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Fintech

Marqeta (MQ) at $5.35: Promising Growth Amid Challenges in a Competitive Market

Marqeta (MQ) $5.35

Marqeta is a credit card processor with clients like Block (Square), Affirm, and DoorDash.

Marqeta should grow in 2025, after two years of a slowdown in 2023 and 2024 (estimated). 

Total Bookings with new clients and expansions with existing clients are growing well at over 50% and 60%. They’ve also done a good job on cost reduction.

The stock, though, could likely stagnate since they’re far from profitability. The other negative is that this is a commodity business with a lot of strong older players and several new upstarts, without any real competitive advantages. But Marqeta has a strong business relationship with Block, (51% of business) so that’s a plus, and their contract is in place through 2028.

The valuation is around 5X sales, and once growth resumes should be seen as cheap.

I think it’s worth looking into around $5. I’ll keep an eye on updates.

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Cloud Service Providers

Microsoft Q3 Earnings: Strong Revenue Growth Across Key Segments, Stock Rises 5%

  • Microsoft press release (NASDAQ: MSFT): Q3 GAAP EPS of $2.94 beats by $0.11.
  • Revenue of $61.9B (+17.1% Y/Y) beats by $1.01B.
  • Shares +5%.
  • Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $19.6 billion and increased 12% (up 11% in constant currency)
  • Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $26.7 billion and increased 21%
  • Revenue in More Personal Computing was $15.6 billion and increased 17%
  • Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.
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Cloud Service Providers

Alphabet Surges 12% on Strong Q1 Earnings: YouTube, Cloud, and Search Drive Growth

Alphabet stock surged by double digits — (NASDAQ: GOOG) +12%, — after its first-quarter earnings easily cleared analyst expectations as revenues jumped 15% with strong performance, particularly at YouTube.

Revenues rose to $80.54B, easily topping consensus for $78.7B. Advertising revenue rose 13% to $61.7B.

Meanwhile, YouTube ads revenue — previously an area of concern — rose a full 21% to $8.09B. Subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenue jumped 18%.

And the momentum in Cloud continued, with 28% revenue growth and operating income that more than quadrupled year-over-year.

Operating income jumped 46% year-over-year, to $25.47B. Earnings per share landed at $1.89 vs. $1.50 expected by Wall Street.

The operating margin also expanded, to 32% from a year-ago 25%.

“Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube, and Cloud,” said CEO Sundar Pichai. “We are well underway with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company.”

Revenues by segment: Google search and other, $46.16B (up 14.4%); YouTube ads, $8.09B (up 20.9%); Google Network, $7.41B (down 1.1%); Google subscriptions, platforms and devices, $8.74B (up 17.9%); Google Cloud, $9.57B (up 28.4%); Other Bets, $495M (up 71.9%).

Operating income by segment: Google Services, $27.9B (up 28.3%); Google Cloud, $900M (up 371%); Other Bets, -$1.02B (vs. year-ago -$1.23B); Alphabet-level activities, -$2.3B (vs. year-ago -$3.3B).

The company also authorized the buyback of up to an additional $70B worth of shares and declared a cash dividend of $0.20 per share.

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Fintech

Pagaya (PGY): Addressing Investor Concerns in Upcoming Fireside Chat

Pagaya (PGY)

After the disastrous action taken by management to dilute shareholders within a few days after a reverse split, a lot of analysts including some of us on Seeking Alpha, raised some important questions. The management has agreed to a fireside chat and hopefully resolve this.

Pagaya has welcomed questions from investors for an upcoming fireside chat with CEO Gal Krubiner, CFO Evangelos Perros and President Sanjiv Das. The conversation will be moderated by John Hecht from Jefferies, on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 at 1:00 PM ET.

www.businesswire.com/…

These are the questions from a group I was interacting with…

“1) Please address the surprise, blindsiding nature of the capital raise (3 days after the Reverse Split). Also, the midstream lowering of the price of the offering while increasing the number of shares you offered.

“I believe the original estimate was $14.70, then it was $12.70, and I watched the volume that day of the offering: the majority of it was under $12, and the share price closed a little above $11. Institutional participation seemed hesitant, even lacking. Today the share price is $9.12

“The timing and execution of this offering has been an unmitigated disaster for your shareholders, somewhere around a $600ML loss for a $90ML capital raise.

“How do you square that? Now that the damage has been done, it’s time to be honest with your investors about the capital raise. What happened?

“2) Since the bearish analyst at Wedbush Morgan downgraded your price target to $11.50, while remaining neutral, citing “losses in risk-retention assets” there has been a horde of relatively-inexperienced DYI accountants pouring through your past financial statements, looking for buried losses that you have not explicated for investors.

“You stated them, yes, in the March 8th 20-F, but now the investing world wants an explanation.

“What is the performance of your risk-retention assets? Are they insured? What is their current status? Do you now have sufficient capital to steer Pagaya to the end of the year? And cover the 5% needed for future ABS investments? Can you reaffirm your 1Q24 guidance and your full year estimates? Thank you.”

There are other questions, and other analysts will be on the call as well. I’ll update right after.

Categories
Fintech

Pagaya Technologies (PGY) Update: $1.34 – Accumulating Between $1.25 and $1.35

Pagaya’s earnings call was a much happier experience and it did match expectations, with revenue and adjusted EBITDA being in line. 

The 2024 revenue forecast was in line with the $ 988 Mn V 1.04Bn expected; more importantly, this is more than 20% growth in revenue and volume. I expect the same growth from 2024 to 2025 as well since their new 2023 customers take two years to fully ramp up.

The biggest surprise was the adjusted EBITDA mid-point number of $170Mn for 2024. Pagaya had a run rate of $28Mn going into this quarter and I had modeled $123Mn for next year, a 20% gain, but this was more than excellent and a good sign that they are executing well. They are looking at GAAP levels of profitability from 2025-2026, the reverse split will be 12:1, and Q1-2024 reporting will be with the SEC under US GAAP standards. 

This was first recommended on 02/05, and if you need the details, let me know I can post it again.