1/12 $AMZN 4Q'21 Update

Market was in such a dour mood before the earnings that even an okay-ish quarter and guidance drove the stock +15% AH.

For the first time, international sales declined in any quarter YoY 😯

I know, I know tough comp. Here's my notes.
2/12 First, here's the breakdown of sales and operating income by NA, international, and AWS. Also, a breakdown by segment. For the first time, advertising revenue was disclosed.
3/12 2020 was extraordinary for $AMZN, so 2-yr/3-yr CAGR is more reflective of underlying health.

Q4: AMZN 2-yr CAGR is still at ~25%. AWS is accelerating growth. Ads 2-yr CAGR ~47%. Hard to complain.

AWS incremental operating margin mid-30s. But a wild swing for AMZN, ex-AWS.
4/12 Gain from Rivian investment was $11.8 Bn which inflated EPS numbers, but obviously one-off.

Prime price increases from $119 to $139.

"we think it's a much more valuable program today than it was in 2020, let alone 2018."
5/12 A little more than $4 Bn costs from inflationary pressure and productivity losses. Negative $1 Bn impact from fixed cost leverage in fulfilment.

"for most of 2020 and the first half of 2021 fulfillment network was running at close to 100% capacity"
6/12 AWS' run-rate now $71 Bn and growth is accelerating!

$1 Bn EBIT tailwind for AWS because of changes in useful life. While it seems to be lower quality earnings, AMZN thinks they had to work hard to to achieve it. It wasn't just an arbitrary change.
7/12 "AWS has 84 availability zones in 26 regions around the world right now. And just in terms of the forward-looking road map, we have announced to launch 24 more zones in 8 more regions, and those will be here in the next couple of years."
8/12 Ads was +33% in 4Q'21 (+66% in 4Q'20, but it had Prime Day in there)

"the sponsored products and brands, they make up the majority of ad revenue today"

3P units was 56%
9/12 Capex: ~40% is infrastructure (mostly AWS, so expect infra capex to continue)

~30% fulfillment capacity (mostly warehouses, capex will moderate here and likely to grow at tandem with biz)

~25% transportation (mostly AMZL, expect additional investment)
10/12 Outlook: 1Q'22 topline growth +3-8%. Expect tough comp to persist till 1H'22 and it gets easier in the latter half of the year.
11/12 Valuation: I was doing some quick sanity check on valuation. If you assume ~15x EV/EBIT terminal multiple, this is what you need to *believe* to generate 10% IRR.

NOT my forecast. The # of people who can forecast AMZN in 2030 is likely zero.
12/12 I'll cover $TRUP next week.

All my twitter threads are here: mbi-deepdives.com/twitter-thread…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Mostly Borrowed Ideas

Mostly Borrowed Ideas Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @borrowed_ideas

Feb 5
1/11 Thoughts on last week

It was supposed to be a pretty difficult week since I "lost" (unrealized) a bunch of money following earnings last week. But in reality, I felt very engrossed, and energized.

It was a textbook reminder why I actively invest in the first place.
2/11 Why do I actively invest?

Investing is my lens to understand the world. With my money on the line, the stakes are as high as it can possibly go.
3/11 Investing allows and forces me to study the past, observe the present, and ruminate the future of the companies that are shaping the world.
Read 11 tweets
Feb 3
1/17 $SPOT 4Q'21 Update

If someone gave me the call transcript and press release a day before and asked me how do you think the market would react, I would probably say +5%?

In reality, stock went down 22% AH, then recovered to -10%. Investing is hard.

Let's dig in.
2/17 So what spooked the market initially? It's the soft Q1 MAU guidance. After adding 64 mn, 74 mn, and 61 mn MAU in the last 3 yrs, SPOT guided only 12 mn MAU add in 1Q'22. On a run-rate basis, that's material deceleration of MAU add.

Market HATES unprofitable decel narrative.
3/17 Why do I think market's initial reaction was misguided?

"we do not anticipate any material changes in the trajectory for net growth in MAUs and subs in 2022 when compared to the net growth we experienced in 2021."
Read 18 tweets
Feb 3
1/19 $META 4Q'21 Earnings

"although the direction is clear, our path ahead is not yet perfectly defined."

The word "headwind" or "headwinds" appeared 30 times on this call. Market listened. Stock is -23% AH.
2/19 It's the first time Meta has broken down topline into two segments: Family of Apps (FoA), and Reality Labs (FRL).

DAU +4%, MAU +5%
In Q4, # of ad impression +13% YoY; price per ad +6% YoY
For 2021, this was +10% and +24% respectively.
3/19 turns out Meta's core biz is even more profitable (~49% EBIT margin) than Google Services biz (~39% EBIT margin)

Unfortunately, there's no "other bets" in Meta. It's a Hail Mary for what the company wants it to be.
Read 21 tweets
Feb 2
1/12 Thread: $GOOG 4Q'21 Update

Another bonkers quarter for GOOG. Yawn, right?

For the first time in a quarter, revenue from YouTube ads exceeded $NFLX revenue. 15 years ago, GOOG bought YouTube for $1.65 Bn. The king of AVOD *grew* its topline by ~9 Bn in 2021.
2/12 Incremental operating margin went down from the ~50s to ~mid-30s, primarily driven by increasing losses in Cloud and corporate overhead costs. Long-term potential margins for the overall biz remain compelling once cloud reaches scale.
3/12 On YouTube shorts: "We just hit 5 trillion all-time views and have over 15 billion views each day globally."

"Last year, the number of YouTube channels that made at least $10,000 revenue was up more than 40% year-over-year"
Read 12 tweets
Jan 29
1/7 $AAPL generated ~$102 Bn FCF in last 12 months. Even though it handily outperformed the index in almost all timeframes, it still trades at ~3.8% NTM FCF yield, arguably not an egregious valuation level.

In 2012-16, it was regularly trading at ~10% NTM FCF yield. Why?
2/7 One rationale was AAPL was expected to be disrupted. Its hardware margin was always assumed to be unsustainable.

Even Clayton Christensen feared all doom and gloom for AAPL. The consensus seemed to be "good enough" Androids will prove to be existential threat for iPhone.
3/7 It's fun to go back and see what people were worried about a decade ago. Some wondered whether Android is already "good enough" in 2012 which would erode iPhone's dominance.

Today, teens dread the "green text" in Android.
Read 7 tweets
Jan 29
1/8 Some weekly thoughts on the market.

Why are so many people focused on calling the bottom?

In bear markets, markets feel like a sinkhole. You put your hard earned money to your portfolio, and it just keeps disappearing. Not fun.
2/8 Since markets start to feel like a hot stove, we don't want to touch it anymore. We want to wait when things cool down. So we keep wondering whether things have indeed cooled down.

I really doubt, however, whether any bottoming in the market ever becomes "obvious".
3/8 During Covid, market bottomed in March 23, 2020. @SuperMugatu wrote this piece on May 08, 2020 titled "Devil’s Advocate — The Bull Case"

Almost one and half month after market bottomed last time, being bullish was contrarian.

medium.com/@dan_60967/dev…
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

:(