TEK2day

Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets

    Month: October 2020

    • FinTech Companies and Their Website Traffic

      The world’s most popular Websites are: 1.) Google.com; 2.) YouTube.com; 3.) Facebook.com and 4.) Amazon.com. We also took a snapshot of Website traffic for eight leading FinTech companies. We found this data interesting, but be careful about reading too much into it. Many of these companies operate multiple Android and iOS apps which are the…

    • New IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Understands the Value of Spin-Offs

      IBM plans to spin off the Managed Infrastructure Services business within its Global Tech Services (“GTS”) segment (approximately $19B TTM revenue through June 2020). Doing so will provide more air time to the acquired RedHat OpenShift (IBM’s “Hybrid Cloud” strategy) and cognitive computing businesses. Post-spin, the growth in these businesses will make a greater revenue…

    • Poor Executive Management Must Be Held Accountable

      The airlines knowingly placed themselves between a rock and a hard place when they decided to gorge on cheap debt for the purpose of funding share buyback plans designed to boost executive compensation. The lack of financial wiggle room is of their own doing. It’s time for the airlines to restructure, to shrink capacity to…

    • Institutional Investors Forgot They Have A Voice. PLUS – Big Tech Regulation.

      It is amazing what institutional investors – especially large holders – put up with. Do Portfolio Managers communicate with CEOs any longer? PMs used to speak with management teams to provide feedback around capital allocation decisions, financial disclosures and more. My sense is that less of this interaction occurs today. Below we cover a few…

    • A Nation in Decline: Total Federal Debt Is 136% of GDP

      U.S. policymakers have increasingly utilized debt to fund various spending initiatives without a thought as to the consequences (reminiscent of the last days of the Roman Empire). U.S. reserve currency status and endless monetary expansion have supported this debt addiction. At this rate U.S. reserve currency status is in jeopardy. The chart below depicts total…

    • Narcissist CEOs Drive Risky Corporate Behavior

      CEOs that allow themselves to be ruled by ego and emotion, that need to see their name in news headlines (“Narcissist” CEOs as defined by Stanford Professor Charles O’Reilly), are more likely to take significant risks – including impulsive M&A transactions – at the expense of a thoughtful, long-term operating strategy. Stanford’s O’Reilly has done…

    • Consolidation Will Not Save Asset Managers

      Mass Mutual and Athene made a bid for American Equity Investment Life. Activist Trian took stakes in Invesco and Janus in an effort to build one of the largest Asset Managers. M&A is a quick way to scale AUM, but it does not change the paradigm for legacy Asset Managers. Legacy Asset Managers (and depository…

    • Three High Quality CEOs

      We recently called out several CEOs for putting forth less than optimal efforts. Conversely, here are several long-time, high quality CEOs – two of them founders – of market-leading companies. Tickers mentioned: Clarivate Analytics (tkr: CCC), CoStar Group (tkr: CSGP), SS&C Technologies (tkr: SSNC) Here are three quality CEOs where investors won’t have to worry…