Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets
The punchline is that a significant percentage of new money creation over the past year was allocated to non-productive use cases. "Helicopter" money to individuals and non-performing firms are two examples. When capital is deployed for non-productive use (acquiring cryptocurrencies for example), that capital invariably bids up prices causing asset price inflation. Conversely, recipients that … Continue reading Rewarding Non-Productive Activities with New Money Leads to Price Inflation
Time is wasting away. If you are a big fan of a target company's management team, pay them the extra EBITDA multiple turn if that is what is required to execute your deal. I did not say "gift" them the incremental purchase consideration. Make the management earn it. Create a Management Incentive Plan ("MIP"), for … Continue reading Don’t Allow Pride To Scuttle Your M&A Transaction
This is a win for investors and could potentially be a "Big" win if new 10b5-1 regulations are tough. Too frequently CEOs and named executives skirt around insider trading rules by way of 10b5-1 plans - especially the modification of existing 10b5-1 plans. Last year we called out Moderna (MRNA) CEO Stéphane Bancel for this … Continue reading The SEC Plans to Further Regulate 10b5-1 Plans
A one-size fits all approach to WFH policies will not work. CEOs and Executive Management teams must shape WFH policy based on corporate culture. Some companies such as Automattic (WordPress owner) have operated in a 100% remote work environment since their founding (Automattic founded in 2005). Other companies perform better when employees share a physical … Continue reading Work From Home Policy Is A Question of Company Culture
Many investors are aware of disruptive FinTech companies such as Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Betterment, PayPal, Robinhood, Square and Stripe to name a few. These companies are disrupting the legacy FinTech landscape as well as traditional Banks in the pursuit of customers, deposits and payment volume. There is a new disruptive FinTech organization in town … Continue reading Bank & FinTech Consolidation to Continue. Central Banks as Disruptors.
Our view is that the U.S. Government will eventually become the largest customer for all three major cloud platform providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). Without a public-private partnership, the U.S. will fall behind China in the race for all things AI. What are some of the near-term military use cases related to AI? I spoke at … Continue reading Military Applications Will Drive AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Growth for Decades
Instagram is on to APIs. Biden's budget implies stagflation. EV poster child Elon Musk will benefit from Biden's spending plan beginning in 2023. Ransomware attacks continue to expose the fragility of our legacy technology systems. Last month we wrote about API strategy. Instagram (tkr: FB), recently opened its platform via APIs to enable Instagram messages … Continue reading Instagram, Stagflation, EVs and More Cyberattacks
Newly public Endeavor Group (tkr: EDR) is valued at $13 billion. The spin transaction that we recommend is of Endeavor's "Owned Sports Properties" or "OSP", segment which primarily consists of the UFC led by UFC co-founder and president Dana White. That segment grew March Q revenue by 22% Y-O-Y to $284 million (see table below) … Continue reading Endeavor Should Spin-Off The UFC
Below are the most viewed CEOs on our CEORater platform from June 1st 2020 through June 1st 2021. The first table is a downloadable image file with the top 20 CEOs ranked by number of pageviews on CEORater.com. The second table is an interactive version - it provides direct links to the CEORater Profile for … Continue reading Most Viewed CEOs on CEORater
CRM acquired Tableau in August 2019 for $16 billion. Tableau generated approximately $1.5 billion of trailing subscription and support revenue in the fiscal year-ended January 31, 2021. Investors think nothing of applying a 20-30x revenue multiple on any Technology company that is growing. Thus, why wouldn't Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff consider taking advantage of this … Continue reading Salesforce (CRM) Should Spin-Off Tableau
