Since 2012, when Apple’s share count peaked, the company have repurchased more than $580 billion in stock.
That’s ~38% of the outstanding share count in ten years.
Even if the revenues remained flat the share price would increase and you would be far better off purely for holding.
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway hold a huge number of Apple stock – they must be laughing!
Free cash flow (FCF) is a financial metric that measures a company’s ability to generate cash after accounting for capital expenditures. It is an important indicator of a company’s financial health and ability to pay dividends, make acquisitions, and invest in growth opportunities.
FCF is calculated by taking a company’s operating cash flow (OCF) and subtracting capital expenditures (CapEx). OCF is the cash generated from a company’s operations, while CapEx is the cash spent on investments in property, plant, and equipment (PPE).
For example, if a company has an OCF of $100 million and CapEx of $50 million, its FCF would be $50 million. This means the company has $50 million in cash left over after accounting for investments in PPE.
A positive FCF is considered to be a good sign, as it means a company is generating more cash than it’s using in its operations. It also indicates that a company has a strong financial position and is able to pay dividends, make acquisitions, and invest in growth opportunities. On the other hand, a negative FCF is considered to be a red flag, as it means a company is using more cash than it’s generating, and it may indicate financial difficulties.
It’s important to note that FCF is different from net income, which is a measure of a company’s profitability. Net income takes into account a variety of factors such as revenue, expenses, and taxes, while FCF only measures cash flow. Additionally, FCF can also be affected by a company’s accounting methods and may not always reflect the true cash position of the company.
In summary, Free Cash Flow (FCF) is a financial metric that measures a company’s ability to generate cash after accounting for capital expenditures. It is an important indicator of a company’s financial health and ability to pay dividends, make acquisitions, and invest in growth opportunities. Positive FCF is considered to be a good sign, while negative FCF is considered to be a red flag, it’s important to consider it along with other financial metrics and market conditions.
Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing company that allows businesses to store, analyze, and share data in real-time. The company’s platform is built on top of the cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Snowflake is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SNOW.
One important metric for evaluating a company’s financial health is free cash flow (FCF), which is the amount of cash a company generates after accounting for capital expenditures. FCF is important because it shows a company’s ability to generate cash and pay dividends or make acquisitions.
Snowflake has a positive free cash flow position, meaning that it generates more cash than it uses in its operations. In the most recent quarter, Snowflake reported a FCF of $56.6 million, up from $20.2 million in the same quarter last year. This represents a 180% year-over-year growth in FCF.
This strong FCF position has allowed Snowflake to invest in growth initiatives, including expanding its sales and marketing efforts and research and development. The company has also been able to return cash to shareholders through share buybacks.
Snowflake’s financial position has been supported by its subscription-based business model, which provides a steady stream of recurring revenue, and the growing demand for cloud-based data warehousing solutions. The company has also benefited from the shift to remote work and digital transformation as more companies turn to Snowflake’s cloud-based data warehousing solutions.
Paula Volent sat down with David Rubenstein to talk about the US economy and stocks now being in a Bear Market.
Paula Volent is now the chief investment officer of Rockefeller University.
It seems like private market valuations for startups are getting slashed because of overall economic outlooks. In the past few months we have seen heavy declines in the public markets and now the private markets are following behind.
Fidelity Investments is cutting some of its portfolio company valuations.
These are only private valuations inside of Fidelity and this was back in April – so its expected that these valuations have dropped even more since then.
It’s a tough time economically for everyone!
Over the past month Elon Musk has unloaded $10 billion worth of Tesla shares.
Currently Elon still ranks No. 1 on the global Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $284 billion.
Chinese ride-hail giant DiDi said it will delist from the New York Stock Exchange, following a Chinese government crackdown on foreign listings. (via Axios)
Didi is the Uber of China (and beyond) and it seems as though their progress might be hindered with growing geopolitical tensions between the US and China.
The delisting will occur soon and Didi will move trading across to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has been know to have lower general multiple than its US counterparts.
Mohnish Pabrai is often called the Indian Warren Buffett. Here is a video that outlines his 6 tips for investing returns of over 25% per year.
DOGEcoin is a meme coin with no value at all. It seems like the Redditors on Wall Street Bets are doing a pump and dump, but its been just over a week now and dump hasn’t really happened.
It seems like the Buy and Hold game is on.
Loving the fact that this joke coin now has a market cap of $32 billion.
Coinbase went public the other day on the NASDAQ. Coinbase have a very exciting business and I have been trying to learn as much as possible about the Crypto world for the past year or so (but feels like I’m barely scratching the surface).
At one point Coinbase hit $100 billion in valuation, but I suspect that will drop below half over the next few months as the froth from the initial trades die down.
It will be very interesting to see how Coinbase performs over the long term, but it does seem to be a good hedge if you expect cryptocurrencies to be strong in the next 10 years or more.
Prediction – it drops below $30 billion in market cap and then it starts to climb again.
Wallstreetbets is a sub-reddit where they wanted to try to build a community to for the big short sellers out of certain stocks, but what they didn’t realise is that they can really kill these companies with the power of the retail investors.
Short Seller percentages of outstanding stock:
Most companies tend to be below 2% in short sellers.
At the time of writing this GME is up to $337 per share (up 128% in one day) and AMC 19.35 per share (up 286% in one day).
The community seems to be using their retail power to try to force these short sellers out of the market and make them bankrupt.
Stick it to the man!
This is a great video which very simply explains how to pay yourself from a limited company in the UK for 2020/2021.
There is very little difference between Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A and BRK.B shares.
BRK.B shares were created because Warren Buffett noticed that the BRK.A shares were growing considerable high is cost per share and that these shares were less obtainable by the average retail investor and could only be purchased by either very wealth individuals, unit trusts or mutual funds.
Thus, Warren decided to create BRK.B shares to provide the average investor with the opportunity to purchase shares in Berkshire Hathaway without the huge cost associated with BRK.A.
There are other very small differences, but the above is the only one that really counts.
Bill Ackman is a very interesting person in the world of investing. Below is a great interview with Bill that talks about everything Pershing Square, hedge funds and learning from your mistakes. There are a lot of great quotes inside this interview.
Warner Music Group is going live on the NASDAQ today. Warner are offering 77 million class A shares at $25 a share. If Warner opens up at $25 per share that means they will have a $12.8 billion valuation.
It’s going to be very interesting to see if investors have an appetite for music companies again.
Underwriters for the new offering include Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs. Ticker symbol will be WMG.
Warner Music Group has an amazing catalogue, but I’m very keen to learn more about their recent investments and what other industries they think they can enter, because doing the old record label model just isn’t going to gain enough growth over the next 20 years.
Bill Ackman is an investor that many people across the world follow. Here is an interested snippet from an interview with Bill (not sure the date), but it provides an idea on what type of companies Bill really wants to invest in.