How'd that work out in the past with the previous owners?
Long history of not being profitable - 2018 and 2019 feel like more of an anomaly than a trend.
The problem people had understanding them was that they weren’t Facebook or Google. The expectations of a money-printing machine were unrealistic but they had a solid middle-tier business with a large number of solid customers.
https://www.teslarati.com/x-investors-winning-big-elon-musk-...
https://sherwood.news/tech/companies-hoarding-nvidia-gpu-chi...
If anyone makes it work (whatever that means) in software they could buy it?
That's a big if, and I think most people would be pretty skeptical of the possibility of that happening. The fact that outside investors seem to value it at under $10B suggests that's a common enough opinion.
I had an employer taken over by PE and shredded, for the crime of only managing 10% profit margin. Apparently, to some, if 20% of revenue doesn't go into someone's pocket, your business is a corpse. I think the world needs to chuck that attitude in the bin.
Businesses often use an opportunity cost of around 14%, so if the business is earning only 10%, then they are losing 4%.
For example, if you start a risky venture that earns 2%, when you could invest the money safely in bonds at 5%, it doesn't make sense to do the risky venture.
It's not an "attitude", it's maximizing the use of the money.
The US invented flat screen technology. The return on manufacturing didn't fit American business profit levels so they sold the technology off to overseas companies. Tariff's aren't going to fix that. They might artificially boost the return short term, but unless we are going permanent protected markets this sort of low return manufacturing isn't coming back, because of American management style, not 'Canada bad', not 'trade deals bad'. If anything a better cause statement would be to say 'American MBAs bad'.
You need some diversity in a system to remain able to change. Very homogenous populations are more likely to be wiped out in a crisis. Maximal efficiency is not maximal meta-efficiency.
Crush every competitor through regulation?