“The IAC Way pairs scrappiness and big ambition with the rational patience of permanent capital.”
Joey Levin is an excellent communicator. Another young CEO in early 40s who can work for shareholders hopefully for decades.
Here are my notes.
2/ “Whatever the relative point of reference: we’re back where we need to be: building”
16% CAGR since 1995 is an awesome track record in the public markets. That’s ~4x of S&P 500 over the same period.
3/ Vimeo
“Vimeo became part of IAC in 2006 through the $26 million acquisition of Connected Ventures, a collection of businesses whose main attraction for IAC was a business called College Humor.”
Incredible story on the early years of Vimeo.
4/ “Nearly every stat we laid out in 2017 to rationalize the strategy shift has doubled and continues to increase”
5/ $ANGI
Fixed price is now ~$250 mn run-rate business (vs $160 mn in 2020). This is probably the most interesting chart on ANGI which shows why the fixed price model is of paramount importance.
See the second image to understand what the chart shows.
6/ ANGI will invest quite heavily on fixed price model.
I like the honesty when Joey said “slightly scary”
Although I’m long, I continue to think ANGI’s success is far from guaranteed, but risk-reward seems lucrative.
7/ I understand and agree with the rationale of focus of one brand: ANGI, but I wonder whether a completely new brand would be a better option here.
If anything, ANGI brand may not have the most positive connotation in the market.
8/ ANGI is going to focus on 2 things: get the job done for the customers, and help the pros to grow their business.
Oisin Hanrahan, ANGI’s new CEO in his 30s, sounds more focused and methodical. It’s a difficult business, so the execution needs to be really top-notch.
9/ ANGI is eyeing on absolute EBITDA dollars, and not trying to protect margins.
10/ ANGI payments is already doing $100 mn run rate. Pros that use payments have much higher retention.
Really strange thing is in many cases Pros are doing customer acquisition for ANGI.
11/ When customers use the app, the data is really mind boggling. They basically do all of their home related jobs via ANGI.
If they can just get this going, oh boy… (again, not an easy business)
12/ Dotdash
It is probably the most exciting business in IAC post-Vimeo spin-off.
“Advertisers now put a premium on high quality, safe content that connects them directly with a contextual user need, and have realized that “promoted content” is neither promoted nor content.”
13/ In post-IDFA world, Dotdash can possibly accelerate its growth.
The setup looks pretty good for them. Expect more investments into content. I endorse.
14/ Care dot com
Care@work is growing 100% YoY. Nothing significant now, but long-term ambition seems much bigger.
15/ “We don't have to buy things at low multiples. We have to buy things where we have a very clear vision for a very large future, and that can exist in any market.”
Preach.
16/ Levin says, Lumber is no $MGM, bro (paraphrasing) 😉
Monthly metrics attached here (second image)
End/ I’ll publish my deep dive on $OTIS Tuesday next week.
From 2016-2018, Etsy added 10.9 mn active buyers to its marketplace.
In the first three months of 2021 (AFTER the pandemic-fueled holiday season), Etsy added 8.8 mn active buyers *QoQ*.
Pre, and post-pandemic Etsy are truly a different marketplace.
2/ While the market seems to be focused on YoY numbers, the underlying strength of the marketplace is actually better understood by QoQ numbers.
We usually don’t look at QoQ numbers, but given we are anything but a normal comp, QoQ numbers can depict an interesting narrative.
3/ So what do I see?
I see 1Q’20 (so, pre-pandemic) was down 18% QoQ whereas 1Q’21 was down 13% QoQ.
Here’s how many active sellers have been added (again, QoQ) in the last 6 quarters:
4Q’19: 107k
1Q’20: 115K
2Q’20: 326K
3Q’20: 541K
4Q’20: 684K
1Q:21: 337K
2/6 Like most things in life, I have come to the conclusion that good marriage is part luck, and part skill.
It's very easy for happy couples to pat them on their back, but let's imagine a situation (it'll help if you don't believe in ideas such as "soul mates").
3/ If there were 10 different parallel universe and you would get married to different person in each of those universe, how many of those marriages do you think would end up in divorce?
If you're very skilled in relationship management, your probability of divorce would be low
By now, it is no surprise that Amazon would post another Amazing quarter, but the growth/margin in international (+60%) and ads/other (+77%) still raised my eyebrows.
Let’s look at segment by segment and some highlights from the call.
2/ But first here’s the breakdown of revenue by segment (both product and geography)
The real surprise was how international operating margin increased from -2.6% in 1Q’20 to +4.1% in 1Q’21. That’s +670 bps margin improvement vs NA’s +260 bps during the same time.
3/ One of my concerns was whether Amazon can mimic its success in NA to international markets as well.
Looking at the operating leverage and the pace of improvement, this looks much better than I anticipated.
Shopify is a special company trying to solve the ABC of commerce on the internet for everyone. And it is run by deeply competent leader(s).
I’m not a shareholder, so it must be true.
Here are my highlights from the latest quarter.
2/ “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.”-Bill Gates
Merchants generated $307B, and its partners made $12B. SHOP’s revenue in 2020 was $2.9B. Like I said, it’s a special company.
3/ Both GMV and revenue more than doubled as broader e-commerce penetration remains elevated.
Subscription Solution +71% YoY
Merchant solution +137% YoY
Gross Payments Volume (GPV) 46% of GMV (vs 42% in 1Q’21)