In this week's wrapup, we talk about Movie Theatres, the Pandora Papers, Facebook, inflation and finally OYO’s impending IPO.

But if you want to check out the Markets edition this week before you go about reading the wrapup, don't forget to click the link here. It's about the rally in the power sector.

Are Movie Theatres finally going to see some happy days?

Owners of movie theatres have had a torrid time since the pandemic began. Their salvation is coming thanks to certain state governments now. Last week, the Maharashtra government announced they were going to ease covid restrictions and allow movie theatres to reopen. The news acted as a catalyst and stock prices of some movie chains like PVR and Inox sprung back into life.

It also brought a lot of cheer to the miserable exhibition industry which has been absolutely battered financially during the pandemic. So we decided to take a look at the future prospects of offline showbiz and what it might take to make theatres profitable again.

Also, we have a short piece on Reliance’s international ambitions following the one on Movie Theatres, where we explain how and why the company is setting up shop in the Middle East. You can read both these stories in Monday’s newsletter.

Understanding the Pandora Papers

Leaks happen all the time. We have already seen the likes of the Panama papers, Paradise papers, etc, leak some well-guarded secrets of the rich and the powerful.

This week, we got hold of “the Pandora papers ” which appears to be the most significant leak yet, and slightly different from others. So, we try to give some context on what “the Pandora papers ” entail and whether everyone who made the list should be automatically deemed guilty.

Check out the Tuesday newsletter for the full story.

What is happening to Facebook?

“Is Facebook down? I’m not able to login to Facebook!”

On Monday (night time for us in India), the social media giant suffered a massive outage. And for the hours it was down, it was all anybody could talk about.

But the outage wasn’t the only thing giving Facebook a hard time, there appears to be a multitude of factors contributing to the company’s woes. For instance, there is a whistle-blower revealing all of Facebook’s unpleasant secrets to anyone who will listen.

Considering all this, its stock took a beating and dropped by 14% over the past month. In our next story, we take a look at why Facebook is having such a horrid time lately.

Is a viral economics paper going to change our view of inflation forever?

Over the years you probably would have learnt a fair bit about inflation. There are well established economic theories that explain why the price of a commodity rises the way it does. But then one economist has put forth some interesting ideas that say we may have gotten inflation all wrong.

If you find economic theories interesting, you definitely do not want to miss this story.

Revisiting OYO before its IPO

If you’ve travelled around the country, you’ve probably landed up at an OYO-branded property. Now, the hotel aggregator is planning to go public and raise $1.2 billion from you and me.

There’s one problem —it's asking for a lofty valuation of $10–12 billion, despite not eking out a profit to date. And like all passionate financial sleuths, we downloaded the 642 page monstrosity and started digging into OYO’s business model, its revenues, marketing material, and what have you, to get some clues on how its post-pandemic innings is shaping up.

We’ve found some interesting things for you to ponder before OYO asks us for money. Read our explainer now!

That's it from us this week. We will see you on Monday. Until then don't forget to share this article on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Twitter