Mike Kwatinetz is a Founding General Partner at Azure Capital Partners and a Venture Capitalist investing in application software (SaaS), ecommerce, consumer web and infrastructure technology companies. Successful exits include: Bill Me Later, VMware, TripIt and Top Tier.
Our predictions for 2023 were all fulfilled with the stock portion providing extremely strong performance. This was on the heels of poor performance in 2022 as it was one of the worst years in the past 50 for the stock market in general, and for my stocks in particular. In delineating the stock recommendations in our Top Ten predictions for 2023 we pointed out that the 6 stocks, on average had fallen nearly 49% in 2022 despite average revenue growth of about 38%. Since we expected all 6 to continue to grow in 2023 (and both Amazon and Shopify to increase their growth rates), we felt they were all poised for a recovery. This clearly proved accurate.
What went right for my stock picks in 2023 was great company results coupled with the benefit of an apparent end to the rate hike cycle. I have always pointed out that I am not amongst the best at forecasting the market as a whole but have been very strong at selecting great companies which over the long term (5 years or more) typically have solid stock appreciation if their operating performance is consistently good. But even great company’s stock performance can be heavily impacted in any given year by market conditions. Two key drivers of negative market conditions in 2022 were the huge spike in inflation coupled by the Fed raising rates to battle it.
At the beginning of 2023 we felt that inflation would be on the decline from its peak of 9.1% in June 2022 (see prediction 9). Given the expected decline in inflation we believed the Fed would slow and then stop increasing interest rates. Since the rise in interest rates was a major reason for the decline in our long-duration stocks, we believed that slowing and then stopping this rise would be a factor in driving elevated stock performance.
So, the big question for the market at the beginning of 2023 was whether the expected additional rate increases projected at just under 1% for the year (which theoretically was built into share prices at the end of 2022) would be enough for The Fed. It pretty much was as the Fed raised rates 1.0% during the year but stopped making increases after July and subsequently indicated that rates could start declining in 2024.
Stocks reacted well to what appears to be end of the upward climb in rates and tech stocks reacted particularly well as long duration investments tend to be influenced greatly by rate changes. Coupling this with what appears to be a soft landing created a positive environment for our recommended stocks.
Our six recommended stocks were up an average of 96% with 3 of the 6 appreciating over 100%. While we will have a longer discussion of the reasoning behind it in our next post, we wanted to disclose that all 6 will be recommendations in our 2024 Top Ten.
2023 Stock Recommendations
Tesla will outperform the market (it closed 2022 at $123.18/share)
As usual, Tesla was a wild ride in 2023. Partly, this was based on continued controversy surrounding Elon especially his actions post his October 2022 purchase of Twitter (now called X). But in addition, concerns over price drops, potential slowing momentum of Battery Electric Vehicles, challenges to Tesla market share and more weighed on the stock at times. These concerns buried the stock in 2022. In 2023 they continued to be sighted by shorts but proved overblown as the company reached its unit sales target of 1.8 million vehicles (up 40%), launched the CyberTruck in Q4 and substantially increased its market share of overall vehicles sold. As a result, Tesla stock was very strong in 2023 and closed the year at $248.48/share, a rise of 102%.
2. CrowdStrike (Crwd) will outperform the market (it closed 2022 at $105.29/share)
The most recently reported quarter for CrowdStrike, Q3 FY24 was another strong one as the pandemic had little impact on its results. Revenue was up over 35% and earnings 105%. Existing customers continued to expand use of the company’s products driving Net Revenue Retention to exceed 120% for the 20th consecutive quarter. The company’s stock, which had declined nearly 50% in 2022 (despite a revenue increase of 54%), had a dramatic recovery. It closed 2023 at $255.17/share, up 142%.
3. Amazon will outperform the market (it closed 2022 at $84.00/share)
As we expected, Amazon improved revenue growth in each quarter of 2023 from its low point of 8.6% in Q4 2022. In Q3 2023 growth was back to 12.6%. Additionally, the company increased its focus on profitability with Q3 profits up well over 200% versus the prior year’s weak numbers. This coupled with the improved environment for tech stocks helped drive Amazon’s share price to $151.75 at year end, up 81% from the close on December 31, 2022.
4. The Trade Desk (TTD) will outperform the market (it closed 2022 at $44.83/share)
Fears of a potential recession caused great concern for advertising revenue. After dropping sequentially in Q4 2022 (to 24.1%) and again in Q1 2023 (to 21.5%) TTD’s revenue growth began recovering in Q2 (to 23.1%) and again in Q3 (to 27.7%). The stock reacted well to the improvement and closed 2023 at $71.80 up 60% from year end 2022.
5. Datadog will outperform the market (it closed 2022 at $73.50/share)
Like many other high growth subscription-based software companies, Datadog experienced another solid year in 2023 with Q3 revenue growth at 26.7%. Also, like CrowdStrike, Datadog has a very high gross margin (GM) and is now at the point where it has started to leverage its GM driving up earnings (+96%) at a much faster rate than revenue. This level of success helped Datadog stock close the year at $121.65/share, up 66%.
6. Shopify (Shop) will outperform the market (it closed at $34.71/share)
In our post of Top Ten predictions, we pointed out that the pandemic had created a major warping of Shop revenue growth. Instead of the normal decline for high growth companies from its 47% level in 2019 it jumped to 86% growth in 2020 and still was above “normal” at 57% in 2021. Once physical retail normalized in 2022, Shopify growth plunged against the elevated comps declining to a nadir of 16% in Q2, 2022. When we included Shop in our Top Ten for 2023, we pointed out that we expected its revenue growth to return to 20% or more throughout 2023. This indeed did occur and the stock reacted well, closing the year at $77.88 up 124% year/year.
Non-Stock Specific Predictions
While I usually have a wide spectrum of other predictions, last year I wanted to focus on some pressing issues for my 3 predictions that are in addition to the fun one. These issues are Covid, inflation and California’s ongoing drought. They have been dominating many people’s thoughts for the past 3 years or more.
7. The Warriors will improve in the second half of the current season and make the Playoffs
This forecast proved correct as I expected the Warriors to make the playoffs but be unsuccessful at winning a title. They did rally in the latter part of the season to finish 6th (avoiding the play-in) and won the series against the Kings but failed to progress to the Western Finals.
8. Desalination, the key to ending long term drought, will make progress in California
Some of the pressure to create desalination plants throughout California was reduced by substantial rainfall last year that ended the drought and filled reservoirs. Despite this there was progress as the California Coastal Commission approved a $140 million desalination plant in Orange County (at Dana point) in late 2022. Resistance to its construction has been mounted by environmental groups but in 2023 the planning continued to move forward.
In April 2023, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced 3 more projects that will receive support from DWR and an additional 6 projects that will receive funds through a partnership with the National Alliance for Water Innovation. While the total water generated through all projects currently approved is still far short of fulfilling California needs, the tide seems to have begun to turn (no pun meant) towards favoring use of desalination.
9. Inflation will continue to moderate in 2023
This forecast proved pretty accurate as inflation moderated to just over 3% in 2023 (very slightly higher than my projected range). It was at 6.3% when I made the forecast.
10. Covid’s Impact on society in the US will be close to zero by the end of 2023
I consider this prediction mostly right. On the positive side I believe Covid no longer has much influence on people venturing out to shop, dine, go to the theater, travel, etc. Even cruise lines are experiencing a substantial return towards normal. The number of new Covid cases has waned significantly and deaths from it are close to zero. However, I would not say we’re quite at zero impact as there are still some spikes (of modest magnitude versus before) that cause concern to a portion of the population.
The past year has been extremely busy for me and the decline in blogs produced has been one of the consequences. On the one hand, I’m mortified that my annual Top Ten list has been delayed by 2 months. On the other hand, it turns out that the steep decline in tech valuations affords an opportunity for acquiring recommended stocks at much lower cost than they were on January 2. Because I don’t want to delay recommendations further, I am going to publish the recap of 2021 picks after the new Top Ten blog is out. Suffice it to say the recap will be of a down year after posting my best year ever in 2020, but that means (at least to me) that there is now an opportunity to build a portfolio around great companies at opportune pricing.
Starting in November of 2021 the Tech sector has taken a beating as inflation, potential interest rate spikes, the Russian threat to the Ukraine (followed by an invasion), a Covid jump due to Omicron and supply chain issues all have contributed to fear, especially regarding high multiple stocks. What is interesting is that the company performance of those I like continues to be stellar, but their stocks are not reflecting that. For 2022, the 6 stocks I’m recommending are Tesla, DocuSign, Amazon, Zoom, CrowdStrike and Shopify (the only new one on my list).
In the introduction to my picks last year, I pointed out that over time share appreciation tends to correlate to revenue growth. This clearly did not occur over the last 14 months as illustrated in Table 1.
The average revenue gain in the last quarter reported by these companies was 43%, while the average stock in the group was down 17%. It should also be noted that Amazon reported that its major profit driver, AWS, had grown 40% while eCommerce had been relatively flat year over year and the stock reacted positively due to the AWS increase. Over time I expect share performance to be highly correlated to revenue growth, but clearly that has not been the case for the past 14 months. Shopify, Zoom, DocuSign and Amazon had revenue growth largely distorted by Covid, with 2020 growth being well above their norm and 2021 growth coming down dramatically. This caused their stocks to plummet as the interpretation of 2021 results was that long term growth had slowed. Yet in all cases the 2-year compound growth rate was well above the previous norm.
Table 2 highlights this abnormality.
In Q3 2019, Zoom’s revenue growth was 85%. Such a high rate of growth usually declines each year barring some abnormal situation. Instead, the growth rate soared in 2020 and the jump was followed by additional growth in 2021. The 2-year CAGR was 151% and Zoom had over 6 times the revenue in Q3 2021 than it did 2 years earlier. Yet, its share price is now roughly only 10% above where it was 2 years ago and down 63% from January 1, 2021. While Zoom is the most extreme situation of the four companies in Table 2, each of the other three have had a similar whipsaw of its revenue growth rate and in each case its stock soared in 2020 only to heavily trail revenue growth in 2021 despite its 2-year CAGR being above pre-pandemic levels in every case. While revenue growth at Tesla and CrowdStrike were not impacted in a similar way by the pandemic as both had more normal revenue growth patterns in 2020 and 2021, they still saw share performance significantly trail revenue growth for the past year.
Given the compression in revenue multiples across the board in tech stocks, the opportunity for investing appears timely to me. Of course, I cannot predict that the roughly 59% average decline in revenue multiple among these stocks represents the bottom…as I never know where the bottom is.
2022 Stock Recommendations (Note: base prices are as of February 25, 2022)
Tesla will continue to outperform the market (it closed at $810/share)
a. Tesla demand has far outstripped supply, as backlog increased steadily during 2021. And this is before the Cyber Truck with it’s over a million pre-orders, has come to market. This has been partly based on a substantial surge in demand and partly due to a shortage of some parts. While Tesla has made and will continue to drive up capacity by launching multiple new factories, supply of parts has prevented the factories from operating at capacity. Rather than overspending to secure more supply (a major error by Peloton), Tesla has chosen to raise prices and to prioritize production of more expensive (and more profitable) versions of its products. As of December 31, wait times for the standard Model 3, Model Y and Model S were approximately 10-11 months while the more expensive high-performance version of each had delivery times of 2-3 months. For the Model X, delivery dates were even longer. As we forecast in prior letters, Tesla gross margins have been rising and in its most recently announced fourth quarter were the highest in the industry. Yet, we believe they will still go up from here as:
Tesla, like Apple did for phones, is increasing the high margin software and subscription components of sales;
the full impact of recent price increases is not yet in the numbers;
its factories are not yet operating at full efficiency; and
Tesla will have lower shipping cost to European buyers once the Berlin factory begins to ramp.
b. Cyber Truck preorders are now estimated at over 1.25 million units (approximately $79 billion in sales value) according to a fan tracker site, or 50% more potential revenue than 2021 total revenue. Obviously, some of the orders will be cancelled given the long wait times before delivery, but still, this virtually assures large revenue increases for 2022 and 2023, only gated by obtaining enough supply of parts. The Cyber Truck is not expected to ship until mid-2022 and is not material to meeting revenue forecasts for this year. The Tesla Semi appears close to being ready to go into production, but battery constraints will probably mean any deliveries will be truly minimal for Q1 (Pepsi expects to take delivery of at least 15 in the near term). The Berlin factory, a key to increasing its share in Europe, will likely begin manufacturing in the first half of 2022. What this all points to is high revenue growth continuing, stronger GMs in 2022, and earnings escalation likely faster than revenue growth. While revenue growth is gated by supply constraints it should still be quite strong. And the high backlog not only assures that 2023 will be another high growth year but also means there is little pressure on Tesla pricing.
Shopify will outperform the market (it closed at $677 per share)
Shopify, like Amazon, Zoom and DocuSign experienced elevated growth in 2020. This was due to Covid keeping people out of stores (many of which weren’t even open). If we look at pre-Covid growth the company’s revenue increased by 45% year/year in Q3 2019. A year later revenue growth had escalated to 96% due to Covid. In Q3 2021 growth was 46%, returning to pre-Covid levels. The compound 2-year rate of growth was 70%. If Shopify can continue at a 35-40% revenue growth rate it will mean it has absorbed its higher level of revenue and is growing quite nicely from there.
Shopify has established a clear leadership position as the enabler of eCommerce sites. Its U.S. eCommerce market share, at 10.3% in 2021, is second to Amazon and well ahead of its closest competitors Walmart, eBay, and Apple. Net revenue retention for the company continues to be well over 100% as Shopify has successfully expanded services it provides to its eCommerce business customers. Additionally, because successful eCommerce companies are growing, Shopify also grows its portion of the customer revenue it shares. I expect continued growth to be well over 30% for several more years given three things:
a. Ecommerce should continue to take share from offline.
b. We expect Shopify to continue to gain share of Ecommerce.
c. Shopify will leverage expanded services leading to higher revenue per client.
In 2022 revenue growth is expected to be lower in the first half of the year than the second due to the benefit Covid had on the first half of 2021 and some changes Shopify made in its method of charging customers that took effect in the second half of 2021.
CrowdStrike will outperform the market (it closed at $182 per share)
CrowdStrike continues to gain substantial share of the data security market. Given its leadership position in the newest technology coupled with what is still a modest share of its TAM, the company remains poised for continued high growth. This coupled with over 120% net revenue retention for 12 straight quarters (primarily driven by expanded module purchases) makes CrowdStrike a likely long-term grower at over 50% per year.
The recent threats by Russia to create a Cyber attack on the U.S. could be an additional boost to the entire security industry. CrowdStrike stands to be a disproportionate beneficiary as it has the most advanced technology for defending companies against such attacks.
Amazon will outperform the market (it closed at $3076 per share)
Amazon, like Shopify, benefitted from the substantial number of people who shopped from home in 2020. This caused an expansion of its growth rate from 24% in Q3 2019 to 37% in in Q3 2020. In Q3 2021 growth was down to 15% against the tough compare. Looking at the 2-year compound rate the company appears to have had a modest benefit to growth. We expect the company to return to a 15-20% growth rate in the second half of 2022. This would mean that it has absorbed extra revenue and returned to the normal curve of growth declining. One thing that helped the stock was that higher margin Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew at 40%, much higher than modestly profitable commerce. AWS continues to be quite attractive relative to its peers and its quality and sophistication continues to improve.
A second potential driver for the stock is that new CEO Jassy may decide to increase the focus on earnings growth which is available to Amazon if it chooses to do so. If he does that could be a catalyst to share appreciation. To that end, on the Q4 earnings call the company announced that it would be increasing the cost of Prime by about 17%. This increase will go into effect in Mid-February for new members and in Mid-March for existing members. The impact will roll out over 12 months as existing members renew their annual membership. Despite this increase, Prime remains a distinct bargain as it not only includes free shipping but also a number of other benefits such as video streaming of movies and TV shows, some free eBooks, discounts at Whole Foods and more. Given that Prime has over 200 million members, the increase adds over $4 billion to revenue once it fully rolls out or about 1% of revenue. While this may not appear to be that much, it is worth about $8 per share in pre-tax earnings.
DocuSign will outperform the market (it closed at $115 per share)
DocuSign experienced some of the up and down in growth that Zoom did but to a more moderate extent. Its “normal” pre-Covid growth rate of 40% in Q3 of fiscal 2020 escalated to 53% a year later and then fell back down to 42% in its last reported quarter. As with other high growth stocks DocuSign’s rate would normally have fallen, so the 2-year compound rate of 48% was quite strong. Yet, as I write this letter, the stock is down by over 50% in the past year despite revenue increasing by 42%. This means the multiple of revenue has fallen by about 64% in a year.
As is normal for high growth companies, I expect DocuSign to continue to have a modest decline in revenue escalation from last quarter but believe growth will continue to be above 30% for several years as net retention among enterprise customers (which is 88% of revenue) is over 120% and the company continues to add new customers to this group at a solid pace. DocuSign is the dominant player in the use of eSignature and other management tools for documents. The use of these tools will be just as important in a post-Covid world.
DocuSign continues to add initiatives to keep Net Retention at or near the 120% level. These include growing its partnership with Salesforce, launching a new release of its software, Agreement Cloud which in addition to eSignature also includes the full cycle of contract creation and management. The company is also working on creating an eNotary product.
Zoom will outperform the market (it closed at $125 per share)
Zoom is a company that has had its revenue trajectory impacted the most by Covid. Before the pandemic, the company was growing revenue at 80%+ in 2019. Such a high growth rate would normally decline the following year but when Covid struck Corporate demand increased by a higher rate than normal and individuals flocked to Zoom in order to maintain some visual contact with friends and family. As a result, Zoom growth peaked at an unheard of 365% in Q2 of fiscal 2021 (reported in calendar Q3 of 2020). As people subsequently began leaving their homes Zoom’s growth was impacted. The corporate side of its business continued to have robust growth with Net Revenue Retention of over 130% as business customers from a year earlier increasing their spend by over 30% including churns. In addition, Zoom had a net add of new customers of 18% of the prior year’s total. Putting those together means that revenue from business customers grew about 45% and continued to grow about 10% sequentially while growth of the consumer side was flattish to slightly down sequentially. Combining the two trends meant that overall growth fell to 35% year over year in Q3 of fiscal 2022 and is expected to decline further in Q4. Looking at the 2-year compound growth rate for revenue in Table 2, one can see that Zoom experienced an elevation to over 150%, nearly double their pre-covid level. We believe that over the longer run Zoom can grow over 30% once the corporate side of its business becomes a bit more dominant and the consumer side begins to show moderate sequential growth. And we expect that sequential growth will begin to rise at some point during calendar 2022 (its fiscal 2023).
GMs were over 81% in FY 2020 (ending January 31, 2020), pre-Covid. The impact of free use to schools with students being on Zoom 8 hours a day, a major expansion of consumer free users, plus paying users expanding use without generating extra revenue (there is no charge for increasing usage) caused GMs to decline to under 70% in FY 2021. By Q3 FY 2022 GM had returned to 76%. We believe further improvement in GMs is inevitable as Covid declines and usage rates diminish without impacting revenue. This should mean that earnings increase at a faster rate than revenue assuming the company keeps G&A growth at or lower than revenue growth.
2022 Non-Stock Invitations
Republicans will recapture at least one of the Senate and House in the Interim elections
Since the Biden administration has taken power, inflation has surged to its highest rate since the Carter administration, the Ukraine crisis has emerged, Covid cases have jumped and Biden leadership and mental sharpness have come into question. While several of these issues may have come to the front no matter who was president, an ABC News/Washington Post poll shows the electorate clearly is dissatisfied. Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 37% and people believe by over a 2 to 1 margin that the Republicans would do a better job handling the economy. The poll results show that if the House elections were held today, 49% would vote Republican and 42% Democrat. Given how tenuous the Democrats majority is, this would likely lead to a change of control. It is only late February so there is still time for this to change, but many of these issues, especially the economy, may be hard to turn before the November election.
The travel industry will experience robust growth starting in the summer of 2022
The travel industry has had a pretty rocky 2020 and 2021 as Covid elicited substantial fear of boarding a plane, traveling out of the country and/or taking a cruise. In 2021, we did see a return to travel within the U.S. and it was accompanied by increasing prices of hotel rooms and restaurants. It seems clear (to me at least) that people are worn down by Covid and appear ready to resume some of their prior vacation habits. While new Covid cases are still at very high levels (but falling rapidly), the current version is much less deadly than prior ones. In my group of friends, several of us have planned a trip to France in May which will be the first time back in Europe for any of the 4 couples since 2019. While I’m less certain of when cruise lines will be back to normal, I expect them to see some renaissance this year. The only fly in the ointment is how serious the Russian crisis becomes. As of now I believe it will be restricted (from a military point of view) to the Ukraine.
PG&E and other utility companies will battle to dramatically increase what they charge those who convert to solar
There is a massive conflict between the drive to replace energy received from the grid with solar panels. On the one hand the U.S. government provides a 26% tax rebate for installing solar panels. And states like California are pushing to drive more solar through a net metering law (and in the past tax rebates). Also, California is now mandating roof solar panels for all new homes. On the other hand, utility companies like the three in California are battling to increase charges to those that install solar as an offset to the revenue they would lose. The Solar Rights Alliance estimates that “going big on Solar” could save American households over $473 billion over 30 years, whereas “doubling down” on new powerline installation would add $385 billion in cost to American households. When a household converts to solar, energy companies lose revenue and these companies are intent on increasing the cost to solar users to offset this.
Net Metering means a household can sell back excess energy produced to their utility company, which in turn offsets any cost they incur on days when their solar falls short of needs and they need to buy from the utility. The dollars they were entitled to by selling back is then deducted from the bill for energy used. Before 2016 the price the utility company paid for the excess they bought was equal to the price they sold energy back to the consumer. As more homes installed solar the energy companies pushed for a change and in 2016 NEM 2.0 was passed. This allowed the utilities to charge $ 0.03 per kWh for power they sold back to consumers. It also added an interconnect fee of $145 or more to PG&E and different amounts for the other California utility companies. Further, it established a policy of varying rates based on the time of day (which meant higher charges on energy purchased during the middle of very hot days).
Still, as more and more households install solar (including all new homes), the utility companies view it their right to be able to increase charges so they can grow revenue. There has been a push before the California Public Utilities Commission to pass NEM 3.0. It would allow the 3 major utility companies to charge between $56 and $91/month to any home with a new installation of solar. Additionally, it would slash the credit for selling back energy. If it had passed this would have added significant cost to homes with solar and likely reduced the number of existing homes that install it by 70% or more. For now, the public furor over NEM 3.0 caused the PUC to postpone action on this indefinitely. Instead, a large rate increase was granted to PG&E to help pay for remediating their negligence that contributed to California fires. But this battle is far from over! I’m expecting some sort of political compromise on new charges to solar homes to occur when the furor dies down. It likely will lower the added charges from the prior proposal but still increase the cost. While I am predicting this increase in 2022, it may not happen until 2023.
If Green comes back at full capacity the Warriors will win the NBA Championship
As usual I had to have my one fun pick. Clearly this is not a “gimme” and maybe shows my fan bias. In fact, the Warriors have serious issues even getting to the championship game as the Suns have been playing great and Memphis is on the rise and easily could beat out the Warriors for second in the West. This means the Warriors could need to overcome home court advantages for each of those teams assuming each of the three wins in earlier rounds. But, before Green was injured, the Warriors were the top defensive team in the league and also playing quite well on offense and Klay Thompson had yet to play. Since his injury Kuminga has emerged as another strong cog in the Warrior wheel and Klay appears to be working towards his former production by the playoffs.
In last year’s top ten I pointed out that Wiggins was likely to shine for the Warriors and he has certainly done that on offense and defense this year. Despite a so-called slump, Curry is still the best shooter on the planet and will likely return to full form when Green returns as its no coincidence that his tail-off started under the pressure of breaking the 3-point scoring record but has mostly been with Green out. Poole has developed into a strong 6th man who is capable of providing a scoring boost when needed. Looney could benefit from a little easing of his minutes coming into the playoffs as he was playing his best basketball ever for most of the season. Iguodala should be very additive in the playoffs, assuming he is healthy. Finally, Gary Payton is a game changer on defense and Kerr has been using him very effectively.
I wanted to start this post by repeating something I discussed in my top ten lists in 2017 and 2018 which I learned while at Sanford Bernstein in my Wall Street days: “Owning companies that have strong competitive advantages and a great business model in a potentially mega-sized market can create the largest performance gains over time (assuming one is correct).” It does make my stock predictions somewhat boring (as they were on Wall Street where my top picks, Dell and Microsoft each appreciated over 100X over the ten years I was recommending them).
Let’s do a little simple math. Suppose one can generate an IRR of 26% per year (my target is to be over 25%) over a long period of time. The wonder of compounding is that at 26% per year your assets will double every 3 years. In 6 years, this would mean 4X your original investment dollars and in 12 years the result would be 16X. For comparison purposes, at 5% per year your assets would only be 1.8X in 12 years and at 10% IRR 3.1X. While 25%+ IRR represents very high performance, I have been fortunate enough to consistently exceed it (but always am worried that it can’t keep up)! For my recommendations of the past 6 years, the IRR is 34.8% and since this exceeds 26%, the 6-year performance is roughly 6X rather than 4X.
What is the trick to achieving 25% plus IRR? Here are a few of my basic rules:
Start with companies growing revenue 20% or more, where those closer to 20% also have opportunity to expand income faster than revenue
Make sure the market they are attacking is large enough to support continued high growth for at least 5 years forward
Stay away from companies that don’t have profitability in sight as companies eventually should trade at a multiple of earnings.
Only choose companies with competitive advantages in their space
Re-evaluate your choices periodically but don’t be consumed by short term movement
As I go through each of my 6 stock picks I have also considered where the stock currently trades relative to its growth and other performance metrics. With that in mind, as is my tendency (and was stated in my last post), I am continuing to recommend Tesla, Facebook, Amazon, Stitch Fix and DocuSign. I am adding Zoom Video Communications (ZM) to the list. For Zoom and Amazon I will recommend a more complex transaction to achieve my target return.
2020 Stock Recommendations:
1. Tesla stock appreciation will continue to outperform the market (it closed last year at $418/share)
Tesla is likely to continue to be a volatile stock, but it has so many positives in front of it that I believe it wise to continue to own it. The upward trend in units and revenue should be strong in 2020 because:
The model 3 continues to be one of the most attractive cars on the market. Electric Car Reviews has come out with a report stating that Model 3 cost of ownership not only blows away the Audi AS but is also lower than a Toyota Camry! The analysis is that the 5-year cost of ownership of the Tesla is $0.46 per mile while the Audi AS comes in 70% higher at $0.80 per mile. While Audi being more expensive is no surprise, what is shocking is how much more expensive it is. The report also determined that Toyota Camry has a higher cost as well ($0.49/mile)! Given the fact that the Tesla is a luxury vehicle and the Camry is far from that, why would anyone with this knowledge decide to buy a low-end car like a Camry over a Model 3 when the Camry costs more to own? What gets the Tesla to a lower cost than the Camry is much lower fuel cost, virtually no maintenance cost and high resale value. While the Camry purchase price is lower, these factors more than make up for the initial price difference
China, the largest market for electronic vehicles, is about to take off in sales. With the new production facility in China going live, Tesla will be able to significantly increase production in 2020 and will benefit from the car no longer being subject to import duties in China.
European demand for Teslas is increasing dramatically. With its Chinese plant going live, Tesla will be able to partly meet European demand which could be as high as the U.S. in the future. The company is building another factory in Europe in anticipation. The earliest indicator of just how much market share Tesla can reach has occurred in Norway where electric cars receive numerous incentives. Tesla is now the best selling car in that country and demand for electric cars there now exceeds gas driven vehicles.
While 2020 is shaping up as a stairstep uptick in sales for Tesla given increased capacity and demand, various factors augur continued growth well beyond 2020. For example, Tesla is only partway towards having a full lineup of vehicles. In the future it will add:
Pickup trucks – where pre-orders and recent surveys indicate it will acquire 10-20% of that market
A lower priced SUV – at Model 3 type pricing this will be attacking a much larger market than the Model X
A sports car – early specifications indicate that it could rival Ferrari in performance but at pricing more like a Porsche
A refreshed version of the Model S
A semi – where the lower cost of fuel and maintenance could mean strong market share.
2. Facebook stock appreciation will continue to outperform the market (it closed last year at $205/share)
Facebook, like Tesla, continues to have a great deal of controversy surrounding it and therefore may sometimes have price drops that its financial metrics do not warrant. This was the case in 2018 when the stock dropped 28% in value during that year. While 2019 partly recovered from what I believe was an excessive reaction, it’s important to note that the 2019 year-end price of $205/share was only 16% higher than at the end of 2017 while trailing revenue will have grown by about 75% in the 2-year period. The EPS run rate should be up in a similar way after a few quarters of lower earnings in early 2019. My point is that the stock remains at a low price given its metrics. I expect Q4 to be quite strong and believe 2020 will continue to show solid growth.
The Facebook platform is still increasing the number of active users, albeit by only about 5%-6%. Additionally, Facebook continues to increase inventory utilization and pricing. In fact, given what I anticipate will be added advertising spend due to the heated elections for president, senate seats, governorships etc., Facebook advertising inventory usage and rates could increase faster (see prediction 7 on election spending).
Facebook should also benefit by an acceleration of commerce and increased monetization of advertising on Instagram. Facebook started monetizing that platform in 2017 and Instagram revenue has been growing exponentially and is likely to close out 2019 at well over $10 billion. A wild card for growth is potential monetization of WhatsApp. That platform now has over 1.5 billion active users with over 300 million active every day. It appears close to beginning monetization.
The factors discussed could enable Facebook to continue to grow revenue at 20% – 30% annually for another 3-5 years making it a sound longer term investment.
3. DocuSign stock appreciation will continue to outperform the market (it closed last year at $74/share)
DocuSign is the runaway leader in e-signatures facilitating multiple parties signing documents in a secure, reliable way for board resolutions, mortgages, investment documents, etc. Being the early leader creates a network effect, as hundreds of millions of people are in the DocuSign e-signature database. The company has worked hard to expand its scope of usage for both enterprise and smaller companies by adding software for full life-cycle management of agreements. This includes the process of generating, redlining, and negotiating agreements in a multi-user environment, all under secure conditions. On the small business side, the DocuSign product is called DocuSign Negotiate and is integrated with Salesforce.
The company is a SaaS company with a stable revenue base of over 560,000 customers at the end of October, up well over 20% from a year earlier. Its strategy is one of land and expand with revenue from existing customers increasing each year leading to a roughly 40% year over year revenue increase in the most recent quarter (fiscal Q3). SaaS products account for over 95% of revenue with professional services providing the rest. As a SaaS company, gross margins are high at 79% (on a non-GAAP basis).
The company has now reached positive earnings on a non-GAAP basis of $0.11/share versus $0.00 a year ago. I use non-GAAP as GAAP financials distort actual results by creating extra cost on the P&L if the company’s stock appreciates. These costs are theoretic rather than real.
My only concern with this recommendation is that the stock has had a 72% runup in 2019 but given its growth, move to positive earnings and the fact that SaaS companies trade at higher multiples of revenue than others I still believe it can outperform this year.
4. Stitch Fix Stock appreciation will continue to outperform the market (it closed last year at $25.66/share)
Stitch Fix offers customers, who are primarily women, the ability to shop from home by sending them a box with several items selected based on sophisticated analysis of her profile and prior purchases. The customer pays a $20 “styling fee” for the box which can be applied towards purchasing anything in the box. The company is the strong leader in the space with revenue approaching a $2 billion run rate. Unlike many of the recent IPO companies, it has shown an ability to balance growth and earnings. The stock had a strong 2019 ending the year at $25.66 per share up 51% over the 2018 closing price. Despite this, our valuation methodology continues to show it to be substantially under valued and it remains one of my picks for 2020. The likely cause of what I believe is a low valuation is a fear of Amazon making it difficult for Stitch Fix to succeed. As the company gets larger this fear should recede helping the multiple to expand.
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. Stitch Fix can continue to grow its revenue from women in the U.S. with expansion opportunities in international markets over time. I believe the company can continue to grow by roughly 20% or more in 2020 and beyond.
Stitch Fix revenue growth (of over 21% in the latest reported quarter) comes from a combination of increasing the number of active clients by 17% to 3.4 million, coupled with driving higher revenue per active client. The company accomplished this while generating profits on a non-GAAP basis.
5. Amazon stock strategy will outpace the market (it closed last year at $1848/share).
Amazon shares increased by 23% last year while revenue in Q3 was up 24% year over year. This meant the stock performance mirrored revenue growth. Growth in the core commerce business has slowed but Amazon’s cloud and echo/Alexa businesses are strong enough to help the company maintain roughly 20% growth in 2020. The company continues to invest heavily in R&D with a push to create automated retail stores one of its latest initiatives. If that proves successful, Amazon can greatly expand its physical presence and potentially increase growth through the rollout of numerous brick and mortar locations. But at its current size, it will be difficult for the company to maintain over 20% revenue growth for many years (excluding acquisitions) so I am suggesting a more complex investment in this stock:
Buy X shares of the stock (or keep the ones you have)
Sell Amazon puts for the same number of shares with the puts expiring on January 15, 2021 and having a strike price of $1750. The most recent sale of these puts was for over $126
So, net out of pocket cost would be reduced to $1722
A 20% increase in the stock price (roughly Amazon’s growth rate) would mean 29% growth in value since the puts would expire worthless
If the stock declined 226 points the option sale would be a break-even. Any decline beyond that and you would lose additional dollars.
If the options still have a premium on December 31, I will measure their value on January 15, 2021 for the purposes of performance.
6. I’m adding Zoom Video Communications to the list but with an even more complex investment strategy (the stock is currently at $72.20)
I discussed Zoom Video Communications (ZM) in my post on June 24, 2019. In that post I described the reasons I liked Zoom for the long term:
Revenue retention of a cohort was about 140%
It acquires customers very efficiently with a payback period of 7 months as the host of a Zoom call invites various people to participate in the call and those who are not already Zoom users can be readily targeted by the company at little cost
Gross Margins are over 80% and could increase
The product has been rated best in class numerous times
Its compression technology (the key ingredient in making video high quality) appears to have a multi-year lead over the competition
Adding to those reasons it’s important to note that ZM is improving earnings and was slightly profitable in its most recent reported quarter
The fly in the ointment was that my valuation technology showed that it was overvalued. However, I came up with a way of “future pricing” the stock. Since I expected revenue to grow by about 150% over the next 7 quarters (at the time it was growing over 100% year over year) “future pricing” would make it an attractive stock. This was possible due to the extremely high premiums for options in the stock. So far that call is working out. Despite the company growing revenue in the 3 quarters subsequent to my post by over 57%, my concern about valuation has proven correct and the stock has declined from $76.92 to $72.20. If I closed out the position today by selling the stock and buying back the options (see Table 1) my return for less than 7.5 months would be a 42% profit. This has occurred despite the stock declining slightly due to shrinkage in the premiums.
Table 1: Previous Zoom trade and proposed trade
I typically prefer using longer term options for doing this type of trade as revenue growth of this magnitude should eventually cause the stock to rise, plus the premiums on options that are further out are much higher, reducing the risk profile, but I will construct this trade so that the options expire on January 15, 2021 to be able to evaluate it in one year. In measuring my performance we’ll use the closing stock price on the option expiration date, January 15, 2021 since premiums in options persist until their expiration date so the extra 2 weeks leads to better optimization of the trade.
So, here is the proposed trade (see table 1):
Buy X shares of the stock at $72.20 (today’s price)
Sell Calls for X shares expiring January 15, 2021 at a strike of $80/share for $11.50 (same as last price it traded)
Sell puts for X shares expiring January 15, 2021 with strike of $65/share for $10.00 (same as last price it traded)
I expect revenue growth of 60% or more 4 quarters out. I also expect the stock to rise some portion of that, as it is now closer to its value than when I did the earlier transaction on May 31, 2019. Check my prior post for further analysis on Zoom, but here are 3 cases that matter at December 31, 2020:
Stock closes over $80/share (up 11% or more) at end of the year: the profit would be 58% of the net cost of the transaction
This would happen because the stock would be called, and you would get $80/share
The put would expire worthless
Since you paid a net cost of $50.70, net profit would be $29.30
Stock closes flat at $72.20: your profit would be $21.50 (42%)
The put and the call would each expire worthless, so you would earn the original premiums you received when you sold them
The stock would be worth the same as what you paid
Stock closes at $57.85 on December 31: you would be at break even. If it closed lower, then losses would accumulate twice as quickly:
The put holder would require you to buy the stock at the put exercise price of $65, $7.15 more than it would be worth
The call would expire worthless
The original stock would have declined from $72.20 to $57.85, a loss of $14.35
The loss on the stock and put together would equal $21.50, the original premiums you received for those options
Outside of my stock picks, I always like to make a few non-stock predictions for the year ahead.
7. The major election year will cause a substantial increase in advertising dollars spent
According to Advertising Analytics political spending has grown an average of 27% per year since 2012. Both the rise of Super PACs and the launch of online donation tools such as ActBlue have substantially contributed to this growth. While much of the spend is targeted at TV, online platforms have seen an increasing share of the dollars, especially Facebook and Google. The spend is primarily in even years, as those are the ones with senate, house and gubernatorial races (except for minor exceptions). Of course, every 4th year this is boosted by the added spend from presidential candidates. The Wall Street Journal projects the 2020 amount will be about $9.9 billion…up nearly 60% from the 2016 election year. It should be noted that the forecast was prior to Bloomberg entering the race and if he remains a viable candidate an additional $2 billion or more could be added to this total.
The portion targeted at the digital world is projected to be about $2.8 billion or about 2.2% of total digital ad spending. Much of these dollars will likely go to Facebook and Google. This spend has a dual impact: first it adds to the revenue of each platform in a direct way, but secondly it can also cause the cost of advertising on those platforms to rise for others as well.
8.Automation of Retail will continue to gain momentum
This will happen in multiple ways, including:
More Brick & Mortar locations will offer some or all the SKUs in the store for online purchase through Kiosks (assisted by clerks/sales personnel). By doing this, merchants will be able to offer a larger variety of items, styles, sizes and colors than can be carried in any one outlet. In addition, the consolidation of inventory achieved in this manner will add efficiency to the business model. In the case of clothing, such stores will carry samples of items so the customer can try them on, partly to optimize fit but also to determine whether he or she likes the way it looks and feels on them. If one observes the massive use of Kiosks at airports it becomes obvious that they reduce the number of employees needed and can speed up checking in. One conclusion is this will be the wave of the future for multiple consumer-based industries.
Many more locations will begin incorporating technology to eliminate the number of employees needed in their stores. Amazon will likely be a leader in this, but others will also provide ways to reduce the cost of ordering, picking goods, checking out and receiving information while at the store.
9. The Warriors will come back strong in the 2020/21 season
Let me begin by saying that this prediction is not being made because I have been so humbled by my miss in the July post where I predicted that the Warriors could edge into the 2020 playoffs and then contend for a title if Klay returned in late February/early March. Rather, it is based on analysis of their opportunity for next season and also an attempt to add a little fun to my Top Ten List! The benefit of this season:
Klay and Curry are getting substantial time off after 5 seasons of heavy stress. They should be refreshed at the start of next season
Russell, assuming he doesn’t keep missing games with injuries, is learning the Warriors style of play
Because of the injuries to Klay, Curry, Looney, and to a lesser extent Green and Russell, several of the younger members of the team are getting experience at a much more rapid rate than would normally be possible and the Warriors are able to have more time to evaluate them as potential long-term assets
If the Warriors continue to lose at their current rate, they will be able to get a high draft choice for the first time since 2012 when they drafted Harrison Barnes with the 7th pick. Since then their highest pick has been between the 28th and 30th player chosen (30 is the lowest pick in the first round)
The Warriors will have more cap space available to sign a quality veteran
Andre Iguodala might re-sign with the team, and while this is not necessary for my prediction it would be great for him and for the team
The veterans should be hungry again after several years of almost being bored during the regular season
I am assuming the Warriors will be relatively healthy next season for this to occur.
10. At least one of the major Unicorns will be acquired by a larger player
In 2019, there was a change to the investing environment where most companies that did not show a hint of potential profitability had difficulty maintaining their market price. This was particularly true of highly touted Unicorns, which mostly struggled to increase their share price dramatically from the price each closed on the day of their IPO. Table 2 shows the 9 Unicorns whose IPOs we highlighted in our last post. Other than Beyond Meat, Zoom and Pinterest, they all appear some distance from turning a proforma profit. Five of the other six are below their price on the first day’s close. A 6th, Peloton, is slightly above the IPO price (and further above the first days close). Beyond Meat grew revenue 250% in its latest quarter and moved to profitability as well. Its stock jumped on the first day and is even higher today. While Pinterest is showing an ability to be profitable it is still between the price of the IPO and its close on the first day of trading. Zoom, which is one of our recommended buys, was profitable (on a Non-GAAP basis) and grew revenue 85% in its most recent quarter. A 10th player, WeWork, had such substantial losses that it was unable to have a successful IPO.
Something that each of these companies have in common is that they are all growing revenue at 30% or more, are attacking large markets, and are either in the leadership position in that market or are one of two in such a position. Because of this I believe one or more of these (and comparable Unicorns) could be an interesting acquisition for a much larger company who is willing to help make them profitable. For such an acquirer their growth and leadership position could be quite attractive.
My long term readers know that every so
often the blog wanders into the sports arena. In doing so, I apply the same
type of analysis that I do for public stocks and for VC investments to sports,
and usually, basketball. Given all the turmoil that has occurred in the NBA
this off-season, including the Warriors losing Durant, Iguodala, Livingston,
Cousins and several other players, I thought it would be interesting to
evaluate the newly changed team. Both ESPN and CBS power rankings have them 7th
in the West and 11th in the NBA. I find that an overreaction as the
Warriors may have beaten the Raptors if Klay Thompson not been injured, they
swept Portland, and won the last 2 Rockets games without Durant. At the time
this drove a lot of chatter that the team might be better off without Durant (I
disagree).
But rather then compare the revised roster to
last year’s, it seems more closely matched with the 2014-15 team, as that was a
championship team that did not include Kevin Durant. I will make 2 key
assumptions:
Klay Thompson will return by
the end of February and be as effective as he was before his injury
The Warriors will make the
playoffs despite missing Thompson for the majority of the season
It all starts with Curry
A third key assumption that has been proven over and over again is that players that come to the Warriors usually perform better as they benefit from the “Curry Effect”, namely, getting more shots without having someone closely guarding them, (The Curry Effect), resulting in an average improved shooting percentage of over 5%. In all fairness, it really is the “Curry plus Thompson Effect” as the extreme focus on preventing the two of them from taking 3 point shots is what frees up others. It helps that Curry is unselfish and readily passes the ball when he is double or triple teamed. Thompson’s passing has improved substantially but since he gets his shot off so quickly, he has less need to pass it. Last year both shot over 40% from 3 despite defensive efforts focused on preventing each of them from taking those shots.
Starting Teams: 2019-20 vs 2014-15
Table 1
Curry, Thompson and Green, the heart and soul of the Warriors, all remain from the 2014-15 roster, and now are at their peaks. In the 2014-15 season when Green first became a starter, Curry was one year away from reaching his peak and Thompson was just coming into his own especially on defense. I believe each of them is better today then they were at that time. At his best, Bogut may have been better than Cauley-Stein, but by 2014 Bogut had been through a number of injuries. Last year Cauley-Stein averaged nearly double the points of 2014 Bogut (11.9 vs 6.3), took slightly more rebounds per game and was a better free throw shooter. Stein, much like Bogut, is also considered a solid pick setter and defender. Russell is someone who should benefit greatly from playing with Curry. Even without that, last season he averaged over twice as many points per game as 2014 Barnes (21.1 vs 10.1) which should take considerable pressure off Curry (and Klay when he returns). However, Barnes was a better defender in 2014 than Russell is today. I give the edge to all 5 starters on the 2019 starting team compared to the 5 that started in 2014-15.
Thompson may be the most underrated player in the league!
It’s unfortunate that Thompson was injured in game 6 of the 2019 finals as he was once again proving just how good he can be. Not only was he playing lockdown defense, but he also drove the offense in what has been referred to as a typical Klay game 6. In just 32 minutes, before getting injured, he scored 30 points on 83% effective shooting percentage (67% on 3s), went 10 for 10 on free throws, and had 5 rebounds and 2 steals. I believe Golden State, even without Durant, would have forced a game 7 if Thompson did not get injured.
It boggles my mind that one of the websites
could refer to Thompson as “an average player” who did not merit a max contract.
This is bordering on the ridiculous and has a lot to do with the fact that the
most important measure of shooting, effective shooting percentage (where each 3
made counts as 1½ 2 point shots made) does not normally get reported (or even
noticed). In Table 2, I list the top 31 scorers from last season (everyone who
averaged at least 20 points per game) and rank them by effective shooting.
Thompson is number 8 in effective shooting and number 3 in 3-point percentage
among this group. So, if effective shooting percentage was regularly published,
Thompson would show up consistently helping the perception of his value. When
this is coupled with his being a third team all-defensive player (i.e., one of
the top 15 defenders in the league) it appears clear that he should be
considered one of the top 15 players in the league.
Table
2: Top Scorers 2018-2019 Season
6th Man 2019-20 vs 2014-15
Kevon Looney has emerged as a potential
star in the works. While he may not yet be the defensive presence of Iguodala,
he is getting close. His scoring per minute played was higher than Andre’s
2014-15 numbers and his rebounds per minute were more than twice as much. While
Iguodala had greater presence and could run the team as well as assist others
in scoring, Looney at least partly makes up for this in his ability to set
screens. Looney also has a much higher effective shooting percentage (62.7% vs
54.0%) than Andre had in 2014-15. While Kevon doesn’t shoot 3s he gets many
points by putting back offensive rebounds and dunking lob passes. Overall, I
give the edge to Iguodala based on the Looney of last season but given Looney’s
potential to improve this might be dead even in the coming one.
Rest of the Bench for the 2 teams
It is the bench that is hardest to
evaluate. Unlike last year’s bench, the 2014-15 bench was quite strong which
spawned the Warrior logo “Strength in Numbers”. It included quality veteran
players like Leandro Barbosa, David Lee, Mareese Sprouts and Shaun Livingston, who
was playing at a much higher level than last season. The four of these together
averaged over 26 points per game. This
coming year’s bench is much younger and more athletic. It includes Alec Burks,
Glenn Robinson, Alfonzo McKinnie and Omari Spellman, plus several rookies and
Jacob Evans III. The first four are all capable of scoring and are solid 3-point
shooters (they could increase to well above average once with the Warriors). I
expect that group, coupled with one or two of the others, to exceed the 2014-15
bench in defense…but may not have as much scoring fire power. The team is
likely to give one or two of the rookies as well as Evans opportunities to earn
minutes as well. The bench is an improvement over last year but may not be as
strong as the 2014-15 squads.
Overall Assessment
I believe the 2019-2020 squad is better
than the championship team of 2015. The starting lineup features the core 3
players who have improved since then, D’Angelo Russell who was an all-star last
year, and a solid center in Willie Cauley-Stein making the edge substantial.
Looney as 6th man is already giving evidence of future stardom.
While he was not quite the Andre Iguodala of 2014-15, the difference is modest,
and Looney continues to improve. The 2014-15 bench appears superior to that of
next season, but the edge is not great as the newer group should be stronger
defensively and is not far off the older group as scorers – the question will
be how well they gel and how much the Curry/Klay factor improves their scoring.
Finally, I think Kerr is a better coach today than he was given the last 5
years of experience.
They May Have Improved vs 2014-15, but so has the Competition
ESPN and CBS power rankings reflect the
fact that multiple teams have created new “super star” two-somes:
Lakers: Lebron and Anthony
Davis
Clippers: Kawhi Leonard and
Paul George
Houston: Harden and Westbrook
(in place of Chris Paul)
Nets: Kyrie Irving and Durant
Contenders also include improving young teams
like Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, and Utah plus an improved Portland squad. This
makes the landscape much tougher than when the Warriors won their 2015
championship. Yet, none of these teams seem better than the Cleveland team (led
by a younger LeBron, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love) the Warriors beat in 2015.
So, assuming Klay returns by late February and is back to par, I believe the
Warriors will remain strong contenders given the starting team with four all-stars
augmented by Willie Cauley-Stein and an improving Kevon Looney as 6th
man. However, it will be much tougher going in the early rounds in the playoffs,
making getting to the finals longer odds than in each of the past 5 years.
SoundBytes
An examination of Table 2
reveals several interesting facts:
Curry, once again is the leader
among top scorers in effective shooting and the only one over 60%
Antetokounmpo is only slightly
behind despite being a very poor 3-point shooter. If he can improve his
distance shooting, he may become unstoppable
Russell Westbrook, once again,
had the worst effective shooting percent of anyone who averaged 20 points or
more. In fact, he was significantly below the league average. Part of the
reason is despite being a very poor 3-point shooter he continues to take too
many distance shots. Whereas most players find that taking 3s increases their
effective shooting percent, for Westbrook it lowers it. I haven’t been able to
check this, but one broadcaster stated that he has the lowest 3-point
percentage of any player in history that has taken over 2500 3-point shots!
I believe that Westbrook has a
diminished chance to accumulate as many triple doubles next season as he has in
the past. There is only one ball and both he and Harden tend to hold it most of
the time. When Chris Paul came to the Rockets his assists per game decreased by
about 15% compared to his prior 3 season average.
This post is the third in my series on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), with a heavy emphasis on contribution margin (CM). Previously, I analyzed why CM is such a strong predictor of success. Given that, companies should consistently look at ways of improving it while still maintaining sufficient growth in their business.
In Azure’s recent full day marketing seminar for our consumer (B2C) focused companies, my session highlighted 6 methods of improving CM:
Increase follow-on sales from existing customers
Raise the average invoice value of the initial and subsequent sales to a customer
Increase GM (Gross Margin) through price increases
Increase GM by reducing cost of goods sold (COGs)
Reduce Blended CAC (cost of customer acquisition) by increasing free or very low cost traffic
Decrease marketing spend as a % of revenue
Before drilling down on each of these I want to define several key terms that will be used throughout the discussion:
Contribution Margin = GM – Marketing/Sales Costs – other cost that vary with sales
Paid CAC = Market Spend/New Customers acquired through this spend
Blended CAC = Market Spend/All new customers
CAC Recovery Time (CAC RT) = the number of months until variable profit on a customer equals CAC
LTV/CAC = Life Time Value (LTV) of a customer/CAC
I will now review each of these strategies and provide some thoughts on how to activate these in consumer-facing businesses:
1. Increase Follow-On sales from existing customers
Since existing customers have little or no cost associated with getting them to buy, this will decrease blended CAC, increasing CM.
Increasing customer retention through improvements in customer care, more interesting and more targeted emails to a customer, or launching a subscription of one kind or another can all help.
On the first point here is an email I received shortly after subscribing to Harry’s, that I thought did an excellent job at engaging me with their customer support, increasing my likelihood to keep my subscription active:
Hi there,
My name is Katie, and I’m a member of the Harry’s team. I wanted to reach out and say thanks for supporting Harry’s.
You are important to us, and I am here to personally help you however I can to make your Harry’s experience as smooth as possible – both literally and figuratively. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any thoughts or questions about your Harry’s products or Shave Plan, or just life in general. (And just a reminder that your next box is scheduled to ship on October 27th.) Thanks again for your support, and I hope to speak soon!
All the best, Katie
On the subscription concept, think about Amazon Prime. How many of you buy more frequently from Amazon because of being a prime member?
Add to product portfolio. By giving your customers more options of what to buy (all within the concept of your brand) customers are given the opportunity to spend more often.
Make sure your emails are interesting. This will increase the open rate and drive more follow on sales. If all your emails are about discounting your product, then customers will have less interest in opening them and your brand will be devalued. I’ve received emails from numerous sites that say an X% discount is available until a certain date, and then when that date passes, I receive a new offer that is the same or sometimes better. The most frequently opened emails have headers and content that creates interest beyond whatever products you sell. A/B test different headers and different content. It doesn’t matter how small or large you are or how many emails you send, it always pays to try different variations to increase open rates and conversion. Experiment with different messaging to different customer segments like those who purchased recently, those who “liked” an item, those that have never purchased, etc.
Build a Community of your customers. The more you can get customers engaged with you and with each other, the more committed to you they become and the longer they are retained. Think through how you can build an active community among your users through shared photos, videos, chatting, podcasts or events. Most of this should not involve trying to push new purchases but engaging your community to interact with you and each other.
2. Raise the average invoice value of the initial and subsequent sales to a customer
Since shipping costs will not increase proportionately, this will raise GM dollars and therefore CM.
Increase pricing. Most startups underprice their product thinking that will increase market adoption. Even some of the largest companies in the world have found there was ample room to increase prices. Thinking differently, Apple upped prices to over $1,000 for an iPhone. And then increased it again to $1,349 for the top of the line product. Five years ago, how many of you thought people would pay over $1,000 for a cell phone? This shows that unless you A/B test different price points you have no idea whether a price increase is the right strategy.
Upsell logical add-on products. While trying to get a customer to add to their shopping cart may seem obvious, many companies do not do this on a consistent basis. Some examples of ones that have: a flower company added vases to the offer, a mattress company added pillows and sheets; a subscription razor company added shaving gel; a cell phone company added a case. All of these led to reasonable attach rates of the add-on product and higher average invoice value. Testing what you could add to generate upsell should be a constant process.
“Selling” value added services is another form of upsell. This could include things like concierge customer service, service contacts, premier membership with benefits like: invites to special events, early access to new products, reduced shipping cost, preferred discounts on products, etc. If you get your customers to engage in one or more services, you will significantly increase their connection to your product and likely increase retention.
3. Increase Gross Margin through price Increases
Surprisingly, sometimes higher prices position a product as premium (having more value) and generate increased unit sales. Often higher prices generate more revenue even when fewer unit sales result. What may be counter intuitive is that GM$ can increase even if revenue declines. For example, suppose a company has COGs of $50 for a product and is currently pricing it at $100. If a price increase of 20% causes 20% lower unit sales, revenue would decline by 4% while GM$ would increase 12%. Higher gross margin dollars provide more ability to spend on marketing.
4. Improving GM by reducing COGs
Better Pricing: When your volume increases, ask for better pricing from suppliers. Just as its important to price test regularly, its also important to talk to multiple potential suppliers of your parts/product. An existing supplier may not be eager to voluntarily offer a price discount that goes with increased volume but is more likely to do so if it knows you are checking with others.
Changing Packaging: Packaging should be re-examined regularly as improvements may help customer retention. But it also may be possible to lower the cost of the packaging or to change it in a way that lowers shipping costs since that may be based on the size of the box rather than weight.
Shipping Costs: Lower shipping cost per $ of revenue (increasing GM and CM) by generating larger orders. In addition to upsell, this can be done by offering better discounts if the order size is larger. One site I have purchased from offers 10% discount if your net spend (after discount) is over $100, 15% if over $150 and 20% if over $200. Getting to the highest discount lowers the price of the product by enough to motivate buyers (including me) to try to buy over $200 in merchandise. The extra revenue creates incremental product margin dollars and decreases shipping cost as a percentage of revenue. This in turn increases GM$.
For a subscription company this can be done by scheduling less frequent (larger) deliveries. The shipping cost of the larger order will be a much smaller percent of revenue, raising GM.
Opening a Second distribution center to reduce shipping cost. Orders shipped from a west coast distribution center to an east coast customer will have 5 zone pricing. By having a second distribution center in a place like Columbus, Ohio (a frequently used location) those same orders will usually be 1 zone, sometimes 2 zone pricing, resulting in substantial savings per order. The caveat here is that a company needs enough volume for the total savings on orders to exceed the fixed cost of a second distribution center.
5. Improving CM by driving “free” or “nearly free” traffic
The higher the proportion of free or inexpensive traffic to total traffic, the lower the blended CAC.
Improving SEO (search engine optimization). I’ve learned from SEO experts that optimizing SEO is not free, but rather very low cost compared to paid traffic. Our previous post walks through some of the science involved in making improvements. I would suggest using an SEO consultant as it is likely to lead to far better results.
Convert a visitor not ready to buy to an email recipient. If you do that than you will have subsequent opportunities to market to her or him. A slightly costlier version of this is to use remarketing to woo visitors who came to your site but didn’t buy. While using remarketing (advertising) has a cost, it is usually much lower CAC than other methods.
Produce emails that get forwarded and go viral. Such emails need to motivate recipients to forward them due to being very funny, of human interest, etc. While there is typically a product offering embedded in them, the header emphasizes the reason to read it. One Azure portfolio company, Shinesty, recently had an email that was opened by about 7X the number of people it was initially sent to. That generated a lot of potential customers without spending extra marketing dollars. Engaging emails has enabled Shinesty to maintain high CM and high growth.
Use social networking to generate incremental customers. Having the right posts on a social network like Instagram can lead to new potential customers finding out about you and lead to additional sales.
Optimize Customer Retention. Or as my good friend Chris Bruzzo (CMO of EA) spoke about at the Azure Marketing conference: “Love the ones you’re with.” Existing customers are usually the largest source of “free” buyers in a period. The longer you retain a customer, the more repeat buyers you have, increasing contribution margin. So, it’s imperative to take great care of your existing customers.
Drive PR. Like SEO, there is some cost involved in this but if you are judicious in any agency spend and thoughtful in creating news worthy press releases this can be a great source of traffic at a modest cost. However, I recommend you try to understand what you are getting from PR because I have seen situations where the spend did not produce meaningful results.
6. Decrease Marketing Spend as a % of Revenue.
The CAC Recovery Time plays a major role in how to manage your market spend to balance growth and burn. For example, if CAC Recovery Time is one month, spending more will not drive up burn appreciably. If it takes more than a year to recover your CAC, moderating market spend is critical to achieving a reasonable CM. If you recoup CAC faster, you can invest more quickly in the next round of customers. In the consumer space, I won’t invest in a company that has a long (a year or more) CAC Recovery Time as customers are likely to churn in an average of 2-3 years, making it difficult to achieve a reasonable business model. For B2B company’s customer longevity tends to be much longer, and the LTV/CAC can be 5X or more even if CAC Recovery Time is a year.
When a company decreases its market spend as a % of revenue it may experience lower growth but better CM. However, many companies have waste in their marketing spend so it’s important to measure the efficacy of each area of spend separately and to eliminate programs with a low return. This will allow you to reduce the spend with minimal impact on growth rates. There is a balance needed to try to optimize the relationship between CM and revenue growth as higher burn requires raising money more frequently and can put your company at risk. On the other hand, a company generating $1M in revenue needs to be growing at 100% or more to warrant most VCs to consider investing. Since CM should improve with scale, spending more on marketing may be a viable strategy for early stage companies. Once a company reaches $10M in revenue, annual growth of 50% will get it to $76M in revenue in 5 years so such a company should consider better CM rather than driving much higher growth rates and continuing to burn excessive cash.
In summary, Contribution Margin is the lifeblood of a company. If it is weak, the company is likely to fail over time. If it is strong and revenue growth is high, success seems likely. Improving CM is an ongoing process. I realize many of you probably feel much of what I’ve said is obvious, but my question is:“How many of these suggestions are you already doing on a regular basis?”
While you may be using several of the suggestions in this post, I encourage you to try more and to also double down where you can on the ones you already are trying. The results will make your company more valuable!
SoundBytes
I just want to remind readers that my collaborator on my blog posts, Andrea Drager, doesn’t typically take a bow for her significant contributions. Also, in this post, Chris Bruzzo added several improvements that have been incorporated. So many thanks to Andrea and Chris.
Can’t help but comment on the start to the NBA season. Not surprisingly, the Warriors are off to a great start with Curry and Durant leading the way. Greene and Thompson now have moved close to their usual contribution so I’m hopeful that the team can keep up its current pace.
What surprised me early on was the lack of recognition that both Toronto and San Antonio would be greatly improved. Remember, while San Antonio lost Kawhi, he only played a few games last year so with the addition of DeRozan should improve and once again reach the playoffs. For Toronto the change to Kawhi is a marked improvement placing them very competitive with the Celtics for eastern leadership.
I also feel it necessary to comment on the “Las Vegas” Raiders. I call them that already as they have shown zero regard for Oakland fans. While commentators have criticized their trading of all-star level players for draft choices, this is precisely on-strategy. When they get to Vegas they want a brand-new set of rising stars that the new fan base can identify with (using the numerous first round draft choices they traded for), and they don’t mind having the worst record in the league while still in Oakland. I believe Oakland fans should stop attending games as a response. I also think the NFL continues to shoot itself in the foot, allowing one of the most loyal and visible fan bases in the league to once again be abandoned
After many years of successfully picking public and private companies to invest in, I thought I’d share some of the core fundamentals I use to think about how a company should be valued. Let me start by saying numerous companies defy the logic that I will lay out in this post, often for good reasons, sometimes for poor ones. However, eventually most companies will likely approach this method, so it should at least be used as a sanity check against valuations.
When a company is young, it may not have any earnings at all, or it may be at an earnings level (relative to revenue) that is expected to rise. In this post, I’ll start by considering more mature companies that are approaching their long-term model for earnings to establish a framework, before addressing how this framework applies to less mature companies. The post will be followed by another one where I apply the rules to Tesla and discuss how it carries over into private companies.
Growth and Earnings are the Starting Points for Valuing Mature Companies
When a company is public, the most frequently cited metric for valuation is its price to earnings ratio (PE). This may be done based on either a trailing 12 months or a forward 12 months. In classic finance theory a company should be valued based on the present value of future cash flows. What this leads to is our first rule:
Rule 1: Higher Growth Rates should result in a higher PE ratio.
When I was on Wall Street, I studied hundreds of growth companies (this analysis does not apply to cyclical companies) over the prior 10-year period and found that there was a very strong correlation between a given year’s revenue growth rate and the next year’s revenue growth rate. While the growth rate usually declined year over year if it was over 10%, on average this decline was less than 20% of the prior year’s growth rate. What this means is that if we took a group of companies with a revenue growth rate of 40% this year, the average organic growth for the group would likely be about 33%-38% the next year. Of course, things like recessions, major new product releases, tax changes, and more could impact this, but over a lengthy period of time this tended to be a good sanity test. As of January 2, 2018, the average S&P company had a PE ratio of 25 on trailing earnings and was growing revenue at 5% per year. Rule 1 implies that companies growing faster should have higher PEs and those growing slower, lower PEs than the average.
Graph 1: Growth Rates vs. Price Earnings Ratios
The graph shows the correlation between growth and PE based on the valuations of 21 public companies. Based on Rule 1, those above the line may be relatively under-priced and those below relatively over-priced. I say ‘may be’ as there are many other factors to consider, and the above is only one of several ways to value companies. Notice that most of the theoretically over-priced companies with growth rates of under 5% are traditional companies that have long histories of success and pay a dividend. What may be the case is that it takes several years for the market to adjust to their changed circumstances or they may be valued based on the return from the dividend. For example, is Coca Cola trading on: past glory, its 3.5% dividend, or is there something about current earnings that is deceptive (revenue growth has been a problem for several years as people switch from soda to healthier drinks)? I am not up to speed enough to know the answer. Those above the line may be buys despite appearing to be highly valued by other measures.
Relatively early in my career (in 1993-1995) I applied this theory to make one of my best calls on Wall Street: “Buy Dell sell Kellogg”. At the time Dell was growing revenue over 50% per year and Kellogg was struggling to grow it over 4% annually (its compounded growth from 1992 to 1995, this was partly based on price increases). Yet Dell’s PE was about half that of Kellogg and well below the S&P average. So, the call, while radical at the time, was an obvious consequence of Rule 1. Fortunately for me, Dell’s stock appreciated over 65X from January 1993 to January 2000 (and well over 100X while I had it as a top pick) while Kellogg, despite large appreciation in the overall stock market, saw its stock decline slightly over the same 7-year period (but holders did receive annual dividends).
Rule 2: Predictability of Revenue and Earnings Growth should drive a higher trailing PE
Investors place a great deal of value on predictability of growth and earnings, which is why companies with subscription/SaaS models tend to get higher multiples than those with regular sales models. It is also why companies with large sales backlogs usually get additional value. In both cases, investors can more readily value the companies on forward earnings since they are more predictable.
Rule 3: Market Opportunity should impact the Valuation of Emerging Leaders
When one considers why high growth rates might persist, the size of the market opportunity should be viewed as a major factor. The trick here is to make sure the market being considered is really the appropriate one for that company. In the early 1990s, Dell had a relatively small share of a rapidly growing PC market. Given its competitive advantages, I expected Dell to gain share in this mushrooming market. At the same time, Kellogg had a stable share of a relatively flat cereal market, hardly a formula for growth. In recent times, I have consistently recommended Facebook in this blog for the very same reasons I had recommended Dell: in 2013, Facebook had a modest share of the online advertising, a market expected to grow rapidly. Given the advantages Facebook had (and they were apparent as I saw every Azure ecommerce portfolio company moving a large portion of marketing spend to Facebook), it was relatively easy for me to realize that Facebook would rapidly gain share. During the time I’ve owned it and recommended it, this has worked out well as the share price is up over 8X.
How the rules can be applied to companies that are pre-profit
As a VC, it is important to evaluate what companies should be valued at well before they are profitable. While this is nearly impossible to do when we first invest (and won’t be covered in this post), it is feasible to get a realistic range when an offer comes in to acquire a portfolio company that has started to mature. Since they are not profitable, how can I apply a PE ratio?
What needs to be done is to try to forecast eventual profitability when the company matures. A first step is to see where current gross margins are and to understand whether they can realistically increase. The word realistic is the key one here. For example, if a young ecommerce company currently has one distribution center on the west coast, like our portfolio company Le Tote, the impact on shipping costs of adding a second eastern distribution center can be modeled based on current customer locations and known shipping rates from each distribution center. Such modeling, in the case of Le Tote, shows that gross margins will increase 5%-7% once the second distribution center is fully functional. On the other hand, a company that builds revenue city by city, like food service providers, may have little opportunity to save on shipping.
Calculating variable Profit Margin
Once the forecast range for “mature” gross margin is estimated, the next step is to identify other costs that will increase in some proportion to revenue. For example, if a company is an ecommerce company that acquires most of its new customers through Facebook, Google and other advertising and has high churn, the spend on customer acquisition may continue to increase in direct proportion to revenue. Similarly, if customer service needs to be labor intensive, this can also be a variable cost. So, the next step in the process is to access where one expects the “variable profit margin” to wind up. While I don’t know the company well, this appears to be a significant issue for Blue Apron: marketing and cost of goods add up to about 90% of revenue. I suspect that customer support probably eats up (no pun intended) 5-10% of what is left, putting variable margins very close to zero. If I assume that the company can eventually generate 10% variable profit margin (which is giving it credit for strong execution), it would need to reach about $4 billion in annual revenue to reach break-even if other costs (product, technology and G&A) do not increase. That means increasing revenue nearly 5-fold. At their current YTD growth rate this would take 9 years and explains why the stock has a low valuation.
Estimating Long Term Net Margin
Once the variable profit margin is determined, the next step would be to estimate what the long-term ratio of all other operating cost might be as a percent of revenue. Using this estimate I can determine a Theoretic Net Earnings Percent. Applying this percent to current (or next years) revenue yields a Theoretic Earnings and a Theoretic PE (TPE):
TPE= Market Cap/Theoretic Earnings
To give you a sense of how I successfully use this, review my recap of the Top Ten Predictions from 2017 where I correctly predicted that Spotify would not go public last year despite strong top line growth as it was hard to see how its business model could support more than 2% or so positive operating margin, and that required renegotiating royalty deals with record labels. Now that Spotify has successfully negotiated a 3% lower royalty rate from several of the labels, it appears that the 16% gross margins in 2016 could rise to 19% or more by the end of 2018. This means that variable margins (after marketing cost) might be 6%. This would narrow its losses, but still means it might be several years before the company achieves the 2% operating margins discussed in that post. As a result, Spotify appears headed for a non-traditional IPO, clearly fearing that portfolio managers would not be likely to value it at its private valuation price since that would lead to a TPE of over 200. Since Spotify is loved by many consumers, individuals might be willing to overpay relative to my valuation analysis.
Our next post will pick up this theme by walking through why this leads me to believe Tesla continues to have upside, and then discussing how entrepreneurs should view exit opportunities.
SoundBytes
I’ve often written about effective shooting percentage relative to Stephen Curry, and once again he leads the league among players who average 15 points or more per game. What also accounts for the Warriors success is the effective shooting of Klay Thompson, who is 3rd in the league, and Kevin Durant who is 6th. Not surprisingly, Lebron is also in the top 10 (4th). The table below shows the top ten among players averaging 15 points or more per game. Of the top ten scorers in the league, 6 are among the top 10 effective shooters with James Harden only slightly behind at 54.8%. The remaining 3 are Cousins (53.0%), Lillard (52.2%), and Westbrook, the only one below the league average of 52.1% at 47.4%.
Table: Top Ten Effective Shooters in the League
*Note: Bolded players denote those in the top 10 in Points per Game
In my blog post dated February 3, 2017, I discussed several statistics that are noteworthy in analyzing how much a basketball player contributes to his team’s success. In it, I compared Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook using several advanced statistics that are not typically highlighted.
The first statistic: Primary plus Secondary Assists per Minute a player has the ball. Time with the ball equates to assist opportunity, so holding the ball most of the time one’s team is on offense reduces the opportunity for others on the team to have assists. This may lead to fewer assisted baskets for the whole team, but more for the individual player. As of the time of the post, Curry had 1.74 assists (primary plus secondary) per minute he had the ball, while Westbrook only had 1.30 assists per minute. Curry’s efficiency in assists is one of the reasons the Warriors total almost 50% more assists per game than the Thunder, make many more easy baskets, and lead the league in field goal percentage.
The second statistic: Effective Field Goal Percentages (where making a 3-point shot counts the same as making 1 ½ 2-point shots). Again, Curry was vastly superior to Westbrook at 59.1% vs 46.4%. What this means is that Westbrook scores more because he takes many more shots, but these shots are not very efficient for his team, as Westbrook’s shooting percentage continued to be well below the league average of 45.7% (Westbrook’s was 42.5% last season and is 39.6% this season to date).
The third statistic: Plus/Minus. Plus/Minus reflects the number of points your team outscores opponents while you are on the floor. Curry led the league in this in 2013, 2014, and 2016 and leads year-to-date this season. In 2015 he finished second by a hair to a teammate. Westbrook has had positive results, but last year averaged 3.2 per 36 minutes vs Curry’s 13.8. One challenge to the impressiveness of this statistic for Curry is whether his leading the league in Plus/Minus is due to the quality of players around him. In refute, it is interesting to note that he led the league in 2013 when Greene was a sub, Durant wasn’t on the team and Thompson was not the player he is today.
The background shown above brings me to today’s post which outlines another way of looking at a player’s value. The measurement I’m advocating is: How much does he help teammates improve? My thesis is that if the key player on a team creates a culture of passing the ball and setting up teammates, everyone benefits. Currently the value of helping teammates is only measured by the number of assists a player records. But, if I’m right, and the volume of assists is the wrong measure of helping teammates excel (as sometimes assists are the result of holding the ball most of the time) then I should be able to verify this through teammate performance. If most players improve their performance by getting easier shots when playing with Westbrook or Curry, then this should translate into a better shooting percentage. That would mean we should be able to see that most teammates who played on another team the year before or the year after would show a distinct improvement in shooting percentage while on his team. This is unlikely to apply across the board as some players get better or worse from year to year, and other players on one’s team also impact this data. That being said, looking at this across players that switch teams is relevant, especially if there is a consistent trend.
To measure this for Russell Westbrook, I’ve chosen 5 of the most prominent players that recently switched teams to or from Oklahoma City: Victor Oladipo, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Paul George and Enes Kantor. Three left Oklahoma City and two went there from another team. For the two that went there, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony, I’ll compare year-to-date this season (playing with Westbrook) vs their shooting percentage last year (without Westbrook). For Kantor and Oladipo, the percentage last year will be titled “with Westbrook” and this year “without Westbrook” and for Durant, the seasons in question are the 2015-16 season (with Westbrook) vs the 2016-17 season (without Westbrook).
Shooting Percentage
Given that the league average is to shoot 45.7%, shooting below that can hurt a team, while shooting above that should help. An average team takes 85.4 shots per game, so a 4.0% swing translates to over 8.0 points a game. To put that in perspective, the three teams with the best records this season are the Rockets, Warriors and Celtics and they had first, second and fourth best Plus/Minus for the season at +11.0, +11.0 and +5.9, respectively. The Thunder came in at plus 0.8. If they scored 8 more points a game (without giving up more) their Plus/Minus would have been on a par with the top three teams, and their record likely would be quite a bit better than 12 and 14.
Curry and His Teammates Make Others Better
How does Curry compare? Let’s look at the same statistics for Durant, Andrew Bogut, Harrison Barnes, Zaza Pachulia and Ian Clark (the primary player who left the Warriors). For Barnes, Bogut, Pachulia and Durant I’ll compare the 2015 and 2016 seasons and for Clark I’ll use 2016 vs this season-to-date.
So, besides being one of the best shooters to play the game, Curry also has a dramatic impact on the efficiency of other players on his team. Perhaps it’s because opponents need to double team him, which allows other players to be less guarded. Perhaps it’s because he bought into Kerr’s “spread the floor, move the ball philosophy”. Whatever the case, his willingness to give up the ball certainly has an impact. And that impact, plus his own shooting efficiency, clearly leads to the Warriors being an impressive scoring machine. As an aside, recent Warrior additions Casspi and Young are also having the best shooting percentages of their careers.
Westbrook is a Great Player Who Could be Even Better
I want to make it clear that I believe Russell Westbrook is a great player. His speed, agility and general athleticism allow him to do things that few other players can match. He can be extremely effective driving to the basket when it is done under control. But, he is not a great outside shooter and could help his team more by taking fewer outside shots and playing less one/one basketball. Many believed that the addition of George and Anthony would make Oklahoma City a force to be reckoned with, but to date this has not been the case. Despite the theoretic offensive power these three bring to the table, the team is 24th in the league in scoring at 101.8 per game, 15 points per game behind the league leading Warriors. This may change over the course of the season but I believe that each of them playing less one/one basketball would help.
Much has been written about the fact that Russell Westbrook was not chosen for the first team on the Western All-Stars. The implication appears to be that he was more deserving than Curry. I believe that Westbrook is one of the greatest athletes to play the game and one of the better players currently in the league. Yet, I also feel strongly that so much weight is being placed on his triple doubles that he is being unfairly anointed as the more deserving player. This post takes a deeper dive into the available data and, I believe, shows that Curry has a greater impact on winning games and is deserving of the first team honor. So, as is my want to analyze everything, I spent some time dissecting the comparison between the two. It is tricky comparing the greatest shooter to ever play the game to one of the greatest athletes to ever play, but I’ll attempt it, statistic by statistic.
Rebounding
Westbrook is probably the best rebounding guard of all time (with Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson close behind). This season he is averaging 10.4 rebounds per game while Curry is at 4.3. There is no question that Westbrook wins hands down in this comparison with Curry, who is a reasonably good rebounding point guard. But on rebounds per 36 minutes played this season, Westbrook’s stats are even better than Oscar’s in his best year. In that year, Robertson averaged 12.5 rebounds playing over 44 minutes a game which equates to 10.2 per 36 minutes vs Westbrook’s 10.8 per 36 minutes (Magic never averaged 10 rebounds per game for a season).
Assists
You may be surprised when I say that Curry is a better assist producer than Westbrook this season. How can this be when Westbrook averages 10.3 assists per game and Curry only 6.2? Since Oklahoma City plays a very different style of offense than the Warriors, Westbrook has the ball in his hands a much larger percentage of the time. They both usually bring the ball up the court but once over half court, the difference is striking. Curry tends to pass it off a high proportion of the time while Westbrook holds onto it far longer. Because of the way Curry plays, he leads the league in secondary assists (passes that set up another player to make an assist) at 2.3 per game while Westbrook is 35th in the league at 1.1 per game. The longer one holds the ball the more likely they will shoot it, commit a turnover or have an assist and the less likely they will get a secondary assist. The reason is that if they keep the ball until the 24 second clock has nearly run out before passing, the person they pass it to needs to shoot (even if the shot is a poor one) rather than try to set up someone else who has an easier shot. For example, if a player always had the ball for the first 20 seconds of the 24 second clock, they would likely have all assists for the team while on the court.
Table 1: Assist Statistic Comparison
*NBA.com statistics average per game through Feb 1st, 2017
When in the game, Westbrook holds the ball about 50% of the time his team is on offense, he gets a large proportion of the team’s assists. But that style of play also means that the team winds up with fewer assists in total. In fact, while the Warriors rank #1 in assists as a team by a huge margin at 31.1 per game (Houston is second at 25.6), Oklahoma City is 20th in the league at 21.2 per game. If you agree that the opportunity to get an assist increases with the number of minutes the ball is in the player’s possession, then an interesting statistic is the number of assists per minute that a player possesses the ball (see Table 1). If we compare the two players from that perspective, we see that Curry has 1.27 assists per minute and Westbrook 1.17. Curry also has 0.47 secondary assists per minute while Westbrook only 0.13. This brings the total primary and secondary assist comparison to 1.74 per minute of possession for Curry and 1.30 for Westbrook, a fairly substantial difference. It also helps understand why the Warriors average so many more assists per game than Oklahoma City and get many more easy baskets. This leads to them having the highest field goal percentage in the league, 50.1%.
Shooting
Russell Westbrook leads the league in scoring, yet his scoring is less valuable to his team than Stephen Curry’s is to the Warriors. This sounds counterintuitive but it is related to the shooting efficiency of the player: Curry is extremely efficient and Westbrook is inefficient as a shooter. To help understand the significance of this I’ll use an extreme example. Suppose the worst shooter on a team took every one of a team’s 80 shots in a game and made 30% of them including two 3-point shots. He would score 24 baskets and lead the league in scoring by a mile at over 50 points per game (assuming he also got a few foul shots). However, his team would only average 50 or so points per game and likely would lose every one of them. If, instead, he took 20 of the 80 shots and players who were 50% shooters had the opportunity to take the other 60, the team’s field goals would increase from 24 to 36. Westbrook’s case is not the extreme of our example but none-the-less Westbrook has the lowest efficiency of the 7 people on his team who play the most minutes. So, I believe his team overall would score more points if other players had more shooting opportunities. Let’s look at the numbers.
Table 2: Shot Statistic Comparison
*NBA.com statistics average per game through Feb 1st, 2017
Westbrook’s shooting percentage of 42.0% is lower than the worst shooting team in the league, Memphis at 43.2%, and, as mentioned is the lowest of the 7 people on his team that play the most minutes. Curry has a 5.5% higher percentage than Westbrook. But the difference in their effectiveness is even greater as Curry makes far more three point shots. Effective shooting percentage adjusts for 3 point shots made by considering them equal to 1½ two point shots. Curry’s effective shooting percentage is 59.1% and Westbrook’s is 46.4%, an extraordinary difference. However, Westbrook gets to the foul line more often and “true shooting percent” takes that into account by assuming about 2.3 foul shots have replaced one field goal attempt (2.3 is used rather than 2.0 to account for 3 point plays and being fouled on a 3-point shot). Using the “true shooting percentage” brings Westbrook’s efficiency slightly closer to Curry’s, but it is still nearly 10% below Curry (see table 2). What this means is very simple – if Curry took as many shots as Westbrook he would score far more. In fact, at his efficiency level he would average 36.1 points per game versus Westbrook’s 30.7. While it is difficult to prove this, I believe if Westbrook reduced his number of shots Oklahoma City would score more points, as other players on his team, with a higher shooting percentage, would have the opportunity to shoot more. And he might be able to boost his efficiency as a shooter by eliminating some ill-advised shots.
Turnovers vs Steals
This comparison determines how many net possessions a player loses for his team by committing more turnovers than he has steals. Stephen Curry averages 2.9 turnovers and 1.7 steals per game, resulting in a net loss of 1.2 possessions per game. Russell Westbrook commits about 5.5 turnovers per game and has an average of 1.6 steals, resulting in a net loss of 3.9 possessions per game, over 3 times the amount for Curry.
Plus/Minus
In many ways, this statistic is the most important one as it measures how much more a player’s team scores than its opponents when that player is on the floor. However, the number is impacted by who else is on your team so the quality of your teammates clearly will contribute. Nonetheless, the total impact Curry has on a game through high effective shooting percent and assists/minute with the ball is certainly reflected in the average point differential for his team when he is on the floor. Curry leads the league in plus/minus for the season as his team averages 14.5 more points than its opponents per 36 minutes he plays. Westbrook’s total for the season is 41st in the league and his team averages +3.4 points per 36 minutes.
Summing Up
While Russell Westbrook is certainly a worthy all-star, I believe that Stephen Curry deserves having been voted a starter (as does James Harden but I don’t think Harden’s selection has been questioned). Westbrook stands out as a great rebounding guard, but other aspects of his amazing triple double run are less remarkable when compared to Curry. Curry is a far more efficient scorer and any impartial analysis shows that he would average more points than Westbrook if he took the same number of shots. At the same time, Curry makes his teammates better by forcing opponents to space the floor, helping create more open shots for Durant, Thompson and others. He deserves some of the credit for Durant becoming a more efficient scorer this year than any time in his career. While Westbrook records a far larger number of assists per game than Curry, Curry is a more effective assist creator for the time he has the ball, helping the Warriors flirt with the 32-year-old record for team assists per game while Oklahoma City ranks 20th of the 30 current NBA teams with 10 less assists per game than the Warriors.
There is much controversy over whether Kevin Durant should leave OKC and if so, what team he best fits with. In evaluating what makes the most sense for him I’d like to cut through emotional clutter and start with objectives:
To be rated among the best ever, a basketball player needs to win championships – which is why LeBron James left Cleveland originally and why Bill Russell (8 championships) usually gets rated above Wilt Chamberlain (2 championships) despite the fact that Wilt was clearly a much more complete player and why you don’t typically see the great Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson or Elgin Baylor (all 0 championships) getting ranked that high among the greatest players of the century .
When you win championships, people soon forget how stacked your team may or may not have been – LeBron is sometimes referred to as a failure in his first Cleveland stint despite taking the worst team in the league to the NBA finals and few talk about how good Michael Jordan’s supporting cast was in making the playoffs even when he was playing baseball instead of basketball.
I believe Durant understands that and his primary objective is to win championships so that he can rank higher among the greats.
How can he best accomplish that?
Kevin Durant could stay in OKC because of the emotional concept that it’s “his team” and he should not abandon them. The idea being that helping them win is somehow better than helping someone else win. If he does, his chance of winning a championship would be less than 12.5% (1 in 8) since they would probably need to beat San Antonio, Golden State and Cleveland and it’s hard to rate them as favorites in any of those matchups.
If Durant went to Golden State they would likely win the Western Conference again and have an easier schedule than a Durant led OKC could have in the playoffs. They are already the favorite to win the title even without Durant and the odds of them winning would increase significantly should they land him. Golden State is also a perfect fit for him as it plays a team game that would improve the quality of his shot opportunities. How does a team simultaneously double team Durant, Curry and Thompson? So not only would this increase his chance of winning, it also would likely increase his shooting percent and his assists.
The other team that he could pick with the best opportunity to win would be Cleveland but there is no cap space there and it’s unlikely that this would be a fit.
The third strong opportunity is San Antonio. While this would be a fit, the path to a title would not be as likely as Golden State or Cleveland because several key players are aging. However, adding Durant would create a strong trio that could challenge Golden State and possibly would be favored over them. But not the overwhelmingly favorites that the Warriors would be with Durant. Also going from one small market to another would not add the media draw that would lead to maximizing endorsement income.
Although there are rumors of Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Houston and Miami also courting Durant, none of these teams would solve any of his objectives. None would give him a high probability of winning a championship and would solve even less for the emotional component of the decision.
The question that was rattling around all year was “Why would the Warriors want Durant.” The answer is obvious and even more obvious after their game 7 loss – he will make them better. Adding one of the 5 best players in basketball, who shoots for a high percentage, plays defense well and is team oriented makes any team better.
What about the argument that adding Durant would use up so much cap space that the Warriors would need to shed other key players? I agree that they would not be able to keep Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli. But the reality is that Ezeli is not a key player and they should not match the high price he is likely to get in the free market, regardless of whether or not they get Durant. By Durant (and in the future Curry) taking less than a max salary, the Warriors could make sure that they kept Iguodala and Livingston plus all starters (including Andrew Bogut) other than Barnes. The rest of the team could be filled in and I would predict the Warriors could attract others who are willing to take lower salaries in order to be on a championship team. So, I suspect the remainder of the supporting cast will be as good as this year. If Durant is willing to take a salary that enables keeping the 6 key players mentioned, then he will maximize his chance of winning a title. When the cap goes up next year, he and Curry could take higher, but not maximum, salaries so that the team around them could continue to include Iguodala and Livingston.
What about the argument that Durant should maximize his compensation? My answer is that he will maximize his compensation by taking a lower salary and going to the Warriors because his endorsement money will increase by far more than any salary he forgoes since he would be playing on the highest profile team in a major market and winning championships. To quantify the opportunity, Michael Jordan made more in 2015 from endorsements (12 years after his last retirement) than he did in all 15 years in NBA earnings. Curry is already proving that and can easily take a lower than max salary when his contract expires in another year as his endorsements will dwarf his salary. And winning more championships will only increase all the key players’ outside revenue dramatically.
In this post I want to compare the buying experiences I’ve had recently when purchasing from an older generation company vs a newer one. I think it highlights the fact that ecommerce based models can create a much better buying experience than traditional brick and mortar sellers when coupled with a multi-channel approach. The two companies I want to highlight are Tesla (where my wife recently purchased a car) and Warby Parker (where I recently bought a pair of glasses). I’ll compare them to Mercedes and LensCrafters but you should understand it almost doesn’t matter which older gen companies I compared them to, so just consider the ones I’ve chosen (due to recent personal experience) as representative of their industries.
Controlling the buying experience
Warby Parker began opening retail “Guideshops” a few years ago. I recently went into one and was very pleased with the experience. They displayed all the frames they have and there were only two price categories which included the prescription lenses and the frames, $95 and $145. I selected a frame, went over to the desk and received assistance in completing the transaction. The person assisting me took one measurement of my eyes and then suggested I get slightly better lenses for a charge of $30 which I think was only necessary due to my particular prescription. There were no other charges, no salesperson, no other upsells, no waiting while the glasses are being made. Once I paid by credit card, the glasses were put in their cue to be made at their factory and shipped to my home within 10 days (with no shipping charge) and my receipt was sent by email rather than printed. From the time I entered the store until I left was about 10 minutes.
Compare this experience to buying a pair of glasses at LensCrafters. At LensCrafters the price range of frames is all over the map without any apparent reason except many carry a designer brand logo (but are unlikely to have been designed by that designer). To me the Warby Parker frames are as good or better looking as far more expensive ones at LensCrafters. Even if you select a frame at LensCrafters that costs $95-$300 or more, the lenses are not included. A salesperson then sits with you and begins the upselling process. Without going into all the details, suffice it to say that it is very difficult to discern what is really needed and therefore it is hard to walk out of the store without spending $100-$300 more than the cost of the frame. Further, since the glasses are made at the store you come back in a few hours to pick them up (of course this is a positive if you want them right away; I usually don’t care). I have typically spent well over an hour in the buying process plus going for a coffee for the 2 hours or so it took for them to make the lenses.
Tesla has been very adamant about owning and controlling their physical retail outlets rather than having their cars sold by independent dealerships. This gives them multiple advantages as they completely control the buying experience, eliminate competition between dealers, reduce distribution cost and can decide what the purpose of each location is and how it should look. They have also eliminated having cars to sell on the lot but instead use an ecommerce model where you order a car exactly the way you want it and it gets produced for you and brought to the Tesla physical location you want for pickup. Essentially, they have designed two types of physical stores: one that has a few demo models to enable test drives and one that also has a customer service department. This means that the latter is a much smaller size than a traditional car dealership (as it doesn’t need space for new car inventory on the lot) and the former is much smaller than that. The showroom approach occupies such a small footprint that Tesla has been able to locate showrooms in high foot traffic (high cost per foot) locations like malls. In their sites at the Stanford Mall and on Santana Row (two of the most expensive per square foot), Tesla kept the cars for test drives in the parking lots (at a fraction of the cost of store footage). When my wife decided to buy her second Tesla (trading in the older one) we spent about an hour at the dealer as there was no negotiation on price, the car could be configured to her exact specification on a screen at the dealership (or at home) and would be manufactured for her. There were no upsell attempts, no competing dealers to visit, and really no salesperson but rather a facilitator (much like at Warby Parker) that answered questions.
I bought my new car from Mercedes and had a much less pleasant buying experience. It starts with the fact that the price on the car isn’t the real price. This means that one needs to try to go to multiple dealers as well as online to get a better handle on what the real price is as the dealers are difficult to trust. Each dealer now has its own online person (or team) but this is actually still buying from a dealer. There is also a strong encouragement to buy a car in inventory (on the lot) and the idea of configuring the way one wants and ordering it is discouraged. The cars on the lot are frequently configured with costly (highly profitable) options that are unnecessary so that even with a discount from list one typically spends more than ordering it with only options you want and paying closer to list. After multiple days (and many, many hours) spent online and visiting dealerships I decided to replicate the Tesla concept and order a 2016 model to be built exactly how I wanted. Because I spent many hours shopping around, I still was able to get a price that was an extra $4,000 off list from what I had been offered if I bought a 2015 off the lot. The car was the color I wanted, only had the options I wanted and would have a higher resale value because of being a 2016. Since the list price had not increased and there were no unneeded options on the car I actually saved about $10,000 vs taking one off the lot with the lower discount even though all additional options I wanted were bundled with it.
Receiving the product
In the Warby Parker example, the glasses were shipped to my home in a very well designed box that enhanced their brand. The box contained an upscale case and a card that said: “For every pair of glasses sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need.” Buying at LensCrafters meant returning to the store for the glasses. The case included was a very cheap looking one (creating an upsell if one wanted a nicer case) and there was no packaging other than the case. However, I did get the glasses the same day and someone sat with me to make sure they fit well on my ears (fit was not an issue for me for the Warby Parker glasses but could be for some people).
On the automobile side, the car pickup at Tesla was a much better experience than the one at Mercedes. At Tesla, my wife and I spent a little over an hour at the pickup. We spent about 20 minutes on paperwork and 45 minutes getting a walk through on how various options on the car work. There were no attempts to upsell us on anything. At Mercedes the car pickup experience took nearly 4 hours and was very painful as over 3 hours of it was spent on paperwork and attempts at a variety of upsells. To be fair, we had decided to lease this car and that time occupied a portion of the paperwork. But the attempted upsells were extreme. The most ludicrous was trying to get us to buy an extended warranty when the included warranty exceeded the length of the lease. I could understand that it might be of value to some but, in our case, we told the lease person that we were only doing the lease so we wouldn’t own the car at the end of it. There were also upsells on various online services, and a number of other items. The time this took meant we did not have enough time left to go over all the features of the car. This process was clearly the way each person had been trained and was not a function of the particular people we dealt with. The actual salesperson who sold me the car was extremely nice but was working within a system that is not geared towards the customer experience as dealers can’t count on buyers returning even if they buy the same brand again.
Summary
There is a significant advantage being created by new models of doing business which control the complete distribution chain. Their physical locations have a much smaller footprint than traditional competitors which allow them to put their shops in high traffic locations without incurring commensurate cost. They consolidate inventory into a centralized location which reduces inventory cost, storage and obsolescence. They completely control the buying experience and understand that customer satisfaction leads to higher life time value of a customer.
SoundBytes
In my SoundByte post dated April 9, I discussed several of the metrics that caused me to conclude that Stephen Curry should be the 2014-15 season MVP. He subsequently received the award but it still appeared that many did not fully understand his value. I thought it was well captured in the post by looking at EFG, or effective shooting percentage (where a three point shot made counts as 1.5 two point shots made since its worth 50% more points), plus/minus and several other statistics not widely publicized. This year, Curry has become even better and I realized one other statistic might help highlight his value in an even better way, points created above the norm (PAN).
I define PAN as the extra points created versus an average NBA player through more effective shooting. It is calculated using this formula:
PAN= 2 x (the players average number of shots per game) x (players EFG- league norm EFG)
The league’s effective shooting percentage as of December 6 is 49.0%. Since Curry’s effective shooting percentage is 66.1% as of today date, the difference is 17.1%. Curry has been averaging 20.2 shots per game this year so his PAN = 2 x 20.2 x 17.1%= 6.9. This means Curry’s shooting alone (excluding foul shots) adds about 7 points per game to his team versus an average shooter. But, because Curry is unselfish and is often double teamed, he also contributes heavily to helping the team as a whole be more effective shooters. This leads to a team PAN of 14.0. Which means the Warriors score an extra 14 points a game due to more effective shooting.
Interestingly, when you compare this statistic to other league leaders and NBA stars, Curry’s contribution becomes even more remarkable. While Curry add about 7 points per game to his team versus an average shooter, James Harden, Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant are all contributing less than the average player. Given Curry’s wildly superior efficiency he is contributing almost twice as much as Kevin Durant.
With Curry’s far superior individual and team contribution to shooting efficiency, it is not surprising that the Warriors are outscoring their opponents by such record breaking margins.
To further emphasize how much Curry’s PAN impacts his team we compared him to Kobe Bryant. The difference in their PANs is 11.8 points per game. How much would it change the Lakers record if they had these extra 11.8 points per game and all else was equal? It would move the Lakers from the second worst point differential (only Philadelphia trails them) to 10th in the league and 4th among Western conference teams. Since point differential correlates closely to team record, that might mean the Lakers would be competing for home court in the playoffs instead of the worst record in the league!
I was recently interviewed on NBC regarding education, market valuations and the accuracy of my forecasts of market trends made in 2001, among other things (www.pressheretv.com). Since the interview stimulated thoughts on the education market, I thought it was worth capturing a few in a post.
Why the quality of education in the United States trails
According to the World Bank, the United States leads the world in Gross Domestic Product, dwarfing anyone else. The U.S. GDP is 70 percent ahead of number 2 China, and almost 4 times the size of number 3, Japan. Given this wealth of resources, it is somewhat surprising just how low we rank in K-12 education among nations:
14th in cognitive skills and educational attainment[2]
11th in fourth-grade mathematics and 9th in eighth-grade mathematics[3]
7th in fourth-grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science[3]
Part of the problem is that much of our priority as a country tends to emphasize short-term gratification over long-term issues such as investing in primary education. But the problem goes much deeper.
Classroom sizes have been increasing
Parents Across America, a non-profit organization committed to strengthening US public schools, point to studies that indicate that students (especially in grades K-3) who are assigned to smaller classes do better in every way that can be measured. Of 27 countries shown in a 2007 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey the United States ranked 17th in lower education classroom size, at 24.3 students per class. While other countries are investing in reducing classroom size, the U.S. is going in the other direction. Of 26 countries included in the OECD data from 2000 and 2009, 25 either decreased classroom sizes or kept them about the same. The United States was the only one that increased classroom sizes during that period.
Heterogeneous grouping exasperates the problem
In years gone by, U.S. classrooms were homogenous, as children were separated according to their skill level. This practice came under heavy criticism because it was viewed as discriminatory. Throughout the United States, schools shifted to heterogeneous classes not because this technique was proven to be effective but rather in an effort to promote “political correctness.”
One teacher pointed out that “administrators love to boast that their school has heterogeneous grouping…but the administrators aren’t in the classroom, and they don’t see the disappointment on the faces of students when a new experience is presented and not everyone remains on the same page.”
Another teacher stated: “That ideal [of heterogeneous grouping], is an ideal….Truth is, in our experience the low-end kids tend to pull down the high-end kids, rather than the other way around. The class pace slows, and the teacher has to in effect devise two lesson plans for each period, one for the accelerated students and another for those who have low skills.”
In the past decade, many teachers have moved toward creating homogenous groups for reading and math within their heterogeneous classroom. One teacher who has 17 years of experience teaching in New Hampshire said that the second graders in her class showed up on the first day with a bewildering mix of strengths and weaknesses. Some children coasted through math worksheets in a few minutes, she said; others struggled to finish half a page. The swifter students, bored, would make mischief, while the slowest students would become frustrated, give up, and act out.
“My instruction aimed at the middle of my class, and was leaving out approximately two-thirds of my learners,” said this fourth grade teacher at Woodman Park Elementary in Dover, N.H. “I didn’t like those odds.”
So she completely reorganized her classroom. About a decade ago, instead of teaching all her students as one group, she began ability grouping, teaching all groups the same material but tailoring activities and assignments to each group. “I just knew that for me to have any sanity at the end of the day, I could just make these changes,” she said.
Flexible ability grouping, when used appropriately, works. According to a 2010 meta-analysis by Kelly Puzio and Glenn Colby, students who were grouped by ability within a class for reading were able to make up to an additional “half of a year’s growth in reading in one year.” Similarly, a 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study of students who were grouped by ability found that the performance of both high- and low-performing students significantly improved in math and reading, demonstrating the universal utility of this tool, particularly as our classrooms become more academically diverse.
In summary, I believe that teachers have a more difficult time today than ever before. Their classes are getting bigger, their budgets are smaller, and heterogeneous grouping for the class means that effective teaching requires splitting the class into homogenous groups that each require a different lesson plan. Teaching parts of a class separately leads to less quality time that a teacher can spend with each group. Without essential one-on-one instruction time, students suffer. If the class isn’t divided into 2 or 3 homogenous groups for lessons the students suffer even more, as they are denied level-appropriate learning.
The current system discriminates against the lower two-thirds of society
What I find surprising is that more people don’t realize that the practice of heterogeneous grouping is actually discriminatory to the lower two-thirds of society. Wealthier families typically live in neighborhoods with better school systems (with students that are more homogenous in skill levels); can readily afford tutors for their children; can provide after school access to learning centers; give their children prep courses for various subjects and for SATs; and if all else fails, send their offspring to a private school. Those in the lower two-thirds, economically speaking, have more limited access to additional help outside the classroom, cannot afford private school, often have parents without college education who are less able to help them, and may not even take an SAT prep course. Each of these put them at a disadvantage versus those that come from the upper economic strata of America.
I myself had hardworking parents who had not gone to college. My father was an immigrant and had to work before completing high school. But my education was accelerated because homogenous grouping was the norm at that time. This included being placed into a class of high performers who all received 3 years of curriculum in two years and therefore skipped a grade. I also was able to take a competitive test that enabled me to be accepted into Stuyvesant, one of the very high-end public high schools in New York City, geared toward helping public school students receive an honors course level education. I firmly believe that the access I had to be paired with students that were high achievers played a very important role in my subsequent success.
Technology provides a range of alternatives
One potential way to bridge the gap is by having multiple teachers in a classroom but I think this would be extremely unlikely to be funded out of constrained government resources. A second possibility is to provide teachers with the training and technical resources that could be used to enhance the student experience. All too often when technology is utilized, it is not integrated into curriculum and/or very complicated to use. However, in recent years, there have been advances in K-12 education through the use of technology that is relatively easy to use and integrate to curriculum. For example, an Azure portfolio company, Education.com has created online workbooks and games that are aligned to the Common Core and are sold to parents and teachers for a starting price of $49 per year, making a subscription affordable to everyone. Millions of teachers and parents in the K-5 levels now are basic members of the site, which offers weekly emails and limited educational resources that can be consumed free each month. With a Pro subscription, a teacher can print out unlimited workbooks, worksheets, and lesson plans for their class. The company estimates that roughly one billion worksheets are printed each year by parents and teachers for students to use. While teachers are likely to print worksheets that complement their current curriculum, parents can use printable worksheets and workbooks as supplemental material to help their kids in academic areas where their skills need strengthening. The fact that about 8 million parents and teachers come to the site in a peak month also indicates how strong the need is for these types of materials.
Education.com’s Brainzy program is a first step at individualized learning. It uses games to practice strategies for mastering core curriculum for students in kindergarten through 2nd grade. I have also met with a number of other companies who are creating products that can provide students with personalized learning tools. What Education.com and others are doing is still early steps in a process that I believe will lead to individualized education. If the United States keeps insisting on heterogeneous classroom composition but couples this with under-investing in education and requiring teachers to divide their time into separate lesson levels, then computer tools for the individual personalized instruction of each student appears to be the solution that can bridge the gap.
SOUNDBYTES
Stephen Curry picked up right where he left off last year scoring 40 points in the first game of the new season on strong shooting. Over the last 11 games, the Warriors remain undefeated behind Curry’s league leading scoring. After 11 games, Curry is averaging 33.4 points per game, a full 5 points ahead of the number two, James Harden, at 28.4 points per game. On Saturday night, in Curry’s 427th game, he surpassed the number of threes made by his father, Dell Curry, over his 1,083 game career. Earlier this year, we discussed why Curry deserved to be the clear NBA MVP and analyzed his scoring efficiency adjusting for his ability to hit threes from seemingly anywhere on the court (he was subsequently voted the MVP) .
Curry’s shooting has been even more dominant this year. Even based on “standard” statistics, Curry leads the pack not only in scoring average but also in field goal percentage. At 51.7% he trails only Blake Griffin, who has only taken 3 three-point attempts this season, in the top 10 scorers. Looking at “Field Goal Efficiency” (FGE%), a metric introduced in our previous post, that calculates a 3-point field goal as worth 1.5 times a 2-point field goal, we see Curry’s true dominance this season. Also, “True Shooting Percentage” (TS%) assumes that 1 of every 9 foul shots is part of a 3-point (or 4-point) play and therefore considers 2.25 foul shots as the same as one field goal attempt (since most pairs of foul shots replace a field goal attempt). Looking at these metrics we continue to see Curry’s clear dominance. Curry’s performance is off the charts as he is nearly 7 percentage points ahead of the second highest of the top ten scorers in FGE% and he is also well ahead of anyone else in TS%.
In a recent ESPN segment, Brad Daugherty called Curry “un-defendable”. If he continues to shoot the ball at this level, the road to a second consecutive championship and another MVP seems well paved.
[1] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). 65 educational systems ranked.
[2] Pearson Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment compares the performance of 39 countries and one region (Hong Kong) on two categories of education: Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment. The Index provides a snapshot of the relative performance of countries based on their education outputs.
[3] International Study Center at Boston College. Fourth graders in 57 countries or education systems took the math and science tests, while 56 countries or education systems administered the tests to eighth graders.
In our previous post we posed the potential for Stephen Curry to become a Unicorn (in venture this is a company that reaches $1 billion in value). While it was mostly for fun, on reflection we decided that it actually could prove valid. This post will walk you through why an athlete like Curry (or potentially James Harden, Russell Westbrook or Anthony Davis) could become a Unicorn should they be elevated to the elite status of a LeBron James.
The Precedent for Creating a Corporation Owning an Athlete’s Earnings Exists
In April 2014, Vernon Davis offered stock in his future earnings via a venture with Fantex, Inc. as part of a new financial instrument being sold by Fantex. Davis offered a 10% share of all future earnings from his brand marketing company to Fantex, which would then turn around and divide it into shares of a tracking stock that can be traded within their own exchange. The offering was 421,100 shares, valued at $10 each, for a total of $4.2 million. This implied a total value of the “Vernon Davis Corporation” of $42 million. Davis’ current salary is $4.7 million and endorsement income about $1.75 million for a total income of $6.5 million. Given that the longevity of football players is rarely into their mid-thirties coupled with Davis being over 30 at the time, it seems likely that he had no more than 3-4 years left in his playing career. Putting those facts together makes it appear that Davis was unlikely to earn much more than $42 million going forward and might earn less as we would expect his income to drop precipitously once he retired. So buying the stock was probably viewed as more of a symbol of support for Davis and its “market cap” appears about equal to his expected future earnings.
NBA Stars are Among the Highest Earning Athletes’
The current highest earner of endorsements in the NBA is LeBron James at about $44 million per year (Kevin Durant is second at $35 million). The highest contract in the league is Kobe Bryant at about $23 million per year (and had been $30 million previously) with the 10 highest players in the league making an average of over $21 million. Given the new TV contract scheduled to go into effect in the 2016-2017 season, it’s been projected that the cap will increase from about $63 million today to $90 million in 2017 and be nearly $140 million by 2025 (10 years from now, at age 37, Curry should still be playing). Let’s make the following assumptions:
Curry’s salary will go from a current level of $11 million in 2015 and 12 million in 2016 (4 other Warriors will be paid more that year) to about $30 million in 2017 assuming the top salaries tend to be about 1/3 of their team’s cap as they are today.
It will be up to $40 million in 2025, or less than 1/3 the projected $140 million cap.
His endorsements will reach midway between the current levels experienced by LeBron and Durant, to about $40 million by 2017 (they are currently at about $5.5 million from Under Armour)
His endorsement income will rise by about 10%/year subsequently, through 2025 to reach $92 million in 2025
He will continue to earn endorsement income (but will retire from playing) subsequent to the 2025 season.
The level post 2025 will average $60 million per year for 10 years and then go to zero.
The last assumption is based on observing the income of retired stars like Michael Jordan (earning $100 million/year 12 years after retirement), David Beckham (earned about $75 million the first year after retiring), Arnold Palmer (earned $42 million/year 40 years after winning his last tournament), Shaq ($21 million), Magic Johnson is now worth over $500 million. Each are making more now than the total they made while playing and, in several cases, more per year than in their entire playing careers. So assuming Curry’s income will drop by 1/3 after retirement is consistent with these top earners.
This puts his total income from 2016 through the end of 2035 at over $1.5 billion. All of the above assumptions can prove true if Curry continues to ascend to super-star status, which would be helped if the Warriors win the championship this year. They could even prove low if Curry played longer and/or remained an icon for longer than 10 years after retiring. Thankfully, Curry has remained relatively injury free and our analysis assumes that he remains healthy. Curry is not only one of the most exciting players to watch, but is also becoming the most popular player with fans around the league. Curry now ranks second overall in total uniform sales, behind LeBron James.
So while the concept of Stephen Curry as a Unicorn (reaching $1 billion in value) started as a fun one to contemplate with our last post, further analysis reveals that it is actually possible that Fantex or some other entity could create a tracking stock that might reach that type of valuation.
As a VC, I would love to invest in him!
SoundBytes:
In the recent game against the Blazers there was further validation of Curry’s MVP bid. Curry delivered eight 3-pointers, hit 17 of 23 shots and went 7-of-7 in his 19-point fourth quarter. His last two threes were a combined distance of 55 feet, setting a new record for threes in a season and breaking his own record!
To understand just how well Curry shot, his Field Goal Efficiency was 91% (he had 8 threes bringing his equivalent field goals to 21/23). Not only was this higher than anyone who scored 40 points this year or took at least 20 shots in a game, we believe it may be among the highest ever for someone taking 20 shots in a game.
As a comparison, the two Portland stars, Aldredge and Lillian, each had strong games and scored 27 and 20 points, respectively. But, to do that, they took 46 shots between them (double that of Curry) and only scored 2 more points in total for the extra 23 shots!
The 4th quarter performance by Curry, cited above, translates to a 114% FGE rating, which is averaging more than 100% shooting as he scored 16 points on 7 shots. When foul shots are taken into account, his True Shooting % was 137% as he scored 19 points on 8 field goal attempts (counting the one on which he was fouled).To draw a comparison, when Russell Westbrook scored 54 points against Portland on April 12 he took 43 shots, 20 more than Curry (23 more if we include shots that led to foul shots).
Much has been written about the importance of discovering and investing early in “Unicorns”, companies that eventually cross the $1 billion valuation threshold. In basketball, teams make tough decisions as to whether to sign individual players to contracts that can be worth as much as $120 million or more over six years. The top few players can earn a billion dollars over their career when endorsements are added to the equation, assuming they can last as long as a Kobe Bryant or Tim Duncan. Clearly part of the road to riches is getting the recognition as one of the elite. This year, several players previously thought of as “quite good” are emerging in the quest to be thought of as “great”. Nothing can help a player put his stamp on such a claim as much as winning the MVP. In the spirit of trying to identify a future “Unicorn” in professional basketball, I thought it would be fun to analyze the current crop of contenders.
Given an unusual emergence of multiple stars, this year’s NBA MVP race is one of the most hotly contested in years. There are five legitimate candidates: Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Anthony Davis and LeBron James. All of them are having spectacular seasons and in most years that would be good enough for them to win. But only one can take the MVP crown. LeBron is the reigning king of the league and has long ago hoisted his flag atop the mountain. But, he has won the MVP title a number of times and while he remains a solid choice, he is not a clear choice. Therefore, it appears almost certain that most voters will favor a candidate who has yet to win. In the last few weeks Davis seems to have faded from consideration so, in this post, I will provide the analysis that has led me to determine that Curry is a more worthy recipient than Westbrook and Harden.
Scoring
Basketball columnists and analysts often focus too much of their evaluation of success on a player’s scoring average. In an attempt to help understand a player’s full value, John Hollinger created a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) that incorporates several statistics in the hope it provides a single rating that determines the best player. While it is a truly worthy effort, we feel there is quite a bit of judgement incorporated in what value to place on different statistics. For example, it rewards players who take more shots even when the extra shots are 2-pointers at a low field goal percentage (taking extra 2-point shots at over a 31% increases the rating even though that is well below what the rest of his team would likely shoot). We would place more value on giving the ball up (and having a lower scoring average) than taking a low percentage shot.
I am surprised that the simplest calculation of scoring efficiency does not surface as a regularly reported statistic. Some sources occasionally report an “Adjusted Field Goal Percentage” (AFG%) that counts a 3-point field goal as worth 1.5 times a 2-point field goal. We believe this is the correct way of viewing a shooter’s effectiveness and called it field goal efficiency (FGE%). It calculates the percentage as the equivalent of 2-point field goals made per field goal attempt (FGA):
FGE% = (2-point shots made + 1.5 x 3-point shots made)/FGA
There is one statistic that analysts call True Shooting Percentage (TS%) that goes one step further. It also takes foul shots into account. It assumes that 1 of every 9 foul shots is part of a 3-point (or 4-point) play and therefore considers 2.25 foul shots as the same as one field goal attempt (since most pairs of foul shots replace a field goal attempt). TS% is calculated by adding the field goal attempt equivalent of foul shots to normal field goal attempts to determine the equivalent number of attempts used by a player. By dividing points scored by 2 we know how points scored equates to 2-point field goals made (FGME). This translated to the following formula for TS%:
Equivalent field goal attempts (EFGA) = FGA + FTA/2.25
FGME = points scored/2
TS% =FGME/EFGA
Now let’s compare Curry, Harden and Westbrook based on these statistics all on a per game basis:
Harden and Westbrook are neck-and-neck in scoring average, each about four points per game higher than Curry. But Curry plays fewer minutes per game and takes fewer shots. His shooting efficiency at 58.6% is by far the highest of the three by a significant amount (a full 14% higher than Westbrook and 7% higher than Harden). It is also the highest in the league for players that have taken at least 8 shots per game (which includes all of the top 100 players by scoring average). At over 90%, Curry is the number one foul shooter in the league. But Harden and Westbrook are also hitting roughly 85% of their foul shots. Therefore, the fact that they get fouled much more than Curry brings each of their TS%s closer to Curry’s. Still, Curry is a whopping 10% higher than Westbrook and 2.5% higher than Harden. It is apparent that the scoring average advantage is more a function of Curry playing fewer minutes and being more selective in his shots.
To see the impact of this we calculated their scoring average per 36 minutes played (which we consider about average for a team’s star) and points scored per 25 equivalent field goals attempts:
So, even if he played the same amount of time as Harden and Westbrook, Curry would trail in average points per game, primarily because he still would take fewer shots. But if he took the same number of equivalent shots he’d have a higher scoring average than both.
A Few Other Statistical Comparisons
While scoring efficiency is an important measure of a players value to his team, several other statistics like assists, rebounds, and steals are also considered quite relevant. To make comparisons fair, we adjusted to the average per 36 minutes for each:
For steals, Westbrook and Curry are close to dead even with Harden about 11% behind. However, Westbrook is the clear leader in rebounds and has 7% more assists than Curry with both well ahead of Harden.
Each of these three players leads their team’s offense. They all control the ball attempting to score themselves or assist others in scoring without turning the ball over, as every turnover is a lost scoring opportunity. The ratio of assists to turnovers helps capture effectiveness as a guard. On the defensive end they each can compensate for a portion of their turnovers by stealing the ball. The ratio of steals to turnovers captures how well they are able defensively to partly compensate for depriving their team of a scoring opportunity. But attempts to steal the ball can lead to more personal fouls. The ratio of steals to personal fouls helps understand defensive effectiveness. Here are the comparisons:
Harden and Westbrook are 25%-40% behind Curry in all of these categories. What the first ratio tells us is that Curry passes the ball more accurately and/or takes less risk so that he gets his assists without turning the ball over as frequently as the others. Another way of looking at it is that the extra 0.6 assists that Westbrook averages per 36 minutes comes at the expense of one extra turnover vs Curry. The steal/turnover ratio tells us that for every 3 turnovers Curry has, he is able to get the ball back twice through steals. The others recover less than half of their turnovers through steals. Finally the steals/personal foul ratio shows that Curry is quite effective defensively with a ratio that is over 30% better than either of the others.
Curry Creates the Most Team Success
So, what is the bottom line that helps capture the impact of the various statistics we have shown? Of course one measure is the fact that Curry has helped his team achieve a much better record. What other measure should be considered in evaluating a potential MVP’s impact on a team? Given Curry’s extremely high Field Goal Effectiveness, does his taking fewer shots help the team more than Harden and Westbrook taking more shots and scoring more? The league average for scoring per game is roughly 99.9 points (through about 76 games of the season). Each of the three help their team score at a higher rate than that, but Curry has led the Warriors to the highest scoring per game in the league. The comparison:
A natural question is whether this superior offensive performance comes at the expense of inferior defense. So we should include the average points given up per game by each team to round out the picture. Notice the Warriors allow fewer points per game than the league average while both the Thunder and the Rockets allow more than the league average. The combination for the Warriors means that they have the highest plus/minus in the league by quite a bit (the Warrior’s 10.4 is 60% higher than the Clippers who are second at 6.5), and it is nearly double the sum of the plus/minus for the Rockets and Thunder combined.
The league also maintains plus/minus differential by player. That is how many more points a team scores than opponents when that player is on the floor. In all three cases, it seems clear the players are driving the team’s effectiveness as their differential exceeds that of the teams (meaning that without them on the floor, the other team, on average, outscores their team). This statistic takes offense and defense into account and helps measure the influence a player has on his team’s effectiveness.
This means that Curry is responsible for a 12.0-point improvement in plus/minus when on the floor versus how the team does when he isn’t, while both Westbrook and Harden improve their team’s plus/minus by 5.0 points. Given his top score in plus/minus, much higher Field Goal Effectiveness and TS%, combined with driving the Warriors to the top record in the league, it seems that Curry should be the league MVP and is on his way to becoming a Unicorn. As a VC, I would love to invest in him!
SoundBytes:
The recent ESPN selection of the top 20 players of the past 20 years is quite enlightening in how well the NBA markets their elite players compared to other sports. Despite the fact that football and baseball have a multiple of the number of players and are more popular sports, five of the 20 were from the NBA:
Number 1: Michael Jordon
Number 2: LeBron James
Number 8: Kobe Bryant
Number 11: Shaquille O’Neal
Number 14: Tim Duncan
There were 3 from football (all quarterbacks) and 2 each from baseball, tennis and soccer. And one each from 6 other sports (hockey, boxing, golf, swimming, track and cycling).
The four emerging stars (this includes Anthony Davis) we have discussed all have the potential to be on a future such list but their status among the greatest will also be dependent on their ability to win multiple championships. Winning MVPs makes a player great, winning multiple championships makes them one of the greatest.
Last night’s game against the Blazers was further validation’s of Curry’s MVP bid. Curry delivered eight 3-pointers, hit 17 of 23 shots and went 7-of-7 in his 19-point fourth quarter. His last two threes were a combined distance of 55 feet, setting a new record for threes in season and breaking his own record!
SOUNDBYTES II 