The Boring Company reinvents the wheel. We were promised autonomous pods zipping through undercity tunnels at 200kph / 150mph but what we got was Tesla-taxis chugging from one side of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) to the other at 30mph. The Boring Company did make it look pretty cool with funky LED lighting but stripping away the form makes...
Samsung fixes everything but the elephant. Samsung is expected to release two new folding phones in July where it has made substantial improvements to durability except the one that really matters meaning that this segment will remain niche and that Apple will hold off from going down this route. A sift through Samsung’s trademark documentation and leaks reveals that the...
Apollo bets $5bn on a fourth attempt. Apollo is paying $5bn to acquire 90% of Verizon’s media assets in yet another sure signal that the only good thing that Marissa Meyer did for Yahoo shareholders was to sell it to Verizon. Yahoo is a has-been Internet titan that has catastrophically failed to capitalise on the opportunities that were in front...
The risks are demonstrably manageable. Herman Hauser has once again criticised the acquisition of Arm citing clear signs of unfair competition but what I think he has done is merely re-iterate the risks of this acquisition which everyone already knows are there. The promotion of the idea of a merger between Graphcore and Arm does not help the credibility of...
Darktrace makes the right choice. Instead of pulling the IPO, Darktrace dealt with the issues by cutting its valuation significantly and was rewarded with a first-day bounce that will go some way towards restoring the image of the LSE which was badly tarnished by the awful launch of Deliveroo. Darktrace is a cybersecurity company that uses pattern recognition (AI) to...
One good, one bad exemplifies how unbalanced risk is in big tech. Amazon – Permanent pandemic Amazon reported excellent results as the shift towards online shopping that was accelerated due to the pandemic appears to have changed people’s habits. Q1 2021 revenues / EPS were $102.5bn / $15.79 comfortably ahead of forecasts of $104.6bn / $9.61. The core retail e-commerce...
Both Apple and Facebook smash expectations. Apple FQ2 2021 – the last of the stay at home Apple reported FQ2 2021 results that blasted through estimates as the work and learn from home trend continued to underpin demand for its productivity products which was also supported by a solid performance from the iPhone. FQ2 2021 revenues / EPS were $89.6bn...
Good results but different reactions imply that valuation in big-cap tech is starting to matter again. Alphabet Q1 2021 – Approaching the range. Google reported good Q1 2021 results as it is still catching up from the dip that it suffered in H1 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Q1 2021 Revenues Ex-TAC / EPS were $45.6bn / $26.29...
Lyft sells its differentiation. Lyft may have sold a struggling asset but in a world of robotaxis, this asset was the one chance Lyft had at winning any differentiation highlighting just what a brutal commodity the robotaxi industry is going to be. This is where I think that both Elon Musk and Ark Invest have made a mistake as both...
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.
Crypto – Picks and shovels
The genie is finally out of the bottle? While cryptocurrencies and digital tokens are grabbing all of the headlines, I think that the real action is going to be in the mechanisms that allowed the frenzy to be created i.e. the blockchain. I know very little about how this whole thing works but there is one important distinction to make...