ARM was publicly traded between 1998 and 2016. In that period its value multiplied about 25x, not counting the premium of the acquisition. Could you elaborate, please? Where do you see the disaster? (Honest question).

Because of Apple. Not to mention their last 40% price increase was because of the Vision fund's nonsense.

Publicly traded companies that rely on income from "licensing" peak in revenue then stagnate because innovation becomes harder to come by.

Apple is a small, although significant, part of ARM's total market share. And that 25x is, as I said, without taking into account the premium. If you do, and there are good arguments to do so, the valuation growth is 35x, in almost 20 years.

Regarding innovation, ARM's been at it since 1990. I'm sure it's not the same now as it was 30 years ago, but we're well past the point where one can reasonably fear it to be an unsustainable business. Last time I heard numbers, they were talking about more than 50 billion devices shipped with ARM IP in them. That is a massive market.

You don't answer my question. Why wouldn't licensing businesses work as publicly traded companies? What's the fundamental difference, specially in an increasingly fabless market, between a company licensing IP to other companies and a company selling productized IP to consumers?

How so? It seems like lots of businesses run successfully on that model for indefinite periods.

If a business is viable as a private company (as ARM certainly is), why wouldn't they be viable as a public company?