Jordan Casey, CEO of Casey Games
A digest of the top business technology news stories from the past week.
Thirteen-year-old Irish coder and CEO to address the titans of Silicon Valley
Jordan Casey, a 13-year-old from Waterford who taught himself how to write code and who at 12 was one of the youngest entrepreneurs to publish an app in the App Store, is to speak at the prestigious 20th TiEcon conference in Santa Clara, California.
Jordan, the CEO of Casey Games, will impart the lessons of a CEO to the CEOs of LinkedIn, Amazon, Netfix, PayPal and many others.
The teenager is the youngest entrepreneur ever to speak at the conference, and he will address the 4,000 delegates on ‘Things I learned the hard way as a young CEO’.
TiEcon is one of the world’s largest conferences for entrepreneurs, which takes place on 17 and 18 May.
Facebook revenues up 38pc to US$1.46bn – now has 751m active mobile users
Social networking giant Facebook reported Q1 revenues of US$1.46bn, out of which it garnered a profit of US$219m, up 7pc year-on-year. Significantly, the company revealed it now has 751m active mobile users, up 54pc on last year.
The number of total monthly active users across Facebook is now 1.1bn, while Instagram, the company Facebook acquired last year, reached 100m monthly active users.
Total revenues from advertising reached US$1.25bn, up 43pc and representing 85pc of total revenues.
Mobile advertising revenues represented 30pc of total advertising revenue in the first quarter.
Capital expenditure in the quarter rose 28pc to US$327m.
Twitter IPO not happening any time soon – Dorsey
It’s been nearly a year since Facebook’s IPO but another social networking giant isn’t going to follow suit any time soon. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has said the company is “not even thinking about it” right now.
An initial public offering by Twitter could well be the largest for a consumer web company since Facebook, Bloomberg reported, and Dorsey’s view on IPOs is that they are “going to be different for every single company”.
“A lot of people think of this (an IPO) as a goal you have to get to but it’s a milestone,” Bloomberg quoted Dorsey as having said.
“If you think about it as a goal, you’re rushing towards it and then stop, and that’s not the way to build a timeless company.”
Eircom to raise €310m through bonds issue
Eircom said it plans to sell €310m worth of senior secured notes due in 2020. This is the first bonds issue by the telco since it had €2.3bn worth of debt written off last year.
The proceeds of the offering will be used to repurchase debt under Eircom’s agreement with lenders that include Blackstone Group LP, Eircom said.
The notes will be guaranteed on a senior secured basis by Eircom Holdings (Ireland) Ltd and subsidiaries, including Eircom Ltd.
Best Buy to sell off its European business to Carphone Warehouse for stg£500m
Best Buy, one of America’s leading technology retailers, has revealed plans to sell off its 50pc stake in Best Buy Europe to Carphone Warehouse for an estimated stg£500m in cash and stock.
The deal consists of stg£420m in cash and stg£80m worth of shares. A further stg£29m will also be paid to satisfy obligations under existing agreements, including the companies’ Global Connect partnership.
The sale, approved by the boards of both companies, is expected to close at the end of June.
Best Buy said it expects to record an impairment charge of US$200m that will be written off when the sale concludes.
Intel names Brian Krzanich as its new CEO
The successor to Paul Otellini as CEO of Intel is Brian Krzanich, currently the company’s chief operating officer.
Krzanich will assume the role of CEO at Intel’s annual stockholders meeting on 16 May.
Outgoing CEO Otellini revealed his plans to step down from the helm of the chip giant in November.
Krzanich joined Intel in 1982 and has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles at the semiconductor giant.
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