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Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

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Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#101

Post by nerfhammer »

marktangotango wrote: post #59
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't publish the full schematics of anything, which makes it impossible to do low level programming of the thing in a reasonable manner The schematics aren't so much the issue. It's the lack of documentation for the SoC and other components. The Raspberry Pi is a great learning platform and I think the Raspberry Pi foundation made the right choice in using the Broadcom parts, even if they are relatively close…

> documentation for the SoC and other components Exactly; they're basically reselling discount (or below cost) Broadcom SOCs. I'm pretty sure Broadcom will not continue that arrangement!

I always wondered if broadcom was subsidizing RPi as a form of advertisement

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#102

Post by solarkraft »

phkahler wrote: post #81
MarcScott wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the original idea. However, as well as producing a board that was great for education and hobbyists, it turned out it was great for a whole range of applications, and the bulk orders started coming in from companies all over the world. The Foundation is funded on the sales of Raspberry Pi hardware, government contracts and charitable donations. More sales directly benefit the charity. This allows us to: - Ru…

>> I know nothing about an IPO of RPTL, other than what I've read in the media, but I can guarantee you that RPF will continue to be a non-profit charity, and continue with it's mission. Call me cynical, but you are absolutely clueless. Once shareholders are involved (especially public) the management will be changed. This lovely piece appeared about a week ago here on HN: https://reactionwheel.net/2021/11/your-board…

I know of very few cases in which privatization of something publicly run has benefitted the public.

The argument "oh but the capital will allow all kinds of investments that will decrease the price in the long run" almost never holds up. Maybe it does in RPI's case, their innovation was supply chain based, after all. But my personal expectation, since a for profit company's interest is to extract as much profit add possible, is that RPI boards will move upmarket and become the premium option with an ecosystem advantage. Their position to do this is already quite good, they're basically already there. But the increased prices will also mean that companies operating on lower margins will become stronger - the Pine64s of the world.

That's the "bad case". The "good case" would be that they'll operate with low margins and compensate with scale and keep the educational stuff as marketing expenses. But that's hard to imagine.

I'm somewhat okay with either. Luckily the competition in the segment is healthy nowadays.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#103

Post by gchadwick »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #66
mywittyname wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% of their income is likely the majority of their profits, which are probably in the neighborhood of 10-15%.

A charity does not make any profit. The point being that, approximately, for every £10 that they get through donations or any other source, £9 goes to costs and £1 to actual charitable activities. Personally I would not donate to such a charity.

> for every £10 that they get through donations or any other source, £9 goes to costs

From the accounts I linked they received a bit over £3.5m in donations that year (they're listed in two different places one around £400k the other around £3.1m I don't know why they're accounted differently), spending £7.8m on charitable activities that same year. So in a sense they're managing to double their donations via their profitable trading to generate money for charitable activity spending.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#104

Post by solarkraft »

notreallyserio wrote: post #41
0des wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we stop this cycle where it's a (well-deserved) reluctant goodbye every time a company we like seeks to go public and IPO? It's like the writing's on the wall and we already know what's going to happen.. We're in a segment of time where companies are so over-valued by VC that when they go public they have no choice but to engage in egregious practices to maintain the stock price. It often alienates the custome…

It's the inevitable outcome of enough cases that we should celebrate those that don't take this route. I'm thinking of orgs like Debian here, but there are many others for whom profit is not a or the sole motivator.

Some business person probably read this post and thought "Hmm, Debian ...".

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#105

Post by gchadwick »

phkahler wrote: post #81
MarcScott wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the original idea. However, as well as producing a board that was great for education and hobbyists, it turned out it was great for a whole range of applications, and the bulk orders started coming in from companies all over the world. The Foundation is funded on the sales of Raspberry Pi hardware, government contracts and charitable donations. More sales directly benefit the charity. This allows us to: - Ru…

>> I know nothing about an IPO of RPTL, other than what I've read in the media, but I can guarantee you that RPF will continue to be a non-profit charity, and continue with it's mission. Call me cynical, but you are absolutely clueless. Once shareholders are involved (especially public) the management will be changed. This lovely piece appeared about a week ago here on HN: https://reactionwheel.net/2021/11/your-board…

I think we need to understand the ownership structure post IPO to understand what the future may hold.

If 100% of trading is going in the IPO then I think your predictions will be right on the money.

If the foundation retains the majority share and we're seeing 30/40% go to the IPO then it doesn't really matter how much profit the shareholders are demanding, the foundation can just continue to run things as it sees fit. Though the foundation may worry about the stock price tanking of course and still do what the shareholders demand.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#106

Post by jareklupinski »

0des wrote: post #30
jacknews wrote: post #9

RIP RPi. I thought the whole idea was to produce boards, priced near cost, for educational/inspirational purposes? ie to give today's kids the same kind of intro to computers (you have to program it) as kids enjoyed with the home computers of the 80's. The profit motive inherent to a public company does not seem compatible with that mission.

How do we stop this cycle where it's a (well-deserved) reluctant goodbye every time a company we like seeks to go public and IPO? It's like the writing's on the wall and we already know what's going to happen.. We're in a segment of time where companies are so over-valued by VC that when they go public they have no choice but to engage in egregious practices to maintain the stock price. It often alienates the custome…

if we all organized, we could probably collectively own more stock than any single shareholder

or just buy any amount of stock, and be a normal shareholder - go to the meetings and make your voice heard?

if enough of us even owned the minimum 1 share, the foundation / company would be in a better place

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#107

Post by boublepop »

phkahler wrote: post #81
MarcScott wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the original idea. However, as well as producing a board that was great for education and hobbyists, it turned out it was great for a whole range of applications, and the bulk orders started coming in from companies all over the world. The Foundation is funded on the sales of Raspberry Pi hardware, government contracts and charitable donations. More sales directly benefit the charity. This allows us to: - Ru…

>> I know nothing about an IPO of RPTL, other than what I've read in the media, but I can guarantee you that RPF will continue to be a non-profit charity, and continue with it's mission. Call me cynical, but you are absolutely clueless. Once shareholders are involved (especially public) the management will be changed. This lovely piece appeared about a week ago here on HN: https://reactionwheel.net/2021/11/your-board…

> All those charitable things done for free will be stopped.

Are you kidding? They clashes might be free for kids, but they can get charity donations, governmental donations, and it’s essentially a “buy our product” class. It’s great value for minor expense.

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#108

Post by hnaccount141 »

LegitShady wrote: post #76
Sunspark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

Unfortunately theory once it hits reality is often found to be untenable. The aggregation of power into some kind of central authority system for the good of the people always ends up bad for the people.

> The aggregation of power into some kind of central authority system for the good of the people always ends up bad for the people.

You will find that this sentiment is quite popular among communists these days. The idea of achieving a classless, stateless society via the use of a central state is inherently contradictory. (Though that's not to say that the alternatives are necessarily more realistic)

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#109

Post by hnaccount141 »

0des wrote: post #63
beckman466 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we stop this cycle where it's a (well-deserved) reluctant goodbye every time a company we like seeks to go public and IPO? venture communism instead of venture capitalism? peer-to-peer communism instead of the client server state? http://media.telekommunisten.net/manifesto.pdf

While I respect your willingness to think outside of the box, and am thankful for your reply, I am old enough to remember that communism is not something I personally desire.

If you ignore the historically loaded proper nouns in that piece, most of the values described are the sort of thing that's typically pretty popular around here. Decentralization, free software, information freedom, etc. It doesn't really have anything to do with the communist parties that come to mind when one hears the word "Communism".

Re: Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO

#110

Post by ant6n »

Dangeranger wrote: post #77
Sunspark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure communism as conceived in theory is not the same thing as the Soviet and Chinese applications which are really authoritarianism.

Can you point to a communist government which has not devolved into authoritarianism? I cannot. It seems to be the inevitable end of that form of government.

Many companies are kind of communist when looking at their internal structure.
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