Category: personal_noteS

Books, Digital Books, Public Libraries

So nowadays we are comfortable with two facts:

    1. Books can be digital. It is good for distribution, near zero marginal cost of production, no burden on environment, reducing the barrier of knowledge.
    2. There are public libraries that provide free borrowing for resources including books (physical).

Then here comes the question – why libraries don’t provide free digital version of books.

The Answer could be very simple.

No one will buy books then…..

—

Then there is another question – since public libraries are funded by governments (tax payers) and donors, why are books not subsidized by governments like healthcare or education.

Why don’t governments make a list of knowledge-based books nearly free?

Authors should receive a stream of cash flows from taxpayers, for the contribution of their books.

 

Coffee Chains in China

In a previous post about Starbucks, we talked about its potential in China.

China’s coffee consumption will explode, even considering major cities alone. Younger generations will consume more coffee and they will represent an increasing proportion of the overall urban population.

China coffee consumption potential | Source: Starbucks 6/19 Presentation

Everyone sees the market and opportunities – one of the most eye-catching player is Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡), who just filed to be listed on Nasdaq.

Image result for Luckin Coffee
Source: TechCrunch

The expansion in terms of coverage & number of stores is very impressive: 9 stores by the end of 2017 and 2,370 stores by the end of 2019Q1, although most (91.3 %) of them are pick-up stores (see above).

By comparison, in May 2018, Starbucks announced that it is planning to build nearly 3,000 new stores in mainland China over the next few years (from 3,300 in 2018Q1 to 6,000 before the end of 2022).

Things to notice:

    • Luckin Coffee outsourced delivery services mainly to S.F. Express (顺丰控股SHE: 002352)
    • Luckin’s investors are mainly related to UCAR INC. (神州优车 NEEQ:838006)
    • Didn’t see GIC or BlackRock or Legend Capital as major shareholders (>5%)
    • Loss is significant: ¥527 million operation loss on ¥361 million revenue in 2019Q1 (-110.1%)
    • No significant revenue growth from 2018Q4 to 2019Q1: 465,433k to 478,510k (+2.8%)
    • There was a decrease in advertising cost: 127,372 in 2018Q4 -> 93,080 in 2018Q4 -> 40,143 in 2019Q1

Notre Dame Fire, VR

On 15 April 2019, shortly before 18:50 CEST, fire broke out beneath the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. [Wikipedia]

When it comes to recover/rebuild the damaged masterpiece, the gaming industry will help.

The 2014 game ‘Assassin’s Creed Unity,’ set in Paris during the French Revolution, features a realistic 3D model of the historic house of worship. Caroline Miousse, an artist for the game, spent about two years perfecting the model of the cathedral that appears on gamers’ screens. [New York Post]

Notre-Dame Cathedral in the game | Source: theverge.com

Game developer Ubisoft also employs several staff historians to help dig up any extra details the development team might need. [The Verge]

The level of details not only makes Assassin’s Creed a great game, but also could help to save the history and the real world.

Another very helpful resource is from Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon’s work of exquisite 3D laser maps of every detail of Notre Dame.

In the past, we have many artworks digitalized but mainly for a paining or a sculpture I guess. The tragedy happened in Paris will remind us of many other things to be digitalized. In the future, VR games would probably need even more details and virtually serve as a permanent digital copy of our history. Expect much more “digitalization work” to be done in the next few years. We may even digitalize an event or a piece of time in the digital world.

It’s going to be similar to the “genome bank” to preserve what have existed in this world.

How [Languages] Disappear?

Just finished The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond this weekend and here is an excerpt I would really want to recommend, where you could literally replace “languages” with other words.

How do languages go extinct? … so too are there different ways of eradicating a language.

The most direct way is to kill almost all of its speakers…

The next most direct way to eradicate a language is not to kill its speakers, but instead to forbid them to use their language, and to punish them if they are caught doing so… the French government’s official policy is in effect to exclude the Breton language form primary and secondary schools…

But in most cases language loss proceeds by the more insidious process now under way at Rotokas… Young people in search of economics opportunity abandon their native-speaking villages and move the urban centers, where speakers of their own tribal language are greatly outnumbered by people from other tribal backgrounds, and where people needing to communicate with each other have no option except to speak the majority language…

Eventually, minority languages are spoken only by older people, until the last of them dies. Long before that end is reached, the minority language has degenerated through loss of its grammatical complexities, loss of forgotten native words, and incorporation of foreign vocabulary and grammatical features.

 

First Blackhole Picture And Copyright?

One big confirmation of our knowledge about the universe – the first picture of blackhole due to gravity is available.

target was a nearby galaxy dubbed M87 and its supermassive black hole, which packs the mass of six and half billion suns. Despite its size, the black hole is so far from Earth – 53 million light-years – that capturing the image took a telescope the size of the planet.

Meanwhile, a firm in China claimed the copyright of this picture and tried to charge fees for it.

The firm, called Visual China, is China’s largest stock images provider.

It shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China’s national flag. [Reuters]

It is a time that China is doing more to protect intellectual property but company in this is embarrassing. It’s definitely not a representation of the “highest” level of IP protection in China, but it does show us that a lot of work needs to be done.

Finally, UBER S-1 Available

The S-1 of much anticipated Uber IPO is publicly available for the first time.

The valuation is said to be $90-100 billion, lower than previously reported.

That is also the reason that Lyft’s valuation is under pressure these days. It all makes that Lyft and Morgan Stanley have something to argue about… Lyft’s high valuation at IPO makes it difficult for Morgan Stanley and other banks to sell Uber. (and the pressure is much higher in such a big deal – $10 billion)

So relatively speaking, how much “higher” is Lyft valued?

  • Uber adjusted ebitda -1.85 billion vs. Lyft -944 million, ~2x
  • Uber revenue 11.27 billion vs. Lyft 2.16 billion, ~5x
  • Uber total trips 5.2 billion vs. Lyft 619 million, ~8x

Healthy Beverages Going Mainstream

La Croix may or may not be a one-time thing, but consumers’ tastes are shifting towards beverages that have less sugar and looks more healthy.

Image result for la croix
Source: today.com
Annual Sales (in millions) of La Croix’ Parent Company National Beverage | Source: GuruFocus.com

The overall market of carbonated & flavored bottled water is steadily growing.

Source: Quartz, Euromonitor

Established companies are preparing for the shift, which started decades ago when obesity became a thing in the US.

Source: Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance (nap.edu)

Diet Coke was introduced almost 100 years after the original coke (1886 -> 1982). Coke Zero was introduced in 2005.

The pursuit for “healthy”, “organic” and “natural” has never stopped.

In 2008, The Coca-Cola Company purchased a 40% stake in Honest Tea at $43 million, and acquired the company in 2011.

Source: honesttea.com

Coca-cola also invested in ZICO Coconut water in 2009, and purchased a majority stake in ZICO Coconut water in 2012.

Source: zico.com

In 2017, Coke Zero has become Coke Zero Sugar with minor modifications (taste more like original coke).

Source: coca-colacompany.com

Meanwhile, Pepsi Co has made a series of investments and acquisitions. The most recent move is to buy SodaStream for $3.2 billion.

Image result for soda stream
Source: sodastream.com

I feel like consumers’ tastes in China need to catch-up…. at least a certain percentage of people should look for heathy brands. There is no well-recognized Chinese brand in this category (at least to me).

Middlemen’s Hard Time… PBMs

It has been more than a month since the 7 major drug manufacturers’ CEOs testified before the congress on February 26.

One of the “problems” that pharma CEOs complained about was pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) or the middleman problem.

In a healthcare system involving drugmakers, PBMs, pharmacies, insurers, patients, etc., one of the premises behind CVS’s $70 billion acquisition of Aetna and Cigna’s $54 billion acquisition of Express Scripts might actually make them vulnerable in front of regulators: their bargain power.

CVS Health, Cigna, McKesson, Rite Aid, Walgreens… companies with relatively large exposure between pharmaceutical companies and patients/payers are having a very hard time.

Source: Author, Yahoo Finance

What’s ahead – on March 13, the same committee (Senate Finance Committee) said it has called 5 major PBMs to testify on April 3 (tomorrow…)

    • Cigna
    • CVS
    • Humana
    • OptumRx
    • Prime Therapeutics

They must have been prepared.

Stay stunned.

An Excerpt From Bad Blood

I have talked about this as the most exciting part of Bad Blood with friends several times that I would like to read the original wording again and share it here.

“Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Holmes was trying another avenue to quash the story. In March, a month after I had started digging into the company, Theranos had closed another round of funding. Unbeknownst to me, the lead investor was Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born media mogul who controlled the Journal’s parent company, News Corporation. Of the more than $430 million Theranos had raised in this last round, $125 million had come from Murdoch. That made him the company’s biggest investor.”

“By the time Mike Siconolfi and I had our conversation about the ancient art of Sicilian fishing in late July, Holmes had had three private meetings with Murdoch. The latest had taken place earlier that month, when she’d hosted him in Palo Alto and showed him the miniLab. During the visit, she’d raised my story, telling him the information I had gathered was false and would do great damage to Theranos if it was published. Murdoch had demurred, saying he trusted the paper’s editors to handle the matter fairly.

In late September, as we were getting close to publication, Holmes met with Murdoch a fourth time in his office on the eighth floor of the News Corporation building in Midtown Manhattan. My desk in the Journal’s newsroom was just three floors below, but I had no idea she was on the premises. She brought up my story with renewed urgency, hoping Murdoch would offer to kill it. Once again, despite the substantial investment he had at stake, he declined to intervene.”

– John Carreyrou. “Bad Blood.”

Besides other considerations, the “nonaction” by Mr. Murdoch is simply thrilling and kind of rare these days.

Lyft On Nasdaq

The first of a series of tech IPOs – Lyft debuted on Nasdaq today. With its stock priced at $72, Lyft is offering 32,500,000 shares of its Class A common stock, plus up to an additional 4,875,000 shares (raised $351 million in total).

The market cap excludes things like RSUs to be issued: 1) 77,390,807 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans 2) 31,605,338 shares of our Class A common stock subject to RSUs outstanding, but for which the time-based vesting condition was not satisfied as of December 31, 2018 (including 15,065,349 shares of our Class A common stock subject to RSUs granted after December 31, 2018) 3) 7,037,379 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2018 (weighted average $4.74 exercise price)