$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