Skillz (SKLZ) jumped 33% on Wednesday, finding investor support after a recent short report hit the stock. The recent allegations against the company range from its revenue recognition practices to its recent NFL partnership. After reviewing the reports, we believe the claims to be either exaggerated or incorrect. We believe these short reports stem from a misunderstanding of the company, its position in the gaming ecosystem, and its future ambitions. Skillz is a leading mobile games platform that enables competitive esports-style play. Leveraging its patented match-making technology, Skillz hosts billions of casual esports tournaments worldwide per year.
This week, Apple hosted its first event of 2021 and debuted products incorporating M1, the first silicon it has designed and developed in-house for the Mac. Dubbed āSpring Loadedā, the event showcased new M1-powered iMac and iPad Pro models which will join the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini in supporting M1.
The ARM-based M1 delivers impressive power and efficiency. By combining key components like the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and Memory on a single System-on-a-Chip (SoC) and then vertically integrating hardware and software, Apple claims CPU and GPU performance 3.5x and 6x faster, respectively, and battery life twice as long, compared to previous-generation Macs. With smaller and easier-to-cool packages, Apple will release the thinnest iMac ever, and power an iPad with a desktop-class CPU that will outperform the highest end desktop competition in many tasks.
In our view, its new products signal that Apple is moving quickly on a two-year plan to transition the Mac line onto its own silicon. Having powered Apple computers with its x86 architecture since 2005, Intel could be the big loser.
In other news this week, Intel reported a 20% decline in datacenter sales for the first quarter, purportedly because hyperscale players like Amazon and Facebook are going through a period of inventory ādigestionā. AMD and Nvidia, its competition, also could be playing a role. Last week, for example, Nvidia announced Grace, a new ARM-based datacenter CPU.
This week Meituan raised $10 billion to fund its last-mile autonomous delivery minivan and drone program. After nearly a year of testing, Meituan is launching its next generation autonomous delivery minivans in Beijingās Shunyi district.
The latest robo-delivery vans can move up to 150 kg and 135 gallons at a top speed of 12 mph. From roughly $50,000 today, Meituan expects their cost to drop below $20,000 at scale during the next three to five years. Because existing data indicates that drivers account for more than 90% of Meituanās food delivery costs today, if one van were to displace two drivers, each earning $600 per month, costs could drop more than $14,000 a year, suggesting a payback period of one and a half years at scale.
Reportedly, Meituan has been testing a drone delivery food service in Shenzhen since January. Thus far, the report indicates it has delivered more than 1,000 orders. At scale, drones should enable point-to-point delivery in a two-mile radius within 400 seconds, or fewer than seven minutes.
In our view, Meituan is challenging competitors like JD Logistics and Alibabaās Cainiao in the last-mile autonomous delivery race. While wider adoption will depend on regulatory approval by district, slower moving robo-delivery vans without passengers probably will have to clear lower safety hurdles than robotaxis that are transporting passengers.
16% Skillz (SKLZ) jumped 16% on Monday, perhaps in response to increased investor interest in esports. Skillz is a leading mobile games platform that enables competitive esports-style play. Leveraging its patented match-making technology, Skillz hosts billions of casual esports tournaments worldwide.
Twitter (TWTR)
15% Twitter (TWTR) closed down 15% on Friday after reporting lower than expected user growth in the first quarter. Twitter grew monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) 20% year-over-year to 199 million, just shy of the 200 million expected. That said, given recent product announcements centered around Twitter Spaces, a live audio feature, we believe that future user growth could surprise to the upside.
Is a 5+ years bet. Is not expected to do much for these five years From technicals, there is a possibility that it might crash to 70, so I sold 400 shares, now holding 100 shares. Will add if drops to ~$70.
Teslaās First Quarter Results Suggest Market Share Gains This Year and Disclose the End of Radar
By Tasha Keeney
Analyst
In its first quarter earnings call last week, Tesla stated that the Model Y could become the best-selling vehicle globally based on revenue in 2022 and on units in 2023. For context, in 2019 the Toyota Corolla topped the list with 1.5 million units, roughly triple the number of all Tesla vehicle sales last year. Because the Model Y is roughly twice as expensive as the Corolla, Tesla seems to be forecasting 750,000 units in 2022 and 1.5 million units in 2023, nearly 10X and 20X the 86,000 units sold, respectively, in 2020.
Notably, Tesla did not change its guidance for the year despite a global semiconductor shortage that is impacting nearly every automaker. Ford, for example, is cutting its second quarter production plans by roughly 50%. Thanks to its vertical integration and rapid work-around strategies, Tesla seems to be navigating the shortage effectively. Specifically, it has pivoted to firmware for microcontrollers made by new suppliers. As a result, we believe Tesla could increase its market share significantly this year.
During its quarterly call, Tesla also disclosed a shift away from radar in its Full Self Driving (FSD) beta Autopilot software. Echoing the reason that Tesla decided not to incorporate LiDAR initially, Elon Musk explained that fusing camera and radar signals adds unnecessary complications given the precision of cameras.
Most other autonomous driving projects seem committed to sensor fusion techniques incorporating both LiDAR and radar. ARKās research suggests that eliminating LiDAR and radar could delay the early days of local autonomous driving platforms, one reason that Waymo has been the first company to commercialize autonomous driving in a few cities. Thereafter, however, if successful, Tesla could have a best-in-class vision system, putting it in the pole position for a national autonomous driving platform.
Also talk about uber bearish and sad stuff. With this type of media, how to stay above and be happy?
Market is selling off high growth (aka disruptive tech). A few of them would be truly disruptive and own the future i.e. future AAPL and AMZN. But all of them have been hyped up and investors indiscriminately overpaid for everything vaguely disruptive. Now they decide this is not going to be the case. Rathter than just talkā¦ do you have any ideas which ones are future AAPLs and AMZNs?
Anyhoo, ARKK would tumble below 100 for sure. All ARK ETFs would have a negative return this year. Next year should be sunshine.
10X Genomics (TXG) traded down 21% on Thursday after reporting first quarter earnings. Although the company delivered ~50% revenue growth and reiterated annual guidance, investors seemed to focus on COVID-related lab closures that impacted single-cell sequencing experiments. 10X mentioned that many of its customers wouldnāt reach pre-pandemic utilization rates until the second half. Moreover, it highlighted that significant investments will increase operating expenses and impact margins through year-end. Our conviction in 10X Genomics as a pioneer in single-cell and spatial genomics is strong and intact.
Fastly (FSLY)
Fastly (FSLY), a company focused on content distribution and web security, traded down 27% on Thursday after announcing first quarter earnings. While revenues were in-line with expectations, EPS were lower than expected and revenue guidance was flat sequentially, the latter a function of reopening headwinds and customer ramp cycles. The company also announced that CFO Adriel Lares will be departing and that the search for his successor is underway.
The Chinese Government Is Supporting Battery Swapping for Electric Vehicles (EVs)
By Sam Korus
Analyst
The Chinese Government has announced an EV subsidy for vehicles priced at $45,700 or less for all manufacturers except those offering battery swapping. Electric vehicles incorporating battery swapping will be exempt from the price limit. This policy favors domestic battery-swapping EV manufacturers like NIO as opposed to Tesla which avoided that strategy.
Unsurprisingly, the government is favoring a local Chinese manufacturer, but could this move also suggest that NIO needs help? In our view, such government support could impair NIOās global ambitions in the long term.
ARKās research suggests that, with or without subsidies, the economics associated with battery swapping will result in design constraints and shortened battery lives. Encouraging these sub-optimal results, the Chinese Government could limit NIOās success globally, even more so if the company relies on subsidies instead of aggressive investments in innovation to deliver competitively priced vehicles.
More companies appear to be following Cash Appās footsteps and leveraging the viral nature of social media to drive user growth. As highlighted by our research, Cash App has been using artist and influencer giveaways on Twitter to attract new users and build its brand.
Having trailed Cash Appās marketing prowess for years, in the last few months PayPal has featured giveaways on Twitter, though with less viral success. That said, Venmo is wise to step up its social game. While its payment volumes did surge 63% on a year over year basis in the first quarter, Venmo needs to protect its position from creative and aggressive competitors like Cash App as it expands from peer-to-peer payments into crypto, investing, and banking.
We believe one of the contenders in the US digital wallet space is a challenger bank, Current, that has turbocharged its social game with an exclusive partnership with MrBeast, one of the most successful global YouTube influencers. Only 22 years old, MrBeast - Jimmy Donaldson - has gone viral by giving away large sums of money. In the last 30 days alone, his videos have attracted more than half a billion views.
We believe that the lines between and among traditional peer-to-peer payments applications, challenger banks, and investment applications are blurring and consequently, competition is intensifying and driving up customer acquisition costs. Organic viral growth could separate the winners from the losers. While we have found that Venmo was the first successful peer-to-peer payments network in the US and Cash App the first to generate viral growth through social networks, we believe that staying ahead of the competition will require creativity in and around social trends and networks, preferably before influencers like MrBeast scale and become prohibitively expensive.
To me it seems like the stocks that are most vulnerable are the stocks that are owned by Cathie Wood, the ones that often have no earnings or in some case minimal sales.
Sell any stocks that are in Cathieās ARK etfs
TSLA
ROKU
Whatās not coming back are the price-to-sales stocksā¦ If it is hard to find buyers for FAANG or Microsoft, what are we going to do with these endless software as a service for everything and data analytics companies that are being printed and offered to no end?
No worries. Only own 1 share of the most promising, monitoring closely, let see which are the ones that are likely to come back
From technicals, there is a possibility that it might crash to 70, so I sold 400 shares, now holding 100 shares. Will add if drops to ~$70.
