Each carriers covers 50 cities. And doing a simple coverage overlap check, we could find 44 cities having three operators, 4 cities having two and 10 cities having one.
In total, 57 cities are covered with 5G plan(s).
Here are 45 cities with coverage by three carriers:
The word BAT seems to be the past, as AT (Alibaba & Tencent) have evolved into bigger ecosystems and entered into the league of $400 billion market cap club.
Alibaba market cap $459.43 billion
CYQ2 – Revenue was RMB114,924 million, an increase of 42% year-over-year (just reported CYQ3 revenue RMB119,017 million)
Tencent market cap $396.57 billion
CYQ2 – Total revenues were RMB88,821 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year.
Other internet companies, including Baidu, are in another league. Ranked by market cap:
Meituan market cap HK$543.24 billion, ~$69 billion
CYQ2 – Total revenues increased by 50.6% year-over-year to RMB22.7 billion (Total Gross Transaction Volume (GTV) on our platform grew by 28.7% to RMB 159.2 billion)
Pinduoduo market cap $48.23 billion
CYQ2 – Total revenues in the quarter were RMB7,290.0 million, an increase of 169%
JD.com market cap $45.78 billion
Net revenues for the second quarter of 2019 were RMB150.3 billion, an increase of 22.9% from the second quarter of 2018 (JD uses traditional retail model that takes inventory, so revenue includes value of goods sold)
Baidu market cap $36.47 billion
CYQ2 – Total revenues reached RMB 26.3 billion, increasing 1% year over year, or 6% year over year, excluding the impact of announced divestures
Also, private companies such as ByteDance is also in this league.
Two of my favorite perks are removed/reduced in this new Uber Credit Card – $50 annul credit in subscription is removed (a huge drop in NPV when comparing with other cards), and 4% dining is changed to 3% (a 25% reduction!)
Uber is definitely trying to save some costs and increase cardholder’s usage of Uber here. There will be no cash back – rewards are redeemed in the form of Uber Cash.
After the changes, Uber Credit Card will earn 5% on Uber related purchases (like Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card has 5% on amazon purchases). So when comparing costs of Lyft and Uber, technically you need to do a 5% adjustment to see which is better (too much of a hassle!).
The changes are coming for February 2020 billing period according to the email I received.
Years ago, we have entered into a world where communication with one another is instant and nearly cost-free. For broadcasters, this is the golden age that they could spread their messages easier than ever.
But that time seems to the last, as tech firms supporting those platforms are taking or required to take more actions in limiting messages/ads allowed to broadcast.
The underlying thesis – people realized that the nature of information will change depending on the number of audience.
Twitter’s recent action is to ban political ad purchases – to reach a large audience just by spending money. We could easily see that in a world such thing is allowed, it would just become a competition for war-chest, candidates bidding higher prices to reach the audience.
On the other hand, tech firms don’t want to spend too much on screening messages/ads. After all, they are not speaking those languages. But the challenges they are facing are more real than ever, while implementing more rules will also draw more critics.
There is a balance and trade-off here.
Tech firms need to balance between the percentage of communications allowed and the overall “healthiness” of the platform. The latter would impact long-term ads sales, users growth/engagement and political pressure/costs.
The 1,318km railway began construction in April 2008 and started operation in June 2011.
2019 (Jan – Sep)
2018
2017
2016
Passenger Revenue (‘0000 ¥)
1,204,204.99
1,579,069.55
1,556,737.53
1,418,926.44
PassengerMiles (billion km)
25.86
34.46
34.24
31.83
Unit Price (¥ per km)
0.466
0.458
0.455
0.446
Occupancy %
79.91%
81.64%
80.18%
73.38%
Unit price is consistent with experiences, e.g. Nanjing South to Shanghai Hongqiao is ~295km and costs ¥134.5, which translates to ¥0.456 per km in unit price.
For occupancy rate, there is some seasonality fluctuation (Jan – Sep vs. Oct – Dec).
By just looking at the title, I don’t even know what I am trying to say.
But here is an example. We are know targeted ads (by Facebook or others). By purchasing ads for a more precisely defined population, sellers are wasting less time for other audience. The overall efficiency of transmitting messages (ads in this case) increases. This is value creation.
However, as Facebook gaining more insights and pricing power, it can charge higher prices for more effective ads to the extend that targeted ads are just a little better than traditional (mass) ads. I put 95% in the title but that is just to give a feeling. The sellers will be better off but the marketing costs will continue to increase and in the end they will find it very hard to earn a lucrative net profit margin.
This might be the ultimate price discrimination and Facebook is capturing nearly all the value down the chain.
Some time in the future, we will find old-school ways are much more friendly.
Cyber-security has been a hot space for investments and acquisitions. With Thoma Bravo buying Sophos Group for $3.8 billion this week, here is a roundup of selected corporate M&As happened since 2018.
Travis announced that he would be starting a new fund with his windfall from Uber shares sold in its most recent major secondary round. At the time, Kalanick said the new fund — called 10100, or “ten one hundred” — would be geared toward “large-scale job creation,” with investments in real estate, ecommerce, and “emerging innovation in India and China.” CSS has two businesses, CloudKitchens and CloudRetail (controlled with one entity I assume), which focus on redevelopment of distressed assets in those two areas. [Crunchbase]
And in Feb 2019, Travis Kalanick said to plot China comeback with ‘shared kitchen’ business – CloudKitchens in China, partnering with Zhang Yanqi, former COO of ofo.
OYO
also backed by SoftBank, started from assembling hotel rooms under its brand and management system in India.
acquired by Blackstone, the traditional and one of the largest real estate players in the work, back in June 2017 for approximately £500m.
Source: The Office Group
But with a different type of investor, TOG might be on the path of growing profits.
Its financial results for 2015 reported its EBITDA up 33% to £15.4m (2014: £11.6m), and revenues up 62% to £54.3m (2014: £33.6m). TOG is London’s largest privately-owned occupier of office space (at least by that time). [leadersleague]
Also – a report on beer that includes 2011-2016 beer consumption growth by country.
So ~200,000,000,000 liters divided by world population of 7,500,000,000 = 26.67 liters per person annually.
Say a can of beer is 330 ml – then each person is consuming ~80 cans per year.
That is a larger than I expected.
Although beer still needs to compete with wines, spirits and others for total alcohol consumption, it is still the no.1 source of alcohol (worldwide, but varies by country) – the impacts on everyday life are huge!
Source: brewersassociation.org, R.S. Weinberg, Beer Marketer’s Insights, and the Brewers Association
In the US, craft beers is a growing sector while the overall beer sales is declining in 2018.
Source: brewersassociation.org
And the number of brewpubs is growing rapidly in recent years in the US.
Source: brewersassociation.org
And stories have been told, for example, Corono has been very popular and growing fast in China.
Source: AB InBev
On a conference call following the release of Q1 2018 results yesterday, Carlos Brito told analysts that AB InBev’s more expensive offerings are doing “very well” in China. He singled out Corona, which became the number one imported beer in China in the three-month period. The brand “[is] growing very rapidly”, Brito added. A-B InBev boasts around a 20% market share in the country, with strength coming from its premium and super-premium brands. [just-drinks.com]
And sales of Budweiser in China overtook those in America in the first half of 2018. [beveragedaily.com]
