Netflix Rival Foxtel Will Launch Its iQ3 On Monday

Local companies like Foxtel will be launching services in order to turn attention towards itself prior to Netflix's massive launch.

Netflix, Inc. is the streaming service giant. No other platform has yet been a tough competitor to the service for years now. It has planned to enter every corner of the world posing imminent threat to the local TV providers along with other satellite services etc. Currently, the company is focused on its massive launch in Australia and New Zealand. Prior to its launch, the company has made enemies and local companies are already launching new services and plans to compete with the streaming giant once it enters the region.

Netflix (NFLX) big launch in Australia is scheduled on March 24. Prior to its launch in the region, local companies like Foxtel and Stan are finding ways to strengthen their position despite of the streaming services giant arriving in the country. According to sources, it is believed that Foxtel is all set to launch its iQ3 on Monday, a hotly anticipated set top box.

Foxtel has scheduled the launch of its streaming video recorder service just a few hours before Netflix enters the Australian region. According to The Australian, “The new iQ3 set-top-box has been under development for some years and combines broadcast derived programs and media streamed from the internet into one seamless experience. The iQ3 extends the current ‘start over’ capability, where a viewer can go back to the beginning of a TV show that’s already started and watch it from scratch.”

It is believed that the iQ3 has a new and unique “look back” feature which will allow viewers to rewind or scroll backwards up to 24 hours in the past in order to watch any shows or programs that they have missed previously.

Sydney Morning Herald reported, “These new features turn a Foxtel subscription into more of a Netflix-style on-demand service rather than the traditional linear viewing experience. It's not the iQ3's only nod to its new-world competitors, Foxtel is also adding "intelligent discovery" features which show you what's trending and even make suggestions based on your viewing habits.”

Moreover, Foxtel iQ3 has Ethernet as well as WiFi connectivity. The device can allow users to store and save more than 345 hours of standard definition recordings.

It will be not wrong to say that Netflix Streaming has made more enemies than friends in the region. Posing imminent threat to all the established businesses in Australia, the local companies along with pay TV cable operators will have to take a bold step forward and bring their A game. Foxtel played a smart strategy by launching its service right before Netflix’s launch in order to turn consumers’ attention towards itself.

Facebook Might Fall Down As Yahoo! Did

Social media networking platforms are on the rise in today's era. Either there is a new entry in the market or the existing ones over takes other companies. Facebook is one of the most used social media networking platform which is widely used all across the globe. However, Facebook has the same fame and platform which Yahoo! once had. Yahoo! was but it lost everything as it continued its journey in the modern era. At its prime, Yahoo! had a market capitalization of over $128 billion but it failed to sustain its market position and the company's market capitalization now is only $10 billion or below.

According to him, Facebook earns revenue the same way Yahoo! did. Their major chunk of revenues come from the advertising companies that bought TV and magazine ads. According to Business Insider, "They [advertisement companies] were paying inordinate sums to become Yahoo's official partners in various sectors, from greeting cards to pet stores to travel."

It is believed that Yahoo! as well as Facebook is spending money on such ads from investments made by venture capitalist. However, it was a matter of time when the craze for venture capital funding as it ended quite abruptly.

Maybe that is the reason why the CEO of Snapchat predicts that the future of Facebook might not be as good as everyone believes!

Also hackers have only one thing on their mind these days which is the vulnerability of Facebook's source code. This is an imminent threat to the integrity of the social media platform of the company. The engineers at Facebook, made a massive blunder by dumping data in Pastebin which contains information of Facebook's digital world. Previously as well the company had paved way for external sources to make its way to the source code of Facebook. 

It does not require much effort to make your way to the source code of the company as various bits and pieces of information regarding it are available on Pastebin. If these pieces of data are compiled in a more efficient manner then one can easily hack the company's source code. Not only can one find names, various commands but also valuable information is scattered haphazard manner on this platform. This information on its own does not pose a threat on this stage but in extreme cases this data can completely rupture the social media site. 

The company has established a very strong firewall system but if anybody succeeds to seep in Facebook's servers then the repercussions can be quite extreme. This also raises another question, as data is an extremely precious commodity then why Facebook has not sanitized it efficiently or does not have a strong authentication system. 

All this poses a threat on long term basis and Facebook needs to act before its too late. 

Standard Chartered Hands Pick An Ex-JPMorgan Chief As Its Own

Standard Chartered.5 (OTCMKTS:SCBFF) replaced its long serving CEO, Peter Sands amid an overhaul in its top-tier management level as troubles have continued for nearly a couple years. Reports indicated that Mr. Sands will be replaced by an ex-JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) co-CEO, Bill Winters.

The move comes at a time when the bank suffered recent blows of critical errors in its operational, strategic, and governance sector under the leadership of Mr. Sands. Investors are reported to have pushed his dismissal believing his response to penalties imposed by the US regularity authorities for disregarding certain sanctions to be lethargic, as well as less than impressive returns on commodities loans.

Mr. Winters will be taking over the reins of the bank in June 2015. Although, he will join the bank in May. He is reported to receive annual remuneration of around $10.7 million with a speculated base salary of nearly $1.7 million. According to reports, he will be reimbursed of any expenses or funds out flows as he abandons his current role as a CEO of Renshaw Bay, a UK-based hedge fund he founded after he departed from New York-based investment bank, JP Morgan.

Issues that require utmost attention by Mr. Winters are reported to be not only of cost reduction but, also to shrink the bank’s operations in Asian territory, as reported by industry experts.

Mr. Winters is regarded as “a world class banker” by Standard Chartered Chairman, John Peace. Mr. Sands holds the same view about Mr. Winters, he says, “I am delighted Bill is going to be taking the mantle from me in June.”

Mr. Sands accepted amid troubling and errors under his supervision. He said in a conference call: “We have not got everything right and of course we have faced a huge number of challenges through what has been one of the most tumultuous and turbulent periods in the history of financial markets, but I'm proud of what the bank has achieved.”

Mr. Sand’s departure is part of a much larger overhaul of Standard Chartered bank as Chairman Peace is also reported to leave along with Jaspal Bindra, who serves as the CEO of the bank’s Asian market. Other senior executives have also reported to step down in the near future.

Mr. Sands severance package is reported to total to around $12 million, comprising of un-exercised stock options. Industry analysts are speculating for the end figure to be lower as the bank has performed poorly.    

WalMart and Google ends relationship Over Local Shopping Ads

As reported in news, the relationship between two giant companies Google Inc. and WalMart stores has come to an end after the internet search company asked for the pricing and inventory data from the retail giant.
According to Wall Street Journal, WalMart was not comfortable with sharing information related to prices. Real strategy president of new builder firm said, the relation between both the companies is surfacing by the day. The disagreement between the companies is due to platform leverage struggle going on in retail. He further said, "Retailers not anymore sell products only, they are rapidly growing into technology platforms. That means that their reliance on, and relationships with, other technology platforms will continually evolve."
Walmart spokesperson said that we never talk about our discussion with suppliers. We do have versatile connection with Google Inc.
The search engine giant utilizes its Ads of inventory in order to create local stores and inventory reachable to online shopping. Google launched its service in the year 2013. To be a part of the service it asks the company's about its inventory and pricing data, however definite inventory information is not required.
As mentioned on company's website, the advertiser is required to send store data of a particular product, also daily update of price and inventory data.
The retail giant joined to avail online services last summer, and ended the link after a short period of time. Earlier last month, representatives from both the companies met to solve the issue. However, the news came put that Wal-Mart is planning to launch its own parallel service and have decided not to pay any one else for this.
WalMart has incurred billions lately to expand its online business. The retailer is extending its online contributions to almost 10 million goods and structuring its fulfillment network as an element of the investment. The company has also allocated cash for e-commerce, mobile app and website. At the time of Christmas, a feature was added to download the store map, which will help them to locate the products. The Sam Walton based company is using its online power to attract customers.
Chief Executive Officer of WalMart, Neil Ashe said on a conference call last month, "We've talked about the importance of investing in talent and the fact that we are building a technology company inside the world's largest retailer. In the past year, we have been able to build up our team to the critical mass needed to be that technology company."
Spieckerman said, as the connection between retail industry and tech is getting distorted day by day, it is not unusual that partnership between giant companies like Google and Wal-Mart gets weaken in short time period.

CVS Health Corp. Rating and price target update

Morningstar an investment research and management company has given BBB+ rating to CVS Health Corporation.  This rating represents that the health care company stands at a reasonable default risk. Morningstar also gave the company a one star rating.

Various other research firms’ analysts have also reviewed CVS Health stock. Deutsche Bank analysts upraised their target price to $109 from $100 on company’s share and also assigned a rating of Hold on February 13^th research note. Citigroup analysts restated its Hold rating and gave a new target price of $110 increased from $102 on CVS stock also on 13^th February note. Standard & Poor equity research analysts demoted the stock of the company and rated it as Hold on February 11^th research note.in the end , Cantor Fitzgerald analysts repeated it Hold rating and set a new target price of $83 on CVS Corp stock on Wednesday 11^th February note. Out of 22 research analyst covering the stock, two have given it a Sell rating, five assigned a Hold rating and remaining fifteen have rated the stock a Buy. The 12-month target price based on consensus is $98.15.

The American based company reported its October to December quarter earnings last month on 10^th February. According to which it had an earnings of $1.21 per share surpassing $1.20 per share estimation of analysts by 1 cent. It also posted revenue of $37.06 billion for last three months of the year, almost 1 billion more than consensus estimate of $36.06 billion. During the similar quarter last year, the health care company reported earnings of $1.12 per share. However, its revenue was up by 12.9% on annual basis. Overall, analysts predict that CVS will be able to capture the earnings per share figure of $5.16 for the fiscal year 2015.

The American retailer and health care company declared its quarterly dividends, to be paid on 4^th May Monday. Shareholders on board as of 24^th April will be given $0.35 dividend against each share they own. This signifies an annual dividend of $1.40 and 1.37% yield.

CVS Health Corp (NYSE:CVS) stock was trading at $101.90 on market close Friday 6^th March. The health care company has a 52 week low and high of $72.05 and $104.84 respectively. The share has a 50-day and 200-day average of $101 and $90. It has a market cap of $116.17 billion and P/E ratio equals to 25.74 with almost 4.50 million shares exchanging hand in average 30 days.

Will procter and gamble be able to perform better in second half of 2015?

 On Tuesday January 27^th, Proctor & Gamble announced its second quarter results, in which it missed the analyst estimation in terms of both earnings and revenue second time consecutively. Its earnings per share declined by 8% to $1.06 because of exchange rate volatility

The revenue from organic rose by 2%. Furthermore, procter and gamble reduced its whole year forecast to imitate the foreign exchange negative impact on its profit and overall sales.

Moreover, in order to maintain its focus on some essential strategic brands, which is very encouraging the company has planned to strip off nearly 100 brands that are not performing up to the mark. Analysts believes that with less brands company will be able to focus more on their rapid growth and will generate more values and can be managed easily.

In its attempt to act on the plan, in July last year procter and gamble sold its Asian and American pet care business to Mars followed by the European pet care to Spectrum in December. Furthermore the company has planned to exchange its Duracell batteries business with Berkshire Hathway with Berkshire’s stake in the consumer giant company. During November 2014, procter and gamble enter into a contract to sell off its Camay & Zest soap to Unilever. Both these deals are most likely to take place this year.

However, these initiatives and other structural changes to enhance the growth are not yet translated into upper class development.

The American based company is functioning in a challenging atmosphere. As international market growth is slowing down, foreign exchange volatility, turbulence in various markets in Ukraine, Russia and Middle East, import restriction in different countries has made the situation challenging for the company. All these problems are probable to endure in the upcoming quarter too.

In order to counterbalance the currency headwinds the company has revised its prices in various countries due to which management believes the market share will go down. With almost 60% of business globally, currency volatility has already affected the second quarter sales by almost 5%.

Organic sales of the company grew by 2% during the 1^st half of 2015. However, substantial foreign currency impact, loss on market share because of increasing price and macroeconomic changes in different markets is still one of the biggest challenge from which the company has to deal with in second half of 2015.

Proctor & Gamble Co. (NYSE:PG) stock was trading at a price of $84.63 on Thursday 5^th March after an increase by 0.33%.

CFO Twitter talks about new features

On Tuesday, Morgan Technology organized a Media and Telecom Conference. In that conference Chief Financial Officer of Twitter Inc. Anthony Noto talked about the sharp progress of the company to obtain the best results from its upcoming features.

Mr. Noto while talking about the latest developments said that what we had been witnessing was “Slight enhancement, but nowhere near what the opportunity is in front of us." The company has certain to improve its features for its users, and to attract additional users. In the last quarter Twitter’s active monthly users grew by only 4 million less than that of analyst’s estimation.

Mr. Noto defined a feature of newspaper theme, which is based on a difficult platform but same as “While You Were Away”, a feature introduced earlier last year which placed some tweets on a user profile if they use Twitter after some time.

Because of increasing popularity of Twitter, from January the feature time limit has been abridged to 12 hours, which now put almost three tweets depending on the person’s interests and latest activities on twitter stock page. Mr. Noto said they are trying to abridge the time gap even more, and to increase the system intellect with the intentions of elevating the feature.

Mr. Noto said, “It’s all about teaching people why they should use Twitter, but in a very telegraphic way.”

This new feature will be a more comprehensive edition of the previous idea of While You Were Away. This newspaper theme feature will assist users having urgency to see their notification on their account regularly. Talking about the practicality of the idea, it would be a time saving feature as user does not have to undergo thousands of tweets to get inside knowledge of the topic.

Earlier this week, Twitter page also declared that its videos will be entrenched in the website with an additional feature of editing and uploading.

Mr. Noto further said that Twitter had witnessed a “nice increase” in video feature numbers and also an increase in direct messages and private chat messages has been observed since December. The users have also cheered the While You Were Away feature.

Apart from the company’s continuous efforts to attract more users, it is trying to make the website user friendly to unknown audience and to new users who find it difficult to understand the website.

Lately, Twitter has started timelines, which allow fresh users to get feeds depending on their interest, gathered from user’s phone and applications. Therefore, making it easy for new users to search stuff based on their interest.

BP plc to face another lawsuit by Ohio over tank cleanup

On Monday, as reported by Bloomberg, a lawsuit has been filed against BP plc by Mike Dewine an attorney General at Ohio and Underground Storage Tank Compensation Board. The state legal representatives accused the company of taking wrongfully an amount of $33 million from the compensation fund and insurers to get rid of the leaks caused by the company’s storage tanks situated at various different gas stations.

The British oil major along with Amoco Oil and Atlantic Richfield Co, Standard Oil of Ohio, & Standard oil and affiliates are also involved in the lawsuit filed by the state board. Mr. Dewine mentioning the British oil giant said, it was same as every other company and the company must stick to the laws set by state. He further said, BP should be ready to face the music if it did not do anything about its misconduct.

According to Bloomberg, British Petroleum acquisition has provided the companies a way in to various service stations and underground tanks for storage.

According to Mr. Dewine the insurers fund and state board were built to guard the owners of the tanks with no accidental insurance, and the British oil company has misused the situation for its own purpose. Ohio attorney general said the company put out of sight its insurance and applied for reimbursement of the cleanup cost from the state board. The compensation board told that the company claim of $22 billion is still in the pipeline.

The England based Oil Company, who is already finding it difficult to maintain its liquidity; this is considered as a major setback for them. With declining crude oil prices from past 7 months to almost 50% and BP is still stuck in the oil spill lawsuit, which is still in progress and US Federal court is expected to impose a penalty of $13.7 billion on London oil giant.

The company has now considered value program, based on quality instead of quantity. It has reduced its capital expenditures along with a substantial ct in its workforce. Bearing in mind all these sacrifices, these lawsuits will hurt the company’s reputation in front of its shareholders.

As reported by Wall Street Journal, Jason Ryan a Spokesperson at BP plc. said the company will face the lawsuit and its actions will be based on good faith.

BP plc. Stock was trading at $41.74 at market close on Tuesday after it went up by 1.07%.