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Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

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Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#71

Post by allendoerfer »

johndhi wrote: post #66
SilverBirch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, because they're an investment company. They manage people's money. A lot of people seem to talk about BlackRock as if they're investing their own money, which would be similar to pretending your bank owns all the money that you put in it. They have $10Tn under management, but they have a market cap of $100bn. So the vast majority of what they're doing is just brokering deals for their investors. The fact t…

Can you explain this part more? Does blackrock not invest its own money in deals? And are specific deals specific to blackrock customers or do they just take a percent of their overall holdings and invest them in individual deals?

Blackrock is an asset manager. You can go to ishares.com, search for an ETF, buy shares of it and Blackrock will have your money investing it on your behalf.

It will take away a small percentage of your money every year to pay costs and make its profits, but you will profit from the returns of the investment itself.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#72

Post by yreg »

JackFr wrote: post #46
alex_duf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's coined by Tesla, but not a trademark. (don't quote me on this)

But what does it mean? Are there kilofactories and megafactories? The rarely seen obscure myriafactories?

There is one megafactory: https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/megafactory

I thought gigafactory had no meaning other than Tesla's marketing speak for a large factory, but apparently the term is gaining traction for better or worse:

> The term "gigafactory" has also been adopted by other companies which are involved in the manufacture of electric vehicles and other clean tech products. Established automobile manufacturers such as Jaguar and Volkswagen now use the term to refer to their own electric vehicle factories.[6][7] Newer companies such as Stellantis have also embraced the term[8] by referring to four new "gigafactories" in France which will produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Other companies such as Holosolis[9] and 3Sun,[10] which only produce solar cells and finished solar panel assemblies, also use the term "gigafactory" to refer to their facilities. The term is therefore understood to generically refer to large industrial facilities which are associated with the decarbonization and electrification trend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#73

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

k_bx wrote: post #3

I was recently shopping for an UPS + couple 100Ah Batteries solution and failed to find an easy way to buy something not manufactured in China. Northvolt seems to not be present in retail at all. Are there any good places I should've checked out?

China won almost total dominance of LFP batteries, apparently because Hydro-Quebec enforced steep patent royalties everywhere else. It's no coincidence that manufacturers are starting to look elsewhere now that the patents are expiring.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#74

Post by gottorf »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #61
celtoid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powell and Blackrock have something to do with each other. It's reasonable to assume a conflict of interest. "Fed Chair Powell Has Upwards of $11.6 Million Invested with BlackRock, the Firm that Will Manage a $750 Billion Corporate Bond Bailout Program for the Fed " [0] [0] https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/05/fed-chair-powell-has-...

Thanks for repeating the same thing, I guess..

I think the contentious point is not that "Fed Chair Powell Has Upwards of $11.6 Million Invested with BlackRock", it's that concurrently "the Firm that Will Manage a $750 Billion Corporate Bond Bailout Program for the Fed". At most one of those two things should be true for there to be no conflict of interest.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#75

Post by gottorf »

beambot wrote: post #57
celtoid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chairman of The Fed has his assets being managed by a company that the Fed does business with. It's completely reasonable to assume a conflict of interest in this less-than-transparent environment. The upper tiers of power don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

There's not a single thing the Fed chairman could invest in that wouldn't be a conflict of interest -- whether the world's largest asset manager (blackrock), broadbased ETFs, or even USD since his monetary policy effects the dollar's purchasing power.

> since his monetary policy effects the dollar's purchasing power

Kind of wild that one man* has the ability to change the dollar's purchasing power, which affects literally billions of people, isn't it?

*: Actually twelve members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#76

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #60
somenameforme wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't think this is a practical argument. You have zero control, influence, or access to the businesses BlackRock controls. By contrast Larry Fink has the power, which he has regularly exploited, to reshape entire economies at the snap of his fingers, let alone just one of the many businesses under their control.

Which is exactly what investors pay Fink and the BlackRock team to do. Most people don't have time to analyze and choose things to invest in, so they offload that responsibility to BlackRock in exchange for some fees. The system is working as intended.

To me, the bigger issue is whether BlackRock just gets paid a fee to manage the portfolio composition, or whether they can also exercise voting rights on shares in their ETF.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#77

Post by gottorf »

Shrezzing wrote: post #52
celtoid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chairman of The Fed has his assets being managed by a company that the Fed does business with. It's completely reasonable to assume a conflict of interest in this less-than-transparent environment. The upper tiers of power don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I agree that it's a conflict of interest, but I'm not sure how the chair of the fed could keep their money without a conflict of interest somewhere, given that their role necessarily has interests in all US financial institutions. For the chair to not have a conflict of interest, they'd need to forfeit all their money, or keep it in cash under their mattress.

> keep it in cash under their mattress

Even that would be a conflict! They are Federal Reserve Notes under that mattress, after all.

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#78

Post by adamsmith143 »

k_bx wrote: post #3

I was recently shopping for an UPS + couple 100Ah Batteries solution and failed to find an easy way to buy something not manufactured in China. Northvolt seems to not be present in retail at all. Are there any good places I should've checked out?

Generally have been satisfied with Anker, though that stuff is made in China the chargers and batteries have been good. Monoprice used to be good but I haven't used anything from them in a while

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#79

Post by jt6rajn45ajaq4 »

FredPret wrote: post #13
defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they haven't Blackstone has - they're related private equity groups, aka late capitalist cancer ala Gordon Ecko's 'I produce nothing , I do nothing , I own '.

Owning a stock is a verb. Allocating capital takes a lot of work, and a lot of courage. Gordon Gecko is a fictional character. Having said that, Blackstone/rock has grown far too much. People need to stop sending their money to their index funds.

> Allocating capital takes a lot of work

That's why most people with a lot of capital hire others to manage it.

Also, there are many cases where capital is just "left to sit" and still grows. If you get lucky enough, even dead people can grow their capital.

Capitalism might help if you want the strongest loggers to cut the most logs. But it doesn't help the smartest scientists do more science. Science just doesn't work that way. That's why we are transitioning from picies (age of mass production) to aquarius (age of resource mangement). Why will our children have to carry their own water?

Re: Northvolt raises $1.2B convertible note from BlackRock

#80

Post by gottorf »

worksonmine wrote: post #47
FredPret wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning a stock is a verb. Allocating capital takes a lot of work, and a lot of courage. Gordon Gecko is a fictional character. Having said that, Blackstone/rock has grown far too much. People need to stop sending their money to their index funds.

> Allocating capital takes a lot of work, and a lot of courage. I don't think it does. Sitting on this kind of capital is easy, sprinkle it in enough places during good times and you'll get good results. Add some contacts to that (like private phone calls with the FED) and it's even easier. Having capital is a shortcut to making things happen. What's difficult and takes work is bootstrapping without capital.

> Sitting on this kind of capital is easy, sprinkle it in enough places during good times and you'll get good results.

It's easy when you're talking about someone's 401k with half a million dollars in it. With one click you can put it in the S&P 500, a 60/40 split, a target date fund, or if you're young and frisky maybe you put it in a mix of crypto, renewable energy companies with an uncertain future, and some pre-trial drug companies, because you can afford to lose it all.

If you're BlackRock with $9T AUM and you know that it's other people's retirement money you're managing, it's a lot harder. That much capital moves markets. You can't go in and out of positions easily, because the very act of you buying or selling alters the price appreciably; that is, you're too big of a player to be an invisible participant in the market.

Hell, even a high net worth individual looking to place $50mm isn't going to have an "easy" job, once you realize that the name of the game is actually preserving the purchasing power of that capital. That takes work. It doesn't come for free.

> What's difficult and takes work is bootstrapping without capital.

This is also true. But if managing capital was that easy, nobody rich would ever not be rich anymore. The Vanderbilt family was at one point estimated to be worth more than 1% of the US GDP; yet by the fourth generation, they sold their famous mansion, The Breakers.

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