News and analysis

Near Protocol is one of the major peers of Ethereum and as it was introduced quite a while ago most of the add-ons that Ethereum is only now planning to launch are already in place.

First of all, Shard Chains allow for the boosting of data capacity and transaction speed. This mechanism allows for the entire network to be divided into individual segments or shards, and each of these contain a unique number of smart contracts and balance data. In other words, the network is split into smaller working segments that exist side-by-side and enable 100,000 transactions to be made per second, while commissions are much lower than in the Ethereum network. New blocks are minted by validators according to their NEAR token stakings, or PoS protocol.

There are more advantages, such as the opportunity to create readable wallet addresses (names instead of long set of symbols and digits), the Layer2 Aurora solution for the fast launch of Ethereum-based apps, and many other. The market cap of NEAR is currently at $3.4 billion, or 1.7% of Ethereum’s massive $202 billion market cap vs 3% in April 2022. Technological advantages and large investors behind NEAR may allow the project to increase its market cap to 25% of Ethereum’s, meaning that NEAR token prices may surge by 900%.

Long-term investors may delegate their tokens to validators to receive passive income with around 10% annual yield. Investors may choose to receive interest in USN tokens with 15% annual yield. However, in this case investors may not profit as NEAR tokens may possibly rally.

ETH is a native token for the Ethereum blockchain and is one of the two most reliable digital assets in the market along with Bitcoin. Ethereum is the first platform that became a hub for thousands of blockchain apps and other digital solutions. The recovery of ETH prices to November 2021 peaks at $4,900 would bring investors 190% profit.

Second layer solutions (Layer2) were introduced to improve stability and effectiveness of the Ethereum blockchain. These are blockchain network add-ons that are added on top of the primary blockchain. The most popular add-ons are Arbitrum, Loopring, Immutable X, and Polygon that have recently partnered with Meta (Facebook owner). In other words, the Ethereum blockchain network has a much broader use than the native blockchain itself.

Ethereum developers promise to release a new Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus protocol in late 2022. This protocol will allow miners to stake tokens to a special deposit to mine blocks. Some networks within the Ethereum blockchain have moved to PoS protocol this summer, while others are expected to move to this protocol in the middle of September.  This move will allow for the increase of processing capacity of the network to almost 100,000 transactions a second from the existing 30 transactions and lower commissions. This would also allow for ETH to switch to the deflation model when coins are algorithmically burned, while some coins would be removed from circulation as they would be blocked by staking - more than 13 million ETH or 10% of overall coins in circulation are blocked by staking. The problem is that coins are blocked for a long period of time and cannot be sold or exchanged for fiat currency.

Movies and series are not the only sources for income for streaming services. One of the major sources is the broadcasting of sport events. All major streaming platforms are now struggling to get the rights to broadcast the NFL Sunday Ticket. Apple has offered $3 billion for it while Disney and Amazon are left behind with a $2 billion bet. Google has recently joined the competition to take over the broadcast from Youtube.

Nevertheless, Disney made other significant deals to broadcast sports like a $2.7 billion contract with Monday Night Football, contracts with La Liga football, and NHL for another $0.6 billion a year. Disney has more contracts to broadcast more than 22,000 sport events for its ESPN+ channel. And that costs a bulk of money. Disney has raised monthly ESPN+ subscription by $3 to $9.99 compared to $5.99 in 2020 and $4.99 in 2018. Another subscription price hike may stimulate users to switch to the Disney Bundle service that includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. ESPN+ itself generates $4.73 per client, only 4% up compared to 2021. Thus, promoting clients to the larger service could be justified, and may add $72 per client a year. The problem is that a further increase of the cost could not be as successful as the monetisation potential, which is rather limited. The increase of the Disney Bundle subscription cost may churn clients to move to cheaper Disney+ or ESPN+ subscriptions. The company received $4.9 billion in subscription revenues in Q2 2022 with a net operational loss of $0.9 billion. Expensive sport broadcasting licenses is the major reason for such a loss. ESPN+ itself generates $110 million a month but this is  not enough to cover licenses fees, even together with advertising revenues. Other streaming giants are generating massive cash flows which they can spend on their development. So, market positions of Disney may suddenly become less sustainable than traditionally considered.

Despite strong financials shares of Airbnb have been trading 40% off their prices from the beginning of 2022. Thus, investors have a great opportunity to add shares of the perspective company to their portfolios with a significant discount. The major bullish driver for Airbnb stocks is the recovery of travel activities. The number of apartment owners willing to lease their property is constantly rising and therefore directing more clients to the Airbnb platform. More options for apartment owners and travelers like Split Stays, AirCover, and simplified searches with Airbnb Categories, along with professional photo service to owners, could expand the company’s market share.

The market positioning of Airbnb seems to be very strong as many people are moving to the online working format while changing their locations more frequently. This trend supports the company’s financials as its revenues rose by 70% year-on-year to $1.51 billion in the first quarter of 2022, beating consensus at $1.45 billion. Moreover, revenues grew by 80% year-on-year compared to the pandemic-free Q1 2019.

Cooperation with hotels is another growth source for the platform. Bookings and other services are charging significant commissions, while hotels are not happy with it anymore as the number of bookings declined dramatically during the two pandemic years. Airbnb pioneered cooperation with boutique hotels and may engage other peers very soon.

The enterprise value (EV) is at $58.6 billion with expected revenue at $8.2 billion, up by 38% year-on-year. This puts the forward EV/S at 7.1, which is a very low figure for a company with such strong financials. Net cash flows over the recent 12 months were at $2.9 billion; adjusted EBITDA moved to the positive territory for the first time in the company’s history to $226 million, while the EBITDA margin was at 15%. The number of booking for the first quarter of 2022 rose by 59% to 102.1 million nights. Booking for the 30+ nights segment grew the most to 20% of overall bookings.

The mid-term target price for Airbnd is forecasted above $150 per share.