141–150 of 272 posts
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http://www.amazon.com/Titan-The-Life-John-Rockefeller/dp/140...
I read Titan. Interestingly, it documents how SO's market share was declining steadily throughout the anti-trust trial, and Rockefeller was unable to stop it. It runs against the conventional story of SO being an inevitable monopoly.
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As the article points out, they don't. By running the business this way they are constantly building / growing new businesses but during a downturn they just build more slowly (rather than lose money). It is a very different way of operating but one which has provided some interesting benefits for them. Nominally a business uses profits to either pay dividends or fund unexpected opportunities (like buying some small…
So if they will never pay dividends, why is their stock worth anything?
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Blimey. Fascinating. Sounds like a rather frightening and ruthless individual. Am curious. What would your nominations be for the Rockefeller of the tech (software/hardware) world? Ever thought about that?
Rockefeller was a human hurricane, a truly unique individual. He practically invented the modern corporation. He was also a product of his time. I don't think a comparison to any of today's tech giants could be anything more than laughably superficial. There are plenty of ruthless people in business even today. But Rockefeller was driven by the belief that cooperation in business, rather than competition, was the way…
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Absolutely understand what you are saying. But isn't that by definition a hot potato Ponzi scheme? I mean there are large monster e-commerce giants in other nations, it is a very real possibility that Amazon will have to battle with some company at scale who is also in the razor sharp margin mindframe. Its not impossible to imagine a world where amazon gets into a war with an Asian e-commerce giant for domination of…
But in the meantime, there is money to be made in holding on to it. Look at AMZN speculation like Bitcoin speculation: there's really no intrinsic value of a Bitcoin or AMZN share, except that others want them and there's a finite supply of them, and also there is some underlying (quickly growing) market that they represent, which means that the shares should also grow in value. Couple that with a nice PR machine ( c…
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You know what? Amazon, Werner and/or Benedict Evans can spin it anyway they want (like the kid who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar) but the bottom line is they aren't making money and haven't pinned to a date they plan to do so. (So making arguments as far as one business unit vs. another don't matter many business operate the same way and in sum make money.) All the long winded explanation of the circums…
There has been a distortion in the markets lately with the value of cash. Over the long term, buying a share of any company (Amazon, Intel, Walmart) has to give a return to the holder of that share. Otherwise, you are trading cash to hold onto a piece of paper and get it returned back as cash when you sell it. This invalidates the time value of money. In other words, if I am not getting a quarterly/annual dividend (i…
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You know what? Amazon, Werner and/or Benedict Evans can spin it anyway they want (like the kid who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar) but the bottom line is they aren't making money and haven't pinned to a date they plan to do so. (So making arguments as far as one business unit vs. another don't matter many business operate the same way and in sum make money.) All the long winded explanation of the circums…
your comment is at best a gross exaggeration. They are making money, but they are re-investing that money at a crazy rate into new businesses. That represents a huge bet, which their shareholders are willing to take on. The alternative would be to pay out cashflow from operations to shareholders in the form of dividends, or grow slower. But look at the stock price over the last 5 years - clearly, investors want to ta…
With Amazon, Bezos is deferring that profit-producing, investor-rewarding day almost indefinitely into the future. This prompts the suggestion that Amazon is the world’s biggest ‘lifestyle business’ – Bezos is running it for fun, not to deliver economic returns to shareholders, at least not any time soon. Sorry but that is ridiculous. Look at the stock price for Amazon. Anyone who has invested in Amazon has seen an a…
Amazon is making substantial profit, but not taxable profit: it takes the profit in warehouses rather than cash.
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In the 1990's, undoubtedly Gates.
Yeah, that was my thought too. > John offered three choices to rival refiners, cash, Standard Oil stock, or to get crushed ... is also a pretty good description of how Microsoft approached anyone they considered competition in the '80s and '90s: you either licensed your software to them ("cash"), sold your company to them ("stock"), or got destroyed by them. Gates' charitable efforts have earned him a warmer and fuzz…
I like to say yes. I think. I mean, he may have destroyed hundreds of people's livelihoods/jobs/companies, but his efforts these days are literally saving peoples lives.
Does anyone have an opinion on this? I'm a firm believer people can change and while this might not be Bill Gates changing, it might simply be him "atoning for his sins" so to speak, not that I'm religious, nor that he is either I think.
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Yeah, that was my thought too. > John offered three choices to rival refiners, cash, Standard Oil stock, or to get crushed ... is also a pretty good description of how Microsoft approached anyone they considered competition in the '80s and '90s: you either licensed your software to them ("cash"), sold your company to them ("stock"), or got destroyed by them. Gates' charitable efforts have earned him a warmer and fuzz…
Hmm, does his charitable efforts these days make up for the pain and suffering he caused back when he was a barracuda? (nice term, btw). I like to say yes. I think. I mean, he may have destroyed hundreds of people's livelihoods/jobs/companies, but his efforts these days are literally saving peoples lives. Does anyone have an opinion on this? I'm a firm believer people can change and while this might not be Bill Gates…
No. Changing doesn't remove your past sins and helping one person doesn't balance your hurting another. To believe so would mean saving a life makes up for taking another life, obviously it doesn't.
So basically, companies that switch to profit-making are indicating that they no longer know how to generate new acceptable returns on investment.
Bingo.