Links 12/15: Charter Communications’ stock jumps amid Verizon comments; FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Exiting FCC Jan. 20



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Charter Communications’ stock jumps amid Verizon comments (NY Post)

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Exiting FCC
Will leave Jan. 20 (Multichannel News)


Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Is Back for the Rest of Sky (Fortune)

NBCUniversal, IOC Pact for Year-Round Linear Olympics Channel (Variety)

NBCU Says Nielsen's Total Content Ratings Aren't Ready for Primetime (Ad Age)


Comcast’s Xfinity Home Lights Up More Device Partners (Multichannel News)

Oracle earnings: 61 cents a share vs estimates of 60 cents (CNBC)

Oracle Slips: FYQ2 EPS Beats; Says Bigger Than Salesforce (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Why Embedded Analytics Will Change Everything (Information Week)



Radnor company [Freedom Pay] moving its HQ to Cira Centre South in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Business Journal)



at 7:30 AM 0 comments

Private Equity buyouts this week: Apple Leisure Group (Newtown Square) ; Phlexglobal (Malvern)


Tom Paine



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What's the largest business in relatively bucolic Newtown Square? SAP North America? Sunoco Logistics? Well, the next largest?

Its probably Apple Leisure Group, which the trade pub TravelPulse says is the leading seller of all-inclusive vacation packages in all of North America.

ALG was just sold, by Bain Capital. The buyers were also private equity firms, KKR and KSL Capital Partners. Terms weren't disclosed.

Bain paid $343.5 million for Apple Leisure, according to Moody’s (cited by Buyout), and is selling after owning it for almost four years.

Apple Leisure produced a $250 million dividend (presumably to Bain) in 2015.


ALG CEO Alejandro Zozaya


ALG CEO Alejandro Zozaya founded resort sales, marketing, and brand management company AMResorts, in 2001. It focused mainly on owned Caribbean and Mexican resorts. It combined with Apple Vacations, founded in 1969, to form a vertically integrated travel management group. After Bain bought in, ALG expanded by acquiring online platform CheapCaribbean.com, and B2B tour operator Travel Impressions from American Express.

In June, Reuters reported that Bain was listening to offers for ALG, because of interest expressed by potential Chinese buyers. The sought-for valuation was reported to be in the $1.5 billion range, including debt.

The opening to Cuba could give an additional boost to ALG's business.


Travel Weekly reported in September that Apple Leisure Group was investing more than $50 million to upgrade its technology, including web pages, booking engines, access to flights and software programs.

Although ALG has thousands employed at its resorts, LinkedIn only shows it having a little more than 100 employees in Newtown Square.




Vitruvian Partners buys majority stake in Phlexglobal



Vitruvian Partners, a European private equity firm, has purchased a majority interest in Phlexglobal, a UK and Malvern-based life sciences cloud-based systems and services company. Previous majority investor Bridgepoint Development Capital (“BDC”) will exit the company with the sale.

The benefits of integrated, cloud-based eTMFs has led to life sciences companies switching over from old on-premise software.

Last year, Vitruvian also purchased a majority stake in CRF Health, also US (Plymouth Meeting) & UK-based, which creates electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) solutions which also go into clinical trial data collection. There could be a fit between the two down the road, one might think.





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Dell Boomi Brings iPaaS to the Enterprise (Video: Silicon Angle)



Interview with Dell Boomi CEO Chris McNabb (Silicon Angle)



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Comcast repair truck insists it only needs four cones on snowy road, & havoc ensues (update: Police say Comcast not at fault)


Tom Paine



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Here's the story on
Comcast's reaction, from FierceCable.


Comcast not at fault in icy pileup, Indy police say (FierceCable)





at 10:58 AM 0 comments

Links 12/14: Uber self-driving cars hit streets of SF, until; Seating chart at Trump’s table of tech giant



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Uber’s launching self-driving cars for the San Francisco public today (VentureBeat)
Yesterday's "very soon" apparently meant today.

Uber Might Be Breaking California's Self-Driving Car Law (Fortune)








The seating chart at Trump’s table of tech giants
(Quartz)
Hardly any easterners - no Brian Roberts.

Q&A: Healthcare IT to Enter an Intense Period of Innovation in Philly (Philadelphia Magazine)

Comcast sets focus on creating 'repeatable' content delivery model for content owners (FierceCable)

SAP Buys Attribution Software Company Abakus (AdExchanger)

Why a fast-growing Philadelphia tech company is getting a new name (Philadelphia Business Journal)



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Links 12/13: Uber to put self-driving cars on SF roads 'very soon'; Newtown Square-based Apple Leisure Group changes PE owners



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Amazon Web Services expands to offer cloud IT services to big companies (GeekWire)

Cisco confirms it’s killing Intercloud public cloud in March 2017 (VentureBeat)


​Uber to put self-driving cars on the road in SF 'very soon' (CNET)
So you got all the bugs worked out in Pittsburgh, huh?


Google's self-driving car project gets a new name: Waymo (AP via Philadelphia Inquirer)


Rumors Are Floating About A Cornerstone OnDemand Sale (ERE)

RS Energy Acquires Upstream Data Company, NavPort (Exploration & Production)
NavPort, based in Plymouth Meeting, was PACT's Technology Startup of the Year for 2016.


Apple Leisure Group Sold To KKR and KSL Capital Partners (TravelPulse)
Newtown Square-based Apple Leisure Group is "the leading seller of all-inclusive vacation packages in all of North America", says TravelPulse.


In Philly, Comcast Trumps Muni Broadband (Light Reading)

NBC to boost new Boston station signal (Boston Globe)
I guess Boston qualifies as a large market






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Recent Comcast personnel moves: A new board member; Exec finally leaves for Sprint, and one will split time between NYC & Philly


Tom Paine



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Comcast appointed David C. Novak to its Board of Directors last week.


David C. Novak

Novak last served as Executive Chairman of quick service restaurant group YUM Brands, leaving earlier this year.


Though much respected as a business leader, some eyebrow were raised when Novak departed YUM wth a nest egg of $234 million, almost all in a tax-deferred compensation account, exempt from the annual contribution limits imposed on ordinary 401(k)s. The total compensation doesn't seem out of line comparatively with peers for an executive who ran a huge company successfully for 15 years, but some contrasted his earnings to that of the average Yum hourly restaurant worker.

Given the President-elect's fondness for KFC, one of YUM's brands, its surprising that Novak didn't end up with a cabinet position in Washington.




Rob Roy officially joined Sprint as Chief Digital Officer last week, after a detour of several months.

Comcast had filed suit in June against Roy for violating a non-compete clause in his contract, after he indicated his intent to leave Comcast, where he had held a somewhat similar position, to go to Sprint.

After much legal wrangling, an agreement was reached allowing him to finally move on.

Though the use of non-competes has been restricted in several states and they have often been used as a club against employee freedom of movement, sometimes they make sense. In Roy's case, the issue may have been what he knew about Comcast's emerging wireless plans,which certainly could have been an issue as he was moving to Sprint.

Roy didn't spend much time at Comcast, having joined it from Time Warner Cable in September 2015.




In November, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal jointly promoted Kathy Kelly-Brown to SVP Strategic Initiatives. She will be responsible for identifying creative, technological and strategic opportunities across the entire portfolio of both Comcast and NBCUniversal, and will report to both Neil Smit on the Cable side and Steve Burke on the NBCU side, splitting time between New York and Philadelphia.

An NBCU veteran, she replaces Maggie McLean Suniewick, who recently was promoted to the newly created role of President, NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises.






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RS Energy Group (RSEG) Acquires Leading Data Provider, NavPort


RS Energy Group Announces Acquisition of Data Company, NavPort
Data product a key element to high-powered energy research offering




RS Energy Group (RSEG) Acquires Leading Data Provider, NavPort
December 12, 2016 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
CALGARY, Alberta--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RS Energy Group (RSEG) today announced that is has acquired NavPort, a leading completion and production data company serving the upstream oil and gas market. The acquisition comes following a majority investment in RSEG by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing, in late-2015. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.


The acquisition adds a key data component to RSEG’s service offerings. "This is an exciting time for both RS Energy and NavPort,” said Jim Jarrell, Co-CEO of RSEG. “We are highly committed to providing world-class intelligence and service through our research and adding an in-house data product provides our customers with the best of both worlds.”

NavPort was created to fill an industry need for reliable and comprehensive production and completion data and was spun out of Preferred Sands in September 2014. Its team of industry experts specialize in data gathering, visualization and analytics, enhancing RSEG’s current upstream and midstream offerings to provide best-in-class energy intelligence and client service.

The combination of RSEG and NavPort provides energy investors, operators and service companies with unique and objective intelligence that integrates world-class financial, operational and geological data. Companies that subscribe to RSEG can visualize the complete energy landscape from a macro-economic scale down to the well-level, leveraging elements such as proprietary geo/earth modeling, valuations and investment trends, forecasting and predictive analytics and a patent-pending production allocation methodology.

The expanded team continues to map thousands of unique data sets; scrub, enhance and correct complex public information; test and integrate derived analytics and develop an intuitive, user interface for data exploration.

The RSEG team is excited to announce that the culmination of these efforts, RS Data™, will be available to customers in early-2017. “We are dedicating significant resources to building the highest quality data product using today’s technologies,” said Manuj Nikhanj, Co-CEO of RSEG. “The quality, speed, granularity of data and flexibility in the analytics will be more advanced than anything on the market. We couldn’t be more thrilled with what’s to come.”

About RS Energy Group

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, RS Energy Group (RSEG) is the standard in energy intelligence. Since 1998, RSEG’s dedicated team of engineers, economists, geologists, developers, CFA charter holders, data scientists and mathematicians has provided integrated, thorough and objective analysis to institutional investors, governments and corporate clients. RSEG is a privately-held company with office locations in Houston, Denver, New York City, New York; Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London.

To learn more visit www.rseg.com.

[VIDEO]: Hear from the new combined RSEG and NavPort team.

Contacts
RS Energy Group
Leila Thornborough, 403-294-9111
Leila.Thornborough@rseg.com


RS ENERGY GROUP

Headquarters: Calgary, Alberta
Website: www.rseg.com
CEO: Manuj Nikhanj
Employees: 100
Organization: PRI
Release Summary
RS Energy Group (RSEG) is excited to announce its acquisition of NavPort, a leading completion and production data company. RSEG's unique energy intelligence now offers a raw data element.

Original release: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161212005589/en/RS-Energy-Group-Announces-Acquisition-Data-Company




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Links 12/12: College Board faces rocky path after CEO pushes new vision; Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees



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Uber bull (Wharton's) Jeremy Siegel sees Dow 20K any day now as market cheers 'pro-business president' Trump (CNBC)

Big Pharma Just Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week of Job Cuts (Fortune)

Comcast raises controversial “Broadcast TV” and “Sports” fees $48 per year (Ars Technica)


The CBS-Viacom merger is off, which means CBS could still merge with someone else (Recode)

Apple’s TV guide app has launched — without Netflix, which is working with Comcast (Recode)


Cornerstone OnDemand Said to Mull Sale Under Activist Pressure (Bloomberg)

College Board faces rocky path after CEO pushes new vision for SAT (Reuters)

Razor Technology acquires Yardley company (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Why the data center isn’t dead yet: Explaining the rise of the ‘pragmatic hybrid cloud’
(GeekWire)


IPhone screen maker said to buy major OLED venture (PCWorld)





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Trump's proposed continued relationship with 'Apprentice' conundrum for NBC, Comcast


Tom Paine



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Kellyanne Conway on Friday defended President-elect Donald Trump's decision to remain an executive producer on NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice" as he takes office, saying that "presidents have a right to do things in their spare time."


On the next day, however, Trump spun it a bit differently on his favorite media outlet:





Trump’s fees will be paid through MGM, the production entity on the show, not NBC, the network that will air it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the new host of 'Apprentice', which returns after a two-year hiatus.

Mark Burnett, now president of MGM Television and Digital Group (in 2014 he sold a 55% interest in his production companies to MGM) and still one of the show's executive producers, created 'Apprentice', which first aired in 2004, with the idea of finding a new host CEO each year. But Trump proved a hit so he stayed.

Though Variety reported that Trump will receive a per show fee (not huge by TV standards), the true potential conflict NBC (and Comcast) may face is if any topics or themes come up on the show that may be of a political nature, as well as NBC possibly enhancing the franchise's long-term value by airing it.

This doesn't seem, on the surface at least, to be an indicator of how Trump's relationship with Comcast will go, though Comcast certainly knows the value of having some positive aspects of its relationship with the President-elect, who has continued to criticize NBC News and SNL roundly.



Maybe he's just trying to show he doesn't play favorites?


But I'm not sure we've heard the last on this situation. There may be changes.


Update 3/4: Arnold Schwarzenegger Bails on 'Celebrity Apprentice,' Citing Show's "Baggage" (Hollywood Reporter)




at 11:33 PM 0 comments

Sunday Highlights: Sling TV Sub Growth ‘Hitting a Wall’?; Contegix to merge with (Reading) Pennsylvania IT solutions provider DSS



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Analyst: Sling TV Sub Growth ‘Hitting a Wall’ (Multichannel News)

Live TV streaming providers tap into viewer's tastes (Reuters)

Simplified Travel and Expense Management Takes Flight at Bentley Systems (SAP Insider)

Contegix to merge with (Reading) Pennsylvania IT solutions provider DSS (St Louis Business Journal)


CMU spinoff makes robots that are more than toys (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via Lancaster Online)



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