Alphabet Buys Apigee, Plus The Latest On Verint, Barnes & Noble, and Energous

Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) shares have jumped by 8.48% today after the company reported strong earnings for its second quarter of fiscal 2017. EPS of $0.57 topped the consensus mark of $0.54, while revenue of $261.9 million missed the consensus target by $2.81 million. The strong stock performance is in spite of full-year earnings guidance of $2.85, which was $0.15 off the consensus estimate. With the announcement of a government cyber security contract worth as much as $200 million, investors may feel that Verint’s full-year guidance is overly safe. Shares are testing the high-end of their six-month range today at $38 and will face resistance around the $39 level. 21 hedge funds in our system owned 10.5% of Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT)’s shares on June 30.

Lastly we come to Apigee Corp (NASDAQ:APIC) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), the former of which will soon be a part of the latter’s holding company. Alphabet will buy the San Jose-based software company for $625 million, or $17.40 per share in cash, and Apigee’s shares have responded by jumping 6.52% to $17.41, a cent above the offer price. A leader in API management, Apigee’s shares sank to as low as $5.35 in early-February but have been on a steady uptrend ever since as it’s reached record billings and drastically cut its cash burn. The deal fortifies Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s position in the cloud services sector, in which it’s engaged in a furiously evolving battle with several other tech giants.

Apigee Corp (NASDAQ:APIC) was in the portfolios of 12 of the funds in our database on June 30, up from nine a quarter earlier, while Google’s class A and C shares were held by a total of 187 different funds, making it the most popular stock among the funds that we track as of June 30.

Disclosure: None