Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

#1

Post by mikece » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 1:49 PM UTC

Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab
9to5mac.com

Re: Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

#2

Post by BelleOfTheBall » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

Seems like they will really push VisionOS, which is cool. Hopefully this leads to innovative ways to use it, because those initial videos of pasta timers and "smarter" vacuuming were not at all what I wanted.

Re: Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

#3

Post by sharpshadow » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

Do they have to disclose how much they paid?

Re: Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

#4

Post by ru552 » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

sharpshadow wrote: post #3

Do they have to disclose how much they paid?

Not if the acquired isn't public.

Re: Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab

#5

Post by airstrike » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

sharpshadow wrote: post #3

Do they have to disclose how much they paid?

As a rule of thumb, not if immaterial to their financials, which in often the case for Apple given their size and M&A strategy (they rarely go for any sizeable acquisitions)

Sometimes you can find a reference to it in the buyer's the next quarterly (10-Q) or annual (10-K) filing, but since again this is small, Apple will likely only mention it in passing and any sum paid will either be missing or lumped with a bunch of items to make it undiscernable. No upside in disclosing

And then there's the issue of value vs dollars. Even if we knew how much they paid in dollars, we wouldn't know how much it was worth without some metric for what they bought.

The vanilla public-to-public case for stable industries like widget manufacturers is one company buys another for their future earnings or cashflows, hence ratios like P/E (Price per share divided by earnings per share) or Enterprise Value/EBITDA ((Market Cap+Debt+SimilarStuff)/EBITDA, with the usual caveat that EBITDA is not a perfect proxy for cash flow but it's somewhat more observable)

In this case they likely bought IP and possibly some talent, so valuation there is a bit different. I don't have much experience with acquihires but I guess it just comes down to how much these specific folks required to take the deal rather than walk away...