February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Stephen McKinley
Riverdeep, Ireland’s Internet learning company, has acquired the U.S.-based Teacher Universe for a reported $13.5 million.
The deal involves Riverdeep paying $1 million up front, then taking on certain liabilities as well as issuing around 500,000 new shares in exchange for Teacher Universe assets.
Teacher Universe provides learning materials to U.S. schools and teachers.
Speaking to ENN.ie, technology analyst Conor Walsh said, "This is a good acquisition for Riverdeep."
"This is a classic Riverdeep deal. They have been very successful at developing an indirect sales force through partnering with companies to get their products out there," Walsh walsh.
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Riverdeep also said that a separate part of the deal had been worked out to the effect that Teacher Universe’s parent company, Knowledge Universe, would use Riverdeep as its learning partner of choice.
Cork brokers stumble
Cork-based W. and R. Murrough, the troubled stockbrokers, are still trying to find suitable investors. The High Court has extended the deadline for the company. No figure has been announced indicating just how much debt the company has, and clients and customers are being referred to Bloxham stockbrokers for transactions and day-to-day business.
Insurance brokers’ revamp
All 5,500 registered Irish insurance brokers have received questionaires from the Irish Central Bank. In order to continue in business, the forms must be returned by June 30.
Many smaller brokers are predicted to go out of business altogether, or to agree to work for some of the larger firms. The shake-up is due to the Central Bank’s plans to ensure the industry is being run professionally, and to promote consumer confidence.
Property price madness
Property inflation continues to raise concerns in Ireland as latest figures show an increase in prices since April 2000, of 18.4 percent, although the rate is now slowing for the fourth consecutive month.
"Overall the results show an encouraging trend toward an easing in the rate of growth of house prices in Ireland," said Niall O’Grady of Irish Life and Permanent.
Irish Permanent’s monthly house price index shows the rate of increase year on year in April dropped from 19.1 percent in March. Prices increased 1.2 percent per month from March to April, compared to 1.3 percent the previous month. The average price paid by a first time buyer in April was £125,566, compared with £104,052 a year earlier.
Internet traffic figures
Latest statistics show that Ryanair is one of the most popular Irish websites, with over 31 million page impressions in the month of April, beating the Irish Times’ Ireland.com, which came second at 24 million page impressions.
RTE came third with a much lower 6.7 million page impressions, followed in order by Unison, Oceanfree.net and the Irish Examiner. Other high scores were achieved by job finder site Monster.ie and Oygen.ie. Statistics were recorded by New Medialive.
Bord Gáis may buy UK company
Ireland’s Bord Gáis has been shortlisted to buy a French-owned gas pipline business based in the U.K.
According to the Irish Times, however, Bord Gáis was facing stiff competition, and was "not in pole position." A vague price of "millions" had been mentioned for the pipeline company, Elf Connect.
Owning, building and operating gas pipes, Elf Connect has connections to more than 120,000 homes in the UK and that makes it one of the largest in the country. Its primary focus is to build connections into new housing developments.
U.S. slowdown spreads
After speculation that the slowdown in the U.S. economy may be confined to North America, there is plenty of evidence in the last week that this is not the case.
Baltimore and Horizon both performed poorly this week, and more than 300 jobs were lost from both companies combined.
But some analysts are still pointing to gains for canny investors — if they’re prepared to take bigger risks, of course. There are plenty of Irish high-tech companies that have shown strong business models and have not suffered profit warnings in the last few months. Tech analyst Barry Dixon of Davy Stockbrokers points to Riverdeep as an example. Dixon attributes Riverdeep’s success (and recent expansion in the U.S.) to the U.S. government spending on education recently.
Horizon’s decline this week makes it an attractive stock. Dixon points out that Baltimore and Trintech both have pots of cash that could see them through quite a few years, and ought to be more than enough to sustain them through to a recovery sooner or later.