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> They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. Can large tech companies reasonably run their business competitively without keeping th

> They wasted billions buying their stock to keep the share price high. Can large tech companies reasonably run their business competitively without keeping their share price high? Not that it’s sustainable in the long term… As a non westerner, my (perhaps ignorant) understanding is that Western economies are in a rat race where large companies continuously have to meet or exceed investor “expectations”. This incentivizes the short term outcomes while leaving these companies less competitive or successful in the long term. And a recent example is Amazon. Amazon capped salaries and gave their corporate heads compensation that weighs heavily on stock. If the stock continues massive growth YoY, the party continues. Once the music started to slow down, suddenly Amazon bumped compensation ranges because their compensation simply wasn’t competitive with the market.

jlmorton 5y ago
I'm not sure Amazon is a great example of a company that focused on short-term results to the detriment of long-term results. Amazon famously spent a couple decades re-investing every penny of cash flow into future products and services.
aurizon 5y ago
I view share price purchases as an act of desperation caused by a reduction of the competitive position of the company vis-à-vis their competition - in this case the rise of AMD coupled with ARM based silicon eating up processor share, now we see Apple has gone ARM. AMD did well, no matter what Intel did. They tried bribery via chip-set linkage, and still AMD made progress. Intel changed to a protected interface(socket) yet maintained their basic x86 architecture. Intel practiced monopolistic patterns vis that cited chip set linkage. As their market price declined they tried buying 'paper' (their shares with zero value after destruction of the redeemed 'paper' = burning cash on a fire) so the apparent yield declined less and may have gone up?

jlmorton 5y ago

I'm not sure Amazon is a great example of a company that focused on short-term results to the detriment of long-term results. Amazon famously spent a couple decades re-investing every penny of cash flow into future products and services.

aurizon 5y ago

I view share price purchases as an act of desperation caused by a reduction of the competitive position of the company vis-à-vis their competition - in this case the rise of AMD coupled with ARM based silicon eating up processor share, now we see Apple has gone ARM. AMD did well, no matter what Intel did. They tried bribery via chip-set linkage, and still AMD made progress. Intel changed to a protected interface(socket) yet maintained their basic x86 architecture. Intel practiced monopolistic patterns vis that cited chip set linkage. As their market price declined they tried buying 'paper' (their shares with zero value after destruction of the redeemed 'paper' = burning cash on a fire) so the apparent yield declined less and may have gone up?