You probably don’t need to be told that interest rates are at their lowest for several centuries, if not in recorded history. The fact that the Bank of England is making noises about possibly raising base rate could just be a way to try and rein back inflation (a higher base rate, or prospect of it, causes the pound to rise and that makes imports cheaper – and import costs have been one of the factors in inflation rising). But unemployment is also at its lowest level for 40 years which usually indicates a booming economy and the prospect of higher inflation to come.
Inflation is now at 2.9% measured by the C.P.I., or 3.9% based on R.P.I. which a lot of us like to use instead. Now to me the really astonishing item of news last week was that the large City of London Investment Trust managed to borrow £50 million at a fixed rate of 2.94% for 32 years (I do hold some of their shares). That’s must be one of the best deals ever surely, and shows how investment trusts have the advantage of being able to gear up by borrowing money – and why not when interest rates are so low?
In reality, the lender is not even getting a real positive rate of interest at current inflation rates, and is also betting that it won’t get any worse for the next 32 years. Astonishing, and just shows how the world economy is awash with cash.
Another couple of interesting items of news last week were that Deliveroo lost £129 million in 2016 according to accounts filed at Companies House, on revenue of £129 million. In other words, for every pound paid by customers, they lost a pound. It’s raised $472 million from investors to achieve this wonderful business model (source: FT).
Deliveroo use “self-employed” bike couriers to deliver restaurant meals. Another exponent of this “gig-economy” model is Uber who received the bad news last week that Transport for London were terminating their license to operate in London. More information on that in this blog post I wrote for the ABD: https://abdlondon.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/uber-kicked-out-of-london/ . In there I praised the merits of the service and suggested people sign the petition against it (which is rapidly heading for a million signatures).
But one reason that it is so low cost is because like Deliveroo, Uber loses money in a big way at present. To quote from one report on its financials, “Uber is cheap because the company is heavily subsidising each trip” where it was suggested that Uber’s losses as a percentage of revenue were 129% in the last quarter of 2016. Like Deliveroo, revenue is rising rapidly though.
Do we mind if these companies lose money hand over fist? If they are fool enough to do so in the race to dominate a new market why not let them. But the long term viability of both when there are obviously lots of competitors providing similar services does raise doubts about these businesses, even if London Mayor Sadiq Khan relents over Uber’s license.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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