social media – Latitude Post

Could Now Be A Good Time To Buy Twitter Stock?

Posted on February 1, 2022February 20, 2022 by Nicholas Peart

Disclaimer: The following article is not investment advice. It simply only states my opinions.

Twitter is an interesting company to observe. For a long time I have had very mixed feelings about this social media platform. It is very easy to write it off and there are many reasons to it; chiefly one could argue that it is a toxic platform and has a negative effect on one’s mental health. From an investment point of view, there are additional reasons to be cautious. The company currently doesn’t have strong fundamentals and is not a cash generating machine in the same way that say Meta Platforms or Alphabet are. Even with its current share price more than 50% down from it’s $80+ high reached in February last year, it is a highly speculative stock.

However, when I look at Twitter objectively, I do think it’s model as a social media company, specifically how it’s designed, is unique and I would probably argue that Twitter is one of the most effective and powerful social media platforms to use if you want to get your voice or message heard instantly and to make some kind of noise. Traditional newspapers and journals will always have their place and there will always be a demand for quality content, yet for writers and journalists, Twitter is a much more powerful platform to get one’s message across than solely via a newspaper or blog. Twitter is the ultimate vehicle for someone not only to have their voice heard but to have it amplified in an exponential way.

The other thing that is interesting about Twitter is that almost every public figure uses it. Most people that matter and have something important to say are on it. Almost every person in government has a Twitter account. Almost every writer and journalist also has a Twitter account. The bottom line is that nearly every person who is outspoken is on this platform. For me, this is a very important sign and it reveals to me how powerful and disruptive this particular platform is.

Often I will value a company on its fundamentals in order to see what the company’s margin of safety is. Valuing something like Twitter is much more of an art. It requires truly understanding the platform, specifically it’s power and how it will develop as the internet continues to evolve. The fact that so many public figures, businesses and entities use the platform tells me that this platform clearly provides a lot of value and has very strong network effects.

Meta Platforms, which comprises of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, currently has a market cap of just under a trillion dollars. Alphabet, the parent company for Google and YouTube, has a market cap of nearly $1.8tn. Twitter, on the other hand, has a market cap of just under $30bn. Some people may say that for a company that lacks the cashflow generation of Meta or Alphabet, a $30bn market cap is still very high. And they are not wrong. However, what if Twitter were really able to harness it’s power and become a huge cash flow machine? It is often said that it is important that a company still has its founder/s on board to steer the ship and provide a unique vision of how the company should be developing and operating. However, in the case of Twitter it is not unreasonable to say that it’s founder Jack Dorsey may not be the right person to really take the company to even greater heights. He was instrumental in the beginning phases of the company’s growth. Twitter still needs someone who is visionary and completely understands the company to take it forward, yet it also needs a mature, resilient and pragmatic leader and one who is able to realise and, more importantly, monetise all the company’s untapped potential.

Recently, Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. He was replaced by Parag Agrawal, who has worked at Twitter as software engineer since 2011. In 2017, he became the chief technology officer of the company before replacing Dorsey as the CEO in November last year. I could be wrong, but I sense that Agrawal will have a lot of success in cleaning up the image of the company and improving its credibility by cracking down hard on fake accounts and accounts where individuals and entities spread disinformation. I also think Agrawal will be serious in establishing ways to further monetise the platform and increase its user growth which has been sluggish.

Anyone who has studied the market performance of Twitter stock since it first IPO’d back in 2013 will know that the stock hasn’t really punched above its weight. Yet I think even if user growth continues to be a challenge, at least in the short run, I think the company has the potential to vastly increase its revenue. In Q3 21, the company generated $1.28bn in total revenue. I think there is the potential for the company to at least quadruple it’s total revenues from that point whilst still maintaining a healthy sized gross profit margin and keeping other costs like R&D, sales and marketing, and administrative costs at a reasonable level. If the company successfully pulls all this off, I would not be surprised if it grew into a market cap quite a few multiples from its current market cap of just under $30bn. I think in the next five to eight years, it is entirely feasible for the company to command a valuation of at least $150-200bn provided it makes big changes and succeeds.

By Nicholas Peart

1st February 2022

In The Future, Everyone Will Want To Be Anonymous For 15 Minutes

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Nicholas Peart

Fame can be a dangerous thing. Some people seek it because in their minds it fills a void. If you are talented and have a lot to offer it presents the opportunity to be valued and respected by many people. Fame has always had it’s drawbacks yet I feel there are two different periods of time that one must be aware of. These are Before The Adoption Of The Internet (BTAOTI) and After The Adoption Of The Internet (ATAOTI). In The last 25 years, the growth and development of the internet has been staggering. We currently live in a world of instant hyper connectivity.

If I had to pick a time to be famous I would pick BTAOTI in a heartbeat. News travelled slower back then. The digital world was less developed. I have no nostalgia or desire to live in the past, but when I look at the growth and development of social media today I flinch at the concept of fame. I would even go as far as saying that eventually it may even lose it’s appeal. It would take real guts to go down that path so much so that anonymity would become increasingly attractive. Andy Warhol said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. The internet has provided a platform for everybody to publicly project themselves if they want to. There is so much content on the internet today. There is no way one would be able to absorb all the digital content out there in one lifetime. According to Statista, as of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video content was uploaded to YouTube alone every minute.

It is increasingly a rarity nowadays to not have any personal platform or content online. To be purely anonymous will be rarer and more cherished than fame itself.

By Nicholas Peart

22th June 2021

Image source: https://wellsbaum.blog

Are People Wrong About Snapchat?

Posted on November 4, 2018 by Nicholas Peart

Snapchat has had a torrid year so far. If one were to look at the company purely within the paradigm of its financial fundamentals there is a lot to be concerned about. There is also the risk that the company runs out of money and ceases to be a going concern. One cannot rule out this likely outcome. It’s current share price certainly reflects the very bearish sentiment many have towards the company. At one point the share price recently went below $6 a share. When the company went public last year, the initial public offering price was at $17 a share. Back then the sentiment of the general public towards the company was different. There was such a frenzy around the IPO at the time that the price duly rocketed above $25 a share. Since the beginning of this year though the share price has been on a downward trajectory.

It has been the victim of a number of mishaps such as an unpopular app redesign, key influencers leaving the platform, and even, since quite recently, the number of total users slowly dropping. One of the most damaging things to happen to the company though was Instagram copying it’s key ‘Stories’ feature.

The Facebook Group is an enormous global digital media juggernaut consisting of the Facebook platform, Instagram and WhatsApp as its primary platforms. Snap is a mere minion by comparison. This is a true battle between David and Goliath. Snapchat owns just a sling and a stone whereas the Facebook Empire has Kalashnikovs, WOMDs and other state of the art weapons. On the face of it, Snap doesn’t stand a chance. Or does it?

One thing that does stand out about Snap is that it is designed and created in such a way to be the communication platform of the future. For ten years, smartphones have come to dominate our lives and they still do. But what is the next step? I am tempted to go in the direction of Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality. Google tested the waters with this earlier this decade with their Google Glass product, but it was too ahead of its time and people weren’t ready for it. The biggest misconception about Snapchat is that it is a social media company. It is not. It is a camera app.

Both Facebook and Instagram are designed in a way that is made for the smartphone. Of course people share photos and videos, but they also share written text and messages. The other social media platform Twitter, is purely text-based and relies on the keyboard on your smartphone. Snapchat, on the other hand, is made in a way that can bypass the keyboard and the smartphone. It’s Snapchat Spectacles product enables one to record videos completely bypassing the smartphone. It already has lenses that react to sounds yet earlier in August it launched lenses with speech recognition capabilities. Snapchat is often ridiculed in the media as a platform that is ‘frivolous’ (and Facebook isn’t?) and only used by fickle people. Yet when it comes to technological innovation, it is ahead of Facebook and with far less leverage at its disposal. It would be deliciously ironic if the people who are ridiculing Snapchat today begin to adopt it like everyone else in the event of a massive turnaround in the company’s fortunes. Consensus views can always radically change.

Snapchat may currently be down in the dumps on the surface, yet there is a lot going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to. You can write off Snapchat all you want today, but don’t be surprise in the event that you find yourself with a different point of view a few years from now.

By Nicholas Peart