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Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

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Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#71
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession Any chance you could elaborate on this? Arm exists and is British, after all.

The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a de…

Canada has many similarities. The inherited wealth is essentially banks and oligarchs. You pretty much have to be risk free to get any funding. Lots of window dressing and marketing to make Canada look good. If it were not for US companies (Cisco, Google, etc) the Canadian tech salary would be closer to Europe. Once you start living here you realize the truth about how much they value tech, protectionism, the incompetence of the telecom sector, stodgy banking and finance, poor education, unaffordable housing, and declining access to health (Ontario and stories from the Maritimes since health is provincial - cannot speak of Alberta/BC/etc).

All subpar but the marketing and virtue signaling is great. A lot of 'make Canada look good' comes at the expense of Canadians.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#72
post #34
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the UK has a long history of sending its own tech industry abroad... It begun with the invention of the computer as we know it... - Charles Babbage,"Father of the computer", British - Alan Turing, "Father of modern computer science", British Then there was Margret Thatcher who decided the internet was a fad and wasn't worth investing in internet infrastructure in the country. Where did the multi billion (if not…

Thatcher was replaced by a guy called Blair who saw the internet as the future worth investing in. Sadly he found another cause to throw money at. The mistake Thatcher made was to open up the telecoms market to competition at a time when the legacy provider (BT) were starting to build a high speed internet highway/backbone. In hindsight, this could indeed be considered an error but looking how BT have fared since, pe…

A lot more mistakes made by Thatcher than that.

We're now in the absurd situation where 4 out of 6 power generating companies are foreign owned and the Japanese own our chip manufacturer.

All because of her policies that originally envisioned that the share holding would be by the British public, not foreigners.

And the latest scandal is that our water companies are dumping ridiculous amounts of sewage into our waterways while giving out huge dividends. And there's nothing anyone seems to be able to do about it.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession Any chance you could elaborate on this? Arm exists and is British, after all.

The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a de…

> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth

Curious to see you prove that beyond an imagined stereotype. It's not as though we are in the first generation of US entrepreneurship and there is not a huge quantity of US inherited wealth in those VC funds. The founders of Intel, Apple, Walmart, Standard Oil etc. have all passed on. And on the other side, it's not like there haven't been a dozen generations since Norman lords chopping up all the land wealth. I think only one British billionaire is an aristo, the rest are business folk.

People underestimate the effect of how wealth attracts wealth in terms of commercial hubs - money chases opportunity and opportunities chase money and they end up in the same place for all sorts of reasons. It's just a system effect rather than a consequence of higher virtues that some love grant themselves.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bit of a downer for the UK to see them list in the US I wonder to what extent the overarching business culture of the UK (which I'd categorise as being generally apathetical, if not hostile, to the engineering profession) might have anything to do with it. (...speaking as a former UK eng myself)

More likely there is just more capital available in the US markets - the Arm listing won't be small. A lot of US funds have restrictions as to how much they can invest outside the US.

Why?

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business enviroment is a lot better in the US, a friend just started a company there, got an unsecured 80k line of credit at 1.5% on a fresh LLC. This kind of thing doesn't exist in the UK. I know people who couldn't even get a 5k overdraft after 2 years in business (and profitable).

Sounds like English banking has not changed much from 20 years ago, when I needed to spend 3 months in the UK, had to have a uk bank account to rent a flat, but needed an English residence to open a bank account.

That’s definitely changed. I had little issues with this in 2015 using a letter of proof of employment.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "risks" section is pretty interesting, e.g.: "Arm China is 25% of our revenue, but we have no control over them, they have failed to pay us in the past resulting in us taking on additional costs to recover the money, also we have no way of knowing what they actually owe us and other than what they say, which has already been a problem"

How do they manage IP if they have no control over them? I see a pretty big issue

According to the filing they have extremely limited ability to influence them and yeah it is a big issue.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely there is just more capital available in the US markets - the Arm listing won't be small. A lot of US funds have restrictions as to how much they can invest outside the US.

Why?

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#78

How long until Apple does a hostile takeover? /s I assume regulators would block a hostile takeover like they would a regular buyout if there are concerns regarding market power?

Apple with their special license couldn't care less about ARM.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#79

During the height of the covid tech bubble, Nvidia offered to buy ARM for $40b. Right now, Softbank wants a $60b - $70b valuation when many tech stocks have lost 90%+ and some large caps have lost 30% - 50%. What justifies such crazy increase in value? Also, I believe Nvidia overpaid for the company regardless. Nvidia was willing to pay $40b because they want a world-class CPU design team to integrate their GeForce I…

ARM changed the licensing and now wants % of price of every end device sold.

Re: Arm Announces Public Filing for Proposed Initial Public Offering

#80
post #20

During the height of the covid tech bubble, Nvidia offered to buy ARM for $40b. Right now, Softbank wants a $60b - $70b valuation when many tech stocks have lost 90%+ and some large caps have lost 30% - 50%. What justifies such crazy increase in value? Also, I believe Nvidia overpaid for the company regardless. Nvidia was willing to pay $40b because they want a world-class CPU design team to integrate their GeForce I…

> It's generally not a good business to invest in. i agree. > Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like it's pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp in reality.

>Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March

>i find the current valuation ludicrous, and it seems like it's pushed more by Softbank's Vision Fund than a firm grasp in reality.

Just for comparison, AMD, which is still quite small, gets about $2b - $4b annual net profit. Intel, before their recent disaster quarters, had as much as $24b in annual net profit.

$524m in net income is peanuts compared to the big boys. This is what I was saying in my original post. ARM is a more valuable company if they were acquired by Nvidia. As a standalone company, it's not that great. Again, a weird quirk of ARM is that their biggest customers are also their biggest competitors. This puts a cap on how much profit they can make. If ARM decides to raise licensing fees exponentially, which is likely not simple due to long-term contracts, then companies will seriously look to RISC-V.

Because ARM is the smallest fish in the pond, it can't pay for the best engineers. The best chip engineers will go to AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, and startups. ARM is where these companies go to poach.

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