#41 Apple Hits Record Revenue
US economy grows at fastest pace since 1980s
Bonum Mane (Bo-num-maa-ne) or Good morning as they say in Latin. Welcome to another edition of Business News for Kids (BNFK for short; genius isn’t it? 😅).
Busy business this week 💼
Apple reached record revenues of $123.9 billion for. a. single. quarter. 🤯🤯🤯 read. that. again. 😅 iPhone 13 brought in $71.63 billion, while Services, their 2nd highest revenue generator, contributed $19.5 billion.
The US economy grew faster than it has in decades, growing by 5.7% - a rate not seen since 1984 😱, growing to a cool $23.4 trillion. The World Bank is estimating that the US economy will grow 3.7% this year though.
Microsoft, that follows a July 1 - June 30 financial year rather than the typical Jan-Dec or Apr-Mar one🤷, announced it’s Q2 results for the quarter ending December with revenue growing 20% to $51.7 billion 💰 and operating income rising 24% to $22.2 billion 🤑🤑.
Facebook aka Meta Platforms Inc. threw a surprise by abandoning its much hyped Cryptocurrency project Libra aka Diem, selling it to a financial management company for $200 million😅. Given their Metaverse dreams this doesn’t quite fit in.. but this does - Meta has built a supercomputer it says will be the world’s fastest in 2022 😱.
While things are looking up in age old industries too.. with Toyota retaining it’s title of the biggest car seller in the world with 10.5 million vehicles sold in 2021, also up 10% 🚗🚙🚘.
Wait, what is..
Revenue: In the most basic terms, Revenue is the amount of money a company makes. See the table here for a more complex definition😬.
Operating Income: Revenue minus operating costs i.e. profits. Geek out here.
Financial Year: A Financial year or a Fiscal year is a year through which companies report how much money they make, their profits/losses etc. The financial year can be different to a normal calendar year and start in some companies from April, July (Microsoft) or even October (Apple) 🤪.
Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 (Q = Quarter): A ‘quarter’ like every other quarter is 1/4th but of a Financial Year. Businesses report their performance by each Quarter of the year, divided into 4 sets of 3 months each. For e.g. January, February, March is Q1 for Robinhood, Q3 for Microsoft, but Q4 in India & the UK 🥴.
Woah 😱 Weird 🥴?
No wonder the US economy is booming.. if this is what’s happening👇👇👇. High-end Fashion brand Balenciaga made a $2,000 bag 😱 ‘modelled’ on a $1 Ikea bag 🥴🥴🥴.
Inspiring business people to know 🙏
Meet Ingvar Kamprad, our inspiring business person of the week.
Feodor Ingvar Kamprad was the founder of furniture giant Ikea. He founded IKEA in 1943, and named it by the initials of his name Ingvar Kamprad; his family’s farm, Elmtaryd; and the village he was raised in, Agunnaryd. He started by selling matches, riding on his mother’s bicycle delivering them to people in his neighbourhood. Per Wikipedia “In 2015, Kamprad was listed as the eighth wealthiest person in the world in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated net worth of $58.7 billion”. Born on 30th March 1926, he died in 2018 aged 91. Read his story from a child entrepreneur to a multi-billionaire here.
About BNFK
Knowledge is at the heart of being. To be more, we must know more.
BNFK distills the latest, most interesting, Business News 📰 .. to an emoji filled, ultra informative, and fun Newsletter for Kids. Delivered every Sunday. Previous editions here. Forwarding this? Ask them to hit 👇 & subscribe for FREE.
Stocks, stonks and.. ⚡️
US stock trading app Robinhood saw share price crash 10%+ 📉 after declaring weaker than expected results and a drop in active users 👯 to 17.3 million from 18+ million in the previous quarter. And expected Q1 2022 revenue is likely to drop 35% vs. Q1 2021 numbers. Discuss with mom, dad or a big person at home what makes stock prices go up or down?!
While Indian food delivery company Swiggy raised $700 million 😱 and dashed to a Decacorn valuation (🦄x10) of $10.7 billion 🚀
Q1, Q2, Revenue, Raised more 👉 Wait What Glossary 👈
Mental models.. whaaaat! 🤯
My dad insisted we put this section in here, even though I protested saying its going to be a while before kids need to apply mental models. Mental models are nothing but ways of thinking, you can use as a framework, to take decisions or solve problems. Who knows, they might just be useful!
Hanlon's Razor - Like Occam's Razor that early readers may remember, Hanlon's Razor 🪒 helps us 'cut away' doubts we may have about human behaviour. Specifically, it states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
Basically we may tend to assume, and blame someone else's bad intentions as the explanation of an outcome. For e.g. you may think "I raised my hand but the teacher didn't pick me, seems she doesn't like me"😔. But when seen through Hanlon's lens, the most likely answer was that she simply picked the person she saw first and not because of malice i.e. ill will towards you.🤷Read more in our favourite mental model blog Farnam Street.
Tech, products, toys ++ 🤖
No, that👇 there isn’t a Tesla hatchback. It is infact a sneak peak into Indian ride hailing, turned electric scooter maker, Ola’s foray into cars 😱. It also announced a £100 million investment for a R&D facility in the UK. 🚀
Pro Tip: The magic of learning is in curiosity. Don’t shy away from clicking those hyperlinked texts to read and learn more. We mostly hyperlink to text we have read ourselves to make sure it is safe, but please be aware that comments and ads shown on these pages are beyond our control. We recommend using a kids friendly browser to view the links. Please read all Disclaimers.
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