Inspired by the article below by the Fed, what are some debt-ridden tech companies that most people don’t know of but are central to the economy?<p>Article: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/us-zombie-firms-how-many-and-how-consequential-20210730.html
Not a zombie from a debt perspective, but I’d say Amazon falls into a category where many orgs are stagnant or declining. The headline is always AWS and the Amazon.com, but there are entirely separate organizations producing little value, and it’s been working out because the two juggernauts foot the bill or because debt is (was) cheap.<p>They’re out of ideas and their long term bets require buying up other companies and using the retail and AWS war chest to entrench into “new to them” industries.<p>I don’t see how long the H1B/burn out culture is going to scale in the longer term. People only started staying longer at Amazon because of the increasing stock price (thanks Fed). With that story now ended, I’d no longer bet on them.
Very unlikely to occur in tech because it's not capital intensive. Zombie firms are usually in sectors that require constant capital investment to sustain operations, or those that have gone on a buyout binge. Think about things like airlines, utilities, oil and gas, trucking, and so forth. Real estate is also predisposed to this because they are always levered up to the hilt.
This piece in the FT the other week was very interesting<p><i>Debt monsters in the downturn: with rising rates and sagging economies, we look at the companies flashing warning signals</i><p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e5a807a5-a65f-4885-ab5f-871d545e36a3" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/e5a807a5-a65f-4885-ab5f-871d545e3...</a>