Snapchat reportedly paid over $250 million for an app that lets you track your friends

• Biz Carson
 
•   

• 14h
• 4,219

Snapchat reportedly bought Zenly in what may be its largest acquisition ever.REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

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Snap recently snapped up mapping app maker Zenly in what was likely one of its largest acquisitions ever, TechCrunch reported Wednesday.

And it looks like Snapchat's parent company is already using Zenly's technology.

Snap Inc., bought Zenly for somewhere between $250 million to $350 million, according to TechCrunch. It's not clear when it completed the acquisition.

Snap declined to comment. Zenly did not respond to request for comment.

French-based Zenly created a location app that allows users to see where their friends are, but in a way that doesn't drain their phones' batteries. Popular in Europe, the Zenly app feeds on teenagers' fear of missing out. Users return to the app again and again to make sure they're not missing out on a hot party or event with their friends. 

On Wednesday, Snapchat unveiled Snap Maps, a new feature that allows Snapchat users to see where their friends are on a map. A trailer for the feature showed two women browsing a map in Snapchat and tapping on a nearby location to see friends sharing videos from an ongoing concert. Users will also be able to browse photos and videos from specific locations around the world, including breaking news events. 

After Snapchat launched the new feature, TechCrunch and others were quick to point out just how similar it looked to Zenly's app. It likely wasn't just a coincidence, given Snapchat's acquisition of the company.

The $250 million to $350 million that Snap paid for Zenly could make the acquisition the largest ever for the camera app maker. Snap's most recent acquisition — and its biggest reported one previously — was its rumored purchase of startup Placed, an advertising tracking company, that reportedly cost $200 million. However, Snap is is known for its secrecy when it comes to snapping up startups, so it could have made larger purchases that just haven't been reported yet.

Snapchat maps is reportedly powered by Zenly.Snap

Zenly had raised over $35 million from Silicon Valley's top investors. When Business Insider broke the news of its funding by one of Twitter's earliest investors last September, Zenly lacked a connection to a social network that could turn its amazing location-tracking feature into something more than just a creepy tool to for users to keep tabs on their friends. Snapchat's acquisition will give Zenly that opportunity, although Zenly will continue to operate its own app independently, according to TechCrunch.

One reason Zenly was likely a hot acquisition target compared to makers of other location-tracking apps is that its app is more power efficient. Instead of constantly monitoring users' locations — and running down their phones' batteries in the process — the app only determines them when their friends look them up on their phones. 

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat's new maps feature shows you where your friends are

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The Kiwi dollar is flying after the RBNZ left rates unchanged

DAVID SCUTT 

JUN 22, 2017, 8:05 AM

Photo: Getty Images.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) did pretty much what everyone was expecting following its June monetary policy meeting, leaving the cash rate unchanged at 1.75% and delivering a neutral policy bias, indicating that interest rates are likely to remain on hold for “a considerable period”.

However, it conveyed an optimistic tone in its accompanying monetary policy statement, and that’s sent the New Zealand dollar sharply higher.

“Global economic growth has increased and become more broad-based,” the bank said, repeating the phrase it used in May.

However, it counted that by suggesting that “major challenges remain with on-going surplus capacity and extensive political uncertainty”. Again, unchanged from the phrasing it used in May.

It also struck a similarly optimistic tone on the outlook for the domestic economy, seemingly dismissing the growth slowdown seen in late 2016 and in early 2017.

“GDP growth in the March quarter was lower than expected, with weaker export volumes and residential construction partially offset by stronger consumption,” it said.

“Nevertheless, the growth outlook remains positive, supported by accommodative monetary policy, strong population growth, and high terms of trade.”

It also added that “recent changes announced in Budget 2017 should support the outlook for growth”.

  

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The bank’s language on the housing market and the outlook for inflation was also largely unchanged from May.

“House price inflation has moderated further, especially in Auckland. The slowdown in house price inflation partly reflects loan-to-value ratio restrictions, and tighter lending conditions. This moderation is projected to continue, although there is a risk of resurgence given the on-going imbalance between supply and demand,” it said in relation to the housing market.

On inflation, it said that “non-tradables and wage inflation remain moderate but are expected to increase gradually”, adding that “this will bring future headline inflation to the midpoint of the target band over the medium term”.

And while the bank noted that “a lower New Zealand dollar would help rebalance the growth outlook towards the tradables sector”, it said that the recent strength in the Kiwi was “partly in response to higher export prices”.

Not exactly phrasing that suggests any degree of concern towards the currency which, accompanying the optimistic tone in the broader statement, ensured the Kiwi dollar surged in the immediate aftermath of its release.

Here’s the AUD/NZD 5 minute chart.

And the Kiwi against the US dollar over the same time frame.

You can read the full monetary policy statement here.

Oracle crushes earnings, shares spike 9%

• Pushkala A and Laharee Chatterjee, Reuters

• 16h
• 2,502

Oracle Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Ellison, delivers a keynote address during the 2014 Oracle Open World conference on September 28, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Ellison kicked off the week-long Oracle Open World conference that runs through October 2.Kimberly White/Getty

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(Reuters) - Oracle Corp's quarterly profit blew past analysts' estimates as the business software maker's big push towards cloud-based products and services paid off. 

The company's shares were up 5 percent at $48.74 in after-market trading on Wednesday.

Oracle said cloud-computing and on-premise software business revenue rose 5.3 percent to $8.88 billion in the fourth quarter ended May 31. The business accounted for 78 percent of total revenue in 2016.

The company has been shifting to a cloud-based service as customers increasingly shun the costlier licensing model, a pattern also adopted by rivals such as Microsoft Corp, SAP SE and Amazon.com Inc.

In an effort to strengthen its cloud business, Oracle signed a deal with AT&T Inc in May, under which the U.S. telecom company agreed to move some of its large-scale databases to Oracle's cloud platform.

The company had said it expected more of its "big customers" to migrate their databases and database applications to Oracle Cloud in the coming year.

NetSuite, which Oracle acquired in 2016, is also expanding its data center footprint to take on nimbler rivals such as Workday Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.

The company's net income rose to $3.23 billion, or 76 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended May 31, from $2.81 billion, or 66 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, Oracle earned 89 cents per share.

The company reported an adjusted revenue of $10.94 billion.

Analysts on average had estimated a profit of 78 cents per share and a revenue of $10.45 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Up to Wednesday's close, Oracle's shares had risen about 20 percent this year. (Reporting by Pushkala A and Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Sriraj Kalluvila)

Markets Insider

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2017. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Ethereum flash-crashes to $13 before bouncing back to $296

• Jonathan Garber
 

• 17h
• 51,198

The red-hot cryptocurrency Ethereum flash-crashed on Wednesday afternoon but has recouped all its losses.

The cryptocurrency tumbled from about $296 to a low of $13 in a matter of minutes. The entire decline cannot be seen on the chart, as it shows the price in one-minute increments and doesn't display every tick.

Ethereum has snapped back to around its pre-flash-crash level. It's up about 3,601% so far in 2017.

Investing.com

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A tequila company George Clooney started by accident is being sold for $1 billion

• Mary Hanbury
 

• 13h
• 43,653
 

"Casamigos really started by accident as far as a company," Rande Gerber, right, told Business Insider. Courtesy Casamigos

George Clooney created a tequila company on a whim, and now it's being sold to Diageo for up to $1 billion, CNBC reportedWednesday.

The idea behind Casamigos, the brainchild of Clooney and his two friends Rande Gerber, who is Cindy Crawford's husband, and Michael Meldman, was born when Clooney and Gerber bought neighboring properties in Mexico and got into drinking tequila —so much so that they decided to create their own, Clooney told CNBC in 2016.

"Casamigos really started by accident as far as a company," Gerber told Business Insider in an interview in March. "As you do in Mexico, we would drink a lot of tequila. We'd go out to bars and restaurants, and bartenders would recommend them. Some were good, some not so good, and some expensive. There came a point where George turned to me and said, 'Why don't we create one that's perfect for us?'"

Gerber and Clooney spent two years meeting with distillers and tried 700 samples of tequila until they found the perfect recipe. They wanted to find one they could drink all day long that didn't have a burning aftertaste or leave them feeling hungover.

Initially, the spirit was made only for their consumption, but when the duo started ordering about 1,000 bottles a year, the distillery told them that they would need to have the drink licensed.

Meldman then joined the team, and they found a distributor in the US. In 2013, they launched the company and made the drink available to the public. Gerber stressed that they wanted to keep it affordable.

"George doesn't need the money. I didn't need it. Mike didn't need it," he told Business Insider. "It wasn't the reason behind launching a tequila. We wanted everyone to be able to drink it, and not be exclusive."

A 750-milliliter bottle now costs between $45 and $55.

A 750-milliliter bottle of Casamigos can cost up to $55. Facebook/Casamigos

It became one of the fastest-growing tequila brands, doubling its volume between 2014 and 2015, according to Ad Age. It is now sold in 20 countries — including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica — but Gerber says he and Clooney still taste every batch.

Reviews on Distiller.com give the drink a high rating and praise for its smooth texture.

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There could be a big deal in the software sector in the works

• Matt Turner
 

• 18h
• 4,187

Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

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There could be a big deal in the software sector in the works. 

BMC Software and CA Inc. are considering a combination that would take publicly-listed CA Inc. private, according to Kiel Porter and Alex Sherman at Bloomberg. 

CA Inc.'s stock price jumped close to 8% on the news. The company is valued at around $13.3 billion. 

BMC creates software and services that assist businesses in moving to digital operations, and is owned by two private equity firms, Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital.

CA Inc., which was once known as Computer Associates International, provides software solutions that help customers plan, develop, manage and secure applications.

Porter and Sherman report that BMC and CA Inc. have approached banks about putting together financing to aid BMC's purchase of CA Inc. The talks are at an early stage, the report said. 

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