3 charts for you today:
We're running out of superlative adjectives to describe what is happening in financial markets these days. The latest stat that's breaking our minds is that global venture capital funding hit $156bn in Q2 2021 (three months of April, May and June). That number breaks the record from the first quarter of this year when $136bn found its way into the coffers of promising startups looking to one day become the next letter in the FAATMAN acronym (thanks to CB Insights for the great data from their latest report).
Where did you come from?
Venture capital investors are able to add the odd zero to the end of their checks these days because investors are entrusting them with more and more money. Many asset classes, particularly stock markets and residential real estate, are at-or-near record high valuations. That means more capital is available to find a home in VC funds.
Where did you go?
Geographically speaking, almost half of that money has been invested in the US, with Asia picking up another 29%, and Europe 17%. In terms of industries, things are a little more fragmented. Around 20% of all VC dollars invested in Q2 2021 went into fintech companies, which is a pretty broad category that could include investing platforms, digital banks or innovative loan companies. E-commerce companies scooped $16bn, or about 10% of the total, as did startups working in the field of artificial intelligence.
The average Brit spent 5 hours and 40 minutes a day watching content last year on a screen, according to the latest Media Nations report from regulatory authority Ofcom. That's an extra 47 minutes of watching relative to the year before, which is probably not all that surprising. What is surprising is that TV is still the favorite medium of choice for Brits to get their content fix — and it's not even close.
Reports of the death of TV...
May have been exaggerated. Live broadcast TV was watched for 2 hrs and 42 minutes per day on average in the UK last year, which was more than double the 65 minutes the average Brit spent watching streaming services. That surprised us, but the comparison gets even more one-sided when you add in the 33 minutes of recorded broadcast TV, which would bring the total for broadcast TV to over 3 hours a day.
In fairness, if we isolated just the younger demographic this chart would look very different. For the group aged 16-34 streaming accounted for about 90 minutes a day, with another 72 minutes spent watching YouTube (not on a TV), which compared to just 65 minutes of live TV broadcast a day. TV's far from dead, but it won't be on top forever.
A few months ago we charted about the rise of oat milk and how Swedish company Oatly, which had just joined the stock market, was making the most of oat milk's rising popularity.
At the time we noted that a $13bn valuation for a company that essentially combined oats and water was... quite a lot. Investors obviously didn't see it that way, buying shares in Oatly all the way up to a $17bn valuation, which it hit back in June.
Turning sour
Since then, things haven't gone quite as well for Oatly. First up Oatly's PR team had to defend their legal action against Glebe Farm Foods, a tiny entity compared to Oatly, that Oatly accused of infringing on their trademark. A judge couldn't see Oatly's point of view, ruling yesterday that Glebe Farm Foods is free to keep selling their "PureOaty" brand in competition with Oatly.
Simultaneously, a short-selling hedge fund called Spruce Point released 124-pages that claimed Oatly was misrepresenting its revenues and exaggerating how good its oat milk actually is for the environment. Oatly has strongly denied the claims, but they're unlikely to go away any time soon.
1) Rihanna is the latest celebrity-turned-entrepreneur who has made it big in the world of business, officially becoming a billionaire (1.7 times over apparently) thanks mostly to her stake in Fenty Beauty — a brand she launched just 4 years ago.
2) New analysis and data suggests that the currents driving the Gulf Stream could be closer to a collapse than scientists had previously thought.
3) Disney is launching a Star Wars Hotel, which is set to cost would-be space tourists $5,000 for 2 nights in a "Galactic Starcruiser".
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5) Chinese tech company Huawei is in trouble, with revenue falling 29% in the first half of this year after being put on the US trade blacklist 2 years ago.
6) An audiovisual journey through more than 50 years of the most popular songs in America will settle once and for all what was "the best year in music".
**This is sponsored content.
