by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | August 21, 2014 2:18 pm
I think I saw this ad a few months ago and didn’t write about it for one reason or another, but it just started a heavy rotation again — so let’s have a gander.
David Gardner[1] is a growth stock dynamo — he and his brother Tom founded the Motley Fool[2] as an AOL chat room decades ago, and he has rightly been credited with some tremendous long-term returns over the years because of his faith in massive growth stories like AOL, Amazon, Netflix, Marvel, Priceline and others. Often stocks that I worried were expensive before they went up another 1,000%.
Of course, that comes with some downside, too — he does have a pretty good long-term record at Rule Breakers[3] (his growth stock letter) and at Stock Advisor[4] (which he and Tom put out together), beating the market over the long term if not over recent years, but his newsletters also put out at least a couple stock ideas a month and have done so for more than ten years… and the average return beat the S&P for those few folks who bought every stock and held through ups and downs for five years or more, but there have certainly been plenty of stinkers and mediocre ideas along the way. That’s the seemingly unavoidable downside of buying high-growth, highly-valued stocks: Many of the stories don’t play out, even if you’re a pretty good stock picker.
So with that out of the way, what’s David Gardner’s pick this time around?
It has to do with iBeacons. This is Apple’s new technology for insider location mapping — as in, knowing where you are inside a store or a stadium, which should enable advertisers (or the store you’re in) to send targeted information to your phone. So if you’re browsing through the racks of pants at Brooks Brothers and you want your phone to know you’re there and ping you with a 10% off coupon for suits, well, you may soon be in luck.
Here’s how the Fool ad pitches it:
“The shocking announcement that has Silicon Valley’s smartest investors asking…
‘Is Ecommerce Too Big to Fail?’
“August 21, 2014 – One Silicon Valley Company doesn’t think so.“And it’s now aiming a brilliant new consumer technology straight at a segment of the market that Goldman Sachs predicts will more than triple in size by 2018.
“Incredibly, no one even saw it coming.
“Wired magazine declares it ‘exciting’ and says it has ‘all sorts of compelling use cases.’
“Businessweek called it this company’s ‘secret weapon.'”
The “announcement” is all about how there was an almost-unnoticed slide in a presentation in San Francisco that was overlooked by almost everyone … except, of course, for your Motley Fool cognoscenti.
“For three days each June, a beautiful three-story convention center in downtown San Francisco becomes the center of the tech universe.
“In an industry known for big announcements… this is the place for big announcements….
“The keynote speaker – head of software at one of Silicon Valley’s most inventive companies – had just unveiled the revolutionary redesign of his company’s flagship product.
“But this new, cutting-edge system wasn’t the most important announcement made that day.
“Not by a long shot.
“A new, disruptive consumer technology was.
“Well… that is…
“If you call the presence of a single, eight-letter word… hidden on a text-heavy slide… much of an ‘announcement’
“That was it.
Are you getting our free Daily Update
"reveal" emails? If not,
just click here...“A lone, three-syllable word. Buried among 85 other words.
“On a slide that appeared for just 33 seconds. In the last few minutes of the two-hour address.
“It’s no wonder the whole world missed it!
“Actually… let me stop there.
“I guess I should say ‘It’s no wonder most of the world missed it.’
“Because a small handful of astute investors did notice that word.”
That, of course, is the word “iBeacon” … and it was introduced as part of iOS7 at the Apple developers conference (WWDC) in June of 2013. It’s still very much a “being tested” idea, basically the ability to have “beacons” inside a space that can connect with and share information with your iPhone using low-energy bluetooth. (There’s a pretty good, basic description of it from Cnet her[5]e if you’re curious).
And yes, it was not introduced to great fanfare — it was just one of several new technologies enabled by the new operating system. There was quite a bit of chatter about it among Apple bloggers and such in the weeks following, but it’s not generating headline news the way that new iPhone did, or the way the next iPhone will in a few weeks.
Will it be revolutionary and be the big savior of “brick and mortar” retailers as it enables a better mobile connection with their browsers and customers… and, perhaps, gets a step closer to a workable “phone commerce” system? It’s awfully early to guess, but that’s part of the hope and promise (the Fool has touted NXP Semiconductor several times in the past[6], partly because of the promise of “near field communication” chips in phones as a replacement for credit cards — this is different, but partially aiming at the same thing: finding a secure way to interact with customers through their phones and accept payment from phones through some sort of “digital wallet”).
But what’s the deal? The Fool is not recommending Apple (AAPL)[7] based on this iBeacon technology, nor are they recommending the various companies who could make the (presumably inexpensive and commoditized) iBeacon devices themselves. So who does David Gardner think is worth an investment based on this story?
“In the time since this group of investors noticed that hidden word, the under-the-radar investment I’ll tell you about over the next few minutes has handed them a hefty 40% return on their money.
“Now… don’t get me wrong… a quick 40% on your money is pretty good. I’d take it any day of the week….
“A quick 40% is just the beginning for this investment.”
So what is this under-the-radar investment that will make us great gains thanks to the “iBeacon?” More from the Fool:
“We can sneak in with an investment in the little-known “background platform” that makes that technology work.
“In fact, the world-class investor I’ve been telling you about today believes this company is poised for a huge, long-term run.
“And so far he’s been spot on with his predictions about this company…
“It’s up 687% since he first recommended it – over FOUR TIMES better than the S&P 500!
“I’ll explain how you can also sneak in through this same backdoor in a second (which this investor believes is still poised to go up at least another 200%).”
Then we get some more reiteration about why this is such a hot area:
“Ecommerce – at least in the form we’re familiar with – is finished as the “big thing” in retail….
“The experience a person has while mobile shopping is all that matters right now.
“… the massive growth of mobile commerce, and the resulting stagnation of ecommerce – may actually be driven by an increase in people using their mobile devices while shopping offline.
“In fact, earlier this year a Gallup poll found that the vast majority of Americans – 81% – are actually shopping at brick-and-mortar stores in the same amounts or even more often as a result of mobile device use.”
Which gets us, eventually, after some more scenarios of your improved shopping experiences, and some more heady thoughts of future gains, to the point that they’re trying to make: That the solution will not be in the actual iBeacon devices but in the software that makes them connect to your phone and do something compelling.
“You see, iBeacons are nothing more than a location signal. They simply determine where your device is inside the store.
“When it comes to the integrated shopping experience… all the “events” that make a seamless digital-to-physical ‘iStore’ interaction come to life…
“iBeacon technology doesn’t make any of those events happen.
“The connected app on your phone does.
“Without the app that makes everything work – in your phone, and in the cloud – none of this is possible.
“Which makes this the modern equivalent of Microsoft Windows in the 1980s and 90s“
Not a mild promise. But finally, then, we get to some specifics about the stock:
“This is where we find our backdoor… by investing in the backend that powers the entire integrated retail experience: the platform that’s used to develop and then run the apps that make this a reality.”
How does this teased company make money? More from the ad:
“Will this company be the next Microsoft? Impossible to say.
“After all, few companies in history have delivered the returns that Microsoft did through the 1980s and 90s (more than 60,000%!).
“But it is following a very similar strategy… albeit with one important, and profitable, difference: monthly recurring fees.
“You see, like Microsoft did with Windows-based software, this company openly lets its customers develop apps on its platform (and makes it as easy as possible for them to do so).
“Then, those retailers pay a monthly fee to keep using the platform to do all the data analysis and integration that bring the iStore experience to life.
“So as long as the retailer wants to continue running iBeacons in-store, it keeps paying that monthly fee for the platform. That’s a guaranteed, recurring revenue stream.
“Multiply that by the estimated 20,000 iBeacon systems that will be in place in the next year, extend it years into the future, and you can see a major reason why David believes this company’s value could go through the roof.”
And finally, in case that’s not enough in the way of clues, we get this last wee tidbit:
“… in just the first quarter this platform was publicly available, the company outperformed Wall Street’s expectations by $21 million and then increased its guidance for the year by $100 million.
“Not bad considering the product wasn’t released until halfway through the quarter!
“Gartner also reports that this market will grow by more than 500% this year, and that our Rule Breaker has the largest share of the market.”
So who is behind what they’re calling “the one customer platform to connect everything?”
We toss those clues into the Thinkolator … and, frankly, I think you might be a bit disappointed in the result — this is Salesforce.com (CRM)[8].
Which David Gardner has been teasing (and presumably recommending) for years — it was one of his “Cloud Computing” picks back in 2010, which we covered here[9], and the ad implies that he first recommended it in early 2009 when it was in the neighborhood of $8-10 (split adjusted). So it has certainly done well so far, the stock is now in the mid-$50s.
It’s also a lightning rod, with Porter Stansberry[10] calling CEO the “next corporate psychopath” last Summer and seemingly recommending a short sale of CRM (it’s up about 20% since then), and with pretty much every value investor using CRM as an example of the kind of ridiculous, momentum driven growth stories that go up for no fundamental reason.
CRM is the poster child for cloud computing[11] and momentum growth, and that has continued to work out pretty well for them despite the fact that they haven’t had a profit since 2011 and they’ve never traded for much less than 100X earnings (it’s 70-90X next year’s forecasted earnings right now, depending on whose estimates you use). It just doesn’t seem possible that a company could get to this size (market cap $34 billion) without generating any profit for shareholders… but sometimes that works out as long as the company continues to generate dramatic revenue growth. Companies like Amazon (AMZN)[12] and CRM can apparently keep investors happy with that revenue growth and market share growth that allows for imaginings of future profits, in these cases enough investors believe in the continuing business growth that they are willing to wait for earnings and ignore the continuing pretty dramatic dilution of stock awards and options[13] (CRM issues another 20-30 million shares a year, presumably mostly to employees).
The top-line growth is really there, and it has been phenomenal for years, particularly for such a large company — gross profit (revenue minus direct costs of that revenue) has almost tripled over four years — but they are paying for it. Operating expenses have risen faster (more than tripling), and the share count has gone up by 20%. The company’s most recent forecast (in their quarterly release[14]) is for a non-GAAP profit of about 50 cents a share, so that’s where the current forward PE of ~100 comes in (by GAAP, which includes the $600 million or so of stock-based compensation — almost as much as they spend on R&D — they will have another money-losing year).
And yes, they do apparently lead in market share for integrating iBeacons in their platform — but you have to like CRM’s core business quite a lot to buy the stock, I can’t see that the iBeacon business “backbone” for mobile commerce apps is going to drive their revenue dramatically higher by itself… it will, presumably, be important for a lot of their customers who use mobile apps and want to integrate their customer data into those apps, eventually including “iBeacon” proximity information, but that’s one part of a puzzle.
As of this past quarter, Salesforce.com revenue is about half from their “Sales Cloud” services[15] at $577 million for those three months, a quarter from “Service Cloud”[16] at $295 million, somewhat smaller is their “Marketing Cloud/ExactTarget [17]#8221; product at $111 million, and then the app platform (Salesforce1 Platform) is wrapped in with “other” to combine for about a tenth of Salesforce.com revenues ($165 million). Those are all great revenue streams, and they are delightfully “locked in” and recurring because customers pay per user, per month and these huge, interconnected systems are not easily learned or adopted (which means it’s not easy to move to a competitor). I love the business, but I just can’t get my head around the valuation… which is the same thing I said about CRM four years ago, so you might want to take my curmudgeonliness with a grain of salt.
And if they start putting iBeacons in the dressing rooms to make my iPhone ping and offer me a larger size when my iBelt notices that i’m about to pop a seam, I’ll just stay home.
But it’s not my money, it’s yours — so what do you think? Will David Gardner be correct in predicting “at least 200% more” in gains for CRM after he’s enjoyed being right for 600% or so? Or is this heady valuation going to catch up with Marc Benioff’s company sometime soon? Let us know which way you lean — just use the friendly little comment box below.
Disclosure: I do own Apple, which I mentioned above. Don’t own any of the other stocks mentioned, and I won’t trade any of them for at least three days
Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/motley-fool-rule-breakers/ibeacons-and-the-motley-fools-inside-the-istore-the-one-stock-to-own-when-apple-takes-over-ecommerce/
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what a horrible idea. It is bad enough being barraged with stuff for sale when you go shopping.
To be tracked through the store by some little gizmo which sends you messages about what you should be leafing through on the racks or the shelves to spend more money is terrifying. whatever happened to privacy, caveat emptor, sales resistance, and all that stuff??
So turn it off…?
I can’t for the life of me understand what could pop up on my phone whilst I’m shopping that they couldn’t convey with in-store signage. Videos? I can’t stand being in a store in the first place they sure as hell aren’t going to convince me to stand in their store and watch a video (unless it helps me get out of there faster).
I’m definitely waiting to see some proof in the pudding on this one. I like MIDD a lot more at high valuations.
MIDD is almost incomparably cheaper than CRM … but, of course, CRM is a software provider so it is, at least in theory, far more scaleable.
And the first application of all of this is likely to be that 1% of customers that are the true believers — you have the Target app and you give it permission to alert you, you’re walking through Target, it beeps that something you just walked past and have bought before is on sale and shows you the barcode for the coupon. That’s the idea, at least — they can also be used to map the insides of stores much better for you, like GPS in the aisles, or to answer questions if you can’t ever find that helpful salesperson. Lots of potential, though that doesn’t mean it’ll all go CRM’s way in the end.
Actually the current technology is called “Geo Fencing”, and you haven’t heard of it b/c it’s not that popular yet. The idea is that if you have a smart ap for a place, they then can send you ads and coupons when you get to the store, instead of you haven’t to remember them, and only send you stuff that you normally buy. iBeacon wants to know not just that you are in the store, but what aisle you are on– not sure that’s advantageous?
Further, the idea of Geo Fencing and the like is the basis of a whole new world– much like wifi and smart phones (too much to type). But right now we have the technology, but not the infrastructure to support all the other cool things that could become possible.
I can’t for the life of me understand why so many people walk around with a phone stuck up to their face. What can possibly be so important than we can’t be disconnected for a few minutes. Its seems that no one want to be alone yet isolates themselves behind their phone.
Agree with Vivian, though my sneaking suspicion: this is an idea so horrible it *has* to be a smash hit. I doubt I’ll buy CRM but, to my deep chagrin, David G. been pretty long-range-sharp on these matters. I have bought (as just two examples) Whole Foods and Netflix on David/TMF’s v. early recommendation(s) only to bail way, way, way too soon.
This concept appears to me to a technological update to those in store videos that were introduced >30 years ago. I’ll wait to see how the iPhone customer base responds. I would consider it annoying and a nuisance, unless perhaps the software was advanced enough to only ping me after I had already removed an item from the shelf/rack thereby having expressed my particular product interest.
Earnings out this evening, coincidentally — looks to me like more or less what people expected, though it popped a percent or two after hours. Benioff is on with Cramer tonight, so God knows what he’ll say to move the stock one way or the other tomorrow.
Release here: http://investor.salesforce.com/files/doc_financials/2015/Q2/CRM-Q215-Earnings-Press-Release-w-financials_v001_l18w5l.pdf
Seems like only yesterday I was reading everyone was deserting the big box retailers, shopping on-line and having their purchase delivered by drone. Obviously was a pitch for something else. Oh well, if Benioff, Cramer and Gardner are all beating the drums for this, the stock is sure to have more froth than a freshly filled keg that fell off a truck and rolled down the hill.
I made some really good money on their options back in their early days of growth – like 32X what I paid. But I wouldn’t buy them now.
Could you tell me why Wholefoods stock is down so low. I purchased it last year for $55 per share but just sold it at $35 per share (financial hardship). I happen to know they are making record amounts of money and am completely baffled by the decreased market value??? I am a complete amateur but hear from friends who work there about their record profits???? Thank you.
WFM is suffering from the incursion into their once entirely owned space of organic and non-GMO foods by stores like KR bringing in the same merchandise. It’s price competition, margin erosion, and competing for the same customer base. With Sweet Bay and Fresh Market entering the space they no longer are the 800# gorilla in the room.
Very true — though the stock is down so much that I start to wonder what the value of the brand and their accumulated goodwill and consumer “trust” might be. Interestingly, from a look at the numbers, it appears that WFM has had improving margins for five years. Very small and gradual improvements, but both gross margin and profit margin have risen slightly since the crisis (and not just since the crisis, both are at least slightly higher than they were 10-12 years ago) — I didn’t expect to see that, given the increasing competition in organic produce over the last few years, though I will say that in my (anecdotal) experience Whole Foods still consistently has dramatically better organic produce and meats than our other local “traditional” supermarkets (we don’t have the upstarts — Fresh Market, Sprout, etc. — in our area yet), and much better prices than the small “co-op” style organic markets.
So what makes a stock fetch 100X earnings? Madness! As long as the madness lasts, you can make a lot of money – in theory but alas. not always in practice 🙁
Travis,
I belong to the basic Motley Fool Service. I bought into both SWIR and WETF (two of their hot picks) got frustrated with both companies and sold all my shares at a small profit. In both cases I came in at a low point and they took off but fell back just as quickly. I repurchased WETF when they had a great earnings report and the stock has had nice run since then. I did not buy back into SWIR unfortunately and it has had a great up tick since their earnings report hit. Bottom line from my perspective the MF has a very good track record long term but short term can be very choppy. Especially recently. On another note what about ARCO? Do you still own shares as I did not see it in your personal portfolio. I almost picked up some shares today at $7.45 but my limit order didn’t fill.
V/R
Tom
Shoot, forgot to add it to my portfolio page. Yes, I still own the shares — thanks for the reminder.
Travis,
Acknowledged. I am going to closely watch ARCO today to see if it stabilizes a little. I almost bought in at $8.00 about a week ago but didn’t.
V/R
Tom
Actually this doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. I have pulled up an online discount at Hobby Lobby while I stood in the checkout line. If Groupon can be a publicIy traded company, (which flabbergasts me) there’s a place for this. What if you were offered a Groupon style coupon while in the store? Just doesn’t seem that far fetched to me, though it will be most popular with the younger people. How is this different from seeing ads online based on our browsing history? In fact WalMart is running TV ads now about giving price matching refund gift cards based on entering your receipt into the phone app. The stores could use this for immediate price matching.
I am a subscriber to Motlly Fool Stock Advisor and have found it to be HORIBLE.
They send you multiple emails every day to subscribe to their other services. They tease you with many bad stocks.
They are today a “story stock service” like many others, no better and no worse than others but with a lot of NOISE.
I look at many of their picks and say “No way Jose”.
You have got to do your homework as Jim Cramer says (who has a bad track record as well). Cramer’s excuse is you did not do your homework while the Motley Fool has no excuse.
Everyone needs a reason to enter and a reason to exit. Perhaps Cramer’s best advice is to play with the house’s money by taking some gains and letting the rest just ride.
Our biggest collective mistake is in transforming a TRADE into an INVESTMENT.
Now back to CRM, SalesForce.com.
This is a stock with a good record but lacks a moat around it. There is nothing they do that cannot be done better by someone else. Their “moat” if it exists is in the services that assist the IMPLEMENTATION of their service to your needs. This is where they can succeed or fail. Controlling these sub-contractors is the key. I have seen where they succeed and where they fail.
Their current EPS is minus 47 cents, while they have been around long enough for this to be positive unless they are living on their “STORY”.
Fedwatcher,
I have a little more positive view of MF. What I have noticed recently is some of their “hot” picks have really tumbled initially right after they promote them which is disturbing. Good examples of that have been CITRO and LGF. LGF fell like a rock days after they promoted it heavily. The two I initially invested in took off (SWIR, WETF) but also fell back very quickly. In retrospect SWIR, WETF and LGF all fell mostly because of perceived weakness in their earnings report and all have recovered nicely. But yes having CITRO and LGF to fall so rapidly almost immediately after they were promoted by MF looked very, very bad. MF does give me another view along with Stock Gumshoe to try and make a little better informed decisions. But then again MF’s high growth stocks certainly are volatile no doubt about that. I really feel for those that bought in right before they went off a cliff…ouch. True some recovered but it can be painful waiting as they seem to recover much more slowly then the rate at which they fell. Agree the continual emails from MF are annoying. Concur with your view of CRM.
V/R
Tom
Tom,
What does “V/R” mean?
Hubby
Take your pick:
V/R Virtual Reality
V/R Volta Region (Ghana)
V/R Very Respectfully (closing salutation)
V/R Virtual Regards (email closing salutation)
Absolutely agree with you about CRM. I have used CRM at my last 2 companies and I am not impressed. It does a decent job of generating reports that our sales managers can see how the field is actually doing, but I fail to see how CRM will expand based upon iBeaconing. I think some companies will benefit from end products with iBeacon technology embedded, but it won’t be salesforce. The field of companies exploring this are vast and its a bit difficult to pick the winners. Maybe we need an iBeacon ETF. Apple will obviously be a part of that. Incidentally I bought AAPL based upon the Fools’ SA recommendation. I bought 2 years ago at $650/share as shares were sliding back from the $700 high; I doubled down at $550 while watching the shares dip sub $400. However, I held tight am glad today as AAPL skirts all time highs. In fact I am buying more shares so I can sell more covered calls on this stock. I basically double my dividend every month selling OTM calls.
Thank you for your post, Fedwatcher.
Does it bother anyone else that “iBeacon” isn’t an “eight-letter word”?
I’ve been a Fool for years, and have mostly been happy with the service. Now I’m concerned that either Dave can’t count or iBeacon is the wrong product to look at.
Sorry, the word actually on the slide at the presentation at WWDC 2013 was “iBeacons” — so you get your eight letters with the plural.
Travis,
Well a good day for CRM +7.34% up $4.09 per share so it will be interesting to see where it goes from here in the short term. I picked up some shares of ARCO today at $7.36.
V/R
Tom
Had to read the comments with a smile on my face. This app will go through the roof because it’s made for people 20, 30, and even 40 years younger than you.
Will you don’t understand it, or pull a face at it, the younger ones will leap on it. That’s how the Gardners made their fortunes punting the stocks they saw the young folk using while we old fogies turned our noses up at them!
Hubby Lubby, Dave,
I use V/R to mean Very Respectfully as a closing to my correspondence. I picked it up during my career in the military where it is common. Typically (well in the Army) it is used when responding to those that are senior in grade or authority to the author but I normally use it in all my correspondence.
V/R
Tom
Not mentioned in the retail store conversations here is another application of iBeacon that I recently noticed. A home for sale nearby has an iBeacon attached to the physical For Sale sign. Log in and get information about the house. I have not tried it so don’t know how much information is available, but if the system catches on in real estate, there could be substantial cash flow opportunities.
Travis,
I sold my shares of ARCO at $7.10 on 26 Aug for a small loss. I was in and out pretty quickly as it seems to have a while to go before it stabilizes. SDPI had a very good day yesterday up 10.83%. I had been eyeing SDPI for quite some time and picked up some shares at $5.99 last week on a recent dip. I continue to watch SAND but since one of my largest investments is in EGO I have held off on investing in additional mining companies for now.
V/R
Tom
Yes, ARCO has been a falling knife for me as well. Haven’t sold personally, but I may at some point (I’ll let folks know if I do), it’s doing very poorly with very weak sentiment for McDonald’s and a stronger dollar not helping.
3 day rule – once hyped the stock will rise (or slammed will fall), so do not buy until it settles out.
Don’t buy stocks on tips – research because once everyone knows about it the move is over.
Macroeconomics will affect the market and all stocks, so every Ebola scare, Russian sanction, etc will move your stock. Decide whether it is a buying opportunity. same for exceptionally good news – when the entire market moves your stock, it doesn’t make you a genius. Read charts and take profits where appropriate.