Good riddance Reebok 🙄
Reddit’s round, and the stuff from the week before.
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Market summary: 📊
Promising finish to the week in India, despite the rug being pulled from under small cap stocks on the BSE mid week. US finished up on Friday, ending the week flat with Delta sapping momentum.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.16%
Nasdaq - up 0.32%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 1.01%
Sensex - up 1.08%
Quick shot of espresso ☕
✅ Paytm’s got issues — a former director of Paytm, Ashok Saxena, is asking SEBI to block the company’s IPO for failing to disclose him as a cofounder. Ashok, a US national, apparently wrote a ~$27K check to One97 (Paytm parent) in the early 2000s, leveraged his personal network to help the company get key early enterprise customers, but was never officially given the equity he was promised, including having him booted as a director in 2004. Paytm calls the fiasco harassment, while the Delhi Police are apparently investigating the matter. Cute Netflix script right here!
✅ Pat on the back — turns out the PolyNetwork hacker had benevolent intentions after all. Almost all of the stolen $600 million has been returned to the network, and in exchange Poly handed “Mr. White Hat” a $500K check as a “bug bounty” reward recognizing his kind soul. But the FBI isn’t buying any of that shit, because crimes can’t be reversed, and madmen cant be kept free. Imagine explaining these times to your grandkids!
Adidas will have a good sleep tonight 👟
What happened — a frustrated Adidas finally offloaded its problems, selling Reebok off to brand management company, Authentic Brands, in a $2.5 billion deal.
Some context — Adidas had purchased Reebok 14 years ago believing that the then modern-looking, futuristic brand could help the company take on Nike. That deal turned out to be an epic dud.
Reebok’s revenues peaked in 2006, and since have tanked 25%. Reebok’s brick and mortar heavy strategy never really recovered from ecommerce’s assault that began in 2010 or so… while creative and marketing failed to evolve at a speed that could match online selling. See Nike ads?
Anyway, talks for a sell-off had been going on for a year, but nobody wanted a stale brand with no appeal in the era of Gymsharks and Lululemons.
But Authentic Brands is building a portfolio of washed-up brands, cutting costs and excess, and hoping it can drive marketing synergies. They own over 30 companies including Sports Illustrated and the bankrupt Forever 21.
Reddit getting its act clean 💰
Reddit raised $410 million as part of its ongoing $700 million Series F round from Fidelity Investments, at a valuation of $10 billion!
Kinda low for social, compared to the astronomical numbers of $FB and $TWTR, but the platform had struggled to find its monetization groove, without disturbing the community angle that makes it so different, but finally seems to have understood its “hook” (thanks r/WallStreetBets).
Some stats now:
Monetization looking solid — with ad revenues topping $100M, up 192% YoY
50 million monthly active users frequent the platform
Fresh funds will go towards hiring, better ad systems, and a looming IPO.
That’s a wrap for a long week folks, here’s a quick look at everything that went down this week!
🤔 Recovery is helping — Warren Buffet’s Berkshire kicked off the week on a high, showing old school enterprises are back in business with mainstream recovery slowly picking pace. Meanwhile, later in the week Saudi’s oil corp Aramco showed how travel, transportation and production easing is helping breathe some life into the oil industry.
🔌 EV is priority — US Lawmakers signed off on a big-ass $1.2 trillion infra package, which sets up a $175 billion pot to accelerate EV adoption, including installing half a million charging stations across the country, and an ambitious target of converting 50% of all the cars on the road to EVs by 2030. Spending boom should drive demand for components, parts, circuitry, electric supplies, power systems, batteries, etc. from emerging economies. Also, regions like India will be forced to offer government impetus to wide EV adoption, or risk being left behind.
🥳 Crypto party — Coinbase continues to prove to conservative investors that Crypto is here to stay. Revenues grew an explosive 1,000%+ YoY, to $2.2 billion last quarter, smashing all expectations on growth and profitability. $462 billion of volume was traded, and surprisingly more $ETH was traded than $BTC this time. All of that despite a gloomy three months in the crypto market, which signals retail investors are getting a hang of the long-term mindset.
🦄 It’s raining unicorns — MindTickle, a sales training platform became the 19th unicorn of 2021, after closing a $100 million round from SoftBank, at a $1.3 billion valuation! That was quickly followed by MOOC platform UpGrad’s raise for spot No. 21. Then came CoinDCX representing crypto at No. 22, and finally UpGrad rival Eruditus at No. 23! Bets on 35+ by the end of year?
📡 SpaceX’s first acquisition—after a dry run of 19 years, SpaceX made a move and acquired a satellite connectivity startup ‘Swarm Technologies’, to diversify its assets beyond heavy duty sats. Swarm operates a constellation of 120 tiny satellites literally the size of a sandwich, which can connect directly with IOT devices on Earth, via a tiny chipset. Swarm will operate independently, and use Space’s resources to accelerate progress.
🏏Finally, Dream 11 has plans— Dream 11 launched a $250 million fund called Dream Capital, to invest in early startups playing in gaming, sports, and fitness-tech. Early stage companies generally don’t get into Corporate VC so aggressively, but Dream 11 is showing unique ambitions to transform itself into a digital gaming empire spanning events, esports, merchandise, and other categories, leveraging the power of its 125M+ base.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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Paytm Vs A S=Moment for Movie........ (Not Moment for Marketing- if any legal issue arises please delete it....................!!!!!)