Working up a sweat…
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You may not own a Fitbit (yet) but perhaps you might be interested in owning shares of the company instead. The fitness monitoring device, which collects data on how much exercise you do – and don’t do – along with how much sleep you get – and don’t get – is now looking to fiscally beef itself up for some IPO action. The company, started by James Park and Eric Friedman, already pulled down $745 million in revenue and $100 million just last year. Fitbit is looking to raise $478 million to put out 29.85 million shares that might just fetch somewhere between $14 – $16 per share. That ought to give Fitbit a hefty $3.3 billion valuation. Of course, with any IPO, Fitbit has its share of detractors who are eager to point out the oodles of competition from, among others, Apple’s Smartwatch, Samsung and Jawbone. The other issues that have investors skeptical is the tendency of fitness device wearers to ditch the “bits” within months, though I am not pointing any fingers, if only because I don’t have enough. Research found that a third of fitness device wearers ditch them within six months of getting them. Too bad you’ll have to wait until June 17 to find out the exact IPO price. But at least it gives you some time to start saving up.
Can I get a light?
Dollar General sells a lot of useful stuff for dirt cheap and who doesn’t like that. But it was the not so useful stuff that helped the chain boost its sales this quarter. And by “not useful” I am actually referring to a little category dubbed “vice spending.” Yes, sales from tobacco and candy generated a greater portion of sales, in addition to its less vice-ful, or vice-free merchandise. Dollar General managed to rake in $4.92 billion in revenue. While that number just barely missed expectations, Wall Street didn’t seem to mind as it was still an almost 9% increase over last year and and that came with a very satisfactory profit of $253.2 million adding 84 cents per share. Analysts only expected 82 cents per share, by the way. Even though same store sales grew 3.7% as opposed to the 4.1% expected by analysts, Wall Street still wasn’t upset and instead sent the stock up about 5%. Apparently, the stores were still seeing a lot more traffic i.e. customers who were shelling out a lot more cash. And if “vice” spending takes the credit for that, then so be it.
Stick out your tongue and say argh…
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If the cost of your health insurance doesn’t suck enough, then get ready for 2016. Many many many health insurance companies have big expensive plans to ask state regulators to allow them to hike premiums on individual policies, whether they’re on the Obamacare exchange or not. We’re talking double digit increases. Apparently, these companies didn’t anticipate an increase in the amount of people going for doctor’s visits and getting prescriptions filled. Which is kind of weird because, don’t insurance companies pay people big salaries to anticipate such expenses? Just asking. Even though insurance commissioners and regulators can deny insurance companies their proposed rate hikes, it’s likely they’ll get approved for some type of increase, just maybe not as much as the insurers would have liked. So maybe you should start saving up to pay for your health insurance rate hike instead of those Fitbit shares.
Pujonomics. 