Nothing you mentioned is high tech. Car companies haven't innovated anything in decades. Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.
> Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.
As an investor, I'm very reluctant of those typical SV companies who use debt to finance growth. Not for nothing that the investing world is jitterish lately, with an interest-rate increase looming: it's very bad for tech stocks.
I see those as unhealthy or at least very risky (though I have one or two of those in my portfolio: spread)
Spotify is still growing at mad pace; even compared to the COVID/lockdown boom, they are doing well. Spending loads of cash to landgrab the podcast market. Spending loads of cash to move into the audiobook market.
I can understand the grudge some US people feel over a company like Spotify: why not a US-company? Why are they attacking our tech-pride AAPL? Why are they taking hold of our US-media (podcasts) and our entertainment (music)? But Spotify really is what it is: a tech success. Albeit a more typical European one: less debt, slower, more organic growth and less horn-tooting.
I'm as big a fan of the European businesses that succeed as anyone, but the car industry would still have been dragging its feet if Tesla hadn't provided a credible threat to eat most of their market share.
Toyota was way ahead of the curve and selling more EVs and hybrids than Tesla untill something like 2018-2019. Only last few years Tesla is ramping up their output and becoming this "threat".
Toyota is not a European company. But it certainly is "the car industry" and it has moved that industry towards EV for years before Tesla produced anything close to significant numbers.
And when it comes to e.g. self-driving, Volvo is far ahead of Tesla too. When it comes to safety and duress Tesla is far from leader too.
I don't like fanboyism and a lot of "Tesla Praise" is driven by mostly this. They make great cars, I presume far above average (which also includes all the low-end cheap cars). But above all Tesla seems to be a great marketing machine, yet when it comes to building cars, they are not up there yet between the BMWs, Volvo or maybe even Toyota, Nissan or Volkswagen.
