In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science related news:
- The financial service Moody’s upgrades Quintiles after Q moves to refinance debt
- Tesla’s new home battery product is unveiled
- Apple is testing App Analytics
- LinkedIn shares tumble
- Microsoft opens up new Windows to Apple, Android apps
The details:
- Moody’s sees Quintiles as “stable”
Quntiles (NYSE: Q) reported its earnings and plans to refinance some $2 billion in debt earlier this week. On Thursday, Moody’s Investment Service responded by upping its rating.
The notice:
“Moody’s Investors Service (“Moody’s”) upgraded the Corporate Family Rating and the Probability of Default Rating of Quintiles Transnational Holdings Inc. (Quintiles; the parent company of Quintiles Transnational Corp.) to Ba2 and Ba2-PD from Ba3 and Ba3-PD, respectively. In conjunction with the company’s refinancing transaction, Moody’s also assigned Quintiles Transnational Corp. a Ba1 to its proposed senior secured credit facilities and a Ba3 to its proposed unsecured notes. The proceeds of the debt will be used to refinance the company’s existing credit facility and for general corporate purposes. Concurrently, Moody’s affirmed the SGL-1 Speculative Grade Liquidity Rating (signifying very good liquidity). The rating outlook is stable.
“The upgrade of Quintiles’ ratings reflects Moody’s expectation that the company will continue to be the largest contract research organization (“CRO”) in the world, and will benefit from organic growth and stable margins supported by favorable industry fundamentals. The upgrade also reflects Moody’s expectation that Quintiles’ scale, diversified customer base and breadth of service offerings will result in stable, consistent cash flow generation and that leverage has declined and the company’s financial policies are such that debt to EBITDA will generally be sustained between 3.0x and 4.0x.”
- Tesla CEO plugs into new market with home battery system
Never lacking daring ideas, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is determined to jolt the electricity market.
The CEO of electric car maker Tesla Motors hopes to park hundreds of millions of large, solar panel-connected batteries in homes and businesses so the world can disconnect from power plants — and he can profit. On Thursday night, before an adoring crowd and a party-like atmosphere, Musk unveiled how he intends to do it.
Musk took the stage at Tesla’s design studio near Los Angeles International Airport, an audience of drink-toting enthusiasts cheering him on, in a scene fitting for an audacious dreamer renowned for pursuing far-out projects. Colonizing Mars is one of Musk’s goals at Space X, a rocket maker that he also runs.
Now, he is setting out on another ambitious mission. “Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told reporters gathered in Hawthorne, California.
Although Tesla will make the battery called “Powerwall,” it will be sold by a variety of other companies. The list of partners includes SolarCity, a solar installer founded by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive. Musk is SolarCity’s chairman and largest shareholder.
As with Tesla’s electric cars, which start around $70,000, the battery might be too expensive for most consumers. The system will carry a suggested price of $3,000 to $3,500, depending on the desired capacity. Installation will be extra. That could discourage widespread adoption, especially for a product that may only have limited use.
- New Apple analytics
Apple on Thursday began offering a preview of a new App Analytics tool, according to the news website The Next Web.
“A number of developers tweeted emails informing them of the launch of a beta program for app analytics which promises to show how many customers an app’s page, how often users open the app, how well it sells and more,” TNW reports.
“Third party tools already exist that offer similar functionality, but much of the data is guesswork and this marks the first time Apple has made available an offering that promises to give insights into how apps and their landing pages are performing.”
Read more at: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/04/30/apple-is-testing-analytics-for-the-app-store/
- LinkedIn joins Twitter in post-earnings tumble
Dumping social media stocks that show any sign of weakness is trending on Wall Street.
Shares of LinkedIn Corp. plunged 21 percent in after-hours trading Thursday after the professional networking service gave a disappointing outlook for the second quarter, weighed in large part by its pending purchase of online learning company Lynda.com.
Twitter, meanwhile, has lost 23 percent of its value this week through Thursday. The messaging service on Tuesday reported revenue and offered an outlook that fell short of Wall Street’s expectation. On top of that, investors were rattled when Twitter’s earnings report came out inadvertently nearly an hour ahead of schedule.
The sharp declines came amid a particularly bad stretch for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which was down some 3 percent this week, on pace for its worst week this year. Tech darling Apple seems to be the biggest culprit for the drop. Its shares fell 2.7 percent on Thursday and are down nearly 4 percent for the week.
- Microsoft opens Windows 10 to Apple, Android apps
Microsoft hopes to get more people using the next version of itsWindows software on all kinds of devices by giving them access to many of the sameapps they’re already using on Apple or Android phones.
In a major strategy shift, a top executive told an audience of several thousand software developers Wednesday that Microsoft will release new tools to help them quickly adapt the apps they’ve built for Apple or Android gadgets, so they will work on smartphones, PCs and other devices that use the new Windows 10 operating system coming later this year.
On the first day of the company’s annual software conference, other executives showed off more uses for Microsoft’s holographic “augmented reality” headset, the HoloLens — although it’s not yet for sale. They also announced the official name for a new web browser, called “Edge,” that they promised will be faster and more useful than the Internet Explorer that’s been a Microsoft mainstay for 20 years.
All those initiatives are tied to the impending release of Windows 10, the centerpiece ofMicrosoft’s ambitions to regain the stature it commanded when Windows-based PCs dominated the computing world. Today, after losing ground to smartphones and tablets that run software from rivals Apple and Google, Microsoft wants to make Windows 10the universal software for PCs, phones and other Internet-connected gadgets.
