Technology Roundup – Citi sees Apple wearables strength, PayPal inks agreement with MercadoLibre

Citi sees Apple wearables strength in 2020

Citi analyst Jim Suva tells CNBC that strong sales of Apple’s (AAPL +0.5%) AirPods and Watches will “surprise” investors when the company reports Q1 results on February 4.
Suva notes the several-week delay on AirPods Pro orders during the holiday shopping season, which was due to “strong demand where the company can’t keep up.”
The analyst says AirPods Pro demand is followed by the Apple Watch Series 3, which has a lower starting price than the newer two models.
Suva has a $300 price target on Apple. The company has a Bullish average Sell Side rating.

Adding to its earlier investment in MercadoLibre (MELI -1.9%), PayPal Holdings (PYPL -0.9%) enters into an agreement with the Latin American online commerce platform aimed at boosting its international footprint.
According to CEO Dan Schulman, PayPal will now be a payment option in the Mercado Pago online checkout for people in Brazil and Mexico in addition to the MercadoLibre marketplace for cross-border purchases.
In turn, Mercado Pago will be a payment option for PayPal merchants around the world. PayPal will also expand Xoom’s presence by allowing Mercado Pago users to receive remittances into their Mercado Pago wallets in the two countries (initially).

Aegis Capital maintains a Buy rating on Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and raises the target from $235 to $300. FB has a Bullish average Sell Side rating.
Analyst Victor Anthony thinks the “stock will power through” the regulatory and antitrust headwinds in 2020.
Anthony praises FB’s “continued strong user growth, continued share gains of global advertising, and progress on monetizing Messenger and WhatsApp.”
The analyst expects a “blowout” Q4 due to solid user growth and “solid” ad checks.
Facebook shares are down 1.4% to $205.18.

VMware (NYSE:VMW) completes its $2.7B acquisition of Pivotal Software (NYSE:PVTL).
As a result of the completion, Pivotal’s Class A shares were removed from the NYSE, with trading suspended before the market open.
Pivotal will now operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of VMware.

21Vianet Group (NASDAQ:VNET) and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) agree to start the second phase of construction as part of a previously announced MoU to deploy IDC services.
The first building is expected to be completed by H1 2020; during the contract term, the first building is expected to generate more than RMB600M ($86M) of revenue.
“We are excited to move forward with Alibaba in the second phase of IDC service deployment as we continue to help them expand throughout Eastern China,” said 21Vianet CEO and President Alvin Wang.