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Tag Archive for: (SQ)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Rebirth of Western Union

Tech Letter

This is not your father’s Western Union (WU).

Western Union (WU), the payment remittance service, is a legacy company that is going to harvest the most from a full migration to digital.

That is exactly what is currently happening.

Part of the 25% gain in the stock this year is a nod of approval in the direction the company is heading to.

At its most recent investors’ day presentation, the firm boosted its positive earnings guidance, which was primarily driven by its growth strategy on different verticals.

Western Union’s revamped growth strategy is buttressed by its ability to meet increasing demand from global consumers and businesses for fast and reliable cross-border money transfer and payment solutions.

The company is shying away from the brick-and-mortar operations of yore and choosing a strategy that leverages Western Union’s continued investment in key capabilities such as digital, real-time account payout, compliance, and artificial intelligence.

These nice additions have positioned the company to show strength in one of the most holistic and versatile payment engines in the world.

Western Union has its eyes set on expanding its core consumer-to-consumer business as well as other payment segments where global organizations can utilize its cross-border solutions to expand into fresh markets or better serve existing customers.

Western Union predicts a 23% operating margin by 2022 and a low-double-digit EPS CAGR through 2022.

The operating margin and EPS targets presume a 2020-2022 revenue CAGR of 2% to 3%, compared with the 2019 revenue base excluding divestitures.

The revenue ramp up signals growth in consumer money transfer, driven by its website westernunion.com and other third-party digital services and mid-single-digit growth from Business Solutions.

Operating profit margin and EPS targets also reflect $150 million in total annual savings expected by 2022.

The company expects to succeed in operating efficiencies from initiatives aimed at optimizing commissions and reducing third-party spending.

These initiatives will boost the bottom line an extra $50 million in annual savings to operating profit by 2022.

From 2020 to 2022, Western Union expects to extract more than $3 billion of operating cash flow and return approximately $2.5 billion to $3 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

The company is a cash cow and attractive for many traditional investors who value this type of cash flow.

Other pathways to higher revenue include partnerships that provide customized payments solutions to organizations such as e-Commerce businesses expanding into emerging markets, end-to-end cross-border solutions to third-party organizations to solve consumer money transfer needs, and cross-border services, such as foreign exchange and cash management.

Slagging off the brick-and-mortar payments model for the digital platform is the low-lying fruit here and Western Union has a phase of overperformance in them before they will be thwarted with substantial revenue resistance.

Could this one day turn into a legitimate and mature fintech payment platform such as PayPal Holdings (PYPL) and Square (SQ)?

Offering low cost and efficient services is the first step in the right direction and I can say I’ve seen weirder things happen in the world.

Western Union certainly is in a position of strength as it cruises into the first innings of its digital migration and I believe there is more room to run for the stock until $30.

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-09-27 09:30:532020-05-11 13:31:34The Rebirth of Western Union
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

August 27, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
August 27, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(FIVE STOCKS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM),
(AAPL), (AMZN), (SQ), (ROKU), (MSFT),
(HOW TO EXECUTE A VERTICAL BULL CALL SPREAD)
(AAPL)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-08-27 01:06:012019-08-27 01:16:15August 27, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 29, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 29, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM),
(SCHW), (FB), (SQ), (WMT), (AMZN), (FFIDX), (BOX)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-07-29 04:04:392019-08-27 14:49:17July 29, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Race to the Bottom

Tech Letter

Gone are the days of brokers shouting from the trading pits, a bygone era where pimple-faced traders cut their teeth rubbing shoulders with the journeymen of yore.

The stock brokerage industry is at an inflection point with the revolutionary online stock brokerage Robinhood on the verge of shaking up an industry that has needed shaking up for years.

A common thread revisited by this newsletter is the phenomenon of broker apps being low-quality tech.

A broker ultimately serves little or no value to the real players among the deal, usually extracting huge commissions.

Technology and now blockchain technology vie to completely remove this exorbitant layer from the business process.

Well, for the stock brokerage industry, that time is now.

Robinhood is an online stock brokerage company based in Menlo Park, Calif., trading an assortment of asset classes including equities, options, and cryptocurrencies.

So, what's the catch?

Robinhood does not charge commission.

That's right, you can invest up until the $500,000 threshold protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and you can go along with your merry day trading for free.

The online brokerage industry has been getting away with murder for years.

They got comfortable and stopped innovating - the death knell of any company in 2019.

Effectively, high execution costs reaping massive profits were the norm for brokers, and nobody questioned this philosophy until Robinhood exposed the ugly truth - unreasonably high rates.

Peeking at a monthly chart of brokerage costs will make your stomach churn.

For instance, a trader frequently executing trades with an account of $100,000 would hand over $1836 in commission in 2017 if their account was with Fidelity.

On the cheaper side, Interactive Brokers would charge $854 for its brokerage services to habitual traders per month.

The outlier was Tradier, a start-up brokerage founded in 2014 using the powerful tool of an Application Programming Interface (API) which charged $213 per month to trade frequently.

An API is described as a software intermediary allowing two applications to communicate with each other.

This model helped cut costs for the online brokerage because Tradier did not have to focus its funds on the trading platform that was delegated to various third-party platforms.

Tradier is largely responsible for the aggregation of data and charts thus employing an army of developers to meet their end of the business.

This model is truly the democratization of the online brokerage industry, which has been coming for years.

Costs are cut to a minimum with equity trades at Tradier costing investors $3.49 per order and options contracts costing $0.35 per contract with a $9 options assignment and exercise fee.

Technology has defeated the traditionalist again.

More than 80% of Robinhood's accounts are owned by millennials – as expected.

Trading cryptocurrencies act as a gateway asset to springboard into other asset classes such as equities and derivative contracts.

Vlad Tenev, co-CEO of Robinhood, indicated that Robinhood will have to modify its radical business model to monetize more of the business in the future, but he is comfortable with the current business model.

But Tenev has already seen fruit borne with the likes of Robinhood applying fierce pressure to the legacy brokerages' pricing models.

The traditionalists are locked in a vicious pricing war with each other slashing their commission rates to stay competitive.

The longer the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) feel it necessary to charge $4.95, down from the January 2017 cost of $8.95, the better the chances are that Robinhood can build its account base rapidly.

Charles Schwab has more than 10 million accounts, only double the number of Robinhood, after being founded in 1971.

The 42-year head start over Robinhood has not produced the desired effect, and it is ill-prepared to battle these tech companies that enter the fray.

Robinhood has been able to add a million new accounts per year. If Charles Schwab relatively performed at the same rate, it would have 47 million accounts open today.

It doesn't and that is a problem because the company can be caught up to.

The age of specialization is upon us with full force, and customer demand requires care and diligence that never existed before.

Robinhood continues to enhance its offerings of various products adding Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash to the crypto lineup.

Only Bitcoin and Ethereum were offered before.

And there is one more outrageous thing I forgot to tell you.

Robinhood hopes to snatch away the traditional savings account by offering checking and savings accounts with an interest rate almost 30 times larger than most brick and mortar banks – 3%.

These accounts would have no minimum balances or no fees that nickel and dime customers.

The service will conveniently sit alongside its trading app and this move into the industry led by JP Morgan could start to derail Wall Street.

As with most FinTech start-ups, the roll-out of this new service was slightly botched because Robinhood failed to get the go-ahead from regulators concerning ensuring the accounts properly.

All this does is delay the inevitable and by spring 2019, potential customers should be earning 3% in Robinhood’s checking and savings account.

Sign me up!

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DMI-jul29.png 520 972 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-07-29 04:02:222019-08-27 14:49:10The Race to the Bottom
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 14, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 14, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(FIVE STOCKS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM),
(AAPL), (AMZN), (SQ), (ROKU), (MSFT)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-14 03:04:152019-05-14 03:59:03May 14, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 6, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
May 6, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(PAYPAL GOES FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH)
(PYPL), (SQ), (GOOGL), (LYFT)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-06 01:33:372019-07-11 13:17:16May 6, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

PayPal Goes From Strength to Strength

Tech Letter

It’s time to revisit one of my favorite tech picks for 2019 that is a constant trade alert candidate.

The attention is warranted with the stock performance delivering a tidal wave of euphoria rising around 30% in the first half of 2019.

I expected PayPal to have a great year, but I didn’t expect them to perform better than Square who are growing from a lower install base.

PayPal’s overperformance signals to the wider business establishment how important a broad install base can be that can tap the network effect to reel in profits.

This is how once legacy dinosaurs can reinvent themselves in months.

The lack of entry points is a concern prodding investors to chase the stock if they want a piece of the action.

This is one of the drastic side effects of PayPal’s meteoric rise that has been buttressed by dovish Fed policy.

Investors are literally praying to the skies for any softness in tech earnings reports because for the best of the bunch, there have been no moderate pullbacks of note since last winter.

PayPal did offer a slight data point that might be construed as disappointing when total payment volume (TPV) of $161 billion was slightly lower than the consensus of $163 million for the quarter.

It’s slim pickings for the bear camp with not much to feast on in an otherwise pretty solid earnings report.

As PayPal expanded by 9.3 million new active accounts, bringing its total up to 277 million, management has super charged this legacy fintech company into an outright renaissance.

Doing even more to shed the tag of a legacy company, PayPal invested half a billion dollars at $47 per share into the upcoming Uber IPO signaling possibilities that their payment software could at some point integrate into Uber’s network down the road.

Alphabet (GOOGL) has shown that if you get in early with these Silicon Valley unicorns, synergistic effects are plenty with Alphabet lapping up revenue charging Lyft (LYFT) for providing digital ad capabilities on top of the appreciating value of their investment stake.

And if you remember that way back, PayPal was tied to eBay before it was spun out.

Better to attach future hopes and dreams to a leading visionary and innovator instead of a legacy e-commerce platform.

Illustrating the tough task of turning around eBay, eBay clocked in negative TPV growth of 4% in the past quarter.

PayPal offered us more detail into active-account numbers for its Venmo peer-to-peer service with more than 40 million people using Venmo for at least one transaction in the last 12 months.

Venmo processed $21 billion in TPV last quarter, mushrooming by 73%, while the core PayPal platform’s TPV grew 41% to $42 billion.

The success paved the way to raise its full-year EPS outlook from $2.94 to $3.01 ensuring that its prior forecast on revenue and TPV will be met.

PayPal previously guided lower with an expected $2.84 to $2.91 in adjusted EPS and $17.75 billion to $18.1 billion in revenue.

When we tally up all the positive points, it’s hard to ignore the 12% YOY increase in revenue to $4.13B and the more impressive 37% YOY rise in EPS growth signaling the company is applying its giant scale to maximum effect.

Customer engagement of 37.9 payment transactions per active account rose 9% YOY while the TPV which came in lower than consensus was still growth of 22% YOY.

I love that PayPal has migrated towards the heart of innovation while being a legacy fintech company.

Venmo and the Venmo card are rapidly infiltrating the center of consumer’s daily financial lives wielded for groceries, gas, and restaurants.

In February, PayPal introduced a limited-edition rainbow card which became the fastest adopted Venmo card.

I want to reiterate how the proof is in the pudding with Venmo volume increasing 73% to approximately $21B in the quarter.

Not only does this legacy fintech have super growth drivers, they have become quasi venture capitalists applying a horde of capital to snap up attractive assets.

An example is a $750 million investment in the e-commerce and payments leader in Latin America called MercadoLibre which creates a network effect to PayPal’s core business in the region.

If the steady drip of news wasn’t good enough, PayPal announced a partnership with Instagram to process payments when customers are shopping on Instagram in the U.S.

Management is convincingly delivering the goods with 110 basis points of operating margin expansion.

PayPal’s flawless performance is a great model in how to survive the volatile times of rapid tech shifts, and the best way to alter a model to reduce existential threats.

The company has growth drivers, have migrated capital into growth tech, are innovating with the best of them, and management is executing surgically taking advantage of a massive install base.

Buy on any weakness, entry points are few and far between.

 

 

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/venmo.png 379 972 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-06 01:31:232019-07-11 13:17:22PayPal Goes From Strength to Strength
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

March 6, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 6, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(WILL UNICORNS KILL THE BULL MARKET?),
(TSLA), (NFLX), (DB), (DOCU), (EB), (SVMK), (ZUO), (SQ),
(A NOTE ON OPTIONS CALLED AWAY), (TLT)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-03-06 01:08:582019-03-05 14:52:08March 6, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

February 5, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 5, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE FINTECH COMPANY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF),
(FISV), (AAPL), (GOOGL), (FDC), (PYPL), (SQ)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-02-05 01:07:332019-02-04 17:07:31February 5, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The FinTech Company You've Never Heard of

Tech Letter

Here’s a company for you involved in technology’s tectonic shift towards FinTech in 2019.

They aren’t new, but you’ve probably never heard of them.

It’s Fiserv Inc. (FISV) which sells financial technology and can include customers such as banks, credit unions, securities broker-dealers, leasing, and finance companies.

An inflection point is occurring within the global business and that is financial technology and the rapid integration of it.

Financial institutions are building products around this concept and Fiserv has a head start on the others with more than 30 years of experience in aiding banks, thrifts, and credit unions, managing cash and processing payments, loans, and account services.

The Wisconsin-based company constructed an unstoppable machine leveraging its time-honored relationships and expertise to bring banking to all the screens that pervade daily life.

“Innovation, Integration and Scale” has been the motto that has served this company well for so long.

The company cut its teeth in the trenches helping banks move money long before it became the next big thing.

Five years ago, under the leadership of CEO Jeff Yabuki, there was a corporate flashpoint with upper management realizing they needed to evolve or die.

Yabuki anticipated a near future fueled by mobile wallets and changing consumer expectations - an always-on, never-off connected world.

An environment where consumers want what they want when they want it.

There has been no letup in this trend.

Silicon Valley companies were always the 800-pound gorilla in the room and Fiserv didn’t want to become sideswiped by them.

And in 2014, at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Yabuki set out his vision that continues to prevail today.

The financial services industry had become obsessed with point-of-sale transactions.

And at $200 billion in annual domestic sales, it was a business that resonated to all corners of the FinTech world.

It was sensical to persuade consumers to use branded credit or debit cards to pay for stuff in stores and online.

At the time, that was bread-and-butter banking.

To the banks' chagrin, Silicon Valley has gotten in on the act with the likes of Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), PayPal (PYPL), Square (SQ) firing warning shots.

They formulated products of their own, whipped up the necessary scale and maximized the reverberating network effects.

Yabuki urged financiers at the conference to double down on what they did best while looking to grab low-hanging fruits in the short-term.

The business beyond point-of-sale was theirs waiting on a decorative platter – the opportunity was a $55 billion behemoth consisting of consumer-to-consumer, business-to-business and consumer-to-business transactions.

Embracing FinTech translated into massive speed advantages, stauncher security-laced products while offering traditional bank customers higher quality service at their convenience.

Fiserv erected a platform to help financial institutions focus on payments beyond POS called Network for Our World.

The goal of this NOW Network was to help customers' flow of money by paying bills and getting paid.

These entrepreneurs are looking for more efficient ways to collect money owed - they are a lucrative addressable audience for bankers.

The Fiserv sales pitch is working wonders according to the data. The company has 12,000 clients worldwide, with 85 million online banking end-users.

It has rolled out innovative products for payments, processing, risk and compliance, customer service and optimization.

The company has become ever so profitable with a 3-year EPS growth rate of just 15%, but in the last quarter, this metric surged to 23% and projected to rise.

Fiserv also dabbled with some M&A hauling in debit-based assets of Elan Financial Services.

The stellar acquisition, with annual revenue of over $170 million, extends Fiserv’s leadership in payments, broadens client reach and scale, and provides new solutions to enhance the value proposition of the existing 3,000 debit solutions clients.

The deal also gave Fiserv ownership of Money Pass, the second largest surcharge-free ATM network in the U.S., with over 33,000 in-network ATMs.

They also added other major pieces with the purchase of First Data Corp (FDC).

The maneuver is strategically solid, and Fiserv will benefit from a parlay of idiosyncratic opportunities from the combined synergies.

Fiserv will be able to refer First Data's merchant-acquiring services to the banks it currently works with.

I predict cost savings of $1 billion from the deal and potential upside from platform rationalization, which has not yet been included in synergies.

There will be significant upside potential from interest expense savings given refinancing FDC's debt at investment-grade.

Dipping your toe into this name before its multiple inevitable expands is a good long-term strategy.

Profitability is increasing while management has made moves that will fatten its top line business from the 5% internal growth today.

All these growth levers will push up revenues in the upcoming quarters - Fiserv happens to be the right company in the right industry at the perfect time in the technology cycle.

The stock is up over 1,000% in 10 years.

In February 2009, the stock was meddling around $8 and the $83 it trades at today demonstrates the potency of FinTech and the strength in their underlying business model.

I would wait for a sell-off to get into this one, but it’s a keeper.

 

 

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GOOG-feb5.png 566 974 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-02-05 01:06:222019-02-05 01:12:18The FinTech Company You've Never Heard of
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