Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets
Tag: AI
High product usage rates combined with high switching costs equal pricing power. Google Photos - the popular photo & video management platform for Android and iOS - has pricing power to spare. Google ran the playbook perfectly. Years ago Google promised users of its Photos service that the service would remain free for life so … Continue reading 28 Billion New Photos & Videos Each Week Means Google Photos Has Pricing Power
Amazon (tkr: AMZN) is one of four firms working to reshape the healthcare landscape along with Walmart (tkr: WMT), Alphabet (tkr: GOOG) and Apple (tkr: AAPL). Amazon has established positions in key strategic areas of the healthcare market including healthcare services and insurance (via its Haven joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan) as … Continue reading Amazon Is Reshaping Healthcare
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 … Continue reading New IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Understands the Value of Spin-Offs
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
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
We rank three FinTech companies - FactSet, IHS Markit and SS&C Technologies - from a relative risk standpoint. We also outline key long-term trends that will impact the capital markets and companies that sell into this segment of the Financial Services industry. A few long-term trends will impact the capital markets and participant organizations. These … Continue reading 3 FinTech Names & Long-Term Trends
Regardless of who wins November's general election we expect higher corporate income tax rates in 2021 or more likely 2022. Today's 21% U.S. corporate tax rate will likely climb back to 35% or higher should Trump win re-election or to 40-45% should Biden win the Presidency. We expect companies to control expenses as a result … Continue reading Higher Corporate Income Tax Rates and Advanced Automation Are Coming
Facebook is using AI to turn 2D photos into 3D photos. Fun for consumers. The question is to what degree can Facebook's convolutional neural net-powered technology be used to disrupt legacy geospatial/GIS offerings from companies such as Verisk (tkr: VRSK), ESRI (private), Trimble (tkr: TRMB), Garmin (tkr: GRMN), Pitney Bowes (tkr: PBI) and many others? … Continue reading Facebook Is Using AI to Turn 2D Photos into 3D Images
AI is a war of attrition. Last year we crowned Google the "AI King." Google Assistant is the best of the AI-powered assistants in our view and Microsoft's Cortana was never a serious competitor. Last week Microsoft announced that the updated version of Cortana for Windows 10 will focus on Microsoft's productivity applications and that … Continue reading Microsoft Cortana. No Longer A Player In The Home.
Alphabet shed some light on its cloud operations - "Google Cloud" - tonight after the close. It got us thinking about the three cloud platform providers that matter: AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft) and GCP (Google/Alphabet). Click HERE to access a revenue breakdown for each of the big three. Our revenue comparison is not apples-to-apples. Microsoft … Continue reading Not All Clouds Are Created Equal
