Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets
Month: April 2020
"We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security.." These were the words of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Wednesday night and made an impact on us more so than any other management commentary this earnings season. Nadella's … Continue reading Two Years of Digital Transformation in Two Months
If we are being honest companies have near zero visibility into the short-term despite sell-side analysts' attempts to generate positive spin. We use last night's Google earnings call as an example. Google's Ad business deteriorated over the course of the March quarter from a year-over-year growth position to a "mid-teens" percentage Y-O-Y decline by the … Continue reading If We Are Being Honest
Headcount reductions continue. We have updated our list of recent Tech company layoffs. Access the Excel version HERE. The PDF version may be accessed HERE. It is difficult to imagine a snap economic recovery as companies continue to shed talented people. The mythical "V" recovery would require all components of the global economy to recover … Continue reading Tech Layoffs & The Mythical “V” Recovery
We outline CEO changes that have occurred over the past few weeks Click here for the PDF presentation. https://youtu.be/R7K2KPRtTmU
There is insight to be gleaned from recent earnings conference calls. We have highlighted a few from this past week (below). Many companies assume a deterioration in business from Q1 to Q2 and a potential recovery beginning in Q3. A majority of companies did not provide formal Q2 nor calendar 2020 guidance (access our list … Continue reading It Is A Mistake To “Look Through” Q2 and 2020 Earnings
We were recently critical of companies that decided to completely withdraw their financial outlook given the economic uncertainty that has resulted from the ongoing COVID virus. The good news is that a number of companies are providing financial outlooks, albeit they are taking a conservative approach (which is entirely logical from our perspective). We reviewed … Continue reading Earnings Summary: A Rational Approach To “Guidance”
Earnings calls thus far have struck a similar tone XYZ CEO: "Let me begin by saying our thoughts are with..."XYZ CEO: "We are grateful for the opportunity to delight our customers during this difficult time. We got off to a good start in the months of January and February as we experienced healthy year-over-year growth. … Continue reading Earnings Season Thus Far: Lack of Color & Backbone
Where is the market support coming from? Lipper data (below) shows net fund outflows for Equity funds. Therefore perhaps a sector rotation into Technology funds is providing support for Technology names. We have yet to find fundamental data that would support a bullish near-to-intermediate-term outlook for Technology names, with the exception being the leading streaming … Continue reading Stick With Quality Companies
Square's (tkr: SQ) Cash App appears to be winning the mind share battle against Venmo, the peer-to-peer ("P2P") payments platform owned by PayPal (tkr: PYPL). We ran a Google Trends analysis on search terms "Cash App" and "Venmo" for two time periods - the past 12 months and the past 30 days - for Google … Continue reading Is Square’s Cash App Winning The P2P War?
Congress will vote on a $484 Billion stimulus plan later this week which includes $250 Billion for the Paycheck Protection Program ("PPP") and $60 Billion for the SBA's Disaster Relief Fund. Congress and the Trump administration are racing to approve this stimulus package. The speed to execute this stimulus is driven by the fact that … Continue reading Expect More SMB Failures Despite Latest $310B SBA Relief
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