They’re not the first PBC to go public. Coursera, Warby Parker, and United Therapeutics (not affiliated with UHC) have all followed the same path. Not sure if we’ve had enough time to see this tension play out, public benefit corps are only a decade and a half old and most of these companies IPOd in 2020-2021, but there’s probably some evidence one way or the other
reply> the expectations to maximize shareholder returns
replyThere is no legal requirement to do so. So they can simply set the expectation upfront that they won't do it.
And they are doing so. The S1 says they may never pay dividends (read: they are completely against it), shareholders get no say in how the company is run whatsoever and the company essentially answers to its own friends.
replyThe only way to get return from ANT is to sell to someone else at a higher price, but they aren't promising that of course.
A no-dividends policy is nothing new.
replyAmazon, Tesla, Netflix, and Palo Alto Networks have never paid a dividend at any point in their histories as publicly traded companies.
Advanced Micro Devices hasn't paid one since 1995, Adobe since 2005.
True, although Amazon and Netflix at least have done large stock buybacks, which are theoretically equivalent except for tax incidence. So they have returned capital to investors. I didn't check for the others, maybe they did too.
replyThey can co-exist, maybe only if times are good I suppose. It's not too different from Apple here:
replyhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook...
The PBC mission is directly aligned. The "public" that they benefit are defined as their shareholders.
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