Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 4, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(RIDING THE COATTAILS OF ELLIOT MANAGEMENT)
(DBX), (TWTR), (EBAY), (CRM), (BOX)
Posts
Renowned Vulture Fund Elliott Management is at it again, looking to feast on the frail like the predator fund it is.
It was recently announced they own a large stake in cloud provider Dropbox (DBX) and has been holding private discussions with the file-sharing service provider for some time.
The hedge fund owns a stake of more than 10% which is valued at more than $800 million, the source said, declining to reveal the exact size of the investment.
Dropbox currently has a market cap of around $11 billion.
This is a cloud company that allows users to store documents, videos, and photos online, listed its shares in March 2018 at $21 a share.
Elliott has previously gotten their way at other tech companies like Twitter (TWTR) and eBay (EBAY).
Now Elliott Management is assumed to own the second biggest holding in Dropbox after CEO Drew Houston.
Elliot’s previous 13-F filing form has shown they are scooping up shares of Dropbox.
Dropbox shares also gained in March on news of a potential takeover that never came to fruition, and it smells a lot like that was Elliot.
I have heard other analysts mention Dropbox as a short-listed acquisition candidate for a handful of big players.
An acquisition looked close especially after Salesforce (CRM) announced the purchase of Slack Technologies and it’s logical that Dropbox could have been a retaliation purchase for a bigger tech company looking to keep pace with Salesforce's acquisitive thirst.
Elliot Management overtook Vanguard Group Inc. as the largest shareholder outside of Houston. Vanguard had a stake just below 10% as of March 31, according to Bloomberg.
The hedge fund has not made it clear whether it is seeking board seats on Dropbox’s board or other changes at the company.
But I will tell you there is a standard playbook that Elliot loves to roll out each time they buy into a tech company.
These changes almost always revolve around switching management and squeezing out more efficiencies in operations.
They even threatened Founder and CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey to become more attuned to revenue acceleration so he could keep his job.
There are those who want to play the moral compass card out there, but I can say that almost any tech company Elliot Management has bought into experience a significant boost in asset appreciation 3-6 months after the acquisition.
Elliot is hyper-targeted in what they do, and they usually seek out management who has become too comfortable in their routine.
I believe they do not go after tech companies if they feel they cannot boost the underlying stock shares by 30% within a year.
They have a brilliant track record and any tech investor who doesn’t want to overcomplicate tech investing buys the same tech companies Elliot acquires.
Why?
Because changes are in the pipeline and every management or board seat change is usually met with a 5-7% surge in share price.
What’s not to like about that?
Then there are many up days on the operational front from cutting costs, and forcing through other changes that are first and foremost beneficial for the stakeholders of the company.
Other vulture fund specialists do this too like Starboard Value when they launched a proxy fight earlier this year at Box (BOX), where it has nominated four directors for the three seats that are coming available this year.
To play it simple, buy into Dropbox on the next dip and hold onto shares for the first part of the turnaround.
Once the pace of changes starts to plateau, by then, you should already have a decent-sized profit and can dump the shares.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 20, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM),
(SCHW), (FB), (SQ), (WMT), (AMZN), (FFIDX), (BOX)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 29, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM),
(SCHW), (FB), (SQ), (WMT), (AMZN), (FFIDX), (BOX)
Gone are the days of brokers shouting from the trading pits, a bygone era where pimple-faced traders cut their teeth rubbing shoulders with the journeymen of yore.
The stock brokerage industry is at an inflection point with the revolutionary online stock brokerage Robinhood on the verge of shaking up an industry that has needed shaking up for years.
A common thread revisited by this newsletter is the phenomenon of broker apps being low-quality tech.
A broker ultimately serves little or no value to the real players among the deal, usually extracting huge commissions.
Technology and now blockchain technology vie to completely remove this exorbitant layer from the business process.
Well, for the stock brokerage industry, that time is now.
Robinhood is an online stock brokerage company based in Menlo Park, Calif., trading an assortment of asset classes including equities, options, and cryptocurrencies.
So, what's the catch?
Robinhood does not charge commission.
That's right, you can invest up until the $500,000 threshold protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and you can go along with your merry day trading for free.
The online brokerage industry has been getting away with murder for years.
They got comfortable and stopped innovating - the death knell of any company in 2019.
Effectively, high execution costs reaping massive profits were the norm for brokers, and nobody questioned this philosophy until Robinhood exposed the ugly truth - unreasonably high rates.
Peeking at a monthly chart of brokerage costs will make your stomach churn.
For instance, a trader frequently executing trades with an account of $100,000 would hand over $1836 in commission in 2017 if their account was with Fidelity.
On the cheaper side, Interactive Brokers would charge $854 for its brokerage services to habitual traders per month.
The outlier was Tradier, a start-up brokerage founded in 2014 using the powerful tool of an Application Programming Interface (API) which charged $213 per month to trade frequently.
An API is described as a software intermediary allowing two applications to communicate with each other.
This model helped cut costs for the online brokerage because Tradier did not have to focus its funds on the trading platform that was delegated to various third-party platforms.
Tradier is largely responsible for the aggregation of data and charts thus employing an army of developers to meet their end of the business.
This model is truly the democratization of the online brokerage industry, which has been coming for years.
Costs are cut to a minimum with equity trades at Tradier costing investors $3.49 per order and options contracts costing $0.35 per contract with a $9 options assignment and exercise fee.
Technology has defeated the traditionalist again.
More than 80% of Robinhood's accounts are owned by millennials – as expected.
Trading cryptocurrencies act as a gateway asset to springboard into other asset classes such as equities and derivative contracts.
Vlad Tenev, co-CEO of Robinhood, indicated that Robinhood will have to modify its radical business model to monetize more of the business in the future, but he is comfortable with the current business model.
But Tenev has already seen fruit borne with the likes of Robinhood applying fierce pressure to the legacy brokerages' pricing models.
The traditionalists are locked in a vicious pricing war with each other slashing their commission rates to stay competitive.
The longer the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) feel it necessary to charge $4.95, down from the January 2017 cost of $8.95, the better the chances are that Robinhood can build its account base rapidly.
Charles Schwab has more than 10 million accounts, only double the number of Robinhood, after being founded in 1971.
The 42-year head start over Robinhood has not produced the desired effect, and it is ill-prepared to battle these tech companies that enter the fray.
Robinhood has been able to add a million new accounts per year. If Charles Schwab relatively performed at the same rate, it would have 47 million accounts open today.
It doesn't and that is a problem because the company can be caught up to.
The age of specialization is upon us with full force, and customer demand requires care and diligence that never existed before.
Robinhood continues to enhance its offerings of various products adding Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash to the crypto lineup.
Only Bitcoin and Ethereum were offered before.
And there is one more outrageous thing I forgot to tell you.
Robinhood hopes to snatch away the traditional savings account by offering checking and savings accounts with an interest rate almost 30 times larger than most brick and mortar banks – 3%.
These accounts would have no minimum balances or no fees that nickel and dime customers.
The service will conveniently sit alongside its trading app and this move into the industry led by JP Morgan could start to derail Wall Street.
As with most FinTech start-ups, the roll-out of this new service was slightly botched because Robinhood failed to get the go-ahead from regulators concerning ensuring the accounts properly.
All this does is delay the inevitable and by spring 2019, potential customers should be earning 3% in Robinhood’s checking and savings account.
Sign me up!
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 5, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BOX TAKES A HIT)
(BOX), (MSFT), (PYPL)
REVENUE DOWNGRADES – these are meaningful side effects that many public tech companies are grappling with.
To really understand the complete picture of the technology industry, analyzing the fringes goes a long way to telling us the level of health of firms operating in the face of a mammoth trade war.
Before companies start posting decelerating revenue numbers, the warnings and preannouncements come thick and fast.
That is exactly what we have been receiving as of late.
Redwood City-based cloud storage company Box (BOX) nosedived 14 percent at today’s opening after beating financial estimates but offering investors light guidance that fell short of expectations.
In fact, Box had a tidy quarter and its 16% YOY of revenue growth is performance that many industries would give a left arm for.
The $163 million in sales in the first quarter was a beat of about $1.6 million showing that cloud companies are still the kings of the modern economy.
Being that the stock market is forward-looking, mister market didn’t like what Box finished the call with.
Consensus had it that Box would deliver around $700 million of sales in 2019, but the company indicated that the souring climate because of the trade war made this highly unlikely and guided down to between $688 million to $692 million.
This won’t be the last downgrade if there are no resolutions in the next quarter, expect more than a handful to preannounce.
As we speak, both countries are digging their heels in, signaling to each other they are unlikely to budge.
Box is at an inflection point in their history where they are attempting to push their business model into a $1 billion per year operation.
This means chasing after corporate clients who have the scale and volume to satisfy these revenue goals.
Corporate clients usually are prone to having deep overseas supply chains and the diminishing success of these businesses will force them to think twice about partnering with firms like Box.
They might want to now but could put off the decision for a year or two.
The knock-on effect is massive with many areas of the expense puzzle shaved off here and there.
Expect downgrades in the quality of their office coffee beans as well.
Ultimately, many of the second-tier tech companies are at risk of issuing an imminent profit warning or if they don’t make profits, revenue downgrades will happen in the upcoming weeks.
If you thought the dollars are vanishing into thin air, you are wrong.
They still exist but are actively being pushed around to different parts of the global economy and there is one main recipient of the flow of funds.
Since tariffs have created a situation where it is too expensive to export or import from America and China, one country, in particular, has welcomed an avalanche of new money.
Many supply chains are moving over to Vietnam as we speak.
Malaysia, Chile, and Argentina have also seen an uptick in trade flows.
And you can bet that every drop of manufacturing foreign capital right now is avoiding China like the plague until they get more clarity on trade policy or weighing up moving operations to America, so they aren’t charged a tariff for selling to Americans.
Many Chinese manufacturers are using a workaround - offshoring their business taking a cue from America in the 1990s.
Vietnam has already gained 7.9% of GDP in new businesses from Chinese and American corporations.
America is past the point of no return as many executives believe this could be a dog fight in the trenches until 2035.
Better to move now and salvage what they can.
Many experts have chimed in admitting that Vietnam is what China was 20 years ago, offering manufacturers cheap labor and growing know-how in high precision industries.
Throw into the mix that Vietnam has a huge Chinese minority population which many not only speak the local language but also can communicate in Chinese, then it seems like a natural fit to source goods from there.
It could play out quite ironically with American tech companies deploying this exact carbon copy of a strategy, and we might see Chinese and American factories and research centers standing shoulder to shoulder with one another dotted around Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Expect Vietnam to be the next to ride the economic rollercoaster that China enjoyed for 30 years.
Effectively, tech profits and other American industries have seen their margins and revenue repackaged and delivered to the Vietnamese economy.
The Chinese and American economies are in for some short-term grinding and if they can’t get along at some point, Vietnam and others will be handsomely rewarded.
Investors need to keep a watch out for the next batch of data from second tier tech companies that will offer a glimpse into the future and how this trade war is playing out.
I believe the cleanup hitters like Microsoft and PayPal still swing a heavy bat and that won’t go away for the rest of 2019, but the little guys could get bullied with some revenue resets.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
January 7, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NOT TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE),
(SCHW), (FB), (SQ), (WMT), (AMZN), (FFIDX), (BOX)
Please be advised there will be no Technology Letter
Thursday, August 2, or Friday August 3,
as Editor Arthur Henry will be traveling.
Publication will resume Monday, August 6.
Thank you for your understanding.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 1, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE RACE DOWN TO ZERO),
(SCHW), (FB), (WMT), (AMZN), (FFIDX), (BOX)
It seems time after time, entire industries get flipped on their heads without notice.
The modern-day hyper-acceleration of technology is creating tectonic shifts in the economy that only some can truly understand.
There is the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The functionality of technology has helped enhanced our daily lives infinitely, yet there is a dark side of technology that has reared its ugly head threatening the future existence of mankind.
One industry next in line to be smashed to bits will have the effect of unimaginably reshaping Wall Street as we know it.
Gone are the days of brokers shouting from the trading pits, a bygone era where pimple-faced traders cut their teeth rubbing shoulders with the journeymen of yore.
The stock brokerage industry is at an inflection point with the revolutionary online stock brokerage Robinhood on the verge of shaking up an industry that has needed shaking up for years.
A common thread revisited by this newsletter is the phenomenon of broker apps being low-quality tech.
These apps can be built by a pimple-faced freshman college student in his dorm.
A broker ultimately serves little or no value to the real players among the deal, usually extracting huge commissions.
Technology and now blockchain technology vie to completely remove this exorbitant layer from the business process.
Well, for the stock brokerage industry, that time is now.
Robinhood is an online stock brokerage company based in Menlo Park, Calif., trading an assortment of asset classes including equities, options, and cryptocurrencies.
So, what's the catch?
Robinhood does not charge commission.
That's right, you can invest up until the $500,000 threshold protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and you can go along with your merry day trading for free.
The online brokerage industry has been getting away with murder for years.
How did the online brokers get away with this in a technological climate where industries such as the transportation sector are being flipped on their head?
They got comfortable and stopped innovating - the death knell of any company.
Effectively, high execution costs reaping massive profits were the norm for brokers, and nobody questioned this philosophy until Robinhood exposed the ugly truth - unreasonably high rates.
Peeking at a monthly chart of brokerage costs will make your stomach churn.
For instance, a trader frequently executing trades with an account of $100,000 would hand over $1836 in commission in 2017 if their account was with Fidelity.
On the cheaper side, Interactive Brokers would charge $854 for its brokerage services to habitual traders per month.
The outlier was Tradier, a start-up brokerage founded in 2014 using the powerful tool of an API (Application Programming Interface), which charged $213 per month to trade frequently.
An API is described as a software intermediary allowing two applications to communicate with each other.
This model helped cut costs for the online brokerage because Tradier did not have to focus its funds on the trading platform that was delegated to various third-party platforms.
Tradier is largely responsible for the aggregation of data and charts thus employing an army of developers to meet their end of the business.
This model is truly the democratization of the online brokerage industry, which has been coming for years.
Cost are cut to a minimum with equity trades at Tradier costing investors $3.49 per order and option contracts costing $0.35 per contract with a $9 options assignment and exercise fee.
Technology has defeated the traditionalist again.
Day traders will tell you their largest worry is keeping a lid on execution costs.
Volume traders plan their strategies according to bare bones commission.
Marrying technology with online brokerages has the deflation effect that Amazon (AMZN) deftly took advantage to perfection.
Brokerages do not pay higher costs for an incremental bump in trading volume. Costs are mainly fixed.
If you hold an account in one of these legacy brokers charging an arm and a leg to trade with them, jump ship and join the revolution.
So how does Robinhood generate revenue if the broker trades for free?
Hawk ads? No.
They are not rogue ad sellers as is Facebook (FB).
The plethora of accounts opened with Robinhood earn interest, and Robinhood collects the earned interest as revenue.
Also, Robinhood has one paid service for sale.
Robinhood Gold is a subscription allowing traders to use margin. The margin accounts will set traders back $10 per month adding up to $120 per year, and they won't be charged interest on the funds.
This is peanuts compared to what other traditional brokerages are charging clients for margin account interest.
This is also a data grab with the proprietary data building up profusely turning into a potential Masayoshi Son SoftBank Vision fund acquisition.
Robinhood has already registered more than 5 million accounts for a company that started its operations in 2013.
The rise of these 5 million accounts coincided with the explosion of the price of bitcoin breaching the $20,000 level.
This price surge inspired a whole generation of millennials to get off the sofa and start trading cryptocurrencies.
More than 80% of Robinhood's accounts are owned by millennials.
Trading cryptocurrencies acts as a gateway asset to springboard into other asset classes such as equities and derivative contracts.
Vlad Tenev, co-CEO of Robinhood, indicated that Robinhood will have to modify its radical business model to monetize more of the business in the future, but he is comfortable with the current business model.
But Tenev has already seen fruit borne with the likes of Robinhood applying fierce pressure to the legacy brokerages' pricing models.
The traditionalists are locked in a vicious pricing war with each other slashing their commission rates to stay competitive.
The longer the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) feel it necessary to charge $4.95, down from the January 2017 cost of $8.95, the better the chances are that Robinhood can build its account base rapidly.
Charles Schwab has more than 10 million accounts, only double the number of Robinhood, after being founded in 1971.
The 42-year head start over Robinhood has not produced the desired effect, and it is ill-prepared to battle these tech companies that enter the fray.
Robinhood has been able to add a million new accounts per year. If Charles Schwab relatively performed at the same rate, it would have 47 million accounts open today.
It doesn't and that is a problem, because the company can be caught up to.
The lack of urgency to combat the tech threat is astounding. Companies such as Walmart (WMT) have taken the initiative to transform the narrative with great success.
The race to zero is a grim reality for the Fidelities (FFIDX) of the world, and adopting a Robinhood approach will be the playbook going forward.
Brokerages and a slew of other industries are turning into a legion of top-level developers fighting tooth and nail to stay relevant.
The transportation industry has grappled with this harsh reality lately, but the economy is on the cusp of many other industries digitizing to the extreme.
My guess is that Robinhood starts rolling out a slew of subscription services catering toward specific investors.
The age of specialization is upon us with full force, and customer demand requires care and diligence that never existed before.
Robinhood continues to enhance its offerings of various products adding Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash to the crypto lineup.
Only Bitcoin and Ethereum were offered before.
The company is not without headline investors boasting the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capitalist firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., Box (BOX) CEO Aaron Levie, and hip-hop mogul Snoop Dogg.
Expect Robinhood to pile the funds into improving the technology, data accuracy while offering a new mix of hybrid products.
The enhancements will attract another wave of adopters spawning another wave of panic from the legacy brokers.
To visit the pricing information at Robinhood, please click here.
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Quote of the Day
"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor," - said Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk.
