The latest trending report Global 5G in Gaming Market 2020 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025 offered by DecisionDatabases.com is an informative study covering the market with detailed analysis. The report will assist reader with better understanding and decision making.
The global 5G in Gaming market size is expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025, with a CAGR of xx% in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025 and will expected to reach USD xx million by 2025, from USD xx million in 2019.
The 5G in Gaming market report provides a detailed analysis of global market size, regional and country-level market size, segmentation market growth, market share, competitive Landscape, sales analysis, impact of domestic and global market players, value chain optimization, trade regulations, recent developments, opportunities analysis, strategic market growth analysis, product launches, area marketplace expanding, and technological innovations.
Final Report will cover the impact of COVID-19 on this industry.
Browse the complete report and table of contents @ https://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/49503-5g-in-gaming-industry-analysis-report
The major players covered in 5G in Gaming are:

• Facebook
• LG Corporation
• ZTE Corporation
• Huawei Technologies
• SK Telecom
• Qualcomm
• Ericsson
• Google
• Samsung Electronics
• Microsoft Corporation
• Sony
• EA
• Nintendo

By Type, 5G in Gaming market has been segmented into:

• Software
• Service
• Hardware

By Application, 5G in Gaming has been segmented into:

• Online Games
• Virtual Games

The report offers in-depth assessment of the growth and other aspects of the 5G in Gaming market in important countries (regions), including:

• North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)
• Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)
• Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Australia)
• South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia)
• Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Download Free Sample Report of Global 5G in Gaming Market @ https://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/download-sample-49503
There are 14 Chapters to deeply display the global 5G in Gaming market.
1 5G in Gaming Market Overview
2 Company Profiles
3 Global 5G in Gaming Market Competition, by Players
4 Global 5G in Gaming Market Size by Regions
5 North America 5G in Gaming Revenue by Countries
6 Europe 5G in Gaming Revenue by Countries
7 Asia-Pacific 5G in Gaming Revenue by Countries
8 South America 5G in Gaming Revenue by Countries
9 Middle East and Africa Revenue 5G in Gaming by Countries
10 Global 5G in Gaming Market Segment by Type
11 Global 5G in Gaming Market Segment by Application
12 Global 5G in Gaming Market Size Forecast (2021-2025)
13 Research Findings and Conclusion
14 Appendix
Purchase the complete Global 5G in Gaming Market Research Report @ https://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/buy-now-49503
Other Reports by DecisionDatabases.com:
Global 3D Gaming Console Market 2019 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2024
Global Online Gaming Market 2020 by Company, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025
Global Gaming Mouse & Keyboards Market 2020 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025
About-Us:
DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.
Our expert research analysts have been trained to map client’s research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.
For more details:
DecisionDatabases.com E-Mail: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Phone: +91 9028057900 Web: https://www.decisiondatabases.com/

I’ve been playing Destiny for quite some time and I’ve enjoyed the community around it a lot, but the one thing that frustrates me the most about Destiny is how little the community actually knows about game development. It’s driving me crazy, so I wrote this whole thing down. I’m a game designeproducer myself, I’ve never worked on a project as massive as Destiny (not many people ever do), but I have worked on several gaming projects, some of them big in large companies, some of them small gaming apps. I know enough to explain the basics here, but I’m definitely not the ultimate authority on videogames and I’m not representing Bungie whatsoever, everything here is only from my experience. My goal here is to give you some useful info and calm my mind about this.
The Destiny community is incredibly vocal, especially this sub, which is generally a good thing, but the lack of understanding really damages not only the enjoyment of the community members but also the game itself IMO. I’ll explain some of the basics I think any hardcore fan should know here with an example and then I’ll outline some specific problems.
How Games Are Made
A videogame pipeline can be simplified into this flow: Demand from the top/the market -> top management decision -> design and prototyping -> development and feedbacks -> in house testing -> public testing -> marketing and publishing -> data collecting and analysis -> feedback implementation. It’s a circle that applies to everything from the big picture like the main campaign, to the smallest details like colors of shaders or proofreading of even the smallest posts. Every decision made in this system, even the tiniest ones, has to be debated, supported by data and expertise, approved in multiple places based on the priority, and checked multiple times after it’s implemented.
Game developers, especially in a powerhouse like Bungie, are very skilled, talented, experienced, and passionate people who always do their best to navigate that flow to satisfy the demands with a quality product delivered on time. I can’t stress this enough, developers (including QA testers, designers, artists, marketing, publishing, the whole team) are pretty much always incredibly hard-working people with a love for video games, because otherwise, they would never stay in this scummy business. They’re underpaid, overworked, and most likely overqualified for what they have to do. Some of them know almost everything there is to know about their field and they’re always improving as well.
Because video games, especially gargantuan living games with real-time action combat like Destiny, are insanely complicated, you need sometimes hundreds of experts to put them together. The pipeline needs to be perfectly planned, flexible so you can adapt to problems, and also easy enough to implement so you can deliver the product on time. All of these factors result in a tight-rope walk that never ends.
Now it’s time for an example. Let’s say during Season of the Worthy you get an assignment to create a catalyst for Thorn that would make it more popular in PVE, but doesn’t make it overpowered in PVP. Seems simple enough, right? There are dozens of posts about this topic on this subreddit, how hard can it be. The answer is, very, very hard.
You start working on your designs. You analyze all other exotic catalysts and hand cannon perks in the game - how they were made, their philosophy, psychological effects, and how they influence gameplay, you discuss everything in your team. When you create your first version, your design lead tells your whole team that hand cannons are getting a range buff and Thorn is now a 140 RPM and you have to adjust your design. After that, your priorities get shifted to helping with Beyond Light and the DSC weapons so it’s finished on time, so you put Thorn on hold. You don’t want to waste time though, so you give the art team an assignment to create the catalyst icon.
After two months of work on Beyond Light, you come back to Thorn, but now you basically have to start over because the future meta has changed so much. You create new designs and this time they’re approved by management, so you move onto prototyping. Developers are way too busy debugging and QA testing Beyond Light, so they have no time for Thorn and that task gets put into their To-Do list. You have no choice but to move onto your other tasks and start working on weapons for seasons 13 and 14.
When development starts finally working on Thorn, they find an exploit in your design that would allow it to two tap in PVP, you have to rework it again and hope they’ll have time to implement it this time. They don’t and the Thorn catalyst now officially misses its deadline and is pushed from Beyond Light. The marketing team doesn’t hear about it though, so they publish the icon you had made four months ago, leaking the catalyst coming out. This is of course your fault, but these things happen during all the chaos and there was almost nothing you could have done.
When you finally push this task through and it’s checked and approved dozens of times in different places (weapon design team, design lead, writing, sandbox team, development, QA, studio director, etc.) you have to make sure it’s published correctly in the right build, it has all necessary descriptions and marketing texts done and translated into all languages and the community managers know about it so they can get ready to collect data.
This single task took you a year to complete even when you did your best to do it fast and well and I left out about 90% of problems you would normally encounter. THIS is game development.
Community Attitude and Feedback
Now we get to why the uninformed community hurts the game so much. This sub would only see Thorn getting a catalyst and it would immediately be flooded with posts like “The catalyst sucks in PVE, buff pls”, “Bungo doesn’t care, the catalyst sucks for Warlocks” and a few “Why catalyst for Thorn, but not for Skyburner’s Oath”, completely missing the point of the catalyst and adding nothing to the discussion.
Bungie devs are way more informed, skilled, and experienced than us, the community. The only feedback they are interested in from us is quantitative - basically what we like and what we don’t like about the game. Any posts giving them ideas, elaborate reworks, or straight up negative outrage will accomplish nothing, because they already know everything about the game and discuss it daily in way more detail than we could ever imagine. The only qualitative feedback they should collect and measure is from content creators and the top 1% of the player base because those people actually know some aspects of the game Bungie doesn’t. I know it may sound like the hated “Bungo only listens to sweats and Youtubers”, but that’s kinda the point, they should be listening.
It doesn’t mean that our voices are ignored or not listened to. I would bet all of my money that all forums are constantly monitored and analyzed. The truth is, however, that the only valid opinion we can give that Bungie should consider is what aspects of the game we like, and what aspects we don’t. Anything beyond that we already tell them through data they collect from our play sessions.
As I wrote above, any change within this massive game is complicated and could take months or years to be implemented, so being upset we don’t have everything now is just useless. Bungie is hard at work to make good stuff, we should respect them more and not bring out the pitchforks every time a season slows down a bit and we can’t play for four hours a day every day for the whole year. There will always be problems in a live game and they are doing a fantastic job, I can’t even imagine how much work must go into it. So before you post about something in the future, take a moment to think about the process and figure out what exactly you can provide to the devs with your feedback, because otherwise, you’re fanning the flames on something that probably isn’t actually burning. It’s just taking its time as it should.
With all of the above said, it isn't the community's fault that we're not informed. The fault lies entirely with Bungie not educating people enough and this problem could be avoided.
Reasons Why Things Suck
I’ll close by giving my two cents on why the game isn’t perfect and never will be, just so you know where the community's frustrations should go.

1. The biggest reason that influences everything - Bungie is a company owned by a group of shareholders that will always force the studio to grow and provide more profit. With every extra dollar, the value of the company grows and the board of directors gets richer and because of the super predatory capitalism we live in now, Bungie has to justify every single decision with a monetary value. It's not the fault of the devs, they don't make much money themselves.
2. The game is massive and always online. I’m pretty confident that no other studio would be able to support Destiny for so long without the game completely crashing down. Technology always evolves and it’s almost impossible to keep a living game up to date, so some parts of the front end of the game will always suck because Bungie has to upkeep the back end we will never get to see.
3. The project has been going on for a decade, which leads to people wanting to naturally move on. Replacing team members on a living game is very difficult, which leads to problems and delays.
4. The community is not educated about the game enough, which is why I ended up writing this. The continuous cycle of negative outrage that comes from a lack of understanding damages the game because the devs are forced to deal with it without disclosing information. If people knew more, they could help Bungie, but no company that wants to make big profits will ever open up its communication because it would show just how many decisions are influenced by the search for profit.

That’s it, sorry for the length of this essay. I hope you learned something and let me know if you’d be interested in more stuff like this (takes on sunsetting, sandbox, etc.). I would like to give people more info so they don’t waste their precious time on stuff completely outside of their control and maybe educate people about the industry. I love the game and I hope you’ll appreciate it a bit more now.
Edit 1:
This post is not meant as a defense for the faults of the game or an excuse for bad decisions, it's meant as a resource to give you perspective and information. If you believe the game is not as good as it was promised to be or disagree with some design choices made, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, and there are quite a few things I myself absolutely hate in Destiny. I can't answer questions related to design on Destiny with confidence, because I don't work for Bungie and I won't speculate much on why certain decisions were made. I can give you my opinion on stuff like sunsetting based on my experience in another post, but ultimately it's only speculation with little benefit. All I will say is that there is always more stuff we don't know about the game than we do know and design should be judged in context.
When it comes to questions related to Bungie's scummy tactics when it comes to monetization and bad communication, I agree with you, as I said above. Money is the biggest factor of why Destiny suffers and the best way for us to do anything about that is to stop buying it. I know it's a cliche statement, but it's true.
And lastly, for the comments saying stuff like "shut up, Bungie sucks and you know it", please read what I said again and think about it. The devs most likely love the game just as much as you once did, if not much more.
Edit 2:
I'll add one thing that keeps popping up. It's clear that Destiny is a product developed for profit, so if your outlook is "I don't want to know about development, I'm just an unhappy consumer that didn't like this product", I agree as would most likely everybody that it's absolutely a valid stance, but that's not what my post was about. If that's how you see any product, you should tell the producer why you didn't like it if you care enough to do so and move on. The post is meant to inform people who don't want to move on from Destiny, especially those who continuously engage with the product from a place of understanding even if they don't have it, which wastes their time and does nothing for the product. If you don't like this game or any other game, it's absolutely OK and you should move on from playing it, complaining about things you don't want to understand won't help you achieve what you want and only makes the game worse. As I said above, the best way to show your disagreements is not to support the company and if you don't like Destiny, please stop playing it and take care of yourself. Your time is valuable, don't give it away to someone you don't agree with.
Edit 3
This will be the last edit on this post. I appreciate all the awards and great discussions happening below, but holy cow did this get a lot of vitriol. I expected a lot of negativity, but it still surprised me. It's partially my fault for trying to talk about so much with not enough room so I'm sure I made a few mistakes. I'll reply to a few things that I want to make clear and then leave this alone, it's way too long anyway.
If you see any malicious intent, attacks, arrogance, or "Bungie shilling" between the lines, I put none there, at least not on purpose. My goal was to inform, as I said right at the start, so if you see any other agenda, it's not there and my writing either wasn't clear enough, or you're looking for something that I didn't write. Take the post for what it is, a stranger on the internet telling you something you may not know from their experience. If you disagree with me, downvote the post and explain why, no need to insult anyone, you're once again wasting your precious time.
I didn't mention management as a problem on Destiny, because I don't know enough about it. Leadership is very often a problem on any collaborative projects but calling someone out without the necessary data is exactly what I warned about in my post, so I won't comment on it, but feel free to disagree with me. Maybe you know more about the subject than I do and I'll be happy to read your reply.
I never put myself up as an ultimate authority on the subject, all of this is just basics I thought hardcore fans should know and I communicated that. This post was already very long and I didn't have time, nor did I want to describe theory in detail, so insulting me over not explaining how scrum works in a post meant for people with no experience is not necessary. If you want to argue about production methodologies, my reasoning on examples given, and how healthy management looks like with me please feel free to message me and I'm sure we'll have a cool conversation, I'd love to hear about your experience from working in gaming.
And that's it, I hope you got something out of this. Have a great day and see you around.

I saw u/Unlucky-Prize post about the technical factors for $GME and felt inspired to make a post about the reasons why I‘m long this stock, which is the fundamentals. I don’t do options or techincal analysis so please refer to other posts for that info.
$GME had been on my radar for quite some time but I finally dipped my toes in two weeks ago. The basis for that wasn’t the potential for a short squeeze or short interest but the underlying fundamentals behind $GME. I had posted a long comment in a previous thread and will expand on that to explain why I’m bullish long term for $GME. I hope this helps. This post is meant to be a personal opinion and not advice to buy or sell Gamestop.
🐻 Case:

1. Digital sales will make Gamestop the next Blockbuster.

The digital game sales argument, like all 🐻 arguments, are weak. The shift to digital will possibly occur in the next console cycle. So maybe the 🐻 are right, but they’re right in 8 years which means they’re wrong now. Additionally digital sales growth has decelerated and are returning to pre-covid levels as more people go back to stores. This trend should continue if the pandemic improves. Additionally game publishers don’t care about the fractionally larger margins from selling digital direct. They only care about moving as many units as quickly as possible. If they could sell the games on floppy disks they would. Go read the public filings for any game publisher and they will tell you that they only care about selling what customers want and guess what, they still want physical.
Blockbuster died because Carl Icahn got involved, killed Blockbuster’s attempt to pivot to a Netflix model by offering an online rental service and Blockbuster’s old business model relied on late fees. Icahn insisted that Blockbuster's greatest asset was its physical location and late fees, killed the pivot and forced them to triple down on their old strategy. Carl ended up losing 98% of his investment in Blockbuster. There continues to be demand for physical movie rentals as evidenced by Red Box locations and Netflix still has a few million dvd by mail subscribers.
Gamestop has also recently started to pivot away from software sales into other areas and now software sales now make up large minority of Gamestop's total sales. They're pivoting more towards physical goods and not just Funko Pops but also plan to expand more into new areas like PC gaming and hardware.
Everyone knows that they signed a revenue agreement with Microsoft where Gamestop will get a cut of the lifetime revenue from Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. This shouldn't sour the relationship with Sony or Nintendo. If anything, Sony and Nintendo should be compelled to offer a similar revenue share agreement because Gamestop will inevitably push Microsoft products if Gamestop stand to profit more from it. This will be a bigger deal in later years as console availability increases and consumers actually deciding to cross shop consoles as opposed to getting whichever new one is available right now. Sony and Nintendo won't stop selling products through Gamestop because of this agreement with Microsoft, it's too large of a sales channel to give up.

1. Gamestop will go bankrupt

This is highly unlikely to happen. Gamestop managed to survive the single worst brick and mortar retail sales environment in modern history and ended the year with a cash surplus of a few hundred million. Now its the new year and the beginning of a new console cycle. This console cycle should last as long as the previous ones which is close to a decade, plus or minus a few years. During that time, they will be printing money hand over fist selling consoles, new games, used games, accessories, protection plans, etc.

1. Brick and mortar retail is dead. Gamestop locations are shutting down left and right, this must mean they're going bankrupt.

Gamestop's average lease durations are actually quite short. A lot of brick and mortar shops have lease duration lasting a decade but the average lease duration for Gamestop is just 2-4 years. This allows them to close underperforming stores and open new ones very quickly.
Gamestop's saw e-commerce grow by 250% last quarter. The company has been and continues to pivot towards a "digital-first, omni-channel ecosystem for games and entertainment"
🐂 Case
This MOASS could be long and protracted like Tesla in all of 2020 as many continue to bet against Gamestop, instead of a sharp spike like Volkswagen, where Porsche played a large role in spiking the share price. Keep in mind that at 1x sales, the share price should be $80-100. Compare that with another retailer Chewy, which has a p/s of 6-7x. Pet products also has a much lower TAM than gaming.
This isn’t even factoring in a complete turnaround that RC has to be planning. Look at the newest board composition. Newest members are Reggie (my body is ready), the head of cloud 9 esports, and the current president Petsmart and Chewy. board member. Ask yourself, are these the people that would join the board of a company that is expected to die in 5 years due to digital game sales.
This has moved beyond a short squeeze yolo to a long term hold. If RC succeeds in transforming this into the next Chewy, you’re looking at a 20x multiple. This is based on fundamentals and industry tailwinds. I added 10k shares weeks ago and added 20k shares at $38 because this thing is going much higher and idgaf about a few bucks in share price right now. Also don’t attempt to time the market because you could be left behind at the launchpad.
Simply put, if I told you there was a business that served a $200 billion total addressable market with very discerning and loyal customers with a lot of disposable income to spend on this market. They have over 5,000 retail locations all across the world. Last quarter, they saw Ecommerce grow by nearly 300% and ended a year where many other brick and mortar retailers went bankrupt with hundreds of millions of dollars in extra cash. This company has a database called PowerUp consisting of tens of millions of customers that pay them a yearly premium membership. They're starting a multiyear pivot into several new growing areas and have new board members that are industry leaders in each of those respective areas at the start of a new product launch cycle that will last a decade. A young visionary founder who made his billions by creating a customer centric experience that defeated Amazon, who is well known to focus on one idea to the point of obsession, just became this company's largest shareholder and now controls the board. I tell you this company trades at .5 sales. Would you short or long this company?
TLDR: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 But not because of the MOASS.
Edit: I forgot I had 5000 shares in my YOLO account so position is actually 35,000 GME

Updated @ 10:00 AM CST 01/12/2020: Thanks to the attention of my support thread on the Ubisoft Forum, Ubisoft have finally acknowledged that there are audio problems. They are urging users to reply with further information
Updated @ 11:55 AM CST 20/11/2020: I had no idea this thread would resonate with so many of you, please excuse the pun. You have my sincere thanks for the reactions, comments, recommendations, corrections and affirmations.

TL;DR summary

The audio quality throughout the AC series has been progressively getting worse. This post analyses Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, exposing the fact that heavily compressed low bitrate 24,000 Hz audio is utilized across all three titles. Origins and Odyssey was less noticeable because it mixed higher quality 44,100 Hz ambient environment sounds with low resolution 24,000 Hz combat, character and UI sounds. Valhalla was recently discovered to be the worst offender since it uses 24,000 Hz audio across the board.
The aim here is to provide a technical explanation, cross-comparison and to raise awareness of this bad trend. Audio is a fundamental immersive component of any AAA video game, and should be presented with the same level of quality that you would expect within the film and TV industry.

Introduction

This started out as a technical analysis of the in-game audio present in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but it has since evolved into a topic of a wider scope; if you haven't played the past three AC games, Pandemic notwithstanding, let me be the first to tell you that we are in a predicament.
The idea of this thread is to not only educate, but try and prevent a problem before it becomes more of a problem. Since this is a technical subject, there will be references to sample rate, bit rate and codecs, but I feel like it is more common knowledge these days, especially due to the rise of content creators, or anyone who regularly deals with MP3 and video files.
Admittedly, there is much to talk about regarding Assassin's Creed, especially if you're of the opinion that the series died after the 2nd/Brotherhood or 3rd game. Set that conversation aside for a moment, grab a squeezy ball, punch a pillow, and let's talk about how Ubisoft are starting to set a horrible trend for in-game audio.
So I caved in like many others, gleeing at the prospect of virtually visiting my homeland as an axe-wielding maniac, and decided to pre-order Assassin's Creed Valhalla after thoroughly enjoying my time eliminating the cultists from Odyssey. On launch day during my first playthrough I noticed something that sounded eerily familiar.
I game using a pair of Mackie MR624 studio monitors, or if I feel like giving my neighbours a moment's rest, with my Beyerdynamic DT-770 PRO headphones. The audio I was hearing sounded muffled, or in layman's terms, a bit like listening through a pair of tin cans that were accidentally dropped into a cup of earl grey.

Analysis

Enough was enough, I put my investigative cap on and started by first extracting the audio files using Wwise-unpacker, and proceeding to analyse the files using Adobe Audition. I discovered that the SFX are saved at a 24,000 Hz sample rate, with a variable bitrate that peaks at around 70 kbps. Yes, mystery unravelled, it really is that bad. Those of you who do not fully appreciate this technical blunder, might better appreciate it if I put it this way. Visually, it is the equivalent of removing 50% of the colours in a painting, and leaving smears where the details are.
Here is a screenshot of my analysis.
Looking at the Frequency Analysis tab, you can very clearly observe a frequency rolloff at around 11000 Hz. The low bitrate issue is also not just limited to the PC release. It is affecting all platforms.
This is an unusually strict choice of compression considering that the English audio and SFX only take up 4.5 GB of hard disk space. Standard CD audio is at 44,100 Hz (DVD standard is 48,000 Hz), and those are the two sample rates that nearly every streaming service, sound device and operating system are designed to work with.
Now, you may have heard people say "Oh, but your ears cannot hear above 20 kHz, so the missing detail is irrelevant". Unfortunately, there is complexity surrounding this issue that the statement fails to address. Firstly, when you take a 24,000 Hz sound, the highest audible frequency will be 12,000 Hz. This is already 8000 Hz lower than what the human ear can detect. When frequencies are missing from the original sound, it also negatively impacts the entire representation of that sound. The more you remove, the more hollow and less defined it becomes.
Are you curious to hear the difference?

Side by side audio comparison

This morning I recorded a YouTube video to highlight the differences between 24,000 Hz and 48,000 Hz.
Technical analysis of the poor quality audio used on Assassin's Creed
If you'd rather hear a lossless version of the presentation, you can download the audio file here.
Alternatively, you may also download the individual sound files used for the basis of this comparison: ¹sounds_sfx_3369_high_quality & ²sounds_sfx_3369_low_quality
To help provide an even more visual description of the issue at hand, here's a comparitive study of sample rates performed by a reputable audio company.

The Nyquist theorem

It has been over ten years since I last sat in an audio theory class, so I'm likely over-simplifying the technical details of this theorem. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and in addition, I would highly suggest reading an external official scientific resource.
The Nyquist theorem describes this better. Named after a Swedish-born American electronic engineer who worked on the speed of telegraphs in the 1920s, the Nyquist theorem states that a waveform must be sampled twice in order to get a true representation. The sampling frequency must be at least twice the highest signal frequency recorded in order to be effective. Here is a table showing the Sample rate vs. Highest Frequency.

Sample rate	Highest Frequency
22,050 Hz	11,025 Hz
24,000 Hz	12,000 Hz
30,000 Hz	15,000 Hz
44,100 Hz	22,050 Hz
48,000 Hz	24,000 Hz

As a result, if the highest frequency a human can hear is around 20,000 Hz, then 40,000 Hz is the lowest sampling rate you can use to accurately represent any sound that a human can hear. If you are listening to a recording of "bad audio", but to you it sounds acceptable, the issues are probably one of the following:

1. Bad equipment: headphones, speakers or an improper sound configuration.
2. The highest frequency of the sound in question was one half of the sample rate used.
3. Your hearing is damaged or has deteriorated naturally with age. By the time we approach 40 years old, most of us will not able to discern individual tones above 15,000 Hz. If you would like to test your ears, try this Human Hearing Benchmark. As a safety precaution, only perform this test at a medium or low volume.

Even though the highest frequency our ears can detect is around 20,000 Hz, the sound frequencies that exists beyond our hearing range (overtones) greatly colour and impact the sound we hear. Therefore when we record digital audio and cut out those frequencies above 22,050 Hz with a high pass filter (we have to use a filter or else they would cause aliasing or noise in the sample), we are actually changing the original sound that we were trying to record. If you raise the sample rate, the recording will be more accurate. The trade-off is that it takes up more storage. Partly sourced from another post. ScienceDirect overview.
This theorem is still used today to digitize analog signals, nearly 100 years after Nyquist was an engineer at Bell Laboratories.

Oi mate! Don't take me for a mug.

This is when I had a revelation, realising that this issue has been slowly getting worse and worse with every new Assassin's Creed title released. The games are getting bigger, and sacrifices are being made as a result. I first noticed it with AC:Origins, but because some sounds are higher quality than others, it masks the issue to an extent.
Let me clarify further. Both Origins and Odyssey have high quality stereo ambient background sounds that are bounced to 44,100 Hz with an average variable bitrate of 241 kbps, but then you have all of the mono UI, voice, interaction, footstep and fighting sounds that are bounced to 24,000 Hz, all lacking any convincing spatialization, unceremoniously resulting in a bubbling cauldron that is extremely disconcerting to the trained ear. I say trained, but if you take a minute to search online you will discover that gamers, including some gamers with hearing impairments, picked up on this very quickly and early on. Why? We care about sound.
To summarise how Origins and Odyssey attempts to mask the issue: Even though certain frequencies are missing from non-ambient sounds, the detailed ambience and music in the background compensates psychoacoustically for what is missing. Valhalla sounds worse because it sacrificed more, and it does not have any high quality ambient sounds.
There are far too many links to post, so here's only a small subset of threads that I hand picked, all complaining about the same thing. First up, Origins. ¹Really poor audio quality for voices ²I can't get into origins because of the bad audio quality ³What's up with Assassins Creed Origins audio? ⁴Audio quality is so bad for AC Origins ⁵Terrible Audio Quality Origins
Does it get better with Odyssey? Not exactly. ¹Terrible audio ²Audio quality for Odyssey ³Anyone experience poor audio quality with Odyssey? ⁴Audio quality is so bad ⁵Does the audio sound weird for anyone else?
Aaaaannndd Valhalla. ¹Why have no critics mentioned the terrible audio? ²Has anyone notice the weird audio quality in the recent AC games? ³Assassin's Creed Valhalla audio is the worst of any game I've played Audio is terrible in AC valhalla ⁴Bad audio in the game ⁵Assassin's Creed Valhalla audio is still bad and horrid ⁶Terrible sound on PC.
It's also worth noting that these games support DTS Digital Surround. This can be confirmed by observing the DTS logo printed on the disc itself.
DTS audio bit rate values can be 1.5 Mbps 48/96 kHz, 16/24 bits (or with DTS-HD the bit rate can be 4.5 or 6.144 Mbps for encoded data), but due to the heavily compressed nature of the audio files in-game, it is not fully taking advantage of what this technology has to offer.

The Why?

My first question was: is the sacrifice of quality an attempt to try and cram as much in to meet a specific distribution criteria? I've spoken to a few people within the gaming industry personally about this, and the general consensus seems to be: Yes. Please pitch in here if you've had any first hand experience dealing with this. Realistically, it should only affect products within the physical realm, such as trying to compress the game in order to fit it onto a 50 GB (dual-layer) Blu-ray disc. Digital media does not suffer from this limitation, can be downloaded at our convenience and is much cheaper to distribute.
If they provided the sound at 44,100 Hz (CD Quality) with an average variable bitrate of 128-192 kbps, as an example, similar to the quality you would expect from streaming a song on Spotify, you would see the total size of the in-game audio increase from its heavily compressed 4.5 GB to approximately 9-12 GB. At a minimum it would be 9 GB since we are doubling the sample rate. Still not very large, but it would be a light and day difference for sound quality.
If you're curious to experiment with file size estimations, here's a neat audio filesize calculator.

Is there a solution?

The idealistic solution would be to re-export all sound effects and voice using a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, with the OGG quality parameter set between -q 0.4 and -q 0.6. They could then deliver this as a compulsory patch or a free regional high quality sound pack DLC.
Popular games such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Call of Duty: Warzone, Monster Hunter: World and even Ubisoft's own Watch Dogs 2 have all received DLC addons that increase the quality of the game experience.

Final thoughts

Is it acceptable to allow such a fundamental aspect of a game to suffer a significant loss of frequencies in order to meet that distribution criteria? Absolutely not. This sets a neglectful precedent and one that not only severely destroys immersion, but attempts to normalize poor quality sound to the masses. Here's another question for you. If you bought a Blu-ray box set of your favourite show or movie trilogy, would you be satisified knowing that they replaced the lossless DTS-HD 5.1 audio with muddy, tinny, anti-climatic explosions worthy of being peer-traded on KaZaA and Limewire? (I was born in the 80's so please excuse the reference).
Consumer expectations within the film and gaming industry aren't that different, VR is evolving and the lines are blurring with every new AAA title. We are starting to expect the same kind of treatment: Detailed facial micro expressions, lip syncing, motion capture, in-game characters based on the likeness of real world actors and actresses, quality voice acting, and dare I say it, high quality sound effects, more commonly referred to as Foley within the film industry.
I do not game in one room with a sub-par home media center, and watch films in another where my favourite monolith shaped speakers sit in each corner. If they were sentient and had a mouth and a stomach, I would expect vomit on the floor every time I embark on my journey with Odin. Instead, I have to deal with my audio producer brain punching my cochlea from the inside.

Final, final thoughts

Oddly many of the official reviews of AC:Valhalla I have read so far completely fail to mention the audio issues, and this is concerning. The issues are so obvious that they must have either purposefully omitted the critique, have sub-par sound systems, or couldn't care less. I remember back in the day when video games magazine reviewers took pride in providing a detailed opinion of sound effects and music. Fond memories of reading Zzap!64, Amiga Power and GamesMaster back in the day.
How do you guys feel about it? To me, the $60 price tag is a bit of a kick in the teeth, and I feel that Ubisoft should really have audio technicalities down to a T. Is this what we are meant to expect for a title with a AAA budget? Am I crazy for writing or caring this much?
Ubisoft could learn a thing or two from the guys and gals responsible for Middle-earth: Shadow of War. They released 4K cinematics for free, along with higher quality in-game assets. We deserve to optionally download HD quality assets for Assassin's Creed, especially since there are many gamers among us that invest a great deal of time and money into our home cinema set-ups.
Here is a current thread following this topic on the Ubisoft Player Support Forum:
Audio Issues: Bitrate / Dynamics & Balance / Muffled Sounds / Stuttering / Volume etc. | POST HERE
If you read this all the way to the end, thank you. Let's hope that the trend of heavily compressed audio dies hard.
On a side note, since I've had a few people ask: I'm a music producer and songwriter on the side. Software dev by trade. Gaming, music and audio means everything to me.

Recommended listening and current favourite soundtracks. Links provided where appropriate.

• Katana ZERO Original Soundtrack by LudoWic and Bill Kiley
• Castlevania Symphony of the Night by Michiru Yamane
• Arcanum by Ben Houge
• Halo 2 Volume 1: Original Soundtrack
• The Floor is Jelly Original Soundtrack by disasterpeace
• Anything from the Final Fantasy series, especially if it's by Nobuo Uematsu. The FFVIII Remake is great if you prefer orchestrated works.
• Mark Morgan's work, especially Fallout since it was the first PC game I ever played
• Michael Hoenig's Baldur's Gate II theme (wish it was longer)
• The criminally overlooked Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha Original Soundtrack by Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara. Sakura Mankai is my ringtone.
• Assassin's Creed Original Soundtrack of course. Favourites are II, III, Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla.
• Dark Souls, Demon's Souls and Bloodborne
• Divinity Original Sin 2 by Borislav Slavov as well as Larian's earlier games with Kirill Pokrovsky
• The incredible jazz music by Jerry Martin from The Sims 1
• Westworld Original Soundtrack

Hello to all you special, fabulous, and unsophisticated retail traders. I believe people should view GME how they view startups and tech companies, with a focus on their future potential and how their fundamentals will enable or hinder growth, instead of focusing on their current price to earnings and short term volatility. I'm long on Gamestop because of changes in leadership, their new business strategy, and because their fundamentals are ACTUALLY PERFECT for company beginning to restructure and transform.

• Considering the pandemic and overall state of electronic retailers, let's compare Gamestop and Best Buy fundamentals using their October 2020 10-Qs. BBY is much bigger than GME, isn't currently losing money, and no analysts are concerned about them going bankrupt, so how do their fundamentals compare? They both have relatively strong balance sheets for retailers in 2020, and both companies have almost identical quick ratios and networking capital ratios (.5 and 1.0). Their current distribution of their current assets is similar, but one huge positive for GME is that their current assets are 37.5% cash and about 50% inventory, which is great for companies beginning to restructure. A large cash balance grants the means to launch new company strategies, inventory obviously/hopefully means future revenue for retailers, and a conservative net AR balance in 2020 is likely for the best (not overestimating how much outstanding revenue can be collected). The majority of the current liabilities for GME are AP and accrued expenses, which is standard for commercial retail companies. However, it's more important to note relatively low levels of actual current debt, long term debt, and why the effect of operating leases on total liabilities is bullshit and stupid. ASC 842 changed how leases are accounted for effective January 2019, so operating leases are now shown as current and long term liabilities. So while GMEs debt to equity ratio looks significantly worse than Best Buys, I'd argue that its actually better. Getting out of an operating lease for a small store like Gamestop is pretty easy to negotiate or buy out, not easy to get out of a lease for the massive stores Best Buy leases. Also being F500 and having a huge market cap skewers D/E considerably. GME has a ton of cash, limited debt, and operating leases that that can be exited with some relative ease if needed, so Gamestop can restructure with plenty of breathing room.
• Looking at the income statement and cash flows, GME earnings are not awful given the conditions of brick and mortar stores during a pandemic. While Gamestop has a net income loss, they have good gross profits, and their gross margin is better than Best Buy. Gross margin indicates their core sales and costs of goods sold (costs directly related to revenue) are solid are fundamentally good. They just have too many general and administrative (non-revenue producing) expenses. I wonder what they could do to reduce overhead expenses of supplying and maintaining retail stores? Also, net income loss and loss in cash flows from operating activity in October 2020 was less than 2019. So while it's definitely not ideal to see they losses, they made significant progress towards having a positive net income IN A PANDEMIC/RECESSION, and this was still before the PS5 or Xbox Series X was released in November. GME had a positive total cash flow, but it was driven primarily from the sale of property and equipment. Sale of property and equipment is typically not a good sign for companies (think of a McDonalds not selling enough burgers so it starts selling off fryers for positive cash flow) but I believe it will be good for them. This is one of the first steps in their transformation to an online retailer, which I believe will ultimately make them profitable again. If you don't believe me, you can read exactly what their plan is.
• Ryan Cohen and other Chewy executives did not invest and join the Gamestonk board for the lulz. They liked GMEs plan and the unique opportunity that Gamestop presents, kind of like all of us shitheads here. I think their involvement in the company will provide the necessary knowledge and experience needed to grow improve e-commerce sales. The business strategy from their October 2020 10-Q:

BUSINESS STRATEGY
In May of 2019, we announced our multi-year transformation initiative, which we refer to as GameStop Reboot to position GameStop on the correct strategic path and fully leverage our unique position and brand in the video game industry. Our strategic plan is anchored on the following tenets.
Optimize the core business. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operations across the organization, including cost restructuring, inventory management optimization, adding and growing high margin product categories, and rationalizing the global store base. Prioritizing efforts to optimize the store base and improve the fundamental operations of the business yielded the net closure of 321 stores in fiscal 2019, 461 stores year-to-date in fiscal 2020, and included both the divestiture of the Simply Mac business and wind down of underperforming operations in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Improved inventory management drove a significant increase in inventory turns and as a result, in working capital, while an intense focus on organization structure and expense reductions yielded a $315.9 reduction in reported Selling, General and Administrative costs year-to-date in fiscal 2020.
Build a frictionless digital ecosystem. Develop and deploy a frictionless consumer facing digital first omni-channel environment, including the recent relaunch and customer experience enhancements within GameStop.com, the launch of a completely new GameStop App, as well as the optimization of our retail store footprint to maximize our customer reach more broadly across all channels and provide them the full spectrum of content and access to products they desire, however, wherever and whenever they want to shop. Enhancements to the user shopping experience and improved omni-channel capabilities, including expanded delivery and payment options, yielded an increase in e-commerce sales of over 430% through the third fiscal quarter of 2020.
Become the social / cultural hub for gaming. Create the social and cultural hub for games and entertainment and expand GameStop’s addressable market through category and product expansion to offer the most comprehensive product offering across the GameStop omni-channel platform. Our customers are increasing their engagement across the spectrum of games, entertainment and technology and our focus remains to meet those expanding needs.
Transform vendor partnerships. Transform our vendor and partner relationships to unlock additional high-margin revenue streams through an expanded suite of product and service offerings to optimize the lifetime value of every customer.
Connected to our transformation efforts, we have incurred and continue to incur severance, store closure costs and expenses for consultants and advisors. See "Consolidated Results from Operations—Selling, General and Administrative Expenses" for further information.
We continually review and prioritize our capital needs and are committed to making investments in our infrastructure to drive our business plans and realize on our transformation initiatives. Key areas of investment include improving the presentation and content as well as the functionality, general search and navigation across our customer facing digital channels; improving customer data integration and customer relations management capabilities; continuing to enhance service offerings to our customers; continuing to strengthen and deepen our information technology, analytics, marketing and e-commerce groups; and creating more flexible fulfillment options designed to improve our delivery capabilities and reduce our shipping costs. These and other investments are expected to, among other things, provide a seamless and compelling customer experience across our omni-channel retail platform.

• I still think shorts did not cover, red days are meaningless short ladders, there's probably counterfeit shares floating around, and media fuckery trying to stop a huge squeeze. But totally forgetting all that for a second, when the fuck did every single analyst on wall street start believing that fundamentals are the only thing that matters looking at stock price? A ton of startups and tech companies that IPO trade wildly higher than their fundamentals. A big reason for this is the emerging potential of their industry and investor belief in executive leadership, look at Elon and renewable energy or Portnoy and mobile sports betting. Why should people treat a restructuring company with good liquidity, great executive leadership, and in an emerging industry any differently than we treat exciting startups or tech companies that aren't profitable? What's the difference between a company going through a significant and well calculated transformation vs a young new company IPOing?
• Based on all of my fundamental analysis, I feel comfortable setting a price target and sell limit of $69,420.69, cause stonk. I'm so behind on my work from today because I can't stop thinking about gamestonk and watching the price and volume on Think or Swim. Diamond hands forever but I need a break for a few days. Let me know if my DD is shit, and someone please message me if we hit my PT this week and/or if Steve Cohen gets sent to Rikers, ty and power to the playerzzz

\*I AM IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM RECOMMENDING THAT YOU BUY, HOLD, OR SELL ANY SECURITY. I'M UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF SEVERAL LEGAL SUBSTANCES, DON'T ANY OF THIS SERIOUSLY. I AM USING PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION TO EXPLAIN MY UNDERSTANDING OF A CORPORATIONS FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE AND OPENING A DISCUSSION FOR FUNDAMENTAL VS SPECULATIVE STONK PRICING.\*\

eSports is on the rise in the United States and the need for a eSports Gaming "Gamestop?" League EGL is here. While leagues and competitions can be held online they aren't without their caveats. Differences in internet and computer hardware can prove critical to a gamers ability to perform.
I believe a physical location with standardized high performance gear and internet is required to go forward if there is to be any more growth and adoption past it's normal target audience.
If done properly and well it could augment GameStop’s customer base to not only become customers but become the audience and competitors. Matches can be streamed and monetized. Competitors can compete at all levels "City/State/National".
Merchandise, Sponsorships, Partnerships.
But I digress..
WHY GAMESTOP?!?
They have the customer base, they have the locations and with a little capital can ramp this up quick. They have even started already…
https://gspc.gg/
As a gaming enthusiast I have been waiting for the entrance of a true US eSports giant to rear its head. Much like all sports started with friendly competition, they eventually developed into the jaw dropping revenue producing markets we see today.
The NFL generated 15 Billion in revenue.
The MLB generated 9.9 BIllion in revenue.
Their new revenue streams…
The global gaming peripheral market was worth US$ 3.64 Billion in 2020. A Gaming peripheral is an auxiliary device that provides input and output for the computer and assists in enhanced gaming experience for the user.
https://www.imarcgroup.com/gaming-peripherals-market#:\~:text=The%20global%20gaming%20peripheral%20market,gaming%20experience%20for%20the%20user.
The global esports market size was valued at USD 1.1 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.4% from 2020 to 2027.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/esports-market
Global gaming chair market size will grow by almost USD 66 million during 2019-2023, at a CAGR of more than 5%. The gaming industry has been evolving in the digital age owing to the introduction and popularity of PC games and gaming consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation. The PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X can render games at 4K resolutions with HDR color technology, which will result in an increasing demand for gaming consoles among end-users.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190109005497/en/Global-Gaming-Chair-Market-Will-Grow-at-a-CAGR-of-over-5-During-2019-2023-Technavio
The Conclusion...
There is a lot of untapped revenue potential in the eSports US market.
There is a need for a physical presence in the United States where by other country standards we are spread so far apart.
Utilizing a company with existing framework built around gaming is a boon.
Buying quality internet, high quality gaming computers is a fairly low cost of entry.
Streaming the competitions will only bring more eyes, interest, business.
FUCKING ROCKETS THERE ARE FUCKING ROCKETS ON THIS THING. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

December and January aren't typically busy months for initial public stock offerings, but this time around, they'll be an exception. Almost a half dozen well-known tech startups, each already valued privately at over $1 billion, have recently filed for IPOs, including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Roblox.
They're hoping to take advantage of strong investor appetite for tech stocks, despite the pandemic, and to catch the coat tails of other tech companies that have recently made successful debuts. Shares in cloud database company Snowflake are up 129% since its September IPO and those of data mining company Palantir are up 215% since its September listing.
Here are key details to consider in weighing whether to invest in the latest batch of would-be public tech companies. Financial data is from the first nine months of 2020 unless otherwise indicated.

Affirm

Symbol: AFRM Fiscal 2020 revenue: $510 million (fiscal year ended June 30) Revenue growth: 93% Gross margin: n/a Net loss: $113 million
Affirm’s S-1 filing
Founded in 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Affirm aims to bring credit and lending to customers of all kinds of online retailers. Those hard-to-miss layaway offers for a pair of shoes from Cole Haan or that cute coffee table on West Elm’s website? Affirm works behind the scenes to process the loans and often covers the cost of the item (in some cases, partner banks fund the loans). So far, Affirm has signed up over 6,500 retailer and helped consumers pay for almost $11 billion worth of products over the past three years.
Pros: Affirm says its “buy now, pay later” system is superior to credit cards, with no hidden fees or high interest rates (most Affirm offers are zero interest rate). Like other hot consumer companies, Affirm also touts its net promoter score of 78, suggesting more than three-quarters of customers would recommend the company. As e-commerce grows, there’s plenty of room for growth in the market—less than 1% of e-commerce transactions in North America relied on “buy now pay later” deals. And Affirm says its data analysis of consumers’ ability to pay lets it avoid major losses.
Cons: The largest e-commerce sites, like Amazon and Walmart, have no need for Affirm and could even launch their own lending services. So could big banks or other financial institutions that can borrow money more cheaply than Affirm can. And more than one-quarter of all of Affirm’s lending has so far come from customers of a single retail partner: Peloton.

Airbnb

Symbol: ABNB First nine months of 2020 revenue: $2.52 billion Revenue growth: -32% Gross margin: 74% Net loss: $697 million
Airbnb’s S-1 filing
As the now-famous story goes, Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to rent some airbeds in their San Francisco apartment after a big design conference caused local hotels to be fully booked. Their little web site, AirBedandBreakfast.com, eventually grew into the titan that has rented space to 825 million customers cumulatively across 220 countries.
Pros: The fast-growing startup took a huge hit when COVID-19 curbed travel, but has since almost bounced back. Bookings were down 72% in April compared to the same month in 2019, but for June through September, the declined narrowed to 19% to 23%. The company also brags in its regulatory filing that pandemic-related spending cuts, including slashing headcount by 25%, make it more efficient going forward.
Cons: The pandemic showed that the travel industry is subject to sharp downturns that cut into Airbnb’s sales, and infections are on the rise again worldwide. The company has also battled restrictive rules in many cities and countries seeking to ban short-term rentals. Airbnb's filing disclosed it’s also in a battle with the Internal Revenue Service that could cost it $1.4 billion if it loses. And even after being in business for more than a decade, Airbnb is still on pace to lose around $1 billion this year.

DoorDash

Symbol: DASH First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.92 billion Revenue growth: 226% Gross margin: 53% Net loss: $149 million
DoorDash S-1 filing
After moving to the U.S. as a child, DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant to help make ends meet. The point of DoorDash, he says, is to help strivers and small businesses thrive. Now in business for seven years, DoorDash “dashers” deliver food and other items from almost 400,000 businesses to 18 million consumers per month as of September.
Pros: DoorDash is the leading provider of delivery with over twice the market share of runner up Uber Eats as of October 2020. The pandemic has ignited much faster growth in food delivery as people avoid going out to eat. Some smaller players have already sold out (DoorDash bought Square’s Caviar service for $410 million last year), but further consolidation could let DoorDash charge more for its services.
Cons: Once the pandemic passes, many DoorDash customers may return to eating in restaurants. Although California voters approved a measure to continue to classify gig workers like DoorDash’s dashers as independent contractors, other governments still are trying to classify gig workers as employees, which could wreck DoorDash’s business model.

Roblox

Symbol: RBLX First nine months of 2020 revenue: $589 million Revenue growth: 68% Gross margin: 74% Net loss: $206 million
Roblox S-1 filing
Much more than a video game, Roblox has become a virtual environment for millions of people and companies to create their own games. Co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel went from making software simulations for physics labs to creating Roblox in 2004. Now some 31 million people play daily, including three-quarters of all U.S. kids age 9 to 12, the company says (Research firm Dubit put the figure at half of kids 9 to 12 this summer).
Pros: Roblox has plenty of reasons for developers to stick around, including its large devoted customer base and the Lua scripting language that makes it easier to make new games. About two-thirds of current users are from the U.S. and Canada, so there is room for considerable overseas expansion.
Cons: The pandemic super-charged Roblox growth rate, but kids may decide to put their screens down and play more outside after the crisis ends. Many users play on devices running Apple or Google software, putting Roblox somewhat at the mercy of the twin tech titans’ app policies. Other games have been banned and the app stores decide how much of each sale they are entitled to. A joint venture with Tencent to bring Roblox to China could be impacted by increasing trade tensions or new restrictions. And gaming and social media platforms come and go depending on the latest fads. Roblox could be the MySpace of gaming.

Wish (ContextLogic)

Symbol: WISH First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.75 billion Revenue growth: 32% Gross margin: 65% Net loss: $176 million
Wish S-1 filing
Overshadowed by better known rivals like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay, Wish focuses its e-commerce services on the “affordable” segment of consumers. Founded in 2010, Wish now helps more then 500,000 online sellers hawk goods to 100 million monthly active shoppers. Parent company ContextLogic has its name on the IPO registration filing.
Pros: Shopping online isn’t just for the wealthy. Wish says it's targeting the 44% of U.S. consumers and 85% of Europeans who have household incomes of $75,000 or less, plus shoppers in developing countries. Wish’s platform is mobile first, and 90% of purchases happen via its mobile app. Although Wish doesn't make a profit, it generated free cash flow (or cash from operating activities minus purchases of property and equipment) of $23 million in the first nine months of 2020.
Cons: Wish faces off against many larger rivals, such as Amazon, Alibaba and eBay, plus Shopify and Walmart. To compete against the giants, Wish spends vast sums, over $1 billion so far in 2020, on marketing. With deep connections in China, U.S.-based Wish could be hurt by worsening trade tensions. And as with other startups dependent on mobile apps, Google and Apple could undermine Wish’s business with new rules or requirements.
Source

TL;DR: vaping, marijuana, Michael Burry, low as fuck IV, hugely under-valued company 🚀🚀🚀
\Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This is not investment advice. All information stated in this post is my own opinion, and some information may be unknowingly inaccurate or outdated. Please do your own due diligence before investing your money. I currently hold a long position on various Altria LEAPs.**
Nicotine products have been in continuous use in North America for thousands of years [1]. Upon the arrival of the Spanish to the New World, tobacco use spread rapidly throughout the globe, becoming hugely popular not only across Europe, but also in far-flung Asia and the Ottoman Empire. The only comparable product to conquer the world so thoroughly is the ubiquitous, similarly addictive, mighty coffee bean.
By the 1900's, smoking had become a huge commercial enterprise. Glitz and glam surrounded the tobacco industry. All of your Grandmother's favorite actors smoked [2]. Many high schools had smoking lounges for the students (of course, your Nana still regularly snuck out behind the bleachers to have a private puff with the quarterback). Nicotine use was a normal and accepted part of life.
We are all, of course, familiar with the rest of the story. Studies came out showing just how damaging cigarette usage was on the human body. Campaigns were begun, laws were enacted, and Big Tobacco became Public Enemy #1 [3]
Fast forward to today. For the past few decades, despite decreasing cigarette volumes, the tobacco industry has remained immensely profitable. Big players in the cigarette industry have been able to compensate for declining cigarette volumes by raising prices. Cash flows from cigarette smoking have never been higher. Yet looking at the stock market performance of the tobacco industry over the past 5 years, you would think that the industry was on life support.
No company has lately fared worse than Altria ($MO). Despite growing income at a 5.9% CAGR since 2017 amid a backdrop of stabilizing declines in cigarette consumption [4], the company's stock remains 45% off its 2017 high. Much of the underperformance can be attributed to investors losing confidence in the company's management after a series of questionable investment decisions, including taking a 35% stake in JUUL, a 45% stake in Chronos (a Canadian marijuana company), and a 10% stake in Anheuser-Busch.
These investments have performed poorly over the past few years. High-profile teen deaths from illicit THC vaping products were widely linked to JUUL usage by our sensationalist media [5], causing Altria to write-down its initial $12B investment in JUUL to a value of only ~$2B today. The bubble in the marijuana stock market popped in 2018, causing a 30% reduction in the value of Altria's Chronos stake. And the rise of the craft beer industry has continued to weigh on the profitability of Anheuser-Busch.
Despite the short-term pitfalls, I will argue that it is reasonable to believe that Altria has positioned itself very well for the future. And with all of these factors weighing down the stock over the past few years, I believe $MO is ripe for a turnaround.
I have a 2023 price target for $MO of $90 which, given the low IV Altria enjoys, implies a 30x (3,000%) return on MO Jan 2023 65c LEAPs.
My thesis relies on four key beliefs:
​

1. The company's core business is under-valued
2. Vaping will see a resurgence as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes
3. Altria is poised to win big if marijuana is federally legalized
4. Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management is heavily invested in $MO

1) The Company's core business is under-valued
Altria enjoys a stunningly low forward P/E of 8.7 and a stunningly high dividend yield of 8.1% [6]. Various online discounted cash flow analyses of Altria give it an intrinsic value between $62-$72 [7] [8]. These analyses are very conservative in that they only take into account Altria's current business, which is predominantly smokeable tobacco products.
There are also bright spots in Altria's miscellaneous businesses that these DCF models don't account for, such as the fast-growing "on!" line of nicotine pouches, or the likely reinstatement of Anheuser-Busch's dividend after it was paused last year due to Covid.
We'll ignore these bright spots for now and give Altria's core business a conservative price target of $65.
2) Vaping will see a resurgence as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes
\Please note: I am not a doctor. All health claims made in this post reflect only my own opinions.**
Nicotine has gotten a bad rap in the past 50 years, but on its own there isn't much research I've seen to suggest it's any more dangerous than caffeine. The big problem with nicotine is simply the delivery mechanism. Smoking large amounts of anything is bad for your lungs. Vaping exposes your lungs to far fewer ancillary chemicals in much smaller doses than traditional smoking. For instance, Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., director of clinical research at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, says about vaping “there’s almost no doubt that they expose you to fewer toxic chemicals than traditional cigarettes.” [9]
Altria surveyed the landscape in 2017 and determined that acquiring a stake in JUUL was its best way to position itself for the future. Since then, JUUL's name has been dragged through the mud and associated with many teen deaths. However, these deaths were later determined to be caused by unauthorized THC products unlinked to JUUL [10]. JUUL's case for harm reduction in the nicotine space is still intact.
The FTC filed an anti-trust case recently attempting to block Altria's stake in JUUL [11]. This case is due to be heard this spring. The uncertainty around JUUL's future has weighed on $MO, but in my opinion all outcomes of this case are positive:
1) Altria is forced to divest its stake in JUUL
This is not ideal, but as part of the JUUL acquisition, Altria agreed to not compete in the vaping space against JUUL. If Altria is forced to divest, it can capitalize on the recent decline in the quality and brand value of JUUL (just check out juul to see the declining sentiment around the brand) to bring its own high-quality product onto the market.
2) Altria is allowed to keep its stake in JUUL
In this case, Altria can capitalize on JUUL's troubles by acquiring a larger stake in the company at a discount. Altria can then flood JUUL with the cash it needs to help rebuild its quality and brand. This is the ideal case in my opinion, for both JUUL and Altria.
Setting aside JUUL for the moment, Altria has the exclusive rights to distribute in the USA Phillip Morris's FDA-approved IQoS product [12]. This is a "heat not burn" product that is more similar to existing cigarettes than vaping, but still reduces the number of harmful chemicals inhaled. This product is already popular in Europe and Japan, and is just beginning to be marketed in the USA. One major advantage of this product is that it produces no smoke, and so may potentially end up being allowed in restaurants, bars, and offices.
3) Altria is poised to win big if marijuana is federally legalized
Altria is the one company with the regulatory experience and distribution networks necessary to gain substantial market share in the nascent marijuana industry. Altria has been quietly filing patent after patent for THC and CBD vaping devices [13]. In fact, people in the fledgling marijuana industry are so worried about Altria's entry into the market that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, when speaking about his upcoming federal legalization bill, recently said "I don’t want to see these big tobacco companies coming in and shoving everyone out" [14]. (Note however that, while this position may play well with Senator Schumer's base for now, having a marijuana industry that is run by well-established and responsible companies is ultimately the best outcome for public health, and so it is unlikely that any steps will be taken to bar Altria from competing in the free market of marijuana products).
4) Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management is heavily invested in $MO
Would this really be WallStreetBets if I didn't mention Michael Burry? Burry's fund Scion Asset Management had 5% of its portfolio in $MO as of Q3 2020, making Altria its 13th largest holding [[15](https://dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=SAM). For context, this is about half the weight that Michael Burry's fund had in GameStop during the same quarter.
If nothing else, this is a good sanity check on the analysis here.
Summary
In summary, it's likely that the true value of Altria's core business is closer to $65 than the current price of $43. Add on top of that the potential for success in the vaping category, and the potential for growth into the marijuana market, and it is easy to see $MO adding an additional 20-30B in market cap to reach a price of $90 by 2023.
IV for 2023 LEAPs sits at ~20%. MO Jan 2023 65c's are currently priced at $0.77. If Altria reaches $90 by 2023, these options will be worth at least $25. This would represent a >3,100% return.
For this reason, I believe that Altria LEAPs represent a unique opportunity for asymmetric upside. Please let me know your thoughts below, I'd appreciate counter-arguments that highlight any flaws in the reasoning outlined above.

Background
CD PROJEKT S.A. (WSE: CDR) is a Polish video game developer, publisher and distributor based in Warsaw. CD Projekt Red, best known for The Witcher series and the recent release of Cyberpunk 2077.
The CD PROJEKT Group currently conducts operating activities in two key segments: CD PROJEKT RED and GOG.com (originally as Good Old Games).
Hierarchy
CD PROJEKT Capital Group is headed by CD PROJEKT S.A. A holding company which has five subsidiaries.
The subsidiaries are:
- GOG sp. z o.o (Similar to Steam, it is a distributor of games).
- CD PROJEKT Inc (Where all the game development happens)
- CD PROJEKT Co. Ltd (Only for selling games in China)
- Spokko sp. z o.o. (The mobile arm of CD projekt red)
- CD PROJEKT RED STORE sp. z o.o. (A new store of merchandise launched by the company)
GOG - Who have just released a 2.0 version called GOG Galaxy which subsequently entered its beta testing phase. The goal of the application is to enable players to integrate all their game shelves into a single library, to communicate with friends and to track their progress regardless of their preferred gaming platforms. Its functionality will span PC and console platforms, extending beyond the GOG.com user base. It's main selling points are that is uses the cloud, is DRM free and has a ton of old games such as Diablo, Destroy all humans etc on it's platform that Steam doesn't.
Steam is the single biggest distributor of digital games for PC, it's been dominating the market for years and has way more games than GOG does due to this. Especially as a lot of publishers do not want to host their games DRM free which GOG requires. It's very difficult to predict the future of GOG because Steam is a private company so we don't have access to it's numbers.
However the big benefit of GOG is that CD Projekt Red can sell and promote it's games directly through their own platform. The benefit being a much bigger margin on each game sold as 100% of the profit goes to CD Projekt red if a game is sold on GOG, whereas on Steam they take a 20% cut for the first $50m revenue of Cyberpunk. One third of all digital PC preorders for Cyberpunk 2077 sales were on GOG which is an incredible achievement by CD Projekt Red considering Steams dominance.
This is probably the reason why CD Projekt Red has such a huge operating margin from 30% to 50% in recent years. They are involved in the entire process of making and selling their games.
GWENT: The Witcher Card Game is the first multiplayer game developed by the CD PROJEKT Group. It has been a hugely successful and highly rated game (which is impressive considering it's their first mobile multiplayer game). The reason why this game is important for the future is because multiplayer is the key to the cash machine which is microtransactions which the card game has.
Cyberpunk was released recently and had been in development for many years. It's sold very well but less than analysts expectations and there has been serious problems on console versions which led to sony removing cyberpunk 2077 from it's PS store for the time being. This caused the companies stock to plummet 37% recently.
I'll get into the numbers at the bottom for my reverse DCF that I did.
Cyberpunk Online multiplayer will definitely come at some point within the next couple of years. The reason being is that after GTA Onlines unbelievable success and constant revenue generation for Take Two then it makes sense to try and replicate this with Cyberpunk. This multiplayer will feature microtransactions and in my opinion is the way Cd Projekt red can really make the big $$ in the future. Microtransactions for cosmetic items like in game skins or packs (like fifa) are easy to implement and have huge operating margins as they take 0 CAPEX and virtually no time to implement due to being some simple code and designs. Here's a quote taken from their 2019 Annual Report for Key Sources Of Revenue:

■ sales carried out through optional microtransactions in GWENT: The Witcher Card Game (incl. kegs and meteorite dust) via GOG, proprietors of console platforms (PlayStation, Xbox) and App Store (Apple)

Risks
There are some huge risks with cd projekt red, here are the main ones:
- Neither IP, The Wither or Cyberpunk 2077 is owned by CD Projekt since the two series are based on a series of novels and a tabletop RPG respectively. So they would need permission from these license holders (the creators I think) to be able to do other spin offs for them. While it is likely the permission will be given due to the huge successes it's not a certainty.
- CD Projekt Red relies on a couple of block busters to make 80% of their revenue and earnings. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are the only revenue generates the company has (apart from GOG). If CD Projekt red messes up either of these huge IP's in the future (or like they just have with the console versions of Cyberpunk) then you can expect a huge and sudden stock price drop and potential damage to the company.
- Because of the few but huge releases, CD Projekt Red has very volatile earnings and revenue making it very hard to predict, similar to Take Two Interactive. You can see in the following picture how sales drop a lot after release.
Co-Founders and Board History
CD PROJEKT has a very long tenure of the management board, all at least 10 years and 3/5 of them 20+ years. Insiders have a significant stake in CD Projekt red's stock, including the joint CEO's. This is great news for shareholders as the insiders have a big incentive to make the company work as they have big stakes in the company.
Company shareholding structure is made up of the following people:
- Marcin Iwinski (Joint CEO & Co-Founder) is 13%
- Michal Kicinski (Ex Joint CEO & Co-Founder) is 11%
- Piotr Nielubowicz (VP, CFO) is 6%
- Adam Kicinski (President & Joint CEO) is 3%
Incentives for management:

Management goals are based 80% on net earnings and 20% on SP over the WIG index.

These are poor goals in my opinion. Net earnings can be enhanced by poor acquisitions and stock price is meaningless and should be ignored in incentives as it can produce short term motivations.
Management hit the majority of their goals for year 2019.Their goals going forward:

Goals for 2020-2025 Aggregate Net Income: 8,300 PLN or 1,660 PLN a year.
Optimistic goals for 2020-2025 Aggregate Net Income: 10,000 PLN or 2,000 PLN a year.

These goals seem too high in my opinion. Especially after their cyberpunk flop on consoles but it's still possible.
Competitors
CD PROJEKT is well known for its biggest sales on The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 hype. However, there’s a lot of gaming industries that compete with one another.
Thus comparing its competitors such as Take-Two Interactive, Electronic Arts (EA), Activision Blizzard has more diversified games and games produced more frequently compared to CD PROJEKT RED.
CD Projekt Red's risk in terms of competitors is releasing a big game that clashes with another big game such as GTA 6. However all gaming companies have a good tailwind right now due to COVID restrictions and microtransactions are lifting all gaming companies margins. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Industry

- CAGR 2019-2024 Video games and e-sports growth expected to be 7% (source: PWC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2020–2024).
- In 2019 the strongest strong growth was observed in the mobile and console segments. The former grew by 9.7%, reaching 68.2 billion USD, while the latter grew by 7.3%, reaching 45.3billion USD. The PC market reached a volume of 35.3 billion USD, having increased by 2.8%.The largest share of the global videogame market is currently held by mobile devices (46%), 80% of which are smartphone releases. Gaming consoles come in second at 30%, followed by the PC 24%. Mobile devices are projected to retain their top position, with their corresponding market volume increasing by 11.2% annually (on average) over the next three years. According to estimates, the volume of the global mobile game market will reach 93.6 billion USD by 2022 (it currently stands at 68.2 billion USD).

You can see from the above as to why CD projekt red is branching out to smartphones and China.
Reverse DCF
Here's the original post and reverse DCF because stocks does not allow images: https://www.reddit.com/UndervaluedStonks/comments/kofhq7/wsecdr_cd_projekt_red_analysis_is_it_undervalued/
Conclusion
It's been extremely difficult to project CD Projekt Red and even after doing research I am still very unsure on a bunch of variables. In my opinion the markets assumptions of CD Projekt Red's growth and margins as shown above in the reverse DCF is perfectly acceptable to me. Therefore I would not buy their shares unless they dipped to around 210 zloty~ as I don't think they are undervalued yet. given the risks.
Please comment if you see anything wrong with my valuation. This was a very difficult one for me.
Thanks

Good morning traders and investors of the StockMarket sub! Welcome to the new trading week! Here are your pre-market stock movers & news on this Monday-

5 things to know before the stock market opens Monday

1. Wall Street set to rise after best week since November

• Dow futures pointed to an over 100 points gain at Monday’s open, an advance that would exceed the 30-stock average’s closing record and could top its intraday all-time high, both of which happened last month. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Friday closed at record highs, while the Dow’s gain was about 40 points shy of a closing record as a disappointing January jobs report boosted hopes for further economic stimulus to help Americans and U.S. businesses during the pandemic. All three stock benchmarks logged their best weeks since November. The Reddit-fueled trading frenzy around short-squeeze names receded as shares of GameStop lost 70% last week, even with Friday’s 19% gain. The previous week, the video game retailer’s stock soared 400%. Shares rose 12% in Monday’s premarket trading.

2. Tesla invests $1.5 billion in bitcoin, which soared to all-time high

• Tesla, in a SEC filing, said the electric auto maker has purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin after changing its investment policy last month. Bitcoin soared over $43,000 in an all-time high Monday. The Tesla filing also said, “We expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been talking up bitcoin and dogecoin, another cryptocurency, in recent tweets. Shares of Tesla rose in Monday’s premarket trading.

3. Yellen says Biden stimulus could result in full employment next year

• The U.S. economy could return to full employment in 2022 if President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package were passed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday. Long-term unemployment is around a historical peak. While Biden has said he wants to get GOP support for his Covid relief measure, Democrats are taking steps toward passing his approach without any Republican votes. Republicans have opposed the $1.9 trillion price tag and called for lowering the income cap for receiving the full $1,400 direct payment.

4. Trump impeachment trial starts this week

• Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, one of Donald Trump’s harshest Republican critics in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Sunday he sees a conviction of the former president at his impeachment trial as “very unlikely.” Trump’s unprecedented second Senate impeachment trial will start on Tuesday. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, it would take 17 Republicans voting with every Democrat to convict. If Senate does so, it could also vote to bar Trump from holding office again or getting certain perks reserved for former presidents.

5. South Africa suspends plans to use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine

• South Africa has suspended plans to inoculate its frontline health care workers with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after a small clinical trial suggested it was not effective in preventing mild to moderate illness from the variant dominant in that country. The disappointing early results from the study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, indicated that giving the AstraZeneca vaccine may not be useful in South Africa. In the U.S., AstraZeneca’s vaccine has not been approved. Only vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have been approved for emergency use so far by the FDA. One from Johnson & Johnson will be reviewed later this month by the agency’s vaccine advisory committee.

STOCK FUTURES CURRENTLY:

(CLICK HERE FOR STOCK FUTURES CHARTS!)

LAST WEEK'S MARKET MAP:

(CLICK HERE FOR LAST WEEK'S MARKET MAP!)

TODAY'S MARKET MAP:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S MARKET MAP!)

LAST WEEK'S S&P SECTORS:

(CLICK HERE FOR LAST WEEK'S S&P SECTORS CHART!)

TODAY'S S&P SECTORS:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S S&P SECTORS CHART!)

TODAY'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR!)

THIS WEEK'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR!)

THIS WEEK'S UPCOMING IPO'S:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S UPCOMING IPO'S!)

THIS WEEK'S EARNINGS CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S EARNINGS CALENDAR!)

THIS MORNING'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS MORNING'S EARNINGS CALENDAR!)

EARNINGS RELEASES BEFORE THE OPEN TODAY:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS MORNING'S EARNINGS RELEASES!)

EARNINGS RELEASES AFTER THE CLOSE TODAY:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS AFTERNOON'S EARNINGS RELEASES!)

FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES:

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #1!)

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #2!)

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #3!)

FRIDAY'S INSIDER TRADING FILINGS:

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S INSIDER TRADING FILINGS!)

TODAY'S DIVIDEND CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S DIVIDEND CALENDAR!)

THIS MORNING'S MOST ACTIVE TRENDING TICKERS ON STOCKTWITS:

• OCGN
• TSLA
• SNPR
• PLTR
• CLNE
• VERU
• KMPH
• TGTX
• CRNT

THIS MORNING'S STOCK NEWS MOVERS:

(source: cnbc.com)

Hasbro (HAS) – Hasbro reported quarterly profit of $1.27 per share, 13 cents a share above estimates. Revenue also exceeded forecasts, boosted by ongoing increased interest in its board games and toys amid the pandemic. Hasbro shares rose 2.8% in premarket trading as of 7:36 a.m. ET.

STOCK SYMBOL: HAS

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Energizer Holdings (ENR) – The battery maker beat estimates by 28 cents a share, with quarterly earnings of $1.17 per share. Revenue also topped estimates and Energizer increased its full-year forecast, benefiting from increased demand and lower costs. The company’s shares jumped 5.5% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: ENR

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Westport Fuel Systems (WPRT) – Westport is up by about 50% in premarket trading following news that Amazon.com (AMZN) has ordered about 1,000 truck engines that run on compressed natural gas for its fleet of delivery vehicles. The engines are made by a joint venture between Vancouver-based Westport and Cummins (CMI).

STOCK SYMBOL: WPRT

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Cubic Corp. (CUB) – The provider of transportation-related technology agreed to be bought by Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital for $70 per share in cash, or about $2.8 billion. Cubic had disclosed potential third party interest in acquiring the company back in September. Cubic shares jumped 8.3% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: CUB

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) – The maker of data analysis software announced a partnership with IBM (IBM) that will augment IBM’s artificial intelligence offerings and make them easier to use. Palantir Chief Operating Officer Shyam Sankar told Bloomberg that the company expects to announce more such partnerships in the future. Palantir shares surged 8.6% in premarket trading.

STOCK SYMBOL: PLTR

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Global Payments (GPN) – The payments technology company came in 4 cents a share ahead of estimates, with quarterly earnings of $1.80 per share. Revenue essentially was in line with forecasts. Global Payments saw revenue fall from a year earlier, but saw expenses decline as well. The company also announced a partnership with Google to develop a variety of cloud-based solutions for merchants. The company’s shares rose 2.3% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: GPN

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) – Royal Dutch Shell struck a deal to supply renewable energy to Amazon. The online retail giant is aiming to derive 100% of its power needs from clean energy by 2025.

STOCK SYMBOL: RDS.A

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

PPG Industries (PPG) – The paint and coatings maker is the winner in the bidding for Finnish paint maker Tikkurila, after Dutch rival Akzo Nobel dropped out. PPG submitted a revised offer last week that topped the latest overture made to Tikkurila by Akzo Nobel.

STOCK SYMBOL: PPG

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

AMC Entertainment (AMC) – AMC said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that majority shareholder Wanda Group had executed a share conversion to the movie theater operator’s class A stock from class B shares. The move would allow the China-based company to sell AMC shares, but the filing did not say how many shares were converted or if any were sold. AMC shares were caught up in the Reddit-fueled volatility of the past few weeks. AMC shares rose 1.7% in premarket trading.

STOCK SYMBOL: AMC

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

AstraZeneca (AZN) – South Africa has halted the rollout of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, after a study showed the vaccine gave only minimal protection against a variant of the virus prevalent in South Africa.

STOCK SYMBOL: AZN

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Target (TGT) – Stifel upgraded the retailer’s stock to “buy” from “hold,” noting Target’s strong gains in digital sales and the increasing popularity of the company’s same-day services. Target shares climbed 1.4% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: TGT

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Hershey (HSY) – Hershey was upgraded to “outperform” from “market perform” at RBC Capital Markets, saying the chocolate maker will be able to hold recent market share gains due to ongoing issues for its competitors.

STOCK SYMBOL: HSY

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

DISCUSS!

What's on everyone's radar for today's trading day ahead here at StockMarket?

I hope you all have an excellent trading day ahead today on this Monday, February 8th, 2021! :)

December and January aren't typically busy months for initial public stock offerings, but this time around, they'll be an exception. Almost a half dozen well-known tech startups, each already valued privately at over $1 billion, have recently filed for IPOs, including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Roblox.
They're hoping to take advantage of strong investor appetite for tech stocks, despite the pandemic, and to catch the coat tails of other tech companies that have recently made successful debuts. Shares in cloud database company Snowflake are up 129% since its September IPO and those of data mining company Palantir are up 215% since its September listing.
Here are key details to consider in weighing whether to invest in the latest batch of would-be public tech companies. Financial data is from the first nine months of 2020 unless otherwise indicated.

Affirm

Symbol: AFRM Fiscal 2020 revenue: $510 million (fiscal year ended June 30) Revenue growth: 93% Gross margin: n/a Net loss: $113 million
Affirm’s S-1 filing
Founded in 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Affirm aims to bring credit and lending to customers of all kinds of online retailers. Those hard-to-miss layaway offers for a pair of shoes from Cole Haan or that cute coffee table on West Elm’s website? Affirm works behind the scenes to process the loans and often covers the cost of the item (in some cases, partner banks fund the loans). So far, Affirm has signed up over 6,500 retailer and helped consumers pay for almost $11 billion worth of products over the past three years.
Pros: Affirm says its “buy now, pay later” system is superior to credit cards, with no hidden fees or high interest rates (most Affirm offers are zero interest rate). Like other hot consumer companies, Affirm also touts its net promoter score of 78, suggesting more than three-quarters of customers would recommend the company. As e-commerce grows, there’s plenty of room for growth in the market—less than 1% of e-commerce transactions in North America relied on “buy now pay later” deals. And Affirm says its data analysis of consumers’ ability to pay lets it avoid major losses.
Cons: The largest e-commerce sites, like Amazon and Walmart, have no need for Affirm and could even launch their own lending services. So could big banks or other financial institutions that can borrow money more cheaply than Affirm can. And more than one-quarter of all of Affirm’s lending has so far come from customers of a single retail partner: Peloton.

Airbnb

Symbol: ABNB First nine months of 2020 revenue: $2.52 billion Revenue growth: -32% Gross margin: 74% Net loss: $697 million
Airbnb’s S-1 filing
As the now-famous story goes, Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to rent some airbeds in their San Francisco apartment after a big design conference caused local hotels to be fully booked. Their little web site, AirBedandBreakfast.com, eventually grew into the titan that has rented space to 825 million customers cumulatively across 220 countries.
Pros: The fast-growing startup took a huge hit when COVID-19 curbed travel, but has since almost bounced back. Bookings were down 72% in April compared to the same month in 2019, but for June through September, the declined narrowed to 19% to 23%. The company also brags in its regulatory filing that pandemic-related spending cuts, including slashing headcount by 25%, make it more efficient going forward.
Cons: The pandemic showed that the travel industry is subject to sharp downturns that cut into Airbnb’s sales, and infections are on the rise again worldwide. The company has also battled restrictive rules in many cities and countries seeking to ban short-term rentals. Airbnb's filing disclosed it’s also in a battle with the Internal Revenue Service that could cost it $1.4 billion if it loses. And even after being in business for more than a decade, Airbnb is still on pace to lose around $1 billion this year.

DoorDash

Symbol: DASH First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.92 billion Revenue growth: 226% Gross margin: 53% Net loss: $149 million
DoorDash S-1 filing
After moving to the U.S. as a child, DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant to help make ends meet. The point of DoorDash, he says, is to help strivers and small businesses thrive. Now in business for seven years, DoorDash “dashers” deliver food and other items from almost 400,000 businesses to 18 million consumers per month as of September.
Pros: DoorDash is the leading provider of delivery with over twice the market share of runner up Uber Eats as of October 2020. The pandemic has ignited much faster growth in food delivery as people avoid going out to eat. Some smaller players have already sold out (DoorDash bought Square’s Caviar service for $410 million last year), but further consolidation could let DoorDash charge more for its services.
Cons: Once the pandemic passes, many DoorDash customers may return to eating in restaurants. Although California voters approved a measure to continue to classify gig workers like DoorDash’s dashers as independent contractors, other governments still are trying to classify gig workers as employees, which could wreck DoorDash’s business model.

Roblox

Symbol: RBLX First nine months of 2020 revenue: $589 million Revenue growth: 68% Gross margin: 74% Net loss: $206 million
Roblox S-1 filing
Much more than a video game, Roblox has become a virtual environment for millions of people and companies to create their own games. Co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel went from making software simulations for physics labs to creating Roblox in 2004. Now some 31 million people play daily, including three-quarters of all U.S. kids age 9 to 12, the company says (Research firm Dubit put the figure at half of kids 9 to 12 this summer).
Pros: Roblox has plenty of reasons for developers to stick around, including its large devoted customer base and the Lua scripting language that makes it easier to make new games. About two-thirds of current users are from the U.S. and Canada, so there is room for considerable overseas expansion.
Cons: The pandemic super-charged Roblox growth rate, but kids may decide to put their screens down and play more outside after the crisis ends. Many users play on devices running Apple or Google software, putting Roblox somewhat at the mercy of the twin tech titans’ app policies. Other games have been banned and the app stores decide how much of each sale they are entitled to. A joint venture with Tencent to bring Roblox to China could be impacted by increasing trade tensions or new restrictions. And gaming and social media platforms come and go depending on the latest fads. Roblox could be the MySpace of gaming.

Wish (ContextLogic)

Symbol: WISH First nine months of 2020 revenue: $1.75 billion Revenue growth: 32% Gross margin: 65% Net loss: $176 million
Wish S-1 filing
Overshadowed by better known rivals like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay, Wish focuses its e-commerce services on the “affordable” segment of consumers. Founded in 2010, Wish now helps more then 500,000 online sellers hawk goods to 100 million monthly active shoppers. Parent company ContextLogic has its name on the IPO registration filing.
Pros: Shopping online isn’t just for the wealthy. Wish says it's targeting the 44% of U.S. consumers and 85% of Europeans who have household incomes of $75,000 or less, plus shoppers in developing countries. Wish’s platform is mobile first, and 90% of purchases happen via its mobile app. Although Wish doesn't make a profit, it generated free cash flow (or cash from operating activities minus purchases of property and equipment) of $23 million in the first nine months of 2020.
Cons: Wish faces off against many larger rivals, such as Amazon, Alibaba and eBay, plus Shopify and Walmart. To compete against the giants, Wish spends vast sums, over $1 billion so far in 2020, on marketing. With deep connections in China, U.S.-based Wish could be hurt by worsening trade tensions. And as with other startups dependent on mobile apps, Google and Apple could undermine Wish’s business with new rules or requirements.
https://fortune.com/2020/11/25/2020-ipos-airbnb-roblox-affirm-wish-doordash-predictions-going-public/

Good morning traders and investors of the wallstreetbets sub! Welcome to the new trading week! Here are your pre-market stock movers & news on this Monday-

4 things to know before the stock market opens Monday

1. Wall Street set to rise after best week since November

• Dow futures pointed to an over 100 points gain at Monday’s open, an advance that would exceed the 30-stock average’s closing record and could top its intraday all-time high, both of which happened last month. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Friday closed at record highs, while the Dow’s gain was about 40 points shy of a closing record as a disappointing January jobs report boosted hopes for further economic stimulus to help Americans and U.S. businesses during the pandemic. All three stock benchmarks logged their best weeks since November. The Reddit-fueled trading frenzy around short-squeeze names receded as shares of GameStop lost 70% last week, even with Friday’s 19% gain. The previous week, the video game retailer’s stock soared 400%. Shares rose 12% in Monday’s premarket trading.

2. Yellen says Biden stimulus could result in full employment next year

• The U.S. economy could return to full employment in 2022 if President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package were passed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday. Long-term unemployment is around a historical peak. While Biden has said he wants to get GOP support for his Covid relief measure, Democrats are taking steps toward passing his approach without any Republican votes. Republicans have opposed the $1.9 trillion price tag and called for lowering the income cap for receiving the full $1,400 direct payment.

3. Trump impeachment trial starts this week

• Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, one of Donald Trump’s harshest Republican critics in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Sunday he sees a conviction of the former president at his impeachment trial as “very unlikely.” Trump’s unprecedented second Senate impeachment trial will start on Tuesday. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, it would take 17 Republicans voting with every Democrat to convict. If Senate does so, it could also vote to bar Trump from holding office again or getting certain perks reserved for former presidents.

4. South Africa suspends plans to use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine

• South Africa has suspended plans to inoculate its frontline health care workers with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after a small clinical trial suggested it was not effective in preventing mild to moderate illness from the variant dominant in that country. The disappointing early results from the study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, indicated that giving the AstraZeneca vaccine may not be useful in South Africa. In the U.S., AstraZeneca’s vaccine has not been approved. Only vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have been approved for emergency use so far by the FDA. One from Johnson & Johnson will be reviewed later this month by the agency’s vaccine advisory committee.

STOCK FUTURES CURRENTLY:

(CLICK HERE FOR STOCK FUTURES CHARTS!)

LAST WEEK'S MARKET MAP:

(CLICK HERE FOR LAST WEEK'S MARKET MAP!)

TODAY'S MARKET MAP:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S MARKET MAP!)

LAST WEEK'S S&P SECTORS:

(CLICK HERE FOR LAST WEEK'S S&P SECTORS CHART!)

TODAY'S S&P SECTORS:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S S&P SECTORS CHART!)

TODAY'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR!)

THIS WEEK'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S ECONOMIC CALENDAR!)

THIS WEEK'S UPCOMING IPO'S:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S UPCOMING IPO'S!)

THIS WEEK'S EARNINGS CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S EARNINGS CALENDAR!)

THIS MORNING'S PRE-MARKET EARNINGS CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS MORNING'S EARNINGS CALENDAR!)

EARNINGS RELEASES BEFORE THE OPEN TODAY:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS MORNING'S EARNINGS RELEASES!)

EARNINGS RELEASES AFTER THE CLOSE TODAY:

(CLICK HERE FOR THIS AFTERNOON'S EARNINGS RELEASES!)

FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES:

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #1!)

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #2!)

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S ANALYST UPGRADES/DOWNGRADES LINK #3!)

FRIDAY'S INSIDER TRADING FILINGS:

(CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY'S INSIDER TRADING FILINGS!)

TODAY'S DIVIDEND CALENDAR:

(CLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S DIVIDEND CALENDAR!)

THIS MORNING'S STOCK NEWS MOVERS:

(source: cnbc.com)

Hasbro (HAS) – Hasbro reported quarterly profit of $1.27 per share, 13 cents a share above estimates. Revenue also exceeded forecasts, boosted by ongoing increased interest in its board games and toys amid the pandemic. Hasbro shares rose 2.8% in premarket trading as of 7:36 a.m. ET.

STOCK SYMBOL: HAS

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Energizer Holdings (ENR) – The battery maker beat estimates by 28 cents a share, with quarterly earnings of $1.17 per share. Revenue also topped estimates and Energizer increased its full-year forecast, benefiting from increased demand and lower costs. The company’s shares jumped 5.5% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: ENR

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Westport Fuel Systems (WPRT) – Westport is up by about 50% in premarket trading following news that Amazon.com (AMZN) has ordered about 1,000 truck engines that run on compressed natural gas for its fleet of delivery vehicles. The engines are made by a joint venture between Vancouver-based Westport and Cummins (CMI).

STOCK SYMBOL: WPRT

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Cubic Corp. (CUB) – The provider of transportation-related technology agreed to be bought by Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital for $70 per share in cash, or about $2.8 billion. Cubic had disclosed potential third party interest in acquiring the company back in September. Cubic shares jumped 8.3% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: CUB

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) – The maker of data analysis software announced a partnership with IBM (IBM) that will augment IBM’s artificial intelligence offerings and make them easier to use. Palantir Chief Operating Officer Shyam Sankar told Bloomberg that the company expects to announce more such partnerships in the future. Palantir shares surged 8.6% in premarket trading.

STOCK SYMBOL: PLTR

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Global Payments (GPN) – The payments technology company came in 4 cents a share ahead of estimates, with quarterly earnings of $1.80 per share. Revenue essentially was in line with forecasts. Global Payments saw revenue fall from a year earlier, but saw expenses decline as well. The company also announced a partnership with Google to develop a variety of cloud-based solutions for merchants. The company’s shares rose 2.3% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: GPN

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) – Royal Dutch Shell struck a deal to supply renewable energy to Amazon. The online retail giant is aiming to derive 100% of its power needs from clean energy by 2025.

STOCK SYMBOL: RDS.A

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

PPG Industries (PPG) – The paint and coatings maker is the winner in the bidding for Finnish paint maker Tikkurila, after Dutch rival Akzo Nobel dropped out. PPG submitted a revised offer last week that topped the latest overture made to Tikkurila by Akzo Nobel.

STOCK SYMBOL: PPG

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

AMC Entertainment (AMC) – AMC said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that majority shareholder Wanda Group had executed a share conversion to the movie theater operator’s class A stock from class B shares. The move would allow the China-based company to sell AMC shares, but the filing did not say how many shares were converted or if any were sold. AMC shares were caught up in the Reddit-fueled volatility of the past few weeks. AMC shares rose 1.7% in premarket trading.

STOCK SYMBOL: AMC

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

AstraZeneca (AZN) – South Africa has halted the rollout of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, after a study showed the vaccine gave only minimal protection against a variant of the virus prevalent in South Africa.

STOCK SYMBOL: AZN

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Target (TGT) – Stifel upgraded the retailer’s stock to “buy” from “hold,” noting Target’s strong gains in digital sales and the increasing popularity of the company’s same-day services. Target shares climbed 1.4% in the premarket.

STOCK SYMBOL: TGT

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

Hershey (HSY) – Hershey was upgraded to “outperform” from “market perform” at RBC Capital Markets, saying the chocolate maker will be able to hold recent market share gains due to ongoing issues for its competitors.

STOCK SYMBOL: HSY

• CLICK HERE FOR CHART!

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE STOCK QUOTE!)

DISCUSS!

What's on everyone's radar for today's trading day ahead here at wallstreetbets?

I hope you all have an excellent trading day ahead today on this Monday, February 8th, 2021! :)

TDLR: Gamestop ist mindestens 1000 Dollar wert. Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit. GME ist besser aufgestellt denn je. HALTEN🚀🚀🚀
Kann mit einer von den ganzen heulenden Papier-Händen mal erklären wieso die Party vorbei ist? Wieso jetzt alle verlieren? Warum das hier das Parade-Beispiel einer Blase ist?
Ich bin zu autistisch das zu verstehen. Ach ja, und falls jemand den Chart vom VW-Short-Squeeze gerade zufällig parat hat – könnte mir jemand mit einem Pfeil zeigen, wo wir gerade sind?
Danke!
Aber packen wir den Short-Squeeze jetzt mal an die Seite (wenigstens für diesen einen Post). Nur soviel: Ich habe keine Ahnung, wann, ob und in welcher Form der kommen wird. Für mich spielt das auch keine Rolle. Ich halte.
Ich schreibe hier nochmal meine Investment-These bzw. was das Unternehmen interessant macht. Das allermeiste dürfte allen bekannt sein. Aber wie es scheint, erinnert sich da ganz speziell heute keiner mehr dran.
Vielleicht vorneweg:
Warum ist der Preis die letzten Tage explodiert? Keine Ahnung. Es gab keinen Katalysator dafür. Möglicherweise war es der WSB-Hype. Es gab jedenfalls keine neuen Nachrichten zur Firma etc…
Stand jetzt
In dem Moment in dem ich das hier schreibe hat GME eine Marktkapitalisierung von knapp über 6 Milliarden Dollar, 90$ pro Aktie, wie heute sicherlich viele „schmerzhaft“ erfahren haben. Das ist nichtmal einmal Jahresumsatz (6,466 Milliarden USD, 2019). Das ist unter allen Gesichtspunkten an Lächerlichkeit nicht zu überbieten.
Was ist passiert in den letzten Monaten?
Ryan Cohen hat über 9 Mio. Aktien gekauft, 12,9% vom Unternehmen. RC hat, wie wir alle wissen Chewy.com aus dem Nichts gezaubert und auf den Weg gebracht, ein 40 Milliarden Dollar Unternehmen zu werden. Der Laden verkauft Hundespielzeug und Katzenfutter und hat, genau wie GME, 6,5 Mrd. USD (2020) umgesetzt, aber keinen Gewinn erzielt. Wichtiger: Chewy hat in seiner Kategorie gegen Amazon gewonnen – man mag es kaum glauben. Mit einem besseren Kundenerlebnis hat er praktisch das ultimative Online-Ziel für Haustier-Besitzer erschaffen.
Dann im November hat RC einen Brief (Titel: Maximizing Stockholder Value by Becoming the Ultimate Destination for Gamers) an das Board geschrieben: (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1326380/000101359420000821/rc13da3-111620.pdf). Die entscheidende Stelle (übersetzt):
„Die Führung von GameStop sollte sofort eine strategische Überprüfung des Geschäfts durchführen und einen glaubwürdigen Plan teilen, um die enormen Chancen im schnell wachsenden Gaming-Sektor zu nutzen. GameStop muss sich zu einem Technologieunternehmen entwickeln, das Gamer begeistert und außergewöhnliche digitale Erlebnisse bietet - und kein Videospielehändler bleiben, der seinen stationären Fußabdruck überpriorisiert und über das Online-Ökosystem stolpert.“
Insgesamt sind das drei Seiten mit konkreteren Vorschlägen. Ich fasse die mal zusammen:
​

• Mietverträge von Geschäften kündigen, die underperformen
• Streichen oder Verkauf von Aktivitäten in Europa und Australien, die nicht zum Kerngeschäft gehören
• Cashflow aus neuem Konsolenzyklys (sprich PS5, XBox X) nutzen, um in Zukunft zu investieren

Was lernen wir daraus?
RC hat die Probleme, die bei GME den Gewinn schmälern und den Umsatz vom Abheben abhalten erkannt. Und das viele eigene Geld hat er nicht investieret, um es zu verlieren (oder auf halber Strecke aufzuhören. Schaut euch alle Interviews von ihm an: Der setzt sich was in den Kopf und zieht es dann voll durch).
Inzwischen steht fest: RC kommt ins Board und das sogar mit zwei seiner Chewy-Buddies. Er wird die Mehrheit bekommen und hat dann so ziemlich freie Fahrt.
Grundlage
Und RC hat ein traumhaftes Fundament, auf das er mit seiner Erfahrung bauen kann. 257% YTY Wachstum im E-Commerce-Bereich. 55 Millionen Power-Up-Mitglieder, über 20 Millionen davon innerhalb der letzten 12 Monate aktiv. Diese Zahl wird in den letzten Wochen/Monaten erheblich gewachsen sein, angetrieben durch eine der besten Marketing-Kampagnen, die diese Welt jemals gesehen. Abonnements sind sowas wie der heilige Gral für Online-Händler…
Und das beste? Ein Total Adressable Market (TAM) von – je nach Quelle – aktuell zwischen 160 und 170 Milliarden Dollar (2020), der jährlich – je nach Quelle – zwischen 10 bis 13 Prozent (!) wächst. (https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-games-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/video-game-market). Das ist gigantisch.
Wenn man sich das Wachstum anguckt und den Gaming-Markt, stellt man schnell fest, dass Gamestop als reiner Gaming-Retailer ziemlich einzigartig positioniert ist. Der Wandel wird kommen weg von Gamestop als Einzelhändler, hin zu GME als Onlinehändler.
Die „Spannung“ liegt jetzt darauf, was Ryan Cohen für einen Plan vorlegt. Eine Sache, die schon jetzt durchgesickert ist: Es wird praktisch Bau-Stationen für Gaming-PCs geben, wo es entsprechende Bauteile und kompetentes Personal gibt, das einem dabei hilft seine Gaming-Station zusammenzubauen. Bisher geht das nur Online oder über die Microcenter. Da gibt es in den USA aber nur 25 von, weswegen sie für viele nicht zu erreichen sind. Bausteine für Gaming-PCs sind teuer, die Margen sehr hoch, der Markt wächst = sehr sinnvolle Entscheidung.
Ein anderer wichtiger Punkt wird sein, wie gut er die Abonnenten monetisieren kann und Gamer dazu bringt, dass sie alles dort einkaufen. Denn Ryans Ziel ist ja, wie er im Brief schreibt, GME zum „ultimativen Ziel für Gamer“ zu entwickeln.
Bewertung
Hier hat man – mit Blick auf den Markt und vergleichbare Unternehmen – konservativ gerechnet eine Firma, die problemlos mit 5x Top-Line-Revenue gehandelt wird, sprich bei 6,5 Mrd./Umsatz eine Bewertung von gut, 32,5 Mrd. Dollar, sprich 470$/Aktie oder knapp 450% ab heute hat.
Ein Freund von mir arbeitet in einer VC-Firma (USA) mit dem ich mehrfach ausgiebig auch über GME gesprochen habe. Da geht es sogar soweit, dass die bei vergleichbaren Firmen (sprich Online-Händler, dreistelliges YTY-Wachstum, Millionen zahlende Abonnenten) 10-30x Top-Line-Revenue rechnen, weil Abonnement, weil Tech-Unternehmen, weil weltbekannte Marke, weil treue Kunden etc. Das würde die Bewertung (bei unveränderten 6,5 Mrd. USD Umsatz) auf zwischen 70 und 210 Mrd. USD bzw. zwischen 940$/Aktie und 2820$/Aktie bringen.
Das hört sich wahnsinnig und unrealistisch an. Und dafür fehlen uns Stand jetzt noch einige wichtige Punkte, beispielsweise der genaue Plan, bessere Zahlen, etc. Vielleicht setzen sie 2021 gut 1,5 Mrd. USD um allein im Online-Bereich um. Wenn man für die VC-Rechnung nur den diesen Umsatz nimmt, und von 20x ausgeht, hätte man eine market cap von 30 Mrd.USD, sprich 430$/Aktie.
Die nächsten Zahlen werden am 25.3. vorgestellt. Die dürften im E-Commerce-Bereich sehr sehr gut aussehen.
Tendies?
Wann bekomme ich meinen Gewinn? Der Markt hat das zu entscheiden. Große Institutionen sind der Markt. Hedge Funds sind der Markt. Reiche Menschen sind der Markt. Wir alle sind der verfickte Markt. Und der wird früher oder später realisieren, dass TAM, das Fundament für einen phänomenalen Neustart, eine jetzt überall bekannte Marke, ein sehr gut gelaunter Ryan Cohen, ein Top-Team, ein Top-Board, neue, gewinnbringende Produktkategorien und vieles mehr MEHR WERT SIND ALS 1X JAHRESUMSATZ!
ODER KURZ: GME🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Das passiert nicht von heute auf morgen. Aber schnell genug. Wir haben 0 Zinsen, Menschen sind auf der Suche nach Gewinnen mehr denn je. Mehr Menschen interessieren sich fürs „investieren“ denn je. Das sind Top-Voraussetzungen.
Interessant sind auch die Videos von u/deepfuckingvalue (RoaringKitty auf Youtube). Auch der Interessiert sich nicht für den Short-Squeeze. Deswegen ist er, oh Wunder, auch immer noch drin…
DISCLAIMER: Ich bin Autist, das hier ist keine finanzielle Beratung. Ich bin kein finanzieller Berater. Jeder möge sich selbst informieren.
3000 Aktien im Schnitt @ 11,20 Euro gekauft; erste im Dezember 2019, seitdem stetig aufgestockt. Möglicher Shortsqueeze spielte bei Entscheidung keine Rolle. Exit-Strategie: Werde die Hälfte bei Market Cap 50 Mrd. Doollar (Gut 800$/Aktie) verkaufen, den Rest halten und abwarten.

There are some heavy hitters on GME's Board and in the C-Suite. IMHO, the company should have spoken out about what's happening regarding their stock. They should also have a plan to address changes in the marketplace re Covid19, the push for digital and cryptocurrency, etc. Positive statements from them would improve the stability of the stock.
Why have they been silent throughout this entire event? Wouldn't they speak out against the disparaging remarks from various HF reps in recent weeks which have negatively impacted the value of the stock? Or, do they agree with the HFs that the stock is worthless, which would suggest that GME is behind a pump and dump which has enriched them and left us holding the bag? This is the kind of letter we need to send, en mass, to the Chairman of the Board: Kathy Vrabeck, and to the media.

GME Governance

Management

• George ShermanChief Executive Officer and Director George E. Sherman is the chief executive officer of GameStop. He was appointed to this role in April 2019.George is a member of GameStop’s Board of Directors, a seat he has held since April 2019.George brings to GameStop more than 25 years of senior management experience serving in a variety of retail leadership roles for several major retail brands like Advance Auto Parts, Best Buy, Target and Home Depot.Prior to joining GameStop, George served as CEO of Victra, the largest exclusive authorized retailer for Verizon Wireless products and services. Before this, he served as president and interim CEO for Advance Auto Parts where he was responsible for more than 4,000 stores, merchandising, marketing, IT, supply chain and commercial sales.George also served as president of Best Buy Services, where he led consumer services, small- and medium-business capabilities, channel partnerships and Best Buy for business. Prior to Best Buy, he ran the operations and home services divisions of Home Depot and spent 14 years with the Target Corporation in various leadership roles.He received his master’s degree from Central Michigan University and served as an officer in the United States Air Force for nearly seven years. George is an active community volunteer with veteran’s causes and currently serves on the board of directors of Building Homes for Heroes, which builds mortgage free homes catered to the unique needs of disabled veterans.
• Jim BellEVP and Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for GameStop, a role he was appointed to in June of 2019. Prior to joining GameStop, Jim served as CFO and interim CEO of Wok Holdings, Inc., the parent company of P.F. Chang’s, Pei Wei and True Food Kitchen restaurants, where he successfully designed and led the company’s overall strategic plan and omnichannel digital transformation and the successful sale of each of these brands. Previously, Jim served as EVP and CFO at RLH Corporation and President and CEO of Coldwater Creek, Inc. Earlier in his career he held senior finance roles at Harry & David Holdings, Inc. and The Gap. Jim received his MBA from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy. Following graduation, Jim served as a Naval Flight Officer leading squadron and flight operations in the U.S. Navy from 1989 to 1998.
• Dan ReedGeneral Counsel and Corporate Secretary Dan Reed serves as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for GameStop. In this role, Dan oversees all company domestic and international legal matters and works closely with the executive leadership team and the Board of Directors to ensure legal compliance and success in meeting business objectives.Prior to joining GameStop in 2006, Dan worked in private practice as a business lawyer. Dan holds a J.D. degree from the University of Texas and a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University.

Board of Directors

• Kathy VrabeckBoard Chair Kathy P. Vrabeck is Board Chair and a member of the Compensation Committee. She has served as a Director since June 2012. She is currently a senior client partner in the consumer markets division of Korn Ferry. Previously, she was a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. (“Heidrick & Struggles”) in their Media, Entertainment and Digital practice. Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles in July 2011, Vrabeck was with Legendary Pictures from March 2009 to March 2011 where she served as president, Legendary Digital and was responsible for the creation, management and delivery of digital entertainment, with a focus on video games, across current and next-generation platforms. From May 2007 to November 2008, Vrabeck was with Electronic Arts, Inc. (“EA”) where she served as president, EA Casual Entertainment and led EA’s efforts in the fastest growing segments of the video game market: mobile, online, social networking and global media sales. Prior to joining EA, Vrabeck was with Activision, Inc. (“Activision”) from August 1999 to April 2006 where she served as president, Activision Publishing, overseeing Activision’s product development and global brand management and publishing operations. Earlier in her career, Vrabeck held various marketing, sales and finance positions with ConAgra, The Pillsbury Company, Quaker Oats and Eli Lilly and Company. Vrabeck currently serves on the DePauw University Board of Trustees.
• George ShermanChief Executive Officer and Directo rGeorge E. Sherman is the chief executive officer of GameStop. He was appointed to this role in April 2019.George is a member of GameStop’s Board of Directors, a seat he has held since April 2019.George brings to GameStop more than 25 years of senior management experience serving in a variety of retail leadership roles for several major retail brands like Advance Auto Parts, Best Buy, Target and Home Depot.Prior to joining GameStop, George served as CEO of Victra, the largest exclusive authorized retailer for Verizon Wireless products and services. Before this, he served as president and interim CEO for Advance Auto Parts where he was responsible for more than 4,000 stores, merchandising, marketing, IT, supply chain and commercial sales.George also served as president of Best Buy Services, where he led consumer services, small- and medium-business capabilities, channel partnerships and Best Buy for business. Prior to Best Buy, he ran the operations and home services divisions of Home Depot and spent 14 years with the Target Corporation in various leadership roles.He received his master’s degree from Central Michigan University and served as an officer in the United States Air Force for nearly seven years. George is an active community volunteer with veteran’s causes and currently serves on the board of directors of Building Homes for Heroes, which builds mortgage free homes catered to the unique needs of disabled veterans.
• Carrie TeffnerDirector Carrie Teffner is a director and was appointed to the board in 2018. Carrie is chair of the Audit Committee and brings 30 years of financial leadership and experience in the consumer products and retail industries. Carrie has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Crocs (NASDAQ: CROX) since 2015. Before assuming her executive positions at Crocs, she served on the Crocs board of directors, which she joined in June 2015. Prior to joining Crocs, she served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at PetSmart and, before that, at Weber-Stephen Products. Prior to those roles, she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Timberland and spent 21 years in various leadership positions at Sara Lee Corporation. Carrie holds Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Vermont.
• Raul FernandezDirector Raul is a director and was appointed to GameStop’s board in April 2019. He serves as a member of the company’s Audit Committee. Raul serves as Vice Chairman and Owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, a private partnership that co-owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s 2018 Stanley Cup Champion Washington Capitals, the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, Team Liquid eSports and Wizards District Gaming NBA 2K, as well as co-owns and operates Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. He also serves as Special Advisor and Limited Partner to General Atlantic Partners, a growth equity firm with more than $31 billion under management. He previously served in several leadership roles at various technology companies, including as Chairman and CEO for Object Video, a leading developer of intelligent video surveillance software. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Maryland and is an active philanthropist, focusing his energy primarily on education reform in the D.C. region.
• Lizabeth DunnDirector Lizabeth is a director and was appointed to GameStop’s board in April 2019. She serves as a member of the company’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and the Compensation Committee. Lizabeth is the Founder and CEO of Pro4ma Inc, an information technology services consulting firm that provides cloud-based data forecasting and predictive analytics tools to retailers. She also is the Founder and CEO of Talmage Advisers, a retail and branded consumer products consulting firm that provides a full range of services across brand strategy, pricing analysis, financial benchmarking and transactional due diligence. Prior to founding these firms, Lizabeth served in various consulting and financial analyst roles for leading financial firms and retail organizations, including Macquarie Group, FBR, Thomas Weisel, Prudential Equity Group, Bear Stearns, Gap Inc. and Liz Claiborne. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Spelman College.
• William SimonDirector Bill Simon has more than 30 years of operational and strategic advisory experience in the retail, consumer and food and beverage industries. Since 2014, he has served as a Senior Advisor at KKR & Co. Mr. Simon previously served in multiple leadership roles at Walmart Inc. from 2006 to 2015, including as President and CEO of Walmart U.S. from 2010 to 2014; EVP and COO of Walmart U.S. from 2007 to 2010; and as EVP, Professional Services and New Business Development from 2006 to 2007. Earlier in his career, Mr. Simon served as VP of Marketing, Beverages at Cadbury Schweppes plc and held leadership roles of increasing responsibility at PepsiCo, Inc., after beginning his career at RJR Nabisco. Bill holds an MBA and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Connecticut. Mr. Simon was appointed to the board in 2020 and serves as a member of the Audit Committee and the chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
• James SymancykDirector Mr. Symancyk brings more than 25 years of executive leadership and operational experience in the retail and consumer products industries. He has served as President and CEO of PetSmart, Inc. since 2018. Mr. Symancyk previously served as President and CEO of Academy Sports & Outdoors, Inc., a retail and ecommerce sporting goods chain, from 2015 to 2018. Prior to that, he held leadership roles of increasingly responsibility at Meijer, Inc., a regional supercenter chain store, including as President; COO; and EVP, Merchandising & Marketing. He began his career at Sam’s Club, where he served as Divisional Merchandise Manager, among other roles. Mr. Symancyk holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas. Mr. Symancyk was appointed to the board in 2020 and serves as the chair of the Compensation Committee.
• Reginald Fils-AiméDirector Reggie brings more than 35 years of experience transforming companies, revitalizing brands and reshaping industries. From 2006 to 2019, he served as President and COO of Nintendo of America, Inc. During his tenure, Mr. Fils-Aimé focused on the development and launch of industry re-defining products, including the Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch, quadrupling the company’s revenue from 2005 to 2010, and oversaw the successful implementation of the company’s digital strategy. He previously served as Nintendo of America’s EVP of Sales and Marketing from 2003 to 2006. Prior to joining Nintendo, Mr. Fils-Aimé served as SVP of Marketing for VH1 from 2001 to 2003, where he led a strategic shift to appeal to younger consumers that resulted in an increase in ratings of more than 30 percent. Earlier in his career, he held multiple marketing roles at a variety of consumer and manufacturing companies, including the Derby Cycle Corporation, Guinness Import Company, Panda Management Company, Inc., Pizza Hut, Inc. and the Procter & Gamble Company. Mr. Fils-Aimé holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics from Cornell University. Mr. Fils-Aimé was appointed to the board in 2020 and serves as a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
• Kurt WolfDirector Mr. Wolf is the Managing Member and Chief Investment Officer of Hestia Capital Management LLC. Previously, Mr. Wolf worked in a variety of financial, investing and operating roles, at First Q Capital, LLC, and as a co-Founding Partner at Lemhi Ventures LLC. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wolf worked as a consultant both with Deloitte Consulting and The Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Wolf earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Mathematics from Carleton College. Mr. Wolf joined the board in 2020 and serves as a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
• Paul EvansDirector Mr. Evans is a Senior Managing Director at Dillon Kane Group. Additionally, Mr. Evans is a Board Director at Hill International, Inc. Prior to this, Mr. Evans served in a variety of senior executive roles at MYR Group Inc. Earlier in his career, Mr. Evans held a number of executive management positions at several energy-related businesses. Mr. Evans is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Mr. Evans received a B.B.A in Accounting from Stephen F. Austin State University and a Masters of International Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Mr. Evans joined the board in 2020 and serves as a member of the Audit Committee.