One thing i don’t understand is why a company always needs growth. Why not just do what they do, solve a problem for the people or companies they serve, and be happy with that. Growth will come, and plateau when it reaches a natural level of saturation. Why keep trying to expand, sell more, increase profit and eventually collapse?
because the shareholders want returns on their investments. if you own stock, you want the value of the stock to go up. that requires more profits.
it’s not really an issue for private companies. a lot of private companies/small business don’t grow as long as they provide adequate cash flow to their owners.
This is the point though… Our world today has an issue, because it has become dependent on fast and unstoppable growth. Companies don’t have to grow fast and big, and they shouldn’t.
One thing i don’t understand is why a company always needs growth.
It doesn’t, but if it’s publicly-owned, shareholders will want a return on their investment, which requires growth, and that creates the pressure to continuously grow.
Because Samsung thinks refrigerators & laundry machines must have tablets & wifi. After that they MUST KEEP GROWING and attach Tesla cars with unopenable doors to their refrigerators & laundry machines. And subscription-based functionality for every basic function.
One thing i don’t understand is why a company always needs growth.
Promises of growth mean the firm is eligible for more lending at a lower interest rate. Growth implies lower risk of default and higher ROI down the line. So people will risk more money with a lower immediate expectation when they assume the investment will pay off big in the future.
This higher rate is lending can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you can borrow cheaper than your competition, you can expand your enterprise faster and move more units sooner. You can consolidate market share and transition towards monopoly status sooner. And that means you can raise your prices with impunity.
Even if you can’t deliver, it’s good to promise growth and then fake it until you make it, in order to access all that cheap borrowed money asap
That’s how you end up with the Corporate Dinosaurs. Overlarge corporate conglomerates with C-levels who have fully lost the plot of what the business is intended to do, with vulture capitalists circling overhead to strip them down for parts as soon as they stumble.
One thing i don’t understand is why a company always needs growth. Why not just do what they do, solve a problem for the people or companies they serve, and be happy with that. Growth will come, and plateau when it reaches a natural level of saturation. Why keep trying to expand, sell more, increase profit and eventually collapse?
because the shareholders want returns on their investments. if you own stock, you want the value of the stock to go up. that requires more profits.
it’s not really an issue for private companies. a lot of private companies/small business don’t grow as long as they provide adequate cash flow to their owners.
it’s a public company issue.
Stocks can also return dividends and the value of a stock is not purely growth or even profit-based.
those companies are typically not in a growth stage. they are established.
Yes. My point was that many publicly traded companies /stocks aren’t growth focused.
Why do we have them then?
because public companies allow for a much larger access to capital and scale of operations.
private companies can’t grow at the same rate as public companies because they are limited to private investors.
public companies anyone can buy the stock. if you want to grow big and fast, you have to go public.
This is the point though… Our world today has an issue, because it has become dependent on fast and unstoppable growth. Companies don’t have to grow fast and big, and they shouldn’t.
It doesn’t, but if it’s publicly-owned, shareholders will want a return on their investment, which requires growth, and that creates the pressure to continuously grow.
Because Samsung thinks refrigerators & laundry machines must have tablets & wifi. After that they MUST KEEP GROWING and attach Tesla cars with unopenable doors to their refrigerators & laundry machines. And subscription-based functionality for every basic function.
Promises of growth mean the firm is eligible for more lending at a lower interest rate. Growth implies lower risk of default and higher ROI down the line. So people will risk more money with a lower immediate expectation when they assume the investment will pay off big in the future.
This higher rate is lending can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you can borrow cheaper than your competition, you can expand your enterprise faster and move more units sooner. You can consolidate market share and transition towards monopoly status sooner. And that means you can raise your prices with impunity.
Even if you can’t deliver, it’s good to promise growth and then fake it until you make it, in order to access all that cheap borrowed money asap
To me it sounds like companies outgrow themselves in the pursuit of growth
That’s how you end up with the Corporate Dinosaurs. Overlarge corporate conglomerates with C-levels who have fully lost the plot of what the business is intended to do, with vulture capitalists circling overhead to strip them down for parts as soon as they stumble.