Platform economy continues to grow strongly
The world's 100 most valuable platforms have gained $1.6 trillion since the beginning of the year. dollars in value and are now worth a combined 15.5 trillion dollars. Dollars. Most of the increase has come from the Americas, whose platform companies now account for 74 percent. By contrast, Asia's share has crashed from 29 to 22 percent as a result of Chinese regulatory policies. Fearing overly powerful digital companies, the government is now even torpedoing IPOs in the U.S., which has reduced the stock market values of Chinese companies by several hundred billion dollars. Nevertheless, the Chinese platforms should not be underestimated, because in real economic terms China remains on an expansion course. European platforms such as Klarna (Sweden) or Revolut (UK) have increased their valuations significantly in recent financing rounds, but Europe's share of the platform economy has remained modest at 3 percent.
Winners and losers in the first half of the year:
Largest absolute increases in the Top 100 this year:
- Alphabet (USA) $546 bn
- Microsoft (USA) $436 bn
- Facebook (USA) $198,7 bn
- Apple (USA) $183 bn
- Amazon (USA) $172 bn
Largest relative increases in the Top 100 this year:
- Kakao (Südkorea) +95 percent
- Sprout Social (USA) +86 percent
- Naver (Südkorea) +50 percent
- Alphabet (USA) +48 percent
- Weibo (China) +47 percent
Largest absolute losers in the Top 100 this year:
- Pinduoduo (China) -$81 bn
- Ping An (China) -$75 bn
- Alibaba (China) -$63 bn
- JD.com (China) -$61 bn
- KE Holdings (China) -$29 bn
Alibaba has not only lost a lot of stock market value, but its market share in China has also fallen below 50 percent again for the first time. By contrast, JD.com (16.9 percent) and Pinduoduo (13.2 percent) have made strong gains in the past year, supporting the thesis that "winner takes all" is captivating in theory, but quite often not observable in practice.
5 years of Platform-Index
Despite the correction of many stock market values in the spring and the decision of the Chinese to push ahead with the decoupling from America, the global platform economy remains clearly on a growth course. We have been tracking the performance of the platform economy on the stock market for 5 years with the Platform Index. Since its launch in July 2016, the index - calculated using the gross price return method - has gained around 300 percent, clearly outperforming traditional indices and the tech stocks in the Nasdaq Composite.
Based on the Platform Index, The Original Platform Fund was launched on July 1, 2021, which tracks the platform economy as a fund. The composition and performance of the Platform Index now correspond to The Original Platform Fund (R-tranche, after costs).
Venture capital gives China a wide berth
Venture capital for startups, much of which flows into platform models, climbed to a record high of $156 billion in the second quarter. By the middle of the year, investments in young digital companies had already almost reached the overall level of the previous year, shows the new "State of Venture Report" from CD Insights. The main target country for these financial injections remains the U.S., but Europe has increased its share to 19.5 percent, while Asia continues to fall behind. Chinese regulatory policies have not only caused the share prices of major digital companies to plummet, but also lowered the interest of VCs. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, venture capital for China's startups has dropped 18 percent as hopes for attractive IPOs in Hong Kong are much lower than in New York.
With China's seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of IPOs suddenly drying up, international investors' hopes are now turning to other Asian markets such as India and Indonesia. "India's tech IPO boom has been long-awaited - there are some world-class companies in the pipeline," said Udhay Furtado, co-head of Asian equity capital markets at Citigroup. "There is clearly a global appetite . . we're seeing investors from all corners of the world, including some who have not been active in the local Indian market." In India, platforms in particular are also benefiting from the sudden investor attention:
- The delivery platform Zomato successfully placed its shares on the market. The tranche for institutional investors was probably 55 times oversubscribed; the allocation for private investors apparently another 8 times. Zomato shares will be listed in India from July 27.
- Payment platform Paytm has also launched its IPO. The major shareholders are Ant Financial (36%), Berkshire Hathaway and Softbank (18 percent each).
- Indonesia's largest digital group GoTo, formed by the merger of cab service Gojek and trading platform Tokopedia, is also pushing to go public. Apparently, New York is also earmarked as a trading venue.
- Flipkart, the Amazon competitor in India acquired by Walmart, also has IPO plans. The company is currently valued at $38 billion.