Latest news with #capital
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Silicon Valley ' s ‘ Tiny Team ' Era is Here
In the era of startup ' blitzscaling,' which lasted roughly from Facebook's IPO in 2012 until WeWork's bankruptcy filing in 2023, market capitalization and total capital raised were prized metrics. The ultimate milestone was reaching 'unicorn status' — a $1 billion valuation that was often accompanied by rapid hiring. These days, bragging rights are going to entrepreneurs who keep headcount the lowest.
Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
‘I was ridiculed for buying a London flat, but it's already gained £100k'
As a single woman in her 20s, owning my flat gives me a level of independence and security that would be impossible otherwise. Dodgy landlords are no longer a concern of mine and I don't have a looming eviction date. I don't even have to worry about finding a suitable partner with the means to escape the pressured rental market, as the cost of renting a room in the capital continues to surge. Before I bought my flat last year, I'd been a student, sleeping on sofas for weeks at a time while taking on summer jobs. After that I became a renter, living for two years with university friends. But once the keys were in my hand, I suddenly had something I'd not had since I'd left my family home for university – a permanent base. My colleague, Josh Kirby, writes that he does not 'believe a flat in London is a good investment for me at this moment in time'. But I decided to buy because I wanted a proper home. And while some like Josh have cast doubt on the wisdom of buying a flat in the capital, I think it is still a sensible option. And if it is located in the right area and well looked after, there is little concern about it holding its value. Some worry about the uncertainty around the current housing market, but I took a gamble on a nice flat in a popular location. I now live near the Thames, a 30-minute commute from work, and near a number of friends. And so far, I've had no reason to worry about it. In fact, Zoopla has estimated that in the year since I bought it my flat has increased in value by £100,000 – which, frankly, does seem ridiculous. But I don't place much weight on the value growth: I have no plans to sell my flat in the near or even mid-term and, without sounding too much like an estate agent, looking at your home as only an investment is a mistake. That's not to say that money was not on my mind. I have been up front with friends, and in my previous column, that my parents gave me a very sizeable deposit to help me buy. But I am far from the only one. My mortgage is entirely my responsibility, as are the ground rent, service charges, utilities and upkeep. I was paying over £1,080 a month in rent; now, my mortgage payments are £650. Even when service charges (mine went down this year) and ground rent (peppercorn) are taken into account, I am still better off. And I've got a fixed rate of 3.99pc for the next four years, so I don't have to endlessly stress about the latest inflation figures. Currently, I overpay by roughly half, because if I spent the full 40 years paying off my mortgage, I'd pay close to £500,000 in interest. That's more than £3 for every £1 I borrowed. And because I bought last year, I benefited from lower stamp duty – saving me £4,000. I also have lodgers. They get a good deal, with below-market rent, and I get help saving towards some of the renovations I want to do. Being a landlord – even in a relatively informal way – has been eye-opening. I feel confident I haven't lost any future opportunities by being tied down: if I wanted to move away for a period, it would be pretty easy. Flats in my postcode are currently being let for as much as £2,700 a month, and charging a monthly rent of £2,000 would more than cover my costs. Even with the upcoming changes in the Renters' Rights Bill, I'd still be able to regain the flat within four months if I wanted to move back in (assuming tenants moved out as asked). Making my flat my own One of the joys of being a homeowner is that you get to decide what the place you live in looks like. No more 'landlord specials' for me – I can decorate to my heart's content. Considered renovations can also add significant value to a home. I increased the size of the second bedroom by moving a wall, and have replaced some flooring. I also plan to have a new bathroom – all of which should help to keep the value of my flat level. While these are not insignificant investments, increasing the value of the flat isn't my only driver. Improvements make the flat a nicer place to live. It's a different priority, but one that is just as important. It should also make it easier to sell. Before I bought it, the flat had been let to social housing tenants and had not been that well looked after. I made the decision to buy it based on its good bones. Now it's being looked after – and with no stars in my eyes as to what I could sell it for – I am confident it would go quickly if I wanted it to. Now is a good time to buy a flat There are a lot of numbers floating around which make the London market look less than healthy. The price of flats has not significantly increased since 2016, with buyers put off by concerns around high service charges, cladding issues and incomplete leasehold reform. But one thing this meant for me was I could negotiate a significant discount. My flat was initially listed for tens of thousands of pounds more than I paid for it. The sellers, who the estate agent told me were living abroad, had already been almost the whole way through the sale process once before, but the buyers had dropped out. With weakened interest in flats generally, even my two-bed, within walking distance of Canary Wharf, was struggling to sell at its original price. The average home sale at the moment is being agreed at 3pc – £16,000 – lower than the average asking price, Zoopla has found. I used this knowledge, and my position as a chain-free buyer with a mortgage already approved, to promise a swift and easy sale, and secured a larger discount as a result. Obviously, not every flat on the market will turn out to be a bargain. But as sellers move away, buyers who can be flexible and move quickly will reap the rewards. Mortgage lenders are rapidly relaxing affordability rules and stress tests in order to lend more to first-time buyers, and are lobbying hard for regulators to go further. This means that homes which could have been out of budget may now be within reach. Maybe I only strongly support buying because, for now, it has worked very well for me. But the fact remains that it works very well for most, providing a level of housing and financial security you can't get through renting. That's why people want it so badly.
RNZ News
19 hours ago
- General
- RNZ News
Wellington council to spend $460,000 on coordination service to support rough sleepers
Wellington councillors have voted to spend $460,000 setting up a homelessness coordination service. Photo: Wellington City Council has agreed to spend nearly half a million dollars on a "homelessness coordination service" to support people who are sleeping rough. As councillors considered officers' proposal for the $460,000 service at Thursday's social, cultural and economic committee meeting, City Missioner Murray Edridge noted the rain pelting the windows. "For most of us that makes very little difference in our lives, but if you're doing it tough in the city it changes everything." His organisation alongside Downtown Community Ministry, He Herenga Kura and others, put great effort into supporting those people, he said. "Despite that, we know that we're not getting it right all the time, and we're not picking up everybody who needs to be picked up." The new service aimed to change that, he said. Council officers said the capital's support system for chronically homeless people was "fragmented and under considerable strain". "Agencies and frontline workers are often left to operate in siloes, with limited capacity to align their work, share insights, or escalate challenges effectively," the meeting's agenda document said. "This results in individuals and whānau falling through the cracks, prolonged street homelessness, and growing concern across the community." The new service would bring together - and fund - three key organisations currently supporting homeless people in the capital: Downtown Community Ministry (DCM), Wellington City Mission, and He Herenga Kura. It was not a new outreach service, the papers said. "Rather, it is a dedicated coordination function that strengthens what already works - enhancing collaboration, supporting shared case planning, enabling responsive escalation (including after-hours), and ensuring that lived experience and frontline realities inform how we respond as a city." The service "attempts to address systemic barriers, and connects existing services around the needs of our city's most vulnerable whānau who are experiencing chronic homelessness and that are rough sleeping in our CBD." The funding would be split between DCM ($286,666) Wellington City Mission ($146,666) and He Herenga Kura ($26,668). It would be drawn from the $500,000 annual community safety grant funding provided through the city council's 2024-34 Long-term Plan, and be spent on: Councillor Nureddin Abdurahman asked how success would be measured, and councillor Ray Chung queried whether the service would be able to provide data to prove its success. Officers and the agencies' representatives said change would not happen overnight, and the establishment of the service would not mean people vanished from sleeping on the street. But it would provide a much better picture - including data - of why people were homeless, what help they needed, and what gaps existed, said DCM's Natalia Cleland. That would also help with things like advocating for more support with central government, she said. Mayor Tory Whanau urged councillors to have compassion and support the proposal. "These are our people, these people are part of our whānau, and they suffer from very complex issues that require more than just a roof over their head," she said. "They need our help." Councillors voted unanimously for the creation of the new service, which would happen in the coming months. The funding would continue past the first year if it was deemed successful after "robust evaluation" - subject to funding availability. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Returns At Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY) Are On The Way Up
If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. So on that note, Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital. AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for Workday, this is the formula: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.051 = US$632m ÷ (US$17b - US$4.8b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to April 2025). Thus, Workday has an ROCE of 5.1%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Software industry average of 9.5%. View our latest analysis for Workday Above you can see how the current ROCE for Workday compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free analyst report for Workday . Workday has recently broken into profitability so their prior investments seem to be paying off. The company was generating losses five years ago, but now it's earning 5.1% which is a sight for sore eyes. And unsurprisingly, like most companies trying to break into the black, Workday is utilizing 178% more capital than it was five years ago. We like this trend, because it tells us the company has profitable reinvestment opportunities available to it, and if it continues going forward that can lead to a multi-bagger performance. On a related note, the company's ratio of current liabilities to total assets has decreased to 28%, which basically reduces it's funding from the likes of short-term creditors or suppliers. So this improvement in ROCE has come from the business' underlying economics, which is great to see. In summary, it's great to see that Workday has managed to break into profitability and is continuing to reinvest in its business. Considering the stock has delivered 32% to its stockholders over the last five years, it may be fair to think that investors aren't fully aware of the promising trends yet. Given that, we'd look further into this stock in case it has more traits that could make it multiply in the long term. One more thing, we've spotted 2 warning signs facing Workday that you might find interesting. While Workday isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Japan Firms Exit Tokyo Exchange at Record Pace in Delisting Rush
Japanese companies are leaving the Tokyo Stock Exchange at the fastest pace in over a decade, reflecting a surge in deals and management buyouts as they face more pressure to make better use of their capital. The number of firms that delisted their shares from the TSE or announced plans to do so has reached 59 in the first half, rising from 51 a year earlier and marking the most on record for a comparable period, according to exchange data going back to 2014. If firms continue to exit the TSE at this pace, the figure for 2025 will exceed last year's annual record of 94 companies.
