NIKKEI 225
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Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)
| Previous close | 255.91 |
| Open | 257.26 |
| Bid | 258.05 x 900 |
| Ask | 258.30 x 800 |
| Day's range | 256.83 - 259.18 |
| 52-week range | 166.11 - 259.18 |
| Volume | 21,899,926 |
| Avg. volume | 30,619,288 |
| Market cap | 1.95T |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 0.79 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 38.54 |
| EPS (TTM) | 6.71 |
| Earnings date | 27 Apr 2021 - 03 May 2021 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 2.24 (0.87%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 19 May 2021 |
| 1y target est | 273.05 |
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Apple expected to announce new products in late April
Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley preveiwed what products Apple might unveil on April 20.
- Bloomberg
TikTok Founder's $60 Billion Fortune Places Him Among The World's Richest People
(Bloomberg) -- Just last year, the world’s most valuable startup, ByteDance Ltd., was being squeezed from all sides.The Trump administration wanted the Chinese firm, which owns the ubiquitous TikTok video-sharing platform, to get rid of assets. Beijing was cracking down on tech businesses, and India blacklisted some of its social-media apps.For all the obstacles, ByteDance kept growing. Now its founder, 38-year-old Zhang Yiming, is among the world’s richest people -- a distinction that lately has carried increased risks in China.Shares of the company trade in the private market at a valuation of more than $250 billion, people familiar with the dealings have said. At that level, Zhang, who owns about a quarter of ByteDance, could be worth more than $60 billion, placing him alongside Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Pony Ma, bottled-water king Zhong Shanshan and members of the Walton and Koch families in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.ByteDance, famous for its short-video apps and news aggregator Toutiao, more than doubled revenue last year after expanding beyond its core advertising business into areas such as e-commerce and online gaming. It’s now weighing options for the initial public offering of some businesses.“Zhang is someone who’s known for thinking long-term and not easily dissuaded by short-term setbacks,” said Ma Rui, partner at venture-capital firm Synaptic Ventures. “He is set on building an enduring, global business.”Surging ValuationDuring its last fundraising round, ByteDance reached a $180 billion valuation, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That’s up from $20 billion about three years ago, according to CB Insights. But in the private market, some investors recently were asking for the equivalent of a $350 billion valuation to part with their shares, people familiar have said. The company’s value for private-equity investors is approaching $400 billion, the South China Morning Post reported. That would mean an even bigger fortune for Zhang.ByteDance representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.It’s a tough time to be wealthy in China as the government seeks to rein in the country’s most powerful corporations and their billionaire founders. Just ask Jack Ma: After opening an antitrust probe, regulators fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion and the central bank ordered an overhaul of his Ant Group Co. fintech empire so it’d be supervised more like a bank. On Tuesday, China ordered 34 internet companies to rectify their anti-competitive practices in the coming month. While ByteDance hasn’t been singled out as a target, its dominance in social media and war chest for deal-making are sensitive areas the government is looking into.“There are no more silly games in the U.S. with Trump and potential bans or forced asset sales,” said Kirk Boodry, founder of investment research firm Redex Holdings. “But the pressure on tech-share prices and China in particular might make $250 billion a tough sell,” he added, referring to ByteDance’s value in private transactions.Born in the southern Chinese city of Longyan, Zhang, the only son of civil servants, studied programming at Tianjin’s Nankai University, where he built a following on the school’s online forum by fixing classmates’ computers. He joined Microsoft Corp. for a brief stint after graduating, later calling the job so boring he often “worked half of the day and read books in the other half,” according to an interview with Chinese media. He went on to develop several ventures, including a real estate search portal.His breakthrough came in 2012, when working in a four-bedroom apartment in Beijing he created ByteDance’s first hit -- a joke-sharing app later shut down by censors. It then turned to news aggregation before winning over more than 1 billion global users with its short-video platforms TikTok and Chinese twin app, Douyin. In the process, it attracted big-name investors such as SoftBank Group Corp., Sequoia Capital and proprietary-trading firm Susquehanna International Group, making it a rarity among Chinese internet startups that usually get absorbed into the wider ecosystems of Tencent and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.Novel ConceptOne of Zhang’s earliest supporters, Susquehanna has become ByteDance’s largest outside backer with a 15% stake, according to a Wall Street Journal story in October. The initial bet was made at the start of 2012, when ByteDance’s news app Toutiao was just a concept that Zhang had drawn up on napkins, according to a 2016 blog post by Joan Wang, who led that investment for Susquehanna’s Chinese venture-capital unit.With TikTok facing scrutiny in the U.S. and India, Zhang has put more effort into ByteDance’s nascent and fast-growing Chinese businesses, which range from gaming to education to e-commerce. That helped it increase sales to about $35 billion last year and operating profit to $7 billion, a person familiar with the results said.Investors are eyeing the IPO of some of ByteDance’s businesses after Chinese competitor Kuaishou Technology raised $5.4 billion in February in the biggest internet listing since Uber Technologies Inc., with its market value now nearing $140 billion. Last month, ByteDance hired former Xiaomi Corp. executive Chew Shou Zi as its chief financial officer, filling a long vacant position that will be crucial for its eventual market offering.But for Zhang, it’s not all about immediate payoffs. The affable founder is known for his business philosophy of “delaying satisfactions” as he puts the focus on long-term growth -- a message he stressed again during his spiel to employees at the company’s ninth anniversary celebration last month.“Keep an ordinary mind, that’s something that sounds easy but important to do,” he said. “Put in the plainest words, when hungry, eat, when tired, sleep.”(Adds latest on China crackdown in ninth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Evercore Having Big M&A Week With Grab, Microsoft Deals
(Bloomberg) -- Evercore Inc. was lead adviser on a pair of back-to-back technology deals this week worth up to $60 billion that helped it jump a spot in the league tables.The boutique investment bank was lead financial adviser to Singapore-based Grab Holdings Inc. on its $40 billion merger Tuesday with the blank-check company Altimeter Growth Corp., a statement showed. It also helped the special purpose acquisition company raise equity to support the deal.Neil Shah, a senior managing director, said in an interview that the firm had been working with Grab for years, and that his Singapore-based colleague, Keith Magnus, the co-chairman of Asia, was important in landing the deal. The firm’s special purpose acquisition company practice was also involved, which helped the firm end up on both sides of the transaction.“We have continued to invest in our SPAC advisory business aggressively,” Shah said.Nuance DealA day earlier, it was “exclusive financial adviser” to Nuance Communications Inc. on its sale to Microsoft Corp., according to a press release. That deal, with an equity value of $19.6 billion, was led out of Evercore’s New York office, and worked on by both technology and health-care bankers.While other banks were involved in the deals, the sell-side advisers typically pocket the most fees. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley also advised Grab while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised Microsoft.Evercore is now the No. 6 ranked global M&A adviser this year, advising on 50 deals worth about $132 billion, up from seventh a week ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs is No. 1 followed by JPMorgan Chase.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
