If one had to summarize the “new economy”, which supposedly this time is different than the last time the US had a “new economy”, in just one chart, it would be the following one which lists the 10 biggest “unicorns”, or startups worth more than $1 billion, a list headed by Uber (which last week reported its latest record valuation of $51 billion, up from$17 billion exactly one year ago), and continuing with names which are more a marketing gimmick than an actual business model.
A few quick observations: the top 10 highest valued companies have a combined private valuation of $156 billion, on just about $4 billion in revenues and employ a whopping 19.5 thousand people.
In other words, the universe’s combined historical Price/Sales ratio is 39x and each employee is worth about $8,000,000.
Here’s hoping to the absolutely astronomical growth that these privately priced to perfection companies will need in order to justify their ridiculous valuations… just as the Fed prepares to hike rates and lead to what many know, but won’t admit, will be a recession in a few years (if one hasn’t started already).
Source: Economist
