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4 more weeks till earnings. We will be above $4 by than. ;)
Got some more shares. Nice bounce!
Going back up
Time to bounce!
Time to bounce!
The week just started. We have many more green days ahead.
This will go crazy once it go past $5
Today is a great day to accumulate some shares. Tomorrow will be a green day :)
Today is a great day to accumulate some shares. Tomorrow will be a green day.
Bounce baby bounce!
Another nice green day!
Another nice green day!
That was a nice shake for more shares. Loving it!
Going to bounce off here
We are closing up the gap between FNMA and FMCC.
We will probably break that $5 during power hour and close above $5
Power hour will push this to $5+
GSEs shoot higher on big Bove price target
02:49 PM ET · FNMA
It doesn't take much to get these names moving, and Fannie Mae (FNMA +10.1%) and Freddie Mac (FMCC +10.3%) rocket higher, with Dick Bove appearing on Fox Business saying both are $18 stocks appearing to be today's catalyst.
Bove has been bullish on the companies for awhile, but the $18 price target is a new item.
Last week: Fannie reports big profit; Treasury paid back and more
Comments(0)
GSEs shoot higher on big Bove price target
02:49 PM ET · FNMA
It doesn't take much to get these names moving, and Fannie Mae (FNMA +10.1%) and Freddie Mac (FMCC +10.3%) rocket higher, with Dick Bove appearing on Fox Business saying both are $18 stocks appearing to be today's catalyst.
Bove has been bullish on the companies for awhile, but the $18 price target is a new item.
Last week: Fannie reports big profit; Treasury paid back and more
Comments(0)
Nice shake now we are back on track to higher highs!
Going back in now. Bounce baby bounce!
Facebook rallies: Needham bullish, Zuck talks, WhatsApp to offer VoIP
01:35 PM ET · FB
Less than a week after selling off on news of a certain high-profile acquisition, Facebook (FB +4.1%) has shot above $71 for the first time. Helping its cause: Needham's Laura Martin has upped her PT to $80 from $65, while arguing the WhatsApp deal isn't as expensive as it might first seem.
Though Facebook agree to pay $45 per WhatsApp MAU, Martin thinks that figure will drop to $23/MAU within a year, given WhatsApp's growth trajectory. She also notes Facebook ($140/MAU) and Twitter ($180/MAU) have much higher per-MAU valuations (ed: unlike WhatsApp, both platforms are also monetized via ads rather than subscriptions), and that WhatsApp averages 14 sessions/user in some markets.
It has been a busy week for WhatsApp after being acquired for $19 billion by Facebook (FB) last Wednesday, but the most important news for the mobile messaging company might have just come out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this morning. WhatsApp founder Jan Koum announced that the mobile application company will introduce voice communication capabilities into the product offering starting in Q2 2014. Shares of FB rose 3.6% to a new all-time high of $71.09 on the news.
FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed his goals for the recent acquisition during a press conference following the deal last week. Toward the top of the list was continued growth in user adoption and engagement - WhatsApp had 450 users last week and is already up to 465 million, but Zuckerberg and Koum have a shared target of eclipsing 1 billion. Monetization of the app - and justification of the big-ticket purchase - were called into question last week after news broke of the deal. Users pay $1/year after one year of using the service and critics argued the revenue generation was not enough to sustain such a high valuation. The news that WhatsApp will enter the voice communication marketplace is not only disruptive to the industry, but also offers a completely new vertical for revenue generation going forward.
In a previous article about the deal and the positive implications for FB, I cited a study from Ovum, a London-based consulting firm, which noted the mobile SMS industry generated $120 billion in revenue in 2013, down from $145 in 2012 as a direct result of broadband-powered mobile messaging apps. These apps, however, have not yet monetized the difference in revenue generation, and that divergence speaks to potential revenue generation going forward. Similarly, with WhatsApp's announcement today that they'll focus efforts on user adoption of voice call technology, the voice-over-IP concept was just taken to a new level. In a report from The Register, a UK tech magazine, it was cited that by Ovum that: "In 2016, non-voice revenues will no longer be a supplement to voice revenues. Instead, they will begin to replace them." The use of data is growing substantially while voice plans have faltered. This news out of WhatsApp coupled with any potential integration into the actual FB platform for voice connectivity is significant. It points to a future with no need for voice or SMS plans. In the same study done by Ovum it is noted that the current voice market generates $645 billion in annual revenue. 63% of the world's people are mobile phone users - that's 4.4 billion people, and they contribute to voice and SMS plans currently yielding $765 billion in annual revenue, or $174/mobile user per year. If WhatsApp - and the host of other mobile communication applications - is successful in transitioning users to sole reliance on data communication (ultimately, this is the goal), and predictions are correct that global smartphone users will grow to 1.75 billion by 2016, then their target addressable market becomes $305 billion in annual revenue.
The news today from WhatsApp has been relatively quiet thus far, but it might be the most significant product development the company has ever announced.
I heard people on this board said the 28th of this month
Just picked up some more shares. Let's bounce baby bounce.
Facebook buying WhatsApp for $16B
05:06 PM ET · FB
Facebook (FB) is acquiring mobile messaging leader WhatsApp for a whopping $16B in cash and stock.
WhatsApp, long seen as an indirect threat to Facebook's mobile engagement rates, had 430M monthly active users as of last month. Facebook, by comparison, ended Q4 with 1.23B MAUs and 945M mobile MAUs.
Great opportunity to accumulate more shares on today's dip :)
What do you guys think about redbox new feature of streaming movies? I think it will be big once they create apps for mobile devices and smart TV'S. This will be bigger than Netflix. I like the fact that you can still pick up movies from the kiosk instead of waiting for the movie to be mailed to you like the other competitor. Going OUTR long term.
Bounce baby bounce! Looking good from here on.
Going to bounce of the .17 :)
Power hour is here. Let's see this move higher.
Zynga rises after SoftBank reports stake
03:46 PM ET · ZNGA
Japanese tech/telecom giant SoftBank (SFTBF) has reported a 0.8% passive stake in Zynga (ZNGA +2.9%). Shares of the social game developer have rallied in response, and are close to their 52-week high of $4.97.
SoftBank's empire includes Sprint (80%-owned), a 37% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, and Japan's third-largest mobile carrier.
$5 is around the corner
Zynga (ZNGA) released its fourth quarter and full year earnings, which caused the stock price to shoot up by 20%. Some of the most important points were the cost cuts, an important mobile application developer acquisition, and falling player numbers. However, the numbers were not the real deal in this announcement; there were a lot of other positive elements that caused the stock price to shoot up. Let's look at some of the elements that will have long-term effects on the growth of the company.
Increase in Bookings
Zynga gave the numbers for average bookings per user (ABPU), a good measure of overall spending pattern of players through both in game purchases and advertising. Zynga calculates the ABPU by dividing total bookings per period by the number of days and then divide the remainder by average number of daily active users for that period. There has been a substantial improvement in ABPU numbers - during the last year, the bookings increased by 20% and if the growth rate continues, we are looking at an expected value of $785 million in year 2014. There are a small number of users who make in game purchases and by doing so, their retention ratio is far more than daily active users DAUs since they have invested in Zynga.
With a remarkable history of in game purchases motivated games like Zynga Poker, Zynga has to develop such games and encourage both paying and nonpaying users to get involved over a long period of time. The online gaming market is expected to grow at approximately 11.4% over the next three years with a total industry worth of $51 billion. With this incremental growth of bookings in the company products, the future growth looks promising for Zynga.
Mobile Online Gaming Industry Growing at an Impressive Rate
The mobile online gaming industry is expected to grow at 12.2% in the next three years. Zynga has acquired a mobile app developer company Natural Motion, which produced the most popular iOS games including Clumsy Ninja and CSR Racing. The acquired company has a remarkable history of games with a next generation graphics engine. This graphics engine has developed some of the finest record breaking console games titles like Grand Theft Auto V.
Japan has become the biggest mobile app market, and the U.S. vendors have not been able to crack the Japanese gaming market. Following the planned divestment of YoVille to Big Viking Games, Zynga could enter the Japanese market with newer user retained games. The key to entering the Japanese market is continuous innovation in the online games with incremental bookings per year. Zynga recently launched new mobile slots product, Hit It Rich! On tablets, which is ranked number one in the free iPad charts in the Casino category games. The older franchises of Zynga are also performing well now - Zynga poker has seen an increase of 8% in monthly active users during the last year. Zynga's Casino and Words with friends has broken their past bookings records assuring Zynga's future growth.
Ignore the Numbers
The earnings for Zynga continued to show a downward trend during the last year. However the arrangements and preparations for the next year have changed the game plan. The decreased bookings observed in year 2012 are taking a stable pattern at the start of 2014. With the increased upcoming product launches and bookings, with the technical support of NaturalMotion graphics engine, Zynga's earnings will certainly improve over the next year. This update is supported by the increased fundamentals of the company obtained from year end results of 2013.
The EPS has increased by 104% compared to the last year. The net income in year 2013 has shown an improvement of 82.3% compared to 2012. The most important fundamental is the free cash flow for Zynga, which has increased to $10 million in 2013 from ($114) million. The earnings results also showed a current assets shortage in the company which was mainly due to the acquisition of NaturalMotion, announced late in year.
Conclusion:
Zynga has seen tough times during the past two years, and the company has been suffering. On more than one occasion, the company has been declared almost a failure by some people. However, the change in strategy has helped the company regain some of its value and it looks set to grow well in the short-term as well as long-term. I believe the fundamentals are strong for the company and it is making good efforts to capture the growth opportunity in the mobile gaming market. However, Zynga will have to continue its efforts and come up with games that can captivate the users and derive revenue growth for the company.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
Business relationship disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. IAEResearch is not a registered investment advisor or broker/dealer. This article was written by an analyst at IAEResearch and represents his/her personal opinion about the companies mentioned in the article. The article is for informational purposes only and it should not be taken as an investment advice. Investors are encouraged to conduct their own due diligence before making an investment decision. I am not receiving any compensation (other than from Seeking Alpha) for this article, and have no relationship with the companies mentioned in the article.
AMD is taking a breather before the next run to $4+.
My price target is $4.20
The release of Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) Kaveri line of APUs last month was understood by even the most hardened detractors of the company as a potential game-changing event in the history of personal computing. Kaveri's support for what AMD call HSA - heterogeneous systems architecture - fundamentally alters the way computers can be built. In short, at launch last month there were more ifs surrounding Kaveri than any chip in recent memory. One of those ifs was extending Kaveri's value proposition with a separate, low cost discrete graphics card, what AMD calls dual graphics, which has been plagued with a number of problems in previous iterations.
A number of design compromises limited Kaveri's initial impact in many regards, the biggest being that its substantial GPU was constrained by low memory bandwidth thereby decreasing overall performance with legacy software. So, there is a real need for Kaveri to operate well in a two GPU environment to play at 1080p a lot of upcoming games without much compromise in image quality and performance.
Graphical Schizophrenia
The problem for dual graphics in the past has been that AMD's drivers have had serious issues scheduling which GPU would render what part of each frame displayed resulting in image tearing, micro-stuttering and an overall poor user experience even though there was an improvement in frames rendered per second. Measurements of frame times by various benchmarking sites became nearly as important as simply reporting average frames per second. The official term for the fix to this mis-coordination between different GPUs is frame pacing.
Like a musician trying to play faster than he is capable, notes get lost or get played badly while trying to play at the edge of his ability, so too does that happen in the interface between hardware and software. Even in a single GPU setting frame time volatility goes up the closer a GPU is to working at its limit. So, to this point dual graphics has been more promise than product.
Bringing Both Halves Together
Not anymore. With the release of the Catalyst 14.1 beta display drivers AMD has apparently fixed this frame pacing issue between Kaveri and a discrete GPU to create not only radically improved performance but also a near elimination of variability in frame times. As this article at WCCFTech shows, sourced from a Chinese website mydrivers.com, performance with a budget Radeon R7 250 discrete card ($79-$89) rises when dual graphics is enabled. Both the 512 shader A10-7850k ($173) and the 384 shader A8-7600 ($119) were tested.
Moreover, AMD's frame pacing fix for Kaveri in the new drivers seems to be working nearly flawlessly as the chart below shows. This is exactly the kind of disruptive performance that I talked about in earlier articles as being the real value add for Kaveri and the first killer app for AMD's latest chips. Throw in Mantle and True Audio support and this packs a whole lot of value into a less than $250 for the 7850K and $200 for the 7600.
So, in short not only is dual graphics improving performance up to its potential it is also producing images that are nearly on par with single GPU solutions.
There are similar solutions on the market at this price point from both Intel (INTC) and AMD CPU/discrete GPU arrangements. That is not the point. This important take away is that this is simply just the beginning. This configuration is now competitive with larger CPU/dGPU combinations costing more money. The value of this technology will only improve with time as drivers mature.
In addition, the results with the smaller A8-7600 (65W TDP) point strongly towards what kind of performance we can expect in a mobile solution at 35W and below. We didn't see huge drop offs in gaming performance at 45W with the 7600. But CPU performance dropped as one would expect. Since we know now know that Mantle's greatest strength is its alleviation of CPU-bound performance this should have a disproportionate improvement in performance in dual graphics solutions as well in Mantle-enabled games like Electronic Arts' (EA) "Battlefield 4" and the upcoming reboot of "Thief" from Eidos Montreal.
There have been some tests run with down-clocking large CPUs like Intel's Core i7-4960 and AMD's FX-8350 with Mantle which shows that they are more than capable at speeds as low as 2GHz to provide enough power to keep far larger R9 290x cards fed. So, if Mantle can still help at the extreme end of the performance spectrum, it is not inconceivable for a quad core Kaveri to keep two smaller GPUs, together half the size of an R9 290x, filled.
I can see strong Kaveri sales in emerging markets and China where consumers are very price conscious.
Looking (WAY) Ahead
One of the things we analysts have to do is look at technology today and project what future versions of it will look like. The successor for Kaveri, Carrizo, will be built on the final iteration of the Bulldozer core and is due in early 2015. We already know there will be eight core server versions to replace the Piledriver-based Opterons currently shipping and that max TDP will be 65 watts. What we don't know is what process it will be built on and the choices are either the current 28nm SHP process from GlobalFoundries or its 20nm process. Regardless of which process, Carrizo is targeting lower power draw, continuing the focus begun with Kaveri.
Perfecting dual graphics in a low power draw environment is a prerequisite for fully leveraging HSA and the idea of the CPU simply being an air-traffic controller for various ASICs housed along with it on die. As this technology matures over the first half of 2014 it will begin to change the face of what level of performance we can expect per dollar paid, fundamentally changing consumer expectations of what an integrated GPU can deliver.
Intel and Nvidia (NVDA) do not have a solution this elegant or powerful at these price points and that's ultimately what will determine the direction of future computing. It is no wonder that consumers are choosing tablets over PCs. But those trends can change with more compelling performance/dollar options in more traditional form factors.
At its current market cap and price multiple to sales this makes a compelling argument for AMD as a mid-term investment. Currently the stock has bounced solidly having sold off strong after its earnings report. AMD is a volatile stock with low institutional ownership and a high short percentage. The rally this week through the January 27th high of $3.57 on expanding volume is indicative of buyers seeing value in this price range.
The next major price target is the high from the post earnings open on January 22nd at $3.82 per share. A weekly close above that price will see a major round of short covering, which could take the stock back to over $4.00 as the gap in the chart overhead is like a magnet pulling the price higher. I expect resistance to form at $3.80 this week, however. Rival graphics firm Nvidia reports earnings on the 17th and that report will likely have spillover onto AMD bull or bear.
(click to enlarge)
Disclosure: I am long AMD. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure: I own a Kaveri based desktop.
GM China reports 12% sales gain for January
06:45 AM ET · GM
General Motors (GM) reports sales rose 12% Y/Y in China to 348,601 units.
The Buick brand powered much of the gain, rising 15.7% to top the 100K-unit mark.
By joint venture, Shanghai GM sold 171.6K vehicles while SAIC-GM-Wuling turned over 172.8K vehicles
GM +0.5% premarket
No matter what, today is a great day for everyone. We have reach $4+ a few times before it start correcting itself. Holding my shares to at least a little above $4 before selling some of my shares. I have some shares at $4.60 and a lot of shares at $3.32. GLTA and hopefully we see this go higher in the next few days.
This is just the beginning of the climb. We will probably be back at $4+ later this week.