Buybacks only work when the shares are cancelled. Amazon has launched an initiative to bolster its share price, but value is only returned to shareholders when shares that are repurchased are cancelled which I suspect is not going to be the case here. For many of the large technology companies, a large component of their attractiveness to employees is the...
After 20 years, corporate governance is once again a problem. 18 years ago, Ericsson’s corporate governance went from awful to not great but now with its latest blunder, the pressure is on to fix what it should have fixed back in 2004. Activist investor Cevian Capital has accumulated a large position in Ericsson and, smelling blood in the water, is...
Diamonds in the rough? Part of the MWC trade show is the 4YFN (four years from now) section where all the start-ups are to be found, most of whom have nothing to do with mobile technology. For once, I had time to do an in-depth tour of this exhibition and found 4 companies that piqued my interest. Inmersia – Outlandish...
5G non-entity 5G is missing in action at its own show but in many ways, this is a good thing. It means that there is no real controversy, problem or anything desperately exciting about 5G. It has dissolved into the background as it is being rolled out in volume and there will be around 1bn devices in circulation by the...
Its hero not zero MWC emerges from the dark tunnel of the pandemic and its attendees are happy to see the sunlight once again. I think the GSMA will be pretty happy. The show is not rammed but it is busy with I would estimate somewhere between 40% – 50% of the footfall that was experienced in 2019. This would...
Zero or Hero Mobile World Congress returns in earnest in 2022 which will prove to be a real test of how much damage the lockdown and video conferencing has done to in-person events. The GSMA (organiser) is expecting 40,000 – 60,000 attendees with 1,500 exhibitors which is considered to be an optimistic forecast. For context, 2019 had 110,000 attendees and...
Priced for stagnation Alibaba reported reasonable results but heavy investments, competition and China’s restrictive zero COVID policy are hurting both growth and profitability in the short term. I think that China is going to be forced to abandon zero COVID reasonably soon which, combined with stepping up to meet the competitive threat, should mean that growth will come back over...
Chinese regulators come out swinging for round 2. It looks as if another round of crackdowns is about to be launched upon the Chinese technology sector and it is Tencent that remains by far the most exposed this time around. After a period of relative calm which emboldened the bottom fishers, it looks like the Chinese state is not done...
Intel turns its hand to disruption. The first signs of Intel’s new identity are beginning to emerge with the launch of a new product that aims to challenge Chinese dominance of equipment for Bitcoin mining / Blockchain computing. This is something that is badly needed in this industry where the verification of transactions on the distributed ledger is inflexible, slow...
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.
Apple – Ultra expensive.
Apple smacks Intel, AMD and Nvidia across the chops. Apple held its “peek performance” event where the star of the show was a Mac Mini on steroids with a hefty price tag. There is not a replacement for the Mac Pro as Apple stated that there is still one more to come. Once again, Apple leaves Intel, AMD and to...