iac posts
FeedPosted Feb 25th 2009 12:40PM by Peter Cohan (RSS feed)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising, IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Technology
With all the gloom in the global economy, I got to wondering whether there is anything else going on in the world of business. I'm looking for growth because I think that's what will ultimately bring the economy out of the doldrums. Not surprisingly, that growth is coming from technology companies. In Growth Matters, I look at consumer technology companies that point the way to growth trends -- and in the process introduce services and products you may want to explore.
If you're thinking of having a party, it might not be a bad idea to use Evite to send out the invitations and plan the event. As Evite's Vice-President of Marketing and Public Relations Lariayn Payne told me, "Evite is the leading online service on the Web for invitations and party planning. Evite is free and easy-to-use and offers hundreds of stylish invitation designs for almost any occasion. Evite also offers fun and creative party ideas, planning checklists, and other tools, which save party hosts both time and money."
Continue reading Growth Matters: Evite's an invitation to print money
Posted Feb 1st 2009 12:30PM by Trey Thoelcke (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, AFLAC Inc (AFL), Avon Products (AVP), MasterCard Inc'A' (MA), Northrop Grumman (NOC)
If you've been watching earnings this past week, or if you read last week's Week in Preview, then this coming week may leave you feeling a bit like Bill Murray in Groundhog's Day. That is, again analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect earnings declines to be more frequent and deeper than earnings gains.
Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE: DOW), Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC), IAC Interactivecorp (NASDAQ: IACI), Moody's Corp. (NYSE: MCO), Elizabeth Arden Inc. (NASDAQ: RDEN), Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE: DVN), Diebold Inc. (NYSE: DBD), Tyco International Ltd. (NYSE: TYC), United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (NYSE: RL), ITT Corp. (NYSE: ITT), and Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) are scheduled to report quarterly results this week, and they're all expected to report double-digit declines in earnings.
But again this week, let's take a look who Wall Street feels may have done well in the past quarter.
Continue reading The week in preview: High hopes for MasterCard, Avon, Aflac, Northrop Grumman
Posted Aug 2nd 2008 9:10AM by Trey Thoelcke (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Starbucks (SBUX), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Viacom (VIA), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Aetna Inc (AET), Altria Group (MO), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Corning Inc (GLW), Nucor Corp (NUE), Valero Energy (VLO), Kraft Foods'A' (KFT), Garmin Ltd (GRMN)
Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:
For more highlights from this week, see: General Motors, Motorola, Disney, Sony, Visa, CBS and others
Upcoming quarterly reports include Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Jack-in-the-Box (NYSE: JBX), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI), Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), and Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI).
Visit AOL Money & Finance for more earnings coverage.
Posted Jul 7th 2008 4:46PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Microsoft (MSFT), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)

When Ask.com's mapping service was just getting up to speed as a very workable product, the company decided to jettison its in-house mapping service and instead install
Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:
MSFT) own mapping service. Ask.com company parent
InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ:
IACI) apparently decided to cut some costs in the day and age of hyper-competition with
Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:
GOOG) and Microsoft and just outsource a great product that was taking up too many resources with too little to show for it.
Microsoft's Virtual Earth technology is now powering Ask.com mapping service. It should not be seen as defeat for Ask.com, as Microsoft's offering is superior in almost every way from my experience (and most likely, cheaper to license instead of maintaining an in-house product). This brings up an important question: is Ask.com in cost-cutting mode temporarily or permanently? The search engine and portal has seen its global market share sit pretty idle for the last year, as has Microsoft. Google, meanwhile, has slightly increased its search marketshare, Let's face it -- Ask.com, like those others, makes it's money in search (with smaller peripheral income sources of course).
Where is Ask.com's future revenue going to come from? Search advertising? Shopping commissions? All of the above? If
Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ:
YHOO) is possibly going to
outsource its search to Google, what is stopping Ask.com from using Google's technology as well? That would literally pit Microsoft and Google as bulls racing towards each other. But if Ask.com is fretting over the continuance of its mapping product, search can't be that far behind. Then, the Ask.com brand will be the only thing left.
Posted May 15th 2008 8:00AM by Laurie Pasternack (RSS feed)
Filed under: Newspapers, Magazines, General Electric (GE), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Merck and Co (MRK)
MAJOR PAPERS:
- In a move to help turnaround its troubled business, General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) will sell or divest its appliance division, and could expect to receive between $5B and $8B for the unit, according to the Wall Street Journal. Potential buyers appliance makers BSH Bosch & Siemens Hausger of Germany and Haier Group of China, as well as private equity firms and Controladora Mabe, GE's partner in Mexico.
- The Wall Street Journal also reported that Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA) will acquire Plaxo, a networking Web site, in an effort to increase its range of services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- To help improve its Ask.com search engine, the Wall Street Journal reported that IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) will buy the Lexico Publishing Group, which owns Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.
WEB SITES:
- Citing the New England Journal of Medicine, Bloomberg reported that migraine headache medicines, including Merck & Co Inc's (NYSE: MRK) Maxalt and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's (NYSE: GSK) Imitrex caused potentially fatal reactions in at least 11 people. The Journal said people using "triptans," an older class of migraine drugs, could develop serotonin syndrome, which may cause fever, shock, vomiting and rapid heartbeat.
Posted May 4th 2008 1:10PM by Trey Thoelcke (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Time Warner (TWX), Viacom (VIA), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Procter and Gamble (PG), Verizon Communications (VZ), Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Eastman Kodak (EK), Alcatel-LucentADS (ALU), RadioShack Corp (RSH)
Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:
Continue reading Earnings highlights: Verizon, Comcast, CBS, DreamWorks, IAC, Kodak and others
Posted Apr 10th 2008 8:20AM by Laurie Pasternack (RSS feed)
Filed under: Newspapers, Magazines, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), News Corp'B' (NWS),
MAJOR PAPERS:
WEB SITES:
- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH) said it liquidated three investment funds, with assets valued at $1 billion as of February 29, because of "market disruptions," Bloomberg reported.
- Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Defense approved the sale of 157 armored trucks to Britain. The trucks are built by Force Protection Inc. (NASDAQ: FRPT), and the deal is valued at $125 million if all options are exercised.
Posted Mar 3rd 2008 1:05PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rumors, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)

Will
InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ:
IACI) be dumping its search and information portal Ask.com? Sort of, according some insider accounts. It wouldn't be jettisoning Ask.com entirely -- it would just be getting rid of the technology that powers the search engine's results. The engine behind Ask.com, Teoma, could be taken out and replaced by
Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:
GOOG)'s technology.
Google already has a stranglehold on internet search. It's been suggested for quite a while that
Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ:
YHOO) dump its pride in its search engine technology (known as Project Panama for the last few years) and just use Google instead for powering its search engine. Does Google have that much power -- one that would make competitors use its search engine technology to power their own sites? Yes, it does.
If Ask.com were to switch to just using Google, then the search service really
would hold little value to the customers using it. Sure, Ask.com would wrap Google search results in its own brand and customer interface, but would there truly be a compelling reason to use Ask.com at that point? Not really. Just like Yahoo!, Ask.com has spent huge amounts of cash to improve its search technology with little to show for it.
That's the first-mover advantage Google has. Even if either had a better search service, that wouldn't mean more search customers. Then again, does either have a superior search service? I personally use Ask.com daily in addition to Google -- it's great. For my sole search engine service, though, it's not that good.
Posted Nov 30th 2007 6:22PM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)
Yesterday, I attended the Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media/SES Local conference. Based on the turnout, there are many companies trying to get a piece of the online local marketplace, which is still in the early phases. But the Internet giants like Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) are gunning for dominance.
So, what are venture capital investors looking for?
Well, there was a great forum on the topic. The panelists included: Nick Veronis, managing director at Veronis Suhler Stevenson; Kara Nortman, vice president of M&A at IAC; and Mark Gorenberg, a partner at the VC firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
"For entrepreneurs looking at local," said Veronis, "this is great timing. The market is hot and the valuations are robust."
He is bullish on so-called mobile phone coupons. "We are seeing much higher conversions with mobile coupons," said Veronis. "It's also convenient. So, coupons may skip the desktop."
But, according to Nortman, this doesn't mean that traditional valuation metrics no longer apply. "When we look at acquisitions of online properties," she said, "we look at cash flows. The cash flows may come in year 2 or 3 – but there needs to be a case that online users can be translated into cash."
Interestingly enough, this week IAC announced that it has invested in a Web 2.0 social networking site, MerchantCircle. "We like that the company has a viral model and a strong user base of over 300,000 merchants."
Also, if you want to check out other recent early stage fundings, visit DealProfiles.com.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements
.
Posted Nov 9th 2007 12:05PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Products and services, Launches, IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)
InterActive Corp. (NYSE:
IACI) seems to be following the herd with this week's announcement of a comedy news channel that sounds very similar to Comedy Central's
The Daily Show and
The Colbert Report. The new IAC property, titled 23/6, will partner with liberal political site the Huffington Post and will be in
full comedic charge of satirizing the news with humor interlaced throughout all moments.
Bloggers from the Huffington Post as well as comedy writers from The Daily Show and The Simpsons will be part of the cast, so expect some funny moments from the new network. 23/6 joins a growing roster of online and television networks and series dedicated to taking normal (and highly predictable) news and turning a spin on those stories to keep the bay of reality, well, away from the mind of the normal consumer. At least, that's my two cents here.
I especially like
23/6's planned "Monolog-o-tron," which will be an online tool for generating your own talk show using drop-down menus on a website. That's a shot at Letterman and Leno and my guess is that it won't be the last one taken. With a whole new generation taking to the web for news and satire instead of played late-night shows, this could very well be another great hit for Barry Diller's IAC.
Posted Nov 6th 2007 8:30AM by Jim Cramer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Citigroup Inc. (C), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), , Goldman Sachs Group (GS), EMC Corp (EMC), Deere and Co (DE), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the market showed its stuff Monday, and health care, tech and retail look like buys.Sweet comeback as people are getting too panicked and too bearish. I noticed it first in the retailers, which all trade like subprime-mortgage originators.
It then spread to the oil and oil-service stocks (as if oil is going to plummet, not just find a level). The minerals got whacked something awful off the usual recession gambit.
Then it started hitting tech names, including ones that are doing well and just reported, like
EMC (NYSE:
EMC) (
Cramer's Take) off the big downgrade.
To me the last straw was the collapse, for a second day, of
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:
GS) (
Cramer's Take), something that simply makes no sense at all except from the proposition that both competitors,
Merrill (NYSE:
MER) (
Cramer's Take) and
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take), will now be better run (which is a given, by the way).
In fact, the only five stocks that were holding up throughout the onslaught -- at least on my screen -- were
Yahoo! (NASDAQ:
YHOO) (
Cramer's Take),
Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG) (
Cramer's Take) and
IACI (NASDAQ:
IACI) (
Cramer's Take) plus
Deere (NYSE:
DE) (
Cramer's Take) and
Parker Hannifin (NYSE:
PH) (
Cramer's Take) -- the latter are incredible stalwarts.
The ability of this market to shrug off these losses will be the tale of today's tape. Resilience has been the hallmark of this market when it comes up against key levels, and it showed it again today.
It's probably time to do some buying of health care -- we did Monday in Action Alerts PLUS -- tech, and retail, and cover some of the financials.
RELATED LINKS
Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long EMC, C and Goldman Sachs.Posted Nov 3rd 2007 10:10AM by Trey Thoelcke (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), Intel (INTC), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Exxon Mobil (XOM), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Avon Products (AVP), Chevron Corp (CVX), CIGNA Corp (CI), Kellogg Co (K), Clorox Co (CLX), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), MasterCard Inc'A' (MA), Procter and Gamble (PG), Trump Entertainment Resorts (TRMP), Verizon Communications (VZ), Alcatel-LucentADS (ALU), U.S. Steel (X), Under Armour'A' (UA), Newmont Mining (NEM), RadioShack Corp (RSH), Burger King Hldgs (BKC), Teva Pharm Indus ADR (TEVA), Kraft Foods'A' (KFT), Crocs Inc (CROX), Jones Apparel Group (JNY)
Lots more quarterly reports rolled out this past week, and here are some highlights of earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:
Continue reading Earnings highlights: Crocs, Exxon, Kraft, P&G, Sirius, and others
Posted Oct 29th 2007 8:45AM by Eric Buscemi (RSS feed)
Filed under: Newspapers, Magazines, Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), , NYSE Euronext (NYX)
MAJOR PAPERS:
- According to a person briefed on the situation, Merrill Lynch & Co Inc's (NYSE: MER) CEO Stan O'Neal was negotiating the terms of his forced departure on Sunday and the departure is expected to be announced on Monday. The top contenders for the CEO position are said to be BlackRock Inc's (NYSE: BLK) CEO Laurence Fink and NYSE Euronext Inc's (NYSE: NYX) CEO John Thain, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- The WSJ also reported that Alibaba.com raised $1.5B after the company priced its IPO at HK$13.50, at the top-end of the HK$12-$HK13.50 range. Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) holds a 39% stake in Alibaba Group.
OTHER PAPERS:
- Ness Technologies Inc (NASDAQ: NSTC) was awarded a contract worth NIS 5 Million to convert the pension fund data managed by Opal Future Technologies, Globes reported.
- Indian company Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited (NYSE: RDY) is set to attempt to raise its share of the U.S. over the counter drug market by partnering with at least six more U.S. retail chains; the company plans to launch up to 10 drugs over the next 12 months that could become OTC offerings in the U.S., the Economic Times reported.
WEB SITES:
- According to TechCrunch, IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) may have submitted a letter of intent to acquire movie-centered social network Flixter over the last week or so.
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