With ELMS look for any movement off infrastructure or Mayor Pete... some kind of big contract from the Gov. Also look for the plant to get up and running. They have a bunch of pre orders and it will be exciting time when they roll off the line. This is still a very good idea. The last mile is where trucking get's expensive.. these vans are not bad looking.
It occurred to me when I went downtown to the Farmers Market that perhaps a good name for the next thread is:: The Green Market.
Who is this? A) Robin Hood head of Crypto investing B) Creepy American Apparel CEO C) Owner of RAW rolling paper.
I dug something else up-- I never rest. I was lying outside in the sun and I said to myself could AMZN buy these ELMS trucks? And then I was like- No AMZN will do this themselves probably... What about the various contractors who service AMZN... and what about a company like Chewie... who's interest in a good earth policy may lead them to only using ELMS as a last mile provider... ELMS TO REVEAL ALL-ELECTRIC MEDIUM DUTY COMMERCIAL TRUCK AT EXPO FOR FEDEX GROUND CONTRACTORS-!!! – Reveal will Occur at Route Consultant Contractor Expo in Nashville, TN – Largest Independent Gathering of FedEx Ground Contractors in the Country – ELMS to Begin Taking Orders with Production Slated for Second Half of 2022 – Urban Utility Expected to Have Approximately 250 Miles of Range Unloaded and Support Variable Cargo Box Lengths The Urban Utility, the Company’s all-electric medium duty cab forward truck, Co will begin taking orders at the Route Consultant Contractor Expo on July 30-31st. Held in Nashville, Tennessee, the annual Expo is the largest independent gathering of FedEx Ground contractors in the country. ELMS will be joined at the Route Consultant Contractor Expo by its strategic distribution partner, Randy Marion Automotive Group, and will host test drives of both its Class 3 Urban Utility medium duty EV as well as its all-electric Urban Delivery cargo van. ELMS expects to begin production of the Urban Delivery, the anticipated first Class 1 commercial EV in the U.S., later this year. With an estimated range of approximately 250 miles unloaded, the ability to support variable cargo box lengths and an expected payload of around 5,700 pounds, the Urban Utility is anticipated to be the second electric vehicle in ELMS’ last mile portfolio. The Urban Utility’s start of production is expected in the second half of 2022, and its introduction would position ELMS to offer commercial electric vehicle solutions spanning the Class 1 to Class 3 last mile segment. “We have seen strong early indications of interest in our Urban Utility from fleets seeking more efficient and sustainable last mile delivery solutions,” said James Taylor, Co-Founder and CEO of ELMS. “With our reveal, we are excited to show our full suite of last mile e-mobility solutions to some of the country’s largest delivery providers.” The Urban Utility is also expected to come with a suite of connectivity solutions that would allow fleet operators full visibility of their vehicles in near real time, as well as the ability to turn each Urban Utility vehicle into a Wi-Fi hotspot. In addition, ELMS expects to include over-the-air software update capabilities aimed at reducing vehicle downtime. As part of its integrated business model, ELMS also plans to offer upfitting solutions to customize the Urban Utility to fleets’ individual end-use cases.
Stoney.... Were you not alive in 1999? Were you not trading? Dude, I can't believe you don't see what's going on right now. If you think you can play musical chairs and come out a winner on stocks that have enterprise values in excess of 100X that of established, profitable companies, stuff like friggin Google for god-sake.... that themselves are at the present, trading at heretofore unheard of multiples.... you friggin go for it. . Yeah WATT.... Cool ticker, cool story.... and a valuation equivalent to me buying out the kid at the red-light selling cold bottles of water for $3M dollars. Literally! Snap the f out of it. And I don't write these words for you... I write them for whoever lands on our little thread here that has "get rich quick" stars in their eyes. I should write this in bold-face... .. In fact I will. The manipulation of social media is so friggin powerful, it has played a part in (regardless of whatever "side" you're on)... the friggin occupant of the office of the most powerful person on Earth. Do you REALLY not think that can be used where money and thugs reside? The early 90's had land-line boiler-rooms. Is there any difference now between that and professional manipulators stepping into Reddit? F no. I'll tell you what Stoney.... you are a very cool dude... but when it it comes to street smarts,,,, my brother... you grew up a tad too rich.
Stoney! No come back on my above post?! Yulia chastised me, told me I needed to buy 2000 shares of DriveShack as penance for being insubordinate. Anyway... did you see Dorsey plopped down $29 B-stacks for some buy now pay later biz? Didn't I tell you when you highlighted that one penny stock operation that ipo'd to this...Square will bury these newcomers? Paysafe and Affirm will probably jump tomorrow on the news, but will it hold? Maybe... I seriously doubt PayPal will take this lying down. That said however... as these things go... Gummy of the week... Square goes into granny's shorts. It closed at $247. I think they overpaid, but that is totally without doing any dd on the deal. $29 billion is 25% of their marketcap. Like I said, I have to read the fine print, is it an all stock deal? Will it be immediately accretive to earnings? But good lord, that seems high. They must have wanted this company bad. So, despite their (incredible) last quarter, if if SQ comes out of the gate strong tomorrow and gets anywhere near $260.... short the farm.
So it is an all-stock deal. Gee, how'd I guess that? . __________________ Finance Square to Buy Afterpay for $29 Billion to Tap Younger Shoppers (Bloomberg) — Square Inc., the digital-payments platform led by Twitter Inc. founder Jack Dorsey, agreed to buy Australian buy-now, pay-later company Afterpay Ltd. for $29 billion in its largest-ever acquisition. The all-stock offer values Afterpay shares at A$126.21 each, 31% higher than Friday’s closing price of A$96.66, the companies said in a statement. Still, that’s less than Afterpay’s February high of A$158.47. The stock jumped as much as 29% to A$125 at the open of Sydney trading Monday. Square Buys Afterpay in Scrip Deal at 31% Premium: M&A Snapshot Square said the buy-now, pay-later concept represents a chance to capitalize on a shift away from traditional credit, especially among younger consumers. The plan is for Square to integrate Afterpay into both its consumer Cash App, and its Seller product for small businesses, Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja said in an interview. “It’s very different from the traditional consumer-financing business model,” Ahuja said, describing “buy now, pay later” as an “alternative” to traditional credit. “Since our founding days we have seen it as a key priority for our customers, whether merchants or consumers, to get fast access to funds,” she added, but declined to say whether Square would offer other traditional finance options, like a credit card. Afterpay lets consumers purchase items on credit and pay later with a series of installments. It’s particularly popular with younger consumers — who may not have a credit card — to buy clothes, beauty products and homewares. There are no fees or interest on the loan as long as people pay on time, according to Afterpay’s website. The deal should also help boost Cash App’s total user base by adding Afterpay’s 16 million users to Cash App’s existing user base of 70 million annual users, Ahuja said. Read more: ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Installment Plan Is Having a Moment Again Afterpay co-founders and co-CEOs Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar will join Square and help lead Afterpay’s merchant and consumer businesses as part of Square’s Seller and Cash App division. The acquisition is easily the biggest deal for an Australian company, eclipsing the A$16.6 billion a group of pension funds last month bid for Sydney Airport, only to have the offer rejected as too low. Square recently launched its banking operations, including checking and savings accounts for small businesses, and offers loans. The addition of Afterpay also gives the digital payments company a chance to expand into consumer lending, which it doesn’t currently offer. ‘Shared Purpose’ “Square and Afterpay have a shared purpose,” Dorsey said in the statement. “We built our business to make the financial system more fair, accessible, and inclusive, and Afterpay has built a trusted brand aligned with those principles.” Square also reported second-quarter gross profit of $1.14 billion, up 91% year-over-year. Gross payment volume, or the total amount of payments processed on Square’s platform, increased 88% to $42.8 billion, the company said in a statement. Analysts, on average, projected $36.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Square had been scheduled to release earnings Thursday. Total revenue, including Bitcoin, was $4.68 billion. Bitcoin revenue alone was $2.72 billion, below the $3.4 billion estimate by analysts. Square said Bitcoin revenue declined because of “relative stability in the price of Bitcoin, which affected trading activity compared to prior quarters.” Afterpay was founded in 2015 and now has more than 1,300 employees globally, according to Molnar. The board of Melbourne-based Afterpay unanimously recommended shareholders accept the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banki...r-installment-plan-is-having-a-moment-again-1 -------------------------------------------------------- Buy Now, Pay Later' Installment Plans Are Having a Moment Again - Bloomberg You’re shopping online, about to hit the checkout button, when something catches your eye. It’s an intriguing offer. Instead of buying your item the old-fashioned way with your credit or debit card, you can pay for it in an even more old-fashioned way, familiar to anyone who shopped at department stores before plastic became ubiquitous: on an installment plan. “Buy now, pay later” programs are growing fast, both on e-commerce sites and at physical retail checkout counters in the U.S. Stores generally offer the programs through third-party financial technology companies including Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna. Unlike credit cards, on which a borrower paying a minimum could carry a balance indefinitely, these loans are designed to be paid off in a set number of payments—often four. And they’re linked to a specific purchase rather than being a general line of credit. In general, these programs make the lion’s share of their money on fees from retailers, rather than from interest paid by consumers. Stores are willing to pay because the programs make it easier for customers to say yes to items with price tags that might otherwise make them queasy. “We are in the business of turning browsers into buyers, which is fundamentally a merchant service,” Affirm Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Max Levchin told Bloomberg TV in July. His company gets a bit under half its revenue from merchant network fees, with a smaller chunk coming from interest income. Americans spent an estimated $20 billion to $25 billion using deferred payments in 2020, according to a March report by analytics firm CB Insights. Worldwide, that same report projects that transactions through such plans could grow 10 to 15 times by 2025, topping $1 trillion. Buy Now, Pay Later Users Share of U.S. internet users Data: EMarketer Silicon Valley giants are trying to muscle in on the business pioneered by the fintechs. PayPal Holdings Inc. rolled out its own buy now, pay later feature, Pay in 4, last year. Now Apple Inc. is looking to offer its own spin, with plans to build the functionality into its Apple Pay platform, Bloomberg News reported. Banking giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will be the behind-the-scenes lender for the new Apple Pay product. “Apple and PayPal getting into this is an indicator that this kind of flexibility—this kind of ‘fintech-ification’ of our everyday commerce experiences—isn’t going to go away anytime soon,” says Lily Varon, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “This isn’t a blip.” The pandemic lockdown fueled an e-commerce spending spree that seems to have accelerated the adoption of buy now, pay later. But the programs may also appeal to younger consumers who are wary of credit cards. Although buying on installment is very much a form of borrowing, it’s set up to feel easier to swallow. Many plans charge no interest. Afterpay Ltd. has no credit check, while some other programs do only “soft” checks that don’t affect a consumer’s credit score. Having a set period to pay back may also feel more manageable. The big opportunity for growth in the business is “either people that don’t really have credit or people that don’t really like using credit cards,” says Dan Dolev, an analyst with Mizuho Securities USA. Installment companies say they’re more transparent and simpler than credit cards, and take steps to protect vulnerable borrowers. Afterpay, for example, cuts off further purchases as soon as a payment is missed. “Creating opportunities for consumers to buy that make them feel safe and smart and responsible is a good thing,” Affirm’s Levchin told Bloomberg TV. Taken as a whole, though, the explosion of new programs means consumers have a lot more ways to put off payments and get into debt—and a lot more complexity to navigate. Each program has its own set of rules on fees, rates, and credit reporting. Afterpay charges late fees of up to $8. Affirm has no late fees, but unlike Afterpay it may charge interest on some purchases, depending on the retailer. Afterpay’s installment plans are designed to be paid off in four chunks over six weeks, while Affirm offers different schedules that may stretch out as long as 12 months. It’s expected that Apple Pay will offer both a short-term pay-in-four plan and longer-term options. “It’s not clear to me that consumers can easily delineate between the different products that are out there,” says Chuck Bell, programs director in Consumer Reports’ advocacy division. “There will likely be more oversight at some point, because I think the problems are not going to go away.” In July, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog overseeing consumer lending practices, published a blog post about buy now, pay later programs. While it didn’t criticize the practice, it advised consumers to look out for late fees and noted that since some programs are linked to a consumer’s debit card, there’s a risk of automatic installment payments triggering bank overdraft fees if the money’s not there. Installment pay companies have come in for more scrutiny in other countries where they’ve gained a foothold. Sweden recently passed a law requiring that non-debt payment options, when there are any, be presented first online. The U.K.’s financial regulator published a report that said the industry “poses potential harms to consumers and needs to be brought within regulation.” One risk it highlighted: Consumers could have multiple outstanding transactions across several platforms, adding up to high levels of indebtedness. Forrester’s Varon says consolidation in the industry is inevitable, given the sheer number of players worldwide and the hunger for expansion. Affirm earlier this year completed the acquisition of Canada’s PayBright. And Apple and PayPal have paved the way for more traditional financial firms to enter the fray. “They’ll probably see more banks moving into the buy now, pay later space,” says Anisha Kothapa, a senior analyst at CB Insights. She points to Goldman Sachs’s MarcusPay offering and installment options being developed by Visa Inc. As companies in the sector get more experience with their customers, they’ll develop an ability to better underwrite credit risk, says Zachary Aron, principal in the payments and banking consulting practice at Deloitte. That will enable them to offer more tailored loans. “Those are ways we really think financial institutions can be on the side of the customer,” Aron says. “Being able to use that information as education, coaching, guidance, support.” Not to mention making it even easier to click “buy.”
Such a bad mood today. I researched both AfterPay and Affirm before recommending the HF go with AFRM. Today he other one got bought by Square. You cannot make this stuff up. Damn it!