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Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
(investors.squarespace.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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What's the benefit of going private for a company that's owned by private equity? Like from a regular standpoint, not being subjected to the constant growth demands of shareholders is good, but I wouldn't think private equity cares about that as long as they're making money
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh man
You don't even want to know about the growth demands in the PE space. You'll be begging for shareholder growth-curve demands in about zero seconds.
There will likely be no benefit for the employees or the users. For the PE firm, the goal is usually to pump up the value and resell or reenter the market, at a massive profit, in a few years. To do that, they'll have to make a lot of unpopular choices, such as layoffs and other cost cutting measures. If they're privately held, those choices have far less impact on the value of the company, since the stock market is heavily swayed by public perception.
Probably going to be what happened to Toys R Us where the company currently has value but private equity will pull out cash and anything not bolted down and load up what remains with extreme amounts of debt before abandoning what remains. The skeleton of a company that remains will be viewed as unviable as it will have large amounts of debt and no cash once the vultures have stripped everything off.
Or if they can't do that, they'll load it up with the debt of its failed businesses and then let it loose to fail.
Sometimes appeasing shareholders isn't good for business.
This would mean it is more likely that employees will see greater benefits. Certainly doesn't guarantee that, but without shareholders to appease, the workers have more leverage.
There are definitely still shareholders, they're just private.
Shareholders were bought out for $44.00 per share.
You're thinking about "investors" which are not the same as "shareholders".
There are no more shareholders. There are no more shades to hold.
What? Private companies can and do sell shares of the company and people who own them are shareholders. The difference is that the shares aren’t traded on public markets.
People who own shares in publicly traded companies are also called investors.