What Google can tell us
*Amazon may have lots of volume directly through its own platform
Walmart first announced its acquisition of a 77% stake in Flipkart in May 2018, with a consideration of $16 bn including $2 bn of new equity funding. The deal closed in August.
According to QZ, “in the fiscal year ended March 31, Flipkart had net sales of $4.6 billion, over 50% higher than the previous year, Walmart said. Its gross merchandise value (GMV, or the total value of goods sold from its platform) was $7.5 billion during the period.”
“Amazon India is currently worth $16 billion and has the same 30% marketshare as local competitor Flipkart”, source: Forbes, Citi
Valuation multiple ~4.5x of net sales in FY2017.
Walmart chose JD as its partner in China in June 2016 when it used its China business for an initial 5.9% stake in JD (newly issued shares)
Then it doubled the stake in Oct. 2016 to 10.8%; and in Feb. 2017, the ownership level was increased to 12.1% (289.1 mn shares).
Walmart also invested $500mn Aug. 2018 with JD in the Dada-JD JV Daojia, which claimed to have 20 million monthly active users at that time.
In June, 2018, Walmart sold 80% of its Brazil business to Advent International, a PE firm and recorded a $4.5 bn loss. In connection with the deal, Advent would also invest 1.9 billion reais ($485.66 million, in three installments; the first two capital raises will total 750 million reais each; the first was already completed in 2018 and the second is expected for 2019; the remaining amount will be invested by 2021, according to Reuters)
Walmart acquired Latin American (Mexico and Chile focused) grocery-delivery marketplace Cornershop for $225 million in Sep. 2018 (WSJ report).
Walmart sold a majority stake in its UK business Asda in Apr. 2018 for $4 bn. Asda was valued at $10 bn (valuing Asda at approximately £7.3 billion on a cash-free, debt-free and pension-free basis, implying an EV / FY17 EBITDA multiple of 5.8x).
China’s passenger vehicle sales has been through 6 month of yoy decline (Jun – November) and will post the first yoy annual decline in 2018, after 26 years of boom
Two sources: CAAM and CPCA, passenger car sales down 16-18% yoy in November.
There are two factors to consider here:
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Democratic – there is no limit to how much they can take from government
Republican – there is no limit to how little they can give to government
where “they = voters”
It seems that the swing between two parties causes the constantly larger promises that are asymmetric in terms of what voters get – no one would promise more restrictive policies to gain votes.
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The second largest data breaches reported in November that Marriott’s Starwood reservation system has been breached since 2014, affecting up to 500 million guests.
A few days later, another major breach was reported – Quora users’ account info and private chats were exposed, affecting around 100 million people.
While the largest hack in history involved around 3 billion accounts of Yahoo in 2013, Marriott’s will probably have the most “impact” as it not only involves usernames, emails, passwords, etc. (as in the case of Yahoo/Quora), but also includes passport info and date of birth among others. The latter two kinds are more personal and sensitive and could be combined to get access to many other things.
This is just another reason why companies should move (at least part of) their info system to cloud services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Technically, those companies have much better security expertise and do provide an edge in protecting users from those breaches.
And for corporate executives, the data security and related issues are outsourced and liabilities are kinda transferred. Media and users might focus more on why tech companies could be breached. (so how did FB data get hacked?)
It seems that most advices on breaches include change password, double-check card transactions and credit reports, freeze your cards… All about what customers should put extra efforts on themselves.
But I thought users should be reimbursed for their trust being failed. Corporates should take more responsibilities and be forced to provide appropriate remedies; otherwise every company could just save money and let those breaches happen again, when
prob(breach) * loss on breach(including remedies, future loss business, etc.) < cost of good data protection
While financial institutions would take some financial damage in those breaches for users, the identity damage might be hard to recover.
Much more efforts should be beforehand in protecting data. Or it’s not only a full network of tracing, but also a future fake network of people.
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Companies’ plans announced
See who is joining and their IPO targets –
Other tech companies include – Pinterest ~$15-20 bn, Robinhood ~$10 bn
A CB Insights report, a good summary.
A video of a very interesting experience that involves VR settings and an live actor (motion captured and built in VR simultaneously)!
This might be the new start of VR enthusiasm. With 5G launching as soon as 19H1, its use in VR should not be far away. By that time, VR theater should be feasible and even in a interactive way (for front rows maybe); interactive VR party will come to reality (think of VR halloween party and maybe people don’t even need to actually wear costumes). The consumer level applications may focus on entertainment, but enterprise/government uses will also play an important part, perhaps in a way that most people won’t know.
If we go further.. and make robots instead of live human actors, things will be wild. When a connection is built, tactile internet + VR = do anything with anybody anywhere.
