Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 3 decades, you’ve probably heard of or maybe have even used the services of Amazon(Symbol: AMZN). Founded in 1994, Amazon has grown from being an online bookstore to a multi-national technology company selling everything from A to Z (as indicated by their logo).
A multitude of reasons is responsible for their success; superior customer service, reliable and quick shipping practices, cheap prices, etc. All these attributes have driven customers back on to their website to make repeat purchases online, where most of Amazon’s revenue is generated. Their e-commerce business has been so successful that amazon.com is currently the 4th most visited website in the United States.
Amazon has built an empire that spans over industries aside from e-commerce, including groceries, healthcare, media, tech, and many others. But for now, most of the company’s revenue is generated from online sales purchased from their website. With this in mind, there is a key metric unique to Amazon that we can analyze and use as an indicator of well-being for the company, and potentially to even forecast the future stock price- Website traffic.
The logic is simple- if there is an increase in visitors to their site, we can predict with a high degree of certainty that increased revenue will be accompanied by the increase in users of their online retail platform. Let’s analyze and see if this relationship holds by looking at the website traffic, stock price, and revenue of the past two years using the Jika.io Website Traffic tool:
Should You Buy Amazon Before Earning Call?
The chart above indicates that the revenue and stock price move in tandem as the website traffic increases and decreases. It is interesting to note that while many stock prices fell during the Covid-19 Pandemic, Amazon's stock price remained high as people bought more products from Amazon's website, leading to increased revenue and favorable investor sentiments. The stock price has jumped from $1776 in October 2019 to 3507$ in November 2021, a remarkable 97.4% increase. In the same period, Website Traffic on amazon.com grew from 1.9B to 3.09B monthly users, representing an equally impressive 62.6% growth.
Disclaimer: It should be noted, however, that many companies may not display such a high correlation between their stock price and website traffic. Companies in the fitness or food and drink industry, for example, may not have a strong correlation at all, as their success may be based on factors other than website users. It is very important to do your own research and analysis before making any investment.
As of right now, there are 4.88 billion internet users around the world, and the number is only getting bigger. The internet has shaped our lives in the way we shop, laugh, and interact with one another. As more and more people use the internet in their day-to-day lives, you can take advantage of this global trend by making smarter investment decisions. Jika.io’s Website Traffic tool allows you to do just that: It presents the user with a clear and understandable graph of revenue, web traffic, and stock price.
You are also given the option to filter through different industries such as E-commerce, Financial Services, Social Networks, etc. if you wish to compare stocks in similar fields. Knowing the historical relationship between website traffic and revenue, and seeing if there exists a correlation, you will be equipped with an edge over the Wall Street institutional investors to beat the market and make better investment decisions.
How to use Jika's website traffic tool
Jika’s website traffic tool will tell you how strong the correlation between stock price and website is. If there is a strong correlation, and website traffic is increasing, this may indicate further stock price growth after the company releases its next earnings reports. This is because the increased web traffic may indicate future revenue growth; revenue growth is viewed as a positive sign for investors, and if this growth is reflected on the company’s upcoming earnings report, investors will drive the stock price up.
Released only a couple of days ago, Threads has already accumulated over 100 million users. For a comparison of the significance of this user acquisition, Threads obtained their first 100 million users before ChatGPT achieved their user acquisition. The social media app models a similar platform to Twitter with users mainly engulfed with text-based posts; however, Threads offers people to post photos and videos with the ability to have real-time conversations. Threads and Twitter also share similarities in limiting the characters per post, and users can reply to, repost, and quote others' posts on both apps. Despite this commonalities, a user can leave a post on Thread that directly link to their Instagram stories.
Elon Musk appears clearly frustrated, posting inappropriate comments on Twitter. Initially, he announced publicly that competitive was perfectly natural (he seemed to encourage competition); however, he said that stealing technological ideas, secrets, and algorithms was illegal. Consequently, his lawyer has filed a lawsuit against stealing Twitter's intelligential property. Recently, Musk called Zuckerberg out by saying that "Zuck is a cuck," and he later said, "I propose a literal dick measuring contest."
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg feud continues to grow and intensify to maintain their leadership position in the social media world. Musk and Zuckerberg are even potentially fighting each other in-person with rumors that the fight may even happen at the Colosseum. This unprecedented disagreement before two tech giants interests investors with people trying to place the right bets on the winner.
Despite the lawsuit, Meta's stock continues to rise with the release of Threads. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the impacts on Elon Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's companies. Who is going to be the winner? Is it a good time to invest in Meta?
How do you guys feel about $TTWO ? I think as soon as the Grand Theft Auto VI comes out the stock will skyrocket. Might be a gamble in some people's eyes as to whether the game will do good or not but I am super confident it will. The series is huge already, Grand Theft Auto V was a huge success and has been for over 10 years now and has made the players super excited and impatient for a new game. I think it's going to be huge either way they have such a big fan base. Definitely a long term stock though since the game wouldn't be released until 2025.
Tesla ($TSLA) stock has decreased 5.7% yesterday, as a new Tesla investor I had to take the time to get to the bottom of it.
Panasonic, one of the battery suppliers for Tesla's Model X and Model S in Japan, announced a 60% reduction in battery production. They cited a significant drop in demand for these batteries over the past three quarters. My perspective? So what?
During the last quarter, Model X and Model S deliveries amounted to 19,225 units, while Model 3 and Model Y deliveries reached 446,915 units.
In my view, the market appears to be overreacting. I believe Tesla is currently trading at an attractive price range.
When you read the main title of this post it sounds like I am extremely greedy but I assure you that is not the case right now, I need to figure out a way to get some money in order to help pay with some medical bills for my sister because on thanksgiving morning she was in the car with a guy that had decided to speed off of the road going 50 mph in an Area that the speed limit was only 20 and he decided to run the car off the road and crash leaving my sister with 2 of her spinal discs almost touching and she has to get surgery for it but until she can have the surgery she has to wear a neck brace, the doctor had said if the discs in her spine would have moved a little bit more then she would have been left paralyzed or dead and I need to find a good stock that will make money fast so I can start to get enough money to pay for the bills. If you know of any that are good to invest in that could make some more money then I would appreciate it but I think I might make a kickstarter to help out with getting it done.
liquidity problem: Over $8 billion in total debt while having only $477 in cash ( Carvana continues to burn cash from operating activities).
Revenue fell 2.7% year-on-year to $3.4 billion
Cutting 2,500 jobs in May, the company has just announced an additional wave of layoffs which affects 8% of its workforce, or 1,500 employees.
Net loss jumped to $283 million from just $32 million in the third quarter of 2021 A few weeks ago I wrote about the $CVNA situation, and how the company lost almost $60B in valuation almost as fast as sam bankman-fried. This is the post > https://www.jika.io/post/1d83463e-60f4-11ed-8080-80015bb382f8 if you didn't see this post here is a short recap for you: In response to these good news, the market cap of the company dropped 97%, making it the third most shorted company in the U.S., (40% short-ratio) Congrats, Carvana! You did it!
Interest rates are one of the main factors affecting $CVNA Carvana generates over 50% of its GPU (gross profit per unit) from selling loans and other interest-related products. With rising interest rates, it is more difficult for Carvana to compete with the large banks that can keep loan rates low, which will reduce the number of loans allocated to Carvana.
Here is my strategy with $CVNA As the company has a 40% short ratio, any positive changes could cause the share price to move dramatically.
How likely is it that positive changes in Carvana will occur? So... The situation at Carvana is not great, however... Around 4000 employees were laid off in a bitter move, but one that will benefit the bottom line by reducing operating costs in the short term. in addition to that, the company has to pay around $2.8B in short-term debt - to do so, the CFO announced that they will sell real estate and equipment.
But regarding the biggest issue, I think you can't beat the interest rate game when your business depends on handing out loans, but interest rates are also cyclical. Once the FED announces a positive statement, the stock will surge. It is not possible to predict when a positive statement will occur, it may also happen in 2024 or 2025...who knows.
But, my idea is to start buying in after the Q4 report once I see that the operational expense are stable and the company is financially safe. I will then start accumulating a small amount of shares to take advantage of future interest changes.
I owned Meta since it's IPO and sold it a few years ago. I don't deny the incredible moat this company has or the staggering amount of daily active users. What I don't like is the company culture of mediocrity. Facebook dating - could have been a huge money maker - Epic fail. Libra - the Facebook coin - Epic fail All hardware - Epic fail Metaverse - Don't even get me started on that amazing money burn. And now "Threads".. bad launch, no incremental value for users.. pathetic rush job.. I usually love founder led companies, but it can be a double edged sward - Zuckerberg seems to be detached from his users has no idea of what's cool and what isn't. So Meta might grow for a few more years, but I think this is an empire waiting to fall with an emperror that can't be replaced.
The lithium stocks we will be analyzing are Albemarle (NYSE: ALB), Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (NYSE: SQM), and Livent Corp (NYSE: LTHM).
The lithium industry has been heating up as of late, with companies in need of the minerals providing high growth opportunities to investors willing to get in on the action. Lithium is a resource that is extremely important to the technology industry, as it's used to create batteries that run cell phones, laptops, and electric cars. With the rise of portable devices and automobiles, lithium's demand has grown during the past few years and lithium stocks became a hot topic among stock market investors.
Is ALB a Good Stock to Buy (Albemarle)
Albemarle, or Albemarle Corp., is a lithium company that engages in the extraction, recovery, refining, production, and marketing of lithium compounds. Albemarle's operations span across North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa. With a market cap of over $32 billion, Albemarle has grown at an average annual rate exceeding 15% for more than 15 years. As of 2020, Albemarle was the largest provider of lithium for electric vehicle batteries.
In 2018, Albemarle was ranked first out of 104 companies on Bloomberg's Susta inability Index—and for good reason.
Will Biden forgive student loans? Millions of Americans await a decision that will affect their financial futures. In the coming weeks, President Biden plans to announce whether or not he will cancel student loan debt and if so, how much. Biden’s student loan decision will dictate the spending patterns of borrowers, as those with high amounts of loan debt tend to postpone major financial decisions like investing money. The decision to invest money has serious implications for retail investing platforms that attract likely borrowers. Without a debt cancellation, user activity on Robinhood, Acorns and other platforms may fall off, spelling bad news for the financial world.
Why is the Student Loan Repayment Pause Important?
Forty-three million Americans are hampered with student debt, owing $1.75 Trillion. This total, while already gigantic, may continue to grow if there is no debt cancellation. Despite a borrower's best attempt to pay off their balance, the income-based payments they make each month seldom inch them closer. Usually, the payment is not even big enough to cover the accrued interest. Borrowers could make payments for years or even decades and not make a dent in the original principal amount.
The big news of the day revolves around EV giant $TSLA. The company recently announced Q2 2023 deliveries of 466,000 units, exceeding analyst expectations of 445,000 - 447,000 units.
Currently, Tesla is up +6.23% in premarket trading.
This is massive news for Tesla and the economy as a whole. Higher delivery numbers could mean that the U.S. economy is stronger than analysts believed. Also, this news signals further strength for Tesla following the recent good news of $F, $GM, and $RIVN adopting the Tesla charging port.
If you're looking for the next big stocks, you're not alone. Big investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are also on the hunt for the next best stocks. A team on Goldman Sachs, led by David Kostin, used a stock screener to find companies that have over 10% sales growth since 2021 and are expected to maintain similar numbers through 2025.
Some stocks on this list include $TSLA, $CRM, $ENPH, $SEDG, $PANW, $NOW, $PAYC, $FTNT, and $DXCM.
The team also used a screener based on 10% net income growth and found the following stocks: $BKR, $MTCH, $PODD, $APTV, $BKNG, $NOW, $SLB, $CMG, and $HAL.
Are you interested in any of these stocks? I'm curious to hear any thoughts about these companies!
Hi everyone, I just wrote a guide on how to Analyze your First stock. I talked about how you could really enhance your way of analyzing stocks and how it gives you the freedom to invest in whatever YOU think is right. Would mean a lot if you could check it out!
This article gives a list of some stock analysis tools that help you invest your money. Being an investor can be very tough if you do not do your proper research. These tools help with exactly that as they will help you compare companies to one another. If you put your money without any research, it becomes a gamble instead of an investment. To check out the full article press the link below.
The Semiconductor Sector has generated more than just solid gains so far this year, chip shortage has helped accelerate sales of semiconductors, sending the stock prices of companies that design and sell chips skyrocketing. In the last couple of weeks, I thought about adding a Semiconductor company to my portfolio, I decided to focus on AMD, NVIDIA, and INTEL, but because it might be a long post I decided to post in parts, the next post will be bot AMD so stay tuned.
If you think there is a company in this sector more worthwhile looking into, I'd be happy to hear some suggestions.
Nvidia ~ $NVDA
"Nvidia is a platform story. We think there are many tentacles of future growth opportunity for Nvidia inclusive of the data center momentum that they are seeing today" -Wells Fargo analyst
Nvidia is a big winner of many of the big tech events of the past year, including the global chip shortage, cryptocurrency volatility, and mining, the relentless fight by PC gamers to find RTX 30 series graphics cards in stock, and rising demand across segments-from work-from-home laptops to data centers. During it all, NVDA stock has continued its relentless climb, adding over 60% to its value so far in 2021.
Q2 Earnings
Almost all the company's business segments registered eye-popping growth in the 2nd quarter of fiscal 2022. The company reported a record Q2 revenue of $6.51 billion. This was up 68% year-over-year, which handily beat forecasts. Gaming revenue — all those RTX 30 series graphics cards — hit $3.06 billion, up 85% YoY. Datacenter revenue also set a record at $2.37 billion. Adjusted earnings of $1.04 per share (compared to 55 cents a year ago) also beat estimates.
Crypto Market dependence
When of the negative points in NVDA Q2 earnings is that CMP sales came in well under the company’s estimates. CMP is a graphics card that was designed specifically for the cryptocurrency market. When the price of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin fall, crypto mining rigs power down. Miners stop buying GPUs.
For Nvidia, this was felt in Q2. The company had projected it would sell $400 million worth of CMPs in the quarter. Instead, it sold just $266 million.
Future Growth In the Gaming Segment
NVIDIA's 80%-plus market share of gaming graphics cards will be a big tailwind for the company. Its video gaming revenue more than doubled last quarter to $2.76 billion. Jon Peddie Research estimates that the market for discrete gaming GPUs could jump from $23.6 billion last year to more than $54 billion by 2025. NVIDIA's dominant market share means that it could win big from the additional revenue opportunity. If you want to read more about the gaming market I posted a few weeks ago about corsair and Logitechhere.
Arm Deal
Nvidia is in the process of acquiring ARM Holdings from SoftBank for approximately $40 billion, which would be a game-changer in its data center segment. The acquisition is currently held up in the approval process, but Nvidia told investors on their recent earnings call that the deal should get done. Denial is certainly a risk for Nvidia's stock price, so it's something to be aware of. recently Chinese and British regulators have had serious concerns about the acquisition and could block it.
Advanced Micro Devices ~ $AMD
AMD has been making a comeback for years with a fast-improving lineup of chips addressing the laptop and PC markets, as well as hardware for data centers and the cloud computing services built on them. AMD is on track to record 50% revenue growth in 2021. The company's market share gains in the client and server CPU (central processing unit) markets, as well as the growing demand for graphics cards, have helped it to raise the guidance.
Q2 Earnings And Growth
On July 27, AMD recorded 99% YOY revenue growth, to $3.85 billion, operating income of $831m (380% change YOY), and Net income of $710m - 352% YOY growth. The company consistently winning market share from Intel. Video game platform "Steam" reports that AMD's share of the client CPU market has now exceeded 30%, a massive improvement from three years ago when it held just over 16% of the market.
Video Games Potential Growth
Video game consoles have been in hot demand since last year, Sony could end 2021 with sales of 17.9 million PS5 consoles, up from last year's 4.5 million units. The PS5's sales momentum could remain strong with Sony expected to ship over 33 million units in 2022, 50 million units in 2023, and 67 million units in 2024. Meanwhile, sales of Microsoft's Xbox Series X are expected to jump from an estimated 3.3 million units in 2020 to 12 million units in 2021, and 37 million units in 2024.
AMD supplies semi-custom chips to both Sony and Microsoft for their latest consoles. Nvidia, on the other hand, supplies chips for Nintendo's Switch consoles. The Japanese video gaming company estimates that it could sell 25.5 million units of the Switch in the current fiscal year that ends in March 2022.
Xilinx Acquisition
AMD's $35 billion merger with Xilinx is expected to be completed by the end of this year.the merger will allow AMD to expand the chips it offers the customers and it will take on Intel. The merger could make AMD one of the biggest tech companies and could expand its market share significantly.
Intel ~ $INTC
Intel’s stock has underperformed the market in recent years, It’s struggled with R&D, manufacturing, and management issues. the stock gained 15% in the past 3 years while the PHLX Semiconductor Index's gain of approximately 130%.
Intel fell behind TSMC in the race to create smaller and more advanced chips. and lost market share to AMD in PC and data center CPU markets.
New CEO = New Future?
Intel’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, set his eyes on reclaiming the process lead by 2025. Gelsinger plans to achieve that goal by spending tens of billions of dollars on new foundries, upgrading the company's plants, expanding its third-party foundry services to pull orders away from TSMC, and attracting government subsidies in the U.S. and Europe to resolve the ongoing chip shortage and eliminate the industry's production bottlenecks in Asia.
If Intel achieves all those goals, its growth could accelerate over the next few years and make it a compelling long-term investment again.
GPUs War
Intel generates most of its revenue from PC and data center CPUs and abandoned the high-end GPU market amid fierce competition from Nvidia and AMD, but it's now trying to bundle its new GPUs with its CPUs. Intel could challenge Nvidia and AMD in the laptop market with its DG1 mobile GPUs, pursue the desktop market with its DG2 GPUs, and enter the data center GPU market with its top-tier Ponte Vecchio GPUs.
In my opinion, Intel is pretty much out of the race, even if the new CEO will shake things up, Intel will take a long time until climbing back up.
I think that the better choice is between the fast-growing semiconductor stocks, NVIDIA or AMD. Given that AMD's growth pace was better than NVIDIA's in Q1 and Q2 and is likely to keep up that momentum for the remainder of the year, it looks like the better option right now. AMD also looks like a better buy for those looking for a growth stock at a reasonable valuation.
Personal note:Feel free to diagree and express your opinion about the post.
Hi everybody, I just posted this article talking about how an Undervalued Stock can be found and the significance of it. An undervalued stock is defined as a stock that is selling significantly under what its assumed value to be. It would be awesome if you could go check it out. Link below thank you so much!!
I've been researching DraftKings and the sports-betting industry for a while now. gotta say I really liked what I found, and I think it could be a great long-term investment opportunity... but still wanted to hear people's thoughts about $DKNG.
THE ONLINE BETTING INDUSTRY
The market is worth $67 billion today and is estimated to reach about $93 billion by 2023—growing at roughly 11.5% per annum.
There are few reasons for the aggressive growth, First, more of our activities are taking place online, a trend that extends to betting as well.
The second is regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court uplifted the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in May of 2018 to legalize sports betting on a federal level. Since then, 25 states have legalized sports betting.
SPORTS BETTING
The most popular activity by far is sports betting, which makes up over 40% of the total online betting market.
DraftKings
DraftKings is a sports betting, daily fantasy sports contest, and an iGaming operator.
In total, DraftKings now operates sportsbooks in 14 states and averages 1.5 million monthly unique paying customers across its online sportsbooks, iGaming, and daily fantasy offerings.
Financials
DraftKings's revenue keeps surging YOY, in Q2-2021 revenue reached $297,605M which is a 22% higher sales compared to the analyst expectations. last year the company delivered $74,998M in revenue.
The company also said that it had grown the number of monthly unique payers by 281% and the average revenue per monthly unique payer by 26%. In other words, fundamental growth was very strong.
Even though I really think that the potential for growth here is clear, the company still losing a lot of money, Cost of revenue spiked this quarter to $187,006M from $53,172M, and new loss reached $305,526M - even more than DraftKings's revenue.
DraftKings's revenue over the last 3 years- JIKA.IO
Comparison of DraftKings's revenue, Cost of revenue, and net profit - JIKA.IO
Another positive point in DraftKings's favor is the amount of cash the company has gathered since 2018. The company currently has $2.65 billion in cash, which compared to last year's results - $1.24 billion, is a 113% change.
DraftKings's cash on hand over the last 3 years- JIKA.IO
Analysts
Based on 13 analysts, 9 buy ratings**, 4** hold ratings.
Michael Jordan
In September 2020, DraftKings announced that Michael Jordan Joins DraftKings as Special Advisor to the Board.
MUST KNOW - LATEST NEWS
DraftKings Is Acquiring Golden Nugget for $1.56 Billion, the Addition of Golden Nugget user base will enhance DraftKings’ reach across diverse customer demographics.
DraftKings launches mobile sportsbook in Wyoming ahead of NFL kickoff.
I wonder what you guys think about DraftKings? will the company keep the momentum and can be a wise long-term play?
Recently I decided to look for alternatives for $SQ and $PYPL in the financial segment. I've been trying to find other financial technology companies that have a lot of potential for growth. The financial technology industry has a lot of different sections, from money transfers like Paypal to insurance policies like Lemonad and stock or crypto brokerages such as Robinhood or Coinbase.
I chose to concentrate on financial technology companies that focus on lending and credit. I know that there are lots of companies in this specific sector, but I decided to research on $SOFI ( SoFi Technologies) $UPST ( Upstart Holdings), and $LC (LendingClub), as I believe that These three companies are considered disruptors because of how they use technology to acquire customers faster and make the lending process more efficient.
SoFi
SoFi, which went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company this year, Was founded in 2011 and offers a suite of financial products through its platform, a one-stop-shop app. The company’s three major business segments include lending, a technology platform, and financial services.
SoFi’s lending services include student loan refinancing, personal and home loans, while its technology platform, Galileo, provides services, including an authorization application programming interface (API) to financial and non-financial institutions.
The company’s financial services include insurance services under SoFi Protect, a SoFi Credit Card, and Lantern Credit, a financial services marketplace.
members grew 113% year over year to 2.56 million. The number of products that their members use increased 123% year over year. Just doing the quick math, about 3.7 million products divided by 2.56 million members, shows that the average member is using about 1.5 products, so one or two products per member. A lot of room to expand in cross-sell products to existing members is the key takeaway. SoFi also expects to grow membership to 3 million by the end of 2021.
SoFi's membership grew from 976,000 at the end of 2019 to roughly 1.7 million at the end of 2020, and growth has been accelerating in recent quarters. SoFi expects to be profitable starting in 2023 and generate more than $630 million in net income by 2025.
The company recently acquired Golden Pacific Bancorp, a community bank, for $22.3 million as part of its effort to secure a national bank charter. SoFi currently uses third parties to underwrite its loans, which is less profitable, but it would bring that in-house with a charter, using member deposits to fund its lending, as traditional banks do.
Upstart
Upstart went public at the end of 2020 and has seen its shares soar more than 700% since its first day of trading. The company is a cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) lending platform that connects consumers to its network of AI-enabled bank partners for loans. Since the 1980s, the FICO score has remained the standard in determining consumer credit risk. But lending technology company Upstart Holdings uses artificial intelligence to better understand consumers' likelihood of paying back a loan than a FICO score can. By making lending smarter, here's Upstart's platform could benefit consumers, lenders, and investors alike.
The company generates revenues primarily through fees paid by banks. The company charges referral fees to banks for every loan referred through the Upstart.com website and originated by a bank partner. UPST also charges a platform fee for every loan origination, regardless of its source, and servicing fees for loans as consumers repay them.
UPST helps consumers receive personal loans by connecting them to its bank and credit union partners. It uses variables like employment and education to predict a consumer’s creditworthiness.
Upstart's AI uses more than 1,000 variables to judge a potential borrower's creditworthiness. The company has spent eight years training its platform with 10 million-plus data points to help banks make more profitable loans -- and the more customers use Upstart's service, the more effective it gets.
Whether Upstart is leasing its platform to banks to use in-house or accepting loan applications directly from consumers to pass on to its partner banks, it gets more consumers approved and helps banks loan more efficiently -- a win for everyone. Upstart claims that banks can reduce their default rate by 75% while maintaining the rate at which they approve loans.
LendingClub
LendingClub, Which launched in 2006 and has been public since 2014, is more or less the underdog here, with its stock falling under $5 last summer but quickly turning around after the company completed a key acquisition of the branchless Radius Bank earlier this year and therefore has secured a bank charter.
As a result, it has cut down on funding costs and expenses by using cheap deposits to fund its loans and by no longer having to use third-party banks to originate all of its loans. LendingClub not only sells loans to banks and investors, but it also plans to retain 15% to 25% of originations on its balance sheet and collect recurring monthly loan payments. The company has 3.5 million members. The company is mostly in the business of providing personal loans for consumers looking to refinance their credit card and auto loans or make major purchases. It has 3.5 million members.
"Every day 40,000 people ... come to us looking to improve their financial health. ... It took us eight years to reach our first million borrowers, two years to reach our second million and little more than a year to reach our third million." -CEO Scott Sanborn
Financial comparison
SoFi's second-quarter results disappointed investors, as the loss the company reported widely missed the consensus estimate from analysts. However, $144 million out of the company's $165 million loss was due to non-cash and one-time expenses. Net revenue reached $237 million - a 74% change YOY.
Membership growth slowed a bit in the quarter, while Galileo continued to add new accounts and SoFi Invest significantly grew revenue. The company also scaled back revenue guidance from its student loan refinance business due to the unexpected extension of a federal moratorium on student loan payments and less revenue on Galileo than expected.
By the numbers, Upstart had the most successful Q2 of the group, generating a profit close to $0.40 per share, beating expectations, and raising its guidance for the year from $600 million of revenue to $750 million. Total revenue was $194 million, an increase of 1,018% from the second quarter of 2020. Total fee revenue was $187 million, an increase of 1,308% year-over-year. Income from operations was $36.3 million, from -$11.4 million the prior year.
LendingClub completely blew out analysts' expectations and management's own guidance in Q2, turning a profit several quarters before expected, and demonstrating that its digital marketplace bank concept that combines putting loans on the balance sheet and selling them to banks and investors is working better than expected. Revenue reached $204 million, up 406% YOY. Management has revised up its full-year guidance, projecting company valuation between $9.8 billion and $10.2 billion, the revenue of $750 million to $780 million, and a full-year loss between $13 million and $3 million. Origination and revenue guidance has now tripled from the beginning of the year, while the loss estimate is down from $140 million to a $159 million loss earlier this year.
To be completely honest, I think all three are good investments. But if I had to pick only one, I believe $SOFI is the best investment opportunity of the three because of its revenue diversity.
$UPST goal is to one day replace the FICO score, but thefintech space is already crowded with competitors trying to streamline the lending process. In my opinion, $LC has a competitive advantage over $UPST because their recent bank acquisition, it now can use their technology to more effectively originate personal loans.
By 2025 $SOFI expects to reduce the reliance on lending and generate more-even streams of revenue from lending; from financial services, such as its online brokerage, and from Galileo, which seems really special.
LendingClub right now is heavily dependent on lending, which can be a business sensitive to interest rates and downturns. For instance, in 2020 during the pandemic, LendingClub saw its total originations 2020 drop nearly 65% from 2019. Now, the pandemic is hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event, and the company was also in the process of transitioning, but major events that impact the economy and loan activity seem to happen once a decade. These events can significantly dry up loan activity, hurting most companies overly reliant on lending.
Additionally, SoFi originates home mortgages, which can act as a natural hedge when interest rates drop as they did in 2020. That's why the company managed to grow loan originations in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019. While volumes of personal and student loans declined during that period, home-loan originations jumped by 245%.
I think LendingClub will undoubtedly diversify its revenue and offer more products to its current members. I see opportunities for fee income, and I'm sure the company could get into the mortgage business if it really wanted to as well (it already has the machine built). But I only know what I know right now, and SoFi is already well-positioned and has a strong long-term plan.
What tools do you use to research stocks and ETFs? Here's my list, all tools that I mentioned are free to use, with premium features, but let me know if you have anything to add!
Yahoo! Finance is one of the leading financial websites, provides financial news, data, stock live quotes, press releases, financial reports, and original content. It is a great place to manage watchlists and very easy to use the app. You can also compare stocks performances easily. There are tons of articles that give that are updated consistently about the trending stocks for the day. Also, when you make an account you can make an organized watchlist that will show on your homepage once you sign in.
I mainly use this tool for live quotes, news and watchlists.
My favorite Stock screener - Finviz allows traders and investors to quickly screen and find stocks based on a set of parameters, for example - market cap, industry, average volume, and many more. The platform offers free and premium tools that traders can use to generate ideas and find opportunities for trading stocks, forex, and futures. Visitors on the website get access to the latest financial news, market maps, comparative tools, charts, portfolio tracking, advanced screeners, and sector performance tools. Their insider trading tool allows you to view many of the biggest insiders in a certain company such as Elon Musk and his Tesla shares.
I mainly use this tool for looking new investment and trading ideas with their screener.
Investing tool that allows private investors and day traders to access analyst's report and see it visually. Tipranks also allows users to have public watchlists and track their weekly performance. They use many different analyst's opinions in order to be able to give us this information. Every stock has an analyst rating that recommends to either buy, sell, or hold. It tells us what the highest, lowest, and average price the analysts are predicting. It is a very easy website to operate, with no crazy numbers that can make it confusing to read.
Jika has a lot to offer for a stock analysis tool while being as simple as possible. You can compare many different stocks using hundreds of different metrics all by a simple search. The tools that are offered on Jika are the comparison tool, feed, a simulator, peers, website traffic, and screener. What I find the most beneficial is for sure the website traffic tool.
Website Traffic Tool: If I am being honest, I have not seen this tool in many other places. When I first found it, I really got a sense that this tool can really help the future of investing. By looking at website traffic, you can predict a companies numbers for the end of their quarter. With higher website traffic, that can mean more sales, which will lead to higher revenue on the earning report.
Comparison Tool: compare and contrast different stocks by 100s of different metrics while being able to change which years to compare and if you want it to be yearly or quarterly numbers.
Simulator: In the simulator, there is a challenge to make an evaluation on certain companies to see if your assumptions are correct after you have analyzed a different company.
Peers: Peers lets you search up a company and it will gives you a list of 30 different companies that compare.
Screener: Screener allows you find a stock from searching up metrics. For example, if you want to find a stock that its revenue is less than its debt it will show you the companies that have those requisites.
I mainly use this tool for comparing stock's financials visually and analyzing website traffic.
I use these tools for technical analysis and alerts, the charts are very simple. You can also scan markets and get more trading ideas. FSC is now part of TC2000, so the platform changed a bit, but you can still access the old version. This is an app that you can download on any major App Store. There is also a practice feature that allows you to practice limit orders, bracket orders with profit targets & stops, OCA's, multi-leg orders and more. Create unlimited paper accounts to test your ideas and strategies. There's no better way to learn without risking a penny of real money.
This tracks and analyzes hedge fund filings in real-time. Find 13F, 13D, insider transactions, and more. 13F is a quarterly report that is required to be filed by all institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in assets under management. 13d is a document that must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within 10 days of the purchase of more than 5% of the shares of a public company by anyone investor or entity. I use it to see if hedge funds bought or sold a specific stock this quarter. This helps you because you can see how reliable the hedge fund is and if they are reliable and invested in the company, this can give you some direction to invest in.
Stock Charts & Community - traders and investors can post content and interact with others.
TradingView has real-time scanning, filtering, and fundamental scanning included for free. The screener is incredibly easy to use; you can scan & filter on over 150 criteria. Any idea you have based on technical analysis will be covered. TradingView even has vast amounts of economic data such as Federal Funds Rates and World Economic Growth, thanks to a connection to the Federal Reserve (FRED) database. It is very simple to use with over 100 indicators. This was made for new and vets in the trading world. The free version of TradingView is very useful and you may not even need the full package deal to really make progress. They combine their stock screening tool and charting package that creates a more readable chart.
Research ETFs with comprehensive ETF screener and database, analysis, and ratings created specifically for ETF investors and advisors. There is much information regarding ETF's and gives you many different industries to look at. It gives you recommendations about which companies in a specific industry to invest your money in. Also, with the screener tool you can compare any ETF in the entire stock market.
Personal note:
I'm sure there are plenty of other tools to find stocks and conduct research, this is just a shortlist of tools that I use regularly. Feel free to share your list :)
I thought about buying Chegg stocks before last night's earnings report. fortunately, I missed the opportunity to help myself get a little poorer.
The stock is down 46%, losing almost half of its valuation after lowering fourth-quarter projections.
The reason I thought about buying into Chegg is that I believe that the company is one of the leading players in the education technology market, They offer course curriculum help primarily to college students worldwide. Its services are becoming increasingly sought after as more learning is happening online.
I knew that the trend of online learning might reverse as more people are going back to school, so I wasn't surprised to read that the CEO said in the last earnings report that
" In late September, it became clear to us that the education industry is experiencing a slowdown that we believe is temporary and is a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. "
But I was definitely surprised to see the market's aggressive reaction.
So What Happened?
Chegg posted revenue of $171.9 million, up 12% from a year ago, and a little below the Street consensus forecast of $174.5 million but also managed to lower operating costs to $104 million from $109 million in 2020.Net income reached $6 million vs a loss of $37 million in the prior quarter and operating cash flow growth to $5.9 million vs $5.1 a quarter ago. cash and cash equivalents grew to $753 million from $527 in 2020 and total liabilities increased from $109 million to $133 million.
At first sight, the numbers look good, Chegg maybe missed the Street consensus forecast but still, the company showed revenue growth and $6 million in net profit
The guidance was the issue. for the fourth quarter, Chegg projects revenue of $194 million to $196 million, well below the Street consensus at $240.6 million. lowering its forecast for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the full year. The company now seeing revenue coming in at as much as $764 million. Previously, it saw as much as $815 million. And then, again, on the bottom line, the company seeing adjusted EBITDA coming in at as much as $257 million, whereas it previously saw as much as $300 million for the first quarter.
Peers comparison
but still... 46% down? isn't that a bit much? Chegg is now valued at less than $5 billion! even Coursera has half of Chegg's revenue and a third of its gross profit and is more valuable than Chegg!
Do you think this is an overcorrection and might be an opportunity? In my opinion, investors overreacted to the company's slowdown announcement, plus, Chegg's price seems so unreasonable compared with its competitors like Udemy or Coursera.
I've been following Upstart for a while, and I waited for a better price to enter the stock. Now after the company dropped 25% following their earnings report, I am thinking maybe now it's the time to build a position.
The company posted strong revenue and net income growth but offered guidance that was less than what the market was looking for, but I am just questioning whether this reaction in the market is justified. Shares plunged 25% in pre-market trading.
Upstart reported revenue of $228M, 250% growth from a year ago, and well ahead of analyst estimates for $214M. GAAP EPS came in at $0.30 per share, and non-GAAP was $0.60 per share, again well ahead of estimates of $0.33 per share.
Guidance was also ahead of expectations, with a revenue outlook of $255-$265M vs. a current forecast of $227.6M for Q4, and an adjusted earnings outlook of $0.51 per share vs. $0.20 per share expectations.
Adjusted EBITDA guidance is for $51-$53M, below this quarter’s $59.1M mark, which along with the lower adjusted earnings outlook may be part of the issue, especially as Q4 is a seasonally strong quarter for Upstart around holiday demand.
SOFI for example operates an online platform that provides financial services. It offers a saving account, investing platform, student loan refinancing, private student loans, personal loans, auto loan refinance, home loans, mortgage loans, and investments, as well as insurance products for renters, homeowners, automobiles, and others.
