Hi, we've got 3 charts for you today:
Video games... so hot right now
Just last week we were discussing how fast the video game industry was growing, exploring why Zynga — the maker of FarmVille — was to be acquired for almost $13bn.
Well this week Microsoft went one further, announcing a deal to acquire gaming giant Activision Blizzard, the studio behind games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, for $68.7bn — more than 5x the value of last week's Zynga deal.
Spare change
For most people it would be unusual to have a big pile of cash... and a big pile of debts, but in the corporate world that's quite common — and Microsoft is no exception. Microsoft has long term borrowings of more than $80bn, but over the last decade it's also accrued an enormous $130bn pile of cash.
So the fact that Microsoft is finally breaking its piggy bank and spending a big chunk of that cash for its largest-ever-acquisition is testament to just how badly it wants to get further into the gaming sector, strengthening its portfolio which already includes Xbox and Minecraft.
Escape pod?
For Activision Blizzard this deal comes after a tumultuous six months. The company has been rocked by allegations of sexual harassment, pay inequity for female workers and a toxic work environment, which have resulted in a number of lawsuits against the company. Its CEO, Bobby Kotick, reportedly kept some reports of harassment from the board of director's. Those allegations hit the company's share price, and faith in its leadership, hard at the end of last year. Microsoft's approach may have been long-planned, or more opportunistic.
For years and years, China had a population problem; too many people. That problem has now reversed as China's birth rate has collapsed in a fashion that few would have been bold enough to predict 20 or 30 years ago.
China's baby bust
The latest data shows that across China 10.62 million babies were born in 2021, a rate of 7.5 for every 1,000 people. In the 1980s, even during the early years of the controversial one-child policy, that number was 23 babies per 1,000 people — meaning that birth rates have fallen almost 70% in just a generation or two, a seismic shift in family sizes and the future demographics of the country.
Top heavy
As we've noted before, China's slowing population growth might be good for the planet and resource-consumption, but it will mean China has to deal with an ageing and a "top-heavy" population for a number of years. Even the relaxation of the one-child policy in 2015 has done nothing to re-invigorate a baby boom. India will soon become the world's most populous nation, likely in the next few years.
Netflix and chill is not immune to inflation. This week the streaming giant announced that the cost of its monthly plans are set to rise. Netflix's premium package, which gives you 4K quality and more screens, is now set to cost almost $20 a month.
Thanks to some great historical research from our friends at The Verge, we can see that the premium package price is now up 66% since 2013, when it was just ~$12 / month.
The bigger picture
We've charted before about how Netflix is running out of places to grow its subscriber base. In the US & Canada growth has slowed down to a trickle — meaning that Netflix has to find other ways to boost its revenue there. Price rises are the easiest.
A 10% price rise might cause a few cancellations, but it's unlikely to be anywhere near the same proportion of their customers which means this won't be the last Netflix price hike.
1) Tonga, reeling from the enormous volcano blast on Jan 15th, has been cut off from the internet. The country relies on a single subsea cable to connect to the internet that runs 514 miles between Tonga and Fiji.
2) A historically significant villa in Rome that is at the center of an inheritance battle went up for auction yesterday with a starting price of $534 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the auction attracted no bids.
3) More than 41,000 Americans underwent surgery for an organ transplant in 2021, setting a new record and a 6% increase on 2020.
4) SpaceX's Starlinkhas launched its 2,000th satellite into orbit in its bid to provide satellite internet access to the entire planet.
5) Most sales emails never even get read, let alone answered. That’s why Gong put together these 11 Hyper-Persuasive Sales Emails, to help you win more deals.**
6) Investment bank Goldman Sachsmade a record profit last year, but the final quarter of the year showed something of a slowdown, alongside higher wages for employees, sending shares down more than 7% in trading.
**This is sponsored content.
