Random FUD incoming...
Just met a Canadian WestJet 737 pilot in Chile who's been motorbiking through South America for months now. Tons of vacay w their MAX fleet grounded. More interesting was his pilot buddy that works for @AirCanada. They have no prior gen 737s.
So ALL of their 737 pilots have been on paid leave for ~10 months now (they won't lay them off bc presumably they'll need them at some point). This has got to be entirely 's bill to foot in the end. FWIW, looks like the MAX is about 10% of their overall fleet.
I asked about when they think they'll return to service. Answer was that consensus thinking in Canada (Air Canada/Westjet) is RTS is at best a summer event, maybe fall. 🤷♂️ All those Feb/Mar deadlines will continue to push out
Good news was that he's having a great time overlanding South America on Boeing's dime (ultimately)
$SOUN has been on quite the tear lately but has anybody actually looked at this thing closely?
They grew revenue 19% y/y in Q323, but that included a 1x rev recc from a contract modification with a Korean customer (Hyundai probably). Absent this, revenue was down -29% y/y in Q3
And $SOUN RPO has been steadily trending down since they came public. And we're supposed to believe this is a growth company? c'mon, be serious
Valuation is at 25x a CY24 revenue estimate that they won't hit. This is silly nonsense.
$SOUN missed on Q4 Revenue ($17.1M vs $17.7M) & EBITDA (-$3.7M vs -$0.6M expected) but introduces a new, even faker "backlog" methodology so they could pump that number, lol ok
I have a loose thesis that aggressive buybacks can, and perhaps will, be the antidote that ails the China internet sector equities. I zero in on $BABA because they've already been putting their $20B+ in annual FCF to work by buying back ~$10B/yr over the last 2 years.
$BABA has been the most aggressive on buybacks, maybe they get more aggressive.
Thread on why I'm adding more to my already large $UCTT position here based on the ~15% pullback this week and a number of positive updates out late last week.
First, $UCTT updated its Target Model last week for the first time in several years:
Two things on this update: 1) it was overdue as $UCTT was already exceeding the top end of the prior Target Model, 2) between higher revenue & margin assumptions in the update, the high end EBIT target was just raised by 167%!
Next, I now believe CY22 consensus numbers for $UCTT to be wildly low! Industry CY22 WFE growth expectations have moved up from HSD to low-mid teens over last few mths. On a calendarized basis, the street now has $LRCX & $AMAT growing top line ~10% & ~12%, respectively, in CY22.
Mini-LED technology is nascent, but growth projections are bonkers. $AAPL continuing to move forward with mLED adoption on schedule is a big deal. They first intro'd mLED in the iPad Pro in April '21.
Couple things from the SEC report out today on $GME trading. First chart here shows buying by "traders identified as having a large short position in GME" in red vs total buying in blue. SEC essentially concluded that because the total buying in blue is so much larger than... 1/5
buying by known shorts (in red) that the impact of short covering was relatively small (their language is below). I think this may be misguided bc 1) the largest spike in red buying coincided very well with the late January initial rip in $GME, and... 2/5
2) because so much of overall trading volume is passive (heard numbers like 80%-90%), the "small fraction" that was short covering may very well have represented a much more meaningful fraction of active market buying. 3/5