Ant Group, you shall not pass
Hey Snackers,
The electionâs been keeping us on our toes, as the race and several key swing states hadnât been called as of late last night. Snacks gotta sleep, too.
Markets jumped up as Americans headed to the polls yesterday â must've been all the sugar from the stress snacking.
Well, that was unexpected... Ant Group is the Chinese fintech giant that was supposed to go public tomorrow in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Think of Ant's Alipay app as a Financial Franken-App: it offers every money service imaginable â from payments to loans to insurance and investing (all in one).
Can I get a refund?... Ant had already raised big money from institutional investors who subscribed to its IPO. These VIPs â like mutual funds and brokerages â are the ones who actually buy the stock "initially" during its Initial Public Offering (before it's available to the rest of us). If the stock price goes up when shares hit the market, the VIPs make money. Ant apologized to investors and plans to return the $$$ it collected.
Politics is a market risk... We don't really know why regulators squashed Ant, but the Chinese government's controlling-ness is likely behind it. Alibaba (aka: the Amazon of China) saw its stock drop 8% yesterday because it owns 33% of Ant. In its own IPO papers, Alibaba said that changes in the Chinese government's policies could hurt its biz. That seems to be proving true for Ant, too.
Nailed it with the name change... A one-syllable word, and the VC cash comes flooding in. Reef, formerly called ParkJockey, just raised an eye-popping $700M to turn underused parking lots into âneighborhood hubs.â Reef leases and manages lots, providing the hardware, software, and electricity needed to transform them into something... less boring.
If you can dream it... you can disrupt it. Reef started as a "disruptor of parking lots" (whoa) with its management business. Now it's a real estate play with 4.8K locations, and plans to grow to 10K with the fresh $$$. Its big focus:
Mobility is power... You've probably noticed more "For Lease" signs on Main Street. Brick-and-mortar shops are sadly shuttering because they can't afford rent when sales are barely coming in. Over 100K restaurants have closed since the first COVID shutdowns. Mobile rental units could give restaurants the flexibility to stay afloat and test digital concepts â without the burden of running a full-on storefront.
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Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Walmart and Softbank
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