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“The Intel of NFC: One ‘Ground Floor’ Stock Every Opportunistic Investor Should Snap Up Today.”

Sleuthing out the subject of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers new "special report"

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, October 10, 2013

David Gardner has touted and teased many stocks for both his Rule Breakers and his Stock Advisor services — probably, in fact, we’ve covered more Motley Fool teaser ads here at Stock Gumshoe than we have any other publisher (and according to the quick calculations of one of our readers, they’ve had more winners than other publishers over the last couple years), so we usually get a big ol’ busload of questions whenever one of their teaser ads launches.

And this one is no different — the pitch sounds familiar, so I think we’re seeing a re-tease of an idea that Gardner pitched a couple years ago, but they’ve updated it with some new catalysts and info so let’s check it out and see if they’re still recommending the same stock as their “Intel of NFC”.

NFC, if you’ve not been paying close attention to smart phone chatter over the last few years, stands for Near Field Communication — it’s one technology that’s being pushed for mobile payments, basically a way of transmitting data over very short distances without touching, as with the smart card you might wave to get out of your office parking garage … or the chip in your cell phone that lets you wave your cell phone at the credit card reader to pay at the grocery store. NFC chips in credit cards are also the reason that you can buy aluminum frequency-blocking wallets at SkyMall, and the reason why some security companies who have solutions for wireless payments are such good candidates for stock teases and promotions (like IWSY, teased by Louis Basenese back in June and now back down after the exaggerated promise failed to be immediately fulfilled).

NFC is not, of course, the only mobile payment system — but it is a widely-anticipated possible winner in the “how will we pay for stuff in the future” sweepstakes. So what’s our pitch from the Fool today?

Well, the promises is (of course) a bit ridiculous as they try to whet your appetite:

“Just imagine being able to buy shares of Nokia when a mere 1% of the population was using cell phones… or Apple when only 1% of people had even heard of an “iPod”… or Intel when just under 1 in one 100 people were using a PC. Talk about getting in on the ground floor!”

And their answer to the “is this really going to take off” question is a catalyst in the form of a recent patent filing, so it looks still to me like the stock pitch is about the same as it was in 2011 … but this patent stuff is new:

“Take a peek at US Patent #20130211971

“For years, NFC naysayers have been chirping that ‘if Apple doesn’t use it, it must not be important.’ That all changed on August 15. Now that Apple has started filing patents based exclusively on this revolutionary technology, even the most boneheaded pundits can’t deny it: NFC is the wave of the future….

“Since the first NFC-enabled phone was released in 2007, it’s been clear to the majority of the tech world that Near Field Communication is a cornerstone of a mobile payment future.

“And considering that consumers around the world put $21.6 trillion on plastic each and every year, I’m sure you can understand why this technology has forward-thinking capitalists all hot and bothered.

“So why hasn’t everyone and their grandmother piled in too?

“Simple: because up until just this past August, Apple ignored NFC altogether—leaving airheaded industry commentators to speculate that Apple was coming up with ‘something better.'”

Then they get into some more big-name NFC-users to bolster the argument that the technology is just on the edge of taking off:

“And given that Google is making a major push into NFC, it probably comes as no surprise that Microsoft is planning to include it in the newest version of its operating system for smartphones — or that it now holds at least 14 patents referencing the technology.

“It’s also probably no surprise that rather than risk being left behind forever, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express have started partnering with the likes of Samsung, AT&T, and Verizon to offer their own NFC-enabled devices.

“Given the fact that its peers have already sold over 150 million NFC devices, it’s no wonder Apple is scrambling to catch up!

“Of course, once you have a look at the numbers, it becomes pretty obvious why these tech heavyweights are all betting so much on the future of NFC…

“According to The Wall Street Journal, $32 billion worth of purchases were made using mobile devices in 2010 alone. And if that doesn’t surprise you, this certainly will…

“An eye-opening new report from industry experts at I.E. Market Research says that number could easily jump to $950 billion by 2015 — meaning we could see the value of this industry grow by nearly 30-fold over the course of a single five-year period!”

David Gardner apparently believes that “this company is uncannily similar to an early Intel,” and they throw in a few charts to show you just how rich you would have been if you had bought Intel shortly after it released the dominant 386 processor, possibly turning your $5,000 in 1985 into well over $600,000 at the peak of the dot-com market around 2000.

So … is this company like Intel was before the boom in PC shipments began to build in the mid-1980s? Here’s a bit more from the ad:

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“… when it comes to manufacturing the crucial, behind-the-scenes components that allow NFC to function in the first place, this company stands head and shoulders above all the rest.

“In fact, not only is it the clear leader in this explosive new industry (Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Ericsson, Nintendo, HP, Cisco, and even Apple are already all top clients, and analysts have conservatively estimated it could control as much as 70% of the market)…

“But it actually helped to invent this world-changing technology — making it far and away the most trusted and highly regarded company in its field (which is why its CEO was recently able to describe his company’s dominant position as ‘Intel-like’….)”

So yes, this is still the same company David Gardner started teasing back in 2011 … who is it?

This is NXP Semiconductor (NXPI), a large Dutch analog chip company. David Gardner started pitching it in teaser ads in May 2011, just as it was in the middle of falling from about $33 to $15 over a several-month period, so it didn’t look good for a while and the anticipated earnings didn’t show up that year … but they did gradually start to appear, they paid down quite a bit of debt (the company was one of those leveraged buyouts by a private equity consortium, which loaded them up with debt and reorganized then took them public again about four years ago), and the stock has recently been bouncing around in the high-$30s.

We do also get a few more specifics, in case you’re curious:

“In fact, this company actually operated as a division within one of the most best-known electronic companies in the world for over 50 years before being taken over by one of the world’s top private equity firms and then spun out as a stand-alone company…

“Today it holds nearly 14,000 patents, employs some 28,000 people, and has operations in more than 25 countries — yet because it’s not headquartered in the United States it’s still virtually unheard of.

“And thanks to Apple’s ‘holier-than-thou’ refusal to incorporate NFC into its products – which we’ve already seen should be coming to a tidy end — this stock has been beaten down right along with plenty of other top-notch growth stocks out there…

“Meaning you’ve got a rare opportunity to snap up Hope Diamond potential at cubic zirconium prices.”

Is that true? Well, the stock is — just like it was in 2011 when we uncovered the teaser the first time around — quite inexpensive based on forward-looking earnings estimates, and quite expensive based on the past year’s actual earnings (it’s trading for about 99X the trailing year’s earnings, and about 9X expected 2014 earnings). That time around the forward earnings estimated didn’t come through — but if they do so this time, then certainly paying 10X earnings for a company with that kind of earnings growth would be reasonable.

Oh, and they’re releasing their quarterly earnings in about two weeks. It might be that no one will notice, particularly if the US Capitol has fallen into a sinkhole thanks to the efforts of too many politicians trying to dig themselves out of trouble at once, but they are expected to post better than 80 cents per share in earnings, a jump of more than 50% from the year-ago period, so expectations are high. NXPI has beaten analyst expectations for several quarters in a row now, and the relatively minor “beat” last quarter helped the stock to jump 10%+ in the days immediately after the report, so even though this is a big $10 billion company there can certainly be a lot of volatility.

NXPI is far from being a “pure play” on NFC chips — they are certainly the largest player in that market, and they are pushing to maintain “Intel-like” market share in the 70% neighborhood, but they have substantial competitors in this space and they are very active in other businesses. They just lost the Samsung smart phone NFC chip business to Broadcom this year, for example, but they were also one of the largest suppliers of chips for the automotive market again in 2012, a sector that has nothing really to do with NFC, and they are apparently making the motion-sensing chip (the M7) in the new iPhone as well (again, not an NFC chip — the iPhones still don’t have NFC chips).

And actually, I think that’s probably a pretty good thing — NFC has been proposed as a mobile touchless payments solution for a decade now, and has been introduced in some areas, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near a groundswell of consumer demand or a guarantee that payments through NFC chipsets will become a huge part of the market. Phones are so incredibly capable right now that it’s very hard to guess what the winning solution will be. Starbucks, for example, is probably the leading retailer in accepting mobile payments, with 10% of their purchases going through via mobile phones now, but those aren’t NFC chip purchases — they use barcodes displayed on the phone screen, like in Apple’s passbook, to let people make purchases using their prepaid Starbucks Card accounts. That was likely an easier and faster rollout than an NFC solution would have been, since there just aren’t nearly as many NFC-enabled phones as there are smart phones with screens that can display a barcode … and since every Starbucks cash register already has a barcode scanner.

That’s not to say NFC won’t become ubiquitous — it is getting installed into more and more phones — just that it’s not necessarily going to become the life-changing technology for retail purchases next year, and if it does get that far it won’t necessarily be true that NXPI’s NFC chips will bring them massive revenue increases for a decade or a monopoly position in a much larger market like Intel enjoyed with the “Wintel” monopoly in PCs. There is more competition in this space, and many, many more companies (including Intel) that could be competitive in designing and manufacturing NFC chips or otherwise play a major role in mobile payments. And really, frankly, as a practical matter it’s hard to imagine a world where the lion’s share of mobile payments don’t pass through the networks of Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA), the two companies who have owned the transition to a cashless society will probably continue to do so in the touchless and mobile society, even if it seems like I’m always too grouchy about having missed those stocks at bargain prices to buy them.

But the broader trends of more chips in more places, doing more sensor-like things, plays into the strengths of NXP Semiconductor too, as it does other big companies in the space like STMicroelectronics (STM) and Broadcom (BRCM) as well as smaller companies like Invensense (INVN), and NXPI does seem to have been getting a decent number of “design wins” lately to get their chips built into more and more products, and the leading position in NFC chips is probably theirs to lose.

And really, the market knows this — at 10X next year’s earnings you’re probably not thinking that you’re buying the Intel of 1986, that’s more like the valuation you’d assign to the Intel of, well, 2013. There’s more uncertainty with NXPI than for a behemoth like Intel, but there’s also dramatically higher growth potential in the next few years if the analysts are guessing correctly. David Gardner isn’t the only one predicting a bright future for NFC, of course — even in just the little world of hype-y investment newsletters we saw Andy Obermueller pitch NFC (and maybe NXPI) as one of the hottest investment opportunities of 2014.

So what do you think? Interested in buying NXPI for their relatively diverse semiconductor offerings, and do you think they’ve got a chance to be the “Intel of NFC?” Let us know with a comment below.

P.S. Yes, Apple did file a patent for “gifting digital media files” partly via NFC over the Summer. You can see it here if you’re curious — looks to me like it’s just another potential expansion of iTunes, potentially letting you buy a copy of a song for the friend who’s sitting next to you. Apple has filed for or been assigned at least dozens of other patents that reference the use of NFC technology over the last five or ten years, so I don’t know why this one would be a particular omen of impending Apple love for NFC. They haven’t been ignoring the technology, they just haven’t built the chips into their products (yet, at least — every round of new iPhones includes a rumor that NFC will be built in, so … prepare for rumors about iPhone 6 with NFC next year!)

I own shares of Intel, but not of any other stocks mentioned above. I wont’t trade in any stocks covered for at least three days.

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Co
Co
October 10, 2013 4:47 pm

I already have NXPI. And sold covered calls for $100/contract. 🙂
It doesn’t matter if NXPI *will* be the Intel of NFC, rather whether Gardner can *convince* people that NXPI will be the Intel of NFC.

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Matt
Member
Matt
October 10, 2013 6:18 pm

I have been holding NXPI since Dec 2011 and am up 142% on the current shares I have left and 103% on my whole position. This stock cancled out my drastic losses on MAKO surgical last year (if only I had ignored that one!). I’m glad to see TMF has this stock back in favor.

I originally picked up on this using .pdfs available on the motley fool site using the google string site:g.fool.com filetype:pdf. Unfortunately they added a robots exclusion to their site now so most of the good teasers available by that method are no longer there.

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Alastair
Guest
Alastair
October 11, 2013 2:42 pm
Reply to  Matt

If only you’d held onto Mako Surgical a little longer. Rumours of takeover have sent their shares up dramatically (I’m actually in profit from my original purchases now, having been on a loss).

I’ve got shares of NXP too and am optimistic on their future potential.

Matt
Member
Matt
October 11, 2013 4:15 pm
Reply to  Alastair

I actually did hold on to MAKO until 29.5 which still put me down 9%. I mean I can’t complain about making most of my money back but the time value of money on the year and a half wait after that massive drop just puts me that much further behind.

sonetirot
sonetirot
October 10, 2013 7:30 pm

As consumer: I already have visa, mastercard and Amex without paying any card fee. Why should I care about NFC on my phone?
What happen is I lost my phone and someone use to buy other stuff?
Will I be covered like credit card?
What is benefit to me as consumer?
Will I have to pay extra fee?
I already have reward using Amex/costco and credit card rebate. I doubt it would be mass consumer acceptance. I pass. I rather have something simple and sleep at night. Main thing is NOT to lose money (unless it has very good odds of winning)
BTW: I learn ALNY ad BOFI from stock gumshoes then I do my own research about it. I happens to pick only this 2 stocks from stock gumshoes and both have rise so quick in short time. I then join irregular membership. Thanks

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Deborah G Flynn
October 11, 2013 6:52 am
Reply to  sonetirot

Call me old fashioned , call me conservative call me dumb BUT I think most people are always looking for that NEXT BIG THING and most of us will miss it. IF I respinded to all of the teases of course some would be stallar. The reality is IF I had followed the Motley Fool’s advice I would have not be as far ahead as I am today. I made three “ghost” portfoilios and tracked them. My own picks with the help of Travis’s advice has me 23% further ahead. My advice read the teases look at the underlying fundamentals of the company and make educated choices. My investment stratagy is very simple. Buy good companies that have a prospect for steady growth and pay better than average dividends. Take the profits from my more speculative trades and put them into those. A very steady growth has occured in good and bad markets.I’m not a fan of the MF. Yes they have had some great wons but unless you have a very long horizon[I don’t I’m63] then preserve your better companies and play with a few specs hoping for a home run. Don’t cry when they tank

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Matt
Member
Matt
October 11, 2013 9:23 am
Reply to  sonetirot

In 2015 most credit card issuers will have to go to a chip and pin system. At this point merchants not credit card issuers will be responsible for fraud. This has been the case in Europe for years now and the rate of CC fraud is much lower there.

NFC works similar to a chip and pin system in that it must read the NFC tag and then you must enter a 4-5 digit pin. If you lose your CC anyone can use it strait away. If you lose your phone with NFC as your CC, the thief requires a PIN access your account.

The USA is way behind the rest of the world on chip-and-pin and NFC is the answer.

Timddeb
Guest
Timddeb
October 10, 2013 7:37 pm

NFC is going to become controversial when people find out how easy it is to read the devices without the owner being aware. There will be the usual spate of scare stories most of which wil be apocraphyll but with some basis in truth, however, as always with human beings the convenience will overcome the reservations. Retailers will push it hard because it will greatly increase their revenue per paid worker hour (is there a gender neutral for man-hour) and the banks want it because it stops the control slipping away from them. SO the only question is who is going to be the winner? I would go with the biggest in the field

syd
Member
October 10, 2013 8:21 pm

UNTIL NFC IS —PART NXP AND FINGER-PRINT– -THEY GOT ” O “

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finder0522
finder0522
March 14, 2014 6:15 pm
Reply to  syd

I’d love to join the Yahoo group… but the friggin Captchya system is on the fritz (as well as the alternative audio Captchya logon.

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Roberto v
Guest
Roberto v
October 11, 2013 2:23 am

IWSY is making a comeback mixing biometrics with NFC, Louis Basenese teased about it and the stock shot up 100+% but has given those gains since Louis predictions did not com true. Type Louis Basenese iwsy on gumshoe and Travis has an article on it.
We also developed a group/yahoo forum for stocks gumshoe followers SGfollowers@yahoogroups.com
Come and join, we just started.

Berto

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abot100
abot100
October 11, 2013 9:15 am

There is so much effort and free content in GS that makes me hesitant taking the traffic somewhere else. I would like to hear Travis opinion on this. It may be a two way deal but I do not want to encourage it without knowing the convenience to GS.

mdfOffman
Member
October 11, 2013 11:03 am

Dear Travis,
I love your work and admire your ability to see through the teases but please, please stop paining me by frequently using “couple” as an adjective. It is not an adjective. It is a noun and it needs “of” after it to make it work like an adjective. There is no such thing as “a couple weeks” or “a couple ads”. “A couple of weeks” and “a couple of ads”, please, please.
I want to be able to read you every day without wincing every day 🙂
Best regards,
Martin

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Gene
Gene
October 13, 2013 7:31 pm

Well, couple mistakes is not to bad. I hope you don’t loose your money on this. : )

Elliot Sedlecky
Guest
Elliot Sedlecky
October 11, 2013 11:39 am

Anyone here in IWSY? I’m down 32% after a little bit of a recovery … I was down almost 50% on Monday. Wondering if I should hold on or get out.

Teddi Knight
Guest
October 11, 2013 12:08 pm

While the phone seems secure I was surprised to read a report about how many people keep their passwords on their phone. My European friends were shocked when I advised them perhaps don’t keep your PIN on your phone or if you do at least use a passphrase to secure the phone.
For investing, I still prefer VISA. I primarily sell puts, but for Visa I have done both the stock and selling puts as well. My returns have been stellar with my capital more than quadrupled since the IPO in 2007. Personally I still prefer strong stocks that have a leadership position in their industries. All my Visa trades are online at fullyinformed.com That way if something unforeseen happens I can work my way out of a loss and turn it back into a profit. Meanwhile I will keep an eye on NXPI and see if it makes any inroads against the traditional credit card companies. I cannot imagine MasterCard and VISA giving up any of their market share. I am sure they will be in there defending their turf. This may though increase the volatility of trading in Visa and MasterCard which would be wonderful for my selling options (puts and calls) strategies. Thanks for the “sleuthing” out this one.

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Holistic Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy - Los Angeles
Guest

Thanks again for your info. As many times, you put to rest my desire to pay for these newsletters, which overpromise and underdeliver. They are so practised at stimulating any “get rich quick” fibre of my being, but you extinguish it with your bucket of cold water
every time.

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Scott Herford
Guest
October 13, 2013 10:10 pm

Retinal scan!
Can anybody please direct me to information on the mobile phone mobile data provider discussed in early october? Thank you in advance.

Roberto v
Guest
Roberto v
October 14, 2013 2:05 am

I was in IWSY but got out before the selling happened, email me personally.

Berto

Eric
Guest
Eric
October 30, 2013 3:47 pm

You dont need to embed chips with any phone to have NFC–and Apple can haev any phone NFC enabled–with a jack from OTIV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-3fS9Zy-wg

John
Guest
John
January 12, 2014 5:43 pm

NFC the next Intel…The technology will be used shortly over the next couple of years. The promise is great. I still feel the banks are going to the best bet. They will be controlling the funds backing each transaction. I think the mnf. of the readers/terminals is the investment play. Just think of how many of these machines need to be produced world wide for this NFC / Smartphone phenomenon? Also, the only glitch I see is the way one will talk to the online supplier. How will the smartphone communicate with Amazon, Walmart, Sears online stores? If one uses the smartphone device to do the shopping, then I can see the link. But if from a pc, there is no link unless a cable is connected etc. I think the ability of this type of technology to grow will happen. And it is a good bet, money can be made on the expansion of it`s use.

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Frederik
Guest
Frederik
April 11, 2014 7:25 pm
Reply to  John

NFC on the computer of course.

Ed Dennis
Guest
Ed Dennis
April 29, 2014 5:25 pm

Can’t we just have an APP for that? While the hardware is being touted, I wonder how many are writing APPs to accomplish the same thing. The problem here is people like Gardner sell themselves on a path and fall in love with it. The fact is that if we have learned nothing about life, the fact that the smart phone will get involved is inevitable. Now given that the phone is already smart why do we presume that a chip will be necessary to enable it to conduct transactions? An if a chip IS needed, why does it have to be internalized? I see people moving money all the time (buying and selling, but mostly buying) using a little device that reads credit cards that is plugged into the iPhone or iPad (Square maybe).
I really think this can be accomplished with an APP. Now we know this will require a two device system to work. A sender and a reader. I feel more comfortable with a reader that I can see reading my device that one using some random radio signal. My Gosh, anyone can intercept a radio signal and how would I know? Give me an optical scanner that could read my account information generated by an APP on my phone. I don’t want an RFID reader grabbing my data out of the air without my knowledge. Apple will do this with an APP and leave the rest of the world behind AGAIN!

bwlrd3
bwlrd3
July 10, 2014 2:03 pm

Your analyses and commentaries so clear and incisive and your readers so brilliant and well-informed that I decided to become a member one day after I discovered your site in search of a counterweight to David Gardner’s advertisement , “The Intel of NFC.” nts .” Although I currently subscribe to several newsletters, I realize that most of the sources I have been depending on for investment advice “overpromise and underdeliver.” in the words of one of your astute members.
The much-needed service that you provide benefits the neophyte as well as the seasoned investor. Thank you.
Bwlrd3

bwlrd3
\

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Genaro
Guest
July 18, 2014 9:11 pm

Interesting Read

Altaf
Guest
February 8, 2015 10:43 pm

Any guess which NFC chips makers’ stock will explode? after pre-IPO?

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Herb
Member
Herb
December 31, 2016 10:23 am

Qualcomm to Acquire NXP OCT 27, 2016 – they mention $110 per share in press release.
does this change anything?

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