Beta Bytes: Week of October 17th

Oct 15

Snippets of financial news calibrated to science, technology, and engineering companies as well as our client’s interests.

Salesforce Ventures’ first $50 million Impact Fund was launched in 2017 and was so successful that the company has just launched a second project, doubling its initial investment with a new $100 million fund.
They seek to invest not only in promising cloud businesses, but startups with a socially positive mission and areas that the company feels need to be emphasized as a corporate citizen beyond pure business goals, including education and reskilling, climate action, diversity, equity and inclusion.
Salesforce also puts money and personnel toward helping in the communities where it operates, encouraging volunteerism and charitable giving from the top down and modeled across the organization.

Prop 22 is a measure that would overturn a controversial state law that compels app based ride companies to classify drivers as employees.
Using a recently published Cornell University driver pay study in Seattle as a basis, Reuters calculated that each full-time driver would cost the company, on average, an additional $7,700. That includes roughly $4,560 in annual employer-based California and federal payroll taxes and some $3,140 in annual workers’ compensation insurance, which is mandated in California.
The companies say they would need to significantly hike prices to offset at least some of those additional costs, which in turn would likely cause a decrease in consumer demand - but they have also both threatened to exit the California market entirely.

Qualcomm’s chips are already being used in major Telcom companies’ products, such as Apple who just announced the release of their iPhone 12 with 5G capability.
Now Qualcomm plans to roll out Snapdragon 4-series chips for use in 5G smartphones in the $125 to $250 price range.
This will bring its 5G technology to areas that currently have around 3.5 billion smartphone users combined.

Prime Day usually runs in July, but Amazon delayed it this year after it was overwhelmed with demand in the early months of the pandemic and needed time to open up more fulfillment capacity, allowing it to meet additional demand from Prime Day.
Consumers may not have as much time to tune into the sales, as many are dealing with unusual daily routines and the stress of working remotely, remote or hybrid school, possible job loss, a decline in income, or a move to new location as a result of the pandemic.
Returns from Prime Day in October will likely interfere with holiday orders and strain shipping capacity. Package deliverers like UPS, FedEx, and the Postal Service are already experiencing a spike in demand from the pandemic

Market Update: October 19th, 2020