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Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

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Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#171

Post by ludicast »

bsder wrote: post #114
Jun8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an HBR article that addresses some of the misunderstandings in maligning buy back programs: https://hbr.org/2018/03/are-buybacks-really-shortchanging-in... . They comment that: "... when we look at CAPEX and R&D as a percentage of revenue ... over the past 25 years, we see that the overall investment intensity of S&P 500 firms, while quite volatile on a year-to-year basis, has been rising over the past decade,…

> If you had $25B to start a company what idea would you tackle? Medical. I would provide FDA approval process funding and indemnification for medical devices. Medical is rife with areas that could be disrupted by startups. The blocking limitation is that you can't afford the funding to get clearance for your product.

Great idea, not sure why you're bored down. The slow as shit FDA has killed more people than Stalin.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#172

Post by skybrian »

colechristensen wrote: post #150
skybrian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument relies on a fallacy of binary thinking: either you have ideas or you don't. It's perfectly fine to say that you have lots of investment ideas, but they don't add up to needing $100 billion to implement them. Especially when you are earning more cash every quarter.

This is a semantic argument which misses the point. Let's rephrase: Alphabet has far more cash than it has ideas, which is definitely a good sign that it is far past being classified an innovative company and stockpiling it can be seen as denial.

This is measuring innovation by how big a spender you are. Maybe that isn't a good metric? It seems likely that whatever other companies you consider innovative also aren't spending hundreds of billions on their ideas.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#173

Post by myroon5 »

earenndil wrote: post #143
aresant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Google/Apple invest their cash hoard very conservatively, in things like short-term treasuries, because of which their returns are very low” This is actually wrong. Apple alone wholly owns one of the world’s largest investment funds - Braeburn Capital - that actively manages over $270b of Apples assets leveraging very sophisticated investment strategies. The extent to which managing its cash is now a value-add part…

Non-AMP url: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-is-a-hedge-fund-that-make...

Non-AMP Non-paywalled URL:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-is-a-hedge-fund-that-make...

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#174

Post by inlined »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #170
dmix wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not buy some companies and get some proper entrepreneurs back into the mix of management? I can't remember any recent major Google acquisitions. No mega company really has to have internal innovation. And I doubt the pretend internal startups ala skunkswork with an unlimited budget and extensive runways are a real replacement for innovation popping out of the marketplace among the bodies of a hundred other failed…

> Why not buy some companies and get some proper entrepreneurs back into the mix of management? Because it's inefficient. Google could buy a thousand biotech startups that are all doing innovative work trying to cure cancer and things like that, but that work has nothing to do with search engines or data centers, so it makes no sense to put it under the same roof. The same management staff isn't going to be effective…

> Google could buy a thousand biotech startups that are all doing innovative work trying to cure cancer and things like that, but that work has nothing to do with search engines or data centers

Yet it has a lot to do with Calico, another Alphabet company.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#176

Post by awad »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #95
MegaButts wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think you're probably right, a blanket assumption that "they're smarter therefore they know best" is why everyone was so surprised by what happened to Enron. I do not think this is the case with Alphabet, just saying you shouldn't blindly trust experts. There's also the subprime mortgages issue from just over 10 years ago which is much better understood now, but at the time people didn't understand them and j…

At the end of the day look where the major banks ended up after the crisis. Mostly unchanged. They knew what they were doing. It's just that what they were doing wasn't in the public's interest.

Better than unchanged, even. Sure, some lost and were scooped up, but by and large the financial sector is even stronger than before with all of the consolidation that's happened.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#177

Post by dmoy »

rvn1045 wrote: post #175

Why dont Google, Microsoft or Apple start operating more like Amazon? these companies have so much cash that thet could literally start 100s of startups within with small teams just like Amazon is doing.

Amazon still has >$40B in cash. Sure Google has 3x that, but it's still within spitting distance.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#178

Post by ehsankia »

siruncledrew wrote: post #147
ehsankia wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, just because you have a lot of cash doesn't mean you should force investment into things that may not make sense. It's like if you had a huge buffet and force fed yourself until you threw up. If anything, Google probably gets flak for having too many ideas and being all over the place. People keep saying they need more focus, yet when they do that, they get accused of not having any more ideas...

Investors and board members would be way more wary of how the company is run if Google decided to do drastic things outside the scope of their core business (like Google Amusement Parks) for superfluous reasons, which would further make them lose money is the stock sinks. At Google’s size they can invest a lot in R&D and product iterations, but because they are so big the innovation seems way less drastic relative to…

I mean, at the alphabet scale, they have pretty wild stuff like waymo, loon, verily, calico, wing, etc. Even at Google, there's pretty cool tech too like stadia, soli, duplex, and so on.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#179

Post by vardump »

bsder wrote: post #114
Jun8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an HBR article that addresses some of the misunderstandings in maligning buy back programs: https://hbr.org/2018/03/are-buybacks-really-shortchanging-in... . They comment that: "... when we look at CAPEX and R&D as a percentage of revenue ... over the past 25 years, we see that the overall investment intensity of S&P 500 firms, while quite volatile on a year-to-year basis, has been rising over the past decade,…

> If you had $25B to start a company what idea would you tackle? Medical. I would provide FDA approval process funding and indemnification for medical devices. Medical is rife with areas that could be disrupted by startups. The blocking limitation is that you can't afford the funding to get clearance for your product.

Very nice. Dealing with FDA is very painful.
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