Tag: Paypal

Business

Weekly reading – 25th February 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 25th February 2022

What I wrote last week

Updates on PayPal

Business

Update from Andy Jassy on return to office plans. Jassy’s memo hit the nail on its head on why companies want staff back into the office. Personally, I believe it’s difficult to maintain productivity, creativity and culture with remote working. It’s particularly harder on new members. In my job, the learning curve is high. It usually takes a person one year to get acclimated. We had a few interns who couldn’t catch on because they found it difficult to learn while working remotely. Recent interns fared better. That hardens my belief that for jobs like mine, it’s important to get folks to the office.

($) More Auto Payments Are Late, Exposing Cracks in Consumer Credit. Two things stood out from this article for me. The first is that it will be interesting to see how the economy will be when consumer debt hits new highs regularly while lenders already see rising delinquency rates. The other takeaway is how many consumers are careless with their personal finance. How would they put themselves into a position where they had to set up a GoFundMe page to make ends meet?

Amazon employees express dismay, anger about sudden return-to-office policy. Opponents of the new policy said that it was decided in an Anti-Amazon way. If they were implying that the decision was arbitrary and subjective, unlike the data-driven way that Amazon is supposedly known for, I’d say it is perhaps exactly how corporate decisions are made. I read a recent Amazon book by insiders who spent years at the company. They chronicled how Amazon came to make a decision on their notoriously obnoxious 2nd HQ selection. At first, it was all about data. Eventually, it was merely a decision made by somebody DESPITE all the data. Or Jeff Bezos just came up with two business ideas out of nowhere that were eventually proven worthless. And if that’s not enough, I’d like to remind everyone that work is not a democracy.

($) Walgreens CEO Bets on Doctors Over Drugstores in Search for Growth. ““I went deeply into a strategic analysis of what could be next” after taking the helm, said Ms. Brewer. “It was clear to me that, from a strategic standpoint, traditional retail plus the pharmacy business is a very mature business, and at some point we’re going to have to have another way to grow revenue.” 

Addigy releases its 2023 State of the Apple Device Management Industry Report for MSPs. I consider it a positive sign for Apple. Demand for Apple device management is there and big enough for Managed Service Providers to charge premium for. Apple launched Apple Business Essentials for the exact same reason. It will take time for the tech giant to scale this business and even report some metrics. But directionally, I think they are onto something

($) American Express Airport Lounges Cut Back on Free Plus Ones. Amex no longer allows its cardholders to bring guests into lounges for free. The company has a dilemma. If they are too cavalier with the guest policy, lounges will be crowded, devaluing what is supposed to be a premium experience. On the other hand, making it too expensive to bring children or spouses will anger some, if not many, members. Amex premium credit cards are not cheap. To justify the high annual fee, cardholders need to travel quite a bit every year. But how many can spend and travel a lot all by themselves? It’ll be interesting to see how the new policy will affect customer churn.

Other stuff I find interesting

Will ChatGPT supplant us as writers, thinkers? “For 25 years I’ve begun my introductory psychology course by showing how our best artificial intelligence still can’t duplicate ordinary common sense. This year I was terrified that that part of the lecture would be obsolete because the examples I gave would be aced by GPT. But I needn’t have worried. When I asked ChatGPT, “If Mabel was alive at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., was she alive at noon?” it responded, “It was not specified whether Mabel was alive at noon. She’s known to be alive at 9 and 5, but there’s no information provided about her being alive at noon.” So, it doesn’t grasp basic facts of the world — like people live for continuous stretches of time and once you’re dead you stay dead — because it has never come across a stretch of text that made that explicit. (To its credit, it did know that goldfish don’t wear underpants.)“

AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology. Generative AI is all the rage these days. It’s hard to go on a day without hearing something related to AI. Futurists run wild with predictions. Tech giants race to introduce their own version of AI-powered tools. Google’s stock price even dropped because of a botched AI demo. As generative AI gains popularity and usage, the question of copyrights will be increasingly important. Hence, the action that the US Copyright Office took carries significant meaning in determining who owns what, in the world of AI.

A Rollout Like No Other. Henry Ford was very protective of his invention and needed convincing to allow new changes to Ford vehicles.

Earth’s innermost layer is a 644 kilometer wide ball of iron. “This newly detected center, which is probably a ball of metal 644 kilometers wide, and its outer shell would be formed of an iron-nickel alloy, with traces of other elements.”

Stats

Private labels totaled a record of $228.6 billion in sales in 2022

Durian, which is an unpopular fruit with Westerners, is expected to bring in $1 billion in export for Vietnam in 2023

Commercial gaming in the US reached $60.4 billion in 2022

Source: Elizabeth Spyers
Business

Updates on PayPal

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Updates on PayPal

FY2022 highlights

  • Total Payment Volume (TPV): $1.36 trillion, up 9% YoY
  • Transactions: 22.3 billion, up 16% YoY
  • 435 million active accounts at the end of 2022, including 8.6 million net new active accounts and 35 million active merchants
  • Net revenue: $27.5 billion, up 8% YoY
  • Free Cash Flow: $5.1 billion, up 4% YoY. FCF margin of 19%
  • Braintree made up 30% of PayPal TPV in 2022, growing 40% YoY
  • BNPL totaled more than $20 billion in transaction volume since launch, growing 160% YoY in 2022
  • Venmo has 90 million active accounts, including 60 million monthly actives, and exceeded $100 million in monthly revenue

Uncertainty at the top

PayPal earnings took a backseat to the announcement that CEO Dan Schulman is retiring at the end of 2023. A seasoned leader with years in leadership positions at global companies like AT&T, Priceline.com, American Express and Virgin Mobile, Dan became the CEO of PayPal in 2014. Here are a few headlines of what he has achieved:

  • Taking the company public in 2015, concluding the separation from eBay
  • “Under his leadership, PayPal’s market cap growth has outpaced the S&P 500. Revenues increased from $9.2 billion in 2015 to $27.5 billion in 2022, with total active accounts more than doubling to over 430 million in 200 markets. Total payment volume grew 5X from $288 billion in 2015 to $1.36 trillion in 2022” (PayPal)
  • Ending a long running feud with card networks in 2016, opening up opportunities for PayPal
  • Acquiring multiple companies, notably Paidy, iZettle, Honey, Xoom and Happy Return

A lot of people have leveled criticisms at the CEO and his leadership, after PayPal’s stock price dropped by almost two-third in 2022. They speculated that he was being pushed out of his job politely, instead of retiring voluntarily. I don’t know what goes on in PayPal’s boardroom, so I cannot dispute such a claim completely. But personally, I think that Dan is going out on his terms. Here’s my reason.

First, the CEO recently bought PayPal stocks worth of $2 million, bringing his stock purchase to $3 million since 2022. That’s not a sign of someone who is shown the door. The purchase signals that the CEO believes in the brighter future for PayPal and that he doesn’t harbor ill will towards the Board. Second, it’s how the announcement on his retirement was made. When Disney wanted to dismiss Bob Chapek, they did it in the most ruthless manner. No touting his achievement. No time given between the announcement and the dismissal. And we haven’t heard the Executive team publicly thank Chapek for his work. In Dan’s case, the departure seems planned and more cordial. The company put out a press release to show him gratitude. And he is leaving at the end of the year, giving PayPal time to settle on a new leader.

Last but not least, it’s what the CEO said himself:

I felt there were two important considerations in terms of timing. First, I wanted to be sure that PayPal had positive momentum and was in a position to deliver a solid year of performance. So I can be sure I wasn’t leaving the company in a difficult position. And second, it was important to me that the Board have enough time to conduct a thorough search and have a reasonable transition period.

Of course, I will be flexible in my time frame in order to assure we seamlessly onboard the ideal next leader of PayPal, and I look forward to continuing to serve on the PayPal board. I’m eager to see the next CEO build on all we have accomplished in the last eight and half years and seize the immense potential ahead of us. In the meantime, I will remain fully focused on maintaining our momentum and executing on our plan.

I had two criteria for when that right timing was. I mean the first one was I wanted to be absolutely sure that PayPal was on solid footing with a bright future. And as we look at kind of the quarter we delivered in Q4, as we look at what’s happening in Q1 right now, which is coming in much stronger than we anticipated across a wide variety of fronts, we feel that 2023 is shaping up to be a strong year. And we think we have a real nice glide path as we go into ’24 as well. And so that kind of like leaving the company in a good place seemed to be a good time for that.

The man is 65 years of age and has worked a long career. It’s sensible for him to think about the next chapter in life. That, to me, makes a lot of sense and indicates this decision comes from Dan himself, not the Board.

With that being said, the upcoming departure of the sitting CEO & President paints uncertainty on PayPal’s outlook. The company has to look for a new CEO and since September 2022, it has been running without an official CFO, who is on a medical leave. In addition, the long-time Chief Product Officer, Mark Britto, is retiring as well. The uncertainty around these three key positions in a complex operation like PayPal is undoubtedly a major concern as it affects long-term planning and execution.

Cost-cutting is great, but is it a bit too late?

The management team has been beating the cost-cutting drums for a while. Back in Q2 FY2022, they set a target of $900 million and $1.3 billion in cost savings for FY2022 and FY2023 respectively. This month, they revealed further savings of $600 million in expenses, on top of the $1.3 billion target, which come from a layoff of 2,000 employees, a reduction in external vendor spend and a decrease in real estate footprint.

This commitment to efficiency is in stark contrast to how wasteful the company was before. Previously, growing the number of active accounts was all the rage. It was one of the key goals proudly set, yet subsequently abandoned by the management team. Now, it’s about cost management and using capital wisely in key initiatives such as PayPal Complete Payments, Passwordless, Venmo or enhanced checkout.

I mean, upgrading the product and service suite to stay competitive as well as growing the addressable market are great. However, I wonder if it’s already too late and if PayPal squandered a golden opportunity in the last two years. Why do I say that?

First of all, the competition is pervasive and fierce. Every market that PayPal competes in, there are established and well-funded competitors, from Apple Pay in checkout, Affirm in BNPL, to Square, Clover, Adyen and Stripe in payment processing. In some areas, PayPal is at technical disadvantage. For instance, Apple Pay has exclusive access to the NFC chip and native on Apple devices. In other areas, the iconic brand has to play catch up. The CEO admitted that Square has done a much better job monetizing Cash App debit card than PayPal has with its own cards. PayPal Complete Payments, an unbranded version of Braintree for SMBs and midsized businesses, enters a crowded field that features the likes of Square, FIS, Adyen or Payrix.

Even when they have to operate in highly competitive fields, PayPal would still have a chance to dominate and win. But there are instances where I call into question such a possibility. Cash App bought the tax filing division of Credit Karma to drive inflows. What has been the appropriate response from PayPal? Absolutely nothing. In addition, Square launched Tap To Pay on iPhone for its US sellers last September. Meanwhile, PayPal will only plan to launch its own version a full year later. Last but not least, PayPal has had trouble monetizing Venmo whereas Cash App is the key profit drive for Square.

We’re updating the debit card. We’re behind Cash App there. We really need to do better on the debit card. We are really looking fully at that rewards piece of it. Business profiles with Apple Tap to Pay, I think, to be meaningful. It’s in pilot. It’ll really start to ramp at the end of Q1 into Q2. So, a lot there. And we’re doing a lot of redesign on the app itself.

All that said, there’s a lot going on there, but we have a lot more work to do, as I mentioned, to turn potential into reality. I think there are a lot of green shoots, but they need to grow and I’m not as happy with our performance on Venmo as I would like to be. It’s obviously a key part of our portfolio growing nicely, but there’s more we can do with it.

Source: PayPal Fourth Quarter 2022 Analyst Call

By no means am I suggesting that PayPal is an easy business to run. On the contrary, it is a highly complex business, even from the outside looking in. All I am saying is that the strategic mishaps in 2021, the level of competition, the failure to get feature parity with competitors and the uncertainty at the top give myself, a shareholder, some major concerns over the outlook of the company. For good measure, because PayPal is highly dependent on discretionary spending, it’s anyone’s guess how the challenging macro-environment and persistent inflation would mean for FY2023 and beyond. In fact, even PayPal’s executives didn’t provide revenue outlook for FY2023. For all of these reasons, while PayPal is trading at a lower price than before Covid, I am still reluctant to increase my position on the company.

Business

Banks plan to compete with Apple Pay & PayPal

by MQDuong1 Comment on Banks plan to compete with Apple Pay & PayPal

Per WSJ:

Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and four other banks are working on a new product that will allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkout with a wallet that will be linked to their debit and credit cards. The digital wallet will be managed by Early Warning Services LLC, the bank-owned company that operates money-transfer service Zelle. The wallet, which doesn’t have a name yet, will operate separately from Zelle, EWS said.

EWS’s owner banks are also trying to cut down on fraud. Customers using their wallet wouldn’t have to type in their card numbers, which can raise the risk of fraud and rejected payments that result in lost sales. 

The banks are still ironing out the details of the customer experience. It likely will involve consumers’ typing their email on a merchant’s checkout page. The merchant would ping EWS, which would use its back-end connections to banks to identify which of the consumer’s cards can be loaded onto the wallet. Consumers would then choose which card to use or could opt out. 

Banks are reacting to the threats from PayPal and especially Apple. The tech giant is moving deeper and deeper into the consumer banking space with the imminent launch of a savings account and BNPL product. Incumbent banks are concerned that Apple will control the customer relationship, rendering banks’ offerings a stepping stone or accessories at best. In “Owning the relationship with your customers. A look at the controversial case of Apple“, I wrote:

Apple is at the peak of their power and having the best relationship ever with users, a relationship that involves other parties such as app developers. The company invests a lot of resources into cultivating the relationship with both end users and app developers. As long as the former is strong (apparently it is now given its strong financial results), it gives Apple enormous bargaining power over anyone who wants to leverage such a relationship. To reduce Apple’s power, the most logical way is to weaken the bond they have with the end users by offering a better alternative, though it’s by no means an easy ask.

There is virtually nothing that these banks can do to stop consumers from buying Apple hardware. Manufacturing a smartphone is not in their circle of competence. As a result, the only way to weaken the bond that Apple forges with consumers is to offer an alternative to Apple Pay. Do that and banks can hope to wrestle back the control over customer relationship. While the plan makes sense, there are major concerns over its practicality.

The first issue is fraud. EWS operates the P2P network Zelle, which enables money exchange between users’ bank accounts. Though popular, Zelle has seen a concerning amount of fraud which attracted criticisms from lawmakers such as Elizabeth Warren. I was personally told that my employer, a bank, hesitated to offer Zelle mainly because of fraud. If EWS cannot solve fraud on Zelle and there is little information on how the new unnamed mobile wallet will minimize fraud, what is to make us believe that will actually happen?

The advantage that Apple has in this area is that their hardware is built as a fraud deterrent. Any Apple Pay transaction needs to be approved either with a Touch or Face ID. And we can bet that Apple won’t make a competitor a native wallet on their devices like Apple Pay.

An argument can be made that since the new wallet challenger will operate like PayPal, which is a massive brand, surely it can replicate PayPal’s success. Well, that’s where the second issue lies. PayPal has a giant network of 380 million consumer and 35 million merchant accounts. Merchants like PayPal because it can help with conversion, while consumers like PayPal because it is widely accepted. One cannot live without the other. How can big banks convince thousands, if not millions, of merchants to display the new checkout button?

To do that, banks first have to convince consumers to use the new shiny wallet. Starting with credit cards is smart since that’s where rewards are. But what about trust? If consumers are unfamiliar with the new wallet’s name, whatever it may be, will they choose it instead of the more established names like PayPal or Apple Pay? Would you choose to pay with “Minh’s Pay” if I had a wallet after my name? That in and of itself is not an easy task.

JPMorgan launched Chase Pay in November 2016, about two years after Apple launched Apple Pay. It’s beyond dispute to say that Apple Pay is a much more successful and popular mobile wallet than Chase Pay. Remember that JPMorgan Chase is one of, if not, the biggest bank in the US. Even they couldn’t get its own proprietary wallet to compete with Apple Pay or PayPal. What are the odds that several banks whose interests may not always align can get the job done when they are several years behind?

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 19th November 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 19th November 2022

What I wrote last week

PayPal has a monetization problem with Venmo

Harvard Business Publishing

Business

Why investors have jumped off the Carvana bandwagon. Carvana is another example that reminds me of that famous quote from Warren Buffett: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

Basically everything on Amazon has become an ad. “Successful Amazon sellers have to spend anywhere between 10 percent and 20 percent of their sales on Amazon ads, according to six high-volume sellers Recode interviewed. That’s on top of the other listing and warehousing fees they also give Amazon. Some said that the pay-to-play evolution of the site is one of the top two reasons they have had to substantially raise the prices of their merchandise on Amazon over the past year.” This is going to spell trouble for Amazon soon. A few of my purchases were off Amazon simply because the same items sold on the site were markedly more expensive. Keep this up and the company will soon have to re-acquire customers and rebuild its brand image. That’s too high a price to pay, just for advertising dollars.

Local ride-hailing startups thrive in the towns that Uber forgot. Giant ride-hailing companies compete fiercely with one another in big cities, leaving small and medium-sized towns ripe for the taking. And they are being taken over by local startups that saw unserved markets and decided to act. To grow, these startups should not venture into big cities. They should strive to continue to serve small and medium-sized towns across the continent. Regarding the likes of Uber, I don’t blame them for not attending to these small towns. Resources are limited and they can’t stretch themselves too thin.

Global Twitter employees describe chaos as layoffs gut their teams. The word chaos can’t even describe what is going on at Twitter, especially to the staff in India. Axing 50% of the policy team and 75% of the product team can’t benefit the company.

Sam Bankman-Fried vs. The Match King. The last few days have been littered with news and coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and FTX. The glamour and the superficial valuation masked the mess that went on behind the scenes. But this scandal is hardly the first. Not even close. This post compares what happened with SBF & FTX with the Match King, a businessman who had great success early on yet ruined everything when he was consumed by greed

The vomit-inducing piece on Sam Bankman-Fried by Sequoia. The venture capital firm is legendary for its longevity, success and role in helping entrepreneurs and startups thrive. However, this is a serious black eye. They penned this ridiculously flowery article on SBF, stuck it on its website under the tagline “We helped the daring build legendary companies”, yet removed it the moment news of trouble at FTX surfaced. Worse, the article recalled a meeting where the firm’s partners met Sam. No hard questions and little due diligence. They were wowed by SBF, who was literally playing games during the meeting. Mind-blowing stuff

Other stuff I find interesting

FTX turmoil destroys clout of crypto’s Washington spokesman. The fall of SBF and his companies apparently threatens to bring my regulatory heat onto crypto firms in the future. Well, I personally think that it’s a bit late. Regulators should have had more oversight and scrutiny over these crypto companies and celebrities.

TikTok’s Subcontractor in Colombia Under Investigation for Traumatic Work. On one hand, I understand that a job is a job, even one that requires people to watch horrifying content for hours. On the other hand, there should be safeguards built to ensure that these workers are treated properly and all measures are taken to limit the exposure to mentally harmful content.

People protested when this capital city went car-free. Now they love it. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, sets an excellent example of how cities can transform themselves with micromobility and car-less space.

Stats

US consumers spent $72.2 billion online in OCtober 2022, according to Adobe

Americans have almost $5 trillion in cash as of Q2 2022

Honey bee life spans are 50% shorter today than they were 50 years ago

The world’s population hit the 8-billion mark on 11/15/2022

US online grocery sales totalled $7.8 billion in October 2022

Global lithium supply & demand forecast
Source: Global lithium supply & demand forecast by BloombergNEF
Business

PayPal has a monetization problem with Venmo

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on PayPal has a monetization problem with Venmo

The past three years has seen a breathtaking growth of Venmo. The number of active accounts grew from 40 million in Q1 2019 to 90 million in Q2 2022. Its Transaction Processing Volume (TPV) almost tripled in the same period of time, reaching $61 billion in Q2 2022. However, growth has been hard to come by in the last two quarters, especially in Q3 2022. TPV growth was only single digit in the last two earnings reports. The number of active accounts plateaued at 90 million. Available only in the US, where there are about 230 million consumers, one has to wonder how much room there is for Venmo to continue to expand domestically.

Venmo TPV and Active Accounts
Venmo TPV and Active Accounts

Going overseas sounds like a straightforward answer, but operationally, it is anything but. It would require a lot of investments in localizing the product, marketing to acquire customers, customer management to maintain engagement and compliance to stay on the good side of lawmakers. There must be a reason why PayPal hasn’t taken Venmo outside of the US. Given the missteps that the management has taken over the last few years, it’s not impossible that restricting Venmo to the US is a mistake. Personally; however, I can see why they haven’t.

If growth in TPV and user base slows down, what about monetization? PayPal reported that Venmo earned $250 million in revenue in Q4 FY2021 and $900 million in FY2021. Since Venmo processed almost $61 billion and $230 billion in TPV in the same periods respectively, Venmo’s take rate is about 0.4%. To put that take rate into context, let’s compare it to Cash App

VenmoCash AppNote
Monthly Active Accounts (in million)5749the Cash App number is the number of transacting accounts in September 2022
Transaction Volume (in $ billion) in the quarter ending Sep 30th, 2022644.3
Revenue (in $ million) in the quarter ending Sep 30th, 2022270118Venmo’s revenue is my estimate based on the $250-million figure reported for Q4 2021 while Cash App’s revenue only includes transaction-based revenue
Take-rate0.42%2.7%

The comparison shows that Venmo is seriously under-monetized compared to Cash App. PayPal has a valuable asset in Venmo that resonates with a lot of consumers in America, especially the younger crowd, but they don’t seem to be able to benefit from said asset. And don’t take my word on it as the CEO of PayPal is not entirely happy either

I am pleased with Venmo’s progress but I am not thrilled with all the progress that we’ve had. I just want to be up front with that. I feel like we can do a lot more with that asset than we have been able to do so far. There is a ton of potential there. The people who use Venmo, our customers love Venmo. It is a beloved brand. They use it all the time. You can tell from our monthly active users [of 57M]. The monthly active users are up by ~85% in the last 2 years or so. So, a lot of progress there. But I feel like there can be more progress.

These are some big merchants that are implementing Pay with Venmo and I think we will see more. We are going to revamp the card strategy, we started to begin to do that. We think that is one place that Cash App has done particularly well on, and there is no reason why we should not with our scale and size be able to really tap into a revamped card functionality. Over time, we will also begin to see more basic financial services there, savings and other things come into the Venmo wallet. There is focus on things that have to get done right now. Amazon and Apple are big opportunities, we want to make sure we take full advantage of those. We’ve got some basic hygiene work to do there. Good progress, but I wouldn’t call it great progress right now. In terms of revenue growth, we had anticipated that we would be about 50% revenue growth [for FY’22] and that is where we are year to date. Q4, like the rest of the business, is going to be weaker than we expected. That will probably take Venmo revenue growth into the 40%’s [year over year growth for FY’22]. That is probably a good place for you to assume it will end

Source: PayPal Third Quarter 2022 Buyside Call

Platforms like Venmo and Cash App monetize by charging sellers on every transaction and the majority of retail sales still takes place in stores. To facilitate in-store transactions, cards are the most successful medium. PayPal put a lot of efforts into QR Code during the pandemic, but they abandoned that push and have since switched focus to cards. Venmo credit card doesn’t require a Venmo balance, but it’s not available to every consumer, especially Gen Z users whose lack of credit history prevents them from qualifying for a credit card. I wouldn’t be surprised if Venmo credit card users constituted only a small percentage of Venmo active base.

While accessible to many more people, Venmo debit card requires a Venmo balance. The question then becomes: how can Venmo get users to park money on a Venmo account? Users only maintain a balance when there is enough utility, whether it’s rewards or accessibility at a variety of merchants. Cash App has been successful so far in this regard. Cash App reported that it had $2 billion of direct deposits in September 2022. Paper direct deposits into Cash App which was launched nearly a year ago cumulatively crossed $3.5 billion. These figures indicate how much Cash App users value the platform and how much they want to use it. This is something that Venmo has to, at least, replicate and there certainly is work to be done.

Cash App users can paper-deposit funds into their accounts at some retail stores, but Venmo doesn’t have this feature. Checks deposited electronically into Cash App will be available on the platform the next business day at no additional cost. With Venmo, users may have to wait up to 10 days to receive funds from an electronic check unless users pay a small fee to expedite the process. Any additional friction to the deposit process will deter users from bringing cash to the platform, so obviously I’d love to see Venmo at least get feature parity with Cash App.

Moreover, Venmo also needs to be available at more checkout pages. The partnership with Amazon which enables customers to add their Venmo account as a payment method will likely boost the perceived utility of Venmo. But there should be more partnerships like that. PayPal powers payments for some of the largest merchants in the US, whether it’s the branded PayPal or the unbranded platform Braintree. They should look into leveraging such an advantage to make Venmo more prominent. If a user could pay for Uber, Amazon or Instacart with their Venmo balance, that would obviously make Venmo more useful and appealing.

There is also a side benefit from having more customer funds. The more funds the likes of Venmo or Block have, the more interest income they can earn. In Q3 2022, PayPal’s Other Value Added Services revenue increased by $37 million year over year. One of the main drivers of such an increase was higher interest income on customer funds due to higher interest rates. Block itself made $7 million in revenue from customer funds as well.

Next, rewards is a great tool to keep consumers engaged. Consumers love to earn rewards and redeem them for other purchases. PayPal recently revamped their rewards program that unifies all PayPal products and offers consumers more ways to earn and redeem. However, since Venmo and PayPal are still two independent platforms, the new PayPal Rewards does not feature Venmo. If consumers are expected to use Venmo for payments, they will expect to be rewarded for such loyalty. Besides Venmo credit card’s rewards, Venmo offers cash back at qualifying merchants on Venmo debit card, but information on that is scant. Venmo needs to make the program more attractive and prominent. Yes, the low interchange rate on debit card transactions makes it expensive to fund rewards, but it’s also expensive, if not more, to acquire new customers and fend off Cash App and a host of other competitors.

Here are a couple of things that Venmo can do. First, link the credit card with the debit card, Any credit card rewards can be turned to cash on Venmo account that can be used to pay friends or purchase at stores with the Venmo Debit Card. This concept is not something new. It’s similar to what Apple has with Apple Card and Apple Cash. By making the credit card rewards immediately available, Venmo would give users a reason to use the Venmo app and debit card.

Second, because Venmo Credit Card is a co-branded card issued by Synchrony, Venmo must receive some compensation, either as share of interest and/or interchange income and finder’s fee for every new account. Financial reports by PayPal indicate that the compensation could run in the millions. Use that money to run marketing campaigns with a celebrity. I’d love to see Venmo try to do what Capital One did with Taylor Swift. Capital One generated a lot of accounts, interest and awareness with this campaign.

In short, Venmo is an incredible asset that PayPal has at its disposal. Investors place a premium on the company’s ability to monetize Venmo, but even the CEO is not happy with what they have done. Compared to Cash App, it’s under-monetized. PayPal needs to start making more progress soon because their competitors don’t stand still for them to catch up.

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 13th August 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 13th August 2022

What I wrote last week

PayPal Q2 FY2022 Results

Business

Monzo growth. A fascinating story on the early days of Monzo, a successful fintech company from the UK

The Wolf in Cashmere’s Conglomerate. A fantastic podcast episode on LVMH and the empire that they have built

($) How One Grocery Chain in Pennsylvania Is Preparing for a Downturn. An interesting case study of how a low-margin business in a cut-throat industry is responding to the macroeconomic challenges. I wonder if these companies will keep lessons learned during this period long in the future. You know what they say, never let a crisis go to waste

Deckers Brands: “The Ugliest Shoes of All Time”

Multicultural Grocers Drive Sales by Catering to Increasingly Diverse America. It’s imperative for grocers to closely understand the social fabric of the areas where they operate. Folks from different backgrounds have different preferences. Grocers who make the best use of their footprint, aka maximize revenue per square foot, must appeal to as many customers and sell as many goods as possible. This will require efforts, focus and investments in infrastructure and tools. But there is no other choice in the ever highly fragmented and competitive world of grocery

Ad Tech Revenue Statements Indicate Unclear Effects of App Tracking Transparency. A very balanced and reasonable take on ATT. If you are interested, here is my take on ATT

Landmark “Self-Dealing” Arbitration Found Netflix In “Violation” Of WGA Contracts. It’s interesting to learn about contracts and compensation schemes in Hollywood

Other stuff I find interesting

China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen becomes first city on mainland to regulate fully autonomous, driverless cars on some roads. The Chinese may have autonomous vehicles on the streets before we do. I am not talking about a few vehicles or test drives. This is about a large scale adoption of autonomous vehicles. Technology alone is not enough. There are important questions that must be answered. For instance, who will be liable for damages in accidents? Are there regulations for that? Shenzhen’s regulations already took place; something that is not yet available here in the US, to my best knowledge. For me, that’s an encouraging sign and a big step towards the future that many envision.

Prison Money Diaries: What People Really Make (and Spend) Behind Bars. I felt angry after reading this piece. Even though violators of the laws should pay for their transgressions, as one of the most developed and richest countries in the world, we should build prisons that offer sufficient living environments to inmates. According to inmates, everything in prisons is pricey and they get increasingly more expensive over time. To buy goods, inmates have to work, although the pay is embarrassingly low. One receives $7 for 8 hours of work. And he said this: “If I work two sessions, that’s $6.68 per day. Almost nothing else in the Department of Corrections pays like this. Plus, during Covid, they gave us hazard pay — $2 extra per day. Last July, I made $334. The two primary things I spend on are: my phone credit account and commissary store purchases. The food at the chow hall is terrible and of poor quality — it’s not fit for a dog, seriously.” Google the prisons in Finland or Norway and see how badly we treat our fellow citizens.

Global Supply Chains of EV Batteries. A long yet excellent primer on the global supply chain of EV batteries. As everything around us requires batteries, those who hold power in this supply chain have tremendous advantages in the future

iOS Privacy: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser. This is exactly why I support Apple in disabling cross-app tracking. Facebook and other advertisers have all the motivation in the world to collect data on us. They are financially incentivized to do so. It’s up to us and companies like Apple to tell them NO

No Great Stagnation in Guinness. Guinness is one of my go-to beers at a pub. It’s great to read a bit about how unique and quirky the business is

Europe’s remote, lost-in-time villages. “Life in Târnava Mare has barely changed in centuries, offering a precious insight into the age-old traditions that are still going strong in its Saxon villages.”

Stats

35% of Gen Z adults in the US don’t trust colleges and universities in the country. Wow!

Adobe’s Digital Price Index found that online prices dipped down 1% year over year in July

Organic fresh produce tends to be twice as expensive as conventional produce. However, conventional fresh produce had a bigger price hike recently

Source: Supermarketnews

Source: IEA
Business

PayPal Q2 FY2022 Results

by MQDuong1 Comment on PayPal Q2 FY2022 Results

Last week, PayPal announced its Q2 FY2022 results, its forecasts and some important personnel changes. Here are the headlines:

  • Net revenue hit $6.8 billion, a 9% YoY growth
  • International revenue declined by 1.7%, to $2.9 billion, while US revenue was $3.8 billion, a 19% growth YoY
  • Operating cash flow and free cash flow grew to $1.5 billion and $1.3 billion respectively, meaning that FCF margin is 19%
  • Total Payment Volume increased by 9% to $340 billion
  • Total payment transactions of 5.5 billion
  • US TPV grew 16%, to $219 billion, while International TPV and Cross Border TPV decreased by 1.6% and 11.8% respectively
  • Venmo recorded $61 billion in TPV, an increase of 5.2%, and 90 million active accounts
  • Total active accounts went flat sequentially at 429 million with 35 million active merchants
  • While the company welcomed a new CFO, it’s now looking for a replacement for their CPO, who is retiring at the end of the year
  • Cost-saving initiatives are expected to save the company $900 million by the end of 2022 and $1.3 billion next year
  • $15 billion in share buybacks was authorized, $4 billion of which will be realized by the end of 2022
  • PayPal expects operating margin expansion in FY2023

Despite the tough macro challenges and fierce competition, PayPal’s TPV increased by 9%, on top of the 30% and 40% YoY growth in the last two years. That’s pretty solid because Visa grew payment volume in the same quarter by 12%, even with its duopoly market power. The divorce from eBay is entering the final stages as the famed marketplace now makes up only 3% of PayPal’s TPV and is projected to have negligible impact in the future. Losing a household name like eBay isn’t great, but because the partnership was exclusive, PayPal couldn’t work with any other retailers or marketplaces. Hence, the separation paved the way for deals like the one with Shopify or Amazon, and would benefit PayPal more in the long term.

Another bright spot is the US market. PayPal’s home soil saw a 16% increase in TPV and a 19% expansion in revenue. Considering that the US is home to other payment alternatives, including some fierce direct competitors, those US numbers showed resilience and a formidable market presence of PayPal. Because the company barely added new active accounts, given the lack of full disclosures, my guess is that PayPal managed to increase usage among existing users.

Venmo TPV
Figure 1 – Venmo TPV

Among the factors that contribute to the domestic success, I want to call out Venmo. Popular among young consumers, Venmo boasts 90 million active users, double from what it had three years ago. In the same time frame (from Q2 2019 to Q2 2022), Venmo TPV grew by 150% from $24 billion to $61 billion. Despite this growth, Venmo still has a lot of grow to monetize. The three main levers are debit card, credit card and the partnership with Amazon. While I suspect that PayPal will have to make some financial concessions to be on Amazon’s marketplace, this will undoubtedly help grow both revenue and margin. Meanwhile, the management team has high hopes for what the Venmo debit and credit card can bring onto the table. If PayPal can monetize Venmo more, the company will become so much more secure and attractive in the eyes of investors. In case you forgot, despite the massive scale of adoption, Venmo is still only available in the US.

Gabrielle Rabinovitch

I’d also point out the card strategies for Venmo are important, as well. The debit and credit cards continue to grow their volumes and those are really important for habituation. They reinforce all the in-wallet spend with offline spend, as well.

Dan Schulman

Yes, I totally agree with that. If you look at Cash App, their big growth is off of their debit card. We have a lot of room in our debit card and credit card to grow too.

Source: PayPal’s Sell-Side Analyst Conference

Moreover, I am very pleased with the switch of focus onto increasing efficiency. I used to receive a bunch of promotional offers from PayPal. $5 here, $10 there for low-impact activities. Now, the company is willing to let go low-engagement customers and focus marketing dollars on driving usage from active users. Efficiency is also apparent in the product development side as well. Although stock trading was on the plan last year, PayPal decided to put a halt on its development. The push for in-store QR code is now replaced by efforts to promote card usage. These decisions obviously led to surplus in headcount and dismissals, where necessary. Due to its enormous scale, PayPal managed to negotiate more favorable contract terms with suppliers. The management team believes that these efforts will drive ROI and yield higher results for the organization. Concretely, they are estimated to bring $900 million in cost savings for the rest of FY2022 and $1.3 billion next year.

These cost savings are likely the main reason why the management forecasts operating margin expansion next year. Low-margin businesses such as BNPL, Venmo and Braintree are expected to grow in the near future. It’s unclear to me, reading their reports, where the margin will come from the revenue side of things. Hence, the gains must come from being a leaner organization with reduced expenses.

On the other hand, it’s not all smooth and rosy with PayPal. I am concerned about the uncertainty that changes at the top level will bring. They have a brand new CFO, who was chosen among at least 14 candidates. By next year, they will have a new Chief Product Officer. These changes may bring about new ideas and positive results, but they may also delay the progress as new hires need time to acclimate themselves to the new work settings.

PayPal's Revenue Growth
Figure 2 – PayPal’s Revenue Growth

While it’s good that a business wants to be laser-focused and mindful of expenses, it remains to be seen whether PayPal is doing too much. After riding to new heights amidst Covid, PayPal’s stock got clobbered, down from more than $300 to $90, due to abandoned forecasts and slowed growth. Then, the narrative switched to higher efficiency and more focus. I get it. The leadership wanted to present a nice story to investors to stop the bleeding. They may even genuinely want to set the company on a better course for the future. But they also have a history of botched plans and forecasts. Who is to say that they are not being too aggressive at the moment? What if the cost cuts hurt the business in the process? We already have three consecutive quarters of decline in International. PayPal competes on multiple fronts and their competitors are fierce. Can they right-size their capital allocation to avoid disasters?

Overall, this is not a disastrous quarter. There are some bright spots, including Venmo, solid growth overall, the US market, the cost-cutting initiatives (at least for now) and the buybacks. However, there are also things that give me pause for concern. As bullish as I want to be on the company’s outlook, I’ll wait for another quarter or two so that by then some of my concerns will be hopefully eased.

Appendix

PayPal's Active Accounts & Active Merchant Accounts
Figure 3 – PayPal’s Active Accounts & Active Merchant Accounts
PayPal's Transactions Per Active Account
Figure 4 – PayPal’s Transactions Per Active Account
PayPal's P2P TPV
Figure 5 – PayPal’s P2P TPV
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 14th May 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 14th May 2022

What I wrote last week

Uber Q1 FY2022 Results

Book Review – After Steve: How Apple Became A Trillion-Dollar Company And Lost Its Soul

Business

Newest trend in delivery apps: move from cars to e-bikes. Micromobility is great for short-distance deliveries in a busy city like San Francisco. This is how Grab Food, Shopee Food and others manage deliveries in Ho Chi Minh City. Consumers order food within 3-4 kms most of the time. Traffic jam is a feature of the city. If couriers used cars for deliveries, there wouldn’t be any food delivery business! eBikes are also environmentally friendly. I hope to see more innovation and governmental subsidies in this space

John Gruber on the European Commission’s calling Apple Pay an illegal monopoly. I like John’s takes on Apple-related things. He is experienced and more importantly nuanced and fair. “This passage, as well as much of the rest of the E.C.’s “statement of objections”, seeks to dismiss the hard work Apple has done to make Apple Pay successful. Yes, NFC is an industry standard, and Apple Pay is, in part, built on top of that. But before Apple Pay, NFC was hardly used, even though Android had supported it since 2011. When Apple Pay launched in late 2014, its support for the existing NFC infrastructure was so good, it worked with many credit card terminals that had no explicit support for “Apple Pay” specifically. Apple Pay was so easy to use people were using it at retailers who weren’t even Apple Pay partners. That’s not a credit to NFC, which had been in place for years. That’s a credit to Apple. I honestly don’t understand where the E.C. sees anticompetitive behavior with Apple Pay. What I see is market share dominance stemming from the hard work of designing better integration into iOS and iPhones and educating users about the feature. How else could the iPhone’s share of NFC payments so far exceed the iPhone’s share of mobile phone sales? I’m not saying Samsung and Google suck at this, per se, but Jennifer Bailey’s team at Apple is really good, and perhaps just as importantly, really diligent about this sort of thing.”

Congress is ‘moving too slowly’ on semiconductor supply crunch, Commerce Secretary says. The dysfunction and ineffectiveness of Congress, especially in this matter, will cost America a lot both in the short and long term.

Buy Now, Pain Later? An interesting read on BNPL and specifically Affirm

Don’t forget Microsoft. Business schools around the world should teach students about Microsoft and its revival by Satya Nadella.

Business Travel Rebounds as Execs Choose (Real) Face Time Over Zoom. I, for one, am curious about whether business travel will come back to the pre-pandemic levels and how it will come back. During the pandemic, articles were written on how business travel would never be the same. Anecdotally, my colleagues at work traveled to Omaha, Nebraska for monthly meetings and quarterly department reviews as if nothing had happened in the past two years. China remains a question mark. Because they remain persistent on the zero-Covid strategy, they are not a viable destination at the moment. And I hope that the prolonged fight with Covid does not give other variants a chance to spring up. I think we have enough of a pandemic for, let’s say, the next few decades.

Inside the Collapse of CNN+, the News Channel’s ‘Apollo Mission’. The launch of CNN+ seems rushed and more like a political move by some executives than a savvy business initiative

How Gillette Embraced the Beard to Win Over Scruffy Millennials. Gillette went from demonizing beards to embracing them. After years of fruitless resistance and declining sales, they finally realized that their bread and butter product is no longer what men want. More than half of the men in the world don beard, including two-thirds of millennial men. Sensing that the tide they were going against was too strong, Gillette launched new beard-friendly products rolled into a line named King C. Gillette. A deviation from what the company is always known for, but a good strategic shift, I think.

Other stuff I found interesting

Could solar power solve Puerto Rico’s energy nightmare? I can’t imagine living in this day and age without electricity. Especially when that happens in a U.S territory.

Moon soil used to grow plants for first time in breakthrough test. This discovery inspires a lot of questions, possibilities and dreams

Cat Litter Could Be Antidote for Climate Change. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have “cat litter could absorb methane before it goes up in the air” in my 2022 bingo card. But it’s a nice surprise and discovery.

Stats

NYC subway ridership as of March 2022 is 60% of the pre-pandemic levels

Germany has 9% of all bitcoin nodes

“In 2021, U.S. podcast advertising revenues rose to $1.4 billion”

Only 50% of the time when a PayPayer user goes to a site that has PayPal does that user use PayPal

Business

Thoughts on Buy With Prime

by MQDuong1 Comment on Thoughts on Buy With Prime

A few days ago, Amazon made a big announcement on Buy With Prime (BWP). Prime benefits loved by thousands of shoppers, including free & fast delivery, easy return and quick checkout, have been restricted to Amazon.com. That’s how Amazon persuades millions of shoppers to pay $10/month for the privileges. Now, imagine you can enjoy all of those benefits on other websites, not just Amazon. That’s what the new service is all about.

For Prime shoppers, there is virtually nothing that needs to be done beforehand. Once you come across eligible products from merchants that participate in BWP, you just need to repeat the usual checkout process on Amazon.com. There is no additional sign-up. At first glance, everything about BWP looks good, except that here are two things that concern me. The first is return. The language from Amazon reads that only some BWP orders, not all, are eligible for return. To me, the name Buy With Prime insinuates that all products enlisted in the program can be returned hassle-free. As a result, what does it mean that only some are qualified? What about the rest? How do I know which products are returnable and which aren’t? The other thing that gives me pause is that if there is an issue with my BWP orders, I have to contact the sellers. My experience with Amazon Prime so far has been great. I don’t have much to complain about. On one or two occasions when I needed to inquire about my orders, the Customer Service from Amazon was helpful and great. However, I wonder if the same level of excellence can be expected from BWP merchants. In case there are unresolved issues, will Amazon help me? What kind of purchase protection can I expect?

Buy With Prime. Source: Amazon

For Amazon, this is a hit-multiple-birds-with-one-stone move. First, expanding Prime to other online stores brings more selection to shoppers, enhancing the value of Prime. The more valuable shoppers find Prime, the stickier the membership will be and the more grip Amazon has on these coveted shoppers. Such influence will translate into bargaining power in negotiations with merchants and suppliers. Second, this service will help Amazon get the most out of their fulfillment capability. Any merchant wishing to participate in BWP does not need to sell on Amazon.com but must have their orders fulfilled by Amazon. The giant retailer has spent a fortune on building out their fulfillment capacity. In the 2021 shareholder letter, the CEO Andy Jassy wrote:

We spent Amazon’s first 25 years building a very large fulfillment network, and then had to double it in the last 24 months to meet customer demand. We’d been innovating in our fulfillment network for 20 years, constantly trying to shorten the time to get items to customers. In the early 2000s, it took us an average of 18 hours to get an item through our fulfillment centers and on the right truck for shipment. Now, it takes us two. 

Given the level of investments, it’s understandable that Amazon wants to maximize the utility of these fulfillment centers. The more orders the centers process, the higher their utilization and the higher the ROI. If you were Amazon, would you want the same thing? Third, off-Amazon purchase data! Amazon knows the behavior of Prime customers, based on their purchase history on Amazon.com. Nonetheless, they don’t know what these customers buy outside of its online store. The company tried to remedy this issue through initiatives such as Amazon Shopper Panel. With BWP, they can capture purchase data on other online stores and use it for their benefits such as private label launches, targeted ads or fine-tuning product recommendation.

For merchants, there are pros and cons from using BWP. Obviously, the Amazon Pay checkout option can help reduce cart abandonment. That’s the sales pitch that we often see the likes of PayPal or Apple Pay sing. Having Amazon take care of fulfillment is attractive to merchants that do not have the means to set up their own logistics. It’s also great for merchants to own the relationship with shoppers, instead of relinquishing it to Amazon entirely like before. While such benefits carry a great deal of appeal, merchants need to be aware of the risks related to BWP. Firstly, the fees paid to Amazon will cut deep into the margin of these merchants. Secondly, they may open the gate to the henhouse for the fox by letting Amazon know what Prime shoppers order on their website. It’s widely reported that some sellers thrived at first on Amazon.com, only to falter and disappear later when Amazon introduced similar products. Who is to say that it’s not a possibility in this case? In addition, BWP merchants have to be responsible for marketing. The greatest perk of being on Amazon.com is that sellers are almost guaranteed traffic. BWP just takes care of checkout and fulfillment. It doesn’t bring valuable traffic. With the reduced margin, due to Fulfillment by Amazon fees, can merchants afford the marketing expenses too?

The introduction of BWP can be a threat for the likes of PayPal, Shop Pay or Apple Pay. Apple Pay and Shop Pay don’t have a fulfillment solution attached to the checkout button. PayPal does with Happy Returns, even though its scale can’t be compared to Amazon’s. Merchants, especially small ones, will consider BWP because they don’t want to be distracted by all the shipping headaches. The adoption of BWP will certainly decrease the amount of transaction volume processed by PayPal, whose revenue is transaction-based. As a consequence, BWP is not welcoming news for PayPal. To remain competitive, PayPal needs to continue offering more values to merchants and simplify the checkout process as much as possible. In this game, having one more click than your rivals is like being slower by one second in F1. Moreover, they should be wise to point out the threats that Amazon can pose with BWP and hope that they can scare merchants into avoiding BWP. After all, few things are as persuasive as fear.

Weekly readings

Weekly readings – 12th February 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly readings – 12th February 2022

What I wrote last week

Thoughts on PayPal’s latest earnings

Apple’s next growth opportunity. Disney’s streamers showed resilience. ESPN+ achieved its FY2024 target

Business

Stream big: how Netflix changed the TV landscape in 10 years. I don’t deny that Netflix revolutionized the streaming industry or that it has the scale advantages. What I disagree with Netflix bulls or fans on is the alleged invincibility. The latest earnings call was a disappointment, sending the stock down by 20%. For the first time, the management team vaguely admitted competition which includes rivals with deep pockets and additional services that can help “subsidize” these rivals’ streamers. So far, Netflix has been successful, but it’s not a lock that they will continue to be the market leader in the near future.

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ could have hit $2 billion at the global box office if it were released in China. Movies without a release date in the most populous country in the world leave a lot of dollars on the table. It will be interesting to see producers strike a balance between freedom to cast whoever they want or craft whatever story they want to tell and the need to appease China. A big payday from a release in the country is something worth thinking about.

New Airline Bets You’ll Stop in Alaska for a Cheaper Flight to Asia. Personally, I look forward to the launch of Northern Pacific and flights to Asia through Alaska. I have never been there and tickets can be cheaper. So why not?

Deep Dive: Xiaomi. More than just cheap phones

How Alexandre Arnault Is Shaking Things Up at Tiffany & Co. An interesting profile of one of the Arnault children. He seems to have more than just the right last name

A $6 Billion Wipeout Was an Omen for Food Delivery Stocks. At this point, I feel like it’s irresponsible to invest in food delivery startups or publicly traded firms that do not have the scale. While it’s already tough for the established incumbents to run their business in the black, it’s an order of magnitude harder for those without scale. And if you haven’t noticed, the market isn’t looking kindly on unprofitable companies in a cut-throat market like food delivery.

Stuff I found interesting

Where Is There More Lithium to Power Cars and Phones? Beneath a California Lake. “In the U.S. hunt for lithium, an essential component of the batteries that power electric vehicles and cellphones, one big untapped source might be bubbling under a giant lake in Southern California. The U.S. currently imports almost all of its lithium, but research shows large reserves in underground geothermal brines—a scalding hot soup of minerals, metals and saltwater. The catch: Extracting lithium from such a source at commercial scale is untested.”

House Passes $350 Billion Competitiveness Bill, but Senate Fight Looms. Read this article and you’ll see how broken Washington is. The country really needs leadership, assistance and regulation to compete on strategic fronts. Yet, these lawmakers are prioritizing tribal politics instead of putting the country first.

EV Charging Network Will Target Interstate Highways. “Dotting the interstate-highway corridors with charging stations is considered a priority because it will give EV motorists confidence that they can take long-distance trips without trouble recharging. Stations will have to be installed every 50 miles, no more than one mile off the interstate, according to a guidance memo by the Federal Highway Administration. And stations will have to have at least 600 kilowatts of total capacity, with ports for at least four cars that can simultaneously deliver at least 150 kilowatts each. The stations also have to be accessible to the general public, or to fleet operators from more than one company. The locations can include privately owned parking lots if they are open to the general public.”

Germany’s Covid Boomtown Stumbles Over Its Newfound Riches. Progressive politicians want companies to pay more taxes; which companies do not want to do. Folks just want stable jobs and to be taken care of by the tax money they pay. Marburg is another example of how hard it is to strike a balance and keep everyone happy

Stats

International students earned nearly half of the master’s and PhD STEM degrees in the US in 2019

90% of Uber’s earners work fewer than 40 hours per week and 60% work fewer than 20 hours per week (Investor Day 2022)

46% of Uber’s gross bookings in Q4 2021 came from customers engaged both with Mobility and Delivery. These customers made up only 17% of Uber’s customers base (Investor Day 2022)

10% of all first time riders to Uber in 2021 came to a 2-wheeler or a 3-wheeler trip (Investor Day 2022)