Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2021.

• Operating cash flow  decreased 1% to $54.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $55.3 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2020.
• Free cash flow  decreased to $2.6 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $29.5 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2020.
• Free cash flow less principal repayments of finance leases and financing obligations  decreased to an outflow of $8.8 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an inflow of $18.4 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2020.
• Free cash flow less equipment finance leases and principal repayments of all other finance leases and financing obligations  decreased to an outflow of $3.9 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an inflow of $17.9 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2020.
• Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards  totaled 523 million on September 30, 2021, compared with 518 million one year ago.
• Net sales  increased 15% to $110.8 billion in the third quarter, compared with $96.1 billion in third quarter 2020. Excluding the $0.5 billion favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 15% compared with third quarter 2020.
• Operating income  decreased to $4.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with $6.2 billion in third quarter 2020.
• Net income  decreased to $3.2 billion in the third quarter, or $6.12 per diluted share, compared with $6.3 billion, or $12.37 per diluted share, in third quarter 2020.

“We’ve always said that when confronted with the choice between optimizing for short-term profits versus what’s best for customers over the long term, we will choose the latter–and you can see that during every phase of this pandemic,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. “In the first several months of COVID-19, Amazonians played an essential role to help people secure the requisite PPE, food, and other in-demand items needed, and we worked closely with businesses and governments to leverage AWS to maintain business continuity as they responded to the pandemic. Customers have appreciated this commitment, which is part of what’s driving this past quarter’s AWS growth acceleration to 39% year over year; but, it’s also driven extraordinary investments across our businesses to satisfy customer needs–just one example is that we’ve nearly doubled the size of our fulfillment network since the pandemic began. In the fourth quarter, we expect to incur several billion dollars of additional costs in our Consumer business as we manage through labor supply shortages, increased wage costs, global supply chain issues, and increased freight and shipping costs–all while doing whatever it takes to minimize the impact on customers and selling partners this holiday season. It’ll be expensive for us in the short term, but it’s the right prioritization for our customers and partners.”

On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a major announcement that it is changing its corporate name to “Meta.” The word “meta” has Greek origins and it means “beyond.” The company mentioned the new name at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference. The name has connotations with its future as it is planning to expand beyond social media and create a metaverse using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

Zuckerberg said that the company’s name Facebook is limited to one product and that it is much more than that one product although it is closely linked to the product and that he hoped that they would be seen as a “metaverse company.”

Zuckerberg also said that the company believed that the “metaverse” would be the successor to the mobile internet.

Zuckerberg already had rights to the Twitter handle @meta as well as the website meta which now links a browser to a welcome page. This page on Facebook outlines the changes that have been made. He has also said that they would start trading on December 1, using the stock ticker MVRS that the company has already reserved. The company stock rose by 3 percent after the announcement was made.

The famous thumbs-up sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park has also been changed. The new name “Meta” has a new logo as well. It is also in blue but looks like a pretzel or an infinity sign, depending on how you see it.

The company had teased the sign earlier, before its official reveal. It had been covered with a canvas that had the iconic Like or thumbs-up icon. A tweet on Wednesday had also briefly captured artists painting the new logo.

 

When Huawei faced sanctions from the U.S. government in December, due to security concerns, it decided to spinoff its smartphone brand Honor as an independent company. CNBC recently reported that Honor will be launched in 40 markets overseas and it has access to both Google apps and Qualcomm chips.

Huawei considered Honor to be its budget phone brand. It was sold to a group of buyers including the government in Shenzhen, which is its home base. Huawei faced U.S. sanctions in 2019 and 2020. So, it made the brand independent, to recoup some of its sales losses.

The new smartphone Honor 50 has been priced at €529 which is equivalent to roughly $614. Currently Honor does not face any sanctions from the U.S. government. It was launched in China, earlier in 2021. Its latest model, the Honor 50 has the following features:

Google apps and Android operating system
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G chip
4 camera setup on the back of the phone
Display screen of 6.57 inches.

Counterpoint research said that the Honor brand has got back some of its market share in China. As per its report, Honor had gained a 15 percent market share in China and is now the third largest smartphone brand in the country. In global markets, it saw a rise to 3.7 percent. Its market share in February was 1.5 percent. The main factor for its gain in global markets is robust sales n China.

It remains to be seen if Honor can gain a larger share in international markets, after it will be launched overseas. Other Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi had taken over the spot vacated by Huawei and Honor when the company was facing U.S. sanctions.

The spinoff was made to save Huawei’s smartphone business. Although Honor is now an independent brand, by gaining independence it has lost the huge marketing reach that its erstwhile parent Huawei had given it in the past. This reach helped it to gain a large market share in the past, before the U.S. sanctions.

 

Robinhood is planning to become a regional “super application” according to the tech startup that operates the platform in Thailand, in 2022. The Thai food delivery platform has been operating for a year and has 2.3 million registered users. It also has 164,000 merchants and roughly 20,000 riders, according to chairman Thana Thienachariya, of Purple Ventures.

Purple Ventures is a tech startup of the SCB group. It does not charge gross profit, nor does it charge commission fees from merchants. Most of the users on the platform are customers of SCB. Many of them have SCB credit cards. They have higher purchasing power when compared with users who use other platforms.

Mr. Thana also said that the food delivery platform had the advantage of cross selling services to existing clients and also to expand its base of customers. It could also contribute greater income from advertisements, commissions and digital loan services.

Next year, Robinhood wants to grow its customer base and reach 4 million users and 300,000 merchants. It is also aiming to expand its operations and diversify into three different categories:

Robinhood Travel
Robinhood Mart
Robinhood Express goods delivery service.

Robinhood began its operations in 2020. SCB gave the platform an initial investment budget of 150 million baht. It expects its investment budget to be in the range of 4 to 5 billion baht within the next couple of years.

Mr Thana said that the company plans to be a regional app in its next phase and it has been investigating potential regional markets as well as different business models to achieve this plan, in Thailand and abroad.

Although the Robinhood platform began operations using SCB’s current digital payments, it plans to join with other financial partners. In future, the food delivery platform that will expand into travel, supermarket delivery and express goods delivery services. It plans to have both banking and non-banking partners as it expands its operations.

Image Credit Source Bangkok SCB

The Democrats have recently proposed to tax billionaires many of whom pay almost zero or less than five percent taxes, due to various tax breaks and some loopholes in the laws of the nation as per a recent report by ProPublica. As the tax proposal could become a reality despite the lack of bipartisan support, one billionaire, Elon Musk, took to Twitter to show his displeasure on being expected to be taxed like most American are. Some billionaires have said that they are ready to be taxed, some have protested and others have kept quiet, as of now.

On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and they come for you.”

In another tweet Musk said that the private sector could be better at managing the reallocation of wealth rather than the government.

In a worst case fantasy scenario we muse about what would happen if the top two billionaires were in charge of reallocation of taxes collected from Americans who have worked hard to pay taxes which would now be disbursed by the private sector including these two.

In the recent past, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos spent a s**t load of money for less than a quarter hour joy ride to space and thanked Amazon employees for making it possible. When Bezos left for space many jokingly asked the government not to let him come back to earth. If huge amounts of taxpayer money is put in this billionaire’s hands, will he offer all those who criticize him a free joy ride to space, this time using tax payer’s money, instead of extending invitations to cronies and ticket holders?

Elon Musk recently reportedly said that the bulk of his fortune would be used in efforts to colonize Mars. His reported $300 billion wealth would most probably be insufficient to reach Mars. Will he reallocate taxpayers’ funds privately to shorten the time it would take humankind to reach Mars, so that he could reach Mars and died there, as is his wish, while mother earth struggles?
We wonder!

Source Twitter