Market summary: 📊
Indian markets finished another notch higher, despite the ongoing geopolitical chaos worldwide. US turned south strongly though, with old-school stocks really facing the heat now.
US:
S&P 500 - down 1.55%
Nasdaq - down 0.68%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.81%
Sensex - up 0.70%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
👎 Kharkiv flattened — Russia responded to western aggression and sanctions by increasing shelling last night on Ukraine’s 2nd largest city of Kharkiv. Hundreds of civilians were wounded and several dead. Among those that perished is an Indian student, per MEA. RIP. Meanwhile, Europe took a vote to decide on Ukraine’s application to join the European Union. Whether Ukraine can get in or not, is likely going to be a multi-year process, but application becomes another pawn in ongoing political chess against Putin.
📉 Markets become boring — 2 months into 2022 and markets have so far returned nada. Sensex is down about 5% year-to-date, while back in the west the S&P is down a brutal 8.8%. Outside of this ongoing eastern-European mess, markets are eagerly waiting for US Fed to announce its first rate-increase sometime in March, at which point investors will have some “guidance” on tightening of noose going ahead. Likely a check-mate until then.
Zoom says goodbye to its crazy rally 🤙
Bittersweet time for Zoom! The knight that rose to the occasion and allowed humanity to maintain a semblance of routine through the pandemic, is *finally* witnessing its EPIC growth rally slowly cool off, as people return to the comforts of in-person gatherings.
Last night, Zoom reported its numbers for the last 3 months of 2021, which were good mind you, but management warned markets to keep hopes low going ahead, as signups and usage begins to drag.
Quick look at the numbers meanwhile: 🧐
Zoom made $1.07 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 21% YoY
Profit of $490.5 million, up a whopping 88% YoY
Enterprise customers still grew 35% to 191K, as old-school giants abandon their legacy software (skype, Webex out the door)
Going ahead: what’s next for Zoom is the question on the minds of most investors. Video is obviously stale and competitive, so Zoom has to hedge its bets and feed its extensive roster of clients with more tools. Supplying software to call centers, building chat apps, better APIs for video, and even graphic engines for the Metaverse are some options being floated.
FWIW, Zoom is a remarkably profitable business, with 49% profit margins, so cash to invest into exciting new avenues isn’t exactly a problem.
Bottomline — with $ZM stock down nearly 65% in the past 1 year, concerns of business growth maturing are mostly priced in. Clarity on a juicy new growth direction could make this a hot bet once again.
Early stage raises keeping things busy 💰
To kick things off, Locofast, a textile marketplace for vendors, closed a $15 million Series A last-night from Stellaris VP, Axilor, and a couple other angel investors.
Textiles is a an extremely fragmented game in India, dominated by small merchants, with lots of price disparity, and with traders constantly scrambling for quality. Locofast’s platform tries to eliminate some of these pain points by connecting buyers and sellers, and then grouping them with services to get products moving through the entire process — from spinning to dyeing to last mile delivery.
500+ vendors have joined the platform so far, and fresh capital will go to beef up tech and fuel growth.
Then quickly looking at fintech for a bit, 💳
Expense management platform Volopay raised $29 million in a Series A from JAM Fund and a couple of others. YC-backed Volopay is building the Ramp or Brex of India, combining a corporate credit card with holistic expense management analytics, to allow SMBs and startups get a better grip on their spending. The business counts startups like CoinDCX among its users.
The Burmans want more of Eveready batteries 🔋
What’s happening — the Burman family, kings of the Dabur empire, are apparently making a stronger run for battery company Eveready — telling SEBI they’ve made an open offer to buy another 26% of the company.
What to know: India’s largest dry-cell maker Eveready, became a debt-laden mess under the watch of its OG owners, the Khaitan family, who ended up pledging a whole lot of their stock to fund other loss making businesses. As debt mounted, major investors bailed, leading to a rough couple of years.
The Dabur-fam (Burmans) stepped in then and started buying as much stock as they could, over time becoming the single largest stakeholder in Eveready. It looks like they’re keen on getting more here — possibly pairing what is otherwise an excellent business, with Dabur’s management and nationwide distribution.
Anyway, Eveready stock jumped a nice 20% over the past 2 days, showing market’s approval.
Closing out — the media brigade got to Ilkar 🙄
Ilker Ayci, the Turkish businessman and diplomat, who was hired by the Tatas to run Air India as its newest CEO decided not to take up the role.
In his statement to Tata, Ilker pointed out Indian media lambasting him, calling out his political ties to the Turkish government, and chastising Tata’s not for picking an Indian CEO. 👀 Besides, apparently Indian regulators and ministries weren’t too excited about clearing Ayci’s complicated background for intelligence and security purposes.
What now — part of the reason Ayci was brought on was to fulfill Tata’s ambition to run Air India as a global-native operation. Odds are Tata now looks at its own roster of executives to fill the role.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
📈 Economy recovering - GST collections grew 18% YoY in February to cross the ₹1.3 lakh crore mark, for the 5th time ever.
🐝 Buzzing again - the auto market is starting to show some life. Mahindra says total sales for Feb 2022 grew a strong 89% YoY.
❌ No world cup for Dimitri - FIFA bans Russia from all football competitions including this year’s world cup. Earlier, F-1 had canceled its Russian Grand Prix too.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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