Too many moving pieces for a clear picture. TSMC reported excellent results as smartphone orders remained resilient and a boost in demand for servers, PCs and office equipment pushed the numbers ahead of expectations. However, the company was cautious on its guidance meaning that there are other factors at play in the heavily disrupted supply chain that has meant that...
Google issues a closet profit warning. Google has effectively warned the market that 2020 is going to be rough by freezing hiring in another sign that its customers, the advertisers, have slashed spending meaning lower revenues and profits for Google. Sundar Pichai, CEO emailed Google employees (and the world (see here)) saying that the time has come to “significantly slow...
Netflix needs subscribers. Netflix is being hailed as one of the lockdown winners and while usage of the service has probably jumped 30% or more in the last quarter, Netflix needs to add subscribers to increase revenues and justify its recent rally. RFM research has found that most of the digital ecosystem will not benefit from the pandemic induced lockdown...
SoftBank will emerge better and stronger. It is the realisation it overpaid for many of its portfolio investments that is causing SoftBank so much difficulty at the moment which I think will lead to a complete re-writing of its investment process for the better. SoftBank has revealed that it expects to write down some assets in its Vision Fund by...
Radio Free Mobile is running a series of webinars for its subscription clients to present what it sees as the issues an outcomes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Richard founded RFM after spending 20 years in investment banking as a technology lead analyst. Richard also gained a PhD in molecular immunology at University College London providing the foundation for a...
Short-term issues mask long-term promise. Zoom has been thrust into the limelight due to the current pandemic and as a result, its shortcomings (typical for any young company), it has lost customers which masks its long term potential. RFM is a subscriber to Zoom’s professional service and regularly uses all of the other systems with its clients as the nature...
Usage increase that will be hard to monetise. There has been a large increase in smartphone usage, but I think that a lot of companies are going to struggle to make real money from the impact of COVID-19. App Annie (see here) which measures app download and usage held a webinar yesterday to discuss what it was seeing in terms...
The pandemic is a great use case for wireless power. Until there is a vaccine, no one is going to want to touch anything they don’t own which paves the way for greater penetration of touchless technology for things like payments, doors, bathrooms and so on. Touchless technology almost always requires the device to have a power source which can...
Samsung Electronics Q1 20 – Cloud rescue. Samsung has reported good Q1 2020 results where the clear indication is that demand for memory, storage and other silicon chips for the cloud has offset weakness in consumer. Q1 2020 revenues / EBIT were approximately KRW55tn / KRW6.4tn below the revenue forecast of KRW56tn but above the EBIT forecast of KRW6.2tn. Samsung’s...
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.
Q1 2020 reports – COVID-19 data points
The first view of the lockdown starts this week. The most important reporting season for many years is about to begin in earnest giving the first concrete idea of how the current pandemic and the economic knock-on effect is going to affect the technology sector. Listed below are some of the key companies reporting this week and what I expect...