lenS & thoughtS – Page 14

Prepare For A Future Where FinTech Firms Dominate: Buy & Be FinTech

In the future where Fintech firms dominate, established companies are reacting with three main strategies:

Cut costs for legacy business lines – like what we said in a previous post Banking Headcount Cut
Consolidate with other legacy companies to gain more market share and thus more say/power, further cutting expenses and trying to get more economy of scale – like what we said in the last post From TD Ameritrade To E-Trade: A Wave Of Consolidation
Acquire Fintech startups or replicate what they are doing – like the title of this post Buy & Be FinTech

Visa x Plaid

In Jan 2020, Visa said it will acquire Plaid $5.3 billion. The deal includes a $4.9B cash consideration and $400M of Visa stock as retention equity and deferred equity consideration.

Plaid is a Fintech firm that enables a lot of other Fintech apps & digital transaction based businesses, providing underlying APIs. It counts Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, Acorns, etc. as customers.

Previously in Dec 2018, Plaid raised $250 million Series C at a valuation of $2.65 billion, led by Mary Meeker with capital from Kleiner Perkins’ growth fund. The growth.

In its mid-2016 financing tho, Plaid was only valued at $200 million.

The growth of valuation is supported by the growing business, the network effect and the sticky/recurring nature.

Through the Plaid acquisition, Visa secured a very strong spot in the future of Fintech and can expand/build upon the Plaid’s platform.

In Visa’s presentation, there is a list of Fintechs with rapidly growing users, on the top of which is Credit Karma with 100 million users.

Intuit x Credit Karma

On Feb 24, Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) announced that it has agreed to acquire Credit Karma for $7.1 billion in cash and stock. (50/50).

Credit Karma lets people check their credit scores, shop for credit cards and loans, file taxes and more. It had close to nearly $1 billion revenue in 2019, growing at 20%.

In 2018, Credit Karma was valued at $4 billion when Silver Lake purchase $500 million in the secondary market.

The company started out originally in 2007 providing free credit scores, later extending that to full credit reports. Credit Karma’s launch of a financial planning tool in 2013 drew a direct comparison to Intuit’s Mint. And since then, Credit Karma has launched other products that directly rival Intuit, for example a free tool to help people file their taxes. These not only represented direct competition, but a disruptive threat, since Credit Karma’s products skewed younger and were built on a “free” premise (offering the products at no charge and instead making money off showing users and selling relevant, related products). The fact that Credit Karma partners with so many other financial services providers also means it’s sitting on a huge data trove that it leverages to build and personalize products, representing a data science angle for Intuit here, too. [TechCrunch]

Meanwhile, besides the notable acquisitions of Fintechs, companies are building similar services by themselves.

In Jan 2020, Goldman Sachs launched a long-awaited app of its online bank Marcus for customers . The bank launched Marcus in 2016.

And BofA’s AI-powered assistant Erica has pulled in more than 10 million users. Zelle peer-to-peer (P2P) payments increased 76 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2019.

While JP Morgan has closed its experimental mobile banking app Finn last year, its own branded mobile app is ranked one of the best. The idea was for Finn to reach locations—St. Louis among them—where it didn’t have branches.

By mimicking the experiences/apps offered by startups, established players are essentially becoming Fintechs themselves, thus evolving internally and embracing the future more positively.

Banking Headcount Cut

HSBC recently surprised the outsiders with a 35,000 job cut plan in three years.

The largest bank by asset in Europe, London-based HSBC does most of its business in Asia.

Financial Times reported last year in October that HSBC has embarked on a cost-cutting drive that threatens up to 10,000 jobs, as its new interim chief executive Noel Quinn seeks to make his mark on the bank.

It will now cut the headcount from 235,000 to about 200,000 in 2022.

It is also not a surprise as fintech companies are becoming more compelling and providing more superior services efficiently.

The long-term trend is inevitable. For example, in retail banking, every major bank is shutting down branches. The previous “comparative advantage” of having more footprint in the last century has become a liability. The bigger they were, the more pain they were feeling.

In a Jan 2017 report, The Guardian said HSBC “will be left with 625 branches by the end of the year [2017], which means it will have more than halved its high street presence since June 2011 when it had 1,301 branches.”

And in today’s report, HSBC US said the bank will close about 80 branches this year in the U.S. alone, a reduction of about 30%.

Other retail banking services such as trading and wealth management are also shifting online + automation. Younger generations just don’t need much face-to-face financial services and digital infrastructure has become more potent than ever. The industry’s reduction in cost structure leads to lowering fees and squeezes every player who couldn’t adapt (fast).

Many Institution services are also digitalized/automated.

Not surprisingly, many parts of the investment banking world such as trading are cutting headcount as well.

Last August, Financial Times reported that

Almost 30,000 lay-offs have been announced since April at banks including HSBC, Barclays, Société Générale, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. Most of the cuts have come in Europe, with Deutsche accounting for more than half the total, while trading desks have been hit hardest.

A graphic with no description — Source: FT

Industries For Reducing Greenhouse Gas

Greenhouse gases trap heat and make the planet warmer.

Several of the major greenhouse gases occur naturally but increases in their atmospheric concentrations over the last 250 years are due largely to human activities. Other greenhouse gases are entirely the result of human activities. [IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report]

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities.

Global GHG emissions by gas: 65% is from carbon dioxide fossil fuel use and industrial processes. 11% is from carbon dioxide deforestation, decay of biomass, etc. 16% is from methane. 6% is from nitrous oxide and 2% is from fluorinated gases. — Based on global emissions from 2010 | Source: IPCC, EPA

In 2017, CO₂ accounted for about 81.6 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and from the effects of land use change on plant and soil carbon are the primary sources of increased atmospheric CO2.

For total U.S. CO2 emissions, which mainly come from the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), by economic activity types, transportation accounts for about 34.2 percent, electricity accounts for about 32.9 percent, industrial processes accounted for about 15.4 percent.

Pie chart of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by source. 33% is from electricity, 34% is from transportation, 15% is from industry, 10% is from residential and commercial, and 7% is from other sources (non-fossil fuel combustion). — Source: EPA

1. Passenger Vehicles Going Electric

An analysis by the International Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT), shows an estimate of lifecycle emissions for a typical European conventional (internal combustion engine) car, the hybrid conventional car with the best available fuel economy (a 2019 Toyota Prius Eco), and a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle (best-selling EV overall in Europe for 2018) for various countries, as well as the EU average.

An electric car using average European electricity is almost 30% cleaner over its life cycle compared to even the most efficient internal combustion engine vehicle on the market today

In most countries, the majority of emissions over the lifetime of both electric and conventional vehicles come from vehicle operation – tailpipe and fuel cycle – rather than vehicle manufacture. The exception is in countries – Norway or France, for example – where nearly all electricity comes from near-zero carbon sources, such as hydroelectric or nuclear power. Lifecycle emissions for electric vehicles are much smaller in countries such as France (which gets most of its electricity from nuclear) or Norway (from renewables). [carbonbrief]

There is an important variable here – how the batteries of EVs are produced, as the largest part of the emissions, around 50%, is currently from battery (including cell) manufacturing.

Producing batteries in a plant powered by renewable energy – as will be the case for the Tesla factory – substantially reduces lifetime emissions. The IVL researchers estimate that battery manufacturing emissions are between 61 and 106 kg CO2-equivalent per kWh.

With the technology advancements and cleaner energy sources for plants, the marginal and average cost of producing batteries will continue to go down.

Casper’s IPO And Valuation

DTC is a buzzword that attracts capital in the private market.

However, public market usually doesn’t have much patience or appetite for future stories.

Casper, the magical mattress unicorn, which raised $100 million in March 2019, marketing itself as a “Sleep Economy” company, is receiving a market cap of $400 million (EV ~$300 million).

The main problem though, is not about the DTC model.

Brands such as Canada Goose and Lululemon are counting on DTC to grow.

The slowing revenue growth rate is also okay. Public market is not relentlessly looking for 100% or 50% growth.

Indeed, Canada Goose and Lululemon, which grew at sub-25% in the last 12 month, are valued at over 4x and 8x sales respectively.

Casper, which is expected to grow at 23% for 2019, has EV/Revenue below 1x.

The cost structure is where things are different.

From 2019 April to December (FY20Q1-Q3), Canada Goose‘s SG&A expenses are 31.2% of revenue.

From 2019 February to October (FY19Q1-Q3), Lululemon‘s SG&A expenses are 36.4% of revenue.

That ratio is 70.5% for Casper from Jan to Sep 2019.

Plus the differences in gross margin, the unprofitable DTC brand growing at sub-25% still needs additional efforts to prove its business is viable/sustainable.

CAR-T Therapies: 2+ Years Into Commercialization (2)

Attaching a chart of quarterly sales for the two CAR-T products discussed before.

With Yescarta’s annual sales of $456 million in 2019 and Kymriah catching up, the acquisition price paid in 2017 by Gilead was indeed very high.

In its 19Q4 earnings, Gilead disclosed an $800 million write-down related to a Kite Pharma setback in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That followed an $820 million write-down this time last year related to Kite’s multiple myeloma candidate KITE-585. [fiercepharma]

The competition will become more fierce as BMY just submitted application for its CAR-T therapy acquired from Celgene (Celgene acquired from Juno) -lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel). The treatment is also for adult patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) after at least two prior therapies.

BMY’s data: among patients evaluable for efficacy (n=256), the overall response rate (ORR) was 73% (187/256, 95% CI: 67 – 78) with 53% of patients (136/256, 95% CI: 47 – 59) achieving a complete response (CR). Responses were similar across all patient subgroups. Among all patients, 79% (213/269) had grade 3 or higher treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAE). Instances of any grade cytokine release syndrome (CRS) occurred in 42% (113/269) of patients at a median onset of 5 days and grade 3 or higher CRS occurring in 2% (6/269) of patients.

Youtube’s First Official Financial Result

It has been more than 13 years since Youtube was acquired for $1.65 billion by Google back in October 2006.

Founded in February 2005, with $11.5 million total venture funding and 65 employees at that time, Youtube commanded 46% of visits to U.S. online-video sites in September. That compared with a 21% share for the video activities of News Corp.’s MySpace site and 11% for Google Video. Youtube had close to 20 million monthly visitors in August 2006.

A year and half before Youtube’s acquisition, MySpace’s parent company Intermix Media Inc. was acquired by News Corp. for $580 million.

Back then, Google reported total revenues of $6.14 billion in 2005 and $10.60 billion in 2006, and had a market value of $132 billion. Its net income was $3 billion in 2006 with $3.6 billion cash flow from operations and more than $11 billion cash balance.

On Monday Feb 3, 2020, Alphabet first provided the breakdown for some of its non-Google-search businesses, including Youtube.

Year Ended December 31,
	2017		2018		2019
Google Search & other	$	69,811	$	85,296	$	98,115
YouTube ads⁽¹⁾	8,150		11,155		15,149

(1) YouTube non-advertising revenues are included in Google other revenues.

Youtube ads generated $4,717 million revenue in 2019 Q4 – a ~$19 billion run rate.

Using a multiple of 5.0x, Youtube could be valued at ~$100 billion – a 60 times return for google acquisition or an IRR of 37% for 13 years.

I guess the success formula is: with the right synergies, acquire early & provide support to grow it.

Alphabet 2019 10-K

2019 Q4 Earnings Call Transcript

A Python Generated Graph On Airlines’ Load Factors

Major airlines usually would post their monthly operation results on IR websites. While United Airlines and Southwest Airlines among other stopped reporting in 2019, Alaska and Delta are still doing so.

Load factor is a measure of the use of aircraft capacity that compares Revenue Passenger-Miles as a proportion of Available Seat-Miles.

Below is a three-part project that automatically downloads, summarizes and creates chart for 4 airlines’ load factor.

Download

Given certain years, the program will go through pre-defined links to search for monthly report urls and scrap relevant data based on the page structure. BeautifulSoup is used here.

Summary

The program uses file reading and writing to put four airlines’ data together while adjusting for missing data (aligning based on month)

Charting

The program converts csv to excel and draws the chart based on data. pandas and xlsxwriter are used here.

With some adjustments, the program should be able to scrape and virtualize other web-based standard reports.

Germline Genetic Testing: BRCA

Genetic testings have different significances and it seems that BRCA is currently the only gene of hard demand (CDx) in cancer treatments among germline testings.

Myriad and AstraZeneca

Back in Dec 2014, AstraZeneca received FDA approval for the first PARP inhibitor LYNPARZA, as monotherapy in patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer who have been treated with three or more prior lines of chemotherapy.

Concurrent with the approval of LYNPARZA, FDA has approved the BRACAnalysis CDx (Myriad Genetics) for the qualitative detection and classification of variants in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Myriad is a pioneer in genetic testing, especially for BRCA. BRACAnalysis CDx is blood-based, using PCR and Sanger sequencing to gauge single nucleotide variants and small indels, and multiplex PCR to assess large deletions and duplications.

Foundation Medicine and Clovis Oncology

In Dec 2016, Foundation Medicine’s FoundationFocus CDxBRCA was approved by FDA as the first NGS-based companion diagnostic, for Clovis Oncology’s PARP inhibitor Rubraca (rucaparib), for patients with deleterious BRCA mutation (germline and/or somatic)-associated advanced ovarian cancer who have been treated with two or more chemotherapies.

Myriad and Clovis

In April 2017, Myriad and Clovis Oncology announced the CDx collaboration on Rubraca. “The companion diagnostic test approved with Rubraca does not discriminate between germline and somatic mutations. Knowledge of germline status is important to provide patients appropriate counseling.”

Myriad and Pfizer

In Oct 2018, the Myriad’s BRCA test was also approved as CDx for Pfizer’s PARP inhibitor Talzenna, for patients with HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer (mBC) who have a germline BRCA mutation.

Expanded PARP usage

In Jan 2018, AstraZeneca’s LYNPARZA received approval for expanded usage in breast cancer, for patients with germline breast cancer susceptibility gene (BRCA) mutated, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, who have been previously treated with chemotherapy. Patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer should have been treated with a prior hormonal (endocrine) therapy or be considered inappropriate for endocrine treatment.

FDA also expanded the approval of the BRACAnalysis CDx, an approved companion diagnostic to Lynparza, to include the detection of BRCA mutations in blood samples from patients with breast cancer.

In Dec 2019, Lynparza was approved in the US as a 1st-line maintenance treatment of germline BRCA-mutated metastatic pancreatic cancer, for patients whose disease has not progressed on at least 16 weeks of a 1st-line platinum-based chemotherapy regimen. Myriad’s CDx usage was also expanded.

While the market expanded, more players are coming to this field. Since 2013, there is a growing number of labs providing BRCA testings – mostly are not for CDx.

Prices are very different for example.

Image result for brca testing price

But overtime, the ASP is definitely coming down.

Image result for brca testing price 2018

Meanwhile, FDA approved 23andMe’s DTC BRCA genetic testing in March 2018 (again, not for CDx) – testing for 3 BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations to identify women at increased lifetime risk of breast cancer.

Drugstore Chains In China Adding More Franchised Locations

Two leading national drugstore chains keeps adding more franchised stores than directly operated stores.

Franchised model is more efficient in

1. leveraging existing distribution network -> improving its utilization
2. aggregating demand & volume -> better pricing terms from manufacturers
3. distributing store management (inventory + O2O sales + payment + CRM) software -> higher margin fees

Quanterix: A Growth Story Just Began (1)

Quanterix (Nasdaq: QTRX) is building a razor-blade model just like Illumina. With its ultra sensitive detection, Quanterix is revolutionizing immunoassay especially in neurology, improving the industry’s capabilities to access/evaluate related molecular data, understand diseases better and designing drugs/trials around it.

In recent quarters, Quanterix saw a continued growth in its consumables, which is the bread-and-butter due to its recurring nature and higher margin (than selling instruments.

Of course, the instrument sales are important, as the cumulative count (or installed base) should drive more recurring revenues in consumables.

Currently, the consumables revenue / instrument is ~$70k per year.