Welcome to Beating the Odds. Our goal is to create and curate content on investing, strategy, tech, fashion and anything else we find interesting.
🔍 Tickers mentioned: ZM, CRM, WORK, AAPL, FTCH, SHOP, BTC, INTC, ASML, BAM
Leveraging the cloud for exponential growth, at its finest:
One more crazy Zoom stat:
Jamin Ball at Clouded Judgement provided a summary of the latest SaaS and cloud earnings and valuations:
Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples
Update on Multiples
Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue.
⚡️ Quick links
🤝 TechCrunch — Salesforce buys Slack in a $27.7B megadeal. ZDNet and Box CEO Aaron Levie also shared thoughts on the deal and its implications
🚨 Bloomberg — OnlyFans Is a Billion-Dollar Media Giant Hiding in Plain Sight
🌍 The Irrelevant Investor — Stocks, Both Foreign and Domestic
👟 Yahoo Finance — Demand for sneakers continues to soar this holiday season, according to GOAT Group CEO
💰 TechCrunch — Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury. Ben Thompson’s ‘Stripe: Platform of Platforms’ post analyzes Stripe’s strategy and future and is a great read. I’m convinced Stripe would easily trade at a $150-200B market cap if it went public tomorrow
📊 Charts of the week
November heat map of the S&P 500. Sheesh!
Bitcoin, solar and clean energy ETF’s, and ARK funds leading the pack from the March lows.
📚 Good reads
Stratechery — Five Lessons From Dave Chappelle
Hayden Capital — Q3’20 Investor Letter. Fred Liu’s firm is up a cool 164.1% YTD—good for 30% per year since inception. The “Real World” Options section is especially worth reading
Om Malik — Steve Jobs’s last gambit: Apple’s M1 Chip
New York Times — The Luxury E-Commerce Wars Heat Up. Solid reporting on the battle for luxury e-commerce market share. FWIW, my bet is on Farfetch
Bloomberg — Bitcoin Is Winning the Covid-19 Monetary Revolution
Modern Retail — ‘An investable opportunity’: Greylock’s Mike Duboe on why he’s focusing on Shopify’s partner ecosystem and headless commerce
Shouts to Bread Crumbs Research for compiling this thread:
🎧 Press play
How the Number One U.S. Semiconductor Company Stumbled
Stacy Rasgon, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research, discusses the long, slow demise of Intel. He also does a great job putting the highly technical manufacturing process into layman’s terms.
Check out this video of ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine used in chip-making. The price tag for one of these: a mere $120 million.
Michael Mauboussin On Valuing Intangible Assets
Another informative listen from Odd Lots, and one of the better podcast episodes of 2020 in my opinion. As always, Michael Mauboussin delivers great insights on how to value intangible assets such as intellectual property and brand value, an increasingly important exercise given the rise of intangibles.
‘One Job: Expectations and the Role of Intangible Investments’ is another excellent piece from Mauboussin. Recommended by Bill Gates, Capitalism Without Capital is the first comprehensive account of the growing dominance of the intangible economy and was one of my favorite reads in recent years. I highly suggest giving both of these a look, as the concept is still under-appreciated by many investors.
📺 Videos of the week
Bruce Flatt Says Covid Fallout Will Favor Brookfield Strengths
“Canada’s Warren Buffet” Bruce Flatt gave his take on the return to offices, the outlook for big cities, and the future of real estate and Brookfield (ticker: BAM).
He was clearly talking his book, but Flatt is an impressive CEO and expert capital allocator. Here’s his track record at Brookfield:
JC Parets and Howard Lindzon: The Post-Spreadsheet World
JC and Howard dropped countless gems during their conversation. A fun watch.
Apple’s M1
Keeping with the semiconductor theme this week—I’m officially sold:
Disclosure: None of this is investment advice. I own BTC, FTCH, SHOP, and BAM shares.
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