I'll say it: if I were in a position to take his investment, this post would give me serious, serious pause.
To be clear, I'm all about transparency and talking about things like this in the open, but not like this. There's a lot we need to talk about as an industry, but this doesn't help.
> I suspect it costs them ~10,000$ to hand out XX,000$. If nothing else they want some due diligence to avoid harming their brand. On top of that 10,000¥ in 2019 does not go as far.
> The thing that worries me about this, is it’s a slippery slope to becoming the next GE.
Sony seems to be doing okay, and their Sony Financial Holdings offers online banking services through Sony Bank, life insurance through Sony Life, and insurance through Sony Assurance (albeit only in Japan).
> How is it that this company went from filing for public offering to laying off up to 25% of it's work force...in just a few short weeks?
The wewtf link someone else posted is good, but essentially, it was burning through cash in order to grow. Its private investors (mostly Softbank) were OK with that, but the public markets weren't. They also didn't like management and corporate structure). Not being able to raise cash to continue hypergrowth and having faced a reckoning about the true business prospects and valuation, they have to cut back.
> ...focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong
I actually buy this line. At the end of the day, they're getting money for a product, so there's a business there. The main risk with We is that there's a recession, occupancy drops to 50%, and they're stuck with the leases. But that's not a unique risk.
It's not sustainable for a company that doesn't intend to stay in business for more than a generation. But for a multinational corporation the aging of both their consumers and especially of their workers is on the other hand pretty unsustainable. Just look at where Japan was in the late 1980s and where it is now, with no redress in sight.
Isn't that "A Thing" with Japanese companies? :)
Well, as long as their retail stores don't all disappear, I'm ok - I don't much like shopping for stuff like thay sell online.
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