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:
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.
MGM Resorts International is putting the Bellagio into a joint venture controlled by a Blackstone Group Inc real-estate investment trust. MGM is to hold a 5% stake in the venture and $4.2 billion cash and will continue to operate the hotel and casino, which it will rent from the venture for $245 million a year. The transaction values Bellagio at $4.25 billion, the company said. [WSJ]
MGM said it is separately selling another Strip casino, Circus Circus, to an associate of Phil Ruffin, who owns Treasure Island in Las Vegas, for $825 million.
Capital needed for expansion in Japan
Japan’s move last year to legalize gambling opened the way for global casino operators to pursue licenses there.
MGM Resorts has adopted what it calls its “Osaka-first” strategy, pouring its efforts into securing a license in that city.
Asset light
MGM could also look to wring some value from its 50 percent interest in mixed-use complex CityCenter, as well its 68 percent stake in MGM Growth Properties (NYSE:MGP). [casino.org]
The company stated its intention to reduce domestic net debt/EBITDA (on a restricted group basis) to about 1.0x – Moody’s
(Before AOL was part of Oath, a Verizon subsidiary, AOL owned Crunchbase. Later, after Verizon bought AOL, but before it combined the Internet brand with Yahoo to form Oath, Crunchbase was spun out as its own entity.)
(Further disclosure: Verizon is the former employer of our editor in chief, who worked for TechCrunch, then owned by AOL, before and after Verizon bought the smaller firm.)
Investors in Crunchbase also include:
Emergence Capital Partners
Salesforce Ventures
Mayfield Fund
etc.
The company raised $18 million of Series B venture funding from lead investor Mayfield on April 6, 2017, putting the company’s pre-money valuation at $52 million.
PitchBook
Acquired by Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN) for $225 million on December 1, 2016. Deal announced in October.
Morningstar was an early investor in PitchBook and owned approximately 20 percent of the company before acquisition.
At that time, PitchBook had $31.1 million in revenue for the trailing 12 months ended June 30, 2016. The company has more than 300 employees located in Seattle, New York, and London.
CB Insights
Raised $10 million of Series A venture funding from Pilot Growth Equity on November 9, 2015, putting the company’s pre-money valuation at $40 million.
After WeWork’s unsuccessful IPO, several long-term apartment rentals startups in China are preparing to list on Nasdaq. Q&K (青客公寓) will likely be the first, planning to raise $100 million, according to the SEC filing.
Firms like Q&K will lease apartments from individual landlords, renovate the space with uniform styles, and then sublease fully-furnished rooms to tenants, who are mainly young urbanites looking for affordable housing. Q&K reported a net revenue of USD 129.6 million in the fiscal year 2018, up 70.3% year-on-year. Net losses however doubled to USD 72.8 million in the same period. [kr-asia]
I do believe they are similar to WeWork in many aspects.
Q&K is more like a test for investors’ current appetite (especially needed after WeWork), with two other bigger players waiting in line. Not surprisingly, those are backed by Alibaba and Tencent respectively.
Ant Financial-backed Danke (蛋壳公寓) and Tencent-backed Ziroom (自如) both are also looking for an IPO to raise $500 million – $1 billion.
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.
The first official meeting of the Libra Council is scheduled for October 14th in Geneva.
Dots to connect: future governance of cryptocurrency, possibility of a global cryptocurrency network run by companies, China can move into global crypto payments if supported/approved
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]
