An incomplete list of things that one may encounter along the way if one plans on owning a great consumer company over the long-term - 5 to 10+ years
(1/x)
Spiking CAC that makes near term unit economics/transactions appear far less attractive
Rapidly decelerating growth rates that make high market penetrations appear near impossible
Perception of a soon to be high market penetration due to high trial usage/churn despite a current low # of users/customers
A completely unjustifiable equity price based on traditional and non-traditional valuation techniques that will challenge the notion of holding for the long term
A CFO and/or other executive changes leading to the notion of ‘why would so and so depart if the upside was still so attractive’
A quarterly miss that produces a peak to trough correction in the share price of 40%+
Your original financial model breaking/losing relevance as the business evolves to something else
Insiders selling in size at prices that are attractive to you as a buyer
Data/credit card panels capturing a definite slowdown in the business ahead of earnings
An attractive, highly justifiable valuation that will be terribly difficult to pull the trigger on due to a chorus of doubts from the sell side and fear of being able to acquire the shares at an even lower price tomorrow
(eom)
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Most of big tech isn't pushing as hard as Meta for real efficiency gains and a faster pace of innovation as of yet. Arguably, PayPal is one that is and given all the changes it’s undergoing, now is the perfect time for the company to upgrade some of the metrics it reports. $PYPL
It's time to break out core consumer check-out services from other services. The overarching goal should be to share separate results for branded check-out services and Braintree (BT) with a high level of clarity - revenue and operating profit pre-shared corporate overhead.
There would be some nuance and assumptions required to break out the business units results but it’s worth the effort. Giving a clearer picture of how the underlying units are performing - especially BT - can only lead to better outcomes for shareholders.
The current tech wreck & discussion on profitability, SBC etc. reminded me of a situation in the aftermath of the 2000 bubble burst where a portfolio company did something fairly radical w/ its comp plan in order to incentivize senior management to right size operations. (1/few)
The company was profitable but under-earning due to excessive overhead and the funding of money losing businesses whose prospects were generally questionable.
Earnings from the core business exceeded reported earnings and post bubble shareholders were not supportive of underwriting suboptimal uses of capital.
The IPO was priced at $15 not long ago & now the shares are at $4. There's a promising business or brand and the balance sheet is in good shape. The company has a low burn or maybe even makes some money but no one seems to care in this market. #SMidOrphans (1/x)
There's an increasingly large class of broken IPO SMID orphans. The speed at which companies have joined this club recently could give any CEO or board whiplash but they would do well to learn a few things as quickly as possible...for everyone's sake.
These thoughts are very incomplete as there's too much to cover, so I'll highlight just a few key issues that the senior teams of orphaned IPOs should try and get in tune with.
Once again judged the annual @BinghamtonSOM stock picking contest with @VD718 and a few others. Last year the winning pitch was a short recommendation of $CHGG which turned out to be spot on.
This year I thought I’d share the finalists picks upfront. The top three teams recommended as follows: short $CALM, long $CROX & long $AXON.
The work and logic flow from all three groups was fairly sound - presenters were largely freshman & sophomores. The team recommending a short on $CALM was deemed to have the winning presentation this year.
Forthcoming tech activism/suggestivism will be centered on getting management teams & boards to be in sync with current economic realities & the new demands of the marketplace. (1/few)
Much of the focus will be on encouraging organizations to alter their trajectories to breakeven/profitability/substantial profitability.
Positively altering trajectories vs current expectations will reward shareholders in both the near and long term with a more competitive organization. This in turn will likely encourage more of the same and a new trend will be born from the current tech wreck.
When I was trying to learn about Netflix in 2003/2004, I was fortunate to spend a fair amount of time with the CFO at the time, Barry McCarthy.
Of course he was terribly smart, super competitive and a rational strategic thinker. My favorite feature was his wicked sense of humor. If you asked him a dumb question about the business then he was sure to let you know that you did.
There weren’t a lot of subscription businesses back then and modeling Netflix properly required a framework that was different than just average subs x monthly subscription price.