Marketing and AI Key Focus Areas for Salesforce’s Acquisition Spree

This year, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has spent close to $5 billion on acquisitions, with the largest one being the $2.8 billion acquisition of e-commerce platform Demandware. Its most recent acquisition is that of marketing data startup Krux. >>>

Featured Videos

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Slack Delays IPO to Next Year

Slack appears to be on an on-again-off-again relationship with the stock market. At the end of last year, the company appeared to be gearing up to go public in 2016. But more recent news reports and comments by the management suggest that the stock market is quite a mile away for the enterprise chat services vendor.

>>>

Energy Recovery Relies on R&D for Growth

In the recently reported quarterly results, alternate energy products provider Energy Recovery (NASDAQ: ERII) had a difficult run. But the market is still hopeful of its future. With investment in product development and talent, the company believes it just needs time to prove its worth.

>>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Guazi Leading the Chinese Online Used Car Market

According to market research, the Chinese car market is the biggest passenger car market in the world. It attained that honor back in 2009 and has kept the crown since. In 2015, the number of cars sold in China grew 5% over the year to 24.6 million units. Compare that with the 17.2 million vehicles sold in the US. Analyst SinoMarketInsight estimates that the country is also seeing the growth in used car sales at a steady clip and used car sales in the country are projected to grow 17% annually to 9.57 million units in 2017. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Guazi is the leading player in the online arena of this industry.

>>>

Overvalued Unicorns Looking for Exits

The social media sector, Facebook in particular, has set the trend for high valuations even without revenues or even monetization models. But not all these unicorns can expect to sustain such high valuations.  >>>

athenahealth Hits 52-Week Low After Trump Election

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare was a big push for healthcare IT companies like athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN). As these subsidies and regulatory pressures decline, athenahealth is shifting its focus to develop services that enhance end-customers’ productivity.  >>>

Alibaba Bracing Itself for New US Government Policy

The election results are out and we have a new President. During his campaign, President Elect Trump had spoken quite vehemently on his views about trade relations with China. And now, that he is in the Office, Chinese companies are worried about the possible trade disruptions that may occur between the United States and China. Given the surprising election results, analysts are still skeptical of forecasting how the stock market will fare in the near future. But on the day following the announcement of the results, Chinese e-commerce player Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) saw its shares fall 3%.

>>>

Yelp is Trying to Get Its House in Order

According to a recent BIA/Kelsey report, the local advertising market in the US is estimated to be worth $146.6 billion in 2016 and the industry is expected to grow to $168.9 billion by 2020, translating to an annualized growth rate of 3.6% over the five-year period from 2015 to 2020. The growth will be driven by digital media which is expected to grow from $38 million in 2015 to $66 million in 2020, recording a 12% annualized growth rate. During the same period, traditional media, which includes print advertising, is expected to shrink marginally from $103.3 million to $102.8 million.

>>>

Baidu Looks to Alternate Options for Growth

Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) woes, driven by regulatory issues in China, continue to hurt its performance. While the company’s recent result announcement exceeded market expectations, this was the first time ever that it reported declining revenues. The market is obviously not thrilled.

>>>

ServiceNow an Attractive Acquisition Target

According to a recent survey conducted by enterprise cloud services provider ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), more than half of the respondents now choose cloud for default IT projects. Of the 1,850 mid- to senior-level managers surveyed in a global study, it was found that 52% choose cloud for new business applications and nearly 77% of them would complete the shift of their organizations to the cloud within the next two years. Given the trend, ServiceNow’s recent quarterly results are not very surprising.

>>>