Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): Out & About With @Tesla @VW @VWWare & Other Thoughts

 On the dawn of a new week, we hereby present the following as we look forward to continuing to build upon the key evolving technologies: 

Electric shock of the new How to be the next Tesla A traffic jam of upstarts is vying to follow in Elon Musk’s tyre tracks. Does any stand a chance?

Related   → Read more: Volkswagen will catch up with Tesla The Briefing  By Martin Peers June 2, 2021 Greetings! Activist investor Elliott Management has had remarkable success lately, helping push both AT&T to abandon its disastrous entertainment diversification and Dell to spin off VMware. (Its track record in Twitter, on the other hand, is, well, meh). It will, however, take all of Elliott’s skill to get a return on its investment in Dropbox, first reported today by the Wall Street Journal. As Starboard Value has learned with its so far fruitless pressure campaign against Box—Dropbox’s alter ego in the corporate storage market—there’s no easy solution to Dropbox’s stagnant stock performance. Well before Dropbox went public in 2018, online storage was a commoditized business, particularly in the consumer market that is Dropbox’s strength. Google and Apple both offer loads of storage for next to nothing. It’s not necessarily a sign of poor management that Dropbox’s revenue growth has been gradually dropping, to 12% in the first quarter from 18% a year earlier. And unlike AT&T and Dell, there are no obvious assets to be spun off at Dropbox. Unlike with Twitter, the CEO isn’t out to lunch—or at least moonlighting as the CEO of another public company. CEO Drew Houston has already been cutting costs—he laid off 11% of the staff earlier this year and Dropbox has been buying back stock. It is possible that Elliott could encourage Houston, as it tried with Jack Dorsey at Twitter, to make some changes around the edges to get more users to pay for Dropbox. But ultimately, the only play here is for Dropbox to find a buyer.  That should be doable. Dropbox stock is cheap, trading at five times this year’s expected revenue, which given its growth rate also isn’t surprising. The company throws off lots of cash—$109 million just in the first quarter. That means private equity would be an option. Another would be a tech company looking to build out its cloud services. Elliott may be looking at the price that Salesforce paid for Slack—23 times revenue—and hoping for a similar outcome. That would be a reach. There aren’t too many Marc Benioffs out there in tech land willing to pay silly money to build an empire. A third option is merging Dropbox with Box, which likely wouldn’t yield as good a price as a healthier strategic buyer. But hey, at least coming up with a new name would be easy.