Gateway to Buy Back Shares From AOL
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Computer maker Gateway Inc. on Tuesday said it agreed to buy back about $316 million of its stock from Internet provider America Online Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - AOL plans to strengthen its online advertising business by acquiring Tacoda, a company that specializes in delivering ads based on users' online activities. AOL entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tacoda, whose "behavioral targeting" technology will complement AOL's online advertising services, the companies announced Tuesday. AOL and Tacoda didn't disclose details of the transaction, which will close after customary approvals are obtained. AOL, which is owned by Time Warner, is in a so far successful, years-longÂ transition from a subscription-fee based business to an advertising-based business. Like Google, Yahoo, and other major Internet players, AOL is busy boosting its capabilities to provide a variety of online advertising services, including search, video, syndicated, mobile, and graphical ads. In order to capitalize on theÂ fast-growing online ad market, AOL, Yahoo, Google and others have resorted to purchasing online ad services companies. For example,Â Google is in the process of buying DoubleClickÂ for $3.1 billion, whileÂ Yahoo recently closed its acquisition of Right Media. In May, Microsoft announced its intention toÂ buy digital marketing services provider aQuantiveÂ for $6 billion. Meanwhile,Â AOL acquired Third Screen MediaÂ and AdTechÂ this year, and Lightningcast last year. The U.S. online advertising market grew 35 percent in 2006 over 2005, the fourth straight year of expansion for this market, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Marketers spent almost $17 billion advertising on U.S. Web sites in 2006, according to the IAB. Tacoda, founded in 2001, is based in New York and will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL. It has about 100 employees and more than 4,000 Web sites in its ad network. Its publishing clients include The New York Times Co. and NBC Universal.
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Gateway Inc. on Monday launched its rebirth as a seller primarily of personal computers, hoping to return to profitability after losing market share to rivals after several years of focusing
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(InfoWorld) - Shares of Acer Inc. opened down by their daily limit on the Taiwan Stock Exchange early Tuesday, as investors took a dim view of its decision to buy U.S. PC vendor Gateway Inc. Acer stock opened down 6.9 percent at NT$59.2 (US$1.79), the lower limit imposed by trading rules on the local stock exchange, and wallowed around that level for much of the early trading day. "People think Acer paid too much for Gateway," said Andrew Teng, sales manager at Taiwan International Securities Corp. in Taipei. According to a rumor in the market, Acer and rival Lenovo Group Ltd. fought a bidding war for Gateway, upping the price, he added. Lenovo declined to immediately comment. Stock and industry analysts offered negative views of the deal, and some feared Acer could run into the same problem with the merger as Taiwan's BenQ Corp. did with its acquisition of Siemens AG's mobile phone division,Â a business that ultimately filed for bankruptcy protectionÂ in Germany. The Siemens deal proved to be too costly for BenQ, which couldn't turn the business around. The company, formerly part of the Acer Group, said it spent over US$1 billion trying to make the purchase work. There are only a few parallels with the Acer-Gateway deal, mainly that Gateway is viewed as a business in decline. "We are negative on this acquisition," wrote Daniel Chang, PC industry analyst at Macquarie Research Equities in Taipei. "Acer's brand has begun to attract U.S. consumers so we believe it would have been much cheaper to build U.S. market share on its own than to pay such a high premium for a declining market share PC company." The company's U.S. market share dropped to 5.6 percent in the second quarter, down from 6.5 percent at the same time last year, according to industry researcher IDC. Acer paid a 57 percent premium over Gateway's closing share price of US$1.21 last Friday, which was too high, Chang said. Acer agreed to buy Gateway in an all-cash deal for US$1.90 per share, or around US$710 million. News of the deal sent Gateway shares up 50.4 percent, to US$1.82 per share, on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. Acer said the deal will transform it into a much larger company with US$15 billion per year in revenue and shipments of nearly 20 millionÂ PCs and give it a solid base in the important U.S. market. The company plans to market multiple PC brands worldwide after the transaction, thereby increasing sales. The deal will also help it cut costs. Size is vital to gaining volume discounts from parts suppliers, the company said. Analysts weren't convinced. Chang cautioned that Gateway's market share was on the decline anyway, and that if Gateway buys Packard Bell BV, which it has pledged to do, the deal will add another company to Acer's stable that it doesn't need. Packard Bell is strong in Europe, where Acer already holds significant market share. Jack Gold, from industry researcher J. Gold Associates, said the Acer-Gateway combination brings little synergy to the market other than size. "Both Gateway and Acer are primarily consumer brands, with little presence in the enterprise [market] -- where margins are higher, and where higher-end laptops, an increasingly important share of the PC market, are sold," he said in an e-mail. Investment banking firm Goldman Sachs listed several positives for the deal in a report, but offered up a generally negative view overall. In particular, the possible acquisition of two companies at once, Gateway and Packard Bell, could slow the process of bringing each company into the Acer fold. "We think Acer may still experience the pain of consolidation of three different companies for a certain period of time," wrote Henry King, director of Asia-Pacific investment research at Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC, in a report on Tuesday. Goldman Sachs acted as an advisor for Gateway in the deal with Acer. Â
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TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Acer Inc. plans to acquire U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc. for $710 million in a deal that will push the Taiwanese company past China's Lenovo Group as the world's third largest vendor of personal computers.
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Time Warner Inc's AOL said on Tuesday  it has purchased online affiliate marketing network buy.at as  part of a strategy to bolster its Internet advertising  operations.
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Gateway (GTW:NYSE - news - research) narrowed its loss and beat Wall Street&#39;s bottom-line expectations for the quarter ending in September.
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Computer maker Gateway Inc. Tuesday said it has agreed to repurchase stock held by America Online Inc. for $316 million US. AOL, which is a unit of media and entertainment company Time
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Gateway Inc. on Wednesday raised fourth-quarter earnings expectations as the personal computer maker freed up cash by selling preferred stock and outsourcing its warranty service plans.
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Gateway Inc. on Monday said it would return to its roots as a personal computer company, backing off on an aggressive strategy of expanding into TVs, digital cameras and other gadgets in a move to return to profitability.
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Acer Inc., the world's fourth-largest computer vendor by unit sales, plans to acquire U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc. for $710 million, the Taiwanese company said Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission Friday approved the planned sale of AOL LLC's U.K. Internet access business to Carphone Warehouse Group PLC (CPW) of the U.K. The deal follows recent similar sell-offs in Germany and France. The Commission said that its month-long examination of the proposed transaction showed that in the sectors where the companies' activities overlap, Internet access services and fixed-line telephony services, the combined entity's share of the relevant market "would not give rise to competition concerns as the new firm would continue to face effective competitive pressure from other market participants." The Commission is the European Union's regulatory and executive branch. Time Warner Inc., AOL's owner, has been retreating from the Internet access business in Europe, where its subscriber numbers are declining. AOL company has about 5.9 million customers for its three European divisions, in the U.K., France and Germany. In September it agreed to sell its French operation to Neuf Cegetel SA for â¬288 million (US$374 million). A month later it agreed to sell its German Internet service provider to Telecom Italia SpA for â¬675 million. In September it agreed to sell its German Internet service provider to Telecom Italia SpA for â¬675 million (US$853.5 million) and its French operation to Neuf Cegetel SA for â¬288 million. CPW is an independent retailer of mobile communications, with over 1,500 stores in Europe. As well as retailing mobile handsets and mobile connections, CPW is active in the supply of fixed-line telecommunication services to business and residential customers. It also offers narrowband and broadband Internet access services to U.K. and European residential customers. Â
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LONDON, October 11  - Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE.ETR) has offered to buyback the remaining stake in its Internet services subsidiary, T-Online International AG, for about â¬3 billion ($3.
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IRVINE, Calif. -- Gateway Inc., a struggling computer maker that has accepted a buyout offer from a Taiwan-based company, said Wednesday it will sell its professional business unit to MPC Corp. in a deal valued at about $90 million.
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IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 2 -- Computer maker Gateway Inc. said Tuesday that it had agreed to repurchase stock held by America Online Inc.
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NEW YORK/LONDON  - Aon Corp, one of the world's largest insurance brokers, said on Monday it has agreed to sell two units for about $2.75 billion and will use the proceeds to buy back shares.
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America Online (NYSE: AOL) is giving Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) a second chance by agreeing to support the software giant's anti-spam technology that it previously had rejected.