Valuation is reasonable. Governance is not. There is no doubt that Ant Group is a powerhouse of digital financial services and while the valuation is reasonable, little if any attention is being paid to the great governance risk being taken by smaller shareholders. Ant Group was founded by Jack Ma and from a very strong position in e-commerce payment processing...
Apple is somewhat on the backfoot. Apple and Epic have both upped the ante in their fight over app store fees, but there are signs that Apple is somewhat on the back foot meaning that there are limits to the aggressiveness with which it can take the fight to its much smaller protagonist. In its reply to Epic’s suit, Apple...
No FOMO here. Alibaba reported good results as it continued to benefit from the same trends that have driven Amazon during the pandemic. Alibaba sells far more stuff than Amazon but it is little known outside of China which combined with increasing hostility means that it is unlikely to grow outside China foreseeable future. However, investors are being asked to...
Brute force is not the answer. NVIDIA reported excellent results as it is the main supplier to an industry where difficulties in evolving its technology have forced it to rely on ever-increasing compute power for progress. This is not a sustainable position as RFM research (see here) indicates that many of the new techniques being explored to advance AI use...
The US Department of Commerce gets serious. The US Department of Commerce has announced a tightening of sanctions on Huawei which at face value effectively mean that no one can sell silicon to Huawei without a license. The practical upshot of this is that the US can put Huawei out of business by failing to grant licenses thereby rendering Huawei...
Epic is spoiling for a fight. Epic Games clearly thinks it has a winning case against Apple as the events of last week were clearly orchestrated by Epic to result in a big legal fight that risks damaging much more than just Fortnite if it loses. Epic Games has filed lawsuits against both Apple and Google alleging that they “impose...
RFM has gone camel racing but will return to active duty on Aug 17th.
The tech war heats up. The White House has ratcheted up the pressure on China with the issuance of two executive orders that in Tencent’s case makes far more noise than the effect it will have. The White House issued two orders one related to TikTok and the other related to WeChat (not Tencent itself) that bans “ any transaction...
Z fold 2 looks like Z Flip. Samsung released a good slate of new products but potential shortcomings with the new Fold and pricing marred what was generally a good event. Note 20 / Note 20 Ultra The Note 20 Ultra goes all out with a 6.9” 120Hz screen, a huge camera bump with 50x zoom as well as a...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
The IPO Signal – FAANGs out.
A rush of IPOs is a warning signal. The sudden rush of technology IPOs is indicative of a sector where valuations are becoming stretched and which bear little resemblance to reality even including a pandemic-related revenue bump. The list is impressive. Palantir, Airbnb, Snowflake, Unity, Asana are all rushing to go public as the IPO window is wide open and...