theStreetFika: Scones, Sips, Strategy & Stocks

This week, the SEC announced that Volkswagen is being investigated over its “Voltswagen” April Fools debacle. So what happened? Voltswagen was the actual new name (for about 24 hours) that automotive giant announced for their US subsidiary on March 31st, in a bid to promote the company's renewed focus on electric vehicles and its new all-electric SUV. Initially leaked as an upcoming April Fools joke, the name change was later confirmed on official VW corporate channels, before company spokesman Mark Gillies said on Tuesday that the statement was indeed an early April Fool’s Day joke. For a company found guilty of lying in a big way about emissions (Dieselgate), this was a high-risk gag with poor delivery. Joke or not, VW is very serious about its ambitions for electric vehicles. Last year, between the company's 12+ brands the group delivered around 230,000 all-electric vehicles. That might only be around 2% of Volkswagen Group's total vehicle deliveries, but it is already a

Last week, Apple hosted its first event of the year and unveiled a slate of deliciously colorful products. But the star of the show was ... what we've been hearing rumors about for a very long time. Apple finally unveiled AirTags, little Bluetooth buttons you stick on things like wallets and keys to locate them (yep, just like Tile). They start at $29 each and will be available on April 30. AirTags use Apple's U1 chip — the same one used in iPhone 12. The chip will make AirTags trackers more accurate than those from Tile, Samsung, and Sony. Also AirTags use the "Find My" network, the same one used for Find My iPhone, Friends, etc. "Find My" is a crowdsourced network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices that can help users locate their missing tech through Bluetooth connection.  Bottom line: Apple’s powerful brand is a statement – that's currently limited to Apple devices. But with AirTags, people can slap expensive Apple labels on non-Apple products.

In fintech, Upstart is definitely not a hidden gem; its stock has risen by more than 8x since its IPO in December to hit an all time high at $165. However, among the many companies that have gone public recently or planning to do so, it stands out as one of the very promising ones. Upstart was founded to modernize and personalize the $3.6T consumer loan industry. The current loan approval process is an antiquated, one-size-fits-all process with over 90% of the creditors mainly using a FICO score to asses credit worthiness. This is resulting in less than half of Americans being able to secure affordable loans, although 80% have never defaulted and millions are unfairly rejected or pay far too much interest. Enter Upstart - a leading AI lending platform partnering with banks to expand access to affordable credit. Instead of the thirty criteria that the banks collect to make their decisions, Upstart can take 1600+. Upstart considers more unique and personal variables like education, loan

Over the past week, Silvergate Capital (SI) has lost more than 25% of its value. Is this a reason for its investors to be alarmed? I don't think so. The stock was down because investors rushed to buy Coinbase when it began trading publicly. They realized profits from SI's stock sale to diversify their exposure to crypto in the public markets. Yesterday, SI reported record earnings. SI, which serves major crypto firms such as Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken, added a record 135 digital currency customers in Q1–more than it added in all of 2020. It also reported sensational growth for SEN Leverage - it's latest product offering. SEN Leverage was the fastest growing product, with $196.5M in outstanding balance. SEN Leverage is expected to be a massive contributor in growing SI's revenues and profits. It's critical to serving clients who are looking to make leveraged bets in this current market under one roof. Bottom line: I remain bullish on SI despite the recent slump, and

If you ask which is the bigger threat to the other, Amazon or Google? Many will argue that it's Google, because it's dead set on diversifying its business and is investing heavily in promoting it's cloud business. Thus encroaching on Amazon's profit machine -AWS. I beg to differ.  As mentioned in a previous article , Amazon is already closing in on Google's advertising business and despite all Google's investments, it's clear that GCP is not going to catch up to AWS any time soon. Now Amazon is posing yet another threat to another big business for Google - Mapping. How So? AWS is Amazon's silent (but deadly) superpower. It's a "silent server" for a huge swath of the digital economy, powering the operations of millions of companies from Netflix to Slack and Shell. Last quarter  it made up over half of Amazon's total profit. Recently AWS announced a new location service called "Amazon Location". No, this is not not a real-time p

Although Peloton's stock debuted in late September 2019, it didn't soar until the pandemic hit. Before the pandemic, the company was growing well, but it was spending a lot of money to grow and investors were skeptical if there was enough market for its products. Then the pandemic hit, fitness enthusiasts turned to Peloton to provide them with workout options while gyms were closed, sales skyrocketed, and Peloton's stock become one of the biggest pandemic success stories. Since January, the stock has lost close to 40% of its peak value. This is primarily because of concerns that the company could return to its net-loss financials as the pandemic wanes. After all, until the pandemic, Peloton was not very profitable. As vaccines started getting rolled out many investors started to wonder if Peloton can sustain the growth it saw in 2020. I think it can. As mentioned in a previous article , I think Peloton will outlive the pandemic and continue to post strong numbers. Its moat

When people think of digital advertising, they think of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat etc. But what about Amazon and Microsoft? Maybe you should just Bing it... said no one ever. Microsoft's search engine Bing is often portrayed as a bit of a joke in comparison to Google. It just happens to be one of those jokes that makes billions of dollars of revenue. Per Chartr , in 2019 while Snapchat and Twitter combined generated $5.2B in revenues, Bing did $7.5B. Basically, Bing is a $7.5B joke that's over 30% bigger than Snapchat and Twitter combined. The fact that Bing is often ridiculed, but is actually an enormous business, gives some context as to how important search actually is. It truly is our gateway to the online world, and unlike other forms of digital advertising it monetizes actual user intent. In some industries it's not uncommon for companies to pay Google $40 or $50 for every individual click on their ad (usually for phrases like "insurance", "m

Even though Nike reported higher than expected third-quarter profits, its stock has been trending down since that earning call. The primary reason for the decline is sales growth, which was hurt by widespread port congestion in the United States and ongoing store closures in Europe. Although the global health crisis still leaves an overhang of uncertainty, Nike said it anticipates lockdowns will start to ease in Europe in April, and delivery windows will slowly improve in North America through the remainder of the year. But what got me so hyped about Nike is its direct-to-consumer (DTC) business which grew 20% YoY, to $4B putting Nike is on track to sell $16B DTC – more than a 40% of all Nike brand revenue. Online sales are fueling this growth. They surged by another 59% in this quarter after the 82% in the last quarter, enabling Nike to book $1B in sales online in North America for the first time. This is super impressive. As mentioned in a  previous article , Nike's ability to th

Over the past year, Bitcoin has increased ~9x in value as corporate and retail investors have poured into cryptocurrency. In January, the crypto market hit $1T in total value (mostly Bitcoin). Now, the mainstream-ification is intensifying: Venmo-owner PayPal, which has a whopping 377M active accounts, officially launched "Checkout with Crypto" in the US, allowing users to pay with crypto at online stores. And in the coming months, PayPal will expand crypto checkout to 29M merchants. Customers with PayPal digital wallets can pay in Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. This comes after Visa also announced that it'll allow people to use the cryptocurrency USD Coin (a US dollar-backed stablecoin) to settle payments. How will it work? Paying with crypto... but not really paying with crypto. Customers' crypto holdings will be converted into fiat currencies (like US dollars) at checkout. It's kind of like selling a fraction of your BTC, then using the sale money t