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Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) have reached a definitive agreement, with Cisco planning to purchase Splunk for $157 per share in cash, amounting to a total transaction value of approximately $28 billion. This announcement caused Cisco’s stock to drop by nearly 5%, while Splunk shares jumped more than 20% pre-market today.
Once the acquisition is finalized, Gary Steele, the current President and CEO of Splunk, will join Cisco’s Executive Leadership Team, reporting to Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins. The transaction is anticipated to close by the end of the third quarter of the 2024 calendar year. Cisco expects the acquisition to have a positive impact on cash flow and gross margin in the first fiscal year after completion, with non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) becoming accretive in the second year.
Raymond James analysts reaffirmed their Strong Buy rating on Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ:LULU) and maintained a price target of $440.00.
The analysts’ assessment highlighted Lululemon’s status as one of the highest-quality companies in the global brand landscape. They recognize Lululemon as a robust and still-evolving brand with substantial growth opportunities.
The analysts pointed out that Lululemon boasts one of the highest growth rates compared to its peers as it continues to expand its core business and diversify across various geographies, categories, and sales channels. Additionally, the company’s operating margins rank among the highest for global brands, and the analysts believe there is room for further expansion, driven by strong revenue growth, which should lead to earnings-per-share (EPS) growth surpassing revenue growth.
Mizuho analysts are enthusiastic about Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) as a strong long-term investment. They see the company as a compelling opportunity due to under-ownership and the positive impact of NAND production cutbacks on spot pricing.
The analysts believe that Western Digital’s NAND business is poised for growth, with rising spot pricing and increased NAND demand from smartphone manufacturers. Additionally, they noted the impending split of Western Digital’s business, with the NAND division set to merge with Kioxia, potentially boosting its valuation.
Deutsche Bank analysts revised their position on the software company Five9 (NASDAQ:FIVN) in a note issued on Thursday. The firm has upgraded its rating from Hold to Buy and increased the price target for Five9’s shares from $75 to $80 per share. This adjustment suggests a potential 20% upside for the stock.
The analysts explained that the recent strength in bookings is expected to reinvigorate the company’s revenue growth, and the current valuation is roughly half of what it was a year ago.
Earlier in the week, Canaccord analysts also expressed a positive view on Five9, stating that the stock appears undervalued and is a high-conviction buy in a market that is increasingly embracing AI.
While Deutsche Bank acknowledges certain risks and bearish arguments, including potential short-term macroeconomic challenges and concerns related to AI and automation, it believes that the recent share price pullback creates a more attractive risk-reward profile for investors.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is reportedly considering ending its reliance on Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) as a supplier of high-end chips, specifically the AI chips known as tensor processing units (TPUs). The Information reported that Google is contemplating an in-house design approach for TPUs, which could be implemented as early as 2027.
Following the report, Broadcom shares fell more than 2% intra-day today.
This potential shift is driven by a pricing dispute between Google and Broadcom, prompting Google’s executives to seek alternatives and explore the development of its own TPUs. Broadcom’s CEO, Hock Tan, recently mentioned that generative AI might account for over 25% of the company’s semiconductor revenue in the coming year.
If Google decides to terminate its partnership with Broadcom, it could lead to substantial cost savings for the tech giant, potentially reaching billions of dollars annually.
Dallas Wings forward Satou Sabally was named the WNBA’s 2023 Most Improved Player on Thursday.
Sabally averaged career highs with 18.6 points, 8.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.8 steals in 38 starts this season. That’s up from 11.3 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 0.5 steals in 2022.
Sabally, 25, received 37 of 60 votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. Los Angeles Sparks guard Jordin Canada finished second (18 votes) and Chicago Sky forward Alanna Smith was third (three votes).
Sabally’s breakthrough season helped the Wings finish 22-18 in the regular season before sweeping the Atlanta Dream in the first round of the ongoing playoffs.
The No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft, the 6-foot-4 Sabally owns four-year career averages of 15.3 points, 7.1 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.1 steals in 82 games (72 starts). She was an All-Star in 2021 and 2023.
Sabally is the second player in franchise history to win Most Improved Player honors. Skylar Diggins-Smith earned the honor with the Tulsa Shock in 2014.
AlphaTauri is retaining drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda for the 2024 Formula One season, ESPN reported Thursday.
The immediate future of rookie Liam Lawson remains in doubt, however, per the report.
The announcement could be made official before Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.
Ricciardo, 34, is an eight-time F1 winner. The Australian joined AlphaTauri on loan from Red Bull Racing in July and replaced Nyck de Vries.
Tsunoda, 23, started racing for AlphaTauri in 2021 and is still looking for his first podium finish. The Japanese driver is currently 17th in the F1 driver standings, tops on his team.
Lawson, 21, has been filling in since Ricciardo broke a bone in his hand before last month’s Dutch Grand Prix. The New Zealander finished ninth at last Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix to earn his first career F1 points.
Rupert Murdoch, the iconic media mogul who has shaped the global media landscape for decades, has stepped down as chairman of both 21st Century Fox (now known as “Fox Corporation” and News Corporation. This historic development marks the end of an era and raises questions about the future direction of these media giants. Only a select few Republicans can equal Murdoch’s decades-long dominance in the Republican Party. While Rupert Murdoch’s influence on the media landscape cannot be denied, it is a legacy that has often been a source of controversy. Critics have accused him of using his media outlets to promote his political views and sway public opinion. His approach to journalism has sparked numerous debates about the role of media in shaping public perception and influencing political discourse.
Murdoch, who is 92, wrote a memo to employees and said, “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change.” “But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams.”
Fox Corporation, originally 21st Century Fox, includes, among other things, 20th Century Studios, Fox News, and Fox Sports. The business flourished under Murdoch’s direction and rose to prominence in the cable news and entertainment industries. Particularly Fox News, which established itself as a powerful conservative voice in the business, played a significant influence in reshaping the American media landscape.
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Murdoch’s media conglomerate also includes News Corporation, which is the parent company of several publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian. Murdoch had a global impact on the newspaper business since his publications were read by people all over the world.
According to the Fox Corporation, Murdoch founded Australia’s first national newspaper about ten years after receiving his father’s local newspaper from Adelaide, Australia, in 1952.
In the late 1960s, he went on to acquire the UK-based News of the World and The Sun, and shortly after that, he expanded his media empire to the United States by purchasing the New York Post, New York Magazine, and The Village Voice.
He made a significant investment in film and television in 1985 when he bought 21st Century Fox and a number of local TV stations across the country. The Fox Television Group was established the next year, and ten years later, the business introduced Fox News, according to the Fox Corporation.
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The selection of the ideal leadership to continue Rupert Murdoch’s legacy will be one of the main difficulties for Fox Corporation and News Corporation. His family has contributed significantly to the business; therefore, the decision of his successor will be severely scrutinized. It remains to be seen whether the new leadership adheres to the conventional principles and tactics of the Murdoch era or chooses a different course.
Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch and now the CEO of Fox Corporation, will take over as the sole chairman of both businesses.
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The first time Heidi Sweeney began hallucinating, the voices in her head told her Orange County’s Huntington Beach was where she would be safe. There, behind the bikini-clad crowds playing volleyball and riding beach cruisers, she slept in homeless encampments, then beside a bush outside a liquor store, drinking vodka to drown out the din only she could hear.
For years, she refused help, insisting to all who offered, “I’m not sick,” until police arrested her for petty theft and public drunkenness. A judge gave her an ultimatum: jail or treatment. She chose treatment.
“I’m so thankful that they did that,” said Sweeney, now 52. “I needed that. I think there’s others out there that need it, too.”
If she hadn’t been compelled to get care, Sweeney said, she wouldn’t be alive today, back at work and reunited with her husband. It’s why she supports California’s new civil CARE Courts that will launch this fall in eight counties, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange, followed by the rest of the state in 2024.
Under the new system, family members and first responders can ask county judges to order people with psychotic illness into treatment, even if they are not unhoused or haven’t committed a crime. A judge will then determine if a person meets criteria for the program and may oversee a care agreement or compel a treatment plan. That treatment plan could even include involuntary commitment.
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The bill creating the program sailed through the state legislature with near-unanimous support last year amid growing frustration from voters over the state’s increasing number of homeless people, even as it drew vehement opposition from disability rights groups, who argued CARE Courts’ hallmark — compelling people who have done nothing wrong into mental health care — is a violation of civil rights.
That tension — between those who advocate for treatment being voluntary and those who say the status quo allows people to die in the streets “with their rights on” — is playing out all over the state of California. In Orange County, officials are threading a delicate needle: how to convince people to accept care without coercion, particularly when their illness causes them to believe they are not ill.
“We don’t want to punish people,” said Maria Hernandez, the presiding judge for Orange County Superior Court. “We want them to maintain their dignity.”
Orange County is expecting between 900 and 1,500 residents will be eligible for CARE Court in any given year, according to the county public defender’s office. Local lawyers, judges, and health officials have all aligned in designing their program with a distinct patient focus, endeavoring to make the process as benign and nonthreatening as possible.
Hernandez said that means modeling the new civil court after the county’s other collaborative courts, where judges often lose the black robe and come down off the bench to work with people, eye to eye.
One prototype, she said, is her Young Adult Court, where, on a day in June, the mood was downright jovial. Defendants and their family members were chatting and laughing, munching on snacks laid out on a table in the back as three young men “graduated” from the diversion program.
“Judge Hernandez is so awesome,” said Abraham, 25, a graduate of the program, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he was charged with a felony that has since been expunged from his record. “I don’t even look at her as the judge. She’s just like a mom figure. She’s only trying to push you to be the better you.”
A minute later, Hernandez walked through the aisle of the courtroom and gave Abraham a hug.
Even if CARE Court is overseen by a judge like Hernandez, patient advocates object to the idea. Orlando Vera, who lives with bipolar disorder, said helping a vulnerable person heal from mental illness shouldn’t involve dragging them into a courtroom.
“It’s not a place you resolve your emotions. It is a very business-oriented environment. So I do feel that this is not the place for it,” Vera said, adding, “Can we stop it? I would say we can’t.”
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After advocates failed to persuade the state Supreme Court to block the program on constitutional grounds, some started referring to gearing up for the rollout of CARE Court as “disaster preparedness,” equating it with a devastating earthquake or wildfire.
Peer Voices of Orange County, a group Vera co-founded and runs, plans to install patient advocates at the courthouse to attend all CARE Court hearings.
“Our focus is how do we support those that are going through the system,” he said. “We need to be their voice.”
Orange County behavioral health director Veronica Kelley is sympathetic to advocates’ concerns. She said CARE Court is not the program she would have created to improve the state’s mental health system. But she serves at the will of the governor and other elected officials who control her budget.
“So we end up building the Winchester Mystery House,” she said, referring to the 100-year-old mansion in San Jose known for its mazelike layout. “It is a structure that was OK, but then it just started adding hallways to nowhere and basements that are on top of the building. That’s what our system looks like.”
Kelley is trying to shape the new court process into something its critics can accept. This is why she wanted Orange County to go first: “so we can help craft it into something that’s not another colossal waste of time and funds, and that we don’t destroy the people we’re trying to serve at the same time,” she told a roomful of patient advocates during a meeting of the state Patients Rights Committee, held in Santa Ana.
Under the CARE legislation, county courts are allowed to fine public behavioral health agencies $1,000 a day if they can’t find a patient and enroll them in treatment by certain deadlines.
Kelley said her county’s judges have agreed to give her staff the time and extensions they need to do their jobs well. She also vowed that no one who declined services in her county would be institutionalized involuntarily, even though the new legislation allows it.
“If someone agrees to do something of their own accord, it is far more probable that there will be long-term success and long-term commitment to the services being provided,” she said.
Kelley pointed to the county’s success with another civil court process, established by Laura’s Law in 2002, in which, for every person involved in court-ordered outpatient care, another 20 accepted treatment willingly.
She said the county has the same goal for CARE Court, with the focus on finding a treatment plan people accept voluntarily, before a judge has to order it.
This article is from a partnership that includes KQED, NPR, and KFF Health News.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
April Dembosky, KQED
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988; Llame al 988 (para ayuda en español) Use Lifeline Chat on the web (English only)
The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Call or text 988 to connect with a trained crisis counselor.
Veterans Crisis Line Use Veterans Crisis Chat on the web
The Veterans Crisis Line is a free, confidential resource that connects veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a trained responder. The service is available to all veterans and those who support them, even if they are not registered with the VA or enrolled in VA healthcare.
Disaster Distress Helpline
Call or text 1-800-985-5990
The disaster distress helpline provides immediate crisis counseling for people who are experiencing emotional distress related to any natural or human-caused disaster. The helpline is free, multilingual, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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