Beware investing in autocracies

Happy Friday. Let's catch you up on the news in the business world.

• The U.S. economy added 136,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate fell even lower, from 3.7% to 3.5% — the lowest level since December 1969.
• E-scooter company Bird raised $275 million in Series D funding at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation.

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1 big thing: Beware investing in autocracies

By: Felix Salmon ? Newsletter: Axios Edge

Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, promised this week that it would set a dividend of at least $75 billion through 2024 — or, that non-government shareholders would receive at least $750 million in dividends for every 1% of the company that they own, from 2020 through 2024.

Why it matters: Because the Saudi royal family controls Aramco, it doesn't need the company to pay any dividends at all. If they need to extract money from Aramco, they can always raise the company's tax rate, or simply expropriate what they need.

• Foreign shareholders could be stuck with worthless shares paying zero dividends.

Between the lines: In many ways the Aramco situation is similar to that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The U.S. government controls the agencies and their profits. Private shareholders, who own 20% of the equity in the companies, have received nothing from them for over a decade.

• If the U.S. government allowed Fannie and Freddie to start paying a dividend, shares would rise. But so long as the government holds the reins, shareholders know that their cashflows can always revert to zero at any time.
• The bull case for Aramco shares is that the Saudi government wants to see a multitrillion-dollar valuation for the company. If that fact ever changes, then it's hard to see foreign shareholders being able to extract much value.

Why you’ll hear about this again: Investing in autocracies is part of modern capitalism. In China, for instance, PayPal is buying Gopay, a local payments provider.

• It's easy to see why PayPal wants exposure to the massive Chinese market — but at the same time the company knows there's always a risk of the government turning against it and nullifying the deal.
• If that happens, PayPal has no real recourse. (It's not going to sue the Chinese government in Chinese courts.)

The bottom line: In countries with robust civil societies, shareholders have significant legally enforceable rights, and those rights underpin the value of their shares. In countries like China and Saudi Arabia, by contrast, foreign shareholders only win insofar as it behooves the local government to keep them happy.

Go deeper: Saudi Aramco revs up IPO sales pitch

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2. The upcoming U.S.-China trade talks are huge

By: Dion Rabouin ? Newsletter: Axios Markets  

Illustration: A?da Amer/Axios

Investors were closely watching today's U.S. nonfarm payroll report, but they will also have an eye out for news on a potentially pivotal meeting between U.S. and Chinese negotiators next week.

What's happening: President Trump downplayed the importance of the meeting on Thursday, telling reporters he has "a lot of options on China. But if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power."

• It's becoming clear the market doesn't see it that way.

Reality check: The U.S. economy continues to grow, but is increasingly struggling to do so. By the day, more economic indicators — from manufacturing to consumer and business sentiment and now the all-important services sector — are turning negative with more industries beginning to follow manufacturing, trade and transportation into outright contractions.

• The trade talks are "the main concern" Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at The Economic Outlook Group, has about the stock market.
• "If once again nothing gets accomplished we could see another substantial fall," he tells Axios.

Where it stands: U.S. equities rebounded on Thursday, as traders continued to buy the dip despite data showing growth in the U.S. services sector badly missed expectations.

• Investors increased bets that the Fed would step in next month with rate cuts to help stabilize the economy.
• However, many are losing faith in the power of monetary policy to help steady the ship, especially in light of the continued struggles in the eurozone and Japan, which have instituted negative interest rates and considerable stimulus.

"Monetary policy is not going to do a damn thing," Baumohl says. "Monetary policy is being held hostage to this trade conflict."

But, but, but: There may be nothing Trump can do to get a meaningful deal with China at this point, as Beijing seems to be participating in negotiations "with the primary intention of staving off further tariff hikes,” Eleanor Olcott, China policy analyst at independent consultancy TS Lombard, told the South China Morning Post.

• “Trump’s actions throughout the trade war, escalating tensions in a wildly unpredictable manner, has made the U.S. an unreliable negotiating partner in the eyes of the Chinese political elite. This, in turn, has relieved pressure on Xi to strike a deal because he is able to convincingly lay the blame for derailment on the U.S."
• “The impeachment proceedings tie Trump’s hands when it comes to his domestic agenda, so his attention will be focused on his foreign policy stance, meaning we are likely entering a period of more volatile trade war news.”

Go deeper: U.S. and China agree to restart trade talks in D.C.

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3. IPO misery

By: Felix Salmon ? Newsletter: Axios Edge

Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

Once upon a time, going public was a fun and joyous thing to do. In the late 1990s, young companies would raise money in an IPO, there would be an enormous first-day pop, everybody would start talking about you, and the combination of new money and free PR would turbocharge your business.

Flash forward: Today, it's hard to find anybody who's happy with way that companies transition from being private to being public. Even the institutional clients of the large investment banks, who can get significant allocations of coveted IPOs, are feeling the pain. Companies like Uber and Peloton have never traded above their IPO price.

Driving the news: Venture capitalists are so unhappy with IPOs that they spent Tuesday at a high-level conference devoted to direct listings — a slightly different way of going public, that doesn't involve raising money.

• But direct listings solve none of the problems of being a public company — not just Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and other bureaucratic overheads, but, more deeply, the feeling that you're constantly trying to do your work with second-guessers peering over your shoulder who could seize the company at any time.
• The highest-profile direct listing to date, Slack, has traded miserably as a public company. Early trades were above $40 per share, but now it's trading at about $23.
• Once you're public, everybody starts to judge you by your share price, over which you have very little control. Private companies can refuse to sell stock at a level lower than they think it's worth, but public companies have no such power to dictate valuations.

Being public is so miserable that people like the Chang family, who founded retailer Forever 21, refused to raise equity capital.

• When they expanded using only debt instead, they found themselves overlevered and were forced this week to file for bankruptcy protection. It's not clear that bankruptcy is worse for them than the specter of quarterly earnings reports and activist shareholders.

The bottom line: In 2012, I wrote a feature for Wired about "why going public sucks," and suggested that maybe the answer might lie in companies staying private instead, orchestrating deals on their own terms to provide liquidity to investors and employees who need it.

• That never really happened. The market leader in terms of matching buyers and sellers of private-company stock was SecondMarket. They ended up being bought by Nasdaq, which obviously has an interest in maximizing the number of IPOs.
• If you have employees and investors who own stock, then they need to be able to sell that stock at some point. So far, no one's come up with a good long-term way of allowing them to (a) sell their equity, while (b) managing to avoid the public markets altogether.

Go deeper ... A seller's market: Lyft is the latest oversubscribed IPO

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See you next week. Until then, let us know what you think in the comments and visit the Axios stream.