At the heart of this merger lies Cendyn’s Customer Data Platform, Starling, and Pegasus’s CRS. Leveraging the alignment of these key data points puts hoteliers at the forefront of personalization to enhance the direct-booking experience. Tim Sullivan, CEO & President at Cendyn, commented:
“We’re incredibly excited about this combination with Pegasus. As our industry recovers from the pandemic, the merging of these companies brings scale and stability to our customers, offering hoteliers a vertically integrated technology platform that enables them to deliver on a broad range of hospitality needs. Seamless integration between these solutions solidifies our commitment to personalizing and optimizing the guest journey as well as empowering hoteliers to maximize their direct booking channel.”
Gautam Lulla, CEO at Pegasus, also noted:
“At Pegasus, we strived to empower hoteliers to provide their guests with the best direct booking channel experience, while ensuring comprehensive distribution of inventory. The combination of Cendyn and Pegasus takes this to the next level enabling unprecedented personalization of the guest experience, not just during the search and book phase but throughout the customer lifecycle too. Above all else, we’ll see longer-lasting and more profitable relationships between hoteliers and their guests.”
Ankur Randev, Chief Commercial Officer at Highgate, said:
“The combination of these companies, and their solutions, allows hoteliers to take back control of their direct-booking channels post-pandemic. Additionally, it enables them to put their revenue needs first, and drive demand when they need it most.”
This merger follows the Cendyn and Rainmaker merger in 2019 and, most recently, the Cendyn and NextGuest merger in 2021. In 2019, Travel Tripper and Pegasus merged. Bringing together these enterprise software solutions in the industry has allowed Cendyn to spearhead global growth and optimize its offering for hoteliers as the preferred vendor for those looking to deliver revenue growth at scale.
The financial details of the merger were not disclosed. The transaction is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.
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Microsoft is one of the few legacy tech companies that has effectively adapted its business model to maintain its leadership position in the past 20 years. Microsoft Azure is the top competitor to Amazon Web Services in the cloud services space. Analyst John Freeman says the long-term economic shift toward cloud computing is gaining momentum, and Azure’s 51% revenue growth in the most recent quarter is evidence that Microsoft is capturing a large part of that market. Freeman is also bullish on Microsoft’s expanding operating margins.
Visa Inc.
One industry that technology is disrupting faster than ever is the financial sector, and credit card giant Visa is a leader in digitizing finance and payments. Analyst Chris Kuiper says Visa’s payment volumes are now 121% of pre-pandemic levels in 2019, but cross-border payment volumes are still just 82% of pre-pandemic levels. Global economic repinings are a tailwind for Visa, and Kuiper says investors aren’t fully appreciating the long-term trend away from cash. Kuiper says open banking could also be a significant growth driver for Visa.
Mastercard Inc.
Mastercard is also riding the wave of global payment digitization and the shift away from cash usage. Kuiper says the mobile and electronic payments markets are approaching an inflexion point, and the market isn’t fully valuing the potential positive impact for Mastercard. He says Mastercard has an attractive asset-light business model that helps support superior operating leverage. International expansion, market share gains and mobile payments are all potential long-term growth opportunities as well. Kuiper projects that Mastercard will maintain annual revenue growth of more than 15% through at least 2023.
Adobe Inc.
Adobe is the market leader in creative content software along with marketing automation and e-commerce software. Adobe shares are up more than 500% over the past five years, but Freeman says there are several reasons why they are still undervalued. Adobe has a “dominant” share of the content creation market, which is growing by 15% annually. Its high-margin Document Cloud business is growing at a 33% annual rate. Freeman says Adobe has an excellent management team that has perfectly executed its shift to a “tethered cloud” model.
Salesforce.com Inc.
Salesforce is the market leader in customer relationship management software and is a cloud software pioneer as a service model. Freeman says Salesforce is the best pure-play stock investment in the migration to cloud services. He estimates that Salesforce already has a 27% market share of the customer relationship management market – a number he expects will continue to grow. A decade of acquisitions, including the recent $27.7 billion Slack buyouts, has beefed up Salesforce’s product offerings into the most comprehensive and feature-rich portfolio in the market.
Accenture PLC
Accenture is a global consultancy, technology and outsourcing services, provider. Analyst David Holt says the company has an attractive cash flow profile, generates above-average earnings growth, and has impressive competitive positioning. At its current valuation, investors may not fully appreciate the sustainability of Accenture’s bookings growth as the company gains market share in the long term. Holt says digital, security and cloud initiatives create a differentiated growth catalyst for Accenture. He projects 10% revenue growth in fiscal 2021 and another 7% growth in fiscal 2022.
ServiceNow Inc.
ServiceNow provides software as a service application to manage business processes and workflows. Freeman says there are plenty of reasons to be bullish on ServiceNow. The stock is highly exposed to secular growth drivers, including cloud migration and digital transformation. ServiceNow has a growing ecosystem of third-party relationships and partners, and Freeman estimates that it has the potential to grow margins to at least 34% over time. ServiceNow’s deep product integration creates stickiness and pricing leverage. Finally, ServiceNow has the opportunity to expand further outside the information technology services management market.
Fidelity National Information Services Inc.
Fidelity National Information Services specializes in financial technology solutions for customers ranging from merchants to banks to capital market firms. Holt says Fidelity is an attractively valued bet on secular growth trends in payments and banking. He is expecting a rebound in sales in the second half of 2021 as the global economy recovers from the health crisis. In the long term, Holt says Fidelity has organic growth potential, particularly in e-commerce and merchant integrated payments. Holt forecasts 9% revenue growth in 2021 and 2022.
Accenture PLC
Accenture is a global consultancy, technology and outsourcing services, provider. Analyst David Holt says the company has an attractive cash flow profile, generates above-average earnings growth, and has impressive competitive positioning. At its current valuation, investors may not fully appreciate the sustainability of Accenture’s bookings growth as the company gains market share in the long term. Holt says digital, security and cloud initiatives create a differentiated growth catalyst for Accenture.
Fidelity National Information Services Inc.
Fidelity National Information Services specializes in financial technology solutions for customers ranging from merchants to banks to capital market firms. Holt says Fidelity is an attractively valued bet on secular growth trends in payments and banking. He is expecting a rebound in sales in the second half of 2021 as the global economy recovers from the health crisis. In the long term, Holt says Fidelity has organic growth potential, particularly in e-commerce and merchant integrated payments. Holt forecasts 9% revenue growth in 2021 and 2022.
Software and services stocks to buy in 2021:
GDC is an annual video game conference that focuses on developers, bringing the global community together to exchange ideas, create connections, and learn new skills to advance their craft. The 2021 edition will see the conference go all-digital, allowing the event to be accessible to even more people with online attendance.
Educational sessions to help developers grow and prosper
The two sessions will bring developers through an educational journey on how AppGallery plays a critical role as a key platform to developer’s growth strategy and explore new ways of monetisation strategy for mobile games with Huawei Ads. Alexandre Salem, Global Gaming Business Development Director, commented:
“Gaming is going through several fundamental transitions from the evolving demographics of global game players to a transformation of cross-platform gaming experiences. AppGallery presents unique growth opportunities with its extensive distribution, market reach, and strength in the Chinese market; with Huawei’s combined hardware and software innovation with HarmonyOS and HMS, it delivers an elevated experience that can maximize the value for gaming partners and users.”
In the first session ‘Find your next big win with AppGallery’, Alexandre, as well as Gavin Kinghall Were, Global Head of BD Solutions, Consumer Business Group, Huawei, will be joined by Aurelien Lavaud, Global BD Director, Gameloft, and Maxim Kirilenko, Chief Business Development Officer, Playrix, to discuss their experience incorporating AppGallery as part of their global growth strategy in their game launch and expansion. From launch to marketing support, AppGallery provides valuable resources for developers to help expand their growth opportunities with every new game they release. He also added:
“We are excited to meet global game developers and invite everybody to explore the next growth opportunity with AppGallery. We are also very grateful to have our partners Playrix and Gameloft join us to share their journey with AppGallery, and hope more partners will join us to explore more and expand together with AppGallery,”
In the following session ‘HUAWEI Ads: Drive Growth with a New Ad Platform’, Aoife Brodigan, Marketing Director, Huawei Mobile Services, Europe, and Stephane Fournis, Director of Business Development, HUAWEI Ads, Europe, will be introducing the HUAWEI Ads’ new monetisation opportunities, the platform’s unique value and support, as well strategic tips to drive growth through building new revenue streams.
As part of the GDC 2021 sessions, Huawei will also unveil an in-depth case study ebook of its recently concluded inaugural global Game Fest campaign, which saw doubling its daily download figures to over 1.2 million hits during the height of the campaign. The eBook shares in detail each of the 13 participating developers’ journey and achievements and the support they received to help their games flourish on AppGallery. More details will be made available during the week of GDC 2021.
AppGallery continues to offer invaluable resources for developers’ growth
As a top 3 global app marketplace, AppGallery provides scalability, speed, discoverability and monetisation, as well as an unwavering support to game developers worldwide.
AppGallery offers scalability with its 540 million monthly active users, 730 million device users, and a growing diversified device base. With strong leadership in the Chinese market and other emerging markets, AppGallery has a proven record of supporting game partners to enter and expand their growth in these booming markets. Developers can enjoy a fast and worry-free experience through simple integration processes, easy to use tools and capabilities, and local market knowledge with hands-on local support. Leveraging HUAWEI Ads, Petal Search, and many other services through AppGallery, game developers can explore the best way to reach gamers and expand to regions critical to their user and revenue growth.
Throughout the whole process, from development and publishing to promotion and monetization, game developers can access high-touch and hands-on local support in their desired markets, leveraging AppGallery ’s large global reach, local market knowledge, and many years’ experience working with global leading app developers.
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