Private company M&A database CB Insights released a number interesting data points tonight in a report focusing on M&A transactions in the technology sector. According to the report, 2,277 private tech companies acquired in 2012. The acquisitions of public tech companies (i.e. Priceline buying Kayak) were not included. You can check out the full report here.

In terms of pricing, $46.8 billion was the total price tag of 331 private companies acquired in 2012 (for those disclosing valuations and financials of the deals). Clearly this number would be much higher if incorporating the financials of those which were not disclosed. The report shows that 50% of exits are less than $50 million. Of the group, only there were only 8 $1 billion private tech companies acquired in 2012 (2.5% of all transactions). In fact, 80% of transactions were less than $200 million.

Of the 2,277 companies bought in the year, 94% of companies were acquired by strategic acquirers with the remaining 6% taken out by private equity firms. And 76% of tech companies acquired in 2012 had not raised investment prior to acquisition.

By sector web and mobile commerce saw the most acquisitions, followed by advertising, sales and marketing and online news and information.

No big surprise–Google and Facebook most active acquirers in 2012. Both did 12 private tech company acquisitions each. According to the CB Insights data, Facebook does more talent acquisitions (five in the year). Cisco and Google disclose valuations and financials most often. Following Google and Facebook, Cisco, Groupon, Twitter, And Oracle rounded out the top six in terms of quantity of private tech company acquisitions.

Another non-surprise from the report–California saw the most private tech companies acquired in 2012. The state had more private tech companies acquired in 2012 than the next five states combined. New York came in second followed by Texas and Massachusetts. New York saw the highest share of internet acquisitions.

The UK led international markets with the most private tech company acquisitions in 2012 followed by Canada and India.

So what’s the forecast for 2013? “With cash stockpiles of big tech companies and as non-tech companies see “software eating the world”, expect a busy 2013.” In related reading, check out CB Insights’ report on VC funding and deals in 2012.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Mozilla just released its annual financial report for 2011, as well as the annual “State of Mozilla” report by the organization’s Chair Mitchell Baker. According to this report (they traditionally arrive at this time of the year), Mozilla’s total revenue (including the Mozilla Foundation and all of its subsidiaries), was $163 million. That’s up about 33 percent from the $123 million it reported in 2010. The majority of this revenue, the organization noted, still comes from Google. Mozilla’s total expenses for 2011 amounted to $145 million.

As Mozilla notes in its report, about 85% of its royalty revenue in 2011 came from its contract with Google. While Mozilla has similar deals with other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, it’s clear that the majority of Firefox users still prefer to use Google. “The receivable from this search engine provider [Google] represented 77% and 64% of the December 31, 2011 and 2010 outstanding receivables, respectively.”

As a non-profit, Mozilla is obviously in a pretty unique position in the Internet space, as it doesn’t really have to worry so much about its revenue given that it doesn’t have shareholders. Instead, the organization’s mission is simply to make the web better and push it forward. As Mitchell Baker notes, after 20 years of developing the Web, we can now “see how the Web can make yet another leap in its usefulness, fun, business opportunities and social benefit.” Baker cites the seamless integration of the Web with mobile devices, the ability to write web-based mobile apps and the ability to control your identity through the browser (something that continues to be a priority for Mozilla) as examples for the kind of technologies Mozilla aims to work on. “

“Imagine,” she writes, “understanding the Web, feeling competent to make things, to change what exists and create things that meet your particular needs. Imagine where Web literacy is fun, and extends beyond to citizens as well as hard-core programmers.” Mozilla, she writes, has the financial resources to so and a “vision of this world, the architecture, the technology and the product plans.”

You can find the full financial report here (PDF).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When it comes to financing small businesses, loans remain an important option. Biz2Credit simplifies the process greatly by removing the need to contact different institutions. With the new iPad app, companies can even get a credit score from Dun & Bradstreet in minutes. By partnering with 1,100 lenders, companies can get a clear view of their options and secure capital easily. So far, Biz2Credit has provided $750 million in loans.

Biz2Credit is all about providing a centralized interface to handle everything when it comes to business loans — evaluate your credit rating, explore options and get business loans. The company has applied big data principles for risk analysis of business loans.

With that amount of data, Biz2Credit attracts important institutions as well to get insights. According to the company, the White House President’s Council, the Federal Reserve and the FDA all turn to Biz2Credit to evaluate the current state of business loans.

Biz2Credit has released the BizAnalyzer app on Android and iOS. It allows you to get a credit score from Dun & Bradstreet, directly from your home. Today, the company has updated the iPad app. With that second version, BizAnalyzer can pull data from more sources, including the Internal Revenue Service, and put it all together in one place. The app gives an instant snapshot of your financials and indicates the chance of receiving funding.

Many different types of loans are available. But the typical startup loan ranges from 15 to 25 years. As long as you make less than $2 million a year and get approved, you will probably have more interesting terms than traditional loans from your existing business bank.

Thousands of applications are received every month. While it was founded in 2007, over the past 14 months, the amount of deals completed has greatly increased from $400 million to $750 million. It’s no surprise given the targeted market, companies that don’t receive VC money. In other words, the vast majority of the private sector.

Click to view slideshow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

SnapLogic, a company that helps enterprises integrate their cloud environments with on-premise solutions, has raised $20 million Series C funding round led by Ignition Partners, joined by Triangle Peak Partners and existing investor Andreessen Horowitz. To date, SnapLogic has raised a total of $32.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Maples Investments, Hit Forge, Triangle Peak Partners and angel investors. Frank Artale of Ignition Partners will join SnapLogic’s board of directors, which includes Andreessen Horowitz’s Ben Horowitz.

As companies adopt new cloud and SaaS applications, SnapLogic helps them integrate the cloud quickly while also ensuring interoperability across a complex range of on-premise legacy applications. Organizations can connect any combination of applications or data sources.

The company’s CEO Gaurav Dhillon tells us the company was founded back in 2007 on the premise that the enterprise would embrace the cloud. “We help businesses connect cloud applications to on-premise applications that were installed in the past,” he explains. “We’re the on-ramp to the cloud for enterprises everywhere.”

For example, if you have customers in Salesforce, but have your financials in an on-premise solution, SnapLogic will help you integrate that data in your SRM with your financial system.

“We continue to be impressed by the strong momentum SnapLogic is gaining as it moves forward a new vision for enterprise integration,” said Horowitz, in a release. “Gaurav pioneered this industry years ago with Informatica, and is reinventing it today with SnapLogic’s innovative cloud architecture and the ability to containerize all kinds of data through its ubiquitous Snaps.”

“One of key factors of our success is that our system works with most cloud applications and on-premise systems,” says Dhillon.

SnapLogic says that its integration infrastructure and SnapStore scale quickly and integrate data via a drag and drop visual designer, over 150 intelligent connectors (called Snaps), and APIs. Enterprise can also build their own “snaps” to connect applications. Customers include the U.S. federal government and companies in game publishing, industrial goods, network broadcasting, consumer electronics retailing, casual dining, and Internet radio. For example, a large restaurant chain is using SnapLogic connect their data from their point of sale terminals to applications in the cloud.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

eBay has just released its second quarter 2012 earnings report, in which the eCommerce giant outpaced expectations for yet another quarter. Revenue increased 23% to $3.4 billion, compared to the same period of 2011. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $0.56 per diluted share. Analysts expected earnings of $0.55 per share on revenue of $3.36 billion. Net income came in at $692 million for the quarter.

For reference, we can compare this to Q2 2011, when (excluding one-time items) eBay earned 48 cents per share with revenue posted at $2.76 billion — both of which were, at the time, above estimates. Now, as it was then, eBay continues to operate as one of the largest eCommerce companies in the world, so many look to the health of its principal businesses as an indicator of how eCommerce is faring overall. And although the economic pains over the last few years have wreaked havoc on traditional retailers and brick and mortars, eBay and online commerce seem to be weathering the storm.

“We delivered a great second quarter, driven by eBay Marketplaces’ best performance in years, strong growth at PayPal and strong same-store-sales growth for GSI’s large retail customers,” said eBay President and CEO John Donahoe. “Our entire company is strong, but we’re particularly pleased with eBay Marketplaces, which delivered its strongest organic growth in gross merchandise volume, excluding vehicles, since 2006. And mobile continues to be a game changer. We now expect eBay and PayPal mobile to each transact $10 billion in volume in 2012 — that’s more than double 2011, a staggering surge in mobile shopping and payments on devices that did not exist just a few years ago. Retail is at an inflection point, and we are helping to reshape how people around the world shop and pay.”

Analysts were also looking to PayPal, which had an extremely active first quarter (with numerous additions to its product set) and ended Q1 with 109.8 million active registered accounts for signs of growth. PayPal didn’t disappoint, with registered users jumping to 113.2 million in Q2.

The company has been moving to take its payment solution beyond the Web, bringing it to local merchants in brick-and-mortar stores and to mobile devices with its recently-launched Square competitor. PayPal’s revenue increased 26% year, and the platform’s net total payment volume grew 20% year over year to $34.5 billion.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google has always been pretty cagey about the financials behind its Android mobile OS — and data that has emerged over the last week could give us an indication why: it’s been losing money from Day One.

In the lawsuit between Oracle and Google — in which Oracle claims Google, in its Android platform, infringes on copyrights and patents related to Java — a judge and jury are trying to work out what kind of damages might be awarded to Oracle. That case took a turn for the specific yesterday, when Judge William Alsup (as reported by Reuters) read out excerpts of Google documents that determined that the platform produced a net loss for every quarter of 2010 — and “a big loss for the whole year”.

He also noted that Android generated around $97.7 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2010.

The jury began their deliberations on Monday, and if they cannot come to a unanimous decision, then the trial will proceed to its second phase, concerning patents, with the first phase on copyright subsequently facing a retrial.

How much money Google has or hasn’t made is an important part of the case because it can be used to decide how much Oracle can potentially receive in damages if it wins the case — although Oracle contends that even if Android is making a loss, this should not have any bearing on the case.

Ironically, if Google can show it’s not making much money out of Android, then that may mean it has less liability. On the other hand, that difficult performance might also become a lever by which critics might begin to ask why Google is pursuing a business that is going nowhere financially.

Figures from Google documents from 2010 revealed earlier in the trial showed that Google expected a loss of $113 million in 2010 from Android and that it expected to have profits of $64 million in 2011; $248 million in 2012; and $548 in 2013. The vast majority of that revenue will be coming from advertising, with small but growing percentages also coming from app sales.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Earning calls are super fascinating when you think about it; For multiple hours a quarter we tune in with the thousands of other tech bloggers to dissect the financials of the public companies we spend our lives covering. Here at TC we’ve started calling covering these calls “putting our Rao face on,” inspired by our star senior editor Leena Rao, who is just amazing at covering earnings.

Like any other collective experience, these calls have their own unique culture; Yahoo earnings calls were particularly hilarious back when Carol Bartz was CEO (“I’m going to go get a Diet Coke,” I recall her randomly interjecting with once). And I’ve played more than one drinking game with fellow bloggers on the Google call (Larry Page says “excited,” A LOT. Like so much that this happened.).

Anyways today’s Apple call was seemingly uneventful, just a bunch of white guys talking about iPads and China and cash money dollar dollar bills y’all until we got to the end, when the call stopped and the most bizarre song started playing abruptly, “IT’S SO NICE TO BE HAPPY/ SHALALALALALALA/HAPPY/IT’S SO NICE TO BE HAPPY.” The song is by, strangely enough, an artist called Alexia, who people @Reply me about a lot, because of the reason that you think.

Anyways, I (seriously) just emailed Apple press about who was responsible for that bizarre and disturbing choice of Outro music (watch the video above, it’s super weird), because yeah, as Jay Yarow points out, that would have never happened while Jobs was still around. They haven’t gotten back to me yet, probably because they’re busy making fun of me for caring like the rest of the TC writing team.

(I’ll keep you posted when/if they do.)

Apple just made me buy this song. Alexia – Happy – itun.es/iPW9fw #iTunes—

I just donated $40 to Wikipedia, because I promised myself I would every time I poked fun at its holiday donation drive and then just never got around to it. Did you know that you could actually donate during the off-season (Via the covert “Donate to Wikipedia” link at the far left of each individual entry page)? I didn’t, before I asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales whether it was possible to donate in the off-season. Spoiler alert, it is.

My 40 bucks got me, in addition to the very sweet ‘Thank You’ letter below, the satisfaction of paying duly for something I use all the freakin’ time.

Dear Alexia,

You are amazing, thank you so much for donating to the Wikimedia Foundation!

This is how we pay our bills — it’s people like you, giving five dollars, twenty dollars, a hundred dollars. My favourite donation last year was five pounds from a little girl in England, who had persuaded her parents to let her donate her allowance. It’s people like you, joining with that girl, who make it possible for Wikipedia to continue providing free, easy access to unbiased information, for everyone around the world. For everyone who helps pay for it, and for those who can’t afford to help. Thank you so much.

I know it’s easy to ignore our appeals, and I’m glad that you didn’t. From me, and from the tens of thousands of volunteers who write Wikipedia: thank you for helping us make the world a better place. We will use your money carefully, and I thank you for your trust in us.

Thanks,

Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director

This year the Wikimedia Foundation raised $20 million during its high gear donation drive, to cover a total budget of $28.3 million — the deficit is made up in grants and off-season donations. Money raised is spent on things like servers, bandwidth, maintenance and staff. Here are the financials if you want to dig deeper.

During the online encyclopedia’s blackout protest of SOPA, many off us felt the pang of “You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone” when we wanted to know something about, let’s say, Exponential Growth and that info wasn’t readily available. Google would be a bunch of spam if not for Wikipedia.

I personally use Wikipedia more than I use makeup, multiple times a day. And I spend a good amount of money on makeup, AT LEAST $40 on a mascara/lippy combo.

What do you use Wikipedia more than? Do the math …

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook had $1 billion in net income on $3.71 billion the previous year, according to its filing for an initial public offering. The company’s revenues grew 47 percent year-over-year from the 2010, which in turn more than doubled from the year before.

Payments and fees revenue made up $557 million or about 15 percent of revenues for all of 2011, showing that the company is still heavily dependent on display advertising. Ads made up $3.154 billion in revenue. Facebook has $3.91 billion in cash and marketable securities.

As you can see, revenue from Facebook’s virtual currency Credits or “Payments and other fees revenue”, has grown to make up 17 percent of the company’s revenue in the most recent quarter. That’s up from 10 percent a year ago. So the company is making progress in diversifying from pure display advertising revenue.

Facebook even acknowledges its dependence on the social gaming ecosystem in the risks sections saying that Zynga accounts for 12 percent of the company’s revenues. That includes both payments revenue and advertising that is displayed alongside Zynga games.

“If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected,” the filing says.

This story is developing and we’ll report more as we go through the financials. Facebook filed to raise $5 billion in a much anticipated initial public offering today.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Samsung has today posted record quarterly profits after selling 35 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, up from 27.9 million in the previous quarter. Operating profits have soared to 5.2 trillion won (US $4.47 billion), representing a 73 percent year-over-year increase.

You can bet that the still-very-popular Samsung Galaxy S II has something to do with it, along with Google’s latest flagship device: the ICS-powered Galaxy Nexus. Of course, the revenue generated from Samsung’s processing chip and OLED display business didn’t hurt either, reports Reuters.

What’s most interesting perhaps is that Samsung only joined in on the smartphone party back in 2010, and has since dominated the market. Last quarter, the South Korea-based electronics giant surged past Apple to take the lead as smartphone king — all the while being taken to court in all corners of the globe.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch