Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Goldman untersucht fast 4500 Börsengänge: Auf Umsatzwachstum kommt es an

Was sind also die wichtigsten Faktoren, auf die Investoren achten sollten? Die US-Bank Goldman Sachs hat sich diese Frage ebenfalls gestellt - und zur Beantwortung beinahe 4500 Börsengänge unter die Lupe genommen, die es seit 1995 am US-Aktienmarkt gab.

Das Ergebnis der Studie, die Goldman in diesen Tagen fertiggestellt hat, scheint auf den ersten Blick die Spekulanten zu bestätigen, die auf IPOs auch dann wetten, wenn Gewinne beim fraglichen Unternehmen Fehlanzeige sind. Investoren sollten sich bei Börsengängen auf das Umsatzwachstum in den ersten drei Jahren nach der Neuemission konzentrieren, anstatt möglichst schnelle Gewinne zu fordern, so die Bank in einer groben Zusammenfassung.

Seit 2010 etwa haben Unternehmen mit einem Umsatzwachstum von mehr als 20 Prozent pro Jahr demnach den breiten US-Aktienindex Russell 3000 deutlich häufiger geschlagen als Firmen mit geringerem Wachstum.

www.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/boerse/...ssen-a-1286433.html

On International Payments
By PYMNTS
Posted on September 11, 2019

Financial technology company Dwolla has announced it is teaming up with global payments platform Currencycloud so that its clients can facilitate international payments.

Launched in 2008, Dwolla has helped move billions of dollars for millions of end-users annually for a variety of businesses. While Dwolla’s ACH payment API connects businesses to the ACH Network to facilitate payments within the United States, the partnership with Currencycloud allows Dwolla’s clients to carry out international payments in 35 currencies and 180 countries.

The partnership is part of the Dwolla Partner Ecosystem, a network of forward-thinking businesses formed to provide Dwolla’s clients with access to services to better build their business.
Stephanie Atkin, Dwolla’s vice president of marketing, said in a press release. “Dwolla is the leader in domestic payments, Currencycloud brings that same level of trust for international payments. This partnership allows our customers to get the best of both worlds. We couldn’t be more excited about this opportunity and its potential.”

www.pymnts.com/news/...rrencycloud-on-international-payments/

Currencycloud is delighted to be included in the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 league table for the second year in a row. The league table ranks Britain’s 100 private tech companies with the fastest-growing sales over the last three years.

Currencycloud is a hyper-growth company and has grown more than 50% each year since 2017 giving us a position of #78 in 2019.

We made our debut on the table in 2018 and are proud to have risen in the table this year. Our inclusion is a testament to our ongoing strategic investment that has seen our customer base and revenue grow significantly in 2018/19.

Currencycloud has seen its customer base almost double from 228 in 2017 to more than 400 in 2019, while we have added more than 100 staff over the same period. The business has processed more than £50bn of cross-border payments since its launch in 2012.

www.currencycloud.com/company/blog/...-hiscox-tech-track-100/

Tell us more about your role at Viber and Viber’s e-commerce platform.

Viber is the third-largest messaging app in the world with 1 billion registered users. Viber provides a secure platform for private conversations—we’re end-to-end encrypted by default, meaning that we can’t and don’t read or monitor private conversations or listen to private calls happening between users. On the e-commerce side, we work with brands to advertise directly to consumers who consent to engagement. We don’t give brands access to our users’ personal and private information to serve targeted ads—we only allow brands to target users from their activity and engagement in public forums, groups or communities. As the VP of e-commerce at Rakuten Viber, I work with my team to develop the entire e-commerce strategy including features like Viber’s native shopping keyboard, which allows users to discover and share products.

martechseries.com/mts-insights/tech-bytes/...e-rakuten-viber/

At a news conference on Sept. 6, Hiroshi Mikitani, chairman and CEO of Rakuten, said the service will be made available only for about 5,000 users until the end of March 2020. During that time, the service will be free.

Full-fledged service will begin in spring 2020, six months behind the initial schedule.

The winners will be notified by e-mail starting from Oct. 11.

“Once we confirm the stability of the new network, we will start accepting applications online as soon as possible,” said Mikitani.
Mikitani added, “It might be one month later or by the end of this year,” suggesting a possibility of moving up the service launch date.

www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201909060027.html

And there’s one more commonality–Tareq Amin. With Jio, Amin served as senior vice president of technology development and now he’s Rakuten Mobile’s chief technology officer. He laid out the vision for Rakuten in January in a company blog post. “The journey that we are embarking on in Japan will enable a complete transformation in the telecom infrastructure buildout. We are building the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native network. The majority of the telecommunication companies in the world have been on this journey of transformation. And yet I would argue that very little progress has happened to deploy a true end-to-end cloud native network. In fact, there is not a single telco in the world that has moved all of its workloads to the cloud. I think Rakuten is going to be the only company in the world that’s going to enable this.”

www.rcrwireless.com/20190911/5g/...ssons-reliance-jio-rakuten

www.total-croatia-news.com/business/38433-glovo

(mobile network operator) for members of Rakuten Mobile’s MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) service

About the Rakuten Mobile MVNO service
Rakuten Mobile’s MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) service was launched in October 2014 and is now the largest MVNO in Japan by number of subscribers*. Through collaboration with the Rakuten Group’s diverse lineup of services and the Rakuten Super Points loyalty program, and with the planned launch of the Rakuten Mobile MNO (mobile network operator) service in October 2019, Rakuten Mobile MVNO is striving to bring a new level of convenience and enjoyment to the lives of its subscribers.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2019/...mp;category=mobile

Streaming Giant Rakuten Viki Partners With Korean Entertainment Companies To Deliver New Dramas

Joan MacDonald Contributor
Hollywood & Entertainment
I'm a journalist fascinated by Korean drama and film.

Streaming giant Rakuten Viki will greatly expand its online content, because of a new partnership with CJ ENM and JTBC, two major Korean entertainment companies. The new expanded library of content includes several Korean TV dramas that have been unavailable to international viewers for over a year.

Viki, which launched as a streaming platform in 2007, and was acquired by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten in 2013, has a library of 1,100 shows, roughly two-thirds of which are Korean dramas. As well as adding new and old dramas, Viki has not ruled out producing original programming in the future. In a competitive marketplace, the partnership with CJ ENM and JTBC strengthens Viki’s position as a provider of international television, particularly Korean dramas.

www.forbes.com/sites/joanmacdonald/2019/...-dramas/#5ecbb1671

There is great potential for machine learning in lending.
A recent study showed it cut losses by 75 percent and boosted approval rates by 173 percent.
ZACK MILLER | FEBRUARY 18, 2019

This article was contributed as part of Tearsheet’s new Thought Leaders contributor program. Dave Girouard is the founder and CEO of Upstart, the first lending platform to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to price credit and automate the borrowing process.

tearsheet.co/artificial-intelligence/...t-intelligence-is-in/

dass Rakuten ein maßgeblicher Eigner von Glovo ist:

www.businesstimes.com.sg/garage/...ith-uber-deliveroo-sources

Glovo, the Barcelona-based startup which set out to transform the way consumers access local goods, accelerates further growth with the closing of a €115 million Series C funding round. The investors include international companies like Rakuten, Seaya and Cathay, which already invested in Series B, AmRest, the largest publicly listed restaurant operator in Central Europe, and the European funds Idinvest Partners and GR Capital.

www.eu-startups.com/2018/07/...then-its-international-growth/

Barcelona’s Glovo scores €30 million from Rakuten and others to boost its on-demand local delivery services
By Robin Wauters, September 28th, 2017.

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, alongside other investors, have pumped more than 30 million euros into Barcelona-based on-demand pickup and delivery startup Glovo, according to Spanish media including La Vanguardia (via EU-Startups).

Glovo provides a platform to connect independent couriers (called 'Glovers') with people or businesses who would like to get anything picked up and delivered locally. The company operates in a rather large number of European cities already, but will presumably use the fresh funding to bolster its internationalisation efforts. The round has not been confirmed yet, mind you.

Fun fact: Rakuten is also the main sponsor of FC Barcelona.

tech.eu/brief/glovo-funding-rakuten/

Rakuten Announces New Fashion Strategy:“Rakuten Fashion”

Tokyo, September 17, 2019 - Rakuten, Inc. today announced “Rakuten Fashion,” a new strategy that aims to both offer one stop digital services to the fashion industry and create a platform to provide users with high value-added services in the fashion sector.

The new Rakuten Fashion strategy encompasses a drive to leverage assets from across the Rakuten Group to build a more open platform for the provision of one stop digital solutions to the fashion industry, aimed at improving efficiency across the business, from merchandise planning and manufacturing to sales. Solutions will include demand forecasting, order management and payment systems, logistics fulfillment services and overseas sales support services. Through the new platform, Rakuten aims to support Japanese fashion to drive digitalization and strengthen e-commerce, contributing to further growth of the fashion industry.

The existing first-party Rakuten BRAND AVENUE site will also relaunch as “Rakuten Fashion” from October 1 with a completely new design aimed at evolving the fashion platform to offer new value to users.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2019/...category=corp%20ec

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019
Rakuten Selected for Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index

Rakuten, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has been selected as a constituent of the 2019 Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index (DJSI).

The DJSI is an investment index jointly developed by S&P Dow Jones Indices and Switzerland-based RobecoSAM in 1999 that evaluates listed companies in a variety of fields based on environmental, social and governance factors and selects those that excel in long-term sustainability.

The DJSI is widely used globally as a reference for ESG investments.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2019/0917_01.html

*1 “Super Hodai” plans: Plan S: 2GB of data, 2,980 yen; Plan M: 6GB of data, 3,980 yen; Plan L; 14GB of data, 5,980 yen; Plan LL: 24GB of data, 6,980 yen. Details can be found at the following site: mobile.rakuten.co.jp/fee/super_hodai/ (Japanese only)
*2 From the second year, the monthly basic fee will revert to 2980 yen. This fee does not include fees such as those for device cost, administrative handling, options, calling charges or universal services.
*3 The discount is available to diamond status Rakuten members for twelve months from the first month of the start of their contract, applicable for the months in which diamond status is maintained.
*4 Data SIMs in the “Kumiawase” plan are offered without a minimum contract length or contract cancellation fee.
*5 A contract cancellation fee will be charged to existing subscribers who wish to change the pricing plan but have not yet completed the minimum contract length. Plans can only be changed once in the period from the first day to the final day of each month.
*6 Domestic calls only, when calling through the Rakuten Denwa app or by adding 003768 to the beginning of the number being called. After ten minutes, callers will be charged at a rate of 10 yen/30 seconds. Calls not using the Rakuten Denwa app will be charged at a rate of 20 yen/30 seconds.
*7 Top speeds for congested periods during the day (12:00-13:00, 18:00-19:00) will be offered at a maximum speed of 300kbps. Communication speed will be provided on a best-effort basis and may be impacted by network environment or conditions.
* All prices exclude tax.
global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2019/...mp;category=mobile

Quelle, die erst die Preiswürdigkeit herstellt:

Rakuten members can receive a discount of 1,500 yen per month after becoming a subscriber, reducing the fee to 1,480 yen per month for the first year*2. Furthermore, diamond rank Rakuten Members can receive an additional 500 yen discount, bringing the basic monthly fee for the first year down to 980 yen*3.

"For Careem investors, this acquisition is a good deal. They get a minimum of $3.1bn."

www.ft.com/content/b26971f4-509c-11e9-b401-8d9ef1626294

LYFT stock should bounce back in a big way
Lyft Stock Is the Hyper-Growth Play in Ride Hailing — Not Uber

Luke Lango
InvestorPlace•September 17, 2019

It’s fair to say that life on Wall Street has been anything but dreamy for ride-sharing giant Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT). Lyft went public at $72 per share in late March. On its first day of trading, LYFT stock reached a high of $89. That was as high as LYFT stock ever got.

The long-term fundamentals underlying Lyft still point to big growth over the next decade. Today, very little of that growth is being priced into LYFT stock. That’s because investors are concerned that the ride-sharing company may never turn a profit. Such concerns are overstated. They will pass. Once they do, the optics should improve here. Improving optics will subsequently converge on favorable long-term growth fundamentals, and LYFT stock should bounce back in a big way.

finance.yahoo.com/news/...-play-133603141.html?.tsrc=fin-srch

Blue Shield of California Debuts rideQ Medical Transportation Program with Lyft in Sacramento for Eligible Members Who Need Rides to Doctor's Appointments
Innovative Collaboration with Lyft, Blue Cross Blue Shield Institute and Hill Physicians helps solve common hurdle in accessing care - transportation

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Shield of California, in collaboration with the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Institute and Lyft, is launching an innovative pilot program for its eligible members in the Sacramento area to provide convenient rides – at no additional cost to members - to their doctors' offices and healthcare locations. The name of the program is rideQSM, and this is the first time that this medical transportation program has been available in Sacramento.

finance.yahoo.com/news/...rideq-130000946.html?.tsrc=fin-srch

trusted.de/rakuten-tv

There is a very simple growth narrative at play here. Specifically, for economic and convenience reasons, consumers throughout the U.S. and Canada are pivoting to ride-sharing. That doesn’t mean they are entirely ditching their cars. Some consumers are. Most aren’t. Instead, most consumers are simply using ride-sharing services with greater frequency in instances where driving yourself doesn’t make economic or convenience sense — such as taking a one-way trip to the airport, taking a trip to downtown where parking is difficult and expensive or taking a trip to a bar where driving back would not be safe or legal.

In numbers, this shift towards ride-sharing is playing out rapidly. In 2018, 36% of American adults had used a ride-hailing app of some kind. This is up from just 15% in 2015. Over the next several years, this penetration rate could easily swell towards 50% as more and more consumers come around to the indisputable economic and convenience advantages of ride-sharing services in certain situations.

Thus, ride-sharing projects as a huge growth market for a lot longer. In that huge growth market, Lyft is the hyper-growth player. Lyft has been consistently winning over market share from ride-sharing leader Uber (NYSE:UBER) over the past several years. This dynamic has persisted as of late. Last quarter, Uber reported 14% revenue growth. Lyft reported 72% revenue growth in the overlapping period.

finance.yahoo.com/news/...-play-133603141.html?.tsrc=fin-srch

Rakuten and La New Conclude Basic Agreement on the Transfer of All Shares of Taiwanese Professional Baseball Team “Lamigo Monkeys”

Tokyo, September 19, 2019 – Rakuten, Inc. and La New International Corporation (La New) announced that the two companies have concluded a basic agreement in which all shares held by La New in Lamigo Monkeys Co. (Lamigo), the La New subsidiary that manages the Taiwanese professional baseball team the Lamigo Monkeys, will be transferred to Rakuten. Through this share purchase, Rakuten plans to enter Taiwan’s professional baseball league (CPBL) from the 2020 season.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2019/...&category=corp

To celebrate its seventh anniversary, Carousell, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing classifieds, announced a successful migration from OLX for its Philippine business unit and a fourfold revenue growth in 2018, supported by monetization streams in mid-2017, enhanced product features and improved user experience.

“We are very encouraged to see most of the OLX users successfully migrated to our Carousell platform. Every day, more and more Filipinos discover that selling on Carousell takes just a matter of seconds,” said Carousell Philippines general manager Raffy Montemayor. “We recorded over 250 million listings worldwide with 4X revenue growth. This proves that Carousell is meeting real demand and it’s more relevant than ever in the Philippines.”

Raffy also announced the appointment of Carousell Philippines’ new head of cars, Karl Magsuci. He has worked with top brands including Honda Cars Philippines, Inc., Ramcar Group (Motolite Battery) and BMW Philippines. Karl will manage a team of 25 in the car business units and lead the strategic planning for the company.

“With the rapid growth of Carousell in the Philippines, we have seen a real need to expand our platform to offer high-value verticals such as properties and automobiles.

tribune.net.ph/index.php/2019/09/10/...unit-sees-high-growth/

Sept. 19, 2019 12:04 pm ET

Steering clear of Lyft has been a smart move since the company went public in March. Shares of the ride-sharing company are down 35% since then.

But UBS analyst Eric Sheridan says investors should focus on what matters: The industry isn’t in as bad shape as the headlines would suggest, he wrote in a note out Thursday. Lyft (ticker: LYFT) has beaten estimates and raised guidance twice this year. He views the “disconnect” between the headlines and an improving fundamental picture as a buying opportunity for long-term investors...

www.barrons.com/articles/...9050?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo