Technology Industry M&A News for North American based target companies in the Telecom, Media and Technology sector for Q3 2016 included 483 closed deals, according to data published by industry data tracker FactSet. The average transaction value was $303 million.
On the public markets, stocks continued to surge higher during the quarter led by sector behemoth Alphabet (GOOGL). Q3 earnings per share minus items for the stock rose 23% to $9.06 while total revenue climbed 20% to $22.45 billion vs. consensus estimates of $8.60 and $22.05 billion.
Competition is intensifying in the fast-growing education software market as tech giants including Facebook, Amazon, and Google roll out new digital education products and services. Many of these early offerings are provided free to educators, but the companies are likely to use them as springboards to sell more advanced academic and institutional software to the education sector in the future, The New York Times reports. In summer 2016, Amazon unveiled a new online marketplace called Amazon Inspire, which gives teachers access to thousands of lesson plans and instructional materials at no cost. Facebook introduced a personalized digital learning platform that enables students to manage their own projects and assignments online and learn at their own pace. Google is another major force in the ed-tech sector: more than 60 million students and teachers now use its cloud-based Google Apps for Education software, and more than 5 million Chromebooks were sold to US schools in 2015, according to the International Data Corporation. Annual spending on education software and digital teaching materials at US pre-K through high schools is about $8.3 billion, according to the Software and Information Industry Association.
Industry Indicators
- US retail sales for electronics and appliance stores, a potential measure of demand for computer software, decreased 2.8% in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.
- Total US revenue for software publishers rose 0.5% in the second quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year.
Posted by Dan Vermeire.
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