Metadoro
Products
News and analysis

News and analysis

Check market insights shared by our community members

12.05.2022

Perspective ETFs in the ESG energy segment: Invesco Global Clean Energy Portfolio ETF

This ETF invests in green energy ventures. The pandemic led to a 300% increase of its share price. But since the beginning of 2022 they have lost 30%, twice as much as the S&P 500 SPY ETF. The net capital which has outflown from the Fund has reached $31.5 billion over the last 12 months, while the major outflow was recorded in December 2021. However, its shares are still seen to be overbought as P/E multiplier is at 24 that is well above the average of 20 for the EFT’s that are linked to the S&P 500, while the dividend yields are above PBD’s numbers.

Inflation in the United States is rising negatively affecting all shares with a high P/E ratio. So, we may expect a further decline of the PBD share price and other similar assets that cannot be protected from rising risks. Traditional energies are looking more attractive on this background and could be a perfect hedge asset amidst geopolitical uncertainties.

15.09.2022

Safe Haven Assets for Long-Term Investments: Broadcom

Broadcom is an American semiconductor and infrastructure software development company. Soon it is expected to close a merger deal with VMware, a cloud computing and visualization company, that will open new cross-sales opportunities for Broadcom to boost its revenues. Broadcom stocks are now 25% off their peak values.

According to the Q3 FY 2022 financial report that ended July 31, consolidated revenues grew by 25% year-over-year to $8.46 billion, and EPS went up by 40% to $9.73 per share. The semiconductors segment, that added 32% year-over-year, was the primary driver for the company’s profit. The company’s free cash flows (FCF) topped $4.3 billion, allowing it to spend $1.7 billion on dividends and 1.5 billion on the shares repurchase program. The company is planning to continue spending at least 50% of FCF on dividends that added 43% every year on average since 2016.

According to the Q4 FY 2022 forward guidance, the company is expecting its revenues to go up by 20% year-over-year to $8.9 billion and for EDITDA to go up by 25% to $5.6 billion. Broadcom has great experience in expanding its product portfolio by M&A operations, and apparently it will continue on this way. The company is also expected to benefit greatly from the $52.7 billion CHIPS bill in the United States.

16.06.2022

Not Every Tech Stocks are Equally Strong: SAP

SAP stocks have lost 30% since the beginning of 2022. The German tech company develops enterprise software and solutions to manage business operations. For example, one of its services can be used to manage all business travel financial activities and related spending. In other words, it is quite a routine company with a stable and strong cash flow. Once SAP software is installed on a corporate level it is hard to do without it as it is deeply integrated into the business core processes. Moreover, SAP is restructuring its business model around its subscription base and this will allow for cash flows to be even more predictable and balanced through the financial year. Such a model is in favourable to Wall Streel investors.

The war in Ukraine has a 300-million-euro negative effect on SAP business, and it is only a marginal 1% of the overall revenue base for the company, while its dominance in the ERP segment is secure. The revenues added 11% year-on-year to 7.08 euros in Q1 2022. The revenues grew by 6% in Q4 2021.

The company has made some successful M&A deals, acquiring Qualtrics, a cloud-based subscription software platform, that delivered +48% revenue in Q1 2022. This company had a gross margin above 90% in 2021 while SAP’s gross margin was at 70% for the same year.

SAP management promised to triple its cloud-based business by 2025, and boost revenues to 22 billion euros, while operational profit is forecasted to grow by 40% from the current 8.4 billion euros. This is a very extensive growth for the company that has a high P/E ratio at 17. The company may not perform very high growth rates as its younger tech sector peers, but it may certainly recover to new all-time highs in the long-term perspective. However, the sector may require several quarters to recover, and the recovery would be headed by such reliable companies as SAP with a low risk profile.

11.08.2022

Perspective Peers of Ethereum: Avalanche

Avalanche is ranked by Coinmarketcap at the 12^th position by market cap with $7.8 billion, which is 4% less than Ethereum’s market cap. AVAX prices dropped by 82% of its peak values, allowing investors to buy it at early 2021 prices. Avalanche’s infrastructure consists of three logically isolated networks, each of these with their own processing, validators, and own set of rules.

This platform is often compared to the existing internet web infrastructure with core connection protocols like HTTP, surrounded by a huge number of networks to their apps. Avalanche allow for the creation of public and private systems as a blockchain or DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) and for the use of different virtual machines for apps, including EVM engine (Ethereum Virtual Machine) that allows Enthereum network programs to be developed.

Avalanche includes C-chain to create smart contracts that are processed on an advanced EVM engine, P-Chain that coordinates validators that process transactions and also allows for the creation and management of new subnetworks, and X-Chain which is a directed acyclic graph regulating issuance and trade of cryptoassets. DAG systems record new transactions on top of the old ones, allowing for processing speed to be increased and for capacity substantially. It is quite different to other blockchains, where transactions are compiled in blocks in order to be processed.

The advantage of Avalanche is that it provides anyone with the opportunity to create his or her own isolated blockchain with its own set of parameters, including access to apps and the programming language with which it will work. Every subnetwork can process around 4,500 transactions per second compared to 14 processed by the Ethereum network.

12.04.2024

CarMax Is More Committed to Innovations But Market Conditions Make It Sinking

CarMax (KMX) quarterly report came out on April 11, vividly displaying why any immediate investment into the used car market still sounds like not a good idea. The stock quickly lost ground, wasting a double-digit number of percentage points as a response to its net income drop to $0.32 per share against $0.44 cents per share a year ago, also compared to much stronger $0.52, $0.75 and $1.44 per share in the previous three quarters. Analyst polls estimated a net income per share at about $0.50, which would be 56% better than the reality.

This almost looks like a financial fiasco in the company's efforts to withstand slowing demand in the segment. CarMax Q4 2023 revenue decreased by 1.7% to $5.6 billion, slightly below consensus expectations of $5.8 billion, indicating the lack of gross marginality of the business. This happened even though the total supply of unsold used vehicles on dealer lots grew by 9% YoY to 2.27 million units in March, according to Cox Automotive data. CarMax CEOs delayed their own goal of selling over 2 million units annually, when measuring combined retail and wholesale actions, to between 2026 and 2030, from its prior target of 2026.

A "higher-for-longer" Fed fund rates is demonstrably bad for car sales volumes, be it new generation Tesla cars or just pre-owned vehicles, while operating costs for warehouses are growing. Besides, easing some semiconductor constraints in North America may help marginally improving orders for new cars, leaving used-car sales under the same pressure. Meanwhile, the entrance of Asia players offered significant discounts. Therefore, North American and European operators of the used car market need to sell many great cars at cheaper prices. CarMax already posted its official warning of a potential "hit to profit-sharing revenue" due to inflationary impact to its partners, before last Christmas. "While affordability of used cars remains the challenge for consumers, pricing improved during the quarter," Enrique Mayor-Mora, executive vice president and CFO admitted.

It was only a smaller division of CarMax Auto Finance, which managed to get a 19% better income due to "a lower provision for loan losses" and an increase in average managed receivables. Yet, this was rather news from the side business, which was clearly not enough to be optimistic. The company added that it is now focused on enhancing its omni-channel experience and leveraging data science and automation. Carmax said it delivered "strong retail and wholesale" graphic processors, which helped to increase "used saleable inventory units" more than 10%, but used total inventory units was unchanged despite innovations. The company seeks to achieve efficiency improvements in its core operations, believing that they "are well-positioned to drive growth as the market turns", according to Enrique Mayor-Mora. This may be useful to strengthen competitiveness in better times for the segment. Yet, the current challenges are too heavy to be ignored by market crowds.

MetadoroIn-house analytics

25.04.2024

Good Levels but Probably a Bad Moment for Buying Meta

Shares of Meta Platforms (META) plummeted by nearly 15%, from $493.5 at closing time of Wall Street's regular session on Wednesday, April 24, to as low as $418.5 in after-hours trading. Current levels are nominally looking so attractive for purchasing stocks of the giant Facebook and Instagram owner, as prices are surely more reasonable for entering this market after the last three months when Meta was extremely costly for investing. Nevertheless, such a severe form of negative response to solid quarterly results of a mega cap company makes us think about the feasibility of taking extra time for probably a better, or at least a more risk-balanced decision, as even lower prices may appear in May. So, simply watching the further dynamics seems to be a rational choice in a rather mixed and complicated environment.

The problem actually was that a substantially better-than-expected EPS number of $4.71 per share, compared with $4.32 per share in analyst poll forecasts, provided a more than 9% advantage against average projections and also impressively doubled Q1 2023 EPS of $2.20. In a normal frame of market minds, this would protect the company's value from an excessively large drop, even though some softer updated guidance for the rest of the year. Another positive thing was that a much better financial return has been squeezed from growing revenue as well, but the pace of revenue rise (less than 1% vs expectations and 27% YoY) was more humble than the speed of income growth.

These achievements were driven by more daily active users than expected (amounting to 3.24 billion) and 6% YoY growth in average prices for advertisers. Yet, the crowd and most investment houses were agitated mostly by weaker points this time, pointing to the general anxiety mood related to Meta Platforms at the moment. Meta CEOs praised improving its advertisement products with AI tools like a last generation chat assistant and Llama 3, an open-source large language model that is designed as a ChatGPT competitor, while Reels (short video) formats also helped a lot in attracting customers, yet those inspiring remarks were mostly ignored by the market. At the same time, Meta was declared "guilty" enough for a tough sold-off due to the company's guidance for total revenue within the range of $36.5 billion to $39 billion for Q2 2024, meaning $37.75 billion at the midpoint to miss average analyst bets on $38.3 billion. Compared to about $36.5 billion in Q1 2024 and $32 billion in Q2 2023, Meta projections were not so sad.

Another "fault" in Meta guidance was that its full-year capital expenditures for 2024 were up from a previously estimated range of $30 billion to $37 billion, now reaching $35 billion to $40 billion. Following only $28 billion spent during a "year of efficiency", proclaimed in 2023, Meta commented it would continue to accelerate its infrastructure investments to support an "artificial intelligence roadmap". A planned increase in spending on generative artificial intelligence features, which is perceived as a boon for many other companies, is somehow interpreted in a different manner by investors for Meta, which is apparently expected to take a more economizing approach.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who backed all strict cost-cutting measures in 2023, including massive employees lay off, also said that increased investments into AI chips and big data processing are necessary for Meta to become "the leading AI company in the world". Yet, the analysts group at Goldman Sachs argued that "such a narrative results in a slight reduction in forward revenue trends'', while experts at Stifel emphasised in a client's note that the "biggest question" is whether Meta can "meaningfully monetize AI over time to justify the investment cycle".

The current intonation of many comments also shows large funds are more eager to believe in chip producers like NVidia and creators of the AI tools like Microsoft and aggregators like Google, than in financial success of pure AI users in the next year or two. The growing competition from other social networks, like Elon Musk's free speech X or China's regional communication platforms, should also be taken into account. That's probably why we are thinking of a more cautious approach to choosing particular price levels before buying Meta shares after the recent drop.