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August 20, 2023

Defensive Opportunities In A Continued Risk Off Quarter

I continue to see a risk off environment in equities that has spilled over to emerging markets. The consensus from American conglomerates on China demand and now Chinese data itself is pointing to significant economic contraction in China. The markets in Turkey (TUR), Vietnam (VNM) are holding strong. Vietnam continues to be my favorite opportunity in emerging markets over the long-term.

Last week Bitcoin saw increased selling and volatility. This just adds to the risk off sentiment as Bitcoin, one of the best performing assets this year is joining in on the selling. Below is the breakdown of the trend support currently in the works on Bitcoin. I alerted on the recent top for Bitcoin here on the blog in early 2022.













In light of this overall market weakness I see opportunity in pharmaceuticals with ETF's like VanEck Pharmaceutical ETF (PPH) and I-Shares Pharma ETF (IHE). The ETF's have recently broken out to new 52 week highs and shown relative strength in the market. I'm particularly bullish on the sector because breakthroughs in AI machine learning should improve drug development costs and increase speed of discovery and research.

I've done extensive research on the newest AI via large LLM's(large language models) and the promise of smaller ones. Drugs and biotech are some of the industries they will transform initially. They are the perfect fit for industries where scanning large language databases is key and processing large amounts of data is needed.

The pharma ETF PPH is coming up on a key support level.













Merger Arb Opportunities

There are opportunites in merger arbitrage with Spirit Airlines (SAVE) and I-Robot (IRBT). Spirit is trying to get an all cash deal done with Jetblue for $33.50 a share. Amazon has been in the works and shareholder approved to buy I-Robot for all cash or $51 a share too.

Oil and Gas Energy

Apart from pharma I have seen relative strength in energy stocks. I have particularly been looking at oil and gas stocks as natural gas has pretty much been written off. I'm not particularly bullish on natural gas but the contrarian trade now is nat gas as harsh winter weather is likely not priced in. The best gas ETF is US 12 month Fund (UNL) at it holds long dated contracts and thus has less decay than ETF (UNG). Nobody is bullish on natural gas prices as the technicals have shown a bottom formation forming.

Some of the energy stocks I added to my watchlists were VAALCO (EGY),Helix Energy (HLX), Nextier Oilfield (NEX), KLX Energy (KLXE).

Solar Weakness Continues

Another industry that caught my attention was Solar. It caught my attention as a short opportunity as the weakness in solar continues as evidenced by the Invesco ETF (TAN). I noticed short selling technical setups in stocks like JKS and MAXN too.

I'm bullish on the prospects of breakthrough technology like quantum computing with the help of AI. The quantum computer ETF is Defiance Quantum ETF (QTUM). I also particulary like the quantum computing stock Rigetti Computing (RGTI) as they have one on the cloud.

I continue to believe the investment of our lifetimes going forward will be in artificial intelligence. The best plays on this are the actively managed Roundhill ETF (CHAT) and long established Global X AI ETF (BOTZ) and Robo Global ETF (ROBO).

One good speculative investment opportunity I saw was in the Nigeria country specific Nigeria ETF (NGE). Nigeria NGE has a trailing twelve month 16% dividend yield. 0.83% expense ratio. Politics might be a partial driver of the 28% YTD performance of Nigerian stocks.

"The Tinubu admin also formed a committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms headed by Taiwo Oyedele, signalling the possibility of critical tax reforms"... " Banking and oil gas stocks have been very strong drivers of market performance. Oil and Gas stocks have been on the rise since they took out fuel subsidy from the sector. Added with banking, they are the top two sectors.”

On specific stocks on the long side I see a buy setup in Payments Holdings (PAY) as it saw large buying volume after earnings and is consolidating in a flag now. It needs to hit 14.05 for a long trade. The company has strong revenue and earnings growth. They recently revised quarterly earnings forecasts to the upside. Next years earnings guidance has been raised to $.24 EPS vs previous $.14.













Full disclosure: I have been actively trading the PPH ETF, RGTI. I have puts on JKS, long BOTZ, CHAT. May long NGE in future.

August 5, 2023

Spok Holdings (SPOK): Healthcare IT Company With a 9% Dividend Yield



















Spok (SPOK) provides healthcare communication solutions in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. They offer subscriptions to one and two-way messaging services, voicemail, and equipment loss or maintenance protection services. They serve over 2,200 health care facilities and 83% of their revenue is re-occurring in nature. The current market cap is $271 million with the stock price at $13.60 a share.

Valuation and Metrics

The trailing twelve month PE ratio is 8. Price to sales ratio is around 2. I find this to be a compelling valuation in the current market. Free cash flow has been positive since 2019, except for 2021 which was driven by unusually large capex.

The company has been profitable since the second quarter of 2022. In 2019 to 2021 net income was negative. I didn't look at any years before 2019. Return on equity has been trending upward the past few years. The current ROE is 13% for Q2 2023.

Strong Dividend History

From 2018 to 2021 the company payed $.50 in dividends per share. In 2022 the dividend was raised to $1.25 per share.

In the years prior to 2018 the company made a total of $467 million in dividend payments.

The current quarterly payments are $.3125 per share. With the stock at $13.60 a share the dividend yield is 9% well above the risk free rate.

In addition to shareholder friendly dividends the company also has a history of returning value through share repurchases. In 2018 and 2019 they spent a combined $40 million on sharebuybacks.

Industry Long-term Outlook

The prospects for health IT is strong.

Gobal healthcare information system market size was valued at USD 406.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.3% from 2023 to 2030. Rise in healthcare expenditure and advancements in its IT infrastructure are some of the primary drivers boosting the market. High demand for remote patient monitoring is also significantly driving its adoption rate.
source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/healthcare-information-system-market

Other sources share similar growth rates. While the company has not experienced rapidly growing sales the industry growth does provide good defensive stability. The nature of the business doesn't require large debt loads and margins are healthy and stable. This lends to the prospect of meeting future dividend payments.

Technical Analysis

The stock price has been uptrending since the summer of 2022. It formed a base and recently broke out to a new 52 week high on earnings.













It has good short-term technicals with a clean bull flag on the daily chart highlighted in red.
















If you like this keep it simple analysis be sure to subscribe to my free Substack where I do analysis on deep value stocks trading below net tangible and net current asset value.





Full disclosure: I have no position at the time of writing. I many take a long position in the future.

July 30, 2023

More Fast Growing Technology Companies

Yalla Group (YALA) is a middle eastern social networking and entertainment platform primarily in the Middle East and North Africa region. It's a $872 million company and a fast grower. The previous 5 year sales compound annual growth rate was 24%. The trailing twelve month gross margin was 62%. Trailing twelve month net profit margin is roughly 18%.

They have been free cash flow positive for the last four years. In 2022 free cash flow came in at a robust $103 million. 2021 had $142 mil in free cash flow, 2020 saw $64 mil.

Yalla is trading at 12 times earnings with forward growth forecasted significantly higher.

The price action is resembling the overall Chinese stock market. It just broke over a resistance level.

The technicals combined with valuation, fundamentals and recent strength in China make this a good long watch.















Nerdy, Inc. (NRDY) an $811 million company in the online education industry that utilizes AI. The companies CEO is the founder. Revenue is forecasted to grow 29%. Earnings are estimated to turn to profitablity next year.

On the balance sheet current ratio is 3. The largest mutual fund holder is Franklin Strategic Series-Franklin Small Cap Growth Fund. Goldman Sachs, Vanguard Group and Blackrock all hold over 2% of the stock each.

June 13, 2023

Undervalued Tech Stocks

datacenter with servers








The Nasdaq 100 is up 30% so far this year. It's not easy to find large-cap growing tech companies that haven't already seen significant stock accumulation.

I have been scanning the sector regularly to find attractive longer term opportunities. I remember the early 2000's very well and how accelerating revenue growth in E-commerce propelled so many stocks higher and higher.

The demand for computer power to fuel the growth of AI and large language models is here. Whether you believe it is all hype or the next paradigm of computers like me as personal computers were in the 80s and internet was in the 90s AI is getting investment.

Everyone complains that Nvidia(NVDA) is too expensive at 30 times sales. Here is some historical context on what large companies can do in a bull market.

In the 2003-2007 market Baidu (BIDU) had a price to sales ratio of 30 in spring 2010 and share price of $60. It still ran to $145 at its peak in 12' with a P/S of 44! that's a 100% return after it was at 30 times earnings. I'm not saying Nvidia will grow like that but another 25% return doesn't seem impossible.

In 2015 Alibaba BABA had a price to sales of 16 and the stock still went from $80 to $200 in 2018.

I've been looking at a lot of robotics companies, semi's, silicon miners and IT infrastructer stocks large and small. I've been tweeting about many such stocks for a couple months on Twitter. One such stock, STRC I made a substack article on. Subscribe to my Substack here to catch all my newest deep value net-net ideas.

One recent dive I did was Nauticus Robotics (KITT). It is in the ocean sensory robotics business.

-4.8 Current ratio

-+230% to +440% forward revenue growth,

-36% rev growth this current year

-EPS loss narrowing 6 quarters straight

-no dilution

-risk, only 2 customers

Another interesting thing I stumbled on was that Boston Dynamics a world leader in robotics is owned by Hyundai Motor (HYMTF). They bought the company in 2020 for $1 billion. I'm sure the current market value is much higher now in this AI frenzy.

ARB IOT Group ticker symbol (ARBB) an Asia based smart home technology company IPO'd in April of this year. There appears to be no analysts on it so it was hard to find guidance. I did see some very good growth. There was 2,200% revenue growth in a six month period in 2022. Quarterly earnings growth was 158% per Finviz.com. The balance sheet has a 3.9 current ratio. I need to do some more research but it appears it may be below net current asset value too. The float is only 1.2 million.

Another lower float one I found was IBEX (IBEX). Earnings guidance has been steadily raised over the past few months. Earnings are expected to grow 11% next year. The forward PE ratio is 9.6.

Some of my favorite datacenter stocks are Bel Fuse (BELFB), MongoDB (MDB), Vertiv Holdings (VRT) and a cloud company I like is Zscaler (ZS).

I currently own Nvidia through ETFs and am long KITT and STRC. I may buy or sell any of these stocks in the future. Here is an AI generated image of a modern datacenter.

modern datacenter

April 21, 2023

AI Wars Are Beginning In Tech: How To Invest In Artificial Intelligence

taking stock in AI companies












Hello loyal readers! Grab a cup of hot coffee or fresh tea. I have a good one for you today!

My goal is to find the best investment opportunities in artificial intelligence and robotics. After researching the technology in-depth I strongly believe this is the best growth industry opportunity to invest in since the 1990's internet boom. We are still early too! I will continue to put my ideas on the blog here, my Substack and my Twitter/X account going forward.



Microsoft recently made a large investment in OpenAI and has already incorporated AI chat technology into it's search engine Bing. We are continuing to see investment as Inflection AI just secured a massive $1.3 billion funding from major investors including Bill Gates.

If you are brand new to AI technology let me give you some quick background on it. Sam Altman and Illya Sutskever used computers to make a "neural network" that was modeled after the human brain. The computers use high powered "GPU's" graphics cards to process the information.

Deep learning has been going on since the early 2000's but it took major breakthroughs in compute to get us to ChatGPT-3 and 4. Previously, the computers were just not powerful enough. Scientists were also not sold on the concept of scaling up neural nets. This all changed in the last 5 years as computer tech advanced. The increased size of the neural nets combined with increased compute brought breakthroughs leading to ChatGPT.

These vast neural nets are called LLM's (large language models). They use NLP (natural language processing) to retrieve info and generate it. So instead of using code to communicate with the computer you can use words. These massive LLM's are being trained on the internet and thousands of books.

If you haven't checked out the future of chat search I recommend going to Bing.com and clicking the chat icon at the top and using the interactive chat bot which utilizes the ChatGPT technology from OpenAI ChatGPT.

Ask Microsoft Copilot to find your results like you would in Google or Safari. It is incredible and free. The difference vs traditional search is you can talk to it like a person and use more detail. Don't be afraid to test it's limits. It's a streamlined chat style search without the ads, unworthy results in Google's top 10, pop-ups, paywalls or wasted time scrolling multiple results pages.

Microsoft and OpenAI are adding things regularly. You can have it write stories, poems or even articles. They now have an AI image creator too. OpenAI is regularly adding features and plug-ins to ChatGPT-4 if you want to pay for the subscription.

I remember the early days of the internet well in the mid and late 90s. The first time I surfed the web it was with Yahoo search at my dads office because we didn't have it at home yet. I am getting the same vibe using AI powered search now.

AI Is Here To Stay

I think some people maybe even Wallstreet are jaded about AI tech from the over-hype of the recent metaverse and web3 and lack of real-world wide scale implementation. Trust me AI and LLM's(Large Language Models) is legitimate and is going to be revolutionary. How revolutionary? I believe AI technology is someday going to be more revolutionary to mankind than the internet, especially if AGI or something like ASI (artificial superintelligence) or any thing near a singularity is reached.

We still are not experts on what goes on in the brain. What exactly would it take to push AI to a level rivaling human creativity? Human innovation only comes from "learning" and experience after all. If we accelerate the learning as resesrchers are doing as I'm writing this how soon could major scientific breakthroughs occur?

It is already creative and solving problems. these models are still the early versions and are being improved. Eventually, from what I am hearing they could take an Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Nicola Tesla bot and have them theorize on advanced physics. This novice version we have with ChatGPT when you use AutoGPT can perform jokes and I'm hearing even a full comedy skit with a hook and final punchline like great comedians do.

Some people are afraid of advancing this technology that has given a massive technological breakthrough already for the average person. It can proof-read writing, fix spelling and grammar and make sentence structure more consice. It can write articles on any subject. It can write a business plan and do web development coding. Think of it like an assistant for your work or hobbies with the entire knowledge of the internet by your side.

There are crucial externalities like potential slowing investment and the overall economy that could slow down the growth of this technology. If things continue as they are going the research I got from using the Bing AI chatbot(now Copilot) paints a very prosperous picture for growth.

Future Growth

"According to Statista, the market for artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to show strong growth in the coming decade. Its value of nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars is expected to grow twentyfold by 2030, up to nearly two trillion U.S. dollars. These figures are regularly being updated by big banks and analysts as the demand for Nvidia GPUs remains robust.

In 2021, worldwide investment into AI companies increased by 115% since 2020, marking the largest year-on-year growth in AI investment for at least two decades. Total AI investment reached $77.5 billion in 2021. The global AI market, valued at 142.3 billion U.S. dollars as of 2023, continues to grow driven by the influx of investments it receives. This is a rapidly growing market, looking to expand from billions to trillions of U.S. dollars in market size in the coming years.
"

Best AI Stocks To Buy

Google is behind Microsoft right now with AI search. Bing chatbot came to market first. Bard finally came out but isn't competitive on financial searches. Anecdotally, I've seen mixed feedback for Bard. Googles (GOOGL) main revenue segment is search ad revenue. Google has already been struggling with declining growth in many segments and missing earnings estimates the last four quarters. This new consumer technology is a huge loss for them right now. They are losing some searches to Bing every day now. Granted ChatGPT and Bing haven't moved the needle the real threat is there now. Microsoft being first to market may turn out to be a huge advantage as Samsung has been publicly contemplating dropping Google from their devices.

I expect all major tech companies like IBM, Apple(AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), Google(GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Adobe (ADBE), Nvidia (NVDA), Meta Platforms (META), Amazon(AMZN) among others to develop advanced AI for the consumer. I see all of these companies benefiting.

Many hardware and robotics companies will do well too as the hardware needs to be updated to handle AI The two popular AI ETFs are Robo Global Robotics and Automation Index ticker (ROBO) and Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence (BOTZ).These ETFs provide exposure to companies that develop, deploy or benefit from AI. BOTZ is more concentrated and has fewer companies in the holdings. This means it is less diversified than ROBO. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though because it means it has potential to have more price gain or loss.

The newcomer in AI ETFs is Roundhill Generative AI Technology (CHAT) it is an actively-managed fund designed to provide exposure to companies involved in the theme of generative artificial intelligence, and related technologies.

Internet security as an industry will do well in the future as well. As it gets harder to distinquish a bot from a human security will need to be enhanced. Very soon, if not already voice security will become compromised as bots copy our voices perfectly.

Cyber Security ETFs

The safest way to play the future security growth is with ETF's such as First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity (CIBR),ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF (HACK) or Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG). These sport expense ratios well below 1%. BUG has the highest average daily volume. There are other ETF's but the daily volume is much lower. It is not uncommon for specialized ETF's to fail to deliver because of declining low volume.

Entertainment Will Boom

I suspect as many creative and coding jobs become replaced by machine learning the entertainment and movie industry will benefit greatly two-fold. Firstly, they will be bringing amazing new visual and creative masterpieces to movies and various forms of entertainment. GPT is already creating comedy sets by comedians that have passed. Large movie companies will improve their margins and have bigger profits.

Many people including myself believe a recession of varying magnitudes could arrive shortly. This is not necessarilly a bad thing for movies overall. During the Great Depression, with the advent of new and impressive film technology, people escaped their daily lives by paying for entertainment. Even though unemployment was high people would pay to see the new technological advances in film at the time.

The 1930s are considered the golden era of Hollywood cinema. During this time, the movie industry thrived. Technological advances such as color and sound made movies truly extravagant. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s. Two companies I see potentially benefiting greatly are Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD), and The Walt Disney Company (DIS). Both are publicly traded on the stock market.

Some Major Tech Companies

Microsoft is currently in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard (ATVI) making Microsoft the third largest video game company. My hunch is they will be incorporating GPT into video games bringing a new level to interactive gaming. Duckduckgo.com search is even adding A.I. functionality.

Adobe (ADBE) has benefited greatly this year from incorporating AI into their Firefly image creator software. They are one of the leading image generators in terms of realism. They have beaten their earnings estimates every quarter this year and hit record revenue. I see them continuing to see much success.

I highly suspect having lived through the 90's that the long-term leader in this new tech will take time to emerge. I expect they will share market share significantly as I-phone people will use AI on their phones and Google people will use Bing or maybe Google or even another company not yet in our radar. The future will include deep learning A.I. advanced large language models (LLMs) are machine learning models that are very effective at performing language-related tasks such as translation, answering questions, chat and content summarization, as well as content and code making. They distill value from huge data sets and make that “learning” accessible out of the box.

I've also seen LLM's referred to as "life long learning machines" which is essentially what GPT does as it learns from your input and corrections. The feedback all companies can get from customers and clients from generative AI will be great for their marketing and profitablity. We are just in the beginning of seeing the benefits to large and mega companies. Imagine how big the impact will be when most small business owners are using AI in the future.

Final Thoughts

Finally, as far as stocks go I see the most obvious alpha in shorting the companies losing to this technology right now. I am long May Google puts so if the stock falls I see profit. I plan on continuing to long puts as the market is not aware of the changes happening with chatbot search.

It's hard to pick the sole long-term winner with new technology as every other technology breakthrough has shown. Few would have pegged Amazon a lowly book seller as becoming the giant it is as just one example. With this in mind, going the ETF route like ticker BOTZ or CHAT with diversification is the safest bet. Even a Nasdaq 100 fund or Invesco ETF like ticker symbol QQQ is heavily exposed to big tech which are all building AI.

I expect many industries will benefit from this technology becoming acessible to consumers. Right now Microsoft, Google's Bard and Snapchat are battling in the war for large LLM's. More newcomers are popping up rapidly. Now there is Perplexity for Android and conversational HeyPi an AI assistant. These are certainly exciting times.

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