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Once Valued at $3.2B, Wearable Company Jawbone Shuts Down, CEO Launches New Startup: Report (axios.com)
Consumer hardware company Jawbone is being liquidated, according to The Information. From a report: The San Francisco-based company, which once was valued at $3.2 billion by private investors, has hired Sherwood Partners to handle the wind-down process and assume its ongoing litigation with rival FitBit. Jawbone 2.0: Co-founder and CEO Hosain Rahman reportedly has formed a new company, named Jawbone Health Hub, that has hired many of Jawbone's employees and will take over servicing Jawbone's products. BlackRock, which loaned Jawbone $300 million in 2015, has a stake in the new company. No other existing Jawbone investor has a stake in the new startup, with one telling Axios that his firm has been kept in the dark.
The tech in the headset was fantastic for its time, but the wire ear loops repeatedly snapped off just from putting the unit on your ear. Their response to the raft of complaints was to put out a YouTube instructional video showing how to put a Jawbone on your ear "properly" (i.e., without breaking it), and to only sell replacements in 3-pack of different sizes -- use one, throw the other two away. This doesn't surprise me at all.
Fitbit didn't do it with Pebble. Pebble's management spun it that way to try to shift blame away from themselves - making it sound like Fitbit was the one eliminating Pebble's jobs. Fitbit simply bought Pebble's IP, nothing more.
You realize it's perfectly possible to show a loss on your financials and still be making money, right? Especially when your sinking money into a new factory. That's why you ALSO need to look at the balance sheet.
Not when you follow GAAP. It's highly defined, and you cannot "ignore" capital costs - that's why they are amortized over time. The only way that Tesla is "making money" is when you use non-GAAP accounting and ignore expenses that other car companies do not ignore. You may increase your net worth by "investing" more than you actually make (meaning - you take loans to invest, or in the case of Tesla you sell more shares of stock, getting loans from shareholders), but your income is still negative. Net worth may increase, but income is negative. Flat out, full stop.
Hey, my net income would look a LOT better if I didn't have to actually "recognize" my mortgage payments or my health care insurance premiums! A solid $3K per month change in my stated monthly cash flow! Of course, I can't do that - that's not accepted. Even if most of it is going to build total "net worth", my cash flow still takes that $3K/month hit. Hey, why don't I go get a $50K/month mortgage - well beyond my monthly income - and claim I still have the same income, I'm still cash-flow positive (no loss - profit!) whilst building more net asset value? Can't do that... That's called fraud.
Tesla was slapped by the SEC for it's non-GAAP shenanigans, and now reports GAAP numbers. All of which show Tesla losing money. As is correct. Corporate value - net assets - may be increasing as cash flow is spent on factories, but that does not change the fact: they are spending more money than they are bringing in, they have a negative earnings per share.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!