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「Video of the Week」Tesla Gigafactory

As Elon Musk went to Shanghai for the groundbreaking of Tesla’s first international factory on Jan 6, this video about Gigafactory by Verge is worth watching to refresh the basic understanding of its status and future.

“This is Elon Musk’s key to Tesla’s future”

2019 – A Year of Alliance?

As the first week of 2019 developed with JPM Healthcare Conference in San Francisco and CES in Las Vegas, several alliances across big companies attracted attentions. This might be a year of further cooperations as free growth is not possible and some major developments need different domain knowledge & power.

Intel & Facebook – AI chips (new Nervana Neural Network Processor for Inference) in the second half of this year, according to Reuters, and following the previous collaboration.

Qualcomm & Ford – demonstrating driving situations utilizing C-V2X direct communications, following last year’s partnership announcement.

Celgene & Bristol-Myers Squibb – collaboration-like merger for a stronger presence in oncology & immunology. (news release)

GM & DoorDash – deliver food in self-driving cars. (CNN)

and last month…

Starbucks & UberEats – expanding the partnership to more than 2,000 stores in the United States next year, about a quarter of all of the company’s locations in the country. (TechCrunch)

2019 US Cancer Update by American Cancer Society

The annual report from American Cancer Society is up today, available 1) in the article format “Cancer Statistics, 2019” (published in the American Cancer Society’s journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians), 2) in a companion report, Cancer Facts and Figures 2019, and 3) on the interactive website, the Cancer Statistics Center.

Steady Decline In Cancer Death in US

Compiled within includes the death rate of cancer through 2016. It marked a continuous 25-year of decline in cancer death in US since 1991.

The overall age-adjusted cancer death rate rose during most of the 20th century, peaking in 1991 at 215 cancer deaths per 100,000 people, mainly because of the tobacco epidemic. As of 2016, the rate had dropped to 156 per 100,000 (a decline of 27%) because of reductions in smoking, as well as improvements in early detection and treatment.

– American Cancer Soceity

Female death rate from major cancers
Male death rate from major cancers
Lung cancer & smoking

While lung cancer is still the largest category, it is declining with the smoking trend as mentioned above.

2019 Cancer Estimation

The 2019 cancer estimation has also come in.

2019 Estimated new cases and deaths of cancer | Source: cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org

Incidence rates are estimated to be 494.8 and 419.3 per 100,000 population for male and female; death rates are estimated to be 193.1 and 137.7 per 100,000 population for male and female.

In total, there will be an estimated 1,762,450 new cancer cases and 606,880 cancer deaths.

The Race in Aerospace – Positions of Private Equity Firms

~$40bn Apollo acquisition – GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS), GE’s aircraft leasing operations

  • Bidder: Apollo, an offer as much as $40 billion according to Bloomberg & Reuters
  • GECAS has a fleet of more than 1,900 planes, which it provides to airlines under long-term leases.
  • 1/4/2019

~$1bn KKR investment – Altavair, focusing on the acquisition of new and used commercial aircraft for leasing to passenger airlines and cargo operators

  • Investor: KKR, $1 billion capital commitment to acquire commercial aircraft in partnership with Altavair + a 50% interest in Altavair; Altavair will be KKR’s partner for aircraft leasing investments going forward
  • Since its inception in 2003, Altavair has completed over $8 billion in commercial aircraft lease transactions with over 40 airline customers in 27 countries representing over 200 individual Boeing and Airbus aircraft
  • 1/3/2019, KKR Commits to Invest $1 Billion with Altavair

~$5bn Carlyle acquisition – StandardAero, largest independent maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers

  • Bidder: Carlyle, for more than $5 billion (Reuters) from Veritas
  • Veritas acquired StandardAero from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise Ltd (DAE) for $2.1 billion, including debt, in 2015
  • Carlyle first acquired StandardAero in 2004. In 2007, DAE simultaneously purchased StandardAero and Landmark Aviation, also an aircraft maintenance services company, from Carlyle in a transaction valued at $1.8 billion, including debt.
  • 12/18/2018, The Carlyle Group to Acquire Leading Aircraft Engine MRO Provider StandardAero from Veritas Capital

~$15bn Apollo acquisition – Arconic (ARNC), aluminum products used around the world by aerospace manufacturers

  • Bidder 1: Blackstone, Carlyle, Onex and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
  • (winning) Bidder 2: Apollo, seems winning with a potential acquisition price of $22; also considered is a spin-off of its cladding operation with potential liability from the Grenfell Tower fire of two years ago.
  • 10/8/2018, early report on bidders
Arconic in 2018 | Source: Bloomberg

Half of the 2018 Top 10 Movies in US Are Made by Disney…

2018 Top 10 movies in US

Here is the list by gross sales in US, according to boxofficemojo.com

Rank Movie Title (click to view) Studio Total Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Open Close
1 Black Panther BV $700,059,566 4,084 $202,003,951 4,020 2/16 8/9
2 Avengers: Infinity War BV $678,815,482 4,474 $257,698,183 4,474 4/27 9/13
3 Incredibles 2 BV $608,581,744 4,410 $182,687,905 4,410 6/15 12/13
4 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Uni. $416,769,345 4,485 $148,024,610 4,475 6/22 10/4
5 Deadpool 2 Fox $318,491,426 4,349 $125,507,153 4,349 5/18 10/18
6 Aquaman WB $270,596,781 4,184 $67,873,522 4,125 12/21 –
7 Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch (2018) Uni. $269,848,350 4,141 $67,572,855 4,141 11/9 –
8 Mission: Impossible – Fallout Par. $220,159,104 4,395 $61,236,534 4,386 7/27 10/18
9 Ant-Man and the Wasp BV $216,648,740 4,206 $75,812,205 4,206 7/6 11/1
10 Solo: A Star Wars Story BV $213,767,512 4,381 $84,420,489 4,381 5/25 9/20

* BV (Buena Vista) was the brand name which was historically often used for divisions and subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company, whose primary studios, the Walt Disney Studios, are located on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California

Top 3 are all from Disney, as are #9 & #10, making Disney occupy half of the Top 10 seats of best-selling movies in US.

And according to ComScore, 2018’s movie business hit all-time benchmarks of $11.9 billion in North America and $41.7 billion globally, with Disney taking in nearly a fifth of that figure. (Variety)

Among Disney’s domestic box office of $3.09 billion, its top 3 got ~$1.99 billion (64.32%), top 5 got ~$2.42 billion (78.25%).

Besides, Disney’s movies in Top 10 all have rating of 7.0 or above, averaging at ~7.56 on IMDb (beating the Top 10 average of 7.35)

2018 US Top 3 Movies | Source: IMDb

Overall…

Total US movie sales is barely growing. The figures below are not inflation-adjusted.

But the number of movie productions is increasing, partially due to a lack of funding after financial crisis (bottomed in 2009 with 521 movies that year).

Yearly US Box Office 2008-2018 | Source: boxofficemojo.com

As streaming is disrupting the market, increasing the number of production seemed to be a way to make up for the total revenue?

Then expenses are up and industry margin is low. It is a sure thing that movies are hard to survive alone.

Then no wonder the consolidation kicked in.

Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion in late 2009, bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion in late 2012. Before the financial crisis, Disney also got Pixar in a $7.4 billion in stock.

With the completion of $71 billion acquisition of Fox, Disney will add X-Men and Avatar to its list of movie series.

Warner Bros. will be under a new umbrella – AT&T’s, together with HBO and Turner.

Universal has been under Comcast since 2011.

Paramount is under Viacom and has teamed up with Netflix.

Movie is not a studio business anymore.

Tesla Model 3 Sales in 2018 Q4 – Not so Exciting

Model 3 has Little QoQ Growth

Tesla had very impressive numbers in Q3, when Model 3 delivery (55,840) was almost tripled from Q2 (18,440).

While no one is expecting another jump, the Q4 numbers are kinda lackluster, especially when adding Model 3 delivery and in transit numbers.

Tesla shares fall 9% on Wednesday when those numbers were reported.

$2,000 Price Cut and Phase-out of Tax Credit

Tesla also announced a price cut of $2,000 for Model S, Model X and Model 3 in the US. The move will partially offset the phase-out of the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV.

[Phase-out will start in the second calendar quarter when the manufacturer has 200,000 plug-in registered in US. The credit is reduced to $3,750 for the next 6 months, then to $1,875 for the next 6 months before expiring completely.]

Source: InsideEVs

According to InsideEVs’ estimate, Tesla hit the 200,000 first in the second half of 2018, while General Motors was second with a breakout month of sales for the Bolt and Volt in November 2018.

The next four manufacturer in EV are Nissan (126,875), Ford (111,715), Toyota (93,011), BMW (79,679).

A combination of flat delivery + in transit Model 3, and a price reduction, warned people about the actual demand for Model 3.

Good news are: 1) people may just be waiting for the basic Model 3, aka $35,000 version that Elon touted but analysts said money-losing for Tesla; 2) Tesla is still way ahead in the EV market

2018 Monthly Sales Chart