IB Business Management

Business Management gold dust: Superdry - the pseudo-Japanese, but actually founded in Cheltenham  fashion company - is thinking of leaving the London Stock Exchange - and in doing so converting from a public limited company to a private limited company as it seeks to restructure and save money. 

It is hoping to save cash - because listing as a public limited company does come with a variety of costs, and, I suspect, it will be pursuing a range of other strategies - seeking alternative sources of finance, as well as "improving its product ranges and reallocating marketing spend", highlighted in the article. 

The notion that the once-frumpy Birkenstock is being floated in the US stock market would once have been seen as fanciful in the extreme. However, the private limited company are looking to raise up to $1.6bn through the initial public offering (IPO) to effectively continue doing what they're already doing in looking at limited product development, with some feeling that the brand name won't support more adventurous forms of risk-taking.  

This is a seismic event: Uber has, at last turned a profit. Last year's $1.8bn operating loss has become a $1.1bn operating profit after 14 years in operation since it was founded in 2009. 

However, up until this point its cumulative losses have been significant, so you might ask how has it remained in business - i.e. who has been prepared to fund the company all this time - and what's changed. In the latter case, revenues have grown as a result of increased demand for journeys and deliveries, to the extent that it made made $40 billion in revenues in the final quarter of 2023, with the company's cut around a quarter of that.