David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Could you be digitally close, yeah. Yeah, seriously. But it definitely worked for Blue Bottle. And I think Biz Stone was an investor. I don’t know if Evan Williams was. Jack was obviously an investor in Sightglass, a competitor. But it worked. So 2014, they then raise another $25 million and then in 2015, they raise $75 million from Fidelity. And that was like, “wow.” This is like a lot of money from a real public markets investor and then they keep expanding within those cities that I mentioned before. But grow to over 30 stores throughout the country and in Japan and then, a surprise announcement, in the middle of September, on September 14, 2017, it is reported that Nestle comes in and the large conglomerate and buys out a majority stake in the company for a reported $425 million. We don't know the exact number but it’s been pretty widely reported that they paid about $425 million and that was for 68 percent of the company. So they bought out the investors and James and the rest of the management team are keeping their stake. So they keep 32 percent of the company, its own separate board. But all the investors are bought out, so the valuation on the company is $625 million, assuming that the $425 million figure is correct. And here we are. Pretty amazing. I mean, I wonder, the first thing that comes to mind is did the founders keep all their shares, was there a little bit of secondary there where they took money off the table. They had have taken something, right?…

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