Comment by bedhead | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bedhead | Hacker News Reader

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I have a slight quibble with the first point, though I generally agree. There are public companies out there that simply don't care about Wall St, and are run like they're private. It requires an admittedly rare combination of founder controlled/involved, no need to raise capital, strong business model, and unique culture. Think about Amazon, who have given the capital markets the biggest middle finger of all time, refusing to show a single dollar of profit because they believe the reinvestment opportunities are too great (I would strongly agree).

There's an agricultural company called Seaboard Corp that's public. Its's a $5 billion market cap company controlled by the founding family. There are no analysts covering it, they've never once held a conference call, they don't give guidance, etc. The stock is near its all-time high and has returned a staggering 22% annually since 2000. Sure, these are rare, but the market is pretty efficient about this stuff over time.

So it's possible, and I bet it would be possible for In-N-Out as well. But it would probably still be viewed as a hassle, and if no one in the family needs liquidity to buy a super-yacht, or pay a massive divorce settlement, or buy an NBA team, there's no point.

Amazon is an interesting example. Yes, they grossly reinvest rather than pay dividends, but they don't invest in employee pay/compensation directly ('wastes' as per common view of what wall street wants)

> The stock is near its all-time high and has returned a staggering 22% annually since 2000.

I was interested by this, so I checked.

It's indeed near it's all-time high. Though this is not surprising, it's the case for many companies that aren't dwindling currently, and that didn't have huge peaks around 2000.

But to say it's had a 22% annual return since 2000 is a bit of a misrepresentation. The overall return between 2000 and 2018, divided over the 18 years, might be 22% YoY (not sure, I didn't check -- could well be that it's not). But it's had a number of years with negative returns (e.g. 2015), certainly not 22% returns.

Edit: I checked. A yearly 22% growth from 2000 to today would put it quite a bit higher than its current stock price. So it's not a 22% YoY growth.

You're wrong. Including reinvested dividends, since 12/31/00, Seaboard's stock has compounded at 22.1% through 12/31/17, for a total gain of 2,890%.

If you don't need to raise capital, why go public at all?

I also think that Amazon is a really bad example. Not only are they growing at a phenomenal rate, but they have been profitable for a few years. The markets would not have tolerated their unprofitability if there wasn't also a pretty clear direction for becoming a profitable business.

Of course, the financial press does a terrible job of explaining these things.

Companies go public for all sorts of reasons. Facebook went public because it was almost being forced to by the SEC because of its size. Microsoft went public simply because other employees who were mega-rich like Gates wanted to cash out...stock is up 132,000% since the IPO. Hermes went public because of family in-fighting...stock is up 11,430% since its IPO in 1993.

Amazon is a good example because they aren't hostage to the capital markets...they are not consumers of capital, though their reported profits are pathetic in comparison to their market cap. Bezos hasn't gone on an earnings call in...I don't know, maybe forever.

When your business doesn't need to raise money, you have a license to run it like a private company. The vast majority don't, but there are reasons for that, too.

Is wall street unhappy with amazon? Share price says otherwise.

Yes there are examples of the the fact that public companies don’t all suffer from this of course. I think however in broad strokes non public companies have much more leeway here than public ones do

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