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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 16, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 16, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE GOLD STANDARD OF U.S. SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES)
(NVDA)

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 Trader2020-11-16 11:04:002020-11-16 13:04:12November 16, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Gold Standard of U.S. Semiconductor Companies

Tech Letter

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.

 

nvidia

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 16, 2020 - Quote of the Day

Tech Letter

“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

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/jensen-huang.png 240 332 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-11-16 11:00:562020-11-16 13:02:42November 16, 2020 - Quote of the Day
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 13, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 13, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(HOW TO STOP THE E-CRIMINALS)
(CRWD), (AVGO)

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 Trader2020-11-13 13:04:052020-11-13 17:03:57November 13, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

How to Stop the e-Criminals

Tech Letter

Cybersecurity is not a discretionary purchase for corporates.

This must-have product soothes the minds of every cybersecurity executive in the world.

I’ll explain how this point of strength is capitalized on by major growth security tech company CrowdStrike (CRWD).

Let me put my stamp on this indispensable service keeping cloud services afloat.

I can say with conviction that this is the beginning of a multi-year trend being driven by the industry consolidation that took place last year along with the seismic shift to cloud technologies.

Fortune 500 companies are increasingly choosing CrowdStrike as their security cloud platform.

CrowdStrike customers have never been larger and have never bought more modules and the same type of optimism appears in the stickiness of the number of new customers that surpass annual recurring revenue (ARR) of over $1 million.

Cybersecurity is mission-critical to both the public and private sectors.

Endpoint or workload security is also essential to protecting a remote workforce and as many of you know, the global remote workforce has never been bigger because of the pandemic.

While the damage to the macroeconomy from the coronavirus is gyrating at an accelerated pace, it is forcing companies to conduct business differently and rapidly shift to a remote workforce.

With CrowdStrikes’ cloud-native platform, this lightweight agent is easily deployed at scale and its frictionless go-to-market engine, CrowdStrike is uniquely positioned to meet any type of cybersecurity requirement.

The financial performance of the company is as healthy as ever as the company added a record $99 million in net new ARR and year-over-year, they increased the number of net new subscription customers by 116%, achieving 90% subscription revenue growth and 89% total revenue growth.

There were three outsized achievements this year: CrowdStrike delivered exceptional growth at scale, significantly improved margins, and achieved positive free cash flow for the fiscal year.

The seismic shift to cloud-native technologies and cloud workloads including containers has created an environment with massive greenfield opportunities.

Many competitors are dragged down by the complexities of integrating acquired technologies, rationalizing their workforce, or retooling their on-prem offerings.

Another positive tailwind is when Broadcom (AVGO) began integrating Symantec, there was a nice increase in inquiries among both customers and partners because they simply didn’t like Broadcom’s new products and vacated them to move towards CrowdStrike’s offerings.

This dynamic will contribute to an expansion in CrowdStrike’s pipeline, an acceleration in the overall customer adoption and increased engagement with partners.

Several partners in the United States and abroad have launched Symantec replacement campaigns as well but I believe CrowdStrike offers some of the most robust products.

One company submitted a list of several thousand of their customers that will be migrating away from Symantec in the next year and there was very little overlap between these prospects and CrowdStrike’s existing customer base.

The customer base has more than doubled and now protects the safety of 5,431 customers.

870 net new customers in Q4 joined CrowdStrike, which is up 136% year-over-year.

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are looking for a strategic partner to help them bridge this skills gap and simplify their operations, while at the same time, reducing cost.

They are also looking for ways to leverage enhanced automation in their security operations to increase efficacy and free up resources.

These organizations are increasingly rotating capital to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform to protect an array of workloads, stop breaches, and restore system performance.

All new customers increased average number of modules in every quarter this past fiscal year.

The percentage of all subscription customers with four or more modules once again increased and those that adopted five or more cloud modules grew to one-third of their customer base.

As customers adopt more modules that span a wide array of workloads, it strengthens the customer relationship and increases CrowdStrike’s strategic position with the customer.

Companies who pay for other security alternatives keep running into the same roadblock of patchwork vendors who are largely ineffective and bureaucratic.

The burden is then directly placed on their resource-constrained IT security team eroding performance and souring team morale.

Another big problem is that a large percentage of the corporate platforms are not on the latest build of Windows, they could not update to newer versions exposing them to malware and security malfunctions.

This result is a cumbersome, manual remediation process and often requires the security team to reach out to users directly dragging out any possible IT solution.

CrowdStrike simply has this covered and can replace all three endpoint security solutions with the Falcon platform and offer seven modules providing firms with comprehensive protection and visibility in their environment and freeing up internal resources.

Existing legacy vendor failing is a common problem, and they fall victim to malicious activity shutting down production at major international facilities.

The ability to deploy the solution quickly can save the customer millions in manufacturing line productivity losses.

Beyond the immediate value provided by remediating a breach, there is significant value realized by streamlining a security stack. With the Falcon platform, firms can eliminate more than ten legacy tools and considerably improve their visibility and security posture.

CrowdStrike is collecting customers across diverse industries, geographies, and size because of proven efficacy and stopping breaches, and its cloud-native platform and lightweight single agent that is easily deployed at scale.

The predictive power of AI-driven threat graph that gets smarter the more data it consumes means the products get better with age.

The coronavirus has done nothing to dent the insatiable trend of companies searching for better security solutions.

While the coronavirus is having an impact on the global economy, it will not stop cyber adversaries. Cybersecurity provides business resiliency and meets compliance requirements.

In times of crisis, adversaries will try to exploit the situation, prey on the public's fear, and escalate new attacks.

I know it's difficult to fathom, but we've already seen nation-state adversaries from rogue regimes and e-criminals launch phishing campaigns using coronavirus marketing as clickbait entrance mechanism.

The world of global business is certainly not naïve in 2020 and tech investors shouldn’t be too.  

CrowdStrike is still a small company but its growth trajectory is a sight to behold and every dip should be bought on the back of their solid business model.

 

cybersecurity

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 Trader2020-11-13 13:02:482020-11-18 13:45:19How to Stop the e-Criminals
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 13, 2020 - Quote of the Day

Tech Letter

“There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.” – Said CEO and Founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 11, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 11, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE VULTURES AT ELLIOT MANAGEMENT)
(FFIV), (TWTR), (EBAY), (T)

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 Trader2020-11-11 12:04:312020-11-11 12:31:03November 11, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Vultures at Elliott Management

Tech Letter

Elliott Management’s dive into tech can be used as a leading indicator of which tech companies are great fixer-uppers.

Truth be told, Elliott Management, the vulture hedge fund, has a knack for finding those rusted cloud gems and polishing them shiny.

They don’t do this for free either, and making a killing on each of these turnaround stories usually has the same ruthless strategy.

Some of the prey were well-known within particular tech sector niches, like BMC, Novell and Informatica, but none were giants or household names.

Billionaire Paul Singer, notched sale after sale, reaping gains from the associated premiums on the acquisitions.

Most recently, his tech aspirations have increased with the pedigree of the company dwarfing in size he did before with stakes in eBay (EBAY), SAP, and AT&T (T).

This year, Elliott has already feasted on Twitter (TWTR) and SoftBank.

Part of the reason for slaying bigger dragons is because tech has gotten expensive with multiples expanding rapidly, and successfully leveraging usually works by going bigger and not smaller.

How does Elliott influence the change needed to raise the share prices?

First, getting his guys on the board to make decisions for the company.

He does this by getting his most trusted confidante and deal maker Jesse Cohn in the mix and he leads Elliott’s technology transactions.

He now sits on the boards of both eBay and Twitter.

Rather than scorching the earth for public change, he has worked in tandem with management at both companies.

Cohn is also supported by Elliott’s in-house Internet analysts, software analysts, operation analysts, consultants and stable of installed board members to help make decisions.

A decision they were at the forefront of was possibly firing Jack Dorsey at Twitter after identifying him as not maximizing profitability and revenue at Twitter.

Ultimately, Dorsey earned himself another quarter as CEO, but that’s how things work at Elliott, they run a tight ship.

Twitter said in a securities filing that a board committee formed this spring recommended that the current management structure remains in place for the time being.

The announcement gives Mr. Dorsey a reprieve after his performance was heavily criticized by Cohn and Elliott Management.

Twitter and Elliott reached an agreement in March in which the company agreed to appoint two board members and commit to $2 billion in share buybacks.

The agreement also included the formation of the new committee to study Twitter’s leadership, which effectively created a probation period for Mr. Dorsey to prove himself to the new investors.

So, does Elliott’s aggressive strategy work or fail?

The proof is in the pudding with Twitter shares up about 40% since bottoming out in March.

Twitter has expanded its userbase by about 23% since the fourth quarter of 2019.

So what now for Elliott?

Elliott is now one of the biggest investors in F5 Networks (FFIV), a Seattle company with a market value of about $8.8 billion.

They have spoken to the software company’s management about ways to appreciate the underlying shares which has not gone up in the past 365 days.

Shares have seriously underperformed to similar-sized cloud companies.

F5 Networks provides multi-cloud application services for the availability, security, performance, and availability of network applications, servers, and storage systems.

So far, they have announced plans to repurchase $1 billion worth of stock through fiscal 2022.

The buyback plan includes the accelerated repurchase of $500 million worth of stock in fiscal 2021.

The company said it targets double-digit adjusted earnings per share growth over the next two years and revenue growth of 6% to 7%, including software revenue growth CAGR of 35% to 40%.

These moves will help the company arrive at an inflection point in the transformation story where operating margins are poised to expand and revenue will accelerate, leading to sustainable double-digit growth

Elliott has also investigated some dubious decisions by F5’s management such as the company’s recent acquisitions of Shape Security Inc. and Nginx Software Inc., unhappy F5 overpaid without a clear integration strategy.

Elliott’ roadmap typically involves sizeable stakes in tech firms giving them the authority to throw their weight around behind the scenes.

Stock buybacks, acquiring company board seats, reducing expenses, acquisitions, wholesale management changes are part of their recipe for raising the stock price.

I have no reason to believe that Elliott will fail this time around after their string of tech successes and that leads me to recommend F5 Networks as a great buy the dip tech story.

The first stage of the turnaround is usually the most dramatic and noticeable with the follow-through to the flagging share price.

I wouldn’t be shocked if shares are up 25% from current prices in Q1 2021.

 

Elliott

 

Elliott

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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 11, 2020 - Quote of the Day

Tech Letter

“The joke about SAP has always been, it's the lingering hangover from the dot-com crash.” – Said American Venture Capitalist Marc Andreessen

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/roubini.png 254 282 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-11-11 12:00:252020-11-11 12:30:15November 11, 2020 - Quote of the Day
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 9, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 9, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(UBER BACK FROM PURGATORY)
(UBER), (LYFT), (GRUB)

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 Trader2020-11-09 11:04:252020-11-09 11:37:07November 9, 2020
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