3 charts for you today exploring:
Spin me right round
This week Universal Music Group, the largest record company in the world, was officially spun out from its parent company — listing on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam and finishing its first day of trading with more than a $54bn valuation.
Eight years ago SoftBank tried to buy Universal Music, offering a bid of $8.5bn to its then owner Vivendi. Vivendi hit skip, much to the confusion of many industry analysts who pegged Universal's value a little lower, at just $5-6bn. Rejecting that offer turned out to be a very good idea, as streaming has revived the industry and Universal's prospects within it.
Making waves
Few formats have lasted more than a decade in the modern music industry, according to data from the RIAA. In the early 80s 8-track tapes and vinyls were getting pushed out by cassettes. Then the CD arrived and the industry transformed. Paying $10, $15 or even $20 for a CD became normal and the industry flourished, hitting its peak revenue in 1999.
The good times didn't last forever though. File-sharing websites like Napster and others cropped up in the late 90s. Music was "set free", and industry revenues — which have to be shared between artists, songwriters, record labels, agents and publishers — collapsed. At one point ringtones were once worth 11% of the entire US recorded music industry. That's how bad it got.
Since then, streaming has helped push the industry back to growth, even if it's still a fraction of its former self.
Will streaming make way for something else, as has happened to every other format before it? Investors seem to think it's here to stay.
Gas money
The price of natural gas in Europe, and across the world, has shot up in the last few weeks, as fear of a gas crisis grows. In some markets that has meant a doubling or even tripling of the price of natural gas over the course of the last few months.
Much of Europe remains dependent on gas imports to heat their homes and generate electricity, but supply disruptions in Russia, Norway and other countries have failed to adequately replenish Europe's stores of gas, which are currently just over 70% full, which is not where you want them heading into the coldest months of the year.
This time last year, and in 2019, they were almost completely full (95%).
Double trouble
The UK has had a particularly tough time. Roughly 25% of the UK's electricity comes from wind and the last few weeks just... haven't been that windy. That's meant extra demand for gas, which has exacerbated the supply issues further - and put 4 smaller energy providers on the brink of collapse.
I O U $310 billion
Stock markets had a scare at the start of this week with the US S&P 500 Index dropping 1.7% on Monday as investors began to get nervous that China's Evergrande, a heavily-indebted property developer, might not be good for that ~$310bn it owes.
For some context on how big that debt pile is; Apple, which has long had an enormous cash pile that it doesn't really know what to do with, currently has about $194bn in cash, or cash like securities that it could sell. So Evergrande owes more than Apple, probably the most cashed up company in history, has on its books.
But that comparison, like the comparison that many are making to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, is too simple. For all of its debts, Evergrande has assets too. At the latest count Evergrande had 1,300 projects spread across 280 cities — physical buildings or land that could help cover some of the losses were the company to be completely liquidated.
Investors certainly didn't seem as worried as they were on Monday, with markets holding steady, or even rising in some regions on Wednesday morning.
1) Netflix has acquired the rights to Roald Dahl's stories, with a plan to create a "universe" of shows and products. Roald Dahl created characters such as Willy Wonka, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox and many more — selling 200+ million copies of his books.
2) Google has made a big bet on the return to the office spending $2.1bn on a huge New York City office building.
3) The fastest fast food? According to a QSR study that would be Taco Bell, with an average drive-thru order taking just 4 minutes 28 seconds.
4) 96% of companies surveyed by Flatfile have said they've run into problems with data onboarding. If your business is one of the 96%, try Flatfile's data onboarding platform.**
5) Scientists at Purdue University have created the "whitest paint ever", capable of reflecting 98.1% of solar radiation, which could help naturally cool buildings in hot climates.
**This is a sponsored snack.
