Twitter – The price of free speech pt. VI

Musk and the board swap places. Mr Musk is seeking to kill his deal to acquire Twitter after realising that Twitter is greatly overvalued at $54.20 per share which is what anyone with a brain and a spreadsheet could have (and in a few cases did) told him long before the deal was even announced. This was uncharacteristically announced in...

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Autonomous Driving – Pie in the sky pt. III

The pie has crashed back to earth. Another autonomous driving upstart is cutting back staff in order to preserve dwindling cash as revenues remain years away and current conditions will make it very difficult to raise anymore. This will exacerbate and accelerate the consolidation of the autonomous driving sector which I think has a bright future but still has far...

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Samsung Q2 2022 – Supercycle pt. VI.

Samsung triggers a relief rally. Samsung reported results that broadly met expectations and I suspect that Samsung will be taking share in the coming quarters which would begin to explain the discrepancy between these numbers and Micron’s guidance. The semiconductor sector in Asia rallied strongly indicating that it has been short-term oversold on fears of a looming recession. Samsung expects...

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Amazon vs. Alibaba – The Baba vote.

Things look much better for Alibaba. While demand is softening all over the world, Alibaba has pretty much priced in a pessimistic outlook but is starting to see a turn in sentiment while Amazon’s valuation remains very high and all the signs are pointing towards worse to come. At its Q1 2022 results, Amazon admitted that it had overbuilt capacity...

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Geely & Meizu – Cars not phones

I don’t think Geely is interested in smartphones. Chinese car maker Geely has acquired a majority stake in Chinese smartphone maker, Meizu, not to become a powerhouse in smartphones but to have control of the Android-based operating system that Meizu has developed and to use it in its vehicles. Meizu is a smartphone maker that has been majority-owned by Alibaba...

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Klarna – WeWork replay pt. II

Klarna accepts reality. Klarna is raising $600m at $6.5bn in another clear example of the agonising problems that occur when one needs to raise money in a downturn when one has previously had a ludicrous valuation. The problem that Klarna faces is that it has to have the money meaning that it has no other choice but to accept whatever...

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Semiconductors – Supercycle pt. V.

Micron joins the canaries. Micron reported good FQ3 2022 results but guided badly blaming a sudden softening in demand that has forced it to slow its expansion sending the most serious warning signal yet for the rest of the sector. FQ3 2022 revenues / adj-EPS were $8.64bn / $2.59 broadly in line with forecasts of $8.66 / $2.45 but went...

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Meta vs. Developers – Eaters of cake.

Developers want to have their cake and eat it. The notion that Meta Platforms is treating developers unfairly when it is on course to lose billions of dollars from subsidising device sales from which developers are benefiting has no merit in my opinion. Developers are starting to make a fuss about the revenue share that Oculus charges developers in return...

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Pinterest – Ready, set, go!

Ready for recovery? Pinterest is changing its CEO with its founder moving aside to make room for new blood from Google that will undoubtedly start to shake things up which makes Pinterest an interesting proposition to look at once again. Founder and long-term CEO Ben Silbermann is moving aside to the relatively innocuous position of executive chairman to make way...

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Apple & The Metaverse – Not yet

2023 is too early. Despite feverish speculation, Apple failed to launch a Metaverse device at WWDC 2022 and now speculation has shifted to early 2023 which I continue to think is still much too early. Ming-Chi Kuo, one of the leading lights on Apple device speculation, is now expecting Apple to release an AR device in January 2023 and while...

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