Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

Hello Gorillatore. Thanks for reading, and the praise.
I get the data from the game, I don´t know what you mean.
With each RE firm´s profits I try my best guess. There are in-game filters so one can surf between firms quickly. The windowed mode also contributes to mining the data easily to a spreadsheet.
About the faces, I guess they come with the last patch.

I´ve considered not reporting the Improved IS&BS for RE firms this year, and do it in the next, with a view to know our current position regarding our big pile of debt.
Here are the missing files I needed to post for February 1998:
Increase in debt: by 535 million to 2332 million
Increase in net assest: by 238 million to 2986 million
Increase in the operating profit: by 4 million/month to 27 million/month (328 million/year)
A 30% increase in the performance, to 1263$/share, from last year.

Here´s a view of our current, very modest, ownership of the competiton. Here´s the apartment profitability sheets, updated for the period 1997-1998, and 2 new sheets for both new districts in Funk. And last but not least, the save file so anyone can play and speak their minds, as we´re always happy to learn and we´ll consider seriously new possible angles to this now public game.

FEBRUARY 1998 - FEBRUARY 1999

SUBSIDIARIES:
First of all, we have a new subsidiary, so welcome Falcon Industries, focused on the electronic product mega-class. We capitalized it with 350 million of new money (we monetized our assets, once more) starting 1998, so at this moment the corporation is one year old. We used 50 million of that money to fund a new political party. So from now on Falcon Industries will be the political sponsor. With this we have almost finished the first part of our subsidiaries program: creating a new venture to develop each one of the product mega-classes (food, fashion, electronics and health care). We might enter the jewelry area in time.

If future conditions allow, we´ll continue setting up new corporations, but this time aimed at each one of the "mini-classes" and also at each class inside the mega-class. The proper way would be once we make the big four (five) public through an IPO, and after offloading part of our ownership for cash. Otherwise getting a high price for them would be rather difficult as the new set-ups will naturally increase the competition, eating up part of their market share, and profits.

We´ll have to strike a balance between our need to cash in the subsidiaries and our need to build up the nation through increased competition. The same way we refrain from issuing new Tomahawk Corp. shares to pay down debt, because we believe we can get a higher price, so we´ll have to consider timing the IPOs and the new "mini-ventures" as best we can.
Of course, our new ventures could prove to be a disaster and we might lose quite some money, but that´s the way it is. FINANCES:
Inflation has gone from 6,7% to 7,2% and back below 7% again.
The banking cartel has increased the interest rates to 7%, so real rates are about 0%.
In case some people wonder why we talk about monetizing our assets, that in our opinion is the proper way to look at debt. We just use the expresion "take a loan" and so on as it´s the common parlance. But we prefer to be more precise, as to monetize our assets first the bank values our property, and then puts new money, according to the valuation, on our hands for a temporary change in the ownership, plus interests.
At this time these interests are in fact 0%, so the cartel, the only people with the keys to new money, is helping private hands develop the country through asset monetization.
As long as we have a big asset to sell (temporarily) to the banks any venture of any size that makes the slightest profit (above real rates) can be funded through debt and held with ease.
We hope the current situation will last a while longer.

We increased our debt by 423 million and our assets by 476 million. We used our debt to capitalize the new subsidiary, buy land, stocks and to build new offices and apartments in all cities.
The "liquid" land available on our books, as well as the number, location, value etc. of the old and new RE firms, will be reported as soon as we create the Improved IS&BS for RE firms for 1999.
Notice for the first time a technology asset in the balance sheet, albeit small-ish. Our profits from running the RE firms increased by 4 million a month to 31 million a month. Increasing quite steadily.
More than 50% of it goes to pay down our debt. The stock price has decreased YoY for the first time. As we have increased both our net assets and profits we believe it will be a small bump on the road and that it will re-enter its natural path, upwards. We still don´t consider issuing any new shares yet. You can take a peek at our current holdings below. Still quite modest. We like to see sales in their reports and the ones held show just that. The exception are Samurai Trinity and Ideas Hotbed which are centered on stock investments and are held as cash equivalents.
Overall, all public companies are still overvalued and we don´t want to stack too many shares on our books.

REAL STATE:
You can see the city views below for a quick appraisal. We have held supply high as our plan mandates. Started building offices in Funk downtown (two small) and new buildings in the center and periphery of our core lots in the other cities. For a detailed view we´ll supply soon the Improved IS&BS for RE firms as promised. As for now we can provide the apartment profitability sheets, which we have merged in two. And we have a winner in Lynden (apartment 30) that has already covered costs in a record time of 4,33 years. The apartments in Lambs Grove come with one year delay, but we have another candidate (building 42) that will probably show a similar profitability. ELECTION YEAR:
So, too good to believe but we have a candidate running for Mayor in Lambs Grove. We intend to spend the 70 million from our party budget campaigning there and we believe we´ll be able to make Howard Konar (we found him a new job already!) our man in the City Hall. As you remember we wanted to lobby the Mayor there so we can clean up the messy net of supermarkets on the CBD.
We´ll also have a chance to take Funk if the other parties overspend spreading their cash campaigning in all cities. We´ll see. Thanks for reading.

Finally, the report on our RE firms. We have split it in two as it was becoming too big.
Lambs Grove and Lynden (rich cities) Glen Fork and Funk (not so well-to-do cities) And also I wanted to add a review on the riskiness of our current debt. For that I have created a simple sheet:
At the top you have the variables (inputs) and where you can locate the numbers (i.e. B.S means Balance sheet, report that I publish every year).
Below you find the outputs:
1- How our debt would look like if we´d sell now all our saleable assets
2- A projection for the end of this year. As you can see, our debt remains quite manageable.

Edit: added the save file. Version 5.1.33 (previous version to current one)

FEBRUARY 1999 - FEBRUARY 2000

FINANCES:
After 10 years of easy financing, the banking cartel might have decided already it´s time to reap the fruits of their fellow´s labor: The chairman of the central bank has been replaced, with a view to increase the interests received for their buying of assets.
We don´t get financing directly from the CB, but through the commercial bank of Sylvania, our main investor. The loans we get have no maturity and are subject to floating rates, so the whole of it will get influenced by this increase in money rates. We decided (feb 1999) to be bold and monetize 1 billion of our assets, with a view to expand our business, mainly by capitalizing further our private firms.
As we still find a high enough level of inflation and there´s plenty of money around (most corporations have big cash reserves) we think our sale was justified. Altough, we´ll be in the lookout for further changes: now we know the trend is reversing.

At the end of the year we find the fluctuations on our IS&BS as follows:
Increase in net profits by 3 million (still quite steady).
Increase in net assets by 431 million (notice the increase in the value of our stocks, due to placing most of our new loan there).
Increase in debt by 819 million. SUBSIDIARIES
No new subsidiaries this year. We Increased their available cash by 200 million to 500 million each and 2 billion total (for the record).

STOCK MARKET
We´ve been watching how some public companies have increased their debt. Some of these have used it to grow their business, others to try and get out of the mess they´re in. So, we have invested accordingly a part of our income.
Target strike, one of the automobile manufacturers, is finding itself in a dire situation. The company has many firms running but poorly managed, a big debt for its size and very low cash reserves.
We´ll wait and see how the situation develops as we might find a chance to acquire its assets cheap. The problem is, there´s a lot of money circulating and it might take some time until they break down. We´ve increased further our ownership of Global Link, a growth company focused on selling watches. We believe they will use their income with good judgement, reduce their debt and expand their business without diluting the stock. Our take is at the moment 21% of the total shares. Also, comment that Fusion corp. started issuing new shares (raised 4 million cash by now). They have enough cash for their operations so we believe they´ve planned expanding somewhere. We´ll decide if we shed our stock (34%) by bits in case they expand where we think they shouldn´t. Until now they´ve been a profitable retailer, selling 2nd party merchandise exclusively.

ELECTIONS
We finally got our men in both Lynden and Lambs Grove (rich cities), but the Conservative Party was too strong to be beaten in Funk and Glen Fork.

We´ll try to find some time later to comment a bit about the RE situation and the state of the cities we now govern...

Thanks for reading!

R&D
We have built two new facilities next door to our previous ones in Glen Fork to start researching the jewelry products (our CEO´s expertise) and one to start developing a new car frame. We´re still mainly focused on the automotive industry.

CITIES
In Lynden the previous mayor was too easy with taxes (actually so easy it encouraged the set up of an industrial base). Now we find it has very low cash reserves and pretty soon we´ll find we have to borrow to keep the city functioning. Our first policy then will be to balance the budget by raising taxes at an adequate level to fund all current city infrastructure, without building any extra. Maybe raising corporate taxes will hurt the boom in the food industry, but we have no choice.
Second, we´ll lift up the immigration quota and let the natural forces dictate supply and demand.
Third we´ll relocate public facilities if we see they are servicing empty locations and they presence is needed somewhere.
Fourth we´ll deal with public RE firms: we´ll demolish "redundant" public office space, and far-off apartment buildings (the ones without access to services).
And last, we´ll clean up the CBDs so Tomahawk corp. can take over and develop the area.

In Lambs Grove we´ll do the same but leaving taxes as they are as the city has a billion in cash reserves and a steadier budget.

Once that´s done we´ll keep an eye on the budgets and make minor adjustments until we see a small surplus. As you see we´ll adopt a conservative management approach.
We also believe our corporation will benefit tremendously after the acquisition of the CBD´s land. Quite a bounty....

REAL STATE
We have built overall 9 new apartment buildings and 2 new commercial buildings in the cities, 6 of the apartments forming a small neighborhood in Lambs Grove, East of the Stock Exchange. We did notice a big influx of people coming there so we increased supply.

Also, we have updated our profitability sheets:
We have new buildings that already paid off their set up costs in three of the cities.
In Funk we have the beach resort still in the negative for the third year, overall. 9 sixters is doing much better.
We´ll keep updating it.
Edited: Added savegame.

Still February 2000.

The Mayors gathered all officials from the firms that had to be relocated from around the CBDs and offered them better locations for their stores (all stores, no factories nor farms were involved in the deal). Public office space was scuttled as well as far-off public apartments, and Tomahawk corp. was granted ´carte blanche´ to develop the new open areas.

We decided to give it a try and purchase the land in the two cities we govern without any new loans (meaning we bought the needed land by selling other lots, as we have very limited amounts of cash while in a high inflation environment).
Total new land purchases and sales estimate: 240 million, changing hands between Town Halls.

In Lynden we built new public facilities to increase the appeal of our projected new apartment expansion (to the west), so we´ll be able to improve our revenue there, as low appeal forces renters to demand much lower rents that average, and that was one of the problems we were finding to make them make a decent profit.
Last, we established new agricultural zones in both cities and an industrial zone in Lambs Grove, as well as expand the city core so no more factories come too close to the residential area.

Here´s the city views: Next, we´ll decide if we use a new loan to build new office space and a few extra apartments, as well as increase our stock position in Global Link, or merely our current monthly income plus some cash equivalents sales, as inflation is still high and the new chairman of the CB will probably aim for a 3% real rate (our guess).

Great series, keep it up!

FEBRUARY 2000-2001

So, first things first, we report the four sheets "de rigueur", as every year: Balance sheet, income statement sheet and stock market performance&holdings.
They speak by themselves, showing in numbers the current standing of our corporation, so our comments here, altough provided, are a bit irrelevant.

Inflation went down to about 6% and interest rates up to 8%, so net about 2% RR.

There has been no changes in our R&D department. We´re still focused on the automobile industry (thanks to the CTO´s expertise), the jewelry industry (our own CEO´s expertise) and have one lab trying to keep our advantadge in the cosmetic product class (struggling there, actually). We took a small loan at the beginning of the period to build some office space, but the amount was quite small.
Overall our total debt has decreased a bit. We haven´t started paying it back.
The cracking of the CBDs has proved very profitable indeed, so far. Our net assets have increased by 1 billion due to the increase in value in our land&land income-bearing firms. Our monthly profits have increased abnormally too, to 42 million/month. Once we publish our IS&BS for RE firms we´ll see in detail where the money´s coming from. All this has been reflected in the stock market performance, reaching this year a market cap. of 6.5 billion and a price of 2135$/share. About our stock holdings, notice the sharp increase in our ownership of Global Link. They repaid their debt and are indeed using their revenue to buy back their own shares and to further expand their business. As mentioned before, they focus on selling watches and some jewelry, and have no competitors around. About our private firms, just Claire Iniguez, from Saratoga Mills, has got the ´animal spirits´. The rest still look quite spineless.

In the next post I´ll report the changes in the RE area: profitability, city views, IS&BS for RE firms, and the current state of our debt.