PINTEREST
Purchase of URX Builds Up Talent
Pinterest Inc. is again paying up to acquire talent as it builds
out an image search engine based on its users' intent.
The image-discovery site on Tuesday said it has acquired half
the staff at URX, a San Francisco mobile advertising service
co-founded by a former Google manager. As is the case with many of
Pinterest's purchases, this one was more about acquiring people
over tech, a company spokeswoman said.
URX's technology and assets will be shut down. But Pinterest
gains URX co-founder and chief executive John Milinovich, who will
join as a product manager. Before starting URX, Mr. Milinovich was
at Alphabet Inc.'s Google, where he worked on the Google Analytics
team and helped roll out the Google Offers coupon service.
About 15 URX employees, including two of the three other
co-founders, will also move over to Pinterest, joining the
product-management, engineering and partnerships team.
Pinterest declined to disclose financial terms of the deal,
which is its 11th acquisition. The deal was mostly composed of
stock, according to a person familiar with the deal.
The company is replenishing its talent after losing some
high-profile managers in recent months, a common scenario at
startups in a rapid growth phase. Most recently, Pinterest's head
of engineering Michael Lopp left the company in April after joining
two years ago, according to the company spokeswoman. Mr. Lopp had
previously worked at Palantir Technologies and Apple Inc.
URX -- started in early 2013 by four former classmates at the
University of California, Los Angeles -- specializes in so-called
deep links on the mobile Web. In essence, it serves ads in mobile
browsers that take users to apps such as Spotify or SeatGeek where
they can take actions such as listening to a song or buying tickets
to a concert.
Deep linking has become increasingly important to Google,
Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and other Web companies as users shift
to mobile devices and spend more time in apps. The technology aims
to add ways to enable people to move seamlessly between specific
pages in different apps.
Pinterest says it was intrigued by the URX team's expertise in
matching user intent with results as it is builds a "discovery
engine" driven by smart recommendations. For example, if a user on
Pinterest starts a "board" -- where people save a collection of
images, or "pins" -- and names it "nursery," Pinterest would take
that as a cue to surface items such as cribs and other
family-friendly items.
At Pinterest, URX employees will work on search and discovery,
which focuses on understanding the data behind each pin; and rich
pins. Rich pins carry extra bits of information, such as the
ingredients for a recipe, and aim to help people take actions such
as installing an app or buying a product.
Pinterest, valued at $11 billion by investors last year, is
working to turn its service into a global one as it seeks to ramp
up its advertising business. The Wall Street Journal has previously
reported that Pinterest made about $100 million in revenue from
advertising in 2015.
URX, incorporated as AdLast Inc., had raised about $15 million
in funding from investors including venture-capital firms Accel
Partners and First Round Capital, and angel investors such as
actress Jamie Lee Curtis and former football player Joe
Montana.
--Yoree Koh
ENCANA
Loss Is Bigger Than Expected
Encana Corp. on Tuesday reported a bigger-than-expected
quarterly loss and a 79% slump in cash flow as sharply lower oil
and gas prices continued to hurt the energy producer's results.
Calgary, Alberta-based Encana, which booked another hefty
impairment charge of just over $600 million in the quarter ended
March 31 due to the commodity-price rout, also recorded a nearly
11% decline in production.
Encana has recorded a series of steep quarterly losses, and like
many of its oil-patch peers, has slashed capital spending and cut
its workforce to shave costs. The company said Tuesday it reduced
drilling and completion costs in its core assets during the quarter
by between 22% and 44% from year-earlier levels, and lowered
general administrative costs. It said it is on track to deliver
$550 million of year-over-year cost savings.
"Our teams are drilling some of the fastest, highest performing
and lowest cost wells in our core four assets and we continue to
find greater efficiency in every part of the business," Chief
Executive Doug Suttles said in a release.
The company's four key oil-and-gas plays, which contributed 70%
of first-quarter production, are in the Eagle Ford and Permian
shale-oil basins in Texas and the Duvernay and Montney basins in
Western Canada.
Encana reported a first-quarter loss of $379 million, or 45
cents a share, compared with a loss of $1.71 billion, or $2.25 a
share a year earlier.
Excluding items, such as large impairments related to lower oil
and gas prices, it swung to an operating loss of 15 cents a share
from an operating profit of 3 cents a share a year earlier. The
latest results missed the 12-cent loss analysts polled by Thomson
Reuters expected.
Cash flow fell to $102 million from $495 million a year earlier,
while revenue declined 40% to $753 million. The company said its
realized natural-gas price was down 54% from year-earlier levels
and its realized oil and natural-gas liquids price fell nearly
13%.
In February, Encana guided for 2016 production of between
340,000 and 360,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. It said it is
on track to meet or beat that guidance.
--Judy McKinnon
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 04, 2016 02:49 ET (06:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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