9to5 : KGI: iPad Pro upgrade will likely gain Face ID from iPhone X

KGI: iPad Pro upgrade will likely gain Face ID from iPhone X

A new prediction from reliable supply chain analyst Ming Chi-Kuo of KGI Securities expects one of the iPhone X‘s defining features to join the iPad Pro lineup in the next upgrade. KGI expects the TrueDepth camera system which enables Face ID facial recognition to next appear on the iPad lineup.
KGI expects the TrueDepth camera to only be offered on the iPad Pro models and not the cheaper priced models. This makes sense as the 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch Pro models make up the flagships in the iPad lineup and Apple already uses Apple Pencil and Smart Connector as differentiators.

The report doesn’t specify what may happen to the Home button and Touch ID fingerprint recognition. The frame around the current iPad models could likely accommodate both the Home button and the new camera system, KGI notes that part of the goal is unifying the user experience between iPads and the iPhone X.

The report also notes that TrueDepth camera being available on both iPhone and iPad will increase developer adoption; Touch ID automatically switches to Face ID in apps, but the new camera enables new depth features as well.

KGI refers to the new iPads as 2018F models (which started this month) but upgraded models aren’t expected anytime soon as the current versions were introduced in June.

As for Face ID, we’re all still waiting to put Apple’s new biometric security feature to the test. The iPhone X goes up for pre-order on October 27 and hits stores November 3, although supply is expected to be extremely constrained at launch.

WSJ : What Sephora Knows About Women in Tech That Silicon Valley Doesn’t

What Sephora Knows About Women in Tech That Silicon Valley Doesn’t
More than 60% of the retailer’s technology workers are female

In a San Francisco office an hour’s drive from some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley, Sephora has managed a corporate feat that would make the leaders of Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. FB +0.13% envious: a majority of the cosmetics retailer’s technology workers—62%—are women.

At a time when technology companies are struggling mightily to attract and retain women with computing and engineering skills, the beauty retailer’s tech staffing is notable not only for the numbers but also for the relatively simple way it got there.

Women hold 23% of roles in the technical ranks at the top 75 Silicon Valley companies, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A report from the commission attributes the scarcity of women in those roles to inhospitable work cultures, isolation, a “firefighting” work style, long hours and a lack of advancement.

Looking for potential
At Sephora, women make up the majority of its 350-person digital and engineering staff and hold all but one of the roles on its six-person digital executive leadership team. Women lead everything from digital marketing and customer experience in apps to back-end programming of the company’s e-commerce systems.

Though large tech companies employ several times as many engineers as Sephora, its share of female digital talent is worth noting. Managers say the retailer has managed to attract technical women by recruiting with an eye toward candidates’ potential rather than specific skills, encouraging hiring managers to take risks and ensuring that job performance is assessed fairly.

The key to Sephora’s success, says Mary Beth Laughton, the company’s senior vice president of digital, is a dedication to technology with a strong connection to the consumer. And, women at the company are encouraged to take risks without fear of failure, she adds.

While tech companies commonly urge workers to embrace failure, the message at Sephora is specifically tailored to help employees avoid common pitfalls that women encounter in tech careers, people at the company say.

Jenna Melendez worked in a number of digital roles at Sephora until she left the company last May. Before joining in 2012, she spent two years as a website merchandiser in Amazon’s Paris offices and observed few female colleagues. When she arrived at Sephora’s San Francisco headquarters, Ms. Melendez says, meetings were free-flowing and open. “Everyone spoke,” she says, “and felt comfortable offering opinions on anything from e-commerce to a shade of blush.

Ms. Melendez recalls one meeting about three years ago where she and other members of the digital-marketing team talked about spotting edgy fashion photos where models were using highlighter—a type of makeup that accentuates facial contours. In a matter of days, the team was working on a separate landing page for Sephora’s site to showcase the product.

“It’s easier to forecast what’s coming and what’s going to be needed because the line is so fine between you as an employee and you as a client,” says Ms. Melendez, now digital-marketing director at Aquis Inc., a San Francisco-based beauty company.

Terre Layton, an engineer by training, had worked in Silicon Valley for nearly two decades, for small startups and large companies such as HP Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., before she joined Sephora in 2011. Recruited as a product manager to lead the retailer’s website redesign, Ms. Layton says she found being in the presence of so many women leaders empowering after years spent in male-dominated workplaces.

When it came time to brainstorm ideas, or even articulate concerns about a project’s direction, bosses made a point of asking team members for their opinions, she says.

“You knew you were being heard. You had a voice,” says Ms. Layton, who last worked for Sephora in 2015 and now advises early stage startups on product management and user experience.

Digital passage
Sephora’s owner, the French luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, LVMUY 3.59% maintains a global workforce of 134,500 that is 74% female. Some 38% of key executive positions are filled by women, up from 26% in 2007. And LVMH has committed to a goal of having women in at least half of its key executive positions by 2020.

Recruiters say those numbers, along with Sephora’s success—the company opened 100 stores in 2016 and recorded double-digit profit growth, according to LVMH filings—make it easy to attract talented women in tech.

Women are drawn to a company of “bright, intense and accomplished women,” says Asheley Linnenbach, an executive-search consultant who has helped the retailer fill a number of roles in recent years.

Ms. Linnenbach, who served as Sephora’s interim vice president of talent for six months in 2014, says the company makes a point of moving high-performing women into digital and tech roles that round out their skills and experience.

“They have that longer-range view of what would be better for the organization in terms of talent development,” Ms. Linnenbach says. “They are willing to put a person in a position where [the company is] willing to lose ground so this person gets exposure on the international side or experience with a P&L,” she says.

A similar philosophy applies to staffing technology teams, where company recruiters encourage women to consider roles that might not fit precisely with their skills and experience.

“Even if a female candidate doesn’t have all the requirements for a technical job, we want that person to come in and show what they can do,” says Yvette Nichols, the company’s vice president of talent.

Sephora’s approach represents a departure from the way many large technology companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, handle recruitment, says Jane Hamner, a veteran recruiter with Harvey Nash Group PLC, whose clients include Amazon.com Inc., Expedia Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.

“Most companies that we work with are looking at skills over all else,” she says. “They can be very picky about skill sets and go only for the top of the talent pool.”

Only in the past nine to 12 months, as the job market has tightened, have some companies begun to ease up on their skills requirements, Ms. Hamner says. “But they’re not doing it to expand gender diversity. It’s just more difficult to find talent.”

At Sephora, Nida Mitchell, 29, got her chance to grow into a new role when she was promoted from web developer to IT project manager after two years at the company. The new job put her in charge of 14 male engineers, most of whom were at least 10 years her senior. She encountered roadblocks on one of the team’s first big projects, updating Sephora’s computing infrastructure ahead of the chain’s expansion to Brazil.

“My first week, I had a one-on-one with my boss and said, ‘No one listens to me,’ ” Ms. Mitchell says. He advised her to get to know the team and show the men how she could help make them better at their jobs, she recalls. Things eventually turned around. She credits that manager for helping her grow more confident and comfortable, she says, “being the girl who’s telling everybody what to do.”

In August, Ms. Mitchell took a new role as a web producer at Workday, a human-resources services company.

FT : LVMH third-quarter sales beat expectations

LVMH third-quarter sales beat expectations
Growth shows no sign of slowing despite warnings on second-half performance

LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group by revenues, has continued its upwards momentum with a 12 per cent increase in third-quarter sales that beat analyst expectations.

The owner of Louis Vuitton and Fendi said on Monday after the market close that, after stripping out the effect of currencies and acquisitions, revenues rose to €10.4bn in the three months to the end of September, exceeding consensus analyst estimates of €10.2bn.

LVMH’s sales growth is showing no sign of slowing despite warnings from its chairman and chief executive Bernard Arnault in July to approach the second half of the year with caution. In the first six months of 2017, LVMH benefited from a favourable basis of comparison on the previous year, notably in France where there was a decline in the first half of 2016 following terrorist attacks in Paris.

During the third quarter, all LVMH divisions recorded double-digit revenue growth with the exception of wines and spirits, home to Moet & Chandon champagne and Hennessy cognac, which lifted revenues 4 per cent in the third quarter and was held back by supply constraints.

Fashion and leather goods — the largest contributor to earnings — increased revenues 13 per cent to €3.9bn. Sales in perfume and cosmetics rose 17 per cent, while watches and jewellery, and selective retailing divisions each reported year-on-year revenue rises of 14 per cent on an organic basis.

Overall for the first nine months of the year revenues at LVMH rose 12 per cent to €30.1bn, stripping out the effect of currencies and acquisitions. On a reported basis, the strengthening euro drove a negative currency impact of 5 per cent on revenues, while the acquisition of Christian Dior Couture, which was finalised in July, was behind a positive impact of 7 per cent.

Luca Solca, analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, said the third-quarter revenues “confirms our expectations that winners will continue to win in soft luxury — with LVMH and Kering at the forefront”.

Last month LVMH announced new environmental targets for 2020, reflecting how environmental, social and corporate governance concerns are becoming more prominent for luxury groups. Targets include 30 per cent renewable energy use and a 25 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions compared with 2013.

Ahead of Paris Fashion Week, last month LVMH and rival luxury group Kering also committed to stop using ultra-thin and underage models, in response to criticism of how young women are portrayed and treated in the fashion world

FT : Wolfgang Schäuble remains blind to his policy failures

Wolfgang Schäuble remains blind to his policy failures
The outgoing German finance minister continues to promote bad ideas, writes Alan Beattie

It takes something to make the International Monetary Fund look like a cuddly, soft-hearted old teddy bear of a crisis lender, but Wolfgang Schäuble has managed it. The German finance minister since 2009, who more than anyone else embodies the intellectual approach of the eurozone countries to its sovereign debt crisis, is leaving to be speaker of the German Bundestag.

It is quite remarkable that someone so dedicated to the European idea should have dealt the project so much damage. But through a wrong-headed analysis of the situation he has caused unnecessary suffering for crisis-hit countries and threatened the credibility of the single-currency project.

There is now, at least, some recognition that the governance of the euro is inadequate and more power needs to be drawn into the centre. But even here, the model of integration that he and Germany are pushing is based on a faulty analysis of what went wrong.

As the official bailouts for crisis-hit countries started in 2010, Mr Schäuble insisted on regarding all such problems as primarily caused by chronic fiscal incontinence rather than, as for example in Ireland, the aftermath of lending booms gone wrong. For Greece, the eurogroup insisted on imposing seriously unrealistic and self-defeating public deficit targets as a condition of aid. This was the delusion at which IMF, the eurozone’s bailout partner, partially and belatedly balked.

Moreover, although it was not his remit and runs counter to the alleged German tradition of respecting central bank independence, Mr Schäuble also persistently and publicly criticised the European Central Bank.

In particular, he took aim at the policies that did more than anything to return other crisis-hit countries to growth: the ECB’s eventual conversion to the cause of monetary activism, first by capping sovereign bond yields and then by flooding economies with liquidity through quantitative easing.

Accordingly, as Mr Schäuble departs, his vision for the single currency’s future, apart from the ECB abandoning the tools that stopped the crisis, is for the eurozone’s rescue facility, the European Stability Mechanism, to evolve into a permanent European Monetary Fund. Eventually, this may come to exclude the actual IMF from future rescues and hence make sure that all glimmers of common sense that might creep into crisis management are irrevocably blacked out. Mr Schäuble says he supports a banking union, and yet opposes a backstop that might make it safer, and continues to criticise the creation of any meaningful central fiscal authority.

In short, Mr Schäuble’s idea of an integrated eurozone involve replicating all the mistakes of the sovereign debt-banking crisis, with a new institution or two to enforce misguided unilateral adjustment on troubled member states from the centre. As spectacular failures to learn from history go, this one is a corker.

No one doubts the sincerity of Mr Schäuble’s belief that he has all of Europe’s interests at heart. But his career is testament to the ability of some ideas to persist in defiance of tottering piles of evidence that they are mistaken.

YouGov.com : 1 in 4 men would consider having sex with a robot


1 in 4 men would consider having sex with a robot
And 49% of US adults expect that, within the next 50 years, having sex with robots will be common practice
Anthropomorphic, hyper-sexualized robots are no longer just the stuff of science-fiction fantasies. In fact, mechanical lovers are becoming increasingly realistic and technologically advanced, so much so that Dr. Ian Pearson, a futurist known for his 85% accuracy record, guesses that, by 2050, sex with robots will be more common than human love-making.
According to new data from YouGov Omnibus, 49% of Americans agree with Dr. Pearson that having sex with robots will become common practice sometime within the next 50 years. However, not everyone is prepared for this shift. For example, just 9% of women would consider getting frisky with a robot. However, men are much more open to the idea – one in four men (24%) would at least think about taking an automaton lover.

For Americans who would potentially have sex with a robot, the appearance of the machine is crucial. 52% of those open to the idea of robotic intimacy agree that it is important for the bot to resemble a human. On the other hand, respondents were not convinced that everything about the sexual acts had to follow normal human conventions of intimate relations.
For instance, most Americans weren’t convinced that robotic sex should even be classified as traditional sex. Only 14% of US adults would label having sex with a robot as intercourse, while one in three (33%) would consider it more akin to masturbation. And 27% of respondents didn’t feel either category did the act justice.
Similarly, Americans were divided over whether having sex with a robot while in a relationship should be considered cheating – 32% felt it should, while 33% said it should not. Answers weren’t quite so evenly matched between men and women, though. While, 36% of women would consider it cheating, 29% wouldn’t. For men, these numbers flip-flop – 29% would consider a robotic affair cheating, but 37% would not.
Despite recent articles expressing the possibility that sex robots could be easily infiltratedby hackers and programmed for more violent means like murder or assault, 42% of US adults feel that getting it on with a robot would ultimately be safer than hooking up with a human stranger.

NYT : Disney’s Big Bet on Streaming Relies on Little-Known Tech Company



From: LAURENT CHEKROUN (MAKOR SECURITIES LO) At: 10/08/17 18:33:13
Subject: NYT : Disney’s Big Bet on Streaming Relies on Little-Known Tech Company
Disney’s Big Bet on Streaming Relies on Little-Known Tech Company

For two days in late June, Disney’s board of directors gathered at Walt Disney World in Florida to wrestle with one topic: how technology was disrupting the company’s traditional movie, television and theme park businesses, and what to do about it?

The most startling presentation came from Disney’s biggest division — a $24 billion television operation anchored by ESPN and Disney Channel. Cord cutting was accelerating much faster than expected. Live viewing for some children’s programming was in free fall. At the same time, streaming services like Netflix were experiencing explosive growth.

With Disney’s board exhorting speedy action, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive and chairman, proposed a legacy-defining move. It was time for Disney to double down on streaming.

And that was how the Disney board, which includes Silicon Valley stars like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, came to bet the entertainment giant’s future on a wonky, little-known technology company housed in a former cookie factory: BamTech.

In August, Disney announced that it would introduce two subscription streaming services, both built by BamTech. One, focused on sports programming and made available through the ESPN app, would arrive in the spring. The other, centered on movies and television shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, would debut in late 2019.

“We’re going to launch big, and we’re going to launch hot,” Mr. Iger promised at a subsequent investor conference.

Disney had experimented with building a streaming platform on its own, to mixed results. It also toyed with the idea of buying Twitter.

But Mr. Iger was impressed with BamTech. Based in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, a former factory for the National Biscuit Company, the 850-employee company has a strong track record — no serious glitches, even when delivering tens of millions of live streams at a time. BamTech also has impressive advertising technology (inserting ads in video based on viewer location) and a strong reputation for attracting and keeping viewers, not to mention billing them.

“BamTech really is as good as it gets,” said Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, a media and technology consultant.

BamTech grew out of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, or Bam for short, which was founded in 2000 as a way to help teams create websites. By 2002, Bam was experimenting with streaming video as a way for out-of-town fans to watch games.

Soon, Bam developed technology that attracted outside clients, including the WWE, Fox Sports, PlayStation Vue and Hulu. HBO went to Bam in 2014 after failing to create a reliable stand-alone streaming service on its own. Could Bam get HBO up and running — in just a few months?

Bam built HBO Now for roughly $50 million, delivering it just in time for the Season 5 premiere of “Game of Thrones,” which went off flawlessly. “They were nothing short of herculean for us,” said Richard Plepler, HBO’s chief executive.

In 2015, Bam decided to spin off its streaming division, calling it BamTech. With an eye toward its own direct-to-consumer future, particularly with ESPN, Disney paid $1 billion in 2016 for a 33 percent stake and an option to buy a controlling interest in 2020. To run the stand-alone company, M.L.B. and Disney recruited Michael Paull, 46, from Amazon, where he oversaw the introduction of Prime Video.

Disney started talking about the inevitable shift toward streaming in 2006, according to Kevin Mayer, Disney’s chief strategy officer. But the world’s largest entertainment company had to be careful: It could not embrace a new business model at the expense of its still highly profitable existing one — at least not until it saw a tipping point.

So Disney, along with other television companies, first tried something called TV Everywhere. Introduced in 2010, it allowed people to watch television shows on mobile devices as long as they “authenticated” themselves as current cable or satellite subscribers. But that cable bundle-saving effort proved cumbersome and never completely caught on.

About three years ago, Disney started to look at streaming more aggressively. Disney experimented with going it alone, quietly developing an app called DisneyLife. Introduced in November 2015 in Britain, DisneyLife offered old Disney movies and television series, children’s e-books, games and music. Subscriptions cost about $13 a month.

The lesson from that was without new movies, or at least exclusive content, interest was limited. Disney soon cut the subscription price in half. After two years, analysts estimate that DisneyLife has only about 437,000 subscribers. (It was never introduced outside Britain.)

Disney also weighed a bid for Twitter. “We thought Twitter had global reach, a pretty interesting user interface and a compelling way that we might be able to present and sell the content that our company makes to the consumer,” Mr. Iger said at a Vanity Fair conference last Tuesday. Ultimately, though, Disney passed. Twitter’s growing reputation as a platform where hate speech can be disseminated would have posed a problem for the Disney brand.

So when Mr. Iger decided in June that the time had come to reposition Disney’s television division for growth by offering its sports, movies and television programming directly to consumers, he asked BamTech to accelerate Disney’s option to take a controlling interest. By early August, Disney had agreed to spend an additional $1.58 billion to bring its BamTech stake to 75 percent.

Most analysts cheered Disney’s streaming plans, but some investors seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach. One reason is cost.

Start-up expenses are unknown, but Disney has signaled that they will be huge. (Analysts estimate that marketing alone could easily run $150 million annually.) Disney has also not announced how much it will charge for subscriptions to the still-unnamed services. (Analysts are guessing $5 to $9 a month.) What is certain: To stock its own offerings, Disney plans to pull content from other services — Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm movies will eventually disappear from Netflix — eliminating an enormous, reliable revenue stream.

Michael Nathanson, a media analyst, estimates that Netflix, for instance, pays Disney $325 million annually to license those films. Also moving to one of the services will be reruns of Disney Channel shows, which generate roughly $500 million annually in third-party licensing fees, according to Doug Mitchelson, an analyst at UBS.

At the same time, Disney has pledged to make original movies and series for its nonsports service, easily adding $150 million in costs.

There has also been some sniping about how much Disney paid for BamTech. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference last month, Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, boasted that his company’s All Access and Showtime streaming services had been built internally.

“We didn’t go buy BamTech for a zillion dollars,” he said.

Disney contends that a big part of BamTech’s value has been overlooked. Down the road, as other media companies move toward streaming, BamTech intends to sign them up as clients.

“That’s going to be a massive business, and BamTech is going to be a massive winner in it,” Mr. Mayer, Disney’s chief strategist, said in an interview.

Still, by the end of next year, BamTech will lose one important customer: HBO, which is moving to a global platform built by its own tech team. “They understood from the very beginning that eventually we would grow our way to independence,” Mr. Plepler said.

For some, Disney’s track record with digital acquisitions is the biggest concern.

Whenever the company has wandered away from content-related mega-purchases (Pixar, Marvel), results have been disappointing. Misfires include the social media-focused game maker Playdom, purchased for $563 million in 2010, and the online video network Maker, bought for $500 million in 2014.

Disney.com has also given the company headaches, with managers trying a series of redesigns and strategic retrenchments.

This time may well be different, in part because failing isn’t an option. And, in a contrast to those smaller acquisitions, Mr. Iger has pledged to devote much of his time over the next 21 months — he insists he will retire in July 2019 — to the twin streaming initiatives. BamTech’s remaining minority owners, M.L.B. and the National Hockey League, also have an interest in the effort succeeding.

Mr. Paull, a Harvard M.B.A. with experience at Sony Music, will report to Mr. Mayer, who joined Disney in 1993 before leaving in 2000 to run Playboy.com. He soon returned to Disney to work on Go.com, a web portal that eventually failed, and other Disney websites, including ESPN.com, before moving to strategic planning.

Though BamTech has proved its streaming bona fides, it still lacks the algorithms and the personalization skills that have helped propel Netflix to success. To fill that gap, Mr. Paull recently hired the former chief technology officer of the F.B.I. to be the head of analytics.

BamTech’s headquarters are a massive sprawl. Inside the darkened “transmission operations center” on a recent afternoon, walls of monitors displayed hundreds of live events — baseball, golf, hockey, boxing, a speech by President Trump — being streamed to somewhere at that moment.

Outside the operations room, in a series of alcoves, including one that used to house an oven where Oreos were baked, employees monitor games and are the first line of defense if something goes wrong with a stream. They’re nicknamed the Night’s Watch, from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

The level of engineering required for that enormous volume of content is no small matter. Each bit of streamable content has to be made to fit a dizzying number of requirements. Start with web browsers, ranging from Safari to Chrome or Explorer, all of which have slightly different demands. It also has to fit every iPhone and Android phone. And then there are connected living room devices like Apple TV.

“The complexity there is incredible,” Mr. Paull said during a tour. “It’s thousands and thousands of different applications we need to build to support that entire ecosystem. Then you add in international and the complexities of languages, currencies, payment mechanisms.”

He added, “That’s one of the big, big barriers to entry if you want to have a scaled digital video service.”

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance:
  • KTWO -16.2%, (guidance), AXTA -5%, MDT -2.4%, (estimates Hurricane Maria Q2 impact of up to $250 mln; reaffirms Q2 / FY18 guidance excluding impact)
M&A news:
  • FLR -1.9% pulling back following M&A chatter circulated last week)
Other news:
  • XXII -19.9% (announces $54 mln common stock only registered direct offering at $2.625/share)
  • TSLA -1.7% (pushes back Semi unveil to November 16 (previously set semi truck unveil / test ride tentatively scheduled for Oct 26) ),
  • GE -0.9% (CEO of GE Transportation named CFO of GE effective November 1; current CFO Jeffrey Bornstein will leave effective December 31 after 28 years of service)
  • SNN -0.7% (CEO to retire by end of 2018)
Analyst comments:
  • PTCT -7.8% (downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JP Morgan)
  • CONN -3.6% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Stifel),
  • DVA -3% (downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JP Morgan)
  • VIAB -3.1% (downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Citigroup)
  • MLNX -2.4% (downgraded to Underweight at Barclays)
  • ATVI -2.4% (downgraded to Market Perform at Cowen)
  • SYNA -2.1% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Mizuho)
  • YELP -1.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Cantor Fitzgerald)
  • AMTD -1.2% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA/Merrill)
  • ESRX -1% (downgraded to Underperform from Mkt Perform at Raymond James)
  • NDAQ -0.7% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill)
  • HUM -0.9% (downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan)

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
  • MZOR +6.6%, (sees Q3 revs above expectations)
M&A news:
  • CLNT +31% (announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Sharing Economy Investment Limited, has entered into an exclusivity agreement with Inspirit Studio, regarding a potential acquisition by SEI of not less than 51% of Inspirit Studio)
Other news:
  • TROV +14.1% (confirms FDA grants orphan drug designation to Trovagene's PLK1 Inhibitor, PCM-075)
  • INSG +12% (announce a new global strategic partnership)
  • CGEN +9.9% (discloses new data demonstrating the potential of CGEN-15032 as a target for the development of first-in-class cancer therapy)
  • FLXN +6.8% (will hold conf call today to update FDA approval of ZILRETTA)
  • ITEK +5% (Opaleye Management disclosed 5.76% passive stake)
  • SSL +3.1% (no longer pursue the preferred funding option, as described in the First Announcement, of issuing up to 43 million ordinary shares through an accelerated book-build process)
  • CDXC +3% (appoints Kevin Farr as new CFO)
  • ERIC +2.1% (proposes Ronnie Leten as new Chairman)
  • AKS +1.3% (will implement electrode surcharge for all stainless product shipments effective October 29), .
Analyst comments:
  • MULE +5.1% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman)
  • JUNO +1.8% ( target raised to $56 at Maxim Group )
  • KSS +1.6% (upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Telsey Advisory Group)
  • BTI +1.4% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman)
  • BLUE +1.4% ( target raised to $170 from $100 at Maxim Groupt )
  • JNJ +1% (upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo)
  • MS +0.8% (upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse)
  • ETFC +0.7% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill)
  • CTRP +0.5% (initiated with a Overweight at Barclays)
  • DIS +0.5% (upgraded to Top Pick at RBC Capital Mkts)
Gapping down

FT : Accor offers $900m to acquire Australia’s Mantra

Accor offers $900m to acquire Australia’s Mantra

Europe’s largest hotel operator eyes extra exposure to China’s top travel destination

Accor, Europe’s largest hotelier by room numbers, has offered A$1.2bn ($931m) for 100 per cent of Australian hotel operator Mantra Group, to gain exposure to a travel market with surging Chinese growth.

Shares in Mantra climbed as much as 18 per cent in Australian trade on Monday to a 16-month high after it confirmed it had received the non-binding takeover offer.

The company said it received an offer of A$3.96 cash per share for 293.7m shares from Accor, or A$4.02 per share if Mantra’s final dividend from the 2017 financial year is included.

The offer represented a 23 per cent premium on Mantra’s closing price on Friday.

Mantra operates 128 properties mainly in Australia and also has businesses in New Zealand, Indonesia and Hawaii. Mantra does not own any of the properties but manages the hotel operations through leasing and management letting rights.

Accor, with properties across nearly 100 countries, owns hotel brands such as Pullman and Sofitel. It has already bought brands such as Fairmont, Raffles, Swissôtel and Onefinestay, the UK-based luxury home rentals site.

Asia Pacific is the largest by revenues of Accor’s six operating regions, and also the fastest growing. In the first six months of the year, Asia-Pacific’s like-for-like revenues in hotel services grew 9.3 per cent year-on-year to €225m, outperforming the group’s global 6 per cent growth for the same period.

“Accor is already market leader in Australia and wants to consolidate its position,” said Najet El Kassir, an analyst at Berenberg. “This deal seems to make strategic sense.”

The acquisition would help Accor expand beyond its slower-growing home market of France, where it is the country’s largest hotel operator, and tap into increasing inbound tourism in Australia. In the 12 months to the end of June the number of international visitors to Australia grew 8.7 per cent to 7.9m, according to the Australian government.

Australia has been one of the top beneficiaries of the global boom in Chinese tourism in recent years, and the Mantra deal capitalises on that trend.

“Australia represents an attractive market for international operators given the country’s appeal as a travel destination, particularly with regards to regions experiencing strong growth in outbound tourism such as China,” according to a note on the deal from Macquarie analyst Shaun Weick.

Australia was the top destination for Chinese overseas travellers in 2017, according to CLSA, the Hong Kong-based brokerage. Second only to New Zealand in the number of inbound tourists to Australia, 1.19m Chinese people visited Australia in 2016, or 15 per cent of total tourists, according to the brokerage.

Mantra has opened its books to Accor but said discussions were ongoing and that any deal was subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.