Spekulatius

If you like ATT, you also have to ask yourself, why not buying VZ instead? Both have warts, but VZ much less so. WEB sort of endorsed it. If I make an A-B test in my head, I think VZ is a winner over T. I am not even sure that T is much cheaper than VZ and managment in VZ is better , imo.

Business breakdowns by itself is a great podcast series, but I found the Episode about the Ethereum blockchain particular great and I am generally indifferent to crypto. What I like about this podcast is that it describes actually what can be done with the Ethereum blockchain and why it was the designed the way it is and differences to Bitcoin. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ethereum-into-the-ether-business-breakdowns-ep-09/id1559120677?i=1000522314009

Has anyone ever seen a startup making it’s numbers shown in projections? I guess those that do are the 1000 baggers.

ATT is basically GM before 2008, except they are in a much better industry, so they die much slower. I also think that HBO would be much better off on their own $T should have spun them off to existing shareholder, imo. DISCA has been a very poor performer over the last decade and now putting low end content with premium content together and make it work? I am sceptical.

The chances that GoeVisit has $19M in EBITDA are basically nill. Website states “thousands of Canadian trust GoeVisit”. Now if they have only thousands of users than they won’t make $1M in revenue, much less $19M in EBITDA. Google app rating 3.3*, I don’t even think they have an iOS app at all. That indicates to me that this business is pretty embryonic.

The same can be said about any small company. Almost any small company competes against larger companies. The reason the smaller companies can win is more focus and sometimes better but almost always more adaptable management. In reality a lot of smaller companies compete very effectively against larger companies, if they have a focus and strong management.

There are way better ways to make VC/ Angel investing bets than buying PDH shares. Ericopoly has a good point regarding the options, but that's little solace to shareholders here. In addition, a lot of straight shares are issued too here, unless I am misinterpreting the SEDAR filings.

I said “ ladder attack” tongue in cheek, but I am sure Burry is aware of the reflexivity angle here because option ladders were suspected to drive up the price of many stocks and whatever works on the way up, could work on the way down. I am sure others hedge funds will now consider latching on and perhaps even the WSB crowd who knows Burry from the GME days could latch on to the dark side if this becomes viral. In any case, this could become an interesting chess game.

LOL, ladder attack:

You can’t shut down Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but you could deter institutions or even citizens from owning and using it, via taxes, money laundering laws etc. If you can’t use it, any crypto currency is pretty worthless, imo. It is also true that the marginal cost (which consist of energy and depreciation for crypto mining equipment) is set by the price of the cryptocurrency , so the more valuable crypto becomes, the higher the consumption of resources. I think we would have a similar problem if we were on gold standard without inflation. We would have to dig for more and more gold if the economy expands to create enough currency to facilitate trade and have a enough gold as A store value (outside of the productive economy). From a macro economic perspective, it is quite interesting to see how this is going to play out. Maybe there is a play here in Iceland real estate or some utilities in countries with an abundance of cheap energy, besides the obvious AMD and NVDA.

I would buy BAH before I would buy TYL. BAH is more federal government consulting , I think @Inofeisone gave some interesting insight that they can leverage this to get more business from states and cities. BAH is a consulting business model that in some way looks similar like my cherished defense contractor stocks, but perhaps with better organic growth prospects. BAH stock has seen some multiple expansion but it is not close to being valued like TYL (for good reasons) but if they can compete against them in the future, this could become a different story. It is a great business as the business relationships last often many decades. That reminds me to do more work on BAH (I put it in the maybe pile a while ago.)

^ The problem appears to be that retail isn’t playing SPAC’s any more, and that’s where the deal pops came from. So far, none of the deals I have been watching has popped and some went immediately below $10. This is probably because the tech bubble seems to be in the process of slowly deflating and the valuation of the SPAC deals still has to reflect this reality, it seems. I do watch some pre-deal SPAC’s from the Koshla venture series. I used to just track KVSA but just noticed that there is a whole family out there - KVSA, KVSB, KVSC all without deals so far. I think they are worth keeping an eye on, because the structure is a bit better - they have no warrants and some of the founder shares only come into play when the stock goes way higher than $10 ($30 if I remember). Koshla ventures is a very well regarded player in venture capital, so they should have decent deal flow. The lack of warrants alone is worth ~$30c yet these trade around $10 and sometimes below. I believe the good reputation of the sponsor and better structure allows them to get more attractive deals negotiated, it it’s all theory so far as they haven’t negotiated anything yet and taking their time. I think those are better than 95% of all the other Pre-deal SPAC’s out there, it what do I know. I don’t have a position, but if they break $10, I might buy some.

There is also a sweet and short one with CNBC: I always enjoy his commentary. He doesn’t have a fixed view and keeps an open mind.

The biohazard dude on Twitter likes the SPAC too. What is the upside when a deal is announced an the SPAC doesn’t pop? it seems to me that in this situation, there is only downside left once the deal closes. If the market were exited about this, the stock would have popped already. I think the valuation is madness? - 65M revenues for a $17B valuation This is basically a contract manufacturing business with some royalty kickers. if you want o buy a public business that is good at these things, just buy Lonza (they do high value manufacturing mostly for pharmaceuticals). Talking about TAM’s makes no sense with this business ,because there are no network effects, just economy of scale. There is no winner takes all dynamic - the cheapest bidder wins. I think the longs hope for newsflow but I doubt anyone want to hold this this post deal. 6 month ago, this could have worked well, but now, I have my doubts.

So observations: Alibaba’s take rate is small relative to Amazons. their revenues from marketplaces are 0.47T revenue with GMV 7.3T is ~6.4%. Amazon ‘s take rate for 3rd party on their website runs around 20%. Now Alibaba does various things including Marketplaces (Tao Bao, Tmall), logistic services, payments (now de-consolidated), websites , advertisements and even B&M retail sales as well as delivery. I think that one order/ vendor may use several services and they are all added up (in terms of GMV) rather than counted as one. This would explain the lower take rate of the market places and the relatively high total GMV because the services are counted independently while for Amazon they stack resulting in a lower GMV but a higher margin. This does make sense because I don’t think all vendors in Tao Bao mall use Alibaba’s logistic service for example (they just use the storefront etc). Otherwise it is hard to explain why Amazon has more than 3 times the 3rd party sellers take rate compared to Alibaba. Anyways, the concern with Alibaba’s earnings was the lower profitability for the current quarter as well as going forward. The news about a foreign Ali cloud customer jumping ship and impacting revenue growth didn’t sound great either.

Ok, yes, this makes sense.

How does someone who has been actively on this site for a while get value from a Phil Town course? That stuff seems pretty basic, at least based on my first look.

The problem I see for FTDR is that the old way of doing business is very profitable for FTDR, but less beneficial for the customer. Is there really a win win where both the customer experience get's better and the business stays just as profitable but will be growing more (because of a better value proposition for customers). I don't think it's going to be easy and if they try to shake up the business, the road could be rough.

^ I assumed the lower provisioning was caused by a better than expected loan losses due to stimulus checks. I don’t know if they arbitrarily juiced their results. Frankly, I don’t care, if what they are doing is good for society or of it is fintech or a grubby payday lender. If they can lend at ~100% APR (which is what their income statement and balance sheet suggests) and lever it just 2:1 and keep loan losses to a manageable 30-50% (?) this business prints money like no other. I do think that there is absolutely no reason to sell a business it’s economics like this, so I assume some sort of regression is going to happen and the folks selling the business know this. I think I just keep watching this post deal and see how the business goes. Perhaps I take a flyer on the warrants if they are cheap enough.

Doge is a hustle and Elon is a hustler.

Trades at $5.29 pre market. A used car would have held it's value better than LOTZ.

It is easier to create new cryptos than it is to create new elements. If you are a celebrity (Kardishan) or an organization (think NFL) or a company (Tesla) to name some examples, is there really a downside to create to create your own crypto currency and promote the hell out of it? The technical barriers to entry are nil. Dodge coin has proven to get to $100B in market value. That’s larger than the entire US airline industry in terms of market cap.

This is a pretty good Twitter thread on the “True Lending rule” from the Trump administration that made life easier for subprime lenders that operate across many states: Repealing this rule could impose some additional regularity cost for lenders like OppFi, but it is not clear how much that would affect the bottom line. OppFi tried to sell itself as Fintech, but it really is a deep subprime lender. The profitability and growth has been mind boggling - they basically 10x their size and equity (equity growth from $9M to $99M) just through retained profits. I don’t care how you call this, if it is that profitable, it is probably the best business I have seen ever. Of course there is the catch, if something is too good to be true, then it typically is. I suspect as this grows in size, someone takes a close look at it and then the problems start. It was mentioned in the podcasts is that their Glassdoor reviews (4.4*) and BBB rating are pretty good. The Glassdoor reviews look a bit generic and it is clear that management or HR is looking very closely at them. The high number of reviews in Glassdoor (~190 reviews for ~500 employees) suggests that management is managing Glassdoor postings too. I searched in the Apple App Store and didn’t find and App for AppFi or Apploans. Strange. Fascinating to see how this plays out.

So, I listened to Bill Brewster’s business brew podcast and he has an episode where he interviews Jared Kaplan from OppFi. OppFi is going public via a merger with the FGNA SPAC this year. Bill and Jared talks a lot of about OppFi business, which caters to subprime customers and why it is a good value proposition for them. Anyhow, I looked at OppFi’s pre IPO numbers and almost can’t believe how profitable it is, to the point where the numbers are absurd: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001818502/000119312521135035/d135342dprer14a.htm#tx135342_22 The numbers are almost absurd. Their revenue is about equal to the size of their balance sheet, which means APR is around 100%. ROE is about 200%. they bumped up their equity from $37M to almost $100M through earnings last year. last year was probably a best better than average due to stimulus preventing defaults on their extremely low credit worthy customers but even befor thwt, the numbers look quite Impressive. Quite frankly, what I don’t understand is why they are going public at all (you don’t really need to raise external capital with this profitability) and Joe the customers don’t default en masse with the type of loans. This is not really addressed in the podcast, but the filing shows the profitability so unless this is all fake or not repeatable, it is one of the best business I have ever seen. The FGNA SPAC is launched by Kyle Cerminara and Larry Swets (which I understand some have mixed feelings about), but are well known in fintwit for their BTN involvement #lumbergang. (No position yet).

John Hampton posted something interesting on Twitter. Type in the Google window: “ How to buy “ and see what comes up. Here is mine: