Berkshire Hathaway pays $33 a share for $330 million of new Bending Spoons stock; shares jump 41%
Berkshire Hathaway is buying $330 million of newly issued Bending Spoons stock at $33, below every broker target, to fund more acquisitions. The shares jumped 41% on the day; the model's costs still land on the acquired apps' users and the lenders behind its 2031 loans.
Richard Tang · 3 min read
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is putting another $330 million into Bending Spoons+45.25% — Bending Spoons, up 45.25 percent today (NASDAQ: BSP), the Milan company that buys aging software apps and grows them by cutting teams and raising prices 1. It is paying $33 a share for newly issued stock, below the $38 the shares opened at last week and below every broker target 12.
The market approved within hours: the shares rose 41% to $53.92, their biggest one-day gain since the July 1 listing 3. Berkshire is underwriting a machine: buy the app, cut the team, raise the price, repeat 1.
Berkshire's entry sat below every published price target
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Berkshire's placement price | $33 |
| UBS | $36 |
| Jefferies | $38 |
| JPMorgan | $38 |
| Goldman Sachs | $43 |
| Average target | $44 |
The equity completes a two-week funding stack
The placement, expected to close in the fourth quarter, is earmarked for new acquisitions 1. It completes a stack assembled in a fortnight: on October 2 the company closed $1.25 billion and €395 million of add-ons to its term loans, upsized from their original targets and due in 2031, to pay for Miro$1.79B — Miro, private, latest valuation $1.79B 4.
Miro, the collaborative whiteboard app once valued at $17.5 billion, is being bought at a $1.355 billion enterprise value, a price for the business before counting its cash 56. Its shareholders are rolling $295 million of proceeds back into Bending Spoons stock 5. The placement takes Berkshire to 4%, after $600 million at the July listing 1.
Acquisitions, not the products, supply the growth
The machine needs the money because the products do not grow. Headline revenue rose 126% last quarter 2; organic growth, on Bank of America's count, was 3% 7. The buying so far has been financed with debt, which is why the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column calls Bending Spoons "a debt-funded serial acquirer" whose roll-up "relies on aggressive price hikes" 8.
Debt has outrun annual revenue as the buying accelerated
- Annual revenue
- Year-end debt
Data
| Annual revenue | Year-end debt | |
|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | $0.39B | $0.39B |
| FY2024 | $0.67B | $0.87B |
| FY2025 | $1.31B | $2.67B |
Users and lenders carry the cost
At the machine's edge, the week was blunt. Airtable$1.285B — Airtable, private, latest valuation $1.285B, the spreadsheet-database app bought for $1.28 billion in cash last month, lost "a large part" of its team on October 12, in a post that doubled as a product launch 10.
An Evernote$200M — Evernote, private, latest valuation $200M customer reports his annual plan for the note-taking app moving from $149 to $249, with a 40% discount offered the moment he canceled 11. Venture investors discussing the Miro sale on the 20VC podcast called that the model's core discovery: keep only the customers who stay despite the rise 6.
The share price assumes deals the balance sheet cannot yet fund
Wednesday's close, $53.92, sits almost exactly where Bank of America wrote its August warning that the price already assumed about $18 billion of future acquisitions at returns above the company's own hurdle rate 37. Berkshire's $330 million signals confidence; the $18 billion still has to be financed, out of debt capacity BofA already judged too small 7.
Berkshire entered below every broker target; by the close, the shares sat above all of them 23. The verdict will come from Evernote and Airtable users deciding whether to stay, and from the lenders behind the 2031 maturities 4.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
