Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets
Month: July 2020
Investors finally may be valuing Amazon as the AI-powered, massively-scaled, market-leading Technology company that it is. We could make the case that AWS and Amazon Prime combined are worth $1.5 trillion (a 20x revenue multiple applied to each). This valuation would imply that the "Retail" operation (ex-Prime), including Whole Foods, Amazon Go, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon … Continue reading Perception Is Everything
A well-reasoned, fundamental-based investment process incorporates company-specific analysis combined with industry trends and macro-economic drivers. This approach helps identify valuation "dislocations" which may be leveraged to the upside or downside. However, fundamentals have never mattered less. Investors' collective attention is glued to Washington with one eye squarely focused on the Fed and the other on … Continue reading Will The Fed Purchase Equity ETFs Next?
Over the past year Moderna (ticker: MRNA) insiders have sold equity worth approximately $292 million as of July 27th 2020. This includes CEO Stéphane Bancel whom has sold equity worth approximately $33 million and Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks whom has sold equity worth approximately $55 million over the same period. MRNA insider sales. Click … Continue reading Moderna Insider Sales Raise Corporate Governance Flags
The pundits chat up gold and silver in the midst of economic uncertainty and trade tensions with China. They are forgetting the Fed's record money printing party. Investors who were concerned about the recent rapid, large scale expansion of the money supply (particularly M1) have had positions in gold and/or silver since early April of … Continue reading Worth Its Weight In Gold?
Amazon is developing a reputation for poor deal etiquette. Specifically (as reported by the WSJ), Amazon is using intelligence gathered by its venture arm during deal due diligence to develop competitive offerings. Microsoft, Google, Walmart, Alibaba, Shopify and others will likely capture a percentage of venture and M&A deal flow that otherwise would have gone … Continue reading Poor Reputations Travel Quickly
Ericsson forecasts a five-fold increase in mobile data traffic from year-end 2019 (approximately 33 Exabytes consumed per month) through 2025 (approximately 164 Exabytes consumed per month). This does not include wireless data traffic. New protocols (5G), new services (AR/VR, streaming, work-from-home, remote medicine), and consumer connected device growth will help drive this trend. Phones today … Continue reading Explosive Mobile Data Traffic Growth & New Use Cases
It is going to take several years for the U.S. economy to recover back to 2019 levels. 2019 is a low bar in our view as that economy - much like the present one - was debt-fueled, deficit-ridden and plagued by artificially low interest rates. These factors in the aggregate have stymied sustainable, real economic … Continue reading Markets Are Poised To Grind Lower
CEOs who scored at the low-end of our Personality Analysis churned at a 46% rate over a two-year period vs. 9% for the peer group. Our CEORater Fintech arm published a CEO Personality Analysis in May 2018 (Access HERE). CEOs who scored at the bottom of that analysis churned at a 46% rate from May … Continue reading Using NLP To Predict CEO Churn
Thus far Tech earnings are playing out as we anticipated. Q2 reports have essentially been in-line. Q3, Q4 and 2021 consensus estimates will likely be revised downward in our view as economic recoveries are not linear. Much like Q1 earnings season, we expect that on the Q2 earnings calls many companies will lean on COVID … Continue reading Tech Is Not Teflon
Rather than differentiate its product from Microsoft Teams, Slack Technologies is using the courts to compensate for its lack of creativity. Admittedly is it not easy to compete with Microsoft. This is especially true when your product is an undifferentiated horizontal offering. Rather than compete in the courts (Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft), … Continue reading Compete On the Playing Field. Not In Court.
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