Category Archives: Stocks

All eyes on Alibaba Group today

If you buy Alibaba shares today, you will buy a piece of North American Island country, and not a piece of the Chinese online retail giant. You will simply buy and own a stake in a variable interest entity registered in the Cayman Island, because Chinese law forbids foreign ownership of strategic assets in China. So, if you buy Alibaba shares today, you would have no influence on management.

alibaba logo

Shares worth about $8 billion is not locked, which means you can sell them right away today. The rest of the IPO`s have a lockup period, which means you have to wait several months before you can sell them.

In addition; if you buy shares in Alibaba today, won`t be able to hedge. Options will listed on September 29. Alibaba Group will be assigned a «China domicile», and therefore shares can`t be included in the S&P 500 Index, which requires a U.S domicile.

As you probably know, Facebook, Twitter and Google are all banned in China, and it was not easy for eBay either. Jack Ma said eBay couldn`t deliver as fast as they could. But what about Alibaba in the west?

Is it gonna be easy for them to build a great express logistic system to deliver fast in the west, where domestic companies are favored over international companies like Alibaba? That`s gonna be interesting in the future, because Alibaba is trying to be a global leader.

In my opinion; Amazon is very expensive, and Alibaba is very cheap. All eyes on Alibaba (BABA) shares today!

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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Sony`s losses could triple

I remember the first time I bought my first Walkman. A Sony walkman. What a product. A cassette with my favorite music on, right in my Walkman, driven by batteries. It was launched for the first time in 1979. The worlds first portable music player with a compact cassette format.

sony-walkman

Sony has historically been notable for creating its own in-house standards for new recording and storage technologies, instead of adopting those of other manufacturer’s and standard bodies. They introduced the MiniDisc format in 1992. Sony`s Network Walkman line of digital portable music players did not support the MP3 de facto standard natively. Among many other big things, they bought CBS and have released lots of music, but now things have changed.

Sony (SNE) traded down -6,77% yesterday, and this is probably the beginning. First of all; Sony have decided not to pay a dividend for the first time since listing in 1958. They have no announcement regarding restructuring announcement either.

Investors can expect more bad news in the future. Sony cut its FY3 guidance factoring in the 180b impairment in goodwill associated with Sony Mobile. Sony`s lack of additional clarity on the ongoing strategy and the restructuring of the smart phone business is a big surprise.

But the biggest surprice is their cut in the dividende to zero for the first time since 1958. That`s what drove the shares down yesterday -6,77%. Investors are disappointed at the lack of dividend, but on the other hand; Sony could save about 25b Yen per year and that could be used to restructuring and investments.

It`s early to forecast Xperia Z3`s success and Sony need to rely on Sprint that is disrupting the U.S wireless market via aggressive data pricing. Consumers need to find value at a package that includes Sprint`s low-cost shared data plan.

Sony has managed to sell 3,5 million of the PlayStation 3 and 4 consoles, and if they do it all right with both, to the game and subscription business, they earn about $1 billion for the 2016 fiscal year.

Yesterday, Sony warned that they will report a much larger than expected loss of some 230 billion yen ($2,14 billion), and that`s nearly three times the loss to last year`s 50 billion yen. Sony is blaming ailing smart phone business for the revised guidance.

Last year, Sony`s mobile division was its most profitable, but sales have fallen as Sony`s competitors Huawei and Ziaomi have become dominant in the worlds largest smart phone market, China. In addition, they also compete with big brands like Apple and Samsung.

Sony`s president and chief executive Kazuo Hirai, said they will cut their work force by 15 percent, or about 1,000 workers. He also said that mobile business is one of their core business, and that they will continue to do business in this big market.

Net income has declined from $1,044 billion to -$1,340 billion and that is a dramatic 228% drop.

Sony`s movie division is not a big success either. Sequels of Robocop, 21 Jump Street, Think like a Man 2 and Spiderman underperformed. I would rather go for Walt Disney`s (DIS) Ice princesses and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Sony is now trading at $18,88, and it`s tumble isn`t done yet. Bad news like we saw yesterday will continue to bring down the stock and Sony demonstrated the ability to peel away -30% or more when the bearish mood really sets in.

I`m bearish on Sony and bullish on Walt Disney and Apple.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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Will Alibaba raise its IPO price?

The demand for Alibaba IPO shares is going wild! So wild that they have decided to raise its IPO price range from $66 to $68. Alibaba is a step closer to its IPO as much as $21,8 billion. Yahoo! Inc and other backers plan to offer as much as 320,1 million shares.

alibaba logo

Alibaba`s Jack Ma have been on a roadshow, and told the investors that they will not seek too high a valuation, and they are offering the shares at a price-to-earnings multiple that`s below what other public traded Chinese Internet peers fetch.

Alibaba`s market value could be as high as $167,6 billion. China`s biggest search engine trades about 34 times estimates of this year`s earning. Tencent Holdings Ltd trades at 37 times, while Amazon trades to 133 times forecast 2014 earnings.

The average for similar Chinese Internet e-commerce companies trade at 43 times their earnings.

Alibaba will try to be a global company and plans to expand its business in U.S and Europe in addition to Asia. Ma said they will try to avoid a repeat of Alibaba.com`s failure which plummeted below its IPO price right after listing and ended up delisting the company in 2012.

Jack Ma listed the company at the peak of the Hang Seng in 2007 and delisted it at the bottom during the financial crises in 2008. The S&P traded at about 30 times earnings in 2000, but now it is trading at 18. The Alibaba IPO in 2007 was 257 times oversubscribed and we won`t see that kind again.

Jack Ma and Alibaba has been on the road for two weeks trying to meet investors and speak with them. They said they plan to set a final price for the shares on Sept 18. Trading start the day after, on friday 19.

Nasdaq rose to its highest since March 2000 this month. Is this the right timing for Alibaba?

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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Another Smartwatch to watch

Many IoT`s comes from California. So do Pebble. Apple Inc is not the first company on the market with a smartwatch. Pebble Technology have sold 400,000 units as of March 2014. Best Buy began selling Pebble in July last year, and sold out within five days!

Pebble_watch_trio_group_04

Pebble is designed on a concept by Eric Migicovsky. After raising venture capital for the product under their former name inPulse, the company failed to attract traditional investors under their new brand name.

The Pebble is a smartwatch wich is released in 2013, and they was funded via the crowd funding platform Kickstarter. It feature a black and white e-paper display, a vibrating motor, a magnetometer, ambient light sensors and an accelerometer, enabling its use as an activity tracker. Pebble raised $10,3 million trough Kickstarter, making it the most successful product funded through that company up until then.

Pebble is the first watch built for the 21st century. It’s infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps. Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages. While designing Pebble, they strove to create a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life.

Apps bring Pebble to life. Cyclists can use Pebble as a bike computer, accessing the GPS on your smart phone to display speed, distance and pace data. Runners get a similar set of data displayed on their wrist. Use the music control app to play, pause or skip tracks on your phone with the touch of a button. Don’t worry about the rain, Pebble is water-resistant!

If you’re a golfer, feel free to bring Pebble onto the course. Pebble is working with Freecaddie to create a great golf rangefinder app for Pebble that works on over 25,000 courses world-wide. Instead of using your phone, view your current distance to the green right on your wrist. These apps will be the first, with more in the works!

Pebble can change instantly, thanks to its brilliant, outdoor-readable electronic-paper (e-paper) display. They have designed tons of watchfaces already, with more coming every day. Choose your favourite watchfaces using Pebble’s iPhone or Android app. Then as the day progresses, effortlessly switch to the one that matches your mood, activity or outfit.

If you need to stay on top of things, Pebble can help with vibrating notifications, messages and alerts. Dismiss a notification with a shake of your wrist. Don’t worry, it’s easy to disable all notifications.
Incoming Caller ID
Email (Gmail or any IMAP email account)
Calendar Alerts
Facebook Messages
Twitter
Weather Alerts
Silent vibrating alarm and timer
Android users can also receive Text Messages (SMS) on their Pebble. Unfortunately iPhone does not expose this data. Why? Probably because they have their own watch?
Want your watch to tell you when your next bus is leaving? Maybe you’re jonesing to see your compile status or recent github commits. Think push notifications, directly to your watch using the data connection on your phone. Want to check-in on your watch, or create an app that can monitor your sleep? Pebble can send data from the accelerometer and buttons back up to the internet.
Pebble can receive simple alerts and notifications from if this then that (ifttt.com) or their web-facing RESTful endpoint. More adventurous developers can use the Pebble SDK, with its Arduino-like abstractions and simple C structure, to gain full control of the watch. Multiple apps can run on Pebble, along side watchfaces and regular notifications.

Load apps using Bluetooth
144 x 168 pixel display black and white e-paper
Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR and 4.0 (Low Energy)
4 buttons
Vibrating motor
3 axis accelerometer with gesture detection
Distribute apps via Pebble watchapp store

This is a great success story, which is all about entrepreneurship and most importantly about Risktakers. Kickstarter have solved that problem, and this is about the American dream, which is still alive!

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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SENSE is launched

Sleep is very important. No doubt about that, but how much sleep do you need? It`s very individual, but some people only need 5 hours, while some others need more than 8 hours. The key is to sleep well when you sleep.

Sense

(Picture: Sense)

If you sleep very deep, some doctors say you only need 3 hours. That`enough. On the other hand; if you sleep bad for 10 hours, you will feel tired. You know it is important for athletes to sleep, but it`s important for traders to sleep too.

But many people around the world have a big problem here. They can`t sleep. They do not have a good sleep, and don`t know what to do. Someone in this world wants to change that. Someone that have developed a brand new product. An IoT (Internet of Things).

The company is called Hello Inc, and they is about to disrupt «sleep disruption» and they want to give the people answers to people`s simple question that nobody has yet asked: Why?

There are a lot of things out there that tells you about your sleep activity and can give you a historical log, like Jawbone, Sleep Cycle, Fitbit, Sleep Genius and Dormio. They all can track your sleep and can tell you that you woke up at 4:00 AM.

But the right question is: Why? Why did you wake up at 4:00 AM? If you don`t know and have the right answer, how can you prevent it from happening again? Here is where Hello Inc comes in. They have developed a brand new product called «Sense».

«Sense» do not only tracks your sleep, but it can also monitors your surrounding environment and this product comes in two different parts which is The orb and The «pill».

The Orb goes on your nightstand. It listens for noise and monitors the lighting and temperature. In addition; it pics up what kind of allergic particles are in the air.

The «Pill» is placed on you pillow and tracks the activity og quality of your sleep and it`s all based on the motions you make during the night.

«Sense» assigns a Sleep Score for each night and gives you specific details that answer the question; «Why did I sleep so bad last night?»

Watt: «Sense`s» light sensor may note that you`re using 100-watt light bulbs instead of the 75-watt bulbs you typically use. If you change the watt, then it will disturb you sleep and Sense will track that and tell you.

Heat: Sense`s «Pill» tracks that you`re tossing and turning more than you normally do. It recognize that you`re sleeping in a stifling 80 degrees instead of your normal 75 degree range.

Groggy: If you feel groggy in the morning and don`t know why, you can simply check your Sense and discover from the playback that its microphone picket up some noise from some drunk students in your garden at 3:00 AM.

Sense is also a Smart Alarm that wakes you up according to your specific sleep cycle.

They use Kickstarter to gain funding and they have catapulted to over $2 million in under four weeks now. This is a small company with a smart product and so far they have about 17,000 backers. Not bad. Earlier this year they raised $10,5 million in funding in January after allotting about $18,2 million in shares to be sold.

Hello Inc is founded by James Proud and they are 16 employees with an office in San Francisco’s Potrere Hill neighborhood and a host of elite Silicon advisors from former PayPal head David Marcus to former Apple iPhone senior engineer Andy Grignon.

What a team! What a culture! This is what I call a good society!

An investment in Sense isn`t just investing in your well-being, but it`s also a thumbs-up to entrepreneurism and supporting innovative projects through crowdfunding. SMART!

Sence will be released in November 2014. Sleep well!

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Shiny bull. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Shiny bull nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Shiny bull and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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