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Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#681

Post by eric_the_read »

Shivetya wrote: post #667
panarky wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great discussion of company culture, treatment of employees, worker cooperatives, etc., but I hoped HN would go deeper into the business and technology implications. What is the strategic logic behind this move? NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Bloomberg all take the same line: this is about Amazon's expansion into brick-and-mortar retail. They need a physical footprint, knock out Instacart for delivery, accelerate Amazon G…

To me I fail to see the value because Aldi is here and expanding and now Lidi is following. while they may be on the opposite end of the market from Whole foods I do think they are where the market will truly end up. The middle to higher end grocery stores are going to face a tough time with the discounters and we have yet to see if the European model of grocery can covert a large number of shoppers. with regards to…

The value is that Aldi is nowhere near here, and Lidi is completely un-heard-of.

The only reason I know about Aldi is that I spent a couple of years working in Chicago (and living further out), and even there I had to drive a long ways out of my way to find an Aldi. I think I went once in the 2 years I was there.

Whole Foods is everywhere.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#682

Post by walshemj »

irfanka wrote: post #356
rmc wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1880s Bismarck increased the modern welfare state (it was called State Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_(Germany) ). The idea was that, if the poor people can get some form of social welfare from the existing state, they're less likely to support a proper socialist/communist revolution. Sounds like that. People won't unionise when they don't think they need to.

Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.

There are plenty of unions that represent it/dev workers I.A.T.S.E and the CWA in the USA spring to mind Prospect in the Uk and IG Medien in Germany

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#683

Post by walshemj »

tracker1 wrote: post #561
throwaway40483 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this day, I'm still puzzled by the fact that the wage fixing incident didn't blow up in the press. Amazing..

"Some massively rich companies colluded to keep their 5%-er employees from making even more..." Not that I disagree that it was a huge deal, it's hard to gather greater sympathy/empathy from people that tend to make less than half of those aggrieved.

no it depressed the entire industry's wages

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#684

Post by mee_too »

s73ver wrote: post #646
markshead wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ones who bought stock (including those that did so at the 85% discount) will get the value of their stock. However, shareholders aren't guaranteed any returns. If they bought their stock in 2013 they lost money. Employees who bought stock with the 85% discount won't be quite as bad off as non-employee shareholders. Imagine suggesting that any employee who was hired when the stock price was higher than the sel…

I reject that notion entirely. The employees are the reason why the store was able to do so well. They should get the bulk of the reward for that. I flat out reject this idea that people should get the bulk of reward simply for already having money.

IMHO if a person is over 30 yo and an employee, he's either stupid or lazy or both.

Investing and not loosing a lot of money is not simple, it takes intelligence and effort.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#685

Post by walshemj »

Symbiote wrote: post #508
fivestar wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligent people capable of negotiating their pay in a market such as that for software development would only be encumbered by unions. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.

Maybe have a look at the list here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions * Association of Educational Psychologists * British Air Line Pilots’ Association * FDA ("The union for senior public sector managers and professionals") * Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association * Prospect, the professionals' union There are a lot more listed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-list-of-ac...

And Norman Tebbit was the president of BALPA and for non UK the FDA is th union for V senior Civil Servants including MI6

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#686

Post by mee_too »

guelo wrote: post #502
_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

My roommate works at WF and gets paid minimum wage, gets crappy benefits, is never allowed to work 40 hours to avoid being labeled "full time", and her schedule is generated by a computer with no human input allowed.

The schedule thing sounds like a fair deal, if you allow human input the people with "people skills" will benefit at the expense of those that are socially awkward.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#687

Post by sethhochberg »

magic_beans wrote: post #394
jarjoura wrote: post #386

This might just be a strategic move to block Instacart as every WF I've been to recently had created an entire checkout section just for Instacart.

Whoa, really? I've never seen this in New York.

Are you upstate? In the stores I've used around NYC, the Instacart presence in WF is huge. Branded coolers by the doors for deliveries waiting to go out and everything.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#688

Post by Spooky23 »

maxerickson wrote: post #56
AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

I don't think that is right, Whole Foods stores are already full of...food. They don't have room for hundreds of additional products, never mind tens of thousands.

Amazon Fresh cannot keep stuff in stock. Whole Foods can. Even if they have people running around with shopping carts in the store, you'd probably achieve a better result than what Fresh is doing today in many areas.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#689

Post by drtz »

prewett wrote: post #585
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that the purchase, as based on today's price action, was effectively "free". Amazon market cap went up 3.5% as of the current tick, roughly $15.5B. The market effectively rewarded AMZN for the transaction far beyond the actual $13.7B tender offer!

No, they are paying in cash, not stock. The company sold the stock a long time ago, so whatever the stock does has no impact on the company. The stockholders, however, benefited 3.5%, assuming they sell now.

The cash itself is owned by the shareholders.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#690

Post by e12e »

lukas099 wrote: post #525
dx034 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you bought it for $20bn. Wholefoods is publicly owned and the price that Amazon pays is below their price a few years back. It's not about size, $13bn is a lot of money. But Wholefoods needed a strategy or buyer, otherwise they would've faced serious problems in a few years.

How much have they paid in dividends since they cost $20bn?

This is a great question. Are there any open and fee apis where one can look up a publicly traded stock and get out dividends paid out over a time period? Surely that's at least as interesting as the rise and fall of the stock price.
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