Key Points
Alphabet omitted a section describing acquisitions over the past year in the annual report filed this week to the US Securities and Exchange Commision, meaning any dealmaking wasnt significant enough to flag to shareholders..
It spent $306 million in cash on acquisitions during the year ending in September 2022, but had so little to disclose for the year ending in September 2023 that it removed the line item about deals from its annual report and instead bundled any such spending into a line called other, where spending fell 36 percent...
At Meta, cash investment in acquisitions or tangible assets dropped by half, to $629 million in 2023, after two years of growing spending..
Expecting the Dubsmash deal might draw similar investigation, Meta didnt want to take on two battles at once, the source says.. Reddit went on to buy Dubsmash, and Meta lost the fight with the Competition and Markets Authorityan unprecedented defeatand last year sold Giphy to image database Shutterstock for just $53 million...
Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft collectively closed last year with $178 billion in cash, and all have share prices at or near all-time highs, providing more ammunition for dealmaking...
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