Beth.technology Posts

Another day, another headline saying Alphabet’s Google and Facebook are being investigated for allegedly breaking privacy laws and engaging in anti-trust behavior. Google GOOG, +0.95% GOOGL, +0.98%  has been the subject of three antitrust investigations conducted by the European Union, resulting in more than $8 billion in fines. Now the company, which controls 31% of global digital ad dollars, will face the U.S. on anti-trust matters. A big question is if governments will be effective, as they may not understand how social-media and internet businesses operate. In April 2018, Congress tried to piece together how Facebook’s FB, +2.74%  platform works. It ended up being a disaster. Anyone who…

Cloud software stocks suffered a reversal that has produced losses of close to 50% from record highs. The story for those stocks hasn’t changed, but the valuations have, and that could be a good thing for investors who know what they own. The biggest risk for investors in cloud stocks isn’t the losses that have pummeled prices over the past two weeks, but rather the big reversal that may scare them away from the sector. It’s painful to watch large declines in stocks, yet nobody wants to miss out on a potential 10-bagger either. When the market rewards, and penalizes,…

MongoDB outperformed the tech sector a few times over the past 12 months, most notably during Q4, when MongoDB managed to trade between $65 and $80. The stock recouped losses by early December, when MongoDB reached new highs at $90 per share. By March, MongoDB had gained more than 50% off its new highs to $152 in March. MongoDB’s Atlas has proven to defy gravity even in the face of AWS launching a competing product called Amazon DocumentDB in January. This sent shares of MongoDB down 15 percent, with a few larger investors exiting based on the news, but the…

The largest bitcoin conference in the world took place last month in San Francisco with many early pioneers discussing why bitcoin has made a good investment for them and why bitcoin investments will do well long-term. You can view highlights from the Bitcoin conference here. Bitcoin buyers fall into two camps (primarily). Those who trade the cryptocurrency and those who “stack Satoshis,” a term for stockpiling on bitcoin as a means of building long-term wealth. Stacking Satoshis may be the most successful tactic due to a few key iterations that bitcoin will go through to ultimately strengthen its price and…

By now, investors know that Lyft’s ride-sharing IPO didn’t reach $100 per share like many of the media talking heads stated it would, and this will likely weigh on Uber’s IPO. Two weeks prior to Lyft’s IPO, I had warned that the risk listed in the prospectus, which warned Lyft may not become profitable, was more than fine print. Ride-sharing companies use investment money to lower the cost of the ride to create demand, which means the ride you take in a Lyft or Uber is not profitable, and will likely never be profitable. Not one analyst rated Lyft as…

Social media companies today are using smoke and mirrors to hide an important key metric. I’m going to pick on Pinterest first because the social media company recently revealed these issues in its S-1 Filing, and meanwhile, Pinterest stock saw a 25% pop on the day of its public debut. To be fair, this 25% IPO pop pales in comparison to Snap’s 135% stock price increase from December lows. My best guess is that investors are hoping for the next Facebook, or perhaps they aren’t reading beyond the financials, which are on page 13 of the prospectus, compared to the…

Towards the end of March, AdWeek broke the news that “Google Mulls Third-Party Ad-Targeting Restrictions.” Criteo’s stock dropped 30% and TradeDesk saw a 15% drop while Alphabet’s stock showed the least impact at 5%. I believe the market did not fully understand the implications of what advertising experts and insiders had leaked to AdWeek. It is my prediction Alphabet will have to let go of roughly $5 billion in quarterly revenue if the company aims to become a leader in artificial intelligence and sensitive data.

Facebook has financial statements that Wall Street dreams are made of. Profit margins are at 40 percent, free cash flow outperforms due to low capex, and annual growth exceeds 20 percent year-over-year. In fact, FB posted 35 percent growth this past year with lots of runway to go. Meanwhile many of its FAANG peers struggle with high capex (Netflix) and diminishing growth (Apple).

To put it simply, Facebook’s cash flow and profit margins are not only some of the best in the S&P 500, but the best in the world. The ad dollar machine has incredible inertia and advertisers simply can’t turn away. If you are looking at the income statements, then you have every reason to go all-in on this company.

Facebook’s earnings call today may be the most anticipated call of Q3. The stock has tumbled since the last quarterly earnings call from a high of $217 in July to a low of $142. Three months ago, Street analysts did not think this was possible – and many still have price targets at $200. I believe bullish financial analysts are distracted by Facebook’s security costs, news feed fatigue and Instagram while underestimating the most important number on Facebook’s earnings call tomorrow –user growth rate. Background on Facebook’s User Growth Trajectory Facebook’s rampant growth from 2004-2017 was due to a viral…

It’s understandable if you missed the headlines that Apple may buy Tesla. That piece of speculative news, like most news about Tesla, has been overshadowed by the PR storm that surrounds the CEO’s behavior rather than based on the technology behind the product. Here’s some background information for those who missed it. Simultaneously with the CEO’s investigation for violation SEC law 10b-5, rumors began to circulate that Apple may buy Tesla. Some of these rumors were started by Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor, while others sourced the VC firm Loup Ventures, and the gossip is still being echoed a month…

Bandwagons are easy to jump on but it can be hard to decide when it’s time to get off, especially considering Spotify stock has famous hedge funds like Soros Fund Management, Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management, and Louis Bacon’s Capital Management holding sizeable stakes. Since its IPO in April, Spotify has seen an $8 billion rally in market value for an all-time high market cap of $34 billion following Q2 earnings. The bull storyline is that Spotify is the leader in streaming music with nearly 40% of market share in 2017 – which is double what Apple Music holds and…

This is a crucial time to point out to investors that my predictions were correct. Last April, I published an in-depth analysis on Seeking Alpha along with predictions for Facebook (FB) stock. The analysis urged readers to ignore post-Cambridge Analytica hype as Facebook’s quarterly earnings would miss as a result of GDPR. Specifically, I stated the culprit would be revenue and data sources outside of the Facebook “family of apps.” However, with this article, I’d like to explore this point even further and explain with granularity why the issues have only begun and what Facebook isn’t telling you (source for Facebook…

Summary: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest growing cloud segment and will continue to be with AI, machine learning and connected cars. Gartner, an authority in tech analysis, placed Oracle in the “niche player quadrant” (not the leader quadrant) for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) May 22. In addition to IaaS, Oracle’s Data as a Service business model will weaken as marketers fail to get proper consent for ad targeting. Cloud infrastructure is hot right now and for good reason. The world increasingly relies on cloud data centers due to server virtualization, smartphones, movies and entertainment, chatbots, office…

Summary: This analysis answers the following questions: Search is a large driver of revenue and doesn’t require data but what other portions of Alphabet’s advertising model will be affected by the GDPR? How much revenue do the higher risk methods currently contribute to earnings? Where is Alphabet most likely to incur GDPR fines? How will non-personalized ads affect earnings and network sites? Alphabet (GOOG) was announced in 2015 as a holding company to help separate Google’s advertising business from the sprawling investments in Fiber internet, cloud computing, smart home products and connected car products. While these new gadgets and the…

Summary: Despite knee jerk volatility, Roku will become a large cap stock in OTT (over-the-top) within 2-5 years. While Pay TV operators continue to bleed subscribers, Roku has the best business model to capitalize on these losses compared to highly fragmented OTT and SVOD competitors. In addition, Roku has maintained competitive vigor as the number one streaming device in the United States while remaining vendor agnostic. Going global will cement this position. Roku (ROKU) stock prices have fluctuated wildly from being one of the hottest stocks in 2017 with a 400% return from the IPO price of $14 to a…

Next month, when General Data Privacy Regulations (GDPR) take effect, there will be a seismic shift across many technology stocks reflecting a private data drought. Facebook is a half a trillion-dollar profit machine because of a business model dependent on first-party data which will come under scrutiny May 25 under the new GDPR policies. Average revenue per user (ARPU) currently stands at $26.76 compared to $4.08 at IPO. With strict policies for data control, consent, erasure and portability, ARPU and earnings will drop significantly.   Editor’s note: This article was published on Seeking Alpha on April 17th, 2018 Investors should…