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UK’s Blue Prism turns into newest goal of U.S. non-public fairness

UK’s Blue Prism becomes latest target of U.S. private equity

Employees walk past FTSE AIM share price information displayed on a lighted rotating cube in the atrium of the London Stock Exchange Group’s offices in London, UK

Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Robotics firm Blue Prism is the latest in a series of UK firms to attract the attention of U.S. private equity firms, but a high profile shareholder has urged it not to sell.

Blue Prism’s shares rose Wednesday after confirming they had started talks with TPG Capital and Vista Equity Partners. However, she stressed: “There can be no certainty that an offer will be made, nor on the terms on which an offer would be made.”

It comes after supermarket chain Morrisons, infrastructure giant John Laing, and aerospace company Cobham have been exposed to transatlantic private equity approaches in recent months.

Blue Prism, one of the largest tech companies in the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market, uses robotic process automation (RPA) software to hire digital workers to perform back office tasks for businesses.

In a letter to Blue Prism’s management team on Tuesday seen by CNBC, shareholder Coast Capital, a notable activist investor who is reluctant to sell its U.S. operations by FirstGroup, expressed concerns about the company’s valuation.

Coast Capital currently considers Blue Prism to be undervalued and it would be a mistake to approve an acquisition at its share price.

“As you know, Blue Prism PLC’s business value is currently valued at about three times its appointment revenue – a 80-90% discount over the company’s competitors including UiPath, Appian, WorkFusion, Automation Anywhere, etc.,” the letter from Coast Capital said.

“If a buyer were to pay a premium of 100%, the share price would still be considerably lower than its intrinsic value and well below the value that the share was still trading in January 2021.”

James Rasteh, CEO of Coast Capital, said Blue Prism was facing a number of problems – such as product gaps in its portfolio, its position on the London Junior Stock Exchange, and its geographic distance from many key customers – but which could be overcome . He said Coast worked with industry experts to develop an operational improvement plan to drive sales growth and increase Blue Prism’s stock value.

“In addition, we note that the Blue Prism PLC team (including management and board) has developed and maintained the world’s leading unattended automation software product with an extremely valuable customer base of more than 2,000 large corporations,” said Rasteh.

“Even in the worst of times today, the company has an enviable reputation as a best-in-class performer, keeping it at the forefront of its fast-growing and highly profitable industry. Now is not the time to throw in the towel!”

Blue Prism declined to comment. TPG Capital and Vista Equity Partners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

“Reverse Activism”

Where coastal capital is public urged management change at FirstGroup, Rasteh told CNBC in an email Thursday that the company’s engagement with Blue Prism was “the opposite of activism” and claimed it plans to work with management to implement the operational changes needed .

Coast Capital has a stake of almost 3% in Blue Prism. According to data from Refinitiv Eikon, Jupiter Fund Management, which declined to comment, is the largest shareholder with 7.49%.

The company’s stock rose up to 39% on Wednesday but remains in the red around 30% for the year.

“The CEO, Jason Kingdon, is clearly a visionary in the UK’s high-tech industry and does not have long enough time to influence the workforce changes and operational improvements that can and will transform Blue Prism,” said Rasteh.

Kingdon was an early investor in Blue Prism and became Chairman and CEO in April 2020.

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World News

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shedding high expertise throughout NASA lander struggle

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin losing top talent during NASA lander fight

Jeff Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, introduces a new lunar landing module called Blue Moon during an event at the Washington Convention Center, May 9, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Mark Wilson | Getty Images

Jeff Bezos flew to space late last month, but his company has lost top talent since the billionaire space founder came back to Earth.

At least 17 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, CNBC has learned, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.

Two of the engineers, Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons, this week announced jobs at other space companies: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, respectively.

Others quietly updated their LinkedIn pages over the past few weeks.

Each unannounced departure was confirmed to CNBC by people familiar with the matter. Those departures include: New Shepard senior vice president Steve Bennett, chief of mission assurance Jeff Ashby (who retired), national security sales director Scott Jacobs, New Glenn senior director Bob Ess, New Glenn first stage senior director Tod Byquist, New Glenn senior finance manager Bill Scammell, senior manager of production testing Christopher Payne, New Shepard technical project manager Nate Chapman, senior propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, BE-4 controller lead integration and testing engineer Jack Nelson, New Shepard lead avionics software engineer Huong Vo, BE-7 avionics hardware engineer Aaron Wang, propulsion engineer Rex Gu, and rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak.

Those who announced they were leaving Blue Origin did not specify why, but frustration with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure is often cited in employee reviews on job site Glassdoor.

A company spokesperson emphasized Blue Origin’s growth in a statement to CNBC.

“Blue Origin grew by 850 people in 2020 and we have grown by another 650 so far in 2021. In fact, we’ve grown by nearly a factor of four over the past three years. We continue to fill out major leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, engine design, and vehicle design. It’s a team we’re building and we have great talent,” the spokesperson said.

Some of the engineers who left were part of Blue Origin’s astronaut lunar lander program. Bezos’ company lost its bid for a valuable NASA development contract in April when SpaceX was announced as the sole awardee under the space agency’s Human Landing System program, winning a $2.9 billion contract.

But, despite the Government Accountability Office last month denying Blue Origin’s protest of NASA’s decision, the company has continued to escalate its fight to be a part of the HLS program. Blue Origin first launched a public relations offensive against SpaceX’s Starship rocket and then, on Monday, sued NASA in federal court.

A $10,000 bonus

Jeff Bezos pops champagne after emerging from the New Shepard capsule after his spaceflight on July 20, 2021.

Blue Origin

The company has nearly 4,000 employees around the U.S., with its headquarters in Kent, Washington, near Seattle, as well as facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Van Horn, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama.

Ten days after Bezos’ July 20 spaceflight, Blue Origin gave all its full-time employees a $10,000, no-strings-attached cash bonus, multiple people familiar with the situation told CNBC. None of Blue Origin’s contractors received it. The company confirmed the bonus, with a spokesperson noting that it was intended as a “thank you” for achieving the milestone of launching people to space.

Two people told CNBC that internally the bonus was perceived as the company’s leadership attempting to entice talent to stay, in response to the number of employees filing notices to leave after the launch.

A look at Glassdoor reveals a sharp disparity in employee satisfaction with Blue Origin’s leadership when compared with that of other top space companies. According to Glassdoor, just 15% of Blue Origin employees approve of CEO Bob Smith — versus 91% for Elon Musk at SpaceX or 77% for Tory Bruno at United Launch Alliance.

The HLS fight

A mockup of the crew lander vehicle at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in August 2020.

Blue Origin

NASA’s Human Landing System program is one of the critical pieces of the agency’s plan, known as Artemis, to return U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Last year, NASA handed out nearly $1 billion in concept development contracts for HLS — with SpaceX receiving $135 million, Leidos’ subsidiary Dynetics receiving $253 million and Blue Origin receiving $579 million. The space agency then expected to award two of those three companies hardware development contracts this year. However, following a shortfall in requested funding for HLS from Congress, NASA decided to give only SpaceX a contract, worth about $2.9 billion.

Blue Origin and Dynetics each quickly filed protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which halted NASA’s work on the program until the protests could be resolved. The GAO on July 30 upheld NASA’s decision. On Aug. 16, Blue Origin took its battle a step further, suing NASA in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

NASA has paid $300 million of its SpaceX contract so far, with the payment made on the day the GAO denied the protests. However, the space agency’s work on HLS has once again halted — this time due to the Blue Origin lawsuit, according to court filings Thursday — and will not resume until Nov. 1.

Major delays

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos is launched with three crew members aboard a New Shepard rocket on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight from Blue Origin’s Launch Site 1 near Van Horn, Texas, July 20, 2021.

Joe Skipper | Reuters

Blue Origin has struggled to deliver on multiple major programs since Bezos hired Smith as CEO in 2017. Bezos founded the company in 2000, with the goal of creating “a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth.” Delays — although common in the industry, in which the adage “space is hard” is persistently heard — have pushed back Bezos’ vision, highlighted by the departure of Blue Origin’s chief operating officer late last year.

Bezos launched to the edge of space as one of the members of the first crew onboard Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket. While the company has not disclosed pricing, New Shepard competes with Virgin Galactic in the realm of suborbital space tourism, with Blue Origin having sold nearly $100 million worth of tickets for future passenger flights. Although the first crewed New Shepard launch was a smooth success, Blue Origin’s leadership had previously expected the rocket to begin launching people by the end of 2017.

An artist’s illustration of a New Glenn rocket standing on the launchpad in Florida.

Blue Origin

BE-4 engine test at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility.

Blue Origin

Blue Origin’s third major program is its stable of rocket engines, headlined by the BE-4, which will power its New Glenn rocket. The company previously said that its BE-4 engines would be “ready for flight in 2017.”

However, four years later, development issues and a lack of hardware for testing quickly mean Blue Origin has yet to deliver its first flight engines, ArsTechnica reported earlier this month. The company is pushing to have two BE-4 engines ready by the end of this year. Notably, BE-4s are important beyond Blue Origin, as ULA signed a deal to use the engines to power its Vulcan rockets, choosing Blue Origin over Aerojet Rocketdyne as its supplier. ULA is pushing to have its first Vulcan rocket ready to launch by the end of this year, and Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines are expected to be a — if not the — final piece added before launch.

Bezos has spent the majority of his time in the past two decades focused on Amazon, but along the way has steadily sold pieces of his stake in the tech giant to fund Blue Origin’s development — to the tune of $1 billion a year, or possibly more. Last month, Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO, with many in the space industry expecting him to spend more time focusing on his space company.

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World News

The Blue Jays Lastly Return to Canada

The Blue Jays Finally Return to Canada

TORONTO – When the coronavirus shut down the world in the spring of 2020, the area around the Rogers Center in the heart of downtown Toronto became a desolate wasteland. The familiar noises of the game day walk-up crowd and screaming scalpers have been replaced by socially distant outdoor yoga groups, residents taking their daily walks with their pets, and the occasional tennis enthusiast batting their foreheads against the brick wall next to the stadium entrance .

If a tumbleweed had rolled through, no one would have noticed.

For 161 regular season and playoff games over two seasons, the Toronto Blue Jays left their nest and cited without a real home after the Canadian government denied the team’s request to play in Toronto during the pandemic Concerns About Crossing Border Travel To and From The United States.

While all the other Major League Baseball teams stayed in their hometown and welcomed the fans back to their stadiums earlier this season, the majors’ only Canadian team stayed on the streets, initially playing supposed home games at the tiny TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida, and then at Sahlen Field, a retrofitted Class AAA ballpark in Buffalo, NY. In mid-July, the Jays were finally given permission to return to Canada.

Baseball is a sport of statistics. From batting averages to home runs to on-base and slugging percentages to wins over replacements, no sport communicates through numbers more than America’s pastime. On Friday, when the long-dormant stadium in downtown Toronto finally came to life, only one number was on everyone’s lips: 670.

It has been 670 days since the Blue Jays last played a game at the Rogers Center. The number seemed to be everywhere on Friday, from teammates in shirts referencing it to the team’s social media account reminding fans how long they waited for this reunion.

Officially, a baseball game between the Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals was played in Toronto. But what happened at the ballpark on Friday was more than that. The pandemic has stolen most of the people’s daily lives. On the way back to their old way of life, some pieces of normality are picked up. The ballpark was filled with many of these pieces on Friday.

Almost three hours before the first pitch, George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took turns tossing baseball out of the park during batting practice. In between they laughed and danced with manager Charlie Montoyo and soaked up the return to Canada. At the field level, the team’s President and Chief Executive, Mark Shapiro, kept a close eye on the team and members of the news media and welcomed them back to the stadium.

The Jays returned as a very different team. The last time they played at the Rogers Center in 2019, fans emotionally said goodbye to first baseman Justin Smoak – he played his last game with Toronto – and the team ended a 67-95 season. They returned with Guerrero, who established himself as one of the most exciting stars in the game, a line-up that leads the majors on home runs, and a team with the fourth best run differential in the American League that gives them high hopes for improvement on an overwhelming 51-48 record.

You also return to a completely different world. According to the guidelines the Province of Ontario set in Phase 3 of its reopening plans for outdoor venues, the Jays are only allowed to have 15,000 fans per game (about 30 percent of the stadium’s 49,286-person capacity). The 500 level, generally reserved for the die-hard and the occasional belligerent fanatic, remained closed. The cardboard cut-outs that occupy certain sections at this level were just one of the reminders that normal remains a relative term.

Masks were compulsory for all fans (although some tried their luck by wearing them well below the intended level on their faces). The WestJet Flight Deck, a midfield standing area for the loudest fans, has been reduced to a maximum of six socially distant people at a time.

However, the crowd felt far larger than the listed attendance of 13,446. Fans formed long lines in each team store. Springer and Hyun-jin Ryu jerseys appeared to be the top sellers (which gave the sea of ​​Guerrero Jr. jerseys some competition). The $ 25 price tag didn’t stop many fans from ordering Canadian classics: poutine and beer.

Just as the team reunited with their hometown, the fans were reunited too. Groups of people ran into each other at every corner of the stadium. Some got engaged with hugs. Others just shook hands and paused to catch up.

After a pre-game soundtrack that included “The Boys Are Back in Town,” and Coldplay’s Chris Martin sang the chorus of “Homecoming,” the Blue Jays finally took to the field while medical staff from Toronto General Hospital greeted them as they passed Waving team flags.

This ballpark has seen many iconic moments, from Joe Carter’s walk-off home run of the 1993 World Series to Jose Bautista’s emphatic bat-flip against the Texas Rangers in a Division Series game in 2015. Those moments took the stadium right through Mark shaken. The ovation the Blue Jays received on Friday when they entered the field failed to reach that decibel level, but a sense of amusement and relief swept through the stadium. From the media area to the fans in the stands, only a few eyes remained dry during a fan assembly on the large jumbotron in the midfield. With the first of many “Let’s Go, Blue Jays” chants a liberation from emotions followed.

For the next several hours it was just another typical baseball game on a brisk Friday night at the Rogers Center, give or take a few standing ovations and “MVP” chants for Guerrero Jr., who got the biggest reception from the crowd all night.

The Jays officially returned home at 7:28 pm when Ross Stripling delivered a first blow to Whit Merrifield. A home run by Teoscar Hernandez in the second inning put the home team on the map. A double homer from Bo Bichette in the seventh inning gave Toronto a 6-2 lead. The third baseman Santiago Espinal scored the final in a 6-4 win with a bare-handed catch and was the perfect end to a picture-perfect return.

After a final standing ovation for the home team, the fans dispersed and made their way to the exit, with the first game of an 11-game home stand. Outside the stadium, just a few minutes later, the honking of the cars and the clashing conversations of the departing crowd reminded one last time that the stadium, which had slumbered as a reminder of an interrupted life for the past two years, was back in operation.

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Business

Blue Origin Challenges NASA Over SpaceX Moon Lander Deal

Blue Origin Challenges NASA Over SpaceX Moon Lander Deal

Mr Smith said Blue Origin would make bids for a future competition. But he added, “The idea that we will be able to restore competition with something that is currently completely undefined and completely unfunded makes little sense to us.”

When Bill Nelson, a former Florida Senator whom President Biden has appointed as NASA’s next administrator, testified at a confirmation hearing last week, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, was petitioned him to undertake to present a plan to Congress on how NASA would ensure commercial competition under the lunar lander program.

“I do,” said Mr. Nelson. “The competition is always good.”

Mr Smith said NASA has hired more than one company in the past with programs similar to space station missions, despite a lack of security for future budgets.

The Blue Origin-led offering was more than double that of SpaceX at $ 6.0 billion. But Mr Smith said NASA had returned to SpaceX and negotiated the price of their proposal, despite not having had similar conversations with the other two teams.

“We haven’t had a chance to revise and that’s basically unfair,” said Mr Smith.

Less than $ 9 billion would have paid for two landers, and that’s comparable to the $ 8.3 billion cost of the commercial occupation program that now enables transportation to the space station, the protest argued.

“NASA receives great value from these proposals,” said Smith.

The evaluations of the offers by NASA resulted in evaluations of the technical aspects of the proposals by Blue Origin and SpaceX as “acceptable”. The rating of Dynetics was lower and was “marginal”. SpaceX’s management was rated “excellent” while Blue Origin and its partners, as well as Dynetics, were rated “very good”.

Mr Smith said NASA misjudged aspects of its proposal such as the communications system and redundancy in guidance and navigation as vulnerabilities. He also said it downplayed the risks in SpaceX’s design, such as the need to refuel Starship in orbit, which has never been attempted before.

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Health

$100 billion market cap is the blue sky state of affairs for Moderna: analyst

$100 billion market cap is the blue sky scenario for Moderna: analyst

The medic Robert Gilbertson loads a syringe with the vaccine Moderna Covid-19.

APU GOMES | AFP | Getty Images

Biotech and pharmaceutical company Moderna, a pioneer in developing coronavirus vaccines, has the potential to reach a market capitalization of over $ 100 billion, according to an analyst.

When asked what the blue sky scenario could look like for Moderna, whose coronavirus vaccine is 94% effective against severe Covid infections and who is already working on a booster shot to prevent the Hartaj Singh variant, which appears for the first time in South Africa CNBC, managing director and senior biotechnology analyst at Oppenheimer, told CNBC on Thursday that sales trends from similar companies showed what Moderna could see in the future.

“We’re alerting people to other companies in the biotech sector that have peaked or scored a rating when their first line of products was launched. Companies as diverse as Alexion, Regeneron, and Vertex are currently essentially peaking at about ten times future sales, future sales three to five years later. “

“I think with Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine franchise they are also starting to develop flu vaccines that should hit the market in the next few years. You know, we could see a $ 10 billion franchise in five to seven years. If you can If you put ten times the sales multiple and you can do the math, it’s a company with a market capitalization of over $ 100 billion, ”he told CNBC’s Street Signs Europe. The market value is currently just over 57 billion US dollars.

Moderna shares rose 3% in premarket trading on Thursday, as fourth-quarter revenue of $ 571 million far exceeded estimates of $ 318.9 million and was $ 14 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Covid-19 vaccine sales were projected to reach $ 18.4 billion in 2021, following $ 199.87 million in sales of Covid-19 vaccines in the fourth quarter. However, the company reported a quarterly stock loss of 69 cents, more than analysts’ forecast loss of 35 cents.

In the income statement, CEO Stephane Bancel said 2020 will be a historic year for Moderna and 2021 will be a “turning point” for the company.

“We used to believe that mRNA would lead to approved drugs, and our ambitions were constrained by the need for regular fundraising and multi-year cash holdings to manage funding risk. We now know that mRNA vaccines can be highly effective and approved and we are a cash flow generating trading company, ‘he said.

“We plan to accelerate and significantly increase our investment in science and expand our development pipeline faster. By implementing our priorities for 2021, we will advance our mission to deliver on the promise of mRNA science, a new generation of transformative drugs for patients This is just the beginning, “he said.

Booster vaccination

The drug maker announced on Wednesday that it would begin testing its new vaccine booster shot, Covid-19, which is said to provide better protection against a new variant of the virus, first discovered in South Africa. The biotech company said it sent cans of the shot to the U.S. National Institute of Health for testing.

Moderna’s current two-dose burst provokes a weaker immune response against the South African strain of the virus, which has been classified as more infectious than other variants, although the company said the antibodies in patients remain above levels expected to be prior to the virus protect.

“Moderna is committed to making as many updates as needed to our vaccine until the pandemic is under control,” Bancel said in a press release. “We hope to show that booster doses can be given at lower doses when needed, which will allow us to make many more doses available to the global community when needed in late 2021 and 2022.”

Separately, the company announced on Wednesday that it is expected to produce up to 700 million doses by 2021 and 1.4 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses by 2022, assuming the vaccine will be administered at its current level of 100 micrograms .

Should the vaccine turn out to be effective at a lower dose, the company could deliver up to 2.8 billion doses in 2022. Moderna has signed a contract with the US government to supply 300 million cans.

Disclaimer: Hartaj Singh does not hold any position in Modernas shares.

– CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace contributed to this story.