Fox To Acquire Majority Credible Labs Stake For Fintech Marketplace

seekingalpha

By Donovan Jones (seekingalpha)
Quick Take

Fox (FOXA) announced it has agreed to acquire a controlling interest in Credible Labs for $265 million.

Credible Labs operates an online multi-lender financial services marketplace.

With the deal, FOXA hopes to combine Credible with its Fox Business and Television Station assets and leverage those audiences for Credible’s fintech marketplace.

Target Company

San Francisco, California-based Credible was founded in 2012 to develop an online multi-lender marketplace that allows borrowers to receive competitive loan offers from lenders.

Management is headed by Founder and CEO Stephen Dash, who was previously Investment Director at M.H. Carnegie & Co.

Investors have invested at least $25.3 million in the company and include Ron Suber, Carthona Capital, Regal Funds Management, AMTD Group, Scott Langmack, Soul Htite, Cthulhu Ventures, and Redbus Group among others.

Market & Competition

According to a market research report by TransUnion, in 2018, the unsecured personal loan market reached an all-time-high of $138 billion, marking a year-over-year [yoy] growth of 17%.

During the same year, fintech companies made up about 38% of the personal loans market.

In contrast, traditional banks’ and credit unions’ shares accounted for 28% and 21% of the market in 2018, representing a drop from 40% and 31% in 2013, respectively.

Major fintech firms that provide personal loans include:

Lendio
LendKey
Upstart Network
Nav

Acquisition Terms and Financial

Fox disclosed the acquisition price and terms as an acquisition of 67% of the Credible Labs equity for $265 million in cash to Credible’s shareholders.

Additionally, Fox committed to invest ‘up to $USD 75 million of growth capital to Credible over approximately two years.’

A review of the firm’s most recent 10-K filing indicates that as of June 30, 2019, Fox had $3.2 billion in cash and equivalents and $9.6 billion in liabilities, of which borrowings totaled $6.8 billion.

Free cash flow for the twelve months ended June 30, 2019, was $2.3 billion.

Since the stock began trading in mid-March as a result of the spin-off from the sale of its film and TV assets to Disney, the price has dropped about 20%.

Commentary

Fox is acquiring Credible to integrate it into its Fox Business and Fox Television Stations business segments.

As Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch stated in the deal announcement, “Credible, which has tremendous synergy with core brands such as Fox Business and Fox Television Stations and will benefit from our audience reach and scale, will drive strategic growth, further develop our brand verticals and deepen consumer relationships.”

Beyond that generality, Fox didn’t provide any meaningful details about how the deal would be synergistic.

One must assume that Fox wants to reach deeper beyond simply being a media firm and become a direct provider of marketplace services, in this case, financial services.

It is notable that the new Fox’ (post-Disney acquisition of its film & TV assets) first significant foray is in acquiring an Internet fintech marketplace company.

Fox wants to combine it with its existing media properties to leverage its existing audience into this fintech marketplace.

While the deal won’t immediately move the stock price needle for FOXA, it provides investors with a directional signal about Murdoch’s intentions for the future with the new slimmed-down Fox.

Original Article

Murdoch’s Fox Corp to buy fintech Credible Labs in $397 million deal

Reuters

By Paulina Duran (reuters)

SYDNEY (Reuters) – U.S. broadcaster Fox Corp (FOXA.O) on Monday agreed to buy Credible Labs Inc (CRD.AX) in a deal valuing the online finance broker at $397 million, as the Murdoch-controlled firm hunts for growth following the sale of its film and TV assets to Disney.

In a challenging media landscape, the San-Francisco-based Credible Labs, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, gives Fox exposure to an online service that matches personal borrowers and lenders seeking to service the $1.6 trillion a year U.S. mortgage market.

“The acquisition of Credible underscores Fox Corporation’s innovative digital strategy that emphasizes direct interactions with our consumers,” Lachlan Murdoch, Fox Corp’s executive chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

Credible’s online platform provides credit checks to borrowers seeking mortgages and student and personal loans, and uses that information to show them pre-qualified loan rates and refinancing options that they can click through to obtain.

The fintech company had synergies with FOX Business and FOX Television businesses and would join its FOX Sports app, live and on demand content and FOX Now, Fox said, which would help both companies to grow.

Rupert Murdoch’s newly spun-off media company Fox Corp debuted on the Nasdaq in March following the $71 billion sale of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc’s film and television assets to Walt Disney Co (DIS.N).

The smaller firm now relies on costly live cable sports and news in an increasingly competitive television industry.

PREMATURE SALE

Credible said its shareholders will receive A$2.21 in cash per CHESS depository interest (CDI), valuing it at A$585 million less than two years after it listed in Australia at just over half that value.

Fox’s offer price represents a 7% premium to its last close of A$2.06 on August 2.

Majority shareholder, founder and Chief Executive Stephen Dash would remain head of the new Fox subsidiary and would exchange shares equal to one-third of Credible’s outstanding common stock into units of a newly created Fox subsidiary.

The transaction is subject to shareholder approval. Credible’s board of directors – who own a combined 13% of shares in the company – unanimously backed the proposal.

Some minority shareholders were surprised by the approach and feared missing out on the potential growth of the company if they sell now, said Bell Potter analyst Damien Williamson, who values Credible at A$2.78 per share.

“Premature is the word to describe how some minority shareholders see the transaction,” said Williamson. “This company is operating in a very large market and has the potential to do really well.”

Williamson said there was potential for Credible’s larger American rivals, such as Lendingtree Inc (TREE.O), to launch competing bids for the company.

Shares in Credible rose 6.3% percent to A$2.19 in a broader market that was down 1.8%.

Original Article

Postmates’ self-driving delivery rover will see with Ouster’s lidar

techcrunch.com

By Kirsten Korosec (techcrunch.com)

Postmates’ cooler-inspired autonomous delivery robot, which will roll out commercially in Los Angeles later this year, will rely on lidar sensors from Ouster, a burgeoning two-year-old startup that recently raised $60 million in equity and debt funding.

Postmates unveiled the first generation of its self-described “autonomous rover” — known as Serve — late last year. The vehicle uses cameras and light detection and ranging sensors called lidar to navigate sidewalks, as well as a backup human who remotely monitors the rover and can take control if needed.

A new second-generation version made its debut onstage earlier this month at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech event. This newer version looks identical to the original version except a few minor details, including a change in lidar sensors. The previous version was outfitted with sensors from Velodyne, a company that has long dominated the lidar industry.

The supplier contract is notable for Ouster, a startup trying to carve out market share from the giant Velodyne and stand out from a global pack of lidar companies that now numbers close to 70. And it could prove substantial for the company if Postmates takes Serve to other cities as planned.

Lidar measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car. It’s considered by most in the self-driving car industry a key piece of technology required to safely deploy robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles.

Ouster’s strategy has been to cast a wider net for customers by selling its lidar sensors to other industries, including robotics, drones, mapping, defense, building security, mining and agriculture companies. It’s an approach that Waymo is also pursuing for its custom lidar sensors, which will be sold to companies outside of self-driving cars. Waymo will initially target robotics, security and agricultural technology.

Ouster’s business model, along with its tech, has helped it land 437 customers to date and raise a total of $90 million.

The contract with Postmates is its first major customer announcement. COAST Autonomous announced earlier this week that it was using Ouster sensors for its a low-speed autonomous shuttles. Self-driving truck companies Kodiak and Ike Robotics have also been using the sensors this year.

Ouster, which has 125 employees, uses complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology in its OS1 sensors, the same tech found in consumer digital cameras and smartphones. The company has announced four lidar sensors to date, with resolutions from 16 to 128 channels, and two product lines, the OS-1 and OS-2.

Original Article

Unilever and SAP lead £4m investment round in digital reward platform WeGift

City A.M.

By Michael Searles (City A.M.)

The likes of SAP and Unilever have led a £4m investment round into London startup WeGift, which is aiming to become the first real-time digital reward platform.

The company secured the £4m Series A funding, which was also led by venture capital firm Stride, as it also reported a 500 per cent growth in annual revenue.

WeGift plans to use the funds to increase the scale of its operations, improve its technology platform, and support its expansion into the US.

“Employees and customers alike expect consumer-like experiences from businesses,” said SAP managing director Ram Jambunathan. “Being able to provide those experiences is a key driver of retention and satisfaction.

“But today, businesses rely largely on archaic, manual processes for rewards. WeGift can uniquely enable customers to provide appealing experiences from incentives to reimbursements, which is well-aligned with SAP’s distinctive ability to leverage operational data and drive experience management.”

Meanwhile, Unilever Ventures said WeGift had “huge opportunity to leverage their technology across the consumer goods industry”.

Other investors included Simon Franks of the Redbus Group and Zoopla founder, Alex Chesterman.

WeGift uses cloud-based technology to allow businesses to automate sending digital value in real-time rather than relying on manually sending rewards on cards or in the post.

Original Article

WeGift, the digital rewards platform, raises £4M Series A

techcrunch.com

By Steve O’Hear (techcrunch)

WeGift, the U.K. startup that has developed a platform to let businesses easily issue e-gift cards and other digital rewards, has closed £4 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Stride.VC — the relatively new early-stage venture capital firm founded by Fred Destin and Harry Stebbings — alongside a number of other investors including SAP.iO fund, Unilever Ventures, James Hind (founder of Carwow,) and Eamon Jubbawy (co-founder of Onfido).

The startup’s previous backers include Alex Chesterman, Charlie Songhurst, Simon Franks, Ascension Ventures, and Fuel Ventures.

“Currently payments are a one way street,” WeGift founder and CEO Aron Alexander tells TechCrunch. “Payments technology is built to enable businesses to take money from consumers but it doesn’t let businesses send money to consumers.

“We’ve created a new category of digital non-cash rewards to power customer acquisition, retention and loyalty globally: the ‘Twilio for e-gift cards’”.

Alexander says that historically businesses would offer a physical reward to power these use cases. For example, “open a bank account and get a free toaster (for my generation it was a free Filofax). In comparison, he says that e-gift cards are more appealing to consumers because they’re “easier to deliver than merchandise, they don’t get lost in the mail and they can spend it on what they want”.

There are upsides for the businesses handing out digital rewards, too. They include bulk percentage discounts when purchasing e-gift cards from retailers, and negating the need to ask for a customer’s bank account details. Most importantly, says Alexander, “you can track how they affect the customer journey”.

However, the problem with using e-gift cards at scale is that the technology infrastructure to automate orders and delivery is missing, meaning that it remains quite a manual process that often falls back on emails, CSV files and PDFs “This is what we are changing… [by automating] the issuing process of non-cash rewards,” explains the WeGift founder.

The resulting WeGift cloud-based platform offers an open API to enable businesses to automate sending digital rewards, on-demand and in real-time. “We give them instant access to a huge choice of rewards and payouts, an ever-growing network of more than 500 brand partners, across 26 markets and 20 currencies, in real-time,” adds Alexander.

Stride.VC’s Destin says digital rewards is a “messy, fragmented industry with broken processes, prone to errors and leakage, aged technology stacks and plenty of misalignment and distrust between the players”. It is also an industry dominated in the U.S. by two incumbents with a legacy in the physical gift card space and therefore ripe for disruption.

“The business model is well understood,” writes Destin in a Medium post. “Think Stripe, applied to non-cash payouts. Robust APIs, real-time capabilities, disruptive pricing, transparency”.

Meanwhile, WeGift says the Series A will enable the company to deliver on its vision of create “the world’s first” real-time infrastructure for digital rewards and incentives. Specifically, the funding will be used to further scale WeGift’s operations, support expansion to the U.S, and to continue investing in its technology platform.

Original Article

Peerspace Launches 2.0 iPhone App For Instant Bookings Of Hourly Event, Meeting and Production Rentals

prnewswire

By Peerspace

SAN FRANCISCO, June 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Peerspace, the world’s largest marketplace for hourly rentals of unique spaces for events, meetings, photo shoots, and media productions, today announces the 2.0 version of their iPhone app now available on the Apple App Store. Peerspace makes it easy for anyone to find and rent inspiring spaces by the hour for meetings, events, photo shoots and more. Peerspace unlocks significant income for property owners for their facilities, galleries, offices, and spaces – which may otherwise remain empty or underutilized seasonally or on certain days of the week.

Over 10,000 venues are available on Peerspace for hourly rental throughout the United States with a focus on metros including San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Atlanta – with more locales slated to be added throughout 2019.

New Peerspace 2.0 app features include expanded location search and activity selection, advanced filtering by guest capacity, price, amenities and more, the ability to search by activity type, and Instant Booking – a new way to easily book the desired venue. For more information please visit, www.peerspace.com.

“Increasingly, we see our customers book their meetings and events on-the-go,” said Eric Shoup, CEO at Peerspace. “We believe the future is where booking and hosting events is so easy that it can all be done with a few taps on your phone. Our 2.0 app is a big step towards that vision.”

Peerspace’s expanding catalog of unique spaces and locations range from an authentic Brooklyn Coffee Shop to a 1906 Historic Church in Pasadena, California to a Downtown Chicago office in one of the nation’s tallest buildings and a 75 Acre Horse Ranch outside of Houston.

For event and meeting planners, Peerspace removes the hassles of intricate booking negotiations and paperwork, while Peerspace’s expert support provides knowledgeable guidance and service to make sure events go off without a hitch, available 7 days a week.

Peerspace 2.0 features include:

Instantly book a space
Entirely updated design
Crisp, high-resolution location imagery
Search by any location, select activity types, and even your specific date and time
Advanced, specific filters to help match you to the best space
Communicate on the go with hosts
Easily manage bookings directly from your phone
For more information on hosting, or to sign up to make your space available through Peerspace, please visit: https://www.peerspace.com/host

Visit Peerspace on Instagram by visiting: https://www.instagram.com/peerspace

About Peerspace
Peerspace provides access to cities’ best places to meet, create and celebrate, removing the hassle of securing a space for events while making it easy for anyone to rent out their space. The Peerspace marketplace opens the door to thousands of spaces available at all price points – from lofts and mansions to storefronts and studios – so people have a choice of places to get together. By making their space available to an audience of millions, Peerspace makes it easy for both individuals and businesses to safely share and earn extra income from their space.

Founded in April of 2014, Peerspace is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The company’s investors include Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Structure Capital, Carthona Capital, and 31VENTURES.

Original Article

Cleo grabs $10 mln in Balderton Capital-led round

pehub.com

By Iris Dorbian (pehub.com)

London-based Cleo, a digital assistant that helps people manage their finances, has raised $10 million in funding. Balderton Capital led the round.

PRESS RELEASE

London, 21 September 2018

Cleo, a digital assistant that helps people manage their finances, has secured $10m in investment to further its mission of becoming the global interface for money. Users securely connect their bank accounts to Cleo, who sits on top, giving them personalised insight into their spending data. Predominantly millennials, Cleo’s users talk to her in Facebook Messenger, where she creates a daily relationship between them and their money.

Cleo has over 600,000 users, with 94% aged under-35. The AI has a fun, wry, and relatable personality which is helping to drive its rapid growth among millennials. Designed to help young people save, Cleo sets targets, tracks your spending, puts away savings automatically, and answers questions instantly and intelligently.

The latest $10m of investment funding brings Cleo’s total investment raised to $15m, since being founded in 2016. The round was led by Balderton Capital, Europe’s leading Series A investor, who joined a world-leading set of existing backers that include seed fund LocalGlobe, who led Cleo’s seed round, as well as angels that include Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, Taavet Hinrikus, founder of TransferWise and Simon Franks, co-founder of LoveFilm.

Cleo is now set to launch its own range of financial products. CEO Barney Hussey-Yeo points out that “from overdraft fees to credit cards, the traditional range of financial products doesn’t work for this generation. The model of retail banking is not set up for the people it serves. Cleo’s changing that.” The company will continue to expand internationally, following a successful launch in North America in April 2018, which saw 350,000 people sign up within four months. Hussey-Yeo notes that: “Cleo is designed to solve a global problem. There’s an arms race going on to become the financial interface for this generation. A Google-size company will emerge in the next five years that achieves that.”

Rob Moffat, partner at Balderton Capital, agrees: “In the future, people may not use a traditional bank account as their primary financial interface. Cleo has managed to strike the perfect balance between education and entertainment, bringing a unique personality that keeps users coming back. We believe that Cleo has the team and product to become the leading global player in the coming years.”

About Cleo: Cleo is a fintech startup based in Shoreditch, London. Cleo interacts securely with other banks’ accounts and credit cards, using Artificial Intelligence to help users manage their money, budget, and save for the future. Having launched in the UK in late 2016, Cleo has expanded to the US and Canada this year, and will be looking to grow internationally. Cleo’s backers include Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe, Entrepreneur First, and the founders of Skype, TransferWise, Climate Corporation, Zoopla, Lovefilm, Wonga, Songkick, Moonfruit, creative agency Albion and MMC Ventures.

Original Article

Perlego raises $4.8M for its ‘Spotify for textbooks’

techcrunch.com

By Steve O’Hear (techcrunch.com)

Perlego, which has been dubbed the ‘Spotify for textbooks,’ has closed $4.8 million in finding. Leading the round is ADV, with participation from existing angel investors, including Simon Franks (co-founder of Lovefilm), Alex Chesterman (founder of Zoopla), and Peter Hinssen.

To be able to do this, it works with 650 publishers, including big names like Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Macmillan Higher Education, and Cengage Learning. Publishers receive 65 percent of each subscription on a consumption basis.

“Textbook prices have increased more than fifteen-fold since 1970, or three times the rate of inflation,” Perlego co-founder and CEO Van Malderen tells TechCrunch. “In the U.K., the average university student spends £439 a year on textbooks. This is only exacerbating the cost of higher education and the debt burden on students, which is set to rise again this year in the U.K.”.

In turn, Perlego says it helps publishers monetise their content to a large segment of price-sensitive students that would otherwise buy their books from the used-books market or download pirated copies. It also supplies publishers with detailed data on the consumption of titles.

“We are true subscription model,” adds Van Malderen. “For £12 per month you get unlimited access to the best textbooks. We do not operate a complex leasing model and publishers benefit [through] data collection, reduced piracy, no cannibalization from second-hand print sales”.

Meanwhile, Perlego says it will use the new funding to grow the team and support the company’s growth across the U.K. and Europe. It will also further invest in developing its product for students and professionals.

In addition, Perlego has joined Founders Factory this month as part of its edtech accelerator programme, which is backed by Holtzbrinck Macmillan one of the world’s leading academic publishers.

Original Article

Perlego’s ‘Spotify for textbooks’ will solve your student textbook woes

standard.co.uk

By Amelia Heathman (standard.co.uk)

Don’t choose between textbooks and food again thanks to Perlego

In just a few weeks, the UK’s new and returning university students will be arriving at their digs, getting schedules, and buying brand new books for the year.

But with the increasing costs of textbooks, learning is becoming evermore expensive. Indeed, research by the US Census Bureau showed that prices increased more than 800 per cent from 1978 to 2014. This means students will be forced to make decisions on a fairly critical aspect of their education, based on what they can, and can’t, afford.

This is the problem a new ed-tech start-up Perlego wants to solve.

Set up by two 25-year olds, Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, it aims to act like Spotify – only for textbooks. Perlego offers a subscription model that gives students access to the books they need in order to complete their degree.

The thinking behind it is making educational content accessible for all, says CEO Van Malderen.

“In this digital age, we believe that anyone should be able to learn anything at any time. Knowledge should be more accessible, not locked behind sky-high price tags and tuition fees,” he said.

For a subscription price of £12 a month, students can get access to over 200,000 eBooks across all the major subjects including social sciences, engineering, law, medicine and engineering. You can find books from over 650 publishers including Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and from today, Cenage Learning, the second biggest textbook publisher in the world.

eBooks can be downloaded to read offline and specific paragraphs can be annotated with highlights and notes. The start-up is currently working on iOS and Android apps, which will also feature speech-to-text functionality so you can tune into chapters on your commute to uni or when you’re working at home.

The platform works for publishers too. The accessible pricing mitigates textbook piracy, a major issue in the industry, and companies receive a commission when books are read, the same way Spotify pays publishers when people listen to songs online.

Even if you’re not a student, you can still use Perlego. For £15 a month, you can access all of Perlego’s titles, including a growing range of non-fiction books such as Yuval Noah Harri’s Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus, and Shoe Dog, Nike creator Phil Knight’s memoir.

If you want to learn about major tech topics such as artificial intelligence, blockchain or coding, it is all there on the platform.

Perlego is only two years old but has caught the eye of many in the tech world, raising $4.8 million in funding from the likes of venture firm ADV and angel investors including Simon Franks, co-founder of Lovefilm and Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla.

As well, the start-up has recently joined Founders Factory and will take part in its six-month ed-tech focused accelerator programme.

Mike Dimelow, CIO at ADV, said Perlego will do for textbooks what Spotify has done for music.

“Spotify has re-defined this consumption for music, Perlego will do the same for educational textbooks and professional learning. Its platform connects consumers to publishers and enables partial ownership, we feel this is a winning model. Consumers pay for what they read whilst publishers monetise content they commission,” he said.

Original Article
By Amelia Heathman (standard.co.uk)

Don’t choose between textbooks and food again thanks to Perlego

In just a few weeks, the UK’s new and returning university students will be arriving at their digs, getting schedules, and buying brand new books for the year.

But with the increasing costs of textbooks, learning is becoming evermore expensive. Indeed, research by the US Census Bureau showed that prices increased more than 800 per cent from 1978 to 2014. This means students will be forced to make decisions on a fairly critical aspect of their education, based on what they can, and can’t, afford.

This is the problem a new ed-tech start-up Perlego wants to solve.

Set up by two 25-year olds, Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, it aims to act like Spotify – only for textbooks. Perlego offers a subscription model that gives students access to the books they need in order to complete their degree.

The thinking behind it is making educational content accessible for all, says CEO Van Malderen.

“In this digital age, we believe that anyone should be able to learn anything at any time. Knowledge should be more accessible, not locked behind sky-high price tags and tuition fees,” he said.

For a subscription price of £12 a month, students can get access to over 200,000 eBooks across all the major subjects including social sciences, engineering, law, medicine and engineering. You can find books from over 650 publishers including Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and from today, Cenage Learning, the second biggest textbook publisher in the world.

eBooks can be downloaded to read offline and specific paragraphs can be annotated with highlights and notes. The start-up is currently working on iOS and Android apps, which will also feature speech-to-text functionality so you can tune into chapters on your commute to uni or when you’re working at home.

The platform works for publishers too. The accessible pricing mitigates textbook piracy, a major issue in the industry, and companies receive a commission when books are read, the same way Spotify pays publishers when people listen to songs online.

Even if you’re not a student, you can still use Perlego. For £15 a month, you can access all of Perlego’s titles, including a growing range of non-fiction books such as Yuval Noah Harri’s Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus, and Shoe Dog, Nike creator Phil Knight’s memoir.

If you want to learn about major tech topics such as artificial intelligence, blockchain or coding, it is all there on the platform.

Perlego is only two years old but has caught the eye of many in the tech world, raising $4.8 million in funding from the likes of venture firm ADV and angel investors including Simon Franks, co-founder of Lovefilm and Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla.

As well, the start-up has recently joined Founders Factory and will take part in its six-month ed-tech focused accelerator programme.

Mike Dimelow, CIO at ADV, said Perlego will do for textbooks what Spotify has done for music.

“Spotify has re-defined this consumption for music, Perlego will do the same for educational textbooks and professional learning. Its platform connects consumers to publishers and enables partial ownership, we feel this is a winning model. Consumers pay for what they read whilst publishers monetise content they commission,” he said.

Original Article