Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
November 17, 2020
Fiat Lux
FEATURED TRADE:
(WHY TELADOC IS A WIN-WIN-WIN STOCK)
(TDOC), (GOOG), (GOOGL), (AAPL)
Digital health was a struggling sector before COVID-19, but the pandemic changed the game, driving customers and even providers to embrace digital health solutions.
As expected, frontrunner Teladoc Health (TDOC) surfaced as a major beneficiary of this booming industry, reporting a record high in the number of virtual care visits during the ongoing health and financial crisis.
While there are concerns that these rewards could be fleeting, COVID-19 appears to have contributed longer-lasting changes, particularly in consumer behavior.
More and more users are opting for digital health solutions, with total virtual care visits up by 206% to hit 2.8 million in the third quarter of 2020 alone.
A noticeable change in Teladoc’s portfolio is the diversity of diseases they handle.
Previously accounting for only a third of its total care visits in 2019, non-infectious conditions like hypertension, depression, anxiety, and back pain now account for half.
As for the virtual care visits for dermatology and behavioral health in their business-to-business transactions, the company enjoyed a 500% boost year over year.
For context, the total number of virtual visits to Teladoc in 2019 was only 4.1 million.
Since the year 2020 started, though, the company has already recorded almost twice that number at 7.6 million—and the fourth quarter is projected to become its best-performing period yet.
The shift was also evident in the third-quarter earnings report of Teladoc, which showed that the company’s top line jumped by 109% year over year to reach $289 million.
This marks the company’s highest quarterly top-line growth rate.
In fact, this growth rate exceeded even the company's expectations.
When Teladoc released its second-quarter earnings, its Q3 projections were only somewhere between $275 million and $285 million.
As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, it is highly possible that the company will once again deliver much better results than the forecasted numbers in the fourth quarter.
In terms of its fourth-quarter projections, Teladoc is expected to reach roughly 3 million virtual visits in the last months of 2020.
The conservative estimate for Teladoc’s total virtual visits this year is at 10 million.
So far, Teladoc shares are up 133% year-to-date, with the company expected to cross the $1 billion revenue mark in 2020—an almost 100% increase from its 2019 projection.
In terms of future growth, Teladoc recently completed an $18.5 billion mega-merger with Livongo Health (LVGO), making it a one-stop-shop for every virtual care need.
As a combined unit, the Teladoc-Livongo partnership is hailed as the next-generation virtual care provider. Simply put, this newly formed company is the future of the healthcare industry in America.
This means that while Teladoc has more than doubled this 2020, the stock is still expected to continue soaring thanks to its recent merger with Livongo.
Here’s a brief background of Livongo.
This company gathers data and sends reminders to its users suffering from chronic diseases to encourage them to implement lifestyle and even behavioral changes that would improve their health.
Prior to its cash-and-stock merger with Teladoc, Livongo was doubling its membership, particularly among diabetes patients.
This deal is anticipated to elevate virtual care and push Teladoc front and center of the $121 billion digital health market in the United States alone—a number that is projected to grow at a rate of 16.9% until 2025.
Needless to say, Teladoc has set itself up to control a huge part of that total value.
So far, the most notable competitors of Teladoc in this space are technology giants like Google (GOOG) via its parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) and Apple (AAPL).
With all the opportunities and even with the challenges of new competitors in the market, Teladoc remains the leader in this explosive digital health industry, making it extremely attractive for investors to ignore.
Looking at its risk-reward proposition, the company is clearly a solid growth pick.
After all, telemedicine offers a long-term win-win-win situation for everyone in the healthcare industry.
It is a win for doctors because they can see more patients.
It’s a win for patients because they get to see doctors with ease and convenience.
Finally, it is a win for insurance agencies because they generally pay lower bills for virtual visits.
When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more
When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more
While the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader focuses on investment over a one week to a six-month time frame, Mad Day Trader, provided by Bill Davis, will exploit money-making opportunities over a brief ten minute to three-day window. It is ideally suited for day traders, but can also be used by long-term investors to improve market timing for entry and exit points. Read more
Global Market Comments
November 17, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HOW TO GET A FREE TESLA), (TSLA),
(TESTIMONIAL)
I have assiduously instructed readers on how to earn boatloads of money over the past 12 years. Now I am going to teach you how to spend it wisely.
How would you like to drive a vehicle whose technology is from ten years in the future, will be the envy of your neighbors, and leaves zero carbon footprint? It also the fastest production car ever built. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
I bet if I told you that the car was available for free, you’d be even more interested.
Here’s how it goes.
Buried in the tax bill signed into law in December 2017 is a provision for “bonus depreciation.” It allows one-time-only depreciation of the entire cost of a new car for business use. All of this is tax-deductible.
In addition, you get to deduct all of the annual interest on any loan taken out to purchase the vehicle. Also coming off the bottom line is any insurance and maintenance expenses which, by my experience, come to about $4,000 a year.
You also get a federal electric car tax credit of $3,750 if you sign your contract for a new vehicle before the end of 2019 when the subsidy expires. This comes right off your final tax bill for 2019.
So, total deductions over a five-year period are about $307,000, plus the $3,750 tax credit.
In five years, the car will have a residual value of $60,000, and the $102,500 additional cost is covered by the tax breaks, taking the bottom line after-tax cost of your new mid-life crisis to zero.
Now, here’s how to get a better deal.
Call Tesla and ask if they have any used 2019 showroom cars they want to get rid of before the new model year begins in 2019. In my case, I was able to find in Los Angeles a 2018 Model X P100 D SUV with just 800 miles on the odometer for a $25,000 discount to the $162,500 list price.
It was a total LA car, silver with black wheels and a black leather interior. They added on a $5,000 advanced navigation system, a $3,000 seven-seat configurations for free.
Tesla lists their used car inventory at this site. You may have to get a Tesla salesman on the line to find the 2019 showroom cars.
For those of you who own your own companies or work through single-member LLCs, this is a no-brainer. If you work for a big company, it may be tough to pull off. Talk to your accountant before you do anything.
This is exactly what I did which led me to pick up a brand-new Tesla during a torrential rainstorm last week. It was then that I truly learned what Elon Musk has recently referred to as “Logistics Hell.”
For a start, my car was supposed to be delivered to me at my lakefront estate in Incline Village, Nevada. But Tesla could only get it from Los Angeles to as far as the Fremont factory before the logistics system completely broke down. I agreed to pick it up at Fremont to cut a week off the delivery time and before the heavy snow hit.
When I arrived at the showroom, it was completely empty so I had to wait an hour. Out front were 100 parking spaces filled mostly with Tesla 3’s, and animated technicians showing new owners how to operate them. I was told that the parking lot is completely filled and then emptied out three times a day. (TSLA) is now producing 1,000 Tesla 3’s a day.
When I finally got my turn, I discovered to my horror that the car was registered in the wrong name. When the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles was told that the new registered owner was “Mad Hedge Fund Trader,” they were somewhat taken aback.
The tow hitch I ordered was missing so the tech pulled one from a back room. The same happened with the second set of keys which are very expensive. I had to Google the tire specs which required me to crawl under the car and get soaked to make sure they were all season because no one there knew.
In the end, I was sent off with my $162,500 car, a box of parts, and a vague promise that a mechanic would visit me someday and put it all together.
This was not the experience I had when I picked up my Teslas in 2011 and 2016 when I was treated like visiting royalty. But I love the car anyway.
Then it really got interesting!
What is the first thing a new Tesla owner wants to try out? The monstrous zero to 60 mph acceleration in 2.9 seconds. And they do this the second they drive out of the parking lot. So, I was treated to dozens of aspiring Indy 500 drivers with giant smiles on their faces zipping around on rain-slick roads. I felt like I was in a shooting gallery.
Thank goodness I brought an extra supply of airline airsick bags!
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 16, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE GOLD STANDARD OF U.S. SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES)
(NVDA)
Tech investors who want a sure-fire way to sleep well at night while holding tech stocks should consider one semiconductor stock that is a generational gamechanger.
Short-duration trades in chip companies are susceptible to major selloffs because of the inherent boom-bust nature of the chip market.
Combine that with geopolitical headwinds that make consistent contract negotiations a possible one-off activity making it difficult to decode the short-term movements of the underlying shares.
Even with all the difficulties, Nvidia (NVDA) is a must-own stock for anyone that has any ambition to overperform deploying a basket of tech stocks.
This is the gold standard of technology buttressed by a plethora of secular growth drivers.
There are not many companies out there recreating a significant smorgasbord of multiple long-term growth segments.
Nvidia’s cash cow is its secular growth in gaming and graphics chips plus the data center business.
But it also has skin in the game in AI and machine learning, autonomous driving, and professional graphics.
Not only do they participate in these segments, but they are downright beasts in every segment they take part in which validates the firm as a high-quality operational outfit.
Basically, the company’s GPU (graphics processing unit) offerings are the best in the business.
I tell my high school nephews to find a job at Nvidia in the future.
Even though competition has increased—how could it not?—we know Nvidia’s products are top-notch because its margins are better, and they are able to command a higher premium with no push back.
Accelerating growth is really the common denominator found across the myriad of segments.
I expect 44.6% total revenue growth this year to $15.8 billion.
This estimate stood at just $10.8 billion at the beginning of the year and thus, I have moved up my revenue forecasts by about 50%.
Revenue estimates increasing by $5 billion for this year confirm that Nvidia is one of the tech titans of the world.
Constant revenue upgrades are the hallmark of a healthy tech company and its parabolic rise is in the early innings.
And can you believe that this was a supposed down year because of the macroeconomic weakness?
Imagine what they could do during a “good” year?
Earnings are forecast to grow an even more stellar 57% to $9.11 per share this year.
This year, 2020, isn’t just a demand-driven event due to the novel coronavirus.
The runway is long on the supply side and the elevated demand for its products is just one piece of the puzzle.
Soon enough Nvidia (NVDA) will report quarterly results on Wednesday, November 18, and they will most likely confirm my hunch that the overperformance in 2020 will spill over into 2021 and beyond.
The company has been a prime beneficiary of the “shelter-at-home” driven secular trends such as gaming and data center.
The underlying stock has doubled to over $530 this year and I forecast Nvidia to deliver a solid beat and model above any extreme estimate, driven by an expectation of an extra week of revenue that may not be fully accounted for.
The unparalleled growth due to the renaissance in video games cannot be understated and now that a third wave in the U.S. and second wave in Europe is inevitable, gaming will be thrust into the limelight again.
Some of the segments that I see expanding rapidly are 153% year-over-year growth for Datacenter and a 27% year-over-year increase for Gaming, with the two segments making up 41% and 47% of sales, respectively.
Even though they continue to hit on all cylinders in an otherwise challenging macro environment, I feel the overall premium is reflected in its share price.
Even though operational execution is likely to be perfect, I don’t see much upside in the stock in the short-term and investors will need to use any 10% dip to buy and hold Nvidia long-term.
I don’t recommend short-duration trades in Nvidia because of the volatile nature of the price action.
This is a transformational tech institution and is absolutely worth owning.
“The AI technology will keep you out of harm's way. That is why we believe in an AI car that drives for you.” – Said CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang
