Choose Your Own Research Adventure (Vote for a research you want to see)

[Green King]

https://condensed.substack.com/p/choose-your-own-research-adventure?r=7401s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

 

I wrote a short description of a few ideas i want to look into. Please check out my first look analysis and vote for the ones you want to see.

 

$DBX Dropbox Inc High return on brain damage, possible long term payoff

$BUR Burford Capital Limited High Return on popcorn, low return on brain damage

$ING ING Group, Low return on brain damage, maybe grow my edge technology

$EB Eventbrite Inc High return on brain damage, maybe impossible to know

 

Cheers

 

Jason,

 

[Jurgis]

I have looked into DBX and I have owned EB. I am somewhat interested in both.

 

Regarding EB, I kinda liked that people were using them for meetings (pre-Covid). Not sure how much that is monetized/etc. Not sure if there is really moat. IMO the platform is buildable and other companies could sideline this. E.g. Meetup or even FB/GOOGL/Groupon (are they still alive)/LYV. OTOH, it's possible that they could build critical mass and have some moat. I'm neutral right now.

 

I have looked at DBX and BOX some time ago. Here I have bigger issues with competition. If you are business and you go to cloud, you get disk storage and backup storage together with cloud. I.e. just get AWS/GCP/Azure/whatever cloud storage. Why would anyone use/pay for DBX/BOX? If you are not business, then there's still Google/Amazon/Microsoft drives in the cloud that are competitively priced and likely more integrated with your other stuff (e.g. Gmail/Amazon photos/etc.). So I really don't see a defendable niche. There were people defending BOX here on CoBF couple years ago. And presumably there were businesses paying for storage there. So maybe I am totally wrong.

 

Anyway, I'd be interested in what you write on either/both.

 

Not interested in the other two.  8)

 

 

[Jurgis]

OK, I'm ready for hate.  8)

 

I went and read M* report on DBX.

 

I know that people here on CoBF have low opinion about M* reports.

 

Well, so here's couple things:

1. M* report says pretty much what I said above. With more data/numbers/etc.

2. IMO M* report is better than a lot of postings on CoBF. Definitely better than my postings. So there. 8)

 

(Yeah, M* covers limited universe - there's no M* report on EB, for example - so there's def niche for people posting on CoBF. And for some stocks CoBFers may know more than M* analysts.)

 

Anyway, I'm still interested in what OP will write.  8)

 

 

[Casey]

Also interested in Dropbox (I own it).

[bizaro86]

I vote eventbrite. It seems like potentially a high moat business if they can get scale (see ticketmaster) and a place where the competition's margins are so high that there is opportunity for a challenger (see Ticketmaster again).

[Castanza]

I have looked into DBX and I have owned EB. I am somewhat interested in both.

 

Regarding EB, I kinda liked that people were using them for meetings (pre-Covid). Not sure how much that is monetized/etc. Not sure if there is really moat. IMO the platform is buildable and other companies could sideline this. E.g. Meetup or even FB/GOOGL/Groupon (are they still alive)/LYV. OTOH, it's possible that they could build critical mass and have some moat. I'm neutral right now.

 

I have looked at DBX and BOX some time ago. Here I have bigger issues with competition. If you are business and you go to cloud, you get disk storage and backup storage together with cloud. I.e. just get AWS/GCP/Azure/whatever cloud storage. Why would anyone use/pay for DBX/BOX? If you are not business, then there's still Google/Amazon/Microsoft drives in the cloud that are competitively priced and likely more integrated with your other stuff (e.g. Gmail/Amazon photos/etc.). So I really don't see a defendable niche. There were people defending BOX here on CoBF couple years ago. And presumably there were businesses paying for storage there. So maybe I am totally wrong.

 

Anyway, I'd be interested in what you write on either/both.

 

Not interested in the other two.  8)

 

AWS and Azure are not as “cheap and convenient” as people think. I’ve worked first hand with dozens of clients this last year who say they’re switching only to have them come back in a few weeks with their tail between their legs once they see the price and quality of service they get. AWS specifically nickel and dimes the hell out of customers. As a result I’ve seen a lot of clients in large companies instead build out their own IT and private cloud infrastructure in house! Now, I can’t say this is true for everyone. AWS and Azure are great products. But they have some work to do on their pricing and subsequent service offering.

[Spekulatius]

I vote for EB simply because I know nothing about it’s business model.

[Jurgis]

I vote for EB simply because I know nothing about it’s business model.

 

I'd say: charging organizers fee for (non-free?) event listings, charging percentage per ticket, ads on the site, paid promotions of events. But I don't know the mix of the above.

[Green King]

Here is the link for the straw poll

https://www.strawpoll.me/20549293

The votes seems to not be refecting the interest.

Cheers

Jason

[Jurgis]

Here is the link for the straw poll

https://www.strawpoll.me/20549293

The votes seems to not be refecting the interest.

Cheers

Jason

 

Be the poll!

 

 

 

I'm fine with whatever poll decides.

If people are interested, we can always talk more about EB and DBX here on respective threads.

[Guest cherzeca]

BUR is impossible to analyze.  too hard pile for this lawyer.  not a question of fraud but case outcome assessment.  nope, not going near that one.

[Green King]

BUR is impossible to analyze.  too hard pile for this lawyer.  not a question of fraud but case outcome assessment.  nope, not going near that one.

 

I can understand that. I am thinking about framing it more see this like a pile of bank loans you can not know what's there for sure. It's more about taking a look at the big ones or a sample of them to see if it is worth a bet. With the margin of safety given by the discount. with the underlying assumption, they are not all shit. Or to see if there are enough red flags to pass on the whole thing.

 

On my first look, there were too many flags so I passed. I put it up here mostly with the intention to see the rigor in research Muddy water produces. I ways thought these things were low value i want to get an understanding of a sample.

 

 

[Green King]

OK, I'm ready for hate.  8)

 

I went and read M* report on DBX.

 

I know that people here on CoBF have low opinion about M* reports.

 

Well, so here's couple things:

1. M* report says pretty much what I said above. With more data/numbers/etc.

2. IMO M* report is better than a lot of postings on CoBF. Definitely better than my postings. So there. 8)

 

(Yeah, M* covers limited universe - there's no M* report on EB, for example - so there's def niche for people posting on CoBF. And for some stocks CoBFers may know more than M* analysts.)

 

Anyway, I'm still interested in what OP will write.  8)

 

Sounds interesting I might start by going through the report

[Jurgis]

OK, I'm ready for hate.  8)

 

I went and read M* report on DBX.

 

I know that people here on CoBF have low opinion about M* reports.

 

Well, so here's couple things:

1. M* report says pretty much what I said above. With more data/numbers/etc.

2. IMO M* report is better than a lot of postings on CoBF. Definitely better than my postings. So there. 8)

 

(Yeah, M* covers limited universe - there's no M* report on EB, for example - so there's def niche for people posting on CoBF. And for some stocks CoBFers may know more than M* analysts.)

 

Anyway, I'm still interested in what OP will write.  8)

 

Sounds interesting I might start by going through the report

 

Just FYI M* is changing the analyst on DBX. The old report is still available, but they dropped some parts like value estimate (that may be irrelevant for you anyway).

[Green King]

OK, I'm ready for hate.  8)

 

I went and read M* report on DBX.

 

I know that people here on CoBF have low opinion about M* reports.

 

Well, so here's couple things:

1. M* report says pretty much what I said above. With more data/numbers/etc.

2. IMO M* report is better than a lot of postings on CoBF. Definitely better than my postings. So there. 8)

 

(Yeah, M* covers limited universe - there's no M* report on EB, for example - so there's def niche for people posting on CoBF. And for some stocks CoBFers may know more than M* analysts.)

 

Anyway, I'm still interested in what OP will write.  8)

 

Sounds interesting I might start by going through the report

 

Just FYI M* is changing the analyst on DBX. The old report is still available, but they dropped some parts like value estimate (that may be irrelevant for you anyway).

 

Do you have the old report?