Self-promotion alert!
No, I haven't published a book.
Instead, here's a way to get alerts for whenever I publish a new column.
I write about business stuff but don't let that put you off. Companies are super-interesting!
Happy reading :)
Won't someone spare a thought for the 1%? They're forced to hang out in crowded airport lounges and the free champagne is running out. Wonderful reporting here
Welcome to Berlin, whose plan to deal with a housing shortage and soaring rents involves letting rich people pay less rent and scaring off people who build houses via
@AndrewDBlackman
@caro_winter
The median German household has just €106,000 of net assets, far below the euro area median.
Why? Most Germans don't own their own homes and only 1 in 6 invests in the stock market.
So they benefited little from the cheap money era. And income taxes are high.
Instead of taking a flight from Berlin to London for a
@BloombergNEF
summit on decarbonizing the economy, I followed
@GretaThunberg
's example and took the train instead.
Europe is great if you like croissants and long holidays, but the corporate landscape is dull.
Think again. I found more than 50 companies worth more than $1 billion whose value multiplied by 10 in the past decade.
A guide to Europe's ten-baggers🧵
Here in Germany we have reached the Corona home test Multipack stage of the pandemic. This from my local drugstore cost me €60, or €3 ($3.40) for each test. Considering the test shortages in other countries, I'm thankful. (Ps not an endorsement of this particular brand)
Tesla, Spacs, Meme stocks, Crypto, NFTs, Options trading: yep it's been a pretty bonkers year in the world of finance. Here's my review of 2021. Happy holidays.
Good news: emissions from road transport will peak soon thanks to electrification, efficiency and alternative fuels. Bad news: in 2040 they could still be roughly where they are today
#bnefsummit
Another shocking week in European energy markets. This chart explains why there's now a discussion in Germany about only allowing the heating of individual rooms this winter. Grim.
My latest is on the nascent revival of labor unions. Tight job markets and the soaring cost of living are fueling demands for higher pay and better working conditions on both sides of the Atlantic. 🧵
🎵Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? 🎵
Oh, and one more thing Lord. You'll need approximately 73,000 euros, or 43% more than in 2019. Thanks.
$mbg
And why's that? Because rental car operators sold cars during the pandemic. And now they can't rebuild fleets easily because automakers haven't built as many cars due to semiconductor shortages /4
Following the death of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, I tried to figure out what made the energy drinks company so incredibly successful. Not easy -- Red Bull is secretive! -- but here's a few highlights🧵
There are now almost 850 unicorns in the startup world.
That's a lot!
I really hoped the collective noun for a big group of unicorns was a "bubble", but google tells me it's a "blessing".
I guess we'll see whether it is.
When in Bavaria, I do as
@JavierBlas
would do and visit the Isar nuclear power plant. What a beauty! Would be a shame to switch it off during an energy and climate crisis, wouldn't it?
I normally write about business and finance stuff but my latest is on how we need to be nicer to each other.
Sounds like a message you'd teach pre-school kids, but it's adults who've been behaving badly since the pandemic. We can do better.
What recession?
#Siemens
raises full year guidance and sounds super confident.
Here's one explanation: battery companies, EV and chipmakers are spending heaps.
$SIE
How come it's so expensive? Simple, travel is rebounding and there aren't enough cars. Globally there are around one fifth fewer rental cars available. The US is typical. /3
Container shipping is going to need a bigger boat - to hold all the cash it's making.
My latest is on U.S. stock market darling $Zim and an industry transformed by supply-chain upheaval into an astonishing money machine
@AndrewDBlackman
@caro_winter
Seeing as this took off, I'll elaborate. The rent cap means people who live in some of the nicest areas of the city can now pay much less. The laws are most advantageous to people living in grand old apartments in Mitte. That seems wrong headed.
Want to make a lot of money? Find a business model that lets you earn interest on client funds.
Payroll processors, fintechs, online brokerages and travel groups are cashing in as interest rates rise.
$wise $pypl $hood $adp $pcty $abnb
What's your favorite, eyebrow-raising non-GAAP accounting metric?
WeWork's community-adjusted ebitda was fun but there are plenty more out there.
I'll start: how about "adjusted ebitda before user acquisition costs"?
Maersk now guiding for astonishing $19.8 billion operating profit (FY 2021), and $16.4 billion free cash flow.
Good moment to re-up this from yesterday on the insane profits container shipping companies are making
Rivian is teaming up with Mercedes-Benz to share the cost of making electric vans. Timely, as today's column is on the manufacturing challenges faced by newbie EV manufacturers like $RIVN $LCID
Carl Icahn has sold out of Hertz, taking a roughly $1.6 billion loss. Here's a reminder of why that investment went so very wrong and ended in the company's dramatic bankruptcy filing.
Their vehicle allocation is also smaller. In the past, rentals accounted for 7%-12% of a manufacturer’s sales, but the rental proportion has shrunk to between 4% and 7% according to Europcar. /5
No, it's not your imagination, many cities have too many electric scooters. My latest is on scooter companies' urgent battle to become profitable. $brds
"Today, the UK’s per capita CO2 emissions are almost 40 per cent lower than Germany’s, the country that “progressive” Britons almost reflexively assume does everything “better than us.”
@adam_tooze
Berlin needs to build more but the rent regulations will probably lead to the opposite. And instead of renting out apartments, some landlords will decide to sell. So the stock of rental apartments could shrink.
This is a challenge lots of tech companies are facing. Stock-based compensation, or SBC, acts as a tailwind while shares prices are increasing but can hamper employee retention and threaten cash flow when share prices collapse (2/2)
Das neue Jahr begrüßt uns mit einem Fensterblick der Extraklasse: Zwei
#Regenbogen
über dem
#Gendarmenmarkt
. Schöner könnte die Aussicht auf 2023 nicht sein. Die Fliedner Klinik Berlin wünscht allen ein
#frohesneues
Jahr!
#happynewyear
Besides paying out dividends, carriers are buying lots of STUFF, including aircraft! Some, like Maersk, are positioning themselves to become integrated logistics companies i.e. more like Amazon than a plain old shipping group. Here's just some of the companies they've bought
$31 billion?!! I've said it many times before but these shipping windfall profits aren't a good look. Would help if some of these companies paid more taxes.
Maersk trading update for Q2 and full-year 2022 will exceed our previous guidance, now reporting an underlying EBITDA of around USD 37bn and an underlying EBIT of around USD 31bn, based on a gradual normalisation in Ocean in Q4 2022. Full announcement here
I’ve heard you loud and clear—you feel like prices aren’t transparent and checkout tasks are a pain. That’s why we’re making 4 changes:
1. Starting next month, you’ll be able to see the total price you're paying up front.
Does society owe young people for their Covid sacrifice, as
@b_judah
proposed?
Perhaps not directly. But we should certainly do more to help younger generations who are falling behind financially. Here's one way.
My latest on Cristiano Ronaldo and Lewis Hamilton.
OK, so it's mostly about a German software company called TeamViewer.
But it also features a €5.5 billion payday for Permira and some big executive bonuses. So plenty going on.
$tmw
Furthermore, the Biden administration and other governments worried about ocean carriers' market power will be keeping a close watch. Arguably shipping companies are plenty big enough already.
Richard Branson's SPAC, $VGAC, briefly dipped below $10 this week. Here's why the 23andme deal hasn't had the warm reception he'll have been hoping for.
That's because while freight rates are down from their peak, they remain very high compared to before the pandemic and the container lines are cashing in.