Category Archives: Technology

an Intel (INTC) – Altera (ALTR) deal re-emerging?

May 19, 2015 By in Current Market Thoughts, mergers and acquisitions, semiconductor manufacturing, software, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Market gossip is that ALTR recently refused a friendly offer from INTC at $53 a share.

Speculation resurfaced yesterday with rumors that talks have started up again.

The catalyst seems to be the fact that serial acquirer Avago (AVGO–I own shares) appears to be considering a bid for ALTR’s rival Xilinx (XLNX).

AVGO seems to have a knack for finding firms that have excellent technology but which, for one reason or another, find it difficult to achieve consistent profit growth.  AVGo buys them, reorganizes them and puts the profit machine into high gear.

In this case, the sub-industry involved is the sleepy world of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), dominated by the cozy duopoly of ALTR and little brother XLNX.  AS the name suggests, FPGAs are chips whose program structure is not hard-wired (those are application-specific integrated circuits–ASICs).  So they can be reprogrammed, upgraded, debugged…even after they’ve been put into machines that are now in use.  This allows manufacturers to get, say, cutting-edge telecom equipment into customers’ hands very quickly.  The drawback is cost.

The AVGO move suggests the FPGA arena is about to become considerably more competitive.   AVGO/XLNX would be four times the size of ALTR, implying easier access to capital and the ability to offer a much wider variety of products to customers than ALTR.  This suggests ALTR realizes the status won’t be quo for much longer and it needs to be part of a bigger entity in order to compete.

To my mind, the big winner in all this would be INTC.

Tesla (TSLA) or Solar City (SCTY)–which to choose

May 6, 2015 By in Autos, battery power, Energy, family owned companies, Industry Analysis, securities markets, stock market, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

TSLA and SCTY are terrestrial companies run by Elon Musk.  TSLA makes electric-powered cars; SCTY generates electric power with solar cells.

what they have in common

Both are publicly traded.

Both are speculative stocks, in the sense that assessing their value involves projecting results far into the future.

Both are trying to transform staid industries that have been around for a long time.

Both are big users of capital.

Both face substantial regulatory barriers to their success.

–For TSLA, it’s the regulations in many states that prohibit a car manufacturer from selling its products direct to the consumer.  Instead, the carmaker has to use an independent dealer network.

–Because at present they generally have no ability to store power on-site, SCTY clients generally sell the power generated by their solar panels to the electric utilities and purchase power from the grid as they need it run their electrical devices.  Utilities would, naturally, like to buy at 2 and sell at 4.  Regulations, however, force them to trade both ways at the same price, but only so long as solar is a tiny percentage of their business.  In addition, electric utilities are the ones who inspect any local power storage batteries that a household/firm may install.  The utilities aren’t falling all over themselves rushing to do this.

I have small positions in both.

how they differ

Personally, I find SCTY the more conceptually interesting company.

On the other hand, I feel much more comfortable with TSLA.

Why?

It isn’t the industry or the capital structure.

It’s the gigantic battery factory that Musk is in the process of building.

Both TSLA and SCTY can be seen as different ways to create demand for highly sophisticated batteries.  Both are certainly radically dependent on having cutting-edge battery technology.  Arguably, batteries are the main source of value in the products of either firm.

But who owns the battery factory?  TSLA.  To me, this means that Elon Musk’s main economic interest likes in TSLA, not SCTY.  History says an investor wants to have his money in the same place as the entrepreneur he’s betting on.

 

What Amazon (AMZN) said about its web services Thursday night

April 28, 2015 By in Amazon, cloud services, earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, internet, software, Stock ideas, Technology Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

AMZN shares rose by 15% last Friday, after the company gave its first income statement details about Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud business.  In its quarterly reporting from now on, AMZN will break out three business segments:  US sales, International Sales and AWS.

IN the late Thursday earnings release, Jeff Bezos said that AWS is growing fast and “in fact, it’s accelerating.”

the data

operating income

–during calendar 2013, AWS had segment operating income of $673 million, according to the GAAP accounting rules used in financial accounting.  That was 35.3% of AMZN’s total segment income.

—for 2014, AMS had segment operating income of $660 million, or 36.5% of the total

–in 1Q15, AMS had segment income of $265 million, 37.5% of the corporate total

cash flow

–on GAAP principles, AWS had cash flow of $2.4 billion last year.

capital spending

–AWS represents over a third of AMZN’s plant and equipment of $17 billion.  With $4.3 billion in plant additions in 2014, AWS was almost half the company’s total capital spending.  Of the $4.3 billion in new plant, $3 billion was acquired using capital leases–meaning a kind of financing which looks like a loan but which allows AWS to buy the stuff cheaply at the end of the lease.

plant life

–if we divide last year’s depreciation into the average of 2013 and 2014 plant, we get an average plant life of 4 1/2 years.

–return on capital

–last year AWS earned $660 million, using capital of $4.6 billion, meaning a return of 14%.

what to make of this

It’s hard to make a lot out of two years’ data, especially in such a fast-moving and capital-intensive business as AWS’s.

The GAAP numbers look good. Nevertheless, AWS is cash-flow negative, which isn’t troubling if we’re certain that the company will continue to earn a significant return on the capital it is pouring into AWS.  Also, although there’s no way to tell for sure, it seems to me likely that on its IRS books, AWS is losing money.  How so?   …tax breaks for technology investment, including depreciation that’s heavily front-loaded (vs. spread out evenly over the assumed life of the equipment, as GAAP calls for).

Certainly, if Wall Street’s view has been that AWS is bleeding red GAAP ink, the reality is hugely better.  As time goes on, we’ll be better able to judge how insatiable AWS’s need for capital is–or whether, as one would hope, AWS will turn cash flow positive .  My guess is that before then, AWS will be more than half AMZN’s profits, as well.  So holders will have to figure out whether or not it’s an uptick to hold shares in an internet infrastructure business that happens to retail stuff online, too.

 

 

3Q15 earnings for Microsoft (MSFT)

April 27, 2015 By in cloud services, earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, internet, software, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

the report

After the closing bell last Thursday, MSFT reported earnings for its third fiscal quarter (its fiscal year ends in June).  The company had revenue of $21.7 billion for the March period and earnings per share of $.62.  This compares with Wall Street consensus estimates of $.51/share.

Cloud-related businesses were very strong, Windows-related less weak than expected–although the coming launch of Windows 10 at mid-year is already keeping a lid on Windows performance, as potential buyers wait for the newer version.

 

MSFT shares opened Friday trading up by 5%+ from the Thursday close and tacked on another 5% or so be 4pm.

 

Yes, the quarter was good.  And management made it clear, even through its brand of jargon-laden corporate speak, that its move to the cloud can enable a radical expansion of its business, not simply a shifting of revenues from one pocket to another.

the Amazon influence

However, I think the unusually sharp rise in MSFT shares on Friday is more due to Amazon (AMZN) than to MSFT.

AMZN also reported after the close on Thursday.  For the first time, it broke out its Amazon Web Services as a separate business line.  Most Wall Street observers had apparently assumed that AWS, a cloud industry leader, made little or no profit for the company.  I’m not sure why they thought this.  The only thing I can come up with is that AMZN as a whole lost money for the first eight years of its existence as a public company–and analysts argued that AWS would be déjà vu all over again.

Turns out, though, that despite AMZN’s notoriously conservative accounting, the line of business breakout shows AWS making a ton of money.  AMZN shares opened Friday up by 12.5% from Thursday’s close, and drifted higher during the day.

It seems to me that MSFT rose mostly in sympathy with AMZN.

what to do about the stock

The move to the cloud has a bunch of pluses for MSFT:

–the company’s services can be used on many platforms–servers, PCs, smartphones, tablets

–it is launching new multimedia, multi-platform services

–it can provide truncated versions of sophisticated corporate services to small businesses and individuals

–the rental model for services will generate higher income than sales, and

–MSFT can reshape its image from being a PC-centric company of the past to being a cloud-based company of the future.

 

My sense is that Wall Street still views MSFT through PC glasses.  Change in perception represents substantial upside for the stock, in my view.  Still, the outsized upward move in the stock has got to tempt holders–myself included–to take some profits now, with the idea of replacing the stock being sold at lower prices.

Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT) …or an ETF?

April 23, 2015 By in Constructing a Portfolio, ETFs Vs. Mutual Funds, Industry Analysis, internet, securities markets, stock market, Technology Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

When I was reading the Seeking Alpha transcript of INTC’s 1Q15 earnings the other day, I notice that an ad popped up to the right of the text.  It was mostly a list of passive tech-oriented ETFs, with a performance comparison against INTC.  The list showed that INTC had handily outperformed any of the other entries over the pat twelve months   …but that the year-to-date results were a markedly different story.

That started me thinking.  Would I be better off with an ETF than with INTC?

On the one hand,  INTC is a relatively cheap, high dividend yield stock, whose glory days of the PC era are far behind it.  the company finally recognizes this and is in the midst of an attempt to morph into a 21st century-relevant firm. If it’s successful, I can imagine the stock could have, say, a 35% gain in price as Wall Street discounts better future earnings propects (I’d say much the same of the post-Ballmer MSFT).

This isn’t a bad story.  I’m arguably paid to wait.  The stock’s valuation is reasonable.  And at the moment I don’t believe the overall US stock market has very much near-term upside.  So I’ve been content to hold.

The ETF ad, though, got me thinking.   Can I do better, without taking a significantly larger amount of risk?

This question has two parts:

–is there a better tech stock than INTC?, and

–can I locate it?

I’m convinced that the answer to the first is Yes and that the area to look is online services for Millennials and the companies that supply support and infrastructure for them.

For me, the issue is whether to search for, and concentrate, on a single stock–something that requires a lot of time and effort.  I think it’s better to look for an ETF or mutual fund.  The best I’ve found so far is the Web X.O ETF from Ark Investment Management.  The ETF is tiny, so liquidity is a risk–in fact, Merrill Edge wouldn’t accept an online order from me for this reason.  I had no problem with either Fidelity or Vanguard, however.  The other thing is that ARK is a startup.  The principals may have had long Wall Street careers but I see very little evidence of hands-on portfolio management experience.  So ARK is in a sense establishing its bona fides with (a small amount of) my money.  Not exactly the same risk profile as INTC.

Personally, I’m not so concerned about the portfolio manager.  The organization publishes its holdings every day.  For me, liquidity is the bigger worry–and something that would make me reluctant to recommend ARK to anyone else.  Still, I own some.  And I’m looking for other vehicles that can potentially serve the same purpose in my portfolio.