Bloomberg (January 19)
“Chinese stocks just capped another dismal week…. Grim milestones have kept piling up in recent days: Tokyo has overtaken Shanghai as Asia’s biggest equity market, while India’s valuation premium over China has hit a record. Locally, a meltdown in Chinese shares is wreaking havoc on the nation’s asset management industry, pushing mutual fund closures to a five-year high.”
Tags: Asset management, China, Closures, Dismal, Equity market, Grim, Havoc, India, Meltdown, Milestones, Mutual fund, Premium, Record, Shanghai, Shares, Stocks, Tokyo, Valuation
Market Watch (October 27)
“Amazon and Microsoft prove that cloud growth has hit a plateau and investors are ripping away more than $300 billion in valuation because of it, but the technology will still be at the core of computing for generations ahead.”
Tags: $300 billion, Amazon, Cloud growth, Computing, Core, Generations, Investors, Microsoft, Plateau, Technology, Valuation
Financial Times (January 8)
With a $3 trillion valuation, Apple “is worth more than the entire FTSE 100 index—highlighting the malaise of what was long one of the world’s leading stock markets.” In a decade and a half, the LSE’s “share of global equity values has fallen from 8.5 per cent to 3.6 per cent.”
Tags: $3 trillion, Apple, Fallen, FTSE 100, Global equity values, Leading, LSE, Malaise, Stock markets, Valuation
New York Times (June 3)
The movie theater chain AMC “has soared far higher and faster than GameStop and other meme stocks. AMC’s stock nearly doubled yesterday alone; it’s now worth nearly eight times its prepandemic high, a heady valuation for a business that was flirting with bankruptcy not long ago.” The meme stock frenzies may not be “one-off” events and, by eroding trust in the market, they “could have long-term implications beyond what happens with AMC, GameStop or any other stock in the headlines.”
Tags: AMC, Bankruptcy, Chain, GameStop, Heady, Meme stocks, Movie theater, One-off, Prepandemic, Soared, Trust, Valuation
Wall Street Journal (September 1)
“Five venerable Japanese companies were sitting in the bargain bin in plain sight. It took a 90-year-old Warren Buffett to scoop them up.” His company Berkshire Hathaway bought “stakes in Japanese trading companies shunned by others, seeing low valuation and healthy dividends.” The stakes of about 5%, are in trading companies that “resemble none other than Berkshire Hathaway itself,” with “holdings in energy, mining and consumer goods, sometimes owning companies outright and other times taking smaller stakes.”
Tags: Bargain bin, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett, Consumer goods, Dividends, Energy, Japan, Mining, Shunned, Stakes, Trading companies, Valuation
Barron’s (August 19)
“Apple is the first U.S. company to achieve a valuation of $2 trillion,” a valuation that Saudi Aramco has also achieved. There are three other “stocks with a valuation above $1 trillion.” Amazon.com and Microsoft are each about $1.6 trillion with Alphabet trailing at $1.0 trillion. “Facebook (FB) is the next-closest U.S. stock to the 13-digit level, with a valuation of $748.1 billion.”
Reuters (October 18)
“The prospect of Aramco selling a piece of itself has had Wall Street on tenterhooks since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman first flagged it three years ago.” But it looks like the IPO will again be delayed, possibly until next year, to “bolster investor confidence” by reassuring them of the company’s recovery from recent attacks. The sought-after $2 trillion valuation remains in question as “countries have been accelerating efforts to shift away from fossil fuels to curb global warming.”
Tags: Aramco, Confidence, Fossil fuels, Investors, IPO, MBS, Recovery, Valuation, Wall Street
USA Today (August 2)
Apple just became the first U.S. company to achieve a $1 trillion valuation, which seems rather unfathomable at first. “For $1 million you could buy a very nice one bedroom apartment in San Francisco. With $1 trillion, you could buy a very nice apartment for everybody in the city (San Francisco’s population is close to a million).” But hopefully Apple will “write a check because there’s just over a trillion dollars currently in circulation in the U.S.”
Tags: $1 trillion, Apartment, Apple, Circulation, First, San Francisco, U.S., Valuation
Bloomberg (March 18)
Mercari Inc. just “became the first Japanese startup worth at least $1 billion,” making it Japan’s only unicorn. “Though the valuation is an accomplishment for Mercari, it also highlights the dearth of major private startups in the world’s third-largest economy.” Of the 155 unicorns worldwide, 92 are in the U.S., 25 in China, seven in India and only one in Japan. “Japan has suffered from a lack of venture capital and a risk-averse culture where the best and brightest strive for stable jobs at big companies and then stay for life.”
Tags: China, India, Japan, Mercari, Risk-averse culture, Startup, U.S., Unicorn, Valuation, Venture-capital
CFO.COM (November Issue)
“Is providing quarterly earnings guidance worth the effort?” Increasingly U.S. companies are saying no. Quarterly guidance is criticized for “consuming an inordinate amount of time, rarely hitting the bull’s-eye, and unnecessarily shifting company’s focus to short-term tactics at the expense of long-term value.” While quarterly guidance still remains common, more companies are moving toward “annual guidance with quarterly updates.” According to the National Investors Relations Institute, the percentage of companies providing quarterly guidance has fallen from 86% to 76% since 2009. A McKinsey & Co. study analyzed 4,000 public companies, finding that “quarterly earnings guidance does not result in superior valuation.” Many companies who want to discontinue the practice, however, may hesitate out of fear analysts might assume they were trying to hide something.
Tags: Analysts, Annual guidance, McKinsey, NIRI, Quarterly earnings guidance, Quarterly updates, Valuation
