Liberty

FT and WSJ reporting on a possible sale of ARM to Nvidia soon (maybe monday): https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-nearing-deal-to-sell-arm-holdings-to-nvidia-for-more-than-40-billion-11599928360 https://www.ft.com/content/6bfe40a5-2426-4743-98cd-6fed9dd01b98 In the low-40-billions, cash and stock.

Considering they paid 32 billion for ARM in 2016, and in 2016 Nvidia had a similar market cap to ARM, I'd say both companies have had pretty different trajectories..

Same question came to my mind :) Here, kind of: https://www.bvp.com/anti-portfolio

Thread from someone who was (is?) at the company:

Tiktok's latest drama: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-bytedance-tiktok-exclusive/exclusive-china-would-rather-see-tiktok-u-s-close-than-a-forced-sale-sources-idUKKBN2622KX "China would rather see TikTok U.S. close than a forced sale" ("Chinese officials believe a forced sale would make both ByteDance and China appear weak in the face of pressure from Washington")

New acquisition at Vela: https://www.tecplot.com/2020/09/08/compusense-aquired-by-vela-software/ "34 years 45 employees Clients in 50 countries" h/t @pearnick

Looks like todd:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-10/reliance-said-to-offer-20-billion-stake-in-retail-arm-to-amazon "Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries is offering to sell a roughly $20 billion stake in its retail business to Amazon" ("Reliance is willing to sell as much as a 40% stake in the subsidiary to Amazon")

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200910005248/en/ Expanding partnership with Paypal

New acquisition at TSS in Germany: https://www.totalspecificsolutions.com/about-us/transaction-updates?tid=66 h/t @pearnick

I mean, even on the industrial side, he talks about the lack of growth, and then briefly handwaves away "oh, yeah, they had divestitures there..." and doesn't adjust for (which they got good prices for, btw) ::) And then he compares against other "peers" like DHR, FTV, AME, and I don't think he looks at them ex-M&A (could be misreading, it's not entirely clear, iirc), but Roper's industrial segment hasn't had any M&A in forever. Anyway, lots of stuff like that that makes no sense and is just trying to fit a narrative... Like he calls them "worst in class" but then they rank like 5-7 out twenty in that hand-picked peer group (which is all pretty different businesses with different models and end markets and tradeoffs). Even the peer group valuation stuff.. Here's a draft of what I wrote that will be published in my newsletter friday:

That's why FCF is not the only thing that you should monitor, but over long periods, it's a good marker. I've had time to read Tusa's report in more detail since. It's pretty bad, full of bad thinking and ridiculous things. Can you share his report? Sorry, can't. Some excerpts have been posted in this thread: Let's just saw that part of the 'peer group" to which he compares Roper's software assets includes Microsoft, Adobe and Salesforce...

That's why FCF is not the only thing that you should monitor, but over long periods, it's a good marker. I've had time to read Tusa's report in more detail since. It's pretty bad, full of bad thinking and ridiculous things.

Here's some of my thoughts on ROP and how to think about some of the metrics: https://libertyrpf.substack.com/p/14-my-thoughts-on-roper-how-ms-flight

I think GDPR has actually entrenched the big players, because it's a lot more onerous for smaller competitors or new entrants to comply. I think Apple isn't going to damage FB and Google much with privacy/security initiatives. IDFA changes in iOS 14 will mostly affect only a small part of FB's business.

Apple touting CC security is utterly ludicrous given that the app store a lot of fraudulent charges in SE Asia and I have been a victim of this even though I don't use any apple products and detest their walled garden model. They are one of the few online stores here that doesn't require a OTP and apparently is an easy target for the fraudsters. Apple and security seem like a complete oxymoron to me even though I am not a security freak. If you are serous about security, you run OpenBSD or Kali Linux. Paying with Apple pay, which uses tokens, is much more secure than what most Americans do, which is swipe cards or give them to waiters who go in the back and come back for them to sign a piece of paper. This is probably what the ad was about there. Android is so full of malware and security issues, in good part because it's extremely fragmented and large portions of the ecosystem are still running many versions behind or can't even get patches, and each manufacturer puts its own, often crap software on top of Android (even if you trust Google, do you trust Samsung? etc). It's much easier to crack the average Android phone (which can mean getting at banking data or CC data) than the average iPhone. The only reason why don't hear as much about it is because Apple is held to a completely different standard. We hear a lot more about every fake 'gate' scandal for Apple than we even heard about Samsung's exploding phones. OS X/MacOS has generally been a pretty secure OS, in good part because of its UNIX roots and because Apple takes security seriously. Windows has had a horrible security track record historically, and its tendency to support every legacy thing forever and the high heterogeneity of the ecosystem has pros and cons, but one of the cons is that the attack surface for bugs and or malware is much higher.

Outsource everything except the brand. Good deal if you can get it, I guess ;D

Writeup on Uber: https://mbi-deepdives.com/deep-dive-on-uber/

Apple is much much better on privacy and security than its competitors. Much better. It's both a bigger focus, and a strategy benefit of not being primarily in the advertisement business.

I've recently joined and gave it a try and so far I'm impressed. Gotta use it some more to form an opinion, and I had a few bits of feedback to them about the UI (especially how dates are formatted)..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/04/pentagon-reaffirms-microsofts-jedi-cloud-win-despite-procurement-mistake/

Recent (august 24) interview with Ackman, hour-long:

Hour-long interview with Ackman from August 24:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub

What % of retail is Robinhood? And what's the source for these numbers and what do they consider "retail"? Thanks