Le Studio Weekly
🧮 Numbers of the Week
$715 million-The estimated cost of Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” making it the most expensive TV season ever. The price tag equals 0.15% of the company’s 2021 revenues and approximately one-fifth what New Zealand, where the series was filmed, allocated for its defense budget this year. The eight-episode season premieres Sept. 2.
26%—The crypto winter is real. Funding for digital currency-related startups fell 26% last quarter from the one before, and it’s on pace to fall further still in the current period, according to PitchBook data.
$100 million+—The value of NFTs reported stolen in scams over the past year, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Criminals are increasingly looking to use blockchain-based assets to launder illegally made money.
👥 Venture Capital
Public market declines will allow VCs to invest at more appealing prices
Pandemic effects have begun to ease and investors are looking ahead to inflation pressures. Commodity shocks have resulted in high energy prices globally, and all eyes are on the Fed's response as time goes on. US public market declines starting in September have reached a nadir for the moment, and investors are considering their next steps... We see ample opportunity for managers to deploy capital at attractive entry multiples. There is significant capital available to startups—even as the estimated demand for capital increases at both the early and late stages—and public market performance has begun to stabilize and even improve.
Public companies that were previously VC-backed have had their price-to-sales multiples uniformly sliced, with the median ratio falling from 17.3x to 5.6x over the last year.
Late-stage demand for capital has increased YoY at twice the rate of the early stage. This translates to more opportunities for investors to negotiate with startups at that stage, especially as the ratio of capital demanded to the supply of capital shifts in favor of the investor.
Despite exit market headwinds, VC dealmaking has swung in favor of investors since peaking in founder friendliness in Q1 of this year, according to our VC Dealmaking Indicator. Lower valuations and increased capital demand have been the most investor-friendly conditions over that period.
🏛️ Culture & Trends
Christie’s to Sell Paul G. Allen’s $1 Billion Art Collection
The sale, which is expected to be the biggest in auction history for a private collection, will offer works from the Microsoft co-founder’s impressive cache that ranges from old masters to contemporary giants.
In the art world’s latest eye-popping development, Christie’s auction house announced on Thursday that it would sell the impressive art collection of Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who died in 2018. The trove, which includes masterpieces by Renoir and Roy Lichtenstein, has an estimated valued of more than $1 billion.
The sale of more than 150 artworks spanning 500 years — to take place on an undetermined date in November — would be the largest in auction history. Christie’s said it would dedicate all the proceeds to philanthropy, as Allen directed.
Jasper Johns’s “Small False Start” (1960) is expected to bring at least $50 million. The sale will include more than 150 artworks spanning 500 years.Credit...Jasper Johns/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; via Christie’s
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