Wanna get boozy 🥂
YouTube’s monster, no-code wins, and Biyani gets banned
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Market summary: 📊
Sensex rested over 50K by the end of yesterday’s session, with investors’ unflinching confidence in the Indian capitalist machine paying off well. US markets had an okay session, but tech took some beating.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.10%
Nasdaq 100 - down 0.40%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.97%
Sensex - up 0.92%
Fresh from the oven ☕
✅ The nightmare just won’t end—as if existing problems with Amazon weren't enough, Future Group’s Kishore Biyani was served another jolt when SEBI slapped him & his brother with a 1-year ban from the stock market for insider trading.
Basically, Biyani & his brother opened trading accounts through a group of third party companies, and bought Future Retail stock right before Future was about to announce a demerger. Since they literally used information that was known only to the insiders and not to public market investors, that’s a complete no-go. Both will pay some monetary fines as well. Stinks!
✅ Some Moscow mule for ya—Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is promising nearly 92% efficiency in late-stage trials, and India is warming up to granting permission to use it for emergency purposes either this month or the next. So far, 40 lakh people have already been vaccinated using the other candidates, and the Russian dosage will further lend a helping hand to making more doses widely available. You better wish they work fine.
YouTube, what a monster! 🙌
Google put skeptics to rest last night with an outstanding earnings report. Digital advertising, which had nearly frozen at the middle of 2020, has made a thumping comeback and Google made $57 billion in total revenues for the holiday quarter, up 23%.
Real star of the night was YouTube, which is now a $20 billion annual business, with growth for the December quarter peaking at 46%—thanks to all the Christmas carols people watched during holidays.
Not to mention, all those increasingly annoying ads, but if you’re a shareholder, guess you gotta be asking for more. Stock popped like 7% on the beat!
Other notable highlights from Google’s earnings:
Google Cloud is gaining market share—made $13 billion for 2020. Growth rate for December quarter of 47% shows solid acceleration
Google’s overall costs are going down too—profits were up 42%, something that CFO Ruth Porat is extremely particular about
Google’s “other bets” which includes all its moonshot projects including Autonomy, Healthcare AI, Banking etc. lost $4.5 billion in 2020
Bottomline: when COVID had hit the advertising industry really hard, analysts were a bit worried about the future of big tech. Turns out, the digital advertising pocket is becoming an outsized beneficiary in recovery as traditional channels like TV, newspapers become major victims of lockdowns. FYI—FB too had had a phenomenal quarter.
The dolla lie in the automation baby 🤖
UiPath, a robotic process automation company, scooped up $750 million for its Series F funding round, at a massive valuation of $35 billion. That’s a 3x valuation bump in the last 12 months, and just days before we saw Databricks raise at a similarly monstrous valuation. The public-market wildfire is clearly heating up the private rounds too.
Alkeon, Coatue Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Sequoia, Tiger Global, all the biggies pitched in and T. Rowe Price’s involvement shows an IPO is imminent.
The 16 year old company basically helps enterprises streamline and automate tedious & repetitive functions. Simple examples would be copying data from a handwritten doc to a database, or sending out reports every time a function is completed. Might sound too stupid, but there’s big money in solving inefficient processes inside large corporations.
UiPath serves 6,300 strong clientele, including Amazon, Google, HP, Airbus, and Bank of America, making well over $360 million in annual revenues!
What matters: robotic process automation and its cousin “low-code” have been in fashion for quite some time, but still lack the mass approval and interest. UiPath's successful listing could very well give the technology and its promise the mainstream attention that it deserves.
Uber ready to get all boozy 🥂
Nobody is booking any cabs right now, and with remote work here to stay, that’s not gonna change for a while. The only thing that’s in demand is take out lunch orders and evening wine deliveries. No kidding.
To amp up its game, Uber just splashed a billion dollars on buying out Drizly, an alcoholic delivery startup in a cash & stock deal.
Stir ‘em cocktails—Drizly basically ties up with local merchants to deliver booze for them, lists their inventory online, finds delivery workers, and takes a tiny commission of the sale for facilitating a transaction. In less than 8 years and with just 85 employees, they’ve scaled to over 1,400 cities in the US, and are growing at 300%+ rates each year.
For Uber, the deal basically signifies supplementing their UberEats offering (the food delivery business) with a best of breed player, in an exciting vertical that has the potential to drive some serious profits without much heavy lifting. Also, it's important Uber kept Drizzly from the hands of competitors DoorDash, Grubhub and others who have been actively stealing their market share.
Tweet of the day 🐦
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
💰 Whatever sells bruh - you can’t appeal to the Indian consumer without adding a flicker of gold. Jiomart will be adding a jewellery category with silver and gold coins on sale online, with orders fulfilled via RIL’s in-house jewellery brand Reliance Jewels. The brand’s 93 flagship showrooms and retail locations nationwide will be used for fulfillment. Vertical integration FTW!
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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