Are super-low interest rates good for capital intensive businesses such as the Telcos? Intuitively, the answer seems obvious, in that lowering funding costs ought to improve the marginal returns from employing that capital. An analogy might be with fuel prices for airline stocks, with again a seemingly clear inverse relationship. In both cases however you might […]
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Nature may abhor a straight line, but analyst forecasts don’t seem to, even when estimating revenues for a business with an historic margin of error on revenues of over +/-4ppts. I take a look at Gartner as consensus forecasts predict what its never achieved before, a straight run of revenue growth and into a slowing […]
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Think +142k in October for Private sector jobs was poor? How would you feel about +37k then? Unlike in some countries, the US government would never stoop so low as bend some piece of economic data to gain a political advantage ahead of an election. The recovery in Q3 GDP to +2.9% (‘real’) trumpeted a […]
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It has a great model and enormous growth potential, but you’ll have to excuse my cynicism at the way revenues, margins and expectations were pumped up this year. (see my comment back in May after the Q1 results – http://growthrater.com/facebook-q1-beat-followed-controlling-shareholder-share-sale-ring-bells/#topbar_header) Having pushed higher yielding newsfeed-only advertising on mobile and saturated advertising loadings, we’ve […]
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With less than a week to go and Trump edging ahead in some polls, albeit possibly still behind with regards electoral college votes, there’s going to be some sweaty palms in financial markets. A month ago, a Clinton victory may have seemed like a slam dunk and indeed one bookie (Paddy Power Betfair) was reported […]
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Q3 US GDP was “better than expected” at +2.9% and according to Capital Economics, “confirms that the economic recovery has regained some of the momentum lost with last year” and ..”As such leaves the Fed firmly on track to raise interest rates in December” Well there you have it, the consensus view from economists! […]
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The initial flurry of newswire headlines (*1. see end of article) seemed to focus on the offer price of $107.50 per Time Warner share, with the narrative that AT&T was overpaying. I disagree. The bid is sensibly pitched. The issue markets should be focusing on instead, is whether the bid will ever reach completion in […]
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If you haven’t noticed, there is an entire industry of well funded professional spin doctors out there whose business is to present their clients performance in the very best possible light. Whether those clients are corporates trying to game an advantageous cost of capital or a Government claiming to be able to walk on economic […]
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