• @Clbull@lemmy.worldOP
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    3561 year ago

    I work in financial reporting, so I have a decent idea of what makes up things like operating profit/loss and Adjusted EBITDA.

    This does not look good for Reddit and if the company only managed a $90.8m loss after jacking up API costs, nuking virtually every third-party client, backstabbing every power mod, giving alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin an actual user base and selling off user data to Google, then I fully expect things to get a lot worse on the site.

    • @linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      1381 year ago

      I don’t know how in the hell they let it go as wrong as they did. They had all the eyeballs of the internet. They had all the Google search traffic. They had an API that encouraged tons of other people to make applications that link with them to display their content.

      All they had to do was light touch monetization, and slightly stroke the egos of the mods. Every new phone, car, light bulb that ever came out had a place where it could be directed right at the people they want to sell it to. All they had to do was disguise it as an unboxing or a slightly pithy review. Hell, they could have gotten competitors to bid against each other. Chevy could have been on there dissing forward, Ford could have been on their dissing Dodge. They’re so many opportunities there for monetization. They have control over their own algorithm.

      • @Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
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        611 year ago

        You’re totally forgetting the part where from the very top down that company is run by total fuckwads.

        They’ve fucked up at every single step and remained utterly self righteous throughout.

    • Neato
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      1101 year ago

      Seeing a report like that, that they did all these things to raise funds and are still not profitable, is there any reason why anyone would invest? Surely the price can only go down from initial offering, right? Unless the price started very low.

      • @KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        731 year ago

        People who invest are betting that the problems can be solved by a new team or when the company is sold to Facebook.

        • @db2@lemmy.world
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          611 year ago

          Imagine thinking that about a company that isn’t even doing remotely as well as Lycos.

          That’s right, it still exists and unlike reddit it’s profitable.

          • @Clbull@lemmy.worldOP
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            51 year ago

            Lycos isn’t even a particularly bad search engine. It’s just been overshadowed by bigger players like Google, Bing, Baidu, DDG, Yandex, etc. I imagine that their low traffic helps to lower their operating costs a lot.

    • nomad
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      351 year ago

      One would imagine the chief asshole would reduce his 190m payday by 100m to make the balance beautiful before an IPO.

    • @simonced@lemmy.one
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      291 year ago

      I don’t work in financial reporting, and I have no clue what even EBITDA is…

      But even me, I come to the same conclusion!^^

      • @Clbull@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Earnings before interest, taxation, deprecation and amortisation. Interest is classed as other income and taxation is kinda self-explanatory.

        Depreciation is spreading the cost of a fixed asset over the course of its useful life. So let’s say you spend $40,000 on a machine that you expect to keep for 20 years, and scrap for $1,000 at the end of its expected life. You depreciate it on the straight-line basis (meaning it goes down by a fixed amount each financial year, or depreciate it by $1,950 each year. Straight-line isn’t the only form of depreciation. Cars for example go down on a reducing balance basis, meaning their value goes down by a lot more during the early years of their lifespan.

        Amortisation is like depreciation, but for long term loans and intangible assets (things like customer lists, patents, etc.)

        • @ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world
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          81 year ago

          Sorry, I don’t work in economics so I don’t follow this (but it looks like a great analysis for someone who doesn’t understand it!).

          Do all these things mean Reddit IPO is likely to tank (though one never knows)?

          I’d like Spez to pay for all he’s done to 3rd party apps and driving mods (and us users) away, but in the end I’m afraid it’s only going to be regular employees to feel the pinch and Spez just cashing out…

          Also, Reddit has a ton of users and some other article these days said they’re going to sell everything to AI services that are going to train themselves on Reddit for a lot of dollars. Would this be enough to keep them afloat?

        • yeehaw
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          51 year ago

          I’m dumb, how is this different from gross profits?

          • @Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            51 year ago

            If i’m not mistaken (not an accountant but did do the accounts of a tiny company at one point) Interest, Depreciation and Amortization go into the calculation of gross (i.e. before tax) profits, unlike with EBITDA

            • @Clbull@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              EBITDA is used moreso in internal quarterly and monthly management accounts, which don’t follow the exact same structure as an annual report which companies have to publish annually by law and follow GAAP and IFRS guidelinss when preparing.

    • @Ilgaz@lemm.ee
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      -31 year ago

      You know the very credible sounding theory that Musk bought Twitter to drown it. He used Middle Eastern funds etc. and those people owning these gigantic funds had nightmares because Twitter made it so easy to organise mass unrest. I want to believe this crazy sounding theory since other option would be someone having such a capital, know how and influence is that dumb.

      What if this is just a plot to kill Reddit? While crypto bros polluted it a lot, it was very similar with Twitter. Freedom of speech, diversity. It may have bugged people.