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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#871

Post by m463 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #331
ddingus wrote: post #318

While I'm happy for the people who made a lot of money in this transaction, I always read these announcements with a bit of angst. From a user point of view, I expect this to go like Reddit has, for example. Everyone building that value saw high use value, returns on their investment in the form of information they need, lean, easy to find, high signal to noise. Now there is a debt to be paid. The new owner needs to…

I dunno. Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. But I agree with you overall. I'm a bit nervous too. Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. EDIT: In the other announcement post ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ... ): Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overfl…

> Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition.

In relation to money, or to users?

Reddit is awful now, forcing everyone to an app and privacy out the window

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#872

Post by midasuni »

astrange wrote: post #805
midasuni wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have google, Facebook amazon or Netflix ever issued a dividend?

They are likely to do stock buybacks which are the same thing. You’re certainly not buying them for voting rights - FB and Google almost don’t give those out, and ETFs don’t pass on their voting rights but are not cheaper than the underlying stocks.

When was the last buyback?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#873

Post by skinnymuch »

biztos wrote: post #732
skinnymuch wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1…

It totally blew my mind a few years ago to discover that this is also common in the bar & restaurant world.

That would low key blow my mind a bit. I enjoy corporate stuff and stock numbers as an inane thing. Never came across bars and restaurants and their ownerships

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#874

Post by skinnymuch »

moonchild wrote: post #731
skinnymuch wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1…

Is it advantageous for a company to own some of its competitor's stock? Does it represent a conflict of interest?

Spotify and Tencent Music swapped shares when they did a deal together.

There is some hand wringing with all the gaming companies Tencent owns or has a stake in. They own Supercell which was worth $10B+ before. League of Legends parent Riot. A stake in Kakao Daum that does gaming stuff too.

On top of the 40% of Fortnite parent Epic Games, they own 10 or 15% of PUBG parent Bluehole. They own 5%+ stakes in Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard (which owns Candy Crush parent King Games). They are a huge game publisher in China and okay in rest of Asia. So they get to publish a lot of games like WoW in China.

They own a handful of smaller studios and a stake in probably a dozen other gaming studios at minimum. Usually when I say studios I mean outside China too. Miniclip and Agar.io might be familiar to people. 20% of Glu Mobile too which makes a lot of the branded kitsch apps for Kardashians etc. they just got bought so not sure if ownership remains.

Tencent is the closest successor to Berkshire Hathaway. Their other minority stakes are wild too. Minority stakes each worth billions include JD.com(Amazon of China), Kakao Daum as mentioned, Snap[chat], Tesla, Pinduoduo (China’s top 5 richest is founder of this Chinese ecommerce phenom), previously or maybe still Flipkart, one of the big 3 Ecom in India, Didi, the Uber of China of which Uber merged and has a minority stake, Nio (China’s biggest electric car company for now), Meituan Dianping stake which itself could eclipse a $100B market cap, Vipshop another Chinese company. Don’t forget 5% of Reddit though that’s not worth even half a billion

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#875

Post by ppezaris »

prepend wrote: post #860
ppezaris wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold a company to Naspers once (the parent company of Prosus). Their philosophy is to let their portfolio companies continue to operate independently. I continued to be the CEO of my company, and I reported to a regional CEO, who reported to the CEO of Naspers. I share this because I found it odd that "CEO" was basically a middle manager ;)

That’s interesting and sounds positive you had autonomy. Did they have an expected return on investment and just use your existing planned earnings growth? If they didn’t change your earnings slope, did they have a timeframe in mind for the multiple they used to buy you? For example, if you earned $1 in the year of purchase and $.50 the year before and projected $2,3,4,5 in the next four years; did they use this for…

Our company had just transitioned from social networking to social commerce, and was starting to build out features like a shopping cart, product listings, etc. So the valuation was mostly hand-waiving based on the fact that we were the most recognized e-commerce brand in the region, despite not really being an e-commerce business yet.

We were doing about half a billion in annual GMV but none of it monetized yet.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#876

Post by allendoerfer »

pmoriarty wrote: post #865
allendoerfer wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to control a company personally, you can also rely on other shareholders to do that. You just have to know, somebody is voting in your interests, since you probably won’t do it (but again: you could). I don’t know whether your statement about the price difference is true and if so, I don’t know why. Maybe different free float? My statement was about inherent value not short term price negotiations via…

"You don’t have to control a company personally, you can also rely on other shareholders to do that. You just have to know, somebody is voting in your interests" How would you know they're voting in your interests? I've never known how any other shareholder voted in any of the stock I owned. For all I know they could have been voting completely contrary to what I'd wanted. No. Unless you own enough of a stock to vote…

Those other shareholders also want the shares to retain value, so your interests are aligned regarding my initial argument that stocks are valuable because of the voting rights.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#877

Post by robertlagrant »

crispyambulance wrote: post #642
robertlagrant wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One's about discussions; the other isn't.

Sure, but BOTH about solving problems and getting answers. That's the important thing. The culture of SO become incredibly weird and IMHO will eventually sink it.

If you zoom out far enough you can always find a shared level of abstraction, but I don't think that's helpful.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#878

Post by Dah00n »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #586
Dah00n wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. That.... is a very positive view of Reddit. I'd say everything on Reddit is way worse now and going downhill fast.

No it isn't.

Are we really at YES NO YES NO discussion levels?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#879

Post by warrenm »

einpoklum wrote: post #820
21bits wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who asked the naive question that a million other new git users will have at some time or another.

If that person hadn't asked the question, any number of other people would have asked it, probably a couple of days later.

And then they would have gotten the rep

They're fake points that don't matter

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#880

Post by warrenm »

belter wrote: post #846
couchdb_ouchdb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. Day 1. I'm user 25 on the site as I listened to the podcast about them making it. Just for answering a few questions early I'm in the top 0.76% overall. https://stackoverflow.com/users/25/codingwithoutcomments

Do top contributors get compensated financially ? This is a question that is burning me out of curiosity... Do not get me wrong, I understand the whole point of giving back to a community, selfishly helping others and all that. But lets get a simple example: For example the famous Jon Skeet. https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet Based on the account statistics this user is a member as of today, for 12 years…

>Do top contributors get compensated financially

Not from Stack Overflow / Stack Exchnage

That's for sure

There may be employers that look at your standing and say, "hey - let's toss a couple extra $K in this candidate's offer"

..but I've not seen or experienced it

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