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Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

investors.squarespace.com

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Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#71

Post by smaudet »

itsoktocry wrote: post #32
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #14

It must be nice for the founder to pocket $2 billion in cash from selling his company. For users, on the other hand, I'll hardly trust a PE firm with a SaaS product. There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features.

> There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features. So what's the best ownership structure? Public companies have their issues (short-term thinking), acquisitions have their issues (getting closed down)... I mean, cutting costs and upping prices isn't awesome for the customer, but do you have more faith in a…

> do you have more faith in a company that's scraping by versus working to be profitable

Working to be profitable is not correlated with well-functioning. Its usually correlated with enshittification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification), and poor functioning.

The most profitable (at least in the short term) is to provide a costly product that you took no time to produce, with zero support.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#72

Post by mattmaroon »

cactusfrog wrote: post #6
berkeleyjunk wrote: post #2

It is interesting how most M&A transactions trend to have a 30% premium above the trading price. I have tried to investigate why but could not find a good explanation to why this number is so prevalent.

You have to pay enough to convince everyone to sell. The trading price is the marginal price of buying one more unit of stock, not a representation of the stock price at which every owner will sell.

Well, you have to pay enough to convince the board to force everyone to sell and not risk being sued for not doing their fiduciary duty. But yeah, that’s the gist of it. if you were to attempt to simply buy up all of the shares on the open market, it would cost more than whatever it closed at the day before you did that, all else being equal

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#73

Post by can16358p »

> Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access web.prd.q4inc.com

> Why have I been blocked? This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

What?? I'm just trying to open the page in the link.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#74

Post by rqtwteye »

belter wrote: post #66
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #14

It must be nice for the founder to pocket $2 billion in cash from selling his company. For users, on the other hand, I'll hardly trust a PE firm with a SaaS product. There's just too much incentive to jack up prices to service the debt taken to acquire Squarespace, and cut costs on customer support and building new features.

Going from their financials, Squarespace makes no money: Revenues of $281.1 million for Q1 with Net Income of $0.1 million so it can be rounded to $0. They have debt of $556.9 million so yes, for the founder being able to pass on this pig with lipstick is great. Permira is well known for what was their management approach with AA in the UK, so for the employees this will probably mean massive layoffs soon. https://ww…

Something is really wrong in this market when even a "successful" company like Squarespace deson't manage to be a profitable business.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#75

Post by thiago_fm »

renegade-otter wrote: post #60

The gold rush is over - private equity is going to squeeze every little drop from the companies that have been built and we will move on to Web 3.0 - which will be just like web 1.0 - self-hosting, link directories, newsletters, and guestbooks.

I can't wait for this time to arrive, sick of big companies controlling everybody's attention

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#77

Post by nicbou »

renegade-otter wrote: post #60

The gold rush is over - private equity is going to squeeze every little drop from the companies that have been built and we will move on to Web 3.0 - which will be just like web 1.0 - self-hosting, link directories, newsletters, and guestbooks.

As much as I'd like to see a web 1.0 revival, this won't happen.

The traffic is controlled by Google and social networks. Most people don't have the skills needed to run their own website. A lot of valuable content is created by people without these sorts of skills.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#78

Post by klysm »

rqtwteye wrote: post #74
belter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from their financials, Squarespace makes no money: Revenues of $281.1 million for Q1 with Net Income of $0.1 million so it can be rounded to $0. They have debt of $556.9 million so yes, for the founder being able to pass on this pig with lipstick is great. Permira is well known for what was their management approach with AA in the UK, so for the employees this will probably mean massive layoffs soon. https://ww…

Something is really wrong in this market when even a "successful" company like Squarespace deson't manage to be a profitable business.

If growth is the goal, you sacrifice margin for revenue

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#79

Post by lagniappe »

rqtwteye wrote: post #74
belter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from their financials, Squarespace makes no money: Revenues of $281.1 million for Q1 with Net Income of $0.1 million so it can be rounded to $0. They have debt of $556.9 million so yes, for the founder being able to pass on this pig with lipstick is great. Permira is well known for what was their management approach with AA in the UK, so for the employees this will probably mean massive layoffs soon. https://ww…

Something is really wrong in this market when even a "successful" company like Squarespace deson't manage to be a profitable business.

Headcount and marketing spend required to be perceived as "successful" in the industry is commensurately high.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#80

Post by HatchedLake721 »

rqtwteye wrote: post #74
belter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from their financials, Squarespace makes no money: Revenues of $281.1 million for Q1 with Net Income of $0.1 million so it can be rounded to $0. They have debt of $556.9 million so yes, for the founder being able to pass on this pig with lipstick is great. Permira is well known for what was their management approach with AA in the UK, so for the employees this will probably mean massive layoffs soon. https://ww…

Something is really wrong in this market when even a "successful" company like Squarespace deson't manage to be a profitable business.

Because companies chose to not be profitable and invest all their money into growth.
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