Displaying items by tag: tech

(Los Angeles)

In what comes as a really eye-opening turn of events even for someone as outlandish as Masayoshi Son, SoftBank has announced a plan to IPO its $100 bn Vision Fund. The fund is already legendary, having invested $100bn in just two years in some of the world’s biggest startups. It currently holds positions in WeWork and Uber, for instance. Masayoshi Son is now raising for capital for another fund, so wants to access some liquidity from this first one, thus the plan to IPO.

FINSUM: This is a bonkers plan, but honestly, and interesting opportunity for investors to own pieces of some very exclusive private companies. This is like an early stage Berkshire Hathaway.

(San Francisco)

Want to forecast at where Apple’s stock price is headed? There is a good trick for doing so. The method is to look at the earnings and share price moves of Apple’s suppliers. About a third of suppliers report earnings before Apple does, and many of them derive a high portion of their sales from the company. Therefore, one can fairly well predict Apple’s earnings and likely moves. For instance, Apple has been on a tear since its earnings on Tuesday, and it would have been easy to see from the previously released supplier earnings.

FINSUM: This will not always work and some of the value is probably eaten up by algorithmic traders, but still, it seems a good predictive indicator.

(San Francisco)

HSBC just put out a big warning to investors—it is time to sell Apple stock. The news comes as a bit of a surprise because the iPhone maker has been performing well this year and there have been rumors of a big new push into healthcare. However, HSBC says investors should get out of the stock because Apple’s new services business will disappoint. The bank summarized its view this way, saying “Services makes ecosystem more sticky but won’t necessarily enable Apple to recruit more consumers to iPhone … All in, we remain far more cautious on services than some of the numbers in the street might suggest”.

FINSUM: Not only does HSBC think the new services offerings will disappoint on the top line, but they think they will be lower margin too! It is hard to speculate how this might go, but we do think this transition to services will be harder than many expect.

(New York)

You certainly won’t think of it this way, but Morgan Stanley is arguing that Apple is now a great healthcare play. The bank’s research team says Apple is on the verge of a major new product that will transform the healthcare space, meaning there could be a lot of value in the stock that is not being priced in. Katy Hubert of MS says “Apple is building a healthcare ecosystem and is poised to emerge as a leader in consumer-centric healthcare … Healthcare is a large, greenfield services opportunity for Apple”. She continued, saying “Unlike recent announcements on news, gaming, video, and payments, where Apple is joining existing competitors, healthcare is a market where Apple has the potential to lead digital disruption”. The stock is up strongly this year because investors are happy with its shift to a more services-oriented business model.

FINSUM: It is hard to speculate on the potential impact without know the product, but we must say Apple does seem to have a major opportunity if it can map a healthcare product onto the hundreds of millions of users of its products in the US alone.

(New York)

American investors generally don’t pay enough attention to merging markets. We have such a big economy and markets that investing abroad often feels foreign and unnecessary. However, the diversification benefits of doing so can be huge, and right now may be an excellent time, says Morgan Stanley. The bank’s lead emerging markets strategist, Ruchir Sharma, is changing tune. For the last decade he said US shares, and particularly tech, would outperform. Now the pendulum is swinging back, with EM likely to take the lead.

FINSUM: EMs have obviously been beat up over the last decade, so there is certainly value to be had. The big worry for us is about global trade policy and how that constrains EM growth.