In this briefing:
- Spotify: Playbook for Online Platforms to Turn Profitable – Implications for Meituan Dianping
- U.S. Equity Strategy: Nearing Short-Term Overbought Extremes
1. Spotify: Playbook for Online Platforms to Turn Profitable – Implications for Meituan Dianping
- Our analysis of how Spotify Technology Sa (SPOT US) turned profitable in 4Q18 reveals three key ingredients: critical mass in sales, GM progression, and core business diversification.
- With sales reaching critical mass, this would allow fixed costs to be spread out in such a way that opex/unit is lower than GP/unit.
- Progression in GM and core business diversification strategy are worth monitoring.
- Implication: Meituan Dianping’s (3690 HK) core business is ahead of iQIYI Inc (IQ US) in terms of profitability inflection point timeline.
2. U.S. Equity Strategy: Nearing Short-Term Overbought Extremes
Positive news surrounding trade and dovish Fed rhetoric has continued to flow, resulting in a reversal from December’s oversold extremes to our current, overbought extremes according to the S&P 500’s percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving average (see chart below). We continue to believe the market is going through a bottoming process, and we prefer to be on the cautious side at current levels considering how far and how quickly the market has risen.
In today’s report we highlight attractive stocks within Materials and Technology: large- and small-cap gold, silver, platinum, and optical equipment companies.
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