How many employees do the big tech companies have? These three giants have roughly the same number: Microsoft (221 000), Apple (161 000) and Google (183 000). Most of those are office-based knowledge workers.

Are they all working hard? Probably not. When Elon Musk bought Twitter it had 7 500 employees and he chopped that down to 1 300. The service, now known as X, still works as well.

Amazon is in a different league, with 1 521 000 employees at last count. They have a lot of low-level workers who staff their distribution centres and drive their delivery vehicles.

Meta Platforms is another interesting case. They have about 67 500 full-time employees today, down sharply from 86 500 people in 2022. Mark Zuckerberg impressed the market by cutting costs and jacking up operating margins.

Finally, Nvidia, a company worth $2.35 trillion, has only 29 600 employees. That's a remarkable achievement, but keep in mind that they outsource their chip manufacturing.

We still have many clients that own Naspers and Prosus locally, so we pay close attention to the Tencent numbers every quarter because it's still their dominant asset.

Our friends at App Economy Insights have done a great job summarising Tencent's last quarter in the image below. Revenues beat expectations with sales growth of 6% thanks to a solid advertising beat.

As you can see, this is an incredibly profitable business, operating in fast-growing areas of the connected economy which usually ticks all our boxes. Sadly it's a Chinese business stuck in a very tough regulatory environment which we do not approve of.

We advise Naspers/Prosus shareholders to keep their shares. There is still a lot of value unlock potential. Let's hope new CEO Fabricio Bloisi has some fresh ideas.

Last week, Tesla received the green light to expand its German factory. This is an important approval because it's Tesla's only European production facility. Local councillors from the municipality voted 11-6 to allow the expansion.

Having more capacity is essential for Tesla's continued growth, both for car and battery sales. Tesla's strategy is to double the German site's capacity to 100 gigawatt hours of battery production and one million cars per year, with a plan to build a full railway siding.

Interestingly, around 50 protesters gathered outside the council building to protest the factory's expansion, claiming that making the factory bigger would be bad for the environment. Since February, a handful of protesters have been living in treehouses in the forest, just footsteps away from the Tesla factory, in another attempt to stop the site's expansion.

What do these people do that they can sit around in treehouses for weeks being full-time protestors? The luxury of not being gainfully employed is a side effect of a society that got wealthy from having factories, like Tesla, producing goods in Germany.

The Department of Justice announced the indictment of James and Anton Peraire-Bueno, MIT graduates, for stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency in about 12 seconds. The DOJ described this as a "first-of-its-kind" Ethereum blockchain fraud. Their father, Jaime Peraire, a prominent MIT professor, expressed shock.

According to the indictment, the Peraire-Bueno brothers exploited MEV-boost, software used by most Ethereum validators, by taking advantage of a bug in its code that allowed them to preview block content before official delivery to validators. Starting in December 2022, the brothers studied their victims' trading behaviour and took steps to conceal their identities and the stolen proceeds.

About $3 million was frozen by foreign authorities, but the rest was converted to the DAI crypto token and Bitcoin Cash. They also set up shell companies and used multiple crypto addresses and foreign exchanges to "tumble" their crypto to hide their illicit activities.

The brothers face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, with each charge carrying a potential 20-year sentence if found guilty.

The SEC is also reviewing whether to approve an Ethereum ETF, which could be influenced by this case. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has expressed concerns about the lack of regulation in crypto markets, which poses risks to investors.

I've always been skeptical of crypto. There are full-time hackers who dedicate all their resources to unmasking the people behind crypto wallets with hopes to eventually scam them. One of the many reasons to avoid this thing.

Congratulations to Tacos El Califa de Leon. It became the first Mexican taco stand to get a Michelin star - The smallest restaurant to earn the badge.

TikTok is the 7th most valuable brand in the world. Ahead of Facebook, Deutsche Telekom, and ICBC - The top 100 most valuable brands in 2024.

Asian markets are down across the board this morning, breaking a seven-day winning streak for the MSCI Asia-Pacific index. Hong Kong led the losses, dragged down by Li Auto, with benchmarks also falling in India, Japan, mainland China, and South Korea.

Locally, property developer Balwin reported numbers showing that Gauteng sales have plummeted, while Western Cape continued to climb. The company's full-year profits have halved due to the impact of high interest rates, inflation, and loadshedding, forcing them to suspend their dividend. Elsewhere, poultry giant Astral Foods is responding to the recent surge in canned fish sales by introducing canned chicken as a new product.

US equity futures are positive in pre-market trading. The Rand is at around R18.24 to the US Dollar. Gold and copper traded close to their all-time highs, while wheat prices surged. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index hit its highest level since January 2023 on Monday.

Today, Lowe's, AutoZone, Macy's, and newly listed American Sports will report earnings.

Have a good one.