saltybit

some notes from their S-1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1764925/000162828019004786/slacks-1.htm Financial statements show that Slack’s biggest expense by far is sales and marketing, which accounted for $233 million in fiscal 2019, equivalent to 58% of revenue. Slack has been spending heavily on advertising and “brand marketing.” Raising the profile of Slack’s brand name will be important when the company goes public, to ensure investors know what the company does. • General and administrative costs doubled in the year to $112.7 million, which Slack attributed to expanded finance, accounting, legal and HR employees. That increase may reflect Slack’s preparation to become a public company. • Slack’s net loss was roughly flat in the most recent year, at $138 million. • The company’s paid customers use Slack on an average workday for more than 90 minutes. • About 40% of its fiscal 2019 revenue came from just 575 paying customers, each of whom generated more than $100,000 in annual recurring revenue for Slack.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/26/slack-releases-s-1-for-ipo.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/25/slack-valued-at-17-billion-on-secondary-market-ahead-of-public-debut.html Some comparable enterprise Saas companies.. Okta https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/OKTA/key-statistics/ EV/revenue - ~28 yoy revenue growth - 49% zendesk https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ZEN/key-statistics/ EV/revenue ~15-16 yoy revenue growth - 41.3% Slack's revenue was 400M and grew by 82% yoy. They have ~850m in cash. Shares have been trading in the secondary market for 17B, which would be an EV/revenue of ~40. (if I did the calculation right) What would you buy it at?

https://skift.com/2019/02/27/booking-and-airbnb-are-now-in-a-homesharing-dead-heat/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fdr-weighs-in-on-the-buyback-debate-11549644054 if paywalled: https://outline.com/xMruPT

A fantastic memoir of coming from China to America https://www.amazon.com/Out-Gobi-Story-China-America/dp/1119529492 WSJ review https://outline.com/wNdFFp author interview

A funny mall game from Bloomberg :) https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/

other relevant articles, more on the pessimistic side: https://www.wsj.com/articles/slowing-mall-rent-growth-poised-for-a-challenging-2019-11546606800 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/owners-of-fading-malls-on-their-knees-as-buyer-pool-evaporates

What do folks think of Class A mall REITs? seems like they've gone down a bit as a class the past year (due to pessimism about e-commerce and big-box retailer troubles like Sears), but given the prime location of some of their properties, it might be a short-term headwind. Here's an example of a mall space being converted to office space in LA https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-google-office-space writeup of one of the REITs on seeking alpha (Macerich) https://seekingalpha.com/article/4235594-macerich-favorite-mall-operator

https://www.valueinvestingworld.com/2019/01/final-decision-checklist.html

http://fortune.com/longform/value-investing-warren-buffett-tech-stocks/

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2856963

https://microcapclub.com/2018/10/presentation-investing-is-hard/

Wondering if anyone tried this out before? https://www.richuncles.com/ WSJ article: http://archive.is/3Zqvp

John Malone

Thought some of you might find this interesting http://technode.com/2017/08/29/china-internet-report-2017/