“The final feature of the great superbubbles has been a sustained narrowing of the market and unique underperformance of speculative stocks, many of which fall as the blue chip market rises. This occurred in 1929, in 2000, and it is occurring now.“
This Q reiterates the point. They beat estimates in the most competitive market, and they announced price increases, so idea that competition is the problem doesnt hold IMO.
The longstanding question remains, what level of subs can be gained in APAC/LATAM at what price point.
Per a thread last week, Nathanson raising the issue that perhaps an ad supported mobile only tier is going to be necessary in EMs in order to get the type of penetration they expect.
Nathanson been for years "is streaming a good business". Like me asking is ecommerce a good business. In general, no! Streaming and ecomm for the median co are shittier businesses than linear tv/B&M retail. The winners are very valuable, because scale trumps inferior economics.
Great note from @darioperkins on challenges of analyzing post covid economy:
"Much of the confusion about the current state of the economy has its origin in people trying to
apply classic business-cycle analysis to COVID-19 macro distortions... But this is not a business cycle"
"Faulty business-cycle analysis has unduly influenced inflation debate, rapid price gains assumed to be a sign of “overheating”. Yet GDP in most of the world is ~ where it was expected to be in the absence of pandemic... two years ago, the main debate was about a liquidity trap"
"In short, investors must be careful not to infer “new secular growth trends” from what might merely be “levels” effects associated with (and largely confined to) the pandemic."
need a name for unicorns with positive operating income
They are very clear in the document that Covid has helped them with rising awareness from both hosts and guests, and that the rental car shortage elevated pricing in the marketplace. Will be interesting to see how they message longer term margins.
this thread makes it pretty clear that housing supply situation has not improved, and thus estimates for HPA for 2022 are likely too low. given the gains of last few years, have to start to think about ramifications given another year of likely double digit HPA. so let's look.
Bill at @calculatedrisk has his detailed look at home prices and affordability. On this index, things are still moderately affordable but getting less so by the day.
Very few CEOs talk the talk on capital allocation like Strauss Zelnick. Preaches opportunistic buybacks only when the stock is at "deep value". Selective M&A that they have not yet messed up. Very consistent messaging. Interesting to go back through the past few years comments.
"We bought back $360 million of stock at an average price of 97. At least today that looks like a smart move. We only do buybacks, when we believe we're executing them at deep value. That is just our opinion, but it is based on our view of the future"
"we opportunistically repurchased 1.26 million shares of our stock during the second quarter for $200 million with an average price of $158.67. This marks the first time in over two years that we repurchased our stock underscoring the deep value that we observed"
Covid was clearly bad for DIS Parks/Studio biz. But I've been thinking lately it was also bad for D+.
As @ballmatthew wrote, D+ was going to be a binding agent between the company and consumers, helping to drive the non streaming biz by establishing a direct relationship.
The reality of the pandemic is that D+/streaming role as a business unto itself was forced on the Company. Rather than being allowed to grow steadily and become integrated across the divisions, D+ became the focal point. Yes, the DTC biz is much larger today, but at what cost?
To date, we haven't seen the types of cross asset collaborations I would've hoped for. Obviously the pandemic has a lot to do with that! But management also dramatically upped the sub targets and investor focus is now squarely on the size and shape of DTC, not its halo effect.