TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research Analyst, Obex Capital Research

Aaron Gabin

TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research Analyst

TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research

Obex Capital Research

“Obex” is Latin for Barriers to Entry. Obex Capital Management’s investment philosophy is driven by an intense focus on which business model’s Barriers to Entry are able to withstand the ever increasing competitive disruption in the TMT and Consumer Sectors.

Equity Bottom-Up

<p>We’ve been bullish on Disney since early last year when its stock fell below $100 on pandemic concerns, as the market was underestimating the power of the DTC business. That underestimation no longer exists and Disney’s upside to its current valuation is becoming harder to justify as we near $200/share. Disney’s quarter was good enough to keep the bull case intact: booming DTC business and soon to fully re-open Parks business driving a rebound in earnings growth. When we invest on the long side, we want to be able to generate a &gt;30% one year return, so what do we have to believe on Disney from here for 2021?</p><div class="content-highlight"><p>Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.</p></div>

We’ve been bullish on Disney since early last year when its stock fell below $100 on pandemic concerns, as the market was underestimating the power of the DTC business. That underestimation no longer exists and Disney’s upside to its current valuation is becoming harder to justify as we near $200/share. Disney’s quarter was good enough to keep the bull case intact: booming DTC business and soon to fully re-open Parks business driving a rebound in earnings growth. When we invest on the long side, we want to be able to generate a &gt;30% one year return, so what do we have to believe on Disney from here for 2021?Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.

Disney 1Q21: Is Streaming Enough to Support $200?

<p>Spotify printed a modest beat on 4Q and a particularly poor guidance for 2021 – even for a company that chronically underwhelms on guidance. What strikes us is this is one of the worst business models of a large cap TMT company we’ve ever seen. The future bliss of podcasting driven profitability is clearly just that…future bliss. Management has NEVER explained how podcasting will translate into a more profitable business other than through hazy comments about “holistic nature of churn reduction and new users”…it reminds us of Reed Hastings when he promised that one day Netflix would be FCF positive years ago…but at least Netflix had an operating model with inherent operating leverage and pricing power, neither of which is present with Spotify. We can justify downside to $125, but realistically think $200 is a reasonable price target.</p><div class="content-highlight"><p>Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.</p></div>

Spotify printed a modest beat on 4Q and a particularly poor guidance for 2021 – even for a company that chronically underwhelms on guidance. What strikes us is this is one of the worst business models of a large cap TMT company we’ve ever seen. The future bliss of podcasting driven profitability is clearly just that…future bliss. Management has NEVER explained how podcasting will translate into a more profitable business other than through hazy comments about “holistic nature of churn reduction and new users”…it reminds us of Reed Hastings when he promised that one day Netflix would be FCF positive years ago…but at least Netflix had an operating model with inherent operating leverage and pricing power, neither of which is present with Spotify. We can justify downside to $125, but realistically think $200 is a reasonable price target.Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.

<p>In 4Q20, Amazon turned in another sensational quarter, but essentially hasn’t moved since September as it has been “growing” into its valuation after a meteoric move in 1H20. In the past year, Amazon has spent an incremental $11.5B on COVID related costs (~10% of 2020 opex), increased the square footage of its logistics network’s square footage by 50%  and also added ~650,000 (!!!) employees, doubling its employee base in what also turns out to be the largest mobilization of workers in the US since World War II. And yet…since September 2, the stock is down 4% from its alltime high. We think Amazon is worth closer to $6,000 then $3,000 and think that it has potentially the same type of setup as last year when we began writing (on Smartkarma) about Amazon. In years after the company has huge capacity expansions, it tends to outperform as the operating leverage of capacity utilization shines through.</p><div class="content-highlight"><p>Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.</p></div>

In 4Q20, Amazon turned in another sensational quarter, but essentially hasn’t moved since September as it has been “growing” into its valuation after a meteoric move in 1H20. In the past year, Amazon has spent an incremental $11.5B on COVID related costs (~10% of 2020 opex), increased the square footage of its logistics network’s square footage by 50%  and also added ~650,000 (!!!) employees, doubling its employee base in what also turns out to be the largest mobilization of workers in the US since World War II. And yet…since September 2, the stock is down 4% from its alltime high. We think Amazon is worth closer to $6,000 then $3,000 and think that it has potentially the same type of setup as last year when we began writing (on Smartkarma) about Amazon. In years after the company has huge capacity expansions, it tends to outperform as the operating leverage of capacity utilization shines through.Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.

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<p><em><strong>Corrigenda: There is an error in this Insight. Please note the correction.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Correction: The first line under Results in the Detail section should read "Revenues of $6.64B (+22% YoY), a touch ahead of consensus $6.6B."</strong></em></p>
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<p>We have been longtime fans of Netflix the product and Netflix’s management team can rightfully be described as visionary. They had the vision to have the public markets fund an experiment in business models that appears now set to breakeven on FCF in 2021. We have said for the past two quarters that Netflix is a good relative short given Deceleration in Subscriber Growth, Rising Churn, and Rising FCF burn. The key blow to our thesis is that FCF was given the all clear by management last night, while the CFO said churn was a record low.</p>
<p>The key question going forward…if Netflix can now generate tangible FCF into the future and this model is sustainable, don’t we then have to value Netflix on FCF? You don’t short stocks over arguments about what multiple to put on terminal values, and we aren’t advocating outright shorting Netflix, which has proven to be the #2 alltime widowmaker of short sellers (after Tesla), but we think Netflix resumes its role as the favored funding short once the dust clears from this quarter’s FCF announcement and investors focus back on the decelerating sub growth.</p>
<div class="content-highlight">
<p>Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.</p>
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Corrigenda: There is an error in this Insight. Please note the correction.
Correction: The first line under Results in the Detail section should read "Revenues of $6.64B (+22% YoY), a touch ahead of consensus $6.6B."


We have been longtime fans of Netflix the product and Netflix’s management team can rightfully be described as visionary. They had the vision to have the public markets fund an experiment in business models that appears now set to breakeven on FCF in 2021. We have said for the past two quarters that Netflix is a good relative short given Deceleration in Subscriber Growth, Rising Churn, and Rising FCF burn. The key blow to our thesis is that FCF was given the all clear by management last night, while the CFO said churn was a record low.
The key question going forward…if Netflix can now generate tangible FCF into the future and this model is sustainable, don’t we then have to value Netflix on FCF? You don’t short stocks over arguments about what multiple to put on terminal values, and we aren’t advocating outright shorting Netflix, which has proven to be the #2 alltime widowmaker of short sellers (after Tesla), but we think Netflix resumes its role as the favored funding short once the dust clears from this quarter’s FCF announcement and investors focus back on the decelerating sub growth.

Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.


Netflix 4Q20: It’s a Free Cash Flow Machine!

Covering IPOs, Healthcare and Technology Stocks

Andrei Zakharov

Algosun Global

Equity Capital Markets

<p>The online gaming and entertainment technology decacorn Roblox intends to sell of up to ~197 million shares of Class A common stock through a direct listing in February. The opening public price of common stock on the NYSE will be determined by buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from broker-dealers. Roblox has the largest global online gaming community with more than 150 million MAUs and ~75% of all American children ages 9-12 play Roblox. In 2019 Roblox entered into a JV agreement with Songhua, an affiliate of Tencent Holdings to pursue opportunities of expanding business in China.</p><p>Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are lead financial advisors on the upcoming DPO. Roblox raised ~$856 million in funding over 9 rounds, according to Crunchbase. Their latest $520 million Series H round was led by Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group.</p><p>Altos Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Investment Group of Santa Barbara and Warner Music Group also participated in this funding round. The Series H round valued Roblox at ~$29 billion, assuming a purchase price of $45 per share. </p>

The online gaming and entertainment technology decacorn Roblox intends to sell of up to ~197 million shares of Class A common stock through a direct listing in February. The opening public price of common stock on the NYSE will be determined by buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from broker-dealers. Roblox has the largest global online gaming community with more than 150 million MAUs and ~75% of all American children ages 9-12 play Roblox. In 2019 Roblox entered into a JV agreement with Songhua, an affiliate of Tencent Holdings to pursue opportunities of expanding business in China.Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are lead financial advisors on the upcoming DPO. Roblox raised ~$856 million in funding over 9 rounds, according to Crunchbase. Their latest $520 million Series H round was led by Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group.Altos Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Investment Group of Santa Barbara and Warner Music Group also participated in this funding round. The Series H round valued Roblox at ~$29 billion, assuming a purchase price of $45 per share. 

Roblox DPO. Going Public Through A Direct Listing Instead Of A Traditional IPO

United States

Netflix Inc. is an Internet subscription service for watching tv shows and movies. Subscribers can instantly watch unlimited TV shows and movies streamed over the Internet to their TVs, computers and mobile devices and in the United States, subscribers can receive standard definition DVDs and Blu-ray Discs delivered to their homes.

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Netflix Inc (NFLX US)

Disney 1Q21: Is Streaming Enough to Support $200?

We move to the sidelines on Disney after being long for the past year. We think the stock has fully valued a streaming business that has a little...

Aaron Gabin

Spotify 4Q20: Just Trust Us

Spotify printed an OK quarter paired with awful guidance for 2021, especially given that its excuses for missing guidance were they reasons they...

Aaron Gabin

Amazon 4Q20: The GOAT Departs

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down. We doubt he steps away. 2021 is a unique setup. Its the first time Amazon was up during a big capacity...

Aaron Gabin

Netflix 4Q20: It’s a Free Cash Flow Machine!

Netflix posted an inline quarter, but the stock is up 14% on commentary about sustainability of FCF going forward. We don't advocate shorting NFLX...

Aaron Gabin

Roblox DPO. Going Public Through A Direct Listing Instead Of A Traditional IPO

Roblox is the most innovative company in gaming space and largest social platform for play with online gaming community of 150M+ MAUs worldwide

Andrei Zakharov

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