This also signals very clear to investors what this enterprise is about.
From a quick scan it's not clear to me what share of ownership of RPi ltd the foundation would retain post IPO other than the foundation will be selling at least some of its stake:
> The Offer would be comprised of new Shares to be issued by the Company and existing shares to be sold by certain existing shareholders, including the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Raspberry Pi's existing majority shareholder.
Note that the foundation has had a majority stake in RPi ltd (as a private company) for a long time this is not a new structure.
I would like to know how much the Pi Foundation would still own—could be an interesting dynamic there. And good for them to be able to use some of that profit for good (they do a lot of neat things for education / STEM).
I know this is kind of a standard in tech, but it still eludes me where the value of the stock is.
And no its not just tech
Dividends are just adding financial inefficiency and removing choice from the shareholder.
Regarding the share of the profits I already explained. You have your share of the profits in form of liquid stock that you can decide to sell. It's the same thing.
And the answer could then be that you’re investing in a company which allows them to grow, and your money with them. Or that you store your money in a medium that hopefully at least keeps up with inflation (especially if you’ve spread the risk). Or just that you’ve taken a gamble and hope that other people will think the stock is worth more at some later point than it was when you bought it.
You know other people can look at a balance sheet of a company and also judge it's value based on how much it produces and on the expectation of future buybacks that will increase your share's worth. I wouldn't call the absense of dividends the maker of a pyramid scheme.
Again, it's the lack of dividends and the lack of any other tangible benefits of owning the stock like voting rights. I feel like you're so far down the "line goes up" rabbit hole of stock trading, that you can't even think clearly about what you're actually buying, and why would anybody buy it from you in the future.
So as a warning to whoever reads this, do a search for "dual class stocks", and see how many companies sell stock without voting rights as % of any index. Then see how many don't issue dividends. You'll see it's a completely separate subject.
They’re simply listing the two things they think actually provide any real value when owning stock, as opposed to ”line goes up”.
In other words, they’re asking why owning stock has actual value. They dismiss ”line goes up”, which only leaves dividends and voting rights. By that logic, if you aren’t paid any dividends and you don’t have voting rights, what is the point of owning the stock, except to gamble? That is what they want to know.
And then I think that what you have been saying, correctly in my opinion, is that ”line goes up” actually does have real value. But no one is trying to claim that dividends and voting rights aren’t separate things.
Ah yes, the OpenAI approach :)