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Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

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Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#181

Post by bombcar »

wongarsu wrote: post #165
Solvency wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if all salaried employees working from an office created a personal LLC to own their car, and then had their work compensate them by reimbursing each employees LLC. Would that pass muster?

If it's cheaper for the company than leasing or renting cars somewhere else, why not? Presumably you hire the employee for their time and expertise, not because they own a car and offer its use for company travel below market rate. (That does happen in many industries, but that's a market distortion we should look down on, not a yardstick for what's right)

The difference is it's usually not "worth it" to break it out in the case of an employee (the advantage is the other way, where the company buys a car and lets the employee drive it, and ignores personal use).

With $2m on the line, it is worth it even just for the tax savings.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#182

Post by acdha »

alberth wrote: post #109

> The company generated $886,000 in revenue Plenty of companies spend more than that on just AWS egress fees. I’m not saying money spent on a private jet is right or wrong. But when a company is not profitable, you could compare this to anything. Like the headline could have easily been “Canoo spent double its annual revenue on AWS egress fees”

AWS egress fees serve a legitimate business function. They might be higher than what they could be with optimization but they go towards a business service.

What we’re seeing here is more like if those egress charges were due to him hosting the business on his own cloud service even though it cost more.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#183

Post by bombcar »

neom wrote: post #150
echoangle wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really a thing? Is private supposed to be more secure because of accidents or because of risk of kidnapping and assassinations? I don’t see a reason why private flights would be less accident-prone than public flights. Edit: looks like private flights are actually much more dangerous than airlines, the insurance would probably prefer if you would fly public… (not my favorite source but the first thing I found…

It is a thing, yes. A friend of mine was discussing how he has to think about the events to go to because his key man insurance on his family office requires him to use his own pilot, so he's contently inventing dumb reasons not to go to things vs admitting his cheap and doesn't want to spend the money. Two things I find amusing about this... rich people being cheap is always funny, and, as you mentioned, insurance c…

Private is less safe if your grouping includes Cessnas and small business jets, and ignores kidnappings.

With a private jet you can be at the airport and direct into your waiting car with security escort without anyone knowing, which can greatly reduce the chance of other issues occurring.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#184

Post by gangstead »

woobar wrote: post #124
dgrin91 wrote: post #36

The headline is relatively clickbait-y. Its double their revenue because their revenue is basically 0. Their actual expenses are hundreds of millions, of which this 1.7 million is a drop in the bucket. Once their upfront expenses are paid they will (presumably) be making hundreds of millions/billions in revenue, which means this 1.7m is not particularly important. You can talk about standard complaints of CEOs with p…

CEOs get all kinds of compensation. Business jet travel, security, etc. This line item could be just tax optimization for this guy. I am not trying to defend him, he is getting paid a lot: "On May 5, 2023, the Board granted Mr. Aquila an award of 6,884,682 RSUs. These awards vest on May 5, 2024, subject to continuous service." [1] At current stock price it is ~$20M. Getting outraged about additional $1.7M that was ne…

Totally agree. I'm not usually in the habit of defending millionaires. But I thought there used to be a justification for private jet travel of maximizing the CEO's time. The company is investing $20M per year in this asset and he's probably flying for meetings all the time and if a private jet cuts a couple hours of airport transit / wait time off of each flight it's probably worth it for the increased amount of meetings he can attend.

Maybe that can be achieved for less than $1.7M, I'm not informed enough. This source https://simpleflying.com/gulftream-g700-cost-to-own-operate-.... says it's a little more than $2M per year to operate a Gulfstream G700, I don't know what kind of jets CEOs are using these days.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#185

Post by sofixa »

bombcar wrote: post #179
sofixa wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone think that the current ICE manufacturers will just sit idly by and not get out EV designs at some point? Either on their own, or in collaboration with other legacy manufacturers? They have existing brand loyalty, existing relationships, supply chains, dealership networks etc. etc. that they can make use of even if their designs aren't as good as brand new entrants (and that's assuming brand new entra…

Because for a long time the ICE manufacturers were making half-hearted play attempts at EVs, and Tesla came in and made real EVs and had a huge stock play related to that. So now the ICEs are scrambling to catch up, and are doing so, but lots of money is flowing around hoping to be the next Tesla.

> Because for a long time the ICE manufacturers were making half-hearted play attempts at EVs, and Tesla came in and made real EVs and had a huge stock play related to that.

And their sales were still dwarfed by legacy manufacturers, who then started paying attention and practically all of them have at least one EV model out there, often with new platforms/models being in the works.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#186

Post by makr17 »

gumptionary wrote: post #42
snowwrestler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fine for anyone to have multiple concurrent jobs as long as all their employers know about it. Hiding things is where people get into trouble (and not just with jobs).

This is a totally fair point. The incongruity arises for me in that if I said in a job interview process that I'd be continuing to hold another position while adding this one, I'd get laughed out of the room. If it's critical that rank and file guys don't have divided time or loyalties, why is the standard different for the single person most responsible for success or failure of the company?

The last three jobs I've held, I've had to state up front in writing that I will continue to act as the paid IT support for my spouse's one-person consulting firm. Hasn't been an issue yet.

Three jobs ago I also had a very small side consulting gig that came along after I'd been hired, so I had to get it cleared. It was at the behest of one of their board members though, so it really wasn't a hassle...

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#187

Post by bombcar »

diggan wrote: post #7

> Under a deal reached in November 2020, Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO (Tony Aquila), for use of an aircraft. In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement — that’s double the amount of revenue it generated. Canoo paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.8 million in 2021 for use of the aircraft. I'm surprised there are any employees left at the company.…

It may also be part and parcel of the market they're trying to play in.

If every other "car company" has a private jet ready to whisk the CEO anywhere in the world, you might look really silly to other companies who expect you to be able to make a near last minute meeting.

And if you're an employee, as long as you get paid you're likely not to care much about it.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#188

Post by astrange »

diggan wrote: post #100
wsc981 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The whole COVID handling of New Zealand, Australia and Canada proved to me I wouldn't want to live in any of those countries. What countries are you now curious to live in, after seeing how they handled COVID?

Japan, Korea and Taiwan had good results for minimal disruption.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#189

Post by astrange »

bevekspldnw wrote: post #57
Workaccount2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A former president only stayed at properties owned by his company, billing the government millions in extra overhead. His voters love him.

Regular reminder his voters are the minority and he’s never won a popular vote.

That doesn't matter because presidential campaigns aren't designed to get them the popular vote.

Re: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet

#190

Post by empath-nirvana »

Solvency wrote: post #104
Climato wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need at least 400 Million to enter the car manufacturer market. The investment does sound absolutely reasonable at this point.

Can someone explain why people try to make new cars from the ground up, rather than "fork" a base platform from GM/Toyota/KIA/whoever with a different design and little features? This happens in literally every other market and industry. hell, just look at PCs and laptops. Like why can't a Canoo or Rivian license a base EV platform and come up with their own chassis design, infotainment system, and other little thing…

> Can someone explain why people try to make new cars from the ground up, rather than "fork" a base platform from GM/Toyota/KIA/whoever with a different design and little features?

That's sort of what Tesla did with the Roadster. It was a Lotus that they put an electric motor into.

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