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Silicon Valley's Tech Bubble Is Now Larger Than In 2000. Will It Come To An End? (cnbc.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the toil-and-trouble dept.

"We are now officially in a tech bubble larger than March of 2000," argues Keith Wright, instructor of accounting and information services at the Villanova School of Business. An anonymous reader quotes his commentary on CNBC: In case you missed it, the peak in the tech unicorn bubble already has been reached. And it's going to be all downhill from here. Massive losses are coming in venture capital-funded start-ups that are, in some cases, as much as 50 percent overvalued... 76% of the companies that went public last year were unprofitable on a per-share basis in the year leading up to their initial offerings, according to data compiled by Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, and recently featured in the New York Times. This is the largest number since the peak of the dot-com boom in 2000, when 81 percent of newly public companies were unprofitable...

Several financial models project that up to 80 percent of unicorn companies are set to fail within two years. Uber, the highest-valued private technology company, has rapidly growing revenue but remains highly unprofitable. With revenue of $6.5 billion in 2016, it still registered a net loss of $2.8 billion. The truth is, when a unicorn is overvalued, it doesn't take long for the market to discover this fact.

5 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Silicon Valley is too big to fail . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    . . . they'll get a government bailout like the auto and banking industries.

    The government should have broken up GM when they bailed them out . . . making the smaller bits small enough to fail.

    Maybe the government will break up Silicon Valley . . . sending bits and pieces of Silicon Valley to Arkansas, Alaska and Mississippi . . . ?

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:Silicon Valley is too big to fail . . . by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      The tax cuts don't really affect startups, so maybe not. You have to make a profit for it to help you.

      The "bubble" is not in the profitability of the companies. It is in their valuation on the stock, bond and VC markets, which has been driven in large part by the cut in capital gains taxes and cuts in marginal rates for the investment class.

      When you hear about a tech "bubble", don't think, "companies are making more money than they should". Instead, think, "companies are being valued higher than they should".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Re:Whole lotta money going on... by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I do give Uber a little credit for actual innovation. Buy staying private for so long, they have apparently been able to financially sodomize the VCs. Can't happen to a more deserving group.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. Re:Bubble or not, we are DUE for a correction by kentrel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What are you talking about? The US has been in a depression for 10 years with less than 3% GDP growth. Forbes called 2009-2013 the "worst five years since the Great Depression". If anything America is due for a boom.

  4. Re:Whole lotta money going on... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Disagree. I don't need a smartphone to hail a taxi. Built-in equipment (i.e. my hand) will do. I can pay cash and not have my origin and destination tied to a name, CC#, email, phone, and address in a database. True, I might be photographed, but facial recognition isn't typically used for those photos unless a crime was committed.