3 charts for you today exploring:
Rivian, a maker of "electric adventure vehicles" (glossy promo video here), is officially a public company — one with an eye-watering valuation of ~$105bn after its share price rose almost 30% on its first day of trading. That makes it more valuable than Ford ($78bn), GM ($90bn) or Ferrari ($49bn).
Profit? Who needs it
It probably goes without saying, but Rivian does not make a profit — fitting the bill for most companies that go public these days according to data from professor Jay Ritter. Last year just ~20% of IPOs were for companies actually making money, a similar proportion to that found during the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. It's also a complete reversal of the early 1980s, when 80% of IPOs were for companies that were profitable.
Revenue? Who needs it
Rivian's valuation is particularly stunning because the company has recorded less revenue in its 12-year life than most of the coffee shops in your area — in fact Rivian is yet to record any material amount of revenue. Early reviews for its electric pick-up truck are generally quite positive, but how long can a company maintain a $100bn+ valuation without any revenue? We're about to find out.
There are't many better times to launch a family-friendly streaming service than 4 months before everyone gets locked inside — and it showed for Disney.
After launching in November 2019, Disney+ went on to hit 100 million subscribers in record time. People were watching more content than ever, and Disney felt confident it could raise its targets. It settled on a goal of between 230 million and 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024.
After such a fast start, many thought that would be easy for the house of mouse — but yesterday Disney said things were slowing down, with the company adding just 2 million new paid customers in its latest quarter.
The good news for Disney is that its Parks division swung back into profit, thanks to a doubling of its revenue compared to this time last year. The bad news is that the stock market didn't seem to care, with the focus presumably on the streaming slowdown, which sent Disney's shares down more than 7% yesterday.
We'd rather not be charting about inflation when there's so much else going on in the world, but when the data is doing something it hasn't done for more than 30 years, it's hard to ignore.
Consumer prices in the US are up more than 6.2% in the last 12 months — a reading last seen in December 1990. So if you just got a 5% pay rise, congrats, but also sorry — you're probably poorer in real terms than you you used to be.
Stuff that's gone up the most
So where do we go from here? Anyone who has taken ECON101 will tell you that the global central banks may need to raise interest rates from their historic lows. Anyone who took ECON102 will tell you that even if they do that, it will probably take time to filter through the economy. Inflation might be a little more permanent than expected.
1) It paid to be in first class on the Titanic. Some interesting data on who survived the Titanic disaster split by gender, age and class of ticket.
2) World leaders are leaving it down to the last minute to get a deal done at COP26 that might limit global warming to 1.5°C.
3) Swiping less. Dating app Bumble saw its paying user numbers fall 2%, sending shares down 20%.
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)Wilson, the volleyball Tom Hanks befriends in classic movie Cast Away, has sold at auction for $311k.
6) YouTube is going to begin hiding the number of dislikes on videos, in an attempt to reduce harassment on the platform. Good article here on whether the internet needs a dislike button.
**This is a sponsored snack.
