With Michael Bloomberg throwing his hat into the ring for the 2020 Democratic nomination, many have speculated as to how Bloomberg would divest his equity stake in his namesake firm were he to win the Presidency. We don't expect Mr. Bloomberg to win the Office of the President nor would a sale necessarily be required … Continue reading Prospective Bloomberg LP Acquirers
Category: Investing
A Case for Walmart to Acquire Oracle
Our rationale as to why Walmart should acquire Oracle is fairly simple. WMT's strategy: Walmart is pushing to become an "omnichannel" (brick & mortar plus online) retailer. Walmart has rolled out various online offerings most of which are the result of acquisitions. Data proliferation drives demand for storage and advanced analytics: Online retail generates reams … Continue reading A Case for Walmart to Acquire Oracle
More RE: CEO Personality & Implications for Stock Prices
As a follow-up to our November 14th article, we ran a quick supplemental analysis on our 2018 Mid Cap Software CEO Analysis. Although our sample set was considerably smaller, we found evidence to partially support the conclusions of Harrison, Thurgood, Boivie and Pfarrer insofar as the top 2 bullets in the below graphic. We plan … Continue reading More RE: CEO Personality & Implications for Stock Prices
High Quality Tech Names – Steady as She Goes
Our CEORater equal-weight mock Technology portfolio leverages various CEORater investing principles and has outperformed by a significant margin. (tickers mentioned: ADBE, AMZN, CSGP, GOOG, MA, MSFT, NOW, SSNC, TWLO, VEEV, VRSK) We kicked off an experiment in Q1 of 2019. This experiment - not to be confused with the CEORater Technology Founder CEO Index - … Continue reading High Quality Tech Names – Steady as She Goes
Leverage Your Unique Attributes
Not all businesses are created equal. Leverage the attributes that make yours unique. It is critical for CEO's and executives in general to understand the attributes that make their respective businesses unique. These unique attributes vary and may include elements of product design, engineering, service delivery, product quality and intellectual property among others. Executives ought … Continue reading Leverage Your Unique Attributes
Cult of CEO Personality & Implications for Stock Prices
We at CEORater have highlighted the importance of CEO personality in terms of its influence on corporate strategy, operational and financial performance and thereby implications for stock prices. Don't take our word for it, there's plenty of published research from various academic institutions including the work of David Larker and Charles O'Reilly, both of Stanford … Continue reading Cult of CEO Personality & Implications for Stock Prices
What if Disney+ Was Valued As A SaaS Company?
Today Disney announced that its new streaming service - Disney+ - crossed the 10 million subscriber mark on Day 1. What might the value of those 10 million new subscribers be if we were to apply a SaaS-like multiple of revenue to the approximate $840 million revenue stream? (read more).
FinTech and Info Services
We look at a few leading FinTech and Information Services companies from a cash flow perspective. (Tickers mentioned: CSGP, FDS, INFO, MSCI, SSNC, VRSK). I reflect on a few names I used to cover during my equity research days. For purposes of this exercise we review SS&C Technologies, Verisk Analytics, IHS Market, FactSet Research Systems, … Continue reading FinTech and Info Services
Polaroid Day & “Polavision” Instant Video
We attended Polaroid Day at MIT Museum this weekend and were reminded of the genius of Edwin Land, co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. "Like visiting a shrine" is how Apple co-founder Steve Jobs described meeting Land. Polaroid's Board did a great disservice to Land and his company. Film Forever Polaroid's original instant camera - 1947's … Continue reading Polaroid Day & “Polavision” Instant Video
Mirosoft’s Project Silica stores ‘Superman’ movie on quartz glass using lasers and machine learning
Microsoft's proof-of-concept "Project Silica" stores Warner Brothers' original Superman movie on a piece of quartz glass measuring 75x75x2 millimeters thick. It is estimated that more than 100 Zettabytes of data will be stored in the cloud by 2023 (from a data volume standpoint one Zettabyte represents as much information as there are grains of sand … Continue reading Mirosoft’s Project Silica stores ‘Superman’ movie on quartz glass using lasers and machine learning