I have worked selling on Amazon for a long time. it is a bizarre company run by algorithms. A by-product of this is us sellers notice small (and large) detrimental changes in algorithms WAY before Amazon ever does. Their focus is on market share and bottom line. It often seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Common in gargantuan companies. Details don't seem to matter. Often it seems they have no clue what you are talking about. Then two years later when the data has percolated up to the executive summary you might see an un announced fix. Bottom line though. it has basically become a huge flea market where counterfeits and stealing has become rampant. But is mostly invisible to Amazon b/c they get the same cut no matter if a real or fake product is sold. It all looks like positive increase to them on al financial reports. It is a real sh*tshow. One concrete example. A while ago they changed the buy box on the product page to feature the lowest price seller. Previously it had been a host of signals that allowed a seller to get in the buy box. But some genius mba decided that was too complicated. An easy sell internally. "This benefits our customers to always feature the lowest price products!". But externally it caused a HUGE increase in fake products sold since they are often the lowest price products. Duh. So internally this looks great (tons of sales and low prices). Externally it screws all of us. It is insane. Even if someone is smart enough to find the original vendor and buy from them they co-mingle their inventory. So someone buying from me might still get a fake shoddy knockoff product. So it is a double whammy to the seller/producer. The law of unintended consequences is in full effect at Amazon and I am unsure if there is even an answer to the issues. I know you could say this is sour grapes and this is how capitalism works. I know this is what bozo bezos thinks. But when you are down in it you can see there is something inherently not right going on. And I haven't even touched on what they DO on purpose as outlined in your article. It is hard to understand their reasoning.. For sure. Which brings me back to I am unsure if THEY even understand all the ramifications and downstream consequences of even small business decisions.
Just speculation: For ON Semiconductors, there are not a lot of companies with advanced 300mm manufacturing plants in the US today (ON Semi, Intel, Micron, & Texas Instruments). Micron only does memory and Intel is capacity constrained. That leaves 2 companies to do US based manufacturing currently, and both have a strong military chip business. While the administration is pushing to do more chip manufacturing on-shore, it will take years to build a fab. Koch can take advantage of any on-shoring in the mean time.
ON Semiconductors makes high-powered electronics based on Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride. These go into electric cars, USB chargers, power transmission, radio electronics, etc. If Koch wanted to diversify from petroleum that would be a good area to get into.
I have worked selling on Amazon for a long time. it is a bizarre company run by algorithms. A by-product of this is us sellers notice small (and large) detrimental changes in algorithms WAY before Amazon ever does. Their focus is on market share and bottom line. It often seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Common in gargantuan companies. Details don't seem to matter. Often it seems they have no clue what you are talking about. Then two years later when the data has percolated up to the executive summary you might see an un announced fix. Bottom line though. it has basically become a huge flea market where counterfeits and stealing has become rampant. But is mostly invisible to Amazon b/c they get the same cut no matter if a real or fake product is sold. It all looks like positive increase to them on al financial reports. It is a real sh*tshow. One concrete example. A while ago they changed the buy box on the product page to feature the lowest price seller. Previously it had been a host of signals that allowed a seller to get in the buy box. But some genius mba decided that was too complicated. An easy sell internally. "This benefits our customers to always feature the lowest price products!". But externally it caused a HUGE increase in fake products sold since they are often the lowest price products. Duh. So internally this looks great (tons of sales and low prices). Externally it screws all of us. It is insane. Even if someone is smart enough to find the original vendor and buy from them they co-mingle their inventory. So someone buying from me might still get a fake shoddy knockoff product. So it is a double whammy to the seller/producer. The law of unintended consequences is in full effect at Amazon and I am unsure if there is even an answer to the issues. I know you could say this is sour grapes and this is how capitalism works. I know this is what bozo bezos thinks. But when you are down in it you can see there is something inherently not right going on. And I haven't even touched on what they DO on purpose as outlined in your article. It is hard to understand their reasoning.. For sure. Which brings me back to I am unsure if THEY even understand all the ramifications and downstream consequences of even small business decisions.
Great article about Proxy Communications Arbitrage and Naked Short Selling..
https://thefinancialoligarchs.com/2020/03/29/our-financial-oligarchy-emperors-of-a-brave-new-world-2/
Found this article months ago on stocktwits, but I don't think it was fully edited at the time.
Looks to be complete. About a 90 minute read.
Just speculation: For ON Semiconductors, there are not a lot of companies with advanced 300mm manufacturing plants in the US today (ON Semi, Intel, Micron, & Texas Instruments). Micron only does memory and Intel is capacity constrained. That leaves 2 companies to do US based manufacturing currently, and both have a strong military chip business. While the administration is pushing to do more chip manufacturing on-shore, it will take years to build a fab. Koch can take advantage of any on-shoring in the mean time.
ON Semiconductors makes high-powered electronics based on Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride. These go into electric cars, USB chargers, power transmission, radio electronics, etc. If Koch wanted to diversify from petroleum that would be a good area to get into.
WHY is amazon's P/E ratio absurdly high despite such a large market cap? How does the buy-side of wall street tolerate such un real pricing?