writser Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 To some extent I agree with you, but when you say that tombgrt is making an argument on fundamentals, how can you be sure that he really is fundamentally sound and the market is being irrational? How do you determine who is being rational? :) As you surely have noted, a significant section of stocks continually trade at very high valuations at conventional metrics and have done so for years on end. At some point, isn't it worth wondering that maybe the process is not as ironclad as previously thought? "The four most dangerous words in investing are: 'this time it's different.'" Sir John Templeton, legendary investor and philanthropist. Obviously they agree with John and you do apparently not. No point in starting a fight here .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 ^So again, your opinion of whether the analysis is great or not depends on the market price? Cool. All investing is a cash to cash transaction, so the end price always matters. But it doesn't mean that you can't make decisions based on fundamentals rather than other things (momentum, how charts look, etc). I think Tom is making his decisions based on fundamentals, and so trying to say that he's not an investor or whatever is unfair. The market always has the option of being irrational. That goes for shorts as well as long. What if everybody on this board had bought BAC at $7 because of how the fundamentals looked and years later it was at $3? That's the same kind of thing you're saying. We have to be right on process because we control that while we don't control outcomes. To some extent I agree with you, but when you say that tombgrt is making an argument on fundamentals, how can you be sure that he really is fundamentally sound and the market is being irrational? How do you determine who is being rational? :) As you surely have noted, a significant section of stocks continually trade at very high valuations and have done so for years on end. At some point, isn't it worth wondering that maybe the process is not as ironclad as previously thought? As with going long in value investments, you can't be sure until it actually happens, simple as that. The difference with going short/options is that you have a more prominent timing element and the fact that long positions generally increase in value during your holding period. So yeah, you want to be proven right at a certain point. But what the market has done the last 5 years shouldn't make it any more unlikely that my thesis plays out by say 2016-2017. It is what it is and it has led me to believe that those stocks are currently overvalued. If the price action of the last few years didn't occur, I wouldn't be talking about being short CRM anyway. I wouldn't have shorted CRM in 2010-2012 exactly because there was all this room for future expectations and beating of market expectations with stellar growth. CRM is running out of options to surprise investors while the stock keeps going up fiercly despite these changing circumstances. I have a hard time explaining this in English but to me it seems there is simply a shift in the underlying business reality. Internal growth slowing which they have to keep up with expensive acquisitions, debt to be refinanced soon, expenses increasing faster than revenue, bigger players making progress so competition starts to increase, stock compensation to pay employees has reached a point at which say 50% drop in the share price would be catastrophic, ... etc. You could say that they got too big and they used up all tricks to keep fooling the market for long. That is why I am short now and not 2 years ago or some time in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 ^Fair enough then, thanks for explaining your POV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoch01 Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Those of you who are short using options, what kind of expected returns are you estimating? $55 2016 puts are priced at $9.6. Personally I estimate the expected payout on something like that would give you a double. But I don't have confidence in the odds. Of course if you know it's going to $10 in the next few months or something, more power to you. All else equal, I would like to short Salesforce. The only problem is that lots of people appear to be really excited about shorting it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
writser Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 7% of shares outstanding is shorted. That's quite a lot but not even close to SHLD, LULU, HLF, SODA and some other controversial names. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jschembs Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 7% of shares outstanding is shorted. That's quite a lot but not even close to SHLD, LULU, HLF, SODA and some other controversial names. And a lot of that short is hedging those long the two convertibles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 This is just a silly observation but it's interesting to note that analysts are finally asking about growth versus profitability in NetSuite's Q&A. Answers of course stay very vague. But hey, they are making some big deals: $200,000+ each baby! Sorry for all the sarcasm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phaceliacapital Posted April 30, 2014 Share Posted April 30, 2014 http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/High_Tech_Telecoms_Internet/Grow_fast_or_die_slow?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1404 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted May 3, 2014 Share Posted May 3, 2014 http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/05/salesforce-com-inc-crm-cant-grow-without-acquisitions/ Bernstein Research estimates that Salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) will need about $550 million of inorganic revenue in FY2016 to maintain the 30% growth rate. Notably, the company acquired ExactTarget at a price/revenue multiple of 7.6x. Assuming a conservative price/revenue multiple of 6x, the company will have to shell out $3.4 billion on acquisitions. The above article (or research that they pulled) makes the growth problem pretty clear. One of the many reasons why CRM is finally running out of options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted May 3, 2014 Share Posted May 3, 2014 Also: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2186103-salesforce-com-is-vulnerable-to-aggressive-pricing-by-competitors Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Q1 out. Marc wasn't all that euphoric on this earnings call. Maybe he's realizing something? :P Also loved pieces like this: Operator Your next question comes from the line of Pat Walravens with JMP Group. Pat Walravens - JMP Group Two questions. I guess Graham can you tell us what the contribution was from ExactTarget in the quarter? And then Marc now that you have over 14,000 employees, it’s got to be harder to maintain the same culture you had when you were smaller. How are you going about doing that? Marc Benioff - Chairman and CEO Well I’ll take that one first, and also I didn’t answer Heather’s question. First, so why don’t I hit that real quickly. Heather is absolutely right. Our plan is to build a comprehensive marketing cloud and to do that we’ve acquired several different companies recruiting, Radian6, Buddy Media and ExactTarget and we’re integrating those into one integrated application which our customers will have used to comprehensively manage their marketing and you’ll see the evolution of that product at Dreamforce. What I would say is that to really understand where we’re going and how we’re maintaining this culture, you have to look at our product. And I am sure that that must sound a little bit strange but I use Salesforce1 every day and I’m communicating and collaborating with our employees. We have an environment that’s filled with transparency and that transparency has created an environment of trust. And that much communication or what I call over communication is kind of part of what we’re doing all the time. We over communicate, we over align, we’re constantly working on what we call V2MOM which is kind of our internal business process service, which lets us work on our visions, our values, our methods, obstacles and measurements. All of that is built into our application. And then at the core is our philanthropy model. When we first started the company we put 1% of our equity and 1% of our profit and 1% of all of our employees’ time into a 501©(3) charity. As I mentioned in the script, that produces amazing results, like the 700,000 hours of community service and more than 50 million in grants and 20,000 nonprofits. But one thing that’s interesting is in your first day of employment at Salesforce we show you where your desk is, we show you where the kitchen is and then you go out and do something for other people. And you go to one of our soup kitchens here in San Francisco, you go to one of our homeless shelters, you go to one of our hospitals. And that really sets the tone of our culture. And it also provides the referential integrity for our culture. And our culture is different than other technology companies. And when and as we’ve grown our Company, we’ve been able to maintain that culture by starting -- making sure that its philanthropy first and that has really set the values that are so important to us. So when we look at values like trust, values like giving back, like service and then of course we have tremendous execution. That’s also a key value that we do we say we’re going to do. We delivered obviously a great quarter this quarter but this is not our first great quarter. We’ve had a lot of great quarters. And those things are the things that have really cemented our culture and that’s why it continues to be what it is today. So I hope that answers your question. Keith Block - President and Vice Chairman And just on your second question we don’t intend to provide a breakout of the exact target going forward on either the P&L or the balance sheet. Ah what would you expect... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MYDemaray Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Just jumping in this thread here and didn't really read through it so forgive me if I'm rehashing...and full disclosure funds that I manage are short CRM. Going through their financials, one thing that really stood out is that their cash flow is being driven by the growth in negative working capital which is a result of their deferred revenue liability. In other words, they have a growing float from customer funds which they then have to earn out over the next quarter or year (according to the 10-K, this is how they book it). The problem is, once growth in negative working capital stops, so does the cash flow. The caveat here is that Salesforce could easily fire its entire sales team and generate about $2bn annually, less maintenance capex ~$250mn). My guess is that growth would dwindle to about 3-5%, and the company would trade like a no growth business (this is just a mental exercise since it's not going to happen). My point is that the cash flow numbers the company is touting is not a run-rate cash flow, but rather highly dependent on signing up new accounts. Personally, I think I would call it "rationally" valued (by growth investor, not value investor standards) at $35/sh. I don't see this as a terminal bet against the company, more of a tactical trading short and I only got short within the past week. Obviously momentum valuation-based shorts can rip your face off, so I am will monitor it closely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Just jumping in this thread here and didn't really read through it so forgive me if I'm rehashing...and full disclosure funds that I manage are short CRM. Going through their financials, one thing that really stood out is that their cash flow is being driven by the growth in negative working capital which is a result of their deferred revenue liability. In other words, they have a growing float from customer funds which they then have to earn out over the next quarter or year (according to the 10-K, this is how they book it). The problem is, once growth in negative working capital stops, so does the cash flow. The caveat here is that Salesforce could easily fire its entire sales team and generate about $2bn annually, less maintenance capex ~$250mn). My guess is that growth would dwindle to about 3-5%, and the company would trade like a no growth business (this is just a mental exercise since it's not going to happen). My point is that the cash flow numbers the company is touting is not a run-rate cash flow, but rather highly dependent on signing up new accounts. Personally, I think I would call it "rationally" valued (by growth investor, not value investor standards) at $35/sh. I don't see this as a terminal bet against the company, more of a tactical trading short and I only got short within the past week. Obviously momentum valuation-based shorts can rip your face off, so I am will monitor it closely. That is assuming their customer retention rate is (close to) 100%. If you assume a high level of recurring revenue from existing customers, shouldn't we also see the marketing & sales line drop significantly over the years versus revenue? What is happening here? (Well I have an idea and it doesn't match a fair value of $35.. ;D) It sure would be interesting to see what happened to revenues if they quit spending on M&S, or even halved it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MYDemaray Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 That is assuming their customer retention rate is (close to) 100%. If you assume a high level of recurring revenue from existing customers, shouldn't we also see the marketing & sales line drop significantly over the years versus revenue? What is happening here? (Well I have an idea and it doesn't match a fair value of $35.. ;D) It sure would be interesting to see what happened to revenues if they quit spending on M&S, or even halved it! Fair enough. Generally when I short, I like to be as generous with my assumptions as possible and find situations where I can still get comfortable being short....but you're right, customer retention is not 100%, and they are slowly giving the company to the salesforce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ni-co Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 I was on the lookout for some LEAP short ideas just to provide liquidity in a market downturn. CRM fits the bill: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/falling-price-of-shares-creates-risk-at-salesforce/ A company where a falling stock price causes liquidity issues and overall worsens the financials is a great short, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brooklynvestor Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 I recently published on SeekingAlpha a detailed analysis of Salesforce's accounting for its product offerings. I thought this board might be interested to know about it: Salesforce.com Should Disclose Profit Or Loss By Product Offering http://seekingalpha.com/article/2429685-salesforce-com-should-disclose-profit-or-loss-by-product-offering Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MYDemaray Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Glad to know I'm in such great company short CRM. Always enjoy your posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vish_ram Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Revenue continues to grow at double digits. The firm is selling stock to pay debt. At the end of bull run, this will one day be a good short. until then, it'll march on. This thread offers an education on tech valuations to budding value investors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbr Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Revenue continues to grow at double digits. The firm is selling stock to pay debt. At the end of bull run, this will one day be a good short. until then, it'll march on. This thread offers an education on tech valuations to budding value investors. Chanos is short mainly because of accounting issues and not becasue of valuation. Tread carefully. (no pos) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jschembs Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I've been out of CRM for a number of months, but have added aggressively to my short in the last two days. I think the thesis remains intact (slowing revenue growth will unmask issues in operating cash flow), and no one seems to be talking about FX impact. Additionally, 13.5 mm new shares are converting this quarter from the outstanding warrants. I'm curious if anyone else has revised thoughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vish_ram Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 MSFT considering buying out CRM http://fortune.com/2015/05/05/salesforce-halted-microsoft-bid/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 This is why you don't short these things.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jawn619 Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 This is why you don't short these things.... +1. Get my face ripped off? No thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vish_ram Posted November 19, 2015 Share Posted November 19, 2015 Revenue continues to grow at double digits. The firm is selling stock to pay debt. At the end of bull run, this will one day be a good short. until then, it'll march on. This thread offers an education on tech valuations to budding value investors. Another Q of solid revenue growth; hope folks covered their shorts. http://www.wsj.com/articles/salesforce-com-raises-outlook-as-revenue-rises-24-1447884379 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jschembs Posted November 19, 2015 Share Posted November 19, 2015 Thankfully I covered at 70. Still think this thing doesn't pass the smell test, but obviously companies like the product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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