Institutional investors have jumped off the Apple (AAPL) bandwagon and have yet to climb aboard Tesla Motors’ (TSLA), while Amazon.com (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) are doing better, says Morgan Stanley in a report on technology stocks. “Apple and Tesla are exceptions to the rule of growing institutional ownership,” Katy Huberty, a Morgan Stanley analyst, wrote in the report. “Currently in the S&P 500, the average institutional
Amazon.com’s long-rumored television set-top box could launch in March, Re/code reported Friday, a move that could signal an offensive against streaming video rival Netflix. Amazon’s device would compete with products on the market from Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Roku, which stream Netflix (NFLX) and other over-the-top Internet video services. But the Amazon box would put its own content, namely Amazon (AMZN) Prime Instant Video, front and center. To date, Amazon has treated its video service as a nice extra for its Amazon Prime subscription service, which offers free two-day shipping on millions of items from the e-commerce website for $79 a year. Amazon Prime customers get unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows. Amazon currently does not offer the streaming video service on a standalone basis. But with a set-top box on the way and talk of a price increase for Amazon Prime, that could change…
Facebook’s (FB) purchase of mobile messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion easily beats the price of any single acquisition ever done by a host of tech giants, including Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO). The lofty price tag stunned Wall Street, but analysts seemed generally in favor of the purchase. The deal translates to about 9% of Facebook ‘s (FB) market value. Investors changed their minds about the WhatsApp acquisition during the trading day Thursday. Facebook stock was down 3.5% in morning trading, but reversed course and ended the session up 2.3%. Shares hit a record high of 70.11 in the stock market today. Following its $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2012, Facebook has shown a willingness to spend big on fast-growing social networking companies with little revenue but big user bases. With its agreement Wednesday , Facebook will pay $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in Facebook stock, plus $3 billion in options, for WhatsApp, a company with more than 450 million monthly active users. WhatsApp generated “a minuscule $20 million in revenue last year,” Forbes reported. Facebook will spend 35% of its $11.4 billion in cash on hand to make the deal happen. Compare that with Apple, which was sitting on $159 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Dec. 28. It has never made a billion-dollar acquisition. Apple’s largest deal to date is the purchase of NeXT in 1997 for about $400 million, which brought co-founder Steve Jobs back to Apple and provided the core for its new Mac operating system.