VI shows some heartbeat 🤞
Musk pays taxes, cities have coins, and mass quitting.
Happy Monday folks! 👋
Unofficially entering that “end of year” vibe. Markets are adjusting sails for a rocky holiday season — with holiday gifts expected to be stuck somewhere on a container ship, and inflation expected to weaken the consumer’s wallet. Crypto is a wild card.
Anyway, looking like an easy week this one. Let’s kick it off!
Quick shot of espresso ☕
1️⃣ People smart — you probably heard by now, but the IPO of Latent View Analytics, the data-consulting shop, received one of the strongest interest IPOs have ever received in India. ₹1.13 lakh crores in capital came chasing the 660 crore allotment, oversubscribing the bid by 338x. Meanwhile, PayTM, the most celebrated startup-boi, landed flat with 1.89x demand. People sure seem to be shooting with their eyes open.
2️⃣ Musk sheds billons — Elon finally sold $6.9 billion worth of Tesla stock last week (yep, the number is totally intentional), holding true to the Twitter poll where 58% of people voted in favor of the move. There’s a catch though. Back in 2012, Musk went on an audacious compensation plan, where he would be awarded Tesla stock based on the goals Tesla hits. Things looked impossible then, but since, $TSLA has defied gravity. As part of the grant now, Musk owes some $15B+ in taxes, and the stock he liquidated will help foot that bill. Master of narrative management!
Vodafone-Idea shows some heartbeat 🤞
Cash-strapped Vodafone took its losing streak into another quarter — hemorrhaging cash and losing subscribers. But losses seemed under-control, and revenues came a tick-above market’s expectations, giving some hope of change in narrative.
Anyway, quick look at the numbers:
Revenue of ₹9.4K crores, up 2.8% sequentially — a teeny-tiny improvement
Loss of ₹7.1K crores, down a bit from last quarter
ARPU (average revenue per user) rose 4.8% to ₹109, thanks to rise in recharge frequency, and ending of some promo benefits
But then, subscribers again fell — down 2.4 million in the quarter. We’ve seen it before, VI consistently losing to Jio and Airtel month over month in the TRAI data, so that’s that!
Glimmer of hope — management said its working with lenders like SBI to restructure some of its debt, which could reduce payments. Stock gained 4% on the news.
Big picture — VI’s playing 6D chess with its problems. Two merciless competitors (Airtel, Jio), race to conserve cash, weakening-carrier infra that needs upgrade, a looming shift to 5G, shareholder pressure… not for the faint hearted. 🤞
Who’s picking checks? 💰
Entrackr says INDmoney is in talks to raise $100 million from Tiger Global in a fresh round that’ll value the business at a $500 million valuation.
You’ve probably seen enough ads on FB by now, but launched by the founders of Goibibo barely 3 years ago, the company is building a money-super app (investing + lending + other money-matters) — and has managed to scale to 2M+ users, thanks to the meme-stock-frenzy.
Monetization is still elusive tho — with barely ₹1-2 crores in 2020 revenues. But that’s the game in this part of the town… 🤙
Then a quick crypto raise, ☝️
Forte, a global blockchain gaming platform, closed a massive $725 million Series B from heavyweights like Sea Capital, Warner Media and a16z.
Forte makes plug-and-play blockchain infra for game developers — such as APIs for wallets to store player tokens, NFT minting and selling, and other security tools to monitor transactions. Valuation wasn’t disclosed (prob $5-7B?) but Forte has already been a unicorn since April.
Western cities are going crypto 💰
What happened — few months ago, the city of Miami launched its own token, called the “MiamiCoin”. Last week, city officials disclosed that residents will be receiving a crypto-dividend from income the city’s crypto-assets earn.
Like free Bitcoin, sent to every resident’s wallet.
How is it even possible — essentially, MiamiCoin is using the Stacks Protocol, a layer on top of Bitcoin which allows to build smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain.
So basically people first “commit” coins to the pool, while miners commit compute power and unlock more coins with time. Of the coins that are created, 30% go to the city’s kitty, while 70% are distributed to the people “committing” (miners + stackers) to make the network run. Here’s more.
Damn the technicals, it’s intriguing that more and more cities are willing to experiment audaciously with crypto — many just to attract a wave of cool, young talent as they rebuild from COVID’s decay.
New York City launched NYCCoin on November 8
Mayors of both NYC and Miami have been vocal about taking their paychecks in crypto
Months ago, El Salvador made a BIG pivot to Bitcoin, and we know how that has played out since
Bottomline — majority of these projects are nascent, and culturally-driven. But the benefits for cities to operate their economies (from rent, to benefits, to parking fees, to allocation of funds) on the Blockchain are plenty. Perhaps the first killer use case?
Closing out — another one opens today 💪
The Tupperware of chemical-labs, Tarson Products, which makes pipettes, burettes and all the equipment that you dreaded in your 12th-standard chemistry labs, will try to raise ₹1,024 crores from the markets. Bid opens today.
The deets — Tarson manufactures its wares in West Bengal, and then mostly sells to research organizations, schools, pharma companies, diagnostics labs, across the nation. Last year, they made about ₹234 crores in revenue, with ₹69 crores in profits, with modest growth and decent margins. Quick link to DRHP.
Bottomline — commodity business, but if you think pharma R&D spending and infrastructure investment will keep going up in India, worth looking at.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
👋 Off to greener pastures - nearly 4.4 million US citizens quit their jobs in September. Balancing inflation, poor wage growth, nosy managers with dancing on TikTok and kicking of newsletters? No brainer boo.
📈 Sky high - India’s retail inflation rate rose to 4.48% in October, mostly driven by a jump in food prices. Thanks Diwali.
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