Month: January 2019

2019 Top Ten Predictions

Mike Kwatinetz Predictions, Startups, Stocks, Technology, Unicorns , , , , , , , , ,

Opportunity Knocks!

The 2018 December selloff provides buying opportunity

One person’s loss is another’s gain. The market contraction in the last quarter of the year means that most stocks are at much lower prices than they were in Q3 of 2018. The 5 stocks that I’m recommending (and already own) were down considerably from their Q3 2018 highs. While this may be wishful thinking, returning to those highs by the end of 2019 would provide an average gain of 78%. Each of the 5 had revenue growth of 25% or more last year (and 3 were over 35%) and each is poised for another strong year in 2019.

For the 4 continued recommendations (all of which I mentioned I would recommend again in my last post), I’ll compare closing price on December 31, 2019 to the close on December 31, 2018 for calculating performance. For the new add to my list, I’ll use the stock price as I write this post. I won’t attempt to predict the overall market again (I’m just not that good at it) but feel that the 14% drop in Q4 means there is a better chance that it won’t take a nosedive. However, since stock picks are always relative to the market, success is based on whether my picks, on average, outperform the market.

I’ll start the post with stock picks and then follow with the remaining 5 predictions.

 2019 Stocks  

Tesla stock will outpace the market (it closed last year at $333/share and is essentially the same as I write this)

In Q3, 2018 the Tesla model 3 was the bestselling car in the U.S. in terms of revenue and 5th highest by volume. This drove a 129% revenue increase versus a year earlier and $1.75 in earnings per share versus a loss of $4.22 in the prior quarter. I expect Q4 revenue to increase sequentially and growth year/year to exceed 100%. In Q3, Tesla reported that nearly half of vehicles traded in for the Model 3 were originally priced below $35,000. As Tesla begins offering sub-$40,000 versions of it, demand should include many buyers from this high-volume price range. Since the backlog for the Model 3 is about 300,000 units I expect 2019 sales to remain supply constrained if Tesla can offer lower price points (it already has announced a $2,000 price reduction). The important caveat to demand is that tax credits will be cut in H1 2019, from $7500 to $3750 and then cut again to $1875 in the second half of the year. Part of Tesla’s rationale for a $2000 price drop is to substantially offset the initial reduction of these tax credits.

Tesla began taking orders for its Q1 launch in Europe where demand over time could replicate that in the U.S. The average price of a Model 3 will initially be about $10,000 higher than in the U.S. Tesla is also building a major manufacturing facility in China (where Model 3 prices are currently over $20,000 higher than the U.S.). This Giga-Factory is expected to begin production in the latter half of 2019. While moving production to China for vehicles sold there should eliminate trade war issues, Tesla still expects to begin delivering Model 3s to Chinese customers in March.

The combination of a large backlog, reducing prices within the U.S. and launches in Europe and China should generate strong growth in 2019. Some investors fear price reductions might lead to lower gross margins. When I followed PC stocks on Wall Street, this was a constant question. My answer is the same as what proved true there: strong opportunity for continuous cost reduction should enable gross margins to remain in the 20-25% range in any location that is at volume production. So, perhaps the Chinese Giga-Factory and a future European factory will start at lower margins while volume ramps but expect margins in the U.S. (the bulk of revenue in 2019) to remain in the targeted range. Higher prices in Europe and China due to massive initial demand allows premium pricing which may keep margins close to 20%+ in each.

Facebook stock will outpace the market (it closed last year at $131/share).

Facebook underperformed in 2018, closing the year down 28% despite revenue growth that should be 35% to 40% and EPS tracking to about 36% growth (despite a massive increase in SG&A to spur future results).  The stock reacted to the plethora of criticism regarding privacy of user information coupled with the continuing charges of Russian use of Facebook to impact the election. Before the wave of negative publicity, Facebook reached a high of $218/share in July. Facebook is likely to continue to increase its spending to address privacy issues and to burnish its image. However, scaling revenue could mean it keeps operating margins at a comparable level to 2018 rather than increasing them. Rumors of Facebook’s demise seem highly exaggerated!  According to a December 2018 JP Morgan survey of U.S. Internet users, the three most used social media products were Facebook (88% of participants), Facebook Messenger (61%) and Instagram (47%). Also, 82% of those surveyed picked a Facebook-owned platform as being the most important to them. Finally, the average Facebook user reported checking Facebook roughly 5 times per day with 56% of users spending 15 minutes to an hour or more on the platform on an average day. While Facebook has experienced a minor decrease in overall usage, Instagram usage has increased dramatically. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp together give the company a growing and dominant position.

At the beginning of 2018 Facebook stock was trading at 34 times trailing EPS. By the end of the year the multiple of trailing EPS was below 18. If I assume EPS can grow 20%+ in 2019 (which is below my expectation but higher than the consensus forecast) than a multiple of 20 would put the stock at about $180/share by December 31. If it grew EPS, more in line with revenue and/or returned to a multiple closer to 34 it could reach well over 200.

Two key factors:

  1. A 20% increase in revenue (I expect the increase to be about 30%) adds over $11 billion in revenue. A comparable 20% increase in SG&A would provide over $4 billion in additional money to spend, affording the company ample dollars to devote to incremental marketing without impacting operating margins.
  2. Given the “low” stock price, Facebook increased its buyback program by $9 billion to $15 billion. Since it generates $6B – $7B in cash per quarter from operations (before capex) and has roughly $40 billion in cash and equivalents it could easily increase this further if the stock remains weak. The $15 billion could reduce the share count by as much as 3% in turn increasing EPS by a similar amount.

Amazon stock will outpace the market (it closed last year at $1502/share).

While its stock dropped from its September high of $2050, Amazon remained one of the best market performers in 2018 closing the year at $1502/share. At its 2018 high of $2050, It may have gotten ahead of itself, but at year end it was up less than 2018 revenue growth. Leveraging increased scale meant net income grew faster than revenue and is likely to triple from 2017. Growth will be lower in Q4 then Q3 as Q4 2017 was the first quarter that included all revenue from Whole Foods. Still, I would not be surprised if Amazon beat expectations in Q4 since this is already factored into analyst forecasts. Amazon trades on revenue coupled with the prospect of increasingly mining the revenue into higher profits. But the company will always prioritize making long term investments over maximizing near term earnings. Growth in the core ecommerce business is likely to gradually slow, but Amazon has created numerous revenue streams like its cloud and echo/Alexa businesses that I expect to result in maintaining revenue growth in the 20% plus range in 2019. The prospect of competing with an efficient new brick and mortar offering (see prediction 6 in this post) could drive new excitement around the stock.

Profitability in 2019 could be reduced by: announced salary increases to low end workers; increasing the number of physical store locations; and greater marketing incentives for customers. Offsets to this include higher growth in stronger margin businesses like AWS and subscription services. The stock may gyrate a bit, but I expect it to continue to outperform.

Stitch Fix stock will outpace the market (it closed last year at $17/share).

In my 2018 forecast I called this my riskiest pick and it was the most volatile which is saying a lot given the turbulence experience by Facebook, Tesla, and Amazon. I was feeling pretty smug when the stock reached a high of $52/share in September! I’m not sure how much of the subsequent drop was due to VCs and other early investors reducing their positions but this can have an impact on newly minted public companies. Whatever the case, the stock dropped from September’s high to a low point of $17.09 by year’s end. The drop was despite the company doing a good job balancing growth and profitability with October quarter revenue up 24% and earnings at $10.7 million up from $1.3 million in the prior year. Both beat analyst expectations. The stock was impacted because the number of users grew 22% (1-2% less than expected) despite revenue exceeding expectations at 24% growth. I’m not sure why this was an issue.

Stitch Fix continues to add higher-end brands and to increase its reach into men, plus sizes and kids. Its algorithms to personalize each box of clothes it ships keeps improving. Therefore, the company can spend less on acquiring new customers as it has increased its ability to get existing customers to spend more and come back more often. I believe the company can grow by roughly 20% or more in 2019. If it does and achieves anything close to the revenue multiple that it started with in 2018 (before the multiple doubled in mid-year), there would be a sizeable stock gain this year. But it is a thinly traded stock and likely to be quite volatile.

Docusign Stock will outpace the market in 2019 (it is currently at $43/share).

Docusign is a new recommendation. Like Stitch Fix, it is a recent IPO and could be volatile. Docusign is the runaway leader in e-signatures, facilitating multiple parties signing documents in a secure, reliable way on board resolutions, mortgages, investment documents, etc. Strong positives include:

  • A high value for a reasonable price – I am increasingly annoyed when I need to deal with manual signatures for documents.
  • As of October 31, 2018, Docusign had over 450,000 customers up from 350,000 customers one year earlier. Of which 50,000 are Enterprise/Commercial accounts;
  • There are hundreds of millions of users whose e-signatures are stored by the company making the network effect quite large;
  • Roughly 95% of revenue is from its SaaS product which has 80% gross margin with the rest from services where margins have improved and are now positive;
  • As a SaaS company with a stable revenue base growth is more predictable. The company exceeded revenue guidance each quarter with the October 31, 2018 quarter revenue up 37%;
  • Most customers pay annually in advance. This means cash flow from operations is positive despite the company recording an operating loss;
  • Customers expand their use resulting in retained customers growing revenue faster than decreases from churned customers making net revenue retention over 100%;
  • International expansion remains a large opportunity as international is only 18% of revenue.

Picks 6 – 10: Major Trends that will surface in 2019

I developed my primary method of stock picking at my first Wall Street firm, Stanford Bernstein. The head of research there, Chuck Cahn, emphasized that you could get small wins by correctly determining that a stock would trade up on certain news like a new product, a big customer win, and beating consensus forecasts. But larger and more predictable wins of 5X or more were possible if one identified a long-term winner riding a major trend and stuck with it for multiple years. All 5 of my stock picks fall into the latter category. I’ve been recommending Facebook, Tesla, and Amazon for 4 years or more. All 3 are now over 5X from when I first targeted them as I bought Tesla at $46 and Facebook at $24 in 2013 (before this blog) and they have been in my top 10 since. Amazon was first included in 2015 when it was at $288/share. Stitch Fix and DocuSign are riskier but if successful have substantial upside since both are early in their run of leveraging their key trends.

The next 4 picks are in early stages of trends that could lead to current and next generation companies experiencing benefits for many years. The first two go hand in hand as each describes transformation of physical retail/restaurants, namely, replacing staff with technology in a way that improves the customer experience. This is possible because we are getting closer to the tipping point where the front-end investment in technology can have a solid ROI from subsequent cost savings.

Replacing Cashiers with technology will be proven out in 2019

In October 2015 I predicted that Amazon (and others like Warby Parker) would move into physical retail between then and 2020. This has occurred with Amazon first opening bookstores and then buying Whole Foods, and Warby Parker expanding its number of physical locations to about 100 by the end of 2018. My reasoning then was simple: over 92% of purchases in the U.S. were made offline. Since Amazon had substantial share of e-commerce it would begin to have its growth limited if it didn’t create an off-line presence.

Now, for Amazon to maintain a 20% or greater revenue growth rate it’s even more important for it to increase its attack on offline commerce (now about 90% of U.S. retail) I’m not saying it won’t continue to try to increase its 50% share of online but at its current size offline offers a greater opportunity for growth.

A key to Amazon’s success has been its ability to attack new markets in ways that give it a competitive advantage. Examples of this are numerous but three of the most striking are Amazon Cloud Services (where it is the industry leader), the Kindle (allowing it to own 70% share of eBook sales) and Prime (converting millions of customers to a subscription which in turn incentivized buying more from Amazon due to free shipping).

Now the company is testing an effort to transform brick and mortar retail by replacing staff with technology and in doing so improving the buying experience. The format is called Go stores and there are currently 5 test locations. Downloading the Amazon Go App enables the user to use it to open the automated doors. The store is stocked (I think by actual people) with many of the same categories of products as a 7-Eleven, in a more modern way. Food items include La Boulangerie pastries, sushi, salads, an assortment of sandwiches and even meal kits. Like a 7-Eleven, it also has convenience items like cold medicine, aspirins, etc. The store uses cameras and sensors to track your movements, items you remove from the shelves and even whether you put an item back. When you leave, the app provides you with a digital receipt. Not only does the removal of cashiers save Amazon money but the system improves customer service by eliminating any need to wait in line. I expect Amazon to open thousands of these stores over the next 3-5 years as it perfects the concept. In the future I believe it will have locations that offer different types of inventory. While Amazon may be an early experimenter here, there is opportunity for others to offer similar locations relying on third party technology.

Replacing Cooks, Baristas and Waitstaff with robots will begin to be proven in 2019

The second step in reducing physical location staff will accelerate in 2019. There are already:

  1. Robotic coffee bars:  CafeX opened in San Francisco last year, and in them one orders drip coffee, cappuccino, latte, or hot chocolate using an app on your phone or an iPad available at a kiosk. The coffee is made and served by a robot “barista” with the charge automatically put on your credit card. Ordering, billing, and preparation are automatic, but there is still one staff member in the shop to make sure things go smoothly.
  2. The first robotic burger restaurant: Creator opened in San Francisco last June. It was in beta mode through September before opening to the general public. While a “robot” makes the burgers, Creator is not as automated as CafeX as humans prepare the sauces and prep the items that go into the machine. Creator also hasn’t automated ordering/payment. Startup Momentum Machines expects to open a robotic burger restaurant and has gotten substantial backing from well-known VCs.
  3. Robots replacing waitstaff: For example, at Robo Sushi in Toronto, a “Butlertron” escorts you to your table, you order via an iPad and a second robot delivers your meal. Unlike the robots in the coffee bar and burger restaurant these are made into cute characters rather than a machine. Several Japanese companies are investing in robotic machines that make several of the items offered at a sushi restaurant.
  4. Robotic Pizza restaurants: The furthest along in automation is the Pizza industry. Zume Pizza, a startup that uses robots to make pizzas, has recently received a $375 million investment from Softbank. Zume currently uses a mix of humans and robots to create and deliver their pizzas and is operational in the Bay Area. Pizza Hut and Dominos are working on drones and/or self-driving vehicles to deliver pizzas. And Little Caesars was just issued a patent for a robotic arm and other automated mechanisms used to create a pizza.

At CES, a robot that makes breads was announced. What all these have in common is replacing low end high turnover employees with technology for repetitive tasks. The cost of labor continues to rise while the cost of technology shrinks a la Moore’s Law. It is just a matter of time before these early experiments turn into a flood of change. I expect many of these experiments will turn into “proof points” in 2019. Successful experiments will generate substantial adoption in subsequent years. Opportunities exist to invest in both suppliers and users of many robotic technologies.

“Influencers” will be increasingly utilized to directly drive Commerce

Companies have long employed Influencers as spokespersons for products and in some cases even as brands (a la Michael Jordon and Stephan Curry basketball shoes or George Forman Grills). They appear on TV ads for products and sometimes used their social reach to tout them. Blogger, a prior Azure investment, understood how to use popular bloggers in advertising campaigns. But Blogger ads, like most TV ads did not directly offer the products to potential customers. Now we are on the verge of two major changes: tech players creating structured ways to enable fans of major influencers (with millions of followers) to use one-click to directly buy products; and technology companies that can economically harness the cumulative power of hundreds of micro-influencers (tens of thousands of fans) to replicate the reach of a major influencer. I expect to see strong growth in this method of Social Commerce this year.

The Cannabis Sector should show substantial gains in 2019

In my last post I said about the Cannabis Sector: “The industry remains at a very early stage, but numerous companies are now public, and the recent market correction has the shares of most of these at more reasonable levels. While I urge great care in stock selection, it appears that the industry has emerged as one to consider investing in.” Earlier in this post, I mentioned that riding a multi-year wave with a winning company in that segment is a way to have strong returns. I’m not knowledgeable enough regarding public Cannabis companies, so I haven’t included any among my stock recommendations. However, I expect industry wide revenue to grow exponentially. The 12 largest public Cannabis companies by descending market cap are: Canopy Growth Corp (the largest at over $11B), Tilray, Aurora Cannabis, GW Pharmaceuticals, Curealeaf Holdings, Aphria, Green Thumb Industries, Cronos Group, Medmen Enterprises, Acreage Holdings, Charlotte’s Web Holdings and Trulieve Cannabis.

I believe one or more of these will deliver major returns over the next 5 years. Last year I felt we would see good fundamentals from the industry but that stocks were inflated. Given that the North American Cannabis Index opened this year at 208 well down from its 2018 high of 386 investing now seems timely. I’ll use this index as the measure of performance of this pick.

2019 will be the Year of the Unicorn IPO

Many Unicorns went public in 2018, but this year is poised to be considerably larger and could drive the largest IPO market fund raising in at least 5 years.  Disbelievers will say: “the market is way down so companies should wait longer.” The reality is the Nasdaq is off from its all-time high in August by about 15% but is higher than its highest level at any time before 2018. Investment funds are looking for new high growth companies to invest in. It appears very likely that as many as 5 mega-players will go public this year if the market doesn’t trade off from here. Each of them is a huge brand that should have very strong individual support. Institutional investors may not be as optimistic if they are priced too high due to the prices private investors have previously paid. They are: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Slack. Each is one of the dominant participants in a major wave, foreshadowing substantial future revenue growth. Because information has been relatively private, I have less knowledge of their business models so can’t comment on whether I would be a buyer. Assuming several of these have successful IPOs many of the other 300 or so Unicorns may rush to follow.

It will be an interesting year!

Recap of 2018 Top Ten Predictions

Mike Kwatinetz Predictions, Technology , , , ,

Have the bears finally won back control?

Oh, what a difference a month or 3 makes! If only 2018 had ended earlier…

I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have liked 2018 results to have been as of November 30th (or even better, October 1st). My stock forecasts were looking a lot better on those dates (and if I were smarter, perhaps I would have taken some of the gains at that point). My average gain was over 34% on October 1st (versus the S&P being up 8.5%) and was still holding at +10% as of November 30th with the S&P ahead 2.4%. Unfortunately, the year includes a disastrous December and my 4 stock picks ended the year at a 6.6% average loss. Since stock picks are always relative to the market, I take some solace in minutely beating the performance of the S&P which was down 7.0% for the year, especially since I favor very high beta stocks.

Before reviewing each of my picks from last year, I would like to provide a longer term view of my performance as it has now been 5 years that I’ve published my blog’s stock picks. Even with a down year in 2018 my compound gain is 310% versus an S&P gain of 38% over the same period. This translates to an average annual gain of 25% per year which coincidently is the target I set in my book (published years ago and now out of print).

Table 1: Mike’s Annual Blog Stock Pick Performance (5 Years)

Unlike last year, I certainly cannot take a victory lap for my 10 forecasts as I missed on 3 of the 10 and barely beat the S&P for my average among my 4 stock picks (all of which will be included again in my 2019 top ten). I’ve listed in bold each of my 2018 stock picks and trend forecasts below and give a personal, and only modestly biased, evaluation of how I fared on each.

  1. Tesla stock appreciation will continue to outpace the market (it opened the year at $312/share)

Tesla had an extraordinary Q3, 2018 as the model 3 launch showed how potent a player the company is becoming. In the quarter the Model 3 was the best selling car in the U.S. in terms of revenue and 5th highest by volume. This drove a greater than 100% revenue increase versus a year earlier and $1.75 in earnings per share versus a loss of $4.22 in the prior quarter. Given that the starting price for a model 3 was at $49,000, it is rather amazing that it could generate that volume of sales. Since the backlog for the Model 3 appears to remain at well over 300,000 cars and Tesla is closing in on a launch in Europe, Tesla seems assured of continued strong revenue through 2019 and likely beyond. However, much of the backlog is awaiting the lower priced (sub $40,000) version of the car which I believe will be available in Q2, 2019. As I had predicted, the Model 3 ramp up in production volume led to improved gross margins which exceeded 20% in the quarter. Despite the down market, Tesla stock was up about 7% in 2018. While we will continue recommending the stock, the phaseout of tax credits for buying an electric car has already begun. In its Q3 update Tesla stated that “better than expected Model 3 cost reductions is allowing us to bring more affordable options to the market sooner.” Yet, despite this forecast, the recently announced price decreases drove the stock down.

  1. Facebook stock appreciation will continue to outpace the market (it opened the year at $182/share).

Facebook stock did not perform well in 2018, closing the year down 28%, making this pick a losing proposition last year. This comes despite revenue growth that should be between 35% and 40%, and net income that is tracking towards about 35% growth (despite a massive increase in SG&A to spur future results).  What impacted the stock heavily was the plethora of criticism regarding privacy of user information coupled with the continuing charges of Russian usage to impact the election. Before the wave after wave of negative publicity the stock had reached a new high of $218/share in July. Because of the need to improve its reputation, Facebook is likely to continue to increase its spending to address privacy issues and to burnish its image. In summary, the fundamentals of the company remained quite sound in 2018 but the barrage of issues torpedoed the stock.

  1. Amazon stock appreciation will outpace the market (it opened the year at $1188/share).

While its stock dropped considerably from its September high of $2050, Amazon remained one of the best market performers in 2018 closing the year at over $1500/share. The company continued to execute well, growing every part of its business. It also began to leverage its scale as net income grew considerably faster than revenue and is likely to be well over triple that of 2017. Growth should be lower in Q4 2018 than earlier in the year as Q4 2017 was the first quarter that included all revenue from the acquisition of Whole Foods. Since the analyst consensus forecast already reflects Whole Foods revenue being in Q4 last year, as well as concerns over Amazon maintaining strong performance in Q4, I would not be surprised if Amazon was able to beat expectations in Q4.

  1. Stitch Fix stock appreciation will outpace the market (it opened the year at $25/share).

In my forecast I stated that this was my riskiest pick and it certainly proved the most volatile (which is saying a lot given the turbulence experience by Facebook, Tesla, and Amazon). I was feeling pretty smug when the stock reached a high of $52/share in September with a little over 3 months left in the year! Obviously, I was less sanguine as it dropped precipitously from September’s high to a low point of $17.09 by year’s end. I’m hoping that those of you who followed my advice trimmed back when the stock soared (I confess that I didn’t). The company continued to balance growth and profitability throughout the calendar year with October quarter revenue (up 24%) and earnings ($10.7 million up from $1.3 million in the prior year) both beating analyst expectations. Yet, concerns over user growth severely impacted the stock. I’m somewhat surprised by this as the users grew 22% and revenue 24% – since revenue beat expectations this means that analysts did not forecast an increase in average revenue per user. But the bottom line is, despite solid fundamentals the stock did not perform well.

  1. The stock market will rise in 2018 (the S&P opened the year at 2,696 on January 2).

When I made this forecast, I pointed out that I’m not particularly good at forecasting the overall market. My belief was based on the fact that the tax cut for corporations would mean a rise in earnings that exceeded the norm. I felt stronger earnings growth would be enough to offset the risk of the longest bull market in history turning negative. I sited the likelihood of higher interest rates being an additional risk. The market almost made it through the year as it was still up heading into December, but the combination of 4 interest rate hikes in the year coupled with considerable criticism of President Trumps behavior was just too much for the market by December. I view this as a partial victory as I had all the fundamentals right and came within less than a month of being right for the year when many felt the bears would gain control in early 2018.

  1. Battles between the federal government and states will continue over marijuana use but the cannabis industry will emerge as one to invest in.

During the year the legalization of marijuana for recreational use continued to increase on a state by state basis with the number increasing from 6 at the start of the year to 10 by years end. Use of medical marijuana is now legal in 33 states. Several other states, while not formally legalizing it have lowered restrictions on individual use. The industry remains at a very early stage, but numerous companies are now public, and the recent market correction has the shares of most of these at more reasonable levels. While I would urge great care in stock selection, it appears that the industry has emerged as one to consider investing in.

  1. At least one city will announce a new approach to urban transport.

In this prediction I cited the likelihood that at least one city would commit to testing a system of small footprint automated cars on a dedicated route (as discussed in our post on December 14, 2017) as this appears to be a more cost effective solution than rail, bus, Uber, etc. Kyoto has now announced that it signed an agreement to test the system offered by Wayfarer and the company is now out of stealth mode. Wayfarer expects to provide substantial capacity at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives: both in the initial cost of the infrastructure/equipment and the annual cost of running the system. Of course, once there is a live installation in Kyoto or one of their other prospective customers, the validity of this system will be authenticated (or not).

  1. Offline retailers will increase the velocity of moving towards omnichannel.

This forecast discussed both acquisitions of e-commerce companies by offline retailers (with Walmart leading the way) and introducing more online technology in physical stores. Walmart did continue its online buying spree in 2018 with major acquisitions of Art.com, Bare Necessities, Eloquii, Cornershop and Flipkart (the largest at $16 billion). In the case of the acquisitions that are online brands, Walmart intends to introduce these into their physical stores and continue to sell them online. Nordstrom has also moved further to integrate its online and offline business by taking valuable floor space in stores and repurposing it for online buyers to pick up and try on clothes they have purchased online. By placing the location in a very prominent spot, I’m sure Nordstrom is thinking it will help spur more customers to buy online. By having in store locations for picking up and trying on, Nordstrom should reduce returns, lower the cost of shipping, and bring additional customers into their stores (who otherwise might not visit them).

  1. Social Commerce will begin to emerge as a new category

Recall that social commerce involves the integration of social media with commerce through tactics like:

  1. A feed-based user experience
  2. Having friends’ actions impact one’s feed
  3. Following trend setters to see what they are buying, wearing, and/or favoring
  4. One click to buy

Now, about 25% – 30% of shoppers say that social platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat have influence over their purchases. On June 28, 2018 Snapchat began a program for its influencers to use Social Commerce through a tool that allows users to view a video from the influencer and then to swipe up on a product shown in the video to buy it. In September, The Verge reported that Instagram is developing a new app for social commerce. Pinterest and Facebook have been in the social commerce fray longer and have increasing success. It appears that 2018 was the year the social commerce wars accelerated.

  1. “The Empire Strikes Back”: automobile manufacturers will begin to take steps to reclaim use of its GPS.

Carmakers face a serious problem regarding their built-in navigation systems. Consumers are forced to pay hundreds of dollars for them and then use free apps on their phones like Waze or Google maps instead. This does not endear them to consumers. The problem is that carmakers are not great at software design but have been reluctant to use third party providers for their GPS and entertainment. Now, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has agreed to design Google’s Android OS, including Google navigation, into their next generation cars expected starting in 2021. This is a win for users as that will provide a competent GPS that utilizes the existing screen in cars as opposed to having to rely on your phone app for navigation.

In another win for consumers, Amazon and Telenav (a connected car and location based services provider) announced a significant partnership today, January 7, 2019. As part of it, Amazon’s voice assistant will now be part of Telenavs in-car navigation systems. With this included, Telenav’s next generation system will enable its customers, like General Motors, to provide a “smart assistant” thereby making the system included with cars the one to use rather than one’s phone apps.

Stay tuned for my top ten predictions for 2019…but remember that I have already said the 4 stocks recommended for 2018 will remain on the list.