You have to pay enough to convince everyone to sell. The trading price is the marginal price of buying one more unit of stock, not a representation of the stock price at which every owner will sell.
Well, you have to pay enough to convince the board to force everyone to sell and not risk being sued for not doing their fiduciary duty. But yeah, that’s the gist of it. if you were to attempt to simply buy up all of the shares on the open market, it would cost more than whatever it closed at the day before you did that, all else being equal
If you go much lower, shareholders become reluctant wondering if it's really worth it, or if the board are negotiating hard enough.
If you go much higher, shareholders start to wonder why someone is willing to pay so much for a stock. People start to get cagey and wonder what's going on. The sellers interest is to keep it lower as well.
It's just the region things have settled over time. It's generally enough that the board feel they're doing the right thing, it doesn't spook anyone, and it's what the buyer is expecting.
I don't think there's any more magic behind it, it's just what has become the norm over the years.
At 50% it might be easier to just buy up shares on the market til they have a controlling share. The number to do that sets a cap on what the buyer will pay. I don’t have numbers on-hand, but trying to move a majority of a company’s stock (buy or sell) can cause crazy swings. When I worked in hedge funds, it was a thing we worked around. Our larger trades would execute over the course of a day or several days to minimize our impact on pricing.
At 10%, many shareholders will feel that their risk-adjusted returns on the stock would do better than the buyout.
30% is likely below the costs to acquire a controlling share on the market, and above any reasonable belief in risk-adjusted returns for shareholders (barring exceptional companies).
A lot of it is wishy washy because it’s based on math, but math with presumptions baked in. How much do shareholders think their stocks are worth? How much would it cost to buy them on the open market? How much does the buyer think the stocks are worth? There are approximate answers to all of these, from which an even more approximate price needs to be determined.
If the last transaction was 30% the board as to explain why this one isn't 30% (either to the buyer if they are paying more; or to the shareholders if they are paying less).
> Maybe I'm missing something basic but that still doesn't explain why it's 30% and not 50%.
It's like tipping. There's no ideal value that can be picked; just agreed normal values. If 30% appears to work most of the time then that's probably why it's used.
Is there a way to search for lawsuits from shareholders when the price per share of going private was less than 30%? There's probably no mathematical model here but more a way for the sale to insulate itself from getting dragged into litigation.
If Google developed an AI model for cancer detection in MRI scans, you wouldn’t claim that “AI is not for what people think it is for” because Google also uses AI models for advertising.
The Clojure community is extremely cult like. I worked with a dev who tried to push Datomic, and despite the huge flaws with his system, and the fact that it was closed source, he would continuously tout how much better it was than a relational database. I don’t believe the hype.
You just generalized an entire community based on one person. I can add a counter anecdote to your N=1. I'm a Clojure dev. I've used and enjoyed Datomic. Postgres is still my goto database.
Clojure is not special in that it has some zealots.
It's easier to call others out when they aren't in the mainstream, but I'd say that there are way more mainstream cult members than these niche communities. For instance, HN itself can feel a bit cult-like. The greater tech culture feels similarly.
Apple started out as a personal computer company—which was a radical concept because there was no good answer to “What are regular people going to do with one”. Mainframes and terminals were useful, but personal computers only had minor applications.
The Vision Pro product is inline with this philosophy of building a good product with no clear purpose and letting users figure it out. It is going to take years for someone to come up with a good use. Think about how long it took AirPods and Apple play to catch on.
People focus a lot about VR/AR needing to have a "killer app", but I think that line of thought is really off the mark. The point of an AR device, done well, is to be a phone/computer replacement that lets you do whatever you were doing with one but without always needing your hands or a specific location. The reason the idea isn't mass-market popular yet is entirely because the hardware just isn't good enough (too heavy, too big, too battery-hungry), and as soon as it is good enough, plenty of people will start using.
For me the Vision Pro has been my “Mac replacement” in terms of how I use and love it. (Even though it needs a Mac.)
I completely customized the light shield and straps to be very conformable with a wider field of view. Third version was the charm. Apple could have done better.
Games they have are very meh. Pass. Got a Quest for that.
But 3D movies are finally what 3D should be. At least the well done ones. Blade Runner 2049, Dune Part 1, are fantastic. Felt like I hadn’t really seen them before.
Strange to me they only have a few “environments”. Gorgeous, just so few. I use them to focus when working and meditate.
I hope they keep up with it as a developer friendly Mac replacement. It does that well, and with just a few improvements could be significantly better. Devs using it will start building for it, even if just to scratch an itch.
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