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Tren Griffin

14 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read

1/ "Wholesale transfer pricing power" is a term I first heard John Malone use circa 1995. The "Warner Media-Discovery just does content" bet that David Zaslav is making depends on who has the most pricing power in the value chain. What's your BATNA? vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/d…

2/ John Malone: "Is cable going be a great business; who is going to make the money? It may well be that the Disneys of the world make the money and cable and video continue to get squeezed. I think at least for now [broadband has] enough pricing power." 25iq.com/2014/11/02/a-d…

3/ Wholesale transfer pricing = the bargaining power of company A that supplies a unique product XYZ to Company B which may enable company A to take the profits of company B by increasing the wholesale price of XYZ.

4/ Another transfer pricing example: The article above describes a meal at "Barney Greengrass, a 113-year-old Upper West Side deli and go-to smoked fish joint." What the deli pays for rent is a wholesale transfer price. Unusually for a surviving deli they don't own the building.

5/ Tony Bourdain: "There is the advantage quintessential Manhattan restaurants that remain have -- an important one, in that they own the building.” 25iq.com/2017/10/07/a-d…

Bourdain's favorite breakfast spot was that deli. ny.eater.com/platform/amp/2…

6/ The more content Netflix owns, the less wholesale transfer pricing power of studios is an issue. Plus: NFLX doesn't need a complete movie catalog (unlike music).

Board member Rich Barton: "Netflix was relying on the Saudis for oil" before they started making their own."

7/ "Barney Greengrass is one of the few century-lasting small businesses in the city that doesn’t own its real-estate. He won’t divulge the name of his landlord or when his lease is up. Greengrass says: "Everything is so expensive."

Bourdain at the deli bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2…

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More from @trengriffin

Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

12 Oct

1/ A persistent power law is a signature of path dependence. Path dependence is often driven by preferential attachment. Path dependence is everywhere, if you know how to look for it.

The key insight is simple: People don’t make decisions independently.
axios.com/creator-econom…

2/ "We live in Extremistan, where black swans proliferate, winners tend to take all and the rest get nothing –there’s Domingo and a thousand opera singers working in Starbucks.” nytimes.com/2007/04/15/mag…

3/ Please put your Twitter Super Follows revenue into an investment account instead of spending it at The Dollar Store. Thanks in advance!

"Twitter’s creator platform Super Follows is off to an inauspicious start, with only ~ $6,000 in US iOS revenue in the first two weeks."

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

11 Oct

1/ Podcast for your next workout or walk (interview with Dan McCarthy on Customer-based company valuation (CBCV) starts at 13.30 minutes. Better forecasting with data science. With CBCV, marketing speaks the language of the CFO.) music.amazon.com/podcasts/f33ef…—-with-daniel-mccarthy

2/ Podcasts that include a transcript have lower customer acquisition cost (CAC). There is always better word-of-mouth with a transcript. I'm much more likely to be a guest on a podcast with a transcript like Invest with the Best or Infinite Loops. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

3/ Dan McCarthy talks about a way to differentiate between a business that is creating value and one that is destroying value even though both are not profitable on a GAAP basis in this podcast. He uses the word "variable" in one important sentence. What is that sentence ?

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

9 Oct

1/ In October 1945 Arthur C. Clarke published an article in Wireless World. It described a communications system of three satellites at altitude of 35,900 kilometers whose period exactly matched the earth's rotational period. I met with him only one time. celestrak.com/columns/v04n07/

2/ Orbits have different eccentricities – a measure of how circular (round) or elliptical (squashed) an orbit is. Non geostationary orbits (NGSO) can look quite odd at first like this one Boeing would like to use for a satellite system at Ka and V band.
licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/downloa…

3/ I try to include some science in my tweets since you can't understand business today without it. Another example would be propagation of radio waves at V band (40 to 75 GHz). Even oxygen creates problems at this frequency as does rain. Everything (almost) is a trade off.

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

5 Oct

What business is this?

2/ What's wrong with this picture?

3/ Clue: "Capital expenditures were $592 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, compared to $773 million for the year ended December 31, 2019."

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

4 Oct

1/ What business is this?

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

3 Oct

A sentence I don't need to write now (already done):

"Consumers are crazy to buy things because the world is awash with dollars from government stimulus, higher savings and pent-up demand. PlayStations, laptops, phones, gym equipment – you name it people are trying to buy it,”

Systems were not set up to deal with a surge in demand of this magnitude over a time period this short. The time it will take for systems to be rebuilt and reconfigured to meet this new reality will be longer than most people imagine. Atoms must be moved. amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/…

At the same time as the demand for goods increased some key people failed to forecast the speed at which the demand for chips would increase.

Software ate the chip supply.

The best way to escape responsibility for this forecasting error is to point a finger at another cause.