Early premarket gappersGapping up:
- LCI +20.7%, PSDO +13.9%, IRBT +12.8%, MTCH +11.2%, CMG +9.9%, STI +7.3%, IAC +6.9%, GRUB +5.9%, MC +5.8%, TACO +5.7%, SRCI +5.6%, PRTK +4.9%, NOV +4.6%, ARRY +4.5%, GPRO +4.5%, IOVA +4.3%, FTNT +3.5%, FORM +2.9%, MPLX +2.7%, BBT +2.5%, ORLY +2.5%, AAP +2.4%, UHAL +2.4%, ZNGA +2%, AHH +1.8%, HQY +1.2%, ICE +1.1%, CCR +1.1%, YELP +1%, CTSH +0.8%, AHL +0.8%, SHAK +0.7%
Gapping down:
- CNC -50%, USAT -26%, OSUR -10.6%, FEYE -10.2%, TPR -9.7%, RMBL -8%, SONO -6.2%, PSTI -4.9%, CENT -4.9%, TTMI -4.9%, CCK -4.6%, ECHO -4.3%, MRVL -3.5%, VVV -3%, TWO -2.8%, NXPI -2.7%, CDAY -2.3%, TRMB -2.2%, MT -2.2%, PCG -2%, MET -2%, ICHR -1.9%, PAHC -1.9%, COR -1.9%, -1.7%, DNKN -1.7%, ELY -1.6%, NOK -1.5%, BIIB -1.4%, NTR -1.4%, PSEC -1.3%, TOT -1.3%, STM -1.2%, CRZO -1%, CX -0.9%, ACLS -0.7%, COST -0.7%
Paris is blocking EU free trade talks with the US
After the dispute over Nord Stream 2, France is also on a course of confrontation with the Federal Government in the planned free trade talks with the US.
Lime closes USD 310m Series D round
07 FEB 2019
Lime, a San Mateo, California-based scooter sharing company, announced today (7 February) that it has raised USD 310m in a Series D financing round, led by a group of existing and new investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Fidelity Investments, GV and IVP.
Existing investors Alphabet, Coatue, DCM, Fifth Wall, GGV Capital, Singapore's GIC and others continued with their support and joined the round along with several new investors, including GSV Capital, FJ Labs, Bling Capital, Europe's GR Capital and St. Augustine Partners, Lime said in post on its website.
Link to original source
Announcement:
Micromobility is a rapidly growing market that is here to stay, with millions of riders using e-bikes and scooters to commute. This new mode of transport is becoming a part of daily routines and Lime is leading this space. Our ridership grew faster in our first 18 months than the ride-hail industry did in its first two years.
We are thrilled to announce today that we have closed $310 million in a Series D financing, valuing Lime at $2.4 billion. A group of returning backers and new investors, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Fidelity Investments, GV and IVP, led the round. Existing investors Alphabet, Coatue, DCM, Fifth Wall, GGV Capital, Singapore’s GIC and others continued with their support and joined the round along with several new investors including GSV Capital, FJ Labs, Bling Capital, Europe’s GR Capital and St. Augustine Partners.
This new investment demonstrates the fundamental strength of our business and the increasingly rapid adoption of Lime. The new funds will give us the ability to expand into new markets, enhance our technology, strengthen the team and pilot new opportunities. We will also continue investing in two critical areas: rider safety and city collaboration.
Lime has rapidly become the favorite first and last mile solution for riders for their work commute, social event or to get around their communities. More than 10 million sign-ups and over 34 million trips have been taken on a Lime vehicle, a 5.5x increase in trips in the last seven months alone. Lime has operations in over a hundred cities, towns, company campuses, universities and communities throughout 15 countries across five continents.
Our user base reflects the move to Lime becoming a part of people’s daily routine. Riders across a range of ages, geographies, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds are using Lime every day. The median age of our riders is 32 with more than 20 percent of our riders over 40, and 33 percent of our riders identify as belonging to a minority race or ethnic group. Of our riders, 34 percent report an annual income of less than $50,000, making Lime the choice for easy and affordable accessibility. Lime is now the most popular app for scooter sharing globally. We were the #1 app overall in New Zealand and the #1 travel app in the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, France, Portugal, Greece and Spain. Also, our integration with Google Maps gives Lime riders in over 20 global cities an easy commute option.
Over the past few months, Lime has led safety initiatives around the world. From safety education campaigns to hundreds of thousands of free helmets to leading the industry in liability insurance and scooter innovation – every member of the Lime team is committed to getting it right on safety.
Yet for safety to be built into micromobility from the street up, we cannot do it alone. It’s only through new and existing partnerships with local governments that we are helping communities to elevate micromobility in public policy development. Partnerships like our transit data sharing for bike lane planning in Austin and Kansas City, or our membership on the St. Louis Scooter Safety Task Force.
Micromobility is growing at a faster rate than we have ever seen, but the industry is still in its early days. As we move into this next phase of growth and adoption, Lime is committed to leading the way in collaborating with policymakers, the industry and local communities.
I want to thank our investors, the entire Lime team and most of all, our riders for getting us to where we are today.
Gig economy tech companies like Instacart have been accused of tip theft. But the problem is bigger than that.
Workers are demanding a fair wage, not just fair tips.
It started when one Instacart shopper shared a receipt that seemed to show that the company was eating into his $10 tip and using that money to help subsidize the worker’s pay, netting him only 80 cents in base pay on a delivery. First, Instacart denied any accusations of tip theft, calling that shopper’s situation an “edge case” and a “glitch” in the company’s new pay model, which it says is designed to reward shoppers more fairly.
But that didn’t help explain the dozens of other similar cases workers shared online with screenshots of their pay stubs — or Instacart’s history of issues with worker pay. Today, the company agreed to change its policy to increase the minimum pay to workers for deliveries, separate that pay from designated tip money, and compensate workers who saw their tip funds redirected.
In a blog post released today, Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta apologized for the ordeal over workers’ tips, “While our intention was to increase the guaranteed payment for small orders, we understand that the inclusion of tips as a part of this guarantee was misguided.”
Instacart isn’t alone in accusations of mishandling its workers’ tips. Other tech-enabled gig economy companies, including DoorDash, have been accused of similar practices.
Whether or not these companies are or have been intentionally misusing their workers’ tip funds, the public outrage brings to light a deeper issue: Many workers in the new on-demand app economy are not being paid a consistent living wage. Tip theft might be one of the ugliest and most blatant potential cases of gig worker exploitation, but the reality is that even when gig economy workers get their tips in full, many of them are being paid far below what we would consider a decent minimum wage — by some estimates less than $10 an hour after expenses — for jobs that sell workers on a promise of making much more.
For too long, companies like Instacart, Uber, and Lyft have fallen back on the same explanation for these cases: Most of their workers enjoy the flexibility of their jobs, and most of them do it only part-time for supplemental income and are doing it well. It’s the complainers who aren’t doing it right.
If drivers pick up enough riders or if shoppers buy the groceries faster, they would make more, or so the argument goes. But for many workers it isn’t that straightforward. As the Instacart example shows, a series of algorithms that go into complex pay-rate models often dictate worker pay. While some companies, including Uber, are trying to do a better job of making their pay rates clear, they’re still not as simple as an hourly pay rate. And unlike a traditional job, if you think you’re not getting paid enough, there’s no manager to talk to. You can’t ask a formula for a raise.
A growing number of ride-sharing drivers and grocery delivery workers are increasingly frustrated and are asking for a more concrete response than most tech companies are willing to give their gig workers: They want a guarantee of higher wages.
“I’ve worked for several apps off and on — dog-walking, house-cleaning, grocery shopping,” said Ashley Johnson, 30, a former veterinary assistant and single mother who turned to gig economy work because it offered her the flexible hours she needed to raise her child. “This is the first time I’ve been trying to do apps full-time, and it is crazy — because I’m still not making bills, even though I’m working three shifts in a day.”
Johnson is one of the thousands of people who are petitioning Instacart to pay their shoppers more, among other demands. She says that while she is turning to other delivery apps like Shipt, which she says pays its workers a better rate, the reality is that where she’s from — a small town in Washington state — there are not enough customer requests for deliveries to make it a full-time job. Johnson said that’s because Instacart’s groceries are more affordable and more popular with customers.
In response to the criticism around Instacart’s pay practices, some consumers are cancelling their subscriptions, or tipping the delivery workers in cash and putting only 22 cents on the bill as a form of protest. And many Instacart users have backed up workers in their complaints by voicing their support online. But, according to many labor experts, customers can’t be relied upon to enforce wage standards.
“Generally, consumers want to pay less and employers want to pay less, that’s why we have a baseline. That’s why we have regulation,” said Rebecca Givan, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.
The threat of regulation
New York City recently implemented a first-of-its-kind wage floor of $17.22 an hour, plus expenses, for ride-sharing drivers — a kind of minimum wage per trip — which is expected to bring an increase of nearly $10,000 per year to full-time drivers. Lyft and Juno decided to sue the city over these new pay rules, saying that the way it was designed would benefit Uber, their larger competitor. Lyft says it will pay drivers the same amount on a weekly basis instead of per trip. Regardless of disputes over the mechanics of the New York City wage-floor rollout, it’s a historic move that will force companies to give their drivers a predictable living wage.
Lyft and Uber have said this will result in higher fares, but they haven’t said by how much. According to Lyft, there could be other consequences, such as Uber taking more market share; ultimately, a monopoly would not be good for drivers and riders alike.
Setting those concerns aside, if the New York wage floor turns out to be successful, it could serve as a model for other cities.
“A lot of local governments are likely to be watching how the New York minimum wage experiment plays out,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor of business at NYU who studies the gig economy. Sundararajan also cautioned that the “devil is in the details” with rolling out these kinds of regulations.
In California, lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that would codify a court ruling forcing gig economy companies to reclassify their workers as employees — which would mean they have to pay the baseline local minimum. In some major cities, including San Francisco, that minimum wage can be as high as $15 an hour. Tech companies including Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, and others have actively lobbied against such a decision, writing in a joint letter that it would “decimate businesses.”
Aside from legislative threats, there’s also ongoing pressure from the workers, who are increasingly partnering with worker advocacy groups like Working Washington that helped propel the 80 cent Instacart pay stub into the public discussion.
A two-tiered labor market
The outrage over alleged tip theft at Instacart will likely pass, as the company’s previous issues with workers have. As Instacart is on its way to an expected multibilllion-dollar IPO this year, in the eyes of investors, this may end up being nothing more than another minor blip on the record of an otherwise successful business.
But as long as there’s a deepening income divide in the US and an increasingly two-tiered labor system, the long-term fight over worker pay at tech companies that rely on low-paid contract labor will continue. While tech company contract jobs make up a relatively small percentage of all contract jobs across other industries, the tech company gigs are some of the most visible because they are the newest and fastest-growing, and because of the relative obscurity around how they calculate their workers’ pay.
There’s also an expectation that the technology sector bears more responsibility than its peers because it helped create the automation that has contributed to a wider gap between high- and low-paying jobs.
Companies like Instacart would be wise to start figuring out a better response than calling serious questions about worker pay a “glitch.” It needs to come up with a plan for handling one of the key economic issues of our time around contract worker pay before more places like New York and California end up figuring it out for them.
DIA shareholder group seeks alternative takeover offer - report (translated)
07 FEB 2019
A group of Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentación [BME: DIA] (DIA) shareholders have agreed to syndicate their shares and seek an alternative takeover offer for the Spanish supermarket chain, Expansion reported, citing financial sources.
Spanish entrepreneurs, Pedro and Pablo Gómez-Pablos, and French investor, Gregoire Bontoux Halley, said on 6 February that they had syndicated their stock — totalling a 3.25% stake in DIA — which they expect to increase via acquisitions and by adding other shareholders to the agreement, according to the report.
The report said the three investors are analysing an alternative offer to the EUR 0.67 per share bid tabled by LetterOne, which holds 29% of DIA. Discussions are being held with potential advisers to the transaction, the article added.
The shareholders' intention would be to finance the offer with their own funds and then recapitalise the company, the report said. But instead of a capital increase, they would seek a participative loan, which would prevent shareholders from having to make a further contribution or seeing their stakes diluted, it added.
The loan would amount to EUR 600m, the Spanish-language paper said.