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Chinese Consortium's $1.24B Bid To Acquire Opera Software Fails, $600M Deal Agreed Instead (tech.eu)
The $1.24 billion takeover of Opera Software by a Chinese consortium of internet firms has failed, Opera said on Monday. The deal did not receive the required regulatory approval in time of a final deadline. But they will be doing some business. The consortium will now acquire only certain parts of Opera's consumer business, including its mobile and desktop browsers, for $600 million on an enterprise value basis. Tech.eu reports: What will not be acquired by the consortium is: Opera Mediaworks, Apps & Games and Opera TV. In 2015, Opera says these business units combined delivered revenues of $467 million. The company will report second-quarter results on August 31, 2016.
Actually, it was the units that were NOT being acquired that had annual revenues of $460M.
I was led to this place, a place I can't understand. A place that demands my belief just as strongly as my disbelie
Too bad. I only recently discovered Opera on Android, and have been using it ever since because it has an in-built ad-blocker. Google will probably never deliver an ad-blocker to Chrome for Android because Google is an advertising company and it would be about shooting themselves in the foot. But I will any day choose a bit slower and more annoying browsing experience over installing Chinese spyware on my phone. So long, Opera.
Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
Because recovering your entire investment in 5-10 years is considered a very good outcome? You do realize that the stock market returns as a whole over the long term are in the ballpark of 10% per annum, right?
Remember it's not over until the fat lady sings
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Maybe they want Opera because its the #1 browser in Africa and a strong #2 in many other places?
"His name was James Damore."
Revenue is only part of a company's overall value.
There is the Name Recognition.
There is the customer base
There is the physical assets building employees etc...
There are existing contracts in place...
Also the point when a company buys another one, they feel that they can somehow do better than the current owner to make it more profitable. That is why they bid more than just the value of the company. Because you need to make the current owners an offer that will make it worth their while. Why offer 1 year of revenue, when they can earn that much more by keeping the company going?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Opera on Android was a nice product. But there is no way I'm going to install a Chinese browser on my smartphone.
Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
I think you read the article backwards. The stuff NOT sold somehow generates $460 mill. However, it seems like an $600M investment that would likely generate $920M over two years might not be so bad. I guess that comes down to how much of that revenue is profit.
Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
It's actually pretty popular in Europe and I'd imagine other parts of the East. I'm sure that's what is being taken into account here.
Sadly, I agree. I'd already jumped ship to Vivaldi when it first came out early last year, but have given it up recently for stability and profile-syncing reason...but I didn't go back to Opera, I'm on FF for now, only until Vivaldi matures a bit more. The news about being bought by a Chinese consortium did it for me -__-
because of this article. Thanks for the heads up /.
LOL
Butthead
'Regulatory approval' LOL
WTF should there be any need for 'regulatory approval'?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I was going to vote this up (using vivaldi right now, it's a great browser!) but decided to clear up a misconception instead:
Vivaldi uses blink, not presto, unfortunately. There are no current browsers using presto.
It makes me sad Opera has slid so far. Probably smart of them to sell.
Ah not really. That number is thrown around by "fancial advisors" to get people to invest with them. It depends on the asset classes one chooses and the years you look at. (The linked article also assumes one bought right after the Crash of '29) And that doesn't mean it will continue. And much of those returns were from the end of WWII to about 2000. Things are slowing down and with the Baby Boomers retiring and selling their holdings to buy their Harley Davidson motorcycles and Land Yachts, expect returns to be in the mid-single digits. The rate the financial planners I know are using 5% for retirement planning.
Ah, no. The stock market consists of a single asset class: stocks.
Opera actually had a side to their business that wasn't a browser (that frankly went down the tubes years ago)?
Not to mention a wealth of metrics and the strong possibility of inserting data/privacy-sucking code into Opera.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
So, a little clarification. The issue isn't secret hardware waiting to pop your security. It's a bad piece of debug routines that should never have been left in a kernel that went out in the wild. Don't run that kernel, there are no issues.
I loaded Opera Mini on a Jellybean device, and tested it against the best-known SSL/TLS Scanner.
Initial tests passed with flying colors, and indicated that I was using the "Presto" rendering engine, which routes traffic through Opera's server farm for compression.
However, after I reduced the "data savings" parameter in settings from "extreme" to "high," Opera Mini then FAILS with flying colors, because it's using the Jellybean Webkit directly (that lacks TLS1.2, bundles bad ciphers, etc.).
This is deceptive. Don't install this product.
I don't think any of the top browsers are trustworthy, so this just seems par for the course.
Remember it's not over until the fat lady sings
The browsers are not fat, just really bloated - too many carbs, I guess.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's an old bug. If you have a paid Slashdot subscription, one of the perks is being able to see and comment on stories a little while before they show up on the front page for non-subscribers. Sometimes they show up that way for everybody.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I just started using their free VPN app on my phone, now I have real second thoughts about that...
I'm saying there is a massive difference between backdoor hardware and a backdoor in a software component. OP claimed the first was going on, which is clearly bunk.
Thanks for the warning.
Don't ask yourself if you are paranoid.
Ask yourself if you are paranoid enough.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Who said the US is the good guy?
...i honestly couldn't care less. This is just another nail in the coffin; good riddance.
Opera died when, for some unfathomable reason, they decided to rewrite their browser as a Chromium skin. The original Opera browser was a fantastic product.
Nowadays i use Chromium myself while i eagerly wait for the first stable release of Vivaldi.
From 27 Apr., 2016: "Don't use Dolphin browser in incognito mode" https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4gnb2b/dont_use_dolphin_browser_in_incognito_mode/ From 25 Oct., 2011: "WARNING: Dolphin's collection of your browsing history": http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1319529
10% compounded interest in the market would pay off much faster. If it requires more than 7.5 years to even break even on this it's worse than 10% compounded interest in the market which would double your principal in 87 months.
Flat out wrong. ETFs are traded on the stock market and are not themselves stocks.
I have been using Opera since it came out in the 90's. I'm totally going to miss using Speeddial. Nothing I've seen in other browsers match it. For those of you who think Opera sucks, Opera was the root of innovation for many features you see in other browsers. Name it.. tabs? Yup,
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Are you dense? It's an American saying, not a Norwegian nor a Chinese one.