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Phew, that was quite the week for investors as some of the most exciting companies around completely exceeded expectations. For one thing, there was certainly no shortage of topics to talk and write about. To celebrate these exciting results, let’s end the week on a high with a Five on Friday, followed by a nice, chilled evening. As always, stay safe folks.
Quicktake
#InfinityAndBeyond — SpaceX completed another round of funding sending the aerospace manufacturer’s valuation to $74 billion.
#TheWarBegins — Amazon snapped up Shopify’s rival Selz, a company that also helps small businesses open up stores online.
#aFORDableProgress — It looks like Ford Motors will be putting its money where its mouth is in its EV rivalry with Tesla following this week’s announcement.
#Earnings — Let’s see the winners and losers. #AndFinally — If Facebook is looking to revive its damaged image, blocking charity pages in Australia is not the way to go.
#ToInfinityAndBeyond
Musk’s SpaceX enjoyed yet another successful funding round, giving the CEO a fresh opportunity to stoke some IPO fires.
Elon Musk is everywhere we look, and soon he’ll even be in space. ‘Space Karen’s’ galactic venture raised a hefty $850 million in fresh capital this week, giving it a valuation of $74 billion and a price per share of — $420. The cash will fund the company’s $10 billion Starlink which aims to provide high-speed internet to users around the globe via satellites. SpaceX now has around 1,000 Starlink satellites and its constellation-based approach sees them positioned much closer to Earth, which improves latency and provides more consistent coverage. Not one to just let things be, following the event, Must tweeted that: “Once we can predict cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will IPO.” This confirms previous statements that SpaceX will actually spin-off Starlink rather than go public itself.
Bet You Didn’t Know
Musk has previously boasted that he could take human passengers to Mars for as little as $500,000. Better start saving.
#LetTheWarBegin
Amazon announced on Tuesday that it had acquired Selz, a company that provides tools to help small business owners to build their own digital stores.
Why are third-party sellers so important to Amazon?
The deal highlights Amazon’s ambitious plans to dominate the third-party seller market as Selz is a direct rival to Shopify, whom Amazon has cited as its greatest competitor in the space. The retail giant apparently went so far as creating a secret team of Amazon employees named “Project Santos”, tasked with the mission of replicating certain components of Shopify’s business. Shopify’s success has caught the attention of the tech tycoon as more people turned to small business during the pandemic, causing the stock to increase more than 150% year-over-year. This is been attributed to higher rates of unemployment forcing people to become more entrepreneurial, as well as others saving on pre-COVID luxuries and having more disposable income to spend. Amazon wants in and Selz will help it to grow its third-party marketplace which already has 2.5 million sellers and accounts for 50% of Amazon’s total e-commerce sales.
Bet You Didn’t Know
Every year, one million new sellers join Amazon, with more than 25,000 sellers on the platform that produce $100,000+ in sales.
#aFORDableProgress
For a company that has experienced a steady decline in recent years, perhaps a change in direction will be good for Ford.
Ford is diving head-first into electric vehicle production. In an announcement on Wednesday, Ford said that its entire passenger vehicle range in Europe would be “zero-emissions capable, all-electric or plug-in hybrid” by the middle of 2026, with a “completely all-electric” offering by 2030. To help with this bold mission, Ford is investing $1 billion into an EV production facility in Cologne, Germany — a mere 6-hour drive from Tesla’s future Gigafactory location. The move makes sense as several global governments, most notably the U.K., have pledged to completely remove gas-powered vehicles from their roads in the coming decades. By establishing an EV headquarters in Europe, Ford is laying down the groundwork for becoming a real EV powerhouse in the region, which will be required if it is to reclaim its glory days.
Bet You Didn’t Know
The very first Ford sold was to a Dr. Pfennig in 1903, for a grand total of $850. The “Model A” had a 2-cylinder engine and could reach a max speed of 30 mph.
#ItsThatTimeAgain
The Good
Twilio
For an example of blowout earnings, look no further than Twilio, which reported a beat across the board with adjusted EPS of $0.04 on revenue of $548 million — up 65% YoY. CEO Jeff Lawson attributed these smashing results to the pandemic’s acceleration of cloud infrastructure growth, as more and more companies opt to modernize their offerings, thus providing Twilio with more business opportunities.
Not So Bad
Wix
Despite better-than-expected results and year-over-year revenue growth of 34%, the Israeli company still reported a loss per share of $0.03. CEO Avishai Abrahami was very optimistic about the future though, stating: “My goal and belief is that at this rate of growth, in the next 5–7 years, 50% of anything new built on the internet will be done on Wix.”
Quite Bad
Planet Fitness
You didn’t need to be Nostradamus to predict that a gym chain would struggle during a pandemic, with Planet Fitness reporting a 30% YoY decline in revenue to $133.8 million and EPS of $0.17 — analysts expected $0.22 per share. Due to continued uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 the company did not provide any guidance for 2021, but it seems unlikely that it will be hitting all-time highs any time soon.
Sometimes it seems like Facebook actually enjoys being public enemy number one because there’s no way anyone could be accidentally this bad at PR. The latest in a long line of Zuckerberg no-nos comes from our friends in the land down under, where Facebook and Google have been embroiled in a dispute with news outlets. New media laws in the country that are being drafted require online platforms such as the two tech giants to pay news outlets for displaying and linking to their content. In retaliation on Wednesday, Zuckerberg threw his toys out of the pram and blocked hundreds of pages and sites from displaying posts on the platform. Unfortunately, Facebook also accidentally blocked a large swathe of non-news pages in Australia, including charities, small businesses, public services, and government sites.
If you thought that was bad, then prepare to laugh as karma receives its due. Much to everyone’s amusement, Facebook accidentally blocked its own page in Australia. Perhaps we’re being a little bit harsh with all this fun poking at Facebook, or perhaps it’s perfectly justified for a company that actually removed ‘Save the Children Australia’, the ‘Hobart Women’s Shelter’, and the ‘Kids Cancer Project’ from its platform, yet ‘struggles’ to combat online abuse.
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