It's always fun to speculate about IPO's, mergers and acquisitions. In the tech industry it happens so often it's hard to keep track of who bought who and how long ago it was.
My current train of thought on the topic surrounded the recent news of CoreSite. CoreSite is a Carlyle Group company, which as I mentioned before is a HUGE global private equity company. I wondered if CoreSite would do an IPO in the near future. Carlyle invested in Equinix in 1999 -- their site says "acquired" in 1999. Equinix then raised $240 Million in their IPO a year later.
Some other interesting ones I have seen a few times:
"Level 3 Financing, Inc., has received commitments from lenders to increase the borrowings under its existing $1.4 billion senior secured credit facility through the creation of a $220 million Tranche B loan"
That quote was from the StreetInsider.com article on the Level3 announcement. The loan is reported to be used for "general corporate purposes". I'm a techie - so I had to Google what "general corporate purposes" meant. :) Apparently it means we're going to get a ton of money to do what we want with it and not tell anyone.
Rob Powell at the Telecom Ramblings blog had a pretty funny April fools post about CEO James Crowe moving his office to an undisclosed monastery deep in the Himalayas. Rob also suggests that the cash could be used for purchasing Qwest longhaul -- which makes sense to me.
Last Thursday Level3 announced some new wavelength service offerings for network protection, additional bandwidth options and performance guarantees.
Level3 has posted their Red Couch interviews, taken at SXSW last month - including one from Matt Tanase from Rackspace.
OK-- bad title maybe, but I wanted to avoid the "Tuesday Links" vagueness.
Containers -- for anyone that has followed this blog for a while knows, I am fascinated by containers. Initially I just couldn't figure it out, but through Sun, Rackable and Michael Manos I am fully on board now. Although..... now I am racking my brain for the non Microsoft / Fortune 200 idea that makes the container solution applicable to the rest of us. More on that later.
The video that Data Center Knowledge posted last week was really excellent. I watched the full hour and appreciated the knowledge and insight provided. My highlights/comments:
It was interesting to see some new things come into the site selection and data center equation: jurisdiction for placing containers and the classification of the space. Daniel Costello from Microsoft noted that they were able to classify theirs as "unoccupied spaces".
Focus can shift quickly to container solutions for the rest of the infrastructure as well -- what about the emergency need to ship a container somewhere and have an equally quickly deployed power solution available? (i.e.: Active Power)
The one thing that would have been hilarious (to me) for an audience member to ask is what the panel thought about putting containers on cargo ships. :)
The Economy -- All eyes are on the economy now days and President-elect Obama's plans in the making. I personally think the data center industry is going to pull through the recession just fine and GreenTech within data centers should really blossom in 2009. I ran across a video from Financial Times that I thought was interesting; it compares the worst bear markets in history and how they were punctuated by rallies that made a lot of money for those lucky enough to time them correctly. Global Crossing also had an interesting blog post recently about Stimulating Ideas - commentary about telecom investment ideas from Paul Kouroupas. There was also a nice story early last week in the New York Times about Venture Capitalists and how innovation will continue to drive the technology industry out of the recession. The last paragraph is especially interesting:
“Cisco was founded two weeks before a stock market crash. Oracle was founded during the Reagan recession,” Mr. Holland said. “In bad times, that’s when the best opportunities come up."
Telecom -- Level3 is off to a good start in 2009. Rob Powell at the Telecom Ramblings blog speculates why they have been doing so well. Fourth quarter and full year 2008 results are set to be released on February 11th. If my math is correct 4 VPs and the CEO of Level3 sold 23,265 shares January 5th.
As many have said now.... the economy will get worse before it gets better. Level3 announced that they are cutting 450 jobs in North America, about 8% of their work force. Maybe they should apply for a bailout. :)
Tech stocks in general were up today, as my data center stock index showed -- it was up $1.67 from just last Friday, closing at $19.87. The Dow Jones Internet Composite Index was up $2.76 from Friday, closing at $60.35.
As another indicator of tough times -- The Tribune Company, publisher of The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, filed for bankruptcy. I have to wonder if other major newspaper companies won't be far behind. The sale of the Chicago Tribune could mean the sale of the Cubs would be opened up to new prospective buyers.
In other tech news.... at least now we have a double-wide analogy to apply to containers. :)
