shale-drilling company Pioneer Natural Resources for about $60 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Journal said the deal could be finalized in the coming days. The Journal had reported in April that the two companies had held preliminary talks.
The acquisition would be one of the largest in the U.S. this year, and Exxon’s biggest since it bought Mobil in 1999. The Journal noted that Exxon has been flush with cash since posting record profits last year, and is looking to become the dominant player in the oil-rich Permian Basin in western Texas and New Mexico.
Exxon has a market cap of about $446 billion, as of Thursday, while Pioneer is valued at about $50 billion.
Exxon shares XOM, -2.25%
have fallen about 1% year to date, while Pioneer PXD, -0.17%
stock is down about 6% in 2023, The S&P 500 SPX,
in comparison, is up about 11% year to date.
A group of Democrats in the House and Senate are imploring the country’s top antitrust enforcement cop to implement sweeping new changes to its merger-review protocol, according to a new letter viewed exclusively by MarketWatch.
The Federal Trade Commission, along with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, recently proposed changes to forms that companies proposing deals of a certain size must submit to the government, which critics say would suppress the market for mergers and acquisitions.
The new form will require companies to provide much more information to antitrust enforcers before they seek to consummate a deal. Most controversially, that would include narrative information about the strategic rationale for a transaction as well as studies, surveys, analyses and reports which were prepared by the company as it considered the deal.
“The new proposed [form] and associated instructions will facilitate efficient premerger review and ensure effective enforcement of antitrust laws,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats.
The letter, dated Sept. 27, was also signed by Democrats including Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Reps. Becca Balint of Vermont, Henry Johnson of Georgia, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Katie Porter of California and Greg Casar of Texas. No Republicans signed the letter.
The lawmakers lament the state of the U.S. economy today, arguing that the updated premerger process is necessary to combat growing concentration of industry and the digital transformation of the economy.
“Unchecked consolidation hurts consumers, small businesses, workers, and the economy,” the letter reads. “Consolidation leads to higher prices, less innovation, and reduced quality for consumers. It prevents small businesses from entering markets or competing fairly: for example it is twice as expensive for small businesses to borrow money compared to dominant ones, and there are fewer startups in states where a few companies dominate markets.”
The lawmakers note that since the current premerger notification process was instituted nearly 45 years ago, the required forms have not been updated, and only require companies to provide basic information that don’t “give regulators clarity as to whether a deal may substantially lessen competition.”
The FTC and DOJ proposed the changes in July, and then extended the period for accepting public comments on the proposal to Sept. 27, and it’s possible the final rule is amended before the agencies adopt it. There is no set timeline for when the FTC will vote to adopt any changes.
Some antitrust experts are skeptical that the proposed changes will hold up in court, if they are implemented as proposed.
“The proposed changes are likely to face a rocky path ahead,” wrote Justin Hurwitz of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, in a recent analysis.
“They appear to violate legislative intent that [the premerger process] not unduly delay transactions or require the production of materials the firms did not already create as par of evaluating the transaction.”
Hurwitz added that “the premerger notification process serves an important function, but it is a tax on on all mergers,” and predicted that the proposed changes will likely not “survive judicial review.”
Stelco and U.S. Steel didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment
A bid, if it happened, would be surprising. U.S. Steel is much larger than Stelco. The Canadian steel maker shipped about 2.6 million tons of steel in 2022, while U.S. Steel shipped about 15 million. Stelco’s enterprise value, including stock and debt, is about $1 billion. U.S. Steel’s is about $9 billion.
“That makes it an upstart and we suppose the key to handicapping its chances is knowing who it is partnered with. If that partner is an investor with deep pockets, we won’t be so quick to dismiss Stelco’s chances,” wrote Gordon Haskett analyst Don Bilson in a report Friday. “For now, however, we’re going to view it as a long shot.”
Stelco likely would need a partner to complete a merger.
The possible bid is surprising in another way, too. Stelco was actually once owned by U.S. Steel. The American firm bought it 2007 after Stelco filed for bankruptcy protection. Stelco filed for bankruptcy again in 2014 and was purchased by Bedrock Industries in 2017 before listing as a public company again later that year.
“Recent history has not been kind to companies that have tried to recombine with a former partner,” added Bilson, citing
(PARA) shares are down about 70% since the merger plan was announced in August 2019.
That bids are emerging for U.S. Steel isn’t surprising, though. On Aug. 13, the company said it was exploring strategic options, which could include a sale of the company. Since then, steel maker
(CLF) and steel service center Esmark have announced bids.
Esmark processes and distributes steel, rather than producing it. The company didn’t announce financing with its bid and has dropped out of the process.
(MT) was reportedly considering a bid. ArcelorMittal didn’t comment on a potential bid, which also would have been a little odd. Arcelor sold its U.S. operations to Cliffs in 2020.
U.S. Steel stock was about $23 a share before its announcement and bids started to emerge. The Cliffs bid, which is a mix of cash and stock, and is the only current bid with hard numbers attached to it, is currently worth $32.21 a share.
U.S. Steel stock was at $31.80 on Friday, up 1.8%. The
Microsoft’s proposals to modify its $75 billion Activision acquisition address the concerns with the U.K. antitrust authority, the regulator said in a provisional decision Friday.
The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority said that the new deal submitted by Microsoft should lessen any harm to competition in cloud gaming.
The CMA said that the restructured transaction–through which Activision would sell its cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft–opens the door to the deal being cleared.
The regulator is consulting on remedies put forward by Microsoft to address residual concerns it has before making a final decision, it said.
The CMA opened a consultation on these remedies which will last until Oct. 6, it added.
With Cisco Systems Inc.’s pending acquisition of Splunk Inc., the networking giant is making another major step toward becoming a software company.
On Thursday, Cisco CSCO said it was buying Splunk SPLK in a deal valued at about $28 billion, or $157 a share in cash, for the cloud-security company. The match had been speculated about for years, and Cisco has been on a buying binge this year, as it seeks to grow with more security and software offerings.
Smurfit Kappa Group and WestRock Co. have formally signed a merger agreement as first outlined last week, creating a global paper and packaging powerhouse worth some $20 billion.
As announced on Sept. 7 a new company–Smurfit WestRock–will be created with a main listing on the New York Stock Exchange and a standard listing in London.
Smurfit WestRock will be led by Tony Smurfit as chief executive and Irial Finan as chair, the companies said.
Under the deal accepting WestRock shareholders will get one new Smurfit WestRock share and $5.00 in cash, equivalent to $43.51 a share.
Upon completion Smurfit Kappa shareholders will own 50.4% of the combined business with WestRock owning the rest.
“Smurfit WestRock will be the ‘Go-To’ packaging partner of choice for customers, employees and shareholders. We will have the leading assets, a unique global footprint in both paper and corrugated, a superb consumer and specialty packaging business, significant synergies, and enhanced scale to deliver value in the short, medium and long term,” Smurfit Kappa Chief Executive Tony Smurfit said.
Electric-vehicle startup VinFast Auto Ltd. has seen its market capitalization fall more than $140 billion in less than two weeks, weighed down by a six-day losing streak for the company’s stock.
Shares of VinFast VFS, -2.72% soared last month after the company went public through a special-purpose acquisition company deal, taking its market cap to an eye-watering $231.3 billion on Aug. 25 — easily surpassing established automakers such as Ford Motor Co. F, +0.57%
and General Motors Co. GM, +0.09%.
VinFast is on pace to extend its losing streak to seven days. Shares of the low-float company fell 26.3% Thursday, taking VinFast’s market cap to $85 billion, according to FactSet data. Ford’s market cap is $47.7 billion and GM’s is $44.5 billion, FactSet data show.
The EV maker is a majority-owned affiliate of Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, one of the largest publicly traded companies in Vietnam. VinFast said that as of June 30, 2023, the company has delivered close to 19,000 EVs.
About 99% of VinFast shares are controlled by Vingroup chair and VinFast founder Pham Nhat Vuon, making only a small portion available to investors.
VinFast is importing its vehicles into the U.S. and is also ramping up its North American presence. In July, the company broke ground on an electric-vehicle manufacturing site within the Triangle Innovation Point in Chatham County, N.C. The startup says the plant will eventually have the capacity to make 150,000 vehicles a year.
Beer giant Heineken N.V. is the latest Western company to exit Russia, announcing Friday the sale of its Russian operations to Arnest Group for one euro.
Under the terms of the deal, all of Heineken’s HEIA, +0.77%
remaining assets, including seven breweries in Russia, will transfer to the new owners, the beer giant said in a statement. The Russian Arnest Group has also taken over responsibility for Heineken’s 1,800 employees in Russia.
Heineken began the process of exiting Russia in March 2022, following that country’s invasion of Ukraine. The company said it expects to incur a total cumulative loss of €300 million ($324.1 million) as a result of its exit.
“We have now completed our exit from Russia. Recent developments demonstrate the significant challenges faced by large manufacturing companies in exiting Russia,” Heineken CEO Dolf van den Brink said in a statement. “While it took much longer than we had hoped, this transaction secures the livelihoods of our employees and allows us to exit the country in a responsible manner.”
Earlier this week, DP Eurasia, the master franchiser of the Domino’s Pizza Inc. DPZ, +0.49%
brand in Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, also announced its exit from Russia.
But Heineken is “no hero,” according to Mark Dixon, the founder of the Moral Rating Agency, an organization set up after the invasion of Ukraine to examine whether companies were carrying out their promises of exiting Russia. “It failed to leave Russia for a year and a half,” he told MarketWatch via email. “The explanation that it took longer than expected doesn’t hold water, because of course it’s difficult to find a buyer if you remain so long a pariah state.”
The Ukraine Solidarity Project said that Heineken’s move should increase the pressure on companies that remain in Russia, such as consumer-goods giant Unilever PLC ULVR, +0.44%.
“The point here is that major companies, like @Heineken, are and have taken loses of hundreds of millions and billions in leaving the Russian market. It is possible,” the Ukraine Solidarity Project tweeted Friday. “We’re sure @Unilever can do it, too.”
The Ukraine Solidarity Project recently launched a high-profile campaign urging Unilever to get out of Russia, using images of Ukrainian veterans injured in the war with Russia. Last month, activists from the Ukraine Solidarity Project held up a giant poster featuring the veterans outside Unilever’s London headquarters.
“We have always said we would keep our position in Russia under close review,” a Unilever spokesperson told MarketWatch earlier this month. The spokesperson also directed MarketWatch to a statement on the war in Ukraine that the company released in February 2023.
Shares of electric-vehicle startup VinFast Auto Ltd. have surged since the company went public through a special-purpose acquisition company deal last week, taking its market capitalization to levels well beyond established automakers such as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co.
Shares of low-float company VinFast VFS, +40.35%
rose 16.1% Friday, after ending Thursday’s session up 32.3%, sending the company’s market cap to $231.3 billion. In comparison, Ford’s F, +1.36%
market cap is $47 billion and GM’s GM, +0.21%
is $45.2 billion, according to FactSet data. Rival EV maker Rivian Automotive Inc. RIVN, +2.19%
has a market cap of $18.6 billion. However, all of these are dwarfed by Tesla Inc.’s TSLA, +3.72%
$730.2 billion market cap.
In roughly a week, the VinFast stream on Stocktwits, a social platform for investors and traders, has racked up about 3,000 watchers, and message volume is “pretty consistent” throughout the day, Tommy Tranfo, Stocktwits’ head of community, and Tom Bruni, a senior writer for the platform, told MarketWatch Thursday.
“What everyone is discussing is whether or not the current hype in the stock is warranted given where the business is,” Tranfo and Bruni said in a statement emailed to MarketWatch Thursday, noting the company’s soaring market cap. “That’s despite the underlying business doing less than $1 billion in revenue, having negative cash flow from operations of $1.5 to $2 billion.”
Uncredited
In the short term, the stock is trading on momentum and hype, according to Tranfo and Bruni. “But eventually, its business results have to justify the valuation. And as we’ve seen with other startups in the space, it’s easy to say they’re going to accomplish XYZ, but harder to actually execute and produce results,” they said.
“From the community side: [We] think what we’re paying attention to the most right now is if this hype sticks,” they added.
The EV maker is a majority-owned affiliate of Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, one of the largest publicly traded companies in Vietnam. VinFast said that as of June 30, 2023, the company has delivered close to 19,000 EVs.
About 99% of VinFast’s shares are controlled by Vingroup chair and VinFast founder Pham Nhat Vuon, making only a small portion available to investors.
Stocktwits’ Tranfo and Bruni noted that EVs have a good track record of growing strong retail community support. “So there is reason to believe that this momentum could continue, but it may be too early to tell for sure,” they added. “Retail loves the electric-vehicle industry, so the interest is likely to continue regardless of how well the company (and stock) actually perform.”
VinFast is importing its vehicles into the U.S. and is also ramping up its North American presence. In July, the company broke ground on an electric-vehicle manufacturing site within the Triangle Innovation Point in Chatham County, N.C. The EV startup says the plant will eventually have the capacity to make 150,000 EVs a year.
Arm Holdings Ltd. filed its long-awaited initial public offering late Monday, following last year’s failed bid by Nvidia Corp. to acquire the U.K.-based chip architecture company.
Arm has reportedly been seeking to raise $8 billion to $10 billion at a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion, making its IPO the biggest of the year so far, and a number of large tech companies, including Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.10%, Intel Corp. INTC, +1.19%
and Nvidia NVDA, +8.47%,
are reportedly in the mix to be anchor investors.
At the time of the breakup, chips sales had hit record highs in 2021, surging 26.2% to a record $555.9 billion, fueled by pandemic-triggered shortages. But the chip industry has since swung to a glut.
Arm listed Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Mizuho, BofA Securities, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank Securities among the IPO’s underwriters.
Recent reports said SoftBank was in discussions to purchase the 25% stake in Arm that it does not outright own, which is held by its Vision Fund 1, ahead of the IPO.
Arm reported net income of $524 million, or 51 cents a share, on revenue of $2.68 billion for fiscal 2023, which ended March 31, compared with net income of $549 million, or 54 cents a share, on revenue of $2.7 billion, in fiscal 2022, and $388 million, or 38 cents a share, on revenue of $2.03 billion in fiscal 2021.
Arm uses an architecture that is different from the once-standard x86 one built by Intel in the early days of computing.
The company said it has shipped more than 250 billion Arm-based chips since its started in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple AAPL, +0.77%
and VLSI Technology. In fiscal 2023, Arm said it shipped 30.6 billion chips.
The company said it is going public as the “resources required to develop leading-edge products are significant and continue to increase exponentially as manufacturing process nodes shrink.” Transistors are expressed in scales of nanometers, with design costs running about $249 million for a 7-nanometer chip and about $725 million for a 2-nm chip.
“As the world moves increasingly towards AI- and [machine language]-enabled computing, Arm will be central to this transition,” the company said in the filing. “Arm CPUs already run AI and ML workloads in billions of devices, including smartphones, cameras, digital TVs, cars and cloud data centers.”
Arm said it is working with Alphabet Inc. GOOG, +0.64%
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Analysts got to the point early and often during a conference call late Wednesday: What are Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger’s M&A plans, particularly following reports that former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, now co-CEOs of Blackstone-backed Candle Media, have been retained in a “consulting capacity” to decide ESPN’s fate?
The prospect of an Apple-Disney combo seems far-fetched in a heated regulatory climate, where the Federal Trade Commission is attempting to crack down on Big Tech acquisitions, but it could happen should Disney sell off assets and Apple gobbles up Disney’s direct-to-consumer business that includes streaming service Disney+, some media analysts speculate. Apple could conceivably even buy ABC, which reportedly is on the block. But the path is long and circuitous.
Yet the rumors persist, dating back to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ reverence for the Disney brand, and the increasingly overlapping businesses of both companies over the years.
When pressed by analysts during a conference call late Wednesday, Iger declined to discuss the future of Disney’s structure or possible asset sales. When asked if Disney might “plausibly” be snapped up by one company — read Apple — an exasperated Iger said he would not “speculate” on the sale of Disney to a technology company or anyone else, given the current global stance of regulators. The FTC has aggressively challenged mergers from the likes of Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -1.17%
and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META, -2.38%,
with limited success.
Since Iger hinted at the potential sale of Disney’s assets in an interview with CNBC last month, rumors have swirled around ESPN.
ESPN and related properties likely could command at least one-third of Disney’s current depressed market cap of about $150 billion, say some media watchers, though Iger has denied ESPN is for sale. He has acknowledged “the sports leader” is seeking “strategic partners” — possibly with the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL — to generate revenue. Late Tuesday, ESPN stuck up a deal with Penn Entertainment Inc. PENN, +9.10%
to create ESPN Bet, a digital sportsbook to launch in the fall in 16 states.
Another possible property being dangled is ABC. But with rights to the NBA Finals and two Super Bowls in the next eight years, it is unclear who would acquire the network and how Disney would replace lucrative sports revenue.
Other properties on the block include cable channels Freeform and Disney Channel, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
“If an asset sale happens, will the proceeds be deployed into fortifying its balance sheet or beefing up its remaining operations?” Rick Munarriz, senior media analyst at The Motley Fool, said in an email.
Disney, which is in the midst of a $5.5 billion cost-cutting campaign, is exploring several avenues to prop up sales as linear TV ads shrink, Disney+ subscriptions decline and attendance at Walt Disney World wanes.
Shares of Disney are trading at half their highs from a few years ago, in large part because of dwindling sales and profits at ESPN and Disney’s other cable networks.
Enter Mayer, who previously ran Disney’s strategic planning group for years and engineered a trifecta of mega deals: The acquisition of the aforementioned Pixar Animation Studios from Steve Jobs for $7.4 billion in 2006, the purchase of Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in 2009, and the acquisition of Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012. Mayer also led the $71.3 billion acquisition of 20th Century Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019, which has drawn mixed reviews.
