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. >>>
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. >>>
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%.
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’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.
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.
According to an IDC report published last month, the Big Data and business analytics market is estimated to grow 12% annually over the next five year period to be worth $203 billion by 2020 from $115 billion in 2015. But despite the high growth in the market, Tableau Software’s (NYSE: DATA) growth is not impressing the market much.
Nothing appears to deter Facebook’s (Nasdaq: FB) growth. Earlier this week, it announced its third quarter results which continued to outshine market performance and delivered record revenues. This was the fourth consecutive quarter that Facebook surpassed market expectations.