Vì sao giá cổ phiếu Spotify giảm?

cổ phiếu đạt đỉnh 24-36 tháng sau IPO, nhưng kể từ đó đã tuột dốc, giảm 70% giá trị, hiện được giao dịch dưới giá đề nghị ban đầu; để so sánh, giá cổ phiếu Mỹ nói chung chỉ giảm 40% thôi

IPO mà không roadshow hay gặp mặt các nhà đầu tư tổ chức -> đấy là dấu hiệu báo động rồi, như nói với thế giới rằng: đừng hỏi gì chúng tôi cả

trả tiền thuê văn phòng (đắt đỏ) bằng tiền vay

ở thời điểm IPO, một số cổ đông lớn: Sony and Warner Music ngay lập tức bán sạch cổ phiếu (họ linh tính suy thoái sắp tới)

chính sách giá dưới 10 usd/tháng nhắm dịch chuyển việc sở hữu nhạc sang stream, có vẻ hấp dẫn đối với người hâm mộ; nhưng từ góc độ kinh doanh, đó là không chính xác với các dự phóng (không tưởng) về số người thuê bao...

hệ sinh thái ngành nhạc sẽ tốt hơn nếu ko có Spotify và các streamer trấn lột (predatory)

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This may be a surprise (điều ngạc nhiên) to some people, but clearly a lot of large shareholders (cổ đông lớn) had a hunch (linh cảm) that this decline (suy thoái) was coming. At the time of the public offering, several large record labels were shareholders of Spotify—but (surprise!) Sony and Warner Music soon dumped (vứt bỏ, bán hạ giá) most of their shares. Universal Music continues as a shareholder and still owns around 4% of Spotify, but clearly should have sold before the 70% collapse (sụp đổ, giá tuột dốc).

“For all its size (quy mô) and dominance (địa vị thống trị), Spotify generates less cash than a single hit movie or video game.”

The music ecosystem would probably be better off without Spotify and other predatory (cướp bóc, trấn lột; ăn mồi sống, ăn thịt) streamers.

The problem from the start wasn’t that Spotify isn’t capable of generating cash. Instead the real issue is that streaming will never generate enough cash to make all the stakeholders happy.

The stock market’s negative reaction to the company’s recent quarterly report reflects this painful truth. It’s hard to find new subscribers (người đăng ký, người thuê bao) nowadays, but the real anxiety among investors is the lousy (tồi tệ, tệ hại) profit margin (tỷ suất lợi nhuận) at Spotify. The gross profit margin was 25.5%—perhaps acceptable for a run-of-the-mill business but disappointing for a dominant tech platform. Even worse, Spotify told investors that they don’t anticipate margin improvement in the current quarter.

By comparison, the gross profit margin at Microsoft is around 70%. The same is true at Pfizer. At Facebook it’s even higher—despite all Mark Zuckerberg’s strategic blunders, the gross profit margin is 80%. Spotify shareholders have been less ambitious, but even they were hoping for a margin in the mid-30s. But with more than 400 million active users, Spotify still can’t pull it off.

The reality is that someone needs to get squeezed for streaming platforms to hit their financial targets—and those cries of anguish you hear from musicians reading their latest royalty statements is what that squeezing sounds like.

The blunt (thẳng thừng, toạc móng heo; lỗ mãng, không giữ ý tứ) truth is that music streaming isn’t very profitable. And may never be under the current business model.

After all, Spotify needs to pay publishers, composers, record labels, and all its thousands of executives and employees. Then there’s all the other operating costs—rent, computers, bandwidth, etc. Oh, don’t let me forget the musicians—they should get a few crumbs (miếng vụn rất nhỏ (nhất là của bánh mì, bánh nướng) rơi ra từ một miếng lớn) from the table.

...Here’s the bottom line on Spotify:

That original pricing strategy (under ten bucks per month for unlimited access) was made in order to shift the market from owning music to streaming it. This was an attractive deal, and it inevitably convinced most fans to give up their physical albums. But from a business perspective, this approach only works if you have the most optimistic—and unrealistic—estimates for subscription numbers. What investors are starting to realize is that projections of that sort are out of touch (lỗi thời, không hiểu vấn đề, không cập nhật) with the current reality, in which even the most successful platforms may be facing declining user numbers.

Bài trước: Vậy là đã có xe bay?