TOYOTA IS INVESTING $500 MILLION IN UBER AT A VALUATION REPORTED AT $72 BILLION
Toyota is investing $500 million in Uber in a bid to accelerate autonomous ride-sharing and this follows Toyota’s $1 billion investment in the ride-sharing app Grab back in June.
According to the Wall Street Journal this investment now values the ride-hailing giant, as one of the world’s most valuable privately held companies, at $72 billion, up $10 billon from estimates made in the first quarter of the year as the company lost $659 million in the same quarter. The deal will see both companies incorporating self-driving technology into vehicles based on Toyota’s Sienna minivan platform by 2021. AMAZON HITS $2,000 PER SHARE FOR THE FIRST TIME
Amazon stock hit a new high recently closing over $2,000 per share for the first time and helping it meet another major milestone to joining Apple with a $1 trillion market valuation. Analysts at Morgan Stanley raised their 12-month price target on Amazon to $2,500 from $1,850. The new target price, which is the highest on Wall Street, shows no signs of the company slowing its growth. Investors are very confident that Amazon’s rapidly growing, increasingly large, high margin revenue streams (advertis- ing, AWS, subscriptions) will drive higher profitability and continue the upward climb for Amazon as stock has more than doubled over the past 12 months and it is not showing any signs of slowing soon.
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SEPTEMBER 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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