What’s going on? General Motors (GM) announced it’ll boost its spending on electric vehicles (EV) through 2025. What does this mean? 30 news EVs by 2025 are GM’s goal when investing a total of $27 billion. Further radius than Tesla: since most of GM’s new vehicles will feature its upcoming Ultium battery cells, they’ll reportedly…
Author: Finterest
Ep 122: US home sales soar
What’s going on? US existing home sales hit a 14-year high in October. What does this mean? Demand Quantity: Sales of previously-owned US homes climbed by 4.3% YoY, bringing the annualized number of home sales to almost 7 million, which might have been even higher if the home supply weren’t at record lows Prices: are therefore…
Journal Report 23: Airbnb’s IPO
What’s going on here? Airbnb finally filed for IPO (S-1 form link) on Nov 16, 2020, after 5 years of rumor. Its valuation is now ~ $18 bil, compared with the $31 bil valuation in 2017. Pricing terms are not yet set. Lead underwriters are Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Airbnb’s recent performance Gross Booking…
Journal Report 22: How Vietnamese ecommerce is different
Written by the Co-founder of Lazada – Christopher Brinkeborn Beselin, the original article states the characteristics of the Vietnam market that new e-commerce players might want to acknowledge. There appear to be some recurring themes that would continue to make the Vietnamese e-commerce landscape a special place to compete. Frugality Conservation seems to be what…
Ep 121: Global Oil Demand Forecast Cut
What’s going on? The International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its forecast for global oil demand, despite the recently announced vaccine. What does this mean? Oil’s price has been rising since Pfizer and BioNTech reported the success of their coronavirus vaccine trial, renewing hopes for an uptick in demand. But the IEA doesn’t expect demand to rise significantly till late…
Ep 120: Game Over
What’s going on? Amazon announced its foray into the video game streaming industry. What does this mean? Amazon unveiled Luna, a service that’ll let gamers play famous titles without the need for a console or physical games, which will cost $5.99/month, which undercuts Google’s rival streaming games service, Stadia. While Stadia could help Google grow YouTube into a massive…
Ep 119: Hot Diggety Dog
What’s Going On Here? JD.com – China’s 2nd-biggest ecommerce retailer – reported better-than-expected 2nd-quarter results, which was 34% higher than the same period last year What Does This Mean? That was thanks to: an almost 30% increase in active customer accounts – now totaling almost 420 million a surge in cellphone-using customers who tend to buy…
Ep 118: Drug Deal
What’s Going On Here? French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi agreed to buy US biotech Principia Biopharma for $3.4 billion. What Does This Mean? Sanofi’s a pretty traditional pharma outfit, so its purchase of Principia should help push it toward more innovative therapies, which might lift earnings growth. Most of the world’s big pharma and biotech companies…
Ep 117: Tok The Tok
What’s Going On Here? ByteDance – the parent company of TikTok – is not only the most valuable startup but is also wildly profitable. What Does This Mean? ByteDance more than doubled its revenue to $17 billion in 2019, while also recording a profit of $3 billion, beating YouTube’s $15 billion revenue and closing in on Instagram’s $20…
Ep 116: Awkward Silences
What’s Going On Here? WeWork has skipped some of its rental payments, and that’s had knock-on effects for bond investors. What Does This Mean? Clearly, stay-at-home orders mean there aren’t many people paying WeWork to rent office space. Rental and mortgage payments are similar to bonds in that they both pay a regular income for a specific…
with HT 