The Daily Ten - SmartRent to Merge With Fifth Wall SPAC in $2.2 Billion Deal, Why Wall Street is salivating over the garbage business...
The Daily Ten - SmartRent to Merge With Fifth Wall SPAC in $2.2 Billion Deal, Why Wall Street is salivating over the garbage business...
Thursday, April 22nd, 2021
1. SmartRent to Merge With Fifth Wall SPAC in $2.2 Billion Deal | WSJ
Seller of smart home technology also books a $155 million investment from a group including Blackstone, Lennar
SmartRent.com Inc., which sells smart home-technology systems to apartment-building owners and developers, intends to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that values the property-tech startup at $2.2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
SmartRent, whose technology is in use in about 185,000 apartments in the U.S. and Canada, plans to announce as early as Thursday that it will merge with Fifth Wall Acquisition Corp., which raised about $345 million in an initial public offering earlier this year, the people said. The special-purpose company was sponsored by Fifth Wall, a venture-capital firm that invested in SmartRent last year through one of its funds.
2. Some small businesses could increase PPP loan size under new Senate bill | Fox Business Network
Self-employed, independent contractors and sole proprietors could request a recalculation
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a proposal this week to allow the nation's smallest businesses to receive additional aid through the Paycheck Protection Program, a key coronavirus rescue fund that's poised to expire at the end of May.
Under the bill, introduced Tuesday by Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., thousands of self-employed Americans could qualify for a bigger loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, the massive relief program that provides forgivable loans if businesses maintain payroll.
"Congress must pass this bill as quickly as possible so eligible small businesses have time to secure the aid they need before PPP closes on May 31," Cardin said Tuesday.
3. The Americanization of European Sports Seems Inevitable | WSJ
Plans for a soccer Super League are falling through, but a U.S.-style shakeup would be in the interest of both viewers and top clubs
The audacious plan by Europe’s top soccer clubs to form their own U.S.-style tournament lies in tatters just days after it was launched. But that might not stop some eventual Americanization of the world’s most popular sport.
The six English clubs that had supported the new European Super League pulled out Wednesday, all but sealing its fate. The proposal for a “closed” league inspired by U.S. franchises, featuring weekly face-offs between powerful teams that couldn’t be relegated, would have torpedoed the existing Champions League run by European soccer’s governing body UEFA. It sparked immediate outrage from national leagues, clubs, fans and governments.
4. Why Wall Street is salivating over the garbage business | New York Post
Their business is utter trash — and their stocks could soar as a result.
Garbage truck companies may soon be all the rage — thanks to a new report making the rounds on Wall Street that’s advising investors not to overlook the waste management sector when searching for industries that might benefit from the economic rebound being triggered by coronavirus vaccinations.
“Waste is an underappreciated reopening play,” said the report by Jefferies analyst Hamzah Mazari titled “Q1 Waste Preview: The Best Time to Own Garbage in Recent History.”
5. Automakers show off flying cars in Shanghai — but Warren Buffett-backed BYD stays clear | CNBC
SHANGHAI – Flying cars may have made headlines at this year’s Shanghai Auto Show, but China’s BYD — which is backed by Warren Buffett — is sticking to ground vehicles for now.
This week, Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng debuted its second prototype for a flying vehicle the company claims has already undergone eight years of development. The new model resembles a flying car more than the initial version revealed in Beijing in September, which looked more like a human-carrying drone.
6. First Mideast Bitcoin ETF Aims to Raise More Than $200 Million | Bloomberg
Canada’s largest digital-asset investment fund manager 3iQ Corp. is hoping to raise more than $200 million by listing its Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Dubai, according to its chief executive officer.
The intent of listing on the Nasdaq Dubai exchange is to get trading at all hours around the globe, said CEO Fred Pye. “We trade on the North American market times and Dubai is almost perfectly opposite of what our trading hours are,” he told Bloomberg TV.
3iQ was founded in 2012 and has about $1.5 billion in assets. Its 3iQ Coinshares Bitcoin ETF, which listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange last year, is now set to become the first cryptocurrency fund to go public in the Middle East.
7. Welcome to the YOLO Economy | The New York Times
Burned out and flush with savings, some workers are quitting stable jobs in search of postpandemic adventure.
Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.
Some are abandoning cushy and stable jobs to start a new business, turn a side hustle into a full-time gig or finally work on that screenplay. Others are scoffing at their bosses’ return-to-office mandates and threatening to quit unless they’re allowed to work wherever and whenever they want.
They are emboldened by rising vaccination rates and a recovering job market. Their bank accounts, fattened by a year of stay-at-home savings and soaring asset prices, have increased their risk appetites. And while some of them are just changing jobs, others are stepping off the career treadmill altogether.
8. Satellite Vu’s $5M seed round will fuel the launch of its thermal imaging satellites | TechCrunch
Earth imaging is an increasingly crowded space, but Satellite Vu is taking a different approach by focusing on infrared and heat emissions, which are crucial for industry and climate change monitoring. Fresh from TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield, the company has raised a £3.6M ($5M) seed round and is on its way to launching its first satellite in 2022.
The nuts and bolts of Satellite Vu’s tech and master plan are described in our original profile of the company, but the gist is this: while companies like Planet have made near-real-time views of the Earth’s surface into a thriving business, other niches are relatively unexplored — like thermal imaging.
9. How tiny ‘beach huts’ became the hottest commodity in British real estate | MarketWatch
The cost of renting a beachside cabana is now more expensive than leasing a home in one of London’s most exclusive neighborhoods
The cost of renting a tiny “beach hut” is now more expensive than the average monthly rate for property in Kensington and Chelsea, one of the U.K.’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
The price of purchasing one has jumped because COVID-19 restrictions mean more Brits are holidaying in the U.K., due to uncertainties around traveling abroad, according to new research by hotel booking website Hoo.
10. Black real estate developers face barriers to growth. A $100M fund targeting Philly aims to assist them. | The Philadelphia Inquirer
The collaboration is a response to the challenges faced by Black developers in raising the capital needed to accelerate the growth of their businesses.
A consortium of Black Philadelphia developers is teaming up with a Wall Street emerging-markets veteran to raise investment dollars for real estate projects. It’s a strategy meant to address the yawning wealth and opportunity gap among the city’s developers.
The Collective, as the group is known, has hired former Merrill Lynch executive John Morris’ 17 Asset Management to help raise capital from institutional funds and wealthy private investors seeking to make a positive social impact alongside market-meeting — if not market-beating — financial returns.
The Black Real Estate Impact Fund is to be formally announced at an online event on real estate as an engine for social change on Thursday. The Collective and Morris are seeking to attract $100 million for its initial funding round.
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