Category: Business

What is the Difference Between Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A and BRK.B Shares?

There is very little difference between Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A and BRK.B shares.

BRK.B shares were created because Warren Buffett noticed that the BRK.A shares were growing considerable high is cost per share and that these shares were less obtainable by the average retail investor and could only be purchased by either very wealth individuals, unit trusts or mutual funds.

Thus, Warren decided to create BRK.B shares to provide the average investor with the opportunity to purchase shares in Berkshire Hathaway without the huge cost associated with BRK.A.

There are other very small differences, but the above is the only one that really counts.

Asana Files to Go Public via Direct Listing on NYSE – Asana by Numbers!

Asana is one of the world’s most popular project and task management software (we use Asana in our office). A week ago Asana filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Instead of an IPO – Asana has elected to file for a direct listing (which means that they aren’t selling any new shares in the listing only the existing ones).

By the numbers:

  • For the year ending Jan. 31, 2020, Asana had a loss of $118.6 million on $142.6 million in revenue. For the year ending Jan. 31, 2019, it lost $50.9 million on $76.8 million in revenue.
  • The company says it has more than 3.2 million free account users and 75,000 paying customers with a total of 1.2 million paying users across 190 countries.
  • Asana’s biggest shareholders are co-founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz, Benchmark Capital, Generation Management, and Founders Fund.
  • According to its most recent secondary trades, Asana’s stock traded at a volume-weighted average price of $15.82 in fiscal 2020, $15.98 in Q1 2021, and $17.26 in Q2 2021.

Why would a public company want to split it’s stock?

Get share price down, for public companies. Still an issue today. Apple at $1000+ makes each share hard to buy for smaller investors.

Match a typical IPO share price, pre-IPO. Start-ups still like to IPO around $15-20 per share, plus or minus. This gives room for a “pop” and a share price still well under $100. If your private, pre-IPO share price is say $40, then a 2-for-1 forward split will get that down to $20, with the same economics for each shareholder and employee.

Apple and Tesla are both splitting their stock at present. This is to really drive some demand with smaller investors and allows them to have ownership over a great number of full stocks.

Wayfair is up over 250% in the past Year and Growing Faster than ever in Home Improvements and Gardening

Wayfair has seen amazing growth over the past year to the point of growing over 250% in the past 12 months.

Why?

Coronavirus has caused a lot of people around the world to work from home and to remain at home. It seems people have been focusing on home improvements and gardening.

Nutanix Shares Jump as Bain Capital Invest $750 million and Dheeraj Pandey Announces Retirement

Nutanix shares have jumped nearly 30% as Bain Capital announce that they are investing $750 million in the company.

Nutanix is a very interesting cloud software giant that has an amazing future. However, its CEO and co-founder Dheeraj Pandey has announced that he is retiring soon.

“There is no better time for me to make this transition to a new leader who can guide Nutanix through its next decade of growth and success,” Pandey said in a statement.

Who is really the richest person in the world? Putin? A Rothschild?

Jeff Bezos is currently the wealthiest person on the planet due to his controlling stake in Amazon. (However, he has a lot of private investments also).

The wealthiest remaining Rothschild has a net worth under $2 billion. Family fortunes tend to become diluted and squandered through the generations. The Rothschild’s wealth is exaggerated by outdated, anti-semetic conspiracy theories.

Putin is certainly very wealthy, but my guess is that he couldn’t exercise full control over all the money he nominally controls without alienating his fellow oligarchs or tanking the Russian economy.

This leaves Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest person on earth.

TikTok Has Already Had Opportunities to Sell to Microsoft, Oracle, Sequoia and General Atlantic – But Decided No

It seems like everyone wants to piece of TikTok before D-Day in the USA.

Microsoft have been in talks for some time but don’t seem to be progressing.

Oracle are now reportedly in talks, but there has been no real confirmation of those talks from either side (plus I don’t know why Oracle would think that it would be a good fit to run a video consumer product).

Sequoia and General Atlantic attempted to buy a majority stake in TikTok last month, but both seem to have failed.

I think TikTok won’t be selling any stakes as it seems like they have had adequate opportunities already, but have decided not to move forward with those advances.

It going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Is Zoho a Private Company or Public Company?

Zoho Corporation Private Limited is an Indian software development company. … The company was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas in Pleasanton, California, and currently holds its presence in seven locations with its global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India and corporate headquarters in Pleasanton.

Zoho is a software giant that no one is really talking about (purely because it is a private company and not a public company).

How to Submit Your Music on Sony Music or Universal Music Record Labels?

Universal Music and Sony Music don’t have an official website and app for submissions at present. They have always selected music based on their A&R team who keep a close eye on artists and platforms all over the world and then select the artists that are performing well.

If you want to be a major label artist you should focus your efforts on building your own fan base to start and getting your music into the world’s largest stores and streaming services via a platform like RouteNote.

Steve Jobs – Speech About Apple When They Were Weeks Away from Bankruptcy (Video)

Great speech from Steve Jobs just after he returned to Apple.

At the time he gave this speech in the background the company was only several weeks away from going bankrupt.

It was a very important speech for Apple and I also think it was a very important speech for Steve Jobs himself.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy Acquires Dominion Energy’s Natural Gas Transmission and Storage Business for $9.7 billion

It has been confirmed that Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s energy unit will acquire Dominion Energy Inc’s natural gas transmission and storage business for $9.7 billion.

This puts Berkshire Hathaway Energy into a very strong position in the market.

Potentially, this is why Warren Buffett has been holding onto an extra large cash sum? Maybe not.

Reserve Your Cybertruck Now Live in China on Tesla Website

Tesla Cybertruck orders in China.

Tesla is now officially taking Cybertruck orders in China. You can head to the Tesla website to reserve your Cybertruck.

The Cybertruck has such a unique design I’m sure there will be a lot of upper class Chinese who would love to be driving around in such a car. Really makes a statement.

Bill Ackman: Amazing 1 Hour Interview with Pershing Square Founder, hedge funds & learning from your mistakes (Video)

Bill Ackman is a very interesting person in the world of investing. Below is a great interview with Bill that talks about everything Pershing Square, hedge funds and learning from your mistakes. There are a lot of great quotes inside this interview.

Music Industry – Old Money, No Longterm Thinking, Lacks Innovation!

Now the music business sees TikTok as its tool. After being caught flat-footed by the success of “Old Town Road,” and then bringing it in-house at Sony, the labels decided they wanted some of that action. If TikTok could build the unknown Lil Nas X, imagine what it could do with a known quantity, a star?

The music business used to be first, but now it’s last. Because it is controlled by old people who did not get the memo, who believe they are indispensable and that no one can resist their money.

But isn’t it funny that not a single musical star has captured the zeitgeist of the Minneapolis/Black Lives Matter explosion in a song we all know. Illustrating that reflecting life, and opening up an audience’s eyes as to the way of life, are not part of the equation. In the music business, it’s all about collecting fans and milking them dry. When one of the biggest acts in the business, Justin Bieber, tries to manipulate the system to make his record number one, who in the hell is gonna listen to the words of a pop star?

via Bob Lefsetz

The quote above is from the most recent newsletter / article from Bob Lefsetz. Bob has been a long time music industry journalist and I thought that the above section is by far the best thing I have read about the music industry in the past 12 months.

Lefsetz is right!

The music industry has long been run by 60 year old businessman who don’t under the generations they are targeting. It’s no longer about the music and the industry runs more like buying and selling real estate than an art form at the top.

Pop music struggles to tell stories and really drive emotions. This is exactly why tracks from John Lennon, Elton John, Rolling Stones, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, are still getting very large numbers of plays even with the youngest audiences.