Tumblr revenue last year was only $15 million, according to Forbes. The company hoped to increase that to $100 million this year. That means Yahoo! would be paying 11 times sales–if Tumblr reaches its ambitious revenue goals.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Inc.’s board has approved a deal to acquire blogging startup Tumblr, people familiar with the matter said Sunday.

Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion in cash to acquire Tumblr, one of the people said.

Tumblr would continue to operate as an independent business, the people said.

A deal could be announced as soon as Monday, one of the people said.

Spokesmen for Yahoo and Tumblr didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

By acquiring Tumblr, Yahoo would instantly gain a social-media website that has become a hub of communication and blogging for millions of people. Yahoo could help Tumblr generate more revenue from advertisements.

If Yahoo! cannot significantly lift Tumblr sales, the deal will be a bust. It is worth keeping in mind that Yahoo! is struggling to increase its own revenue

Thomson Reuters has a consensus estimate for earnings per share (EPS) of $0.35 on sales of $13.52 billion. Both numbers are well below results from the same period a year ago.

The date change for the company’s results is generating more interest than the actual numbers. Few observers expect Dell to meet the EPS target due to price cuts the company made to overcome the slow sales in the PC business during the first quarter.

The other issue, of course, is the buyout offer from founder and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners worth $13.65 a share ($24.4 billion) that has been challenged by activist investor Carl Icahn and Dell shareholder Southeastern Asset Management. The move to an earlier date may mean that Dell’s board has decided to accept one or the other proposal. If it does announce a decision, that will have far more impact on the stock’s price movement than the reported numbers.

If the board punts on the decision, the shares may not react much at all to the report unless the numbers are so bad that investors fear that the Icahn/Southeastern buyout offer will be withdrawn. Dell and Silver Lake would benefit from some crappy numbers — it makes their offer look less undervalued than Icahn/Southeastern claim.

Should the numbers be awful, Dell and Silver Lake, who believed the company was worth $13.65 a share yesterday, can assure shareholders that the company will be worth $13.65 a share tomorrow, just like they said all along.

Dell’s shares are trading at $13.42 in the mid-afternoon today, down 0.2% in a 52-week range of $8.69 to $15.31.

Bloomberg explains the Icahn counter offer:

Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc., which together own 13 percent of Dell, are offering an alternative to the $13.65-a-share bid by Michael Dell and Silver Lake.

Southeastern and Icahn, in the sharply worded letter, said their proposal gives investors a chance to benefit from potential future growth at Dell and that it is more valuable than the buyout proposal. The two investors plan to take additional stock in the third-largest computer maker, rather than cash, they said.

The value of Icahn’s offer assumes that he can locate new senior management that can do what the other largest PC companies in the world have been unable to do. These companies include, at least, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Lenovo, Acer and Asus. Sales of PCs have started to fall due to the popularity of smartphones and tablets. And as the market disintegrates, Dell has fared worse than most. Research firm Gartner reported on global PC shipments:

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 79.2 million units in the first quarter of 2013, a 11.2 percent decline from the first quarter of 2012, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. Global PC shipments went below 80 million units for the first time since the second quarter of 2009. All regions showed a decrease in shipments, with the EMEA region experiencing the steepest decline.

Gartner further reported:

Dell … had a challenging quarter, registering a shipment decline in all regions except Japan. In Gartner’s preliminary view, Dell’s shipment growth in Japan was boosted by moderate demand, driven by a corporate refresh. Dell’s discussions about a possible leveraged buyout impacted shipments, as competitors aggressively attacked Dell’s position in the professional market.

There is no silver lining in the cloud over Dell’s future.

A number of analysts claim that Dell is worth much more than the $13.65 Michael Dell has offered. To support that assumption, one of two things, and probably both, would need to happen. Dell’s operating costs would have to be pared to the bone, though Dell already has cut thousands of people. Dell also would have to enter sectors in which it has little or no market share, or has had the most limited success.

Dell has tried to move into enterprise computing, which would put it head to head with firms that include International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL). These companies control the high ground. Dell likely would need a significant position in both smartphones and laptops as well. Each of these sectors is already crowded, and each has powerful market leaders, such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung.

Dell’s future does not offer investors much, which makes the Michael Dell offer attractive, even if it appears low right now.

Glencore Xstrata CEO Ivan Glasenberg told The Wall Street Journal that he has found widespread duplication of some tasks and that he expects to fire a “big amount” of Xstrata’s middle managers. Of the 17 top management positions at Glencore Xstrata only 2 are filled by former Xstrata managers — one in coal and one in iron ore.

According to a new presentation, the new company will close Xstrata corporate headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, and in London, and expects to “comfortably” meet its $500 million synergies savings.

More savings are expected as the new company’s major capex commitments cease in 2015, as Xstrata projects for 2013 and 2014 reach their end. Glencore Xstrata may also divest the Las Bambas copper project in Peru which was inherited with Xstrata and is slated for another $3 billion in capital spending through 2014.

Another interesting note in Glasenberg’s interview with the WSJ is that he called the merger “a big play on coal,” and said, “To really screw this up, the coal price has really got to tank.” A big bet on coal at this particular time is, at best, counterintuitive, but except for a one-third stake in a working Colombian mine, all the rest of the company’s working mines are in Australia or South Africa. Projects in Canada could be scrapped.

Coal made up 25% of Glencore Xstrata’s proforma earnings as measured by 2012 EBIT. Copper accounts for 33% or earnings and zinc provides 15%. Trading in metals raked in 17% of earnings, while energy and agricultural commodities trading brought in 5% each.

On the revenue side, based on 2012 proforma calculations, Glencore Xstrata’s trading activities accounted for $189.71 billion in revenues and industrial activities contributed $46.75 billion. Getting those numbers up could be difficult this year with commodities prices softening on just about every mineral and grain you could name. Cutting costs will help Glencore Xstrata, but it’s not a long-term fix.

The Glencore Xstrata presentation is available here.

Ergen said, “We’re not going to lose because we’ve got a better offer on the table.” Dish’s offer for Sprint is $7.10 in cash per share, along with a 32% ownership stake for Sprint shareholders in the combined company, tops Softbank’s cash offer of $6.38 a share and a 30% stake in Sprint.

Softbank has said that it will not improve its offer, but that was then. Ergen appears to expect a sweetened offer for Sprint from Softbank, and indicated yesterday that Dish would have to seek a private equity partner if Softbank put in a bid of $7.50 or $8.00 a share.

Ergen also made it very clear about what is important to Dish: the spectrum owned by Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR), a company controlled by Sprint and for which the wireless carrier already has offered to buy the rest of the company. Dish has tried before to acquire spectrum from Clearwire, only to be rebuffed. Now the gloves are off.

Ergen’s strategy — if he can acquire Sprint/Clearwire — is to leverage Dish’s satellite network with a terrestrial wireless network that would allow subscribers to get mobile wireless service as part of a single package. Verizon Wireless — still a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone Group PLC (NASDAQ: VOD) — and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) both seek the same thing, but neither has the content licenses that Dish already has in place with the media companies.

That is a huge part of Ergen’s play here. Dish would be transformed virtually overnight into the only U.S. provider of a single, all-inclusive wireless-pay TV package that would allow customers seamless access to media content both inside and outside their homes.

Suddenly, Dish is a threat to what is essentially a duopoly at the top of the wireless industry in the United States. The FCC would be hard-pressed to deny a merger that promises to increase competition for consumers.

It is still early days, but the fight for Sprint/Clearwire has all the earmarks of being a good one for Sprint shareholders. Shares are trading now at $7.12, slightly above Dish’s cash offer of $7.10. If Softbank makes a higher bid, shares will shoot up on the expectation that Dish will top the offer.

Ergen has as much as said that Dish Network’s future depends on its acquisition of Sprint/Clearwire. Certainly Dish’s growth prospects are dim without a transformative deal like this, and there are no other deals out there like this one. For Dish, it is grow or die.

Glencore Xstrata will be the fourth largest mining company in the world, trailing Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE), BHP Billiton PLC (NYSE: BHP) and Rio Tinto PLC (NYSE: RIO). Glencore Xstrata also will be the largest commodities trading company in the world.

There already is speculation that Glencore Xstrata will look for another acquisition very soon, while many of its rivals struggle with lower commodities prices and higher costs. A prime candidate appears to be London-traded Anglo American, which currently carries a market cap of around $20 billion, less than half what it was worth less than two years ago.

Glencore has also come under fire recently for hoarding copper at its LME-bonded warehouses, where stockpiles sit at 10-year highs. Glencore and another huge trading house, Trafigura, are said to control about 70% of global supplies of copper, and both have been accused of paying a premium of $100 a ton to the market price of copper to attract more deliveries to their warehouses. The idea, of course, would be to choke off the availability of copper until the price rises and the traders can sell for a substantial profit.

Glencore Xstrata shares begin trading in London tomorrow and on the Swiss Stock Exchange on Monday.

CNN Money reports on the Lenovo-IBM talks:

News of the negotiations surfaced last month in various publications and were confirmed by Fortune. Bloomberg put the value of the potential deal, which would cover IBM’s sale of its so-called x86 server business, at between $2.5 billion and $4.5 billion. Others suggested IBM was seeking as much as $6 billion. Lenovo is said to have balked at the price tag for the business, which generates close to $5 billion in sales, or about a third of IBM’s overall server revenue, according to estimates.

Shares of IBM are down fractionally in premarket trading to $199.60. The 52-week range is $199.20 to $202.17.

Son’s advantage for now is that the Sprint board has tentatively accepted Softbank’s offer. However, Sprint’s board has set a committee to review the Dish offer and, under a confidentially deal, Dish will start to look at Sprint’s books.

MarketWatch reports on the Softbank bid for Sprint Nextel:

Speaking to reporters at the Japanese company’s quarterly earnings announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Son said Dish’s $25.5 billion bid for Sprint included “misleading” statements because it didn’t compare the deal on the same terms as SoftBank’s offer.

“Dish’s offer includes statements that are misleading. It doesn’t compare apples to apples. I want to better explain to shareholders our offer so that they can properly evaluate it,” Mr. Son said.

There have been rumors for years that a deal would be consummated. Verizon takes on a very large risk if it finally does make the purchase. The wireless service subscription business in the United State has become a zero-sum game, at least as far as absolute subscriber counts go. More than 300 million people have wireless service accounts, and that is at or above the level of the U.S. population.

The big four wireless companies — AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and T-Mobile, which will soon merge with MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS) — continue to try to take market share from one another. Sprint is likely to step up its pursuit of customers because of a new investment from likely owner Softbank. Each of these companies has increased its fees for data used by customers, but competition has put price pressure on these initiatives.

Reuters said of Verizon’s bid for Vodafone’s stake:

The sources said Verizon was now ready to push aggressively for a deal. It hopes to start discussions with Vodafone soon for a friendly agreement but is prepared to take a bid public if the British company does not engage, one of the sources added.

“I don’t really see this as a surprise,” one of Vodafone’s 15 largest investors told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. “The talk about this deal has been quite intense recently. We knew that Verizon were definitely a keen buyer and that Vodafone were a keen seller.”

But Sprint’s value is not in its operations as much as it is in its assets. Specifically its 51 MHz of wireless spectrum and another 133 MHz that the company has offered to buy from Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR). The total exceeds the wireless spectrum held by Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) combined. It’s a massive amount and its value could be well more than the two bids now on the table for Sprint.

Japan’s Softbank has offered to pay about $20.5 billion for a 70% stake in Sprint and Dish Network Inc. (NASDAQ: DISH) has topped that with an offer worth $25.5 billion. Today’s vote by shareholders of MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS) to accept the sweetened takeover deal from T-Mobile USA continues the merger mania in the telecom space.

The odd thing is that none of the established telecom players can make a bid for Sprint. U.S. regulators would turn such an offer down flat as anticompetitive. So that leaves only deep-pocketed new entrants into the wireless carrier space.

We noted last week that Softbank, while it has experience in the Japanese wireless market and very deep pockets, may have only a limited strategic plan for Sprint. Dish Network wants to use Sprint to change its business model. That makes more sense to us.

Are there any other players lurking on the sidelines? Media companies and cable companies seem content so far to try to cut themselves a larger piece of the revenue pie by charging heftier licensing fees. That’s probably short-sighted, but then these guys have never been known for their vision. And Sprint is just too large for a smaller wireless carrier to swallow, and it’s market position doesn’t make it very attractive even for private equity or hedge fund buyers.

Sprint is surely worth buying, but the universe of potential buyers is not going to get any bigger unless another foreign buyer jumps in. A Chinese wireless company would be an obvious suspect, but all three of the large Chinese carriers are busy spending billions of dollars just to get their 3G networks up and running. None will want to bite off another network buildout at this time.

Sprint’s share price has dropped about 0.6% so far today to $7.06 in a 52-week range of $2.31 to $7.35. Because the Softbank offer is right around $7 a share, don’t expect to see much action up or down in this stock unless another potential buyer appears.