By Alex Pollak, Chief Investment Officer, Loftus Peak Amazon in the past 24 hours has confirmed it will launch a full scale retail offering in Australia – it is now calling for local retailers to join its global marketplace as part of the launch, having already briefed CB Richard Ellis … Read More
The bull case for Tesla
Tesla blew through car production expectations this quarter – it had made just over 25,000 vehicles by 31 March – putting it on track to make 500,000 cars by 2018, according to the major shareholder, Elon Musk. The stock price is up 28% since the beginning of 2017, as the … Read More
PSD2 – the slow burn on bank valuations
Not really discussed in all the coverage on fintech in Australia is the impact of the Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) in the UK and Europe, forcing banks there to open their platforms to non-bank service providers from next year. PSD2 will break these banks’ monopoly on their users’ data. It … Read More
Loftus Peak in The Australian
Find Alex on the Australian as he is interviewed by Glenda Korporaal. [pdf-embedder url=https://www.loftuspeak.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/170318-the-australian-1.pdf]
Why the ‘technology eats jobs’ argument is wrong
Adrian Turner nailed it yesterday at the AFR Summit, saying that 40 per cent of Australia’s jobs will disappear in 10 years. “The fourth industrial revolution is under way and the winners will be so far ahead of the losers, Australia has no choice but to pivot to the new … Read More
Global managers – looking for love in all the wrong places
If you were to look quickly, the ups and downs of reporting season would suggest that things are pretty much the same, or even slightly better. This isn’t so. Telstra has just reported its first ever mobile revenue drop – something we flagged here two years ago, which caused a … Read More
Apple rallies as the story fades
The Apple price has popped almost 39% in the past year, including 10% in the days around the result a couple of weeks ago. This has less to do with the underlying numbers, which actually weren’t that great (more on that later) and more to do with the building excitement … Read More
Can Trump Disrupt Disruption?
Markets rallied on the back of the Trump victory, and probably correctly in the near term as the US will almost certainly commit to a series of expensive infrastructure projects to re-energise the mining industries and even possibly build a wall on the Mexican border. However ill-advised the spending targets, it … Read More
Why Netflix is in trouble
Everybody knows Netflix and Stan. Fewer know about Foxtel Play, BigPond Movies, TEN Play, ABC iview and SBS On Demand. In the US, Netflix still rules, with a 40% market share, and it’s the market leader here too. But competitors are coming. Monthly app downloads of HBO Now, Amazon Video, … Read More
Apple’s pivots
Apple reported its first annual decline in sales in 15 years last week, which is focusing investors’ minds, as well as those of the management. You wouldn’t expect the world’s most successful company not to be thinking seriously about what it should do next. So it is worth looking more closely … Read More
Infrastructure investment: Roads, rail, ports… cloud?
Do we need to widen the definition of infrastructure in the 21st century? Is it still just roads, ports, rail, electricity and the like, or should we be including the cloud – the virtualised and scale-able platform on which an increasing number of companies are starting to operate. Like who? Netflix, … Read More
Hey Siri, (Ok) Google is coming for you…
Think about this. In a world where search is done by voice, a lot of the screen-based, visual and clickable data which is surfaced via a keyboard is suddenly obsolete. This means very big changes for the business models of Google, Apple and Amazon for starters. It also explains why … Read More