Despite Pinterest’s stock climbing from its initial public offering last month, analysts are expecting a first-quarter loss of 16 cents a share, adjusted, compared to a 10-cent loss in the year-ago quarter. With that said, analysts are expecting revenue of $197 million, reflecting growth of 50%, however there are discrepancies between the user base that is growing and the user base that is monetizing, which is what is causing the losses.
Last month, I wrote an article on how mobile application companies hide user attrition and how Pinterest and Snap bury important key metrics in 10-Ks and S-1 filings. One thing I stated is that financials in tech companies can be misleading when not accompanied by scrutiny of the underlying business.
The key metrics to watch for when evaluating Pinterest stock include monthly active users (MAU), daily active users (DAU) and average revenue per user (ARPU). I’ll review some information here from my last analysis before I go into why Pinterest is seeing an increase in revenue yet a slight decrease in net income.
Pinterest Stock: Company Struggles to Monetize International Audiences
Thus far, Pinterest has struggled to monetize global users. The difference in average revenue per user (ARPU) in the United States compared to the global users is astonishing – and uncommon for social media. We see the United States users monetize at $9 average revenue per user while the international users monetize at a mere 25 cents per user. This is what the graph looks like:
The user growth in the United States shows saturation in previous quarters with flat to declining growth between Q1 2018 to Q4 2018. This means the areas where there actually is user growth (international) does not contribute to profits as the costs of operations likely exceeds 25 cents per user annually. Facebook’s international ARPU is currently at $7 and has never been below $1.50 as a public company even with the stock struggled in 2012. Twitter has seen below $1 international ARPU as reported in 2017 but was also hovering at 5 price-to-sales during some of this time period compared to Pinterest’s 20 price-to-sales (more on this below).
Meanwhile, Snap which is a more direct comparable as both companies are newer to the public markets, shows nearly 1500% more ARPU in the Rest of World region. Yes, you read that right – 1500% with 9 cents from Pinterest ROW compared to $1.24 ROW.
This helps complete the issues Pinterest faces globally as the user growth is coming regions which result in losses. I believe this may be the culprit as to why Pinterest is expected to post 50% revenue growth yet slightly higher losses from -10 cents per share to -16 cents per share. You’ll see below that the United States has stagnated.
According to data from Apptopia, a provider of app intelligence that partnered with Bloomberg in February, Pinterest downloads in Brazil surpassed United States downloads for the first time on Android. This gives us a glimpse as to where the user growth is coming from; which are regions that create a loss.
The information above means investors are doing one of the two:
Betting the United States will monetize higher than $9 per user
Betting the global audience will monetize higher
My best guess is that number one is likely to occur while number two will present a challenge. The issues here are surmountable and we may see some progress here in the next earnings report; however, I do not believe we will see enough from this quarter’s earnings to justify Pinterest’s stock price due to the flat United States base and the lack of revenue coming from the international base. This leads me to ask how overpriced is Pinterest stock?
Pinterest Stock Trading 30-50% Too High
Pinterest’s IPO stock price was originally $15-$17 and went public at $19. My analysis points to this pricing being correct while the current trading price of $28.50 at time of writing is 30-50% too high due to the constraints of social media valuations.
With total revenue at $775 million in 2018 and a market cap of about $15 billion, Pinterest stock is at a 19.3 price to sales ratio. When adjusted for 50% revenue growth this quarter, Pinterest will have about $100 million more in revenue for the past twelve months, which puts the price to sales at 17.14 – if the price remains the same. If investors run up the price after earnings due to revenue growth, we will be right back where we were with a 19 or 20 price-to-sales ratio. This will be on revenue of about $197 million with 50% growth same-quarter YoY.
Meanwhile, Facebook is at 8.8 price-to-sales with 26% same-quarter YoY revenue growth at $15 billion per quarter, Twitter at 8.8 price-to-sales with 20% same-quarter YoY growth on $787 million quarterly revenue and Snap with 39% same-quarter YoY growth on $320 million quarterly revenue at 10.8 price-to-sales.
Historically, Facebook did trade at a price-to-sales above 15 between 2013 and 2016, however, we see that the time period when Facebook was able to command a price-to-sales above 15 was when the company had crossed 1.2 billion monthly active users and was growing towards 2 billion monthly active users. At that time, the company posted 63% YoY growth with $1.5B to $3.0B in profits. With this user base, Facebook is an outlier. Pinterest’s stock is a better comparable to Twitter and Snap with all three social media companies having users in the 270-325 million monthly active user range, with Pinterest being the smaller user base of all three.
Twitter’s price-to-sales history has also been at a high price-to-sales ratio over 15 when posting over 75% growth (Pinterest is expecting growth at 50%). Even with solid growth, Twitter’s price-to-sales did not last long at the 15-20 range and the price was down nearly 50% within two quarters. The second time Twitter tried to get above 10 price-to-sales in early 2018, the price again corrected the following quarter to below 10 price-to-sales.
Snap has met a similar fate of having a short-lived price-to-sales above 15 before correcting to 10 or below where it has been for the last few quarters. Again, the correction in price-to-sales happened despite Snap reporting 50% YoY quarterly growth.
Takeaway: Do you remember Twitter at $50? Snap at $20? Pinterest at $28-$30 is kinda like that. Social media companies with a 10 or higher price-to-sales ratio have not fared well in the immediate quarters that followed with both Twitter and Snap seeing their value cut in half when reaching the price-to-sales where Pinterest is at today.
The market has created a valuation that will be hard for Pinterest to live up to. Pinterest priced correctly at the IPO as I believe the price should be in the $15-$19 range as this would be in the reasonable 8-10 price to sales range. Even if Pinterest beats expectations and we see a bump up in price, I stand by my analysis that the stock’s price-to-sales is 30%-50% too high – and the valuation will be short-lived.
On May 22nd at 4:30 pm Eastern, join four fundamental stock analysts on a webinar where they will discuss stock picks, trends and strategies to help strengthen your personal portfolio. Beth Kindig will discuss how to pick a solid tech growth stock and how to hedge in down market. Specifically, Beth Kindig will discuss the differences between how the financial industry defines growth and how the tech industry defines growth, and why a blend of both is essential for picking stocks in the number one growth sector. Beth predicted the biggest stock drop in history in Q2 2018 with Facebook’s miss and the biggest IPO loss in history with Uber in Q2 2019. She covered Roku from its IPO for a 300% gain and is known for having a crystal ball to predict tech stocks on Twitter. Her experience comes from a decade of analyzing tech companies, tech products and startups resulting in over 700 articles and many enterprise-level analyst reports. She speaks frequently at tech conferences covering macro trends and has a tech podcast in the Top 40 for technology on iTunes and Spotify.
She joins three other analysts including Bhavneesh Sharma, who will highlight a stock with a unique gene editing approach to fighting cancer; Lyn Alden Schwartzer, who will showcase 2 high-quality value stocks to buy and hold over the next decade; and Kirk Spano, who will focus on solar and other sustainable stocks to watch as the world transitions to alternative energy.
By now, investors know that Lyft’s ride-sharing IPO didn’t reach $100 per share like many of the media talking heads stated it would, and this will likely weigh on Uber’s IPO. Two weeks prior to Lyft’s IPO, I had warned that the risk listed in the prospectus, which warned Lyft may not become profitable, was more than fine print. Ride-sharing companies use investment money to lower the cost of the ride to create demand, which means the ride you take in a Lyft or Uber is not profitable, and will likely never be profitable.
Not one analyst rated Lyft as a sell going into earnings despite earnings estimates that called for accelerating net losses from negative $3.16 EPS to negative $3.97 EPS. Going into earnings this week, twelve analysts had rated Lyft as a buy compared to eight who rated it as a hold (What is wrong with these analysts?!).
With the most recent earnings, we have confirmation that my analysis, which detailed why Lyft can increase revenue yet cannot stop the losses, was accurate with expectations of an estimated $1.1 billion in losses this year.
Reuters published in 2015 that Uber passengers pay only 41 percent of the actual cost of their trips. At the time, Reuters warned that this creates an “artificial signal about the size of the market” when Uber released limited financial data that showed losses of $708 million per quarter. Four years later, little has changed.
How Uber’s IPO Compares to other IPOs:
Uber is an IPO that has been covered extensively. You may have heard comparisons of Uber’s IPO to Facebook or Alibaba. Uber is raising $9 billion in this week’s IPO, Facebook raised $16 billion in 2012 and Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014. Facebook and Alibaba are both doing great, seems to be the logic OR many tech companies are not profitable at the time of IPO is another costly mistake when comparing Uber to other IPOs.
Of course, these “big tech” comparisons don’t tell the whole story. Facebook had $1.75 billion in operating income, and $1 billion in net income in the year prior to the 2012 IPO. Alibaba had $1.7 billion in operating income, $1.3 billion in net income, and $2.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA in 2013, the year prior to its IPO. To compare, Uber has a $3 billion operating loss, and negative $1.8 billion adjusted EBITDA.
Notably, for anyone glancing over the prospectus, Uber sold some operations in Russia and Asia, which provided one-time income, and caused the company to post $1 billion in net income. This is why net income should be ignored as it does not reflect the operating income or adjusted EBITDA. To summarize, Uber’s prospectus points towards “an accumulated deficit of $7.8 billion” in the years ending December 31, 2017 and 2018. The year prior (2017), Uber posted $4 billion in operating loss and negative $2.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA.
Chicken and the Egg – Both Broken:
Most investors know there have been numerous lawsuits against Uber with many examples listed on page 28 of the prospectus. Here is a sample of what it says:
“We are involved in numerous legal proceedings globally, including putative class and collective class action lawsuits, demands for arbitration, charges and claims before administrative agencies, and investigations or audits by labor, social security, and tax authorities that claim that Drivers should be treated as our employees (or as workers or quasi-employees where those statuses exist), rather than as independent contractors.”
This paragraph is followed by a list of class action lawsuits and state-level Supreme Court rulings that Uber has been involved with and the various legislation or judicial decisions that could have an adverse effect on the business and financial condition of the company.
Although being sued often comes with the territory for disruptive startups, this is unique as the work force is going on strike during the IPO (this is not a competitor suing over intellectual property, etc). The drivers and customers are a chicken-and-egg scenario and Uber struggles to pacify both to successfully operate. On one hand, Uber is subsidizing rides at up to 60% to lure the customers, and on the other hand, the workers are retaliating. This is not a good formula. Most importantly, Uber has no profit to absorb a change in business model, such as being required to pay minimum wages or health care.
Here are some charts:
If you need some charts, to prove what I’m saying, there is an overabundance of charts that show the issues Uber has with subsidizing rides “to create artificial signals about the market” (Reuters words, not mine).
Core platform is the margin Uber generates after direct expenses. As the prospectus states, “Core Platform Contribution Margin is a useful indicator of the economics of our Core Platform, as it does not include unallocated research and development and general and administrative expenses.” Here is what the margins look like:
The reasons Uber states the Core Platform Contribution Margin goes through periods of decline is due to competition in ridesharing (translation: Uber has to subsidize rides to remain competitive) and they also state it’s due to planned investments in Uber Eats. The problem is that Uber Eats only contributed $165 million in adjusted net revenue last quarter compared to ride sharing at $2.3 billion in adjusted net revenue, and therefore, the majority of the decline is likely due to the issues I stated above (rides are priced too low for profits but price of rides must remain low for demand).
Here’s another chart that shows you what it looks like when a company subsidizes purchases with the capital it has raised.
And here’s another one – perhaps the most critical as it shows the relationship between sales and profits:
As sales go up, gross bookings per trip goes down. This is a good indication that the business model requires the price of the ride to remain below fair value in order to drive demand. Although some reporters and analysts like to talk about Uber Eats, the issue is that Uber is valued at $90 billion+ and Uber Eats is a very small percentage of revenue. You can’t conclude that Uber Eats is a good investment opportunity as it makes up about 5% of Uber’s revenue and this won’t absorb the ride-sharing losses.
Notably, the chart which shows the unprofitable relationship between ridesharing trips and ridesharing gross bookings per trip is on page 106 of the Prospectus. On page one, we are presented with a sky-rocketing hockey stick chart based off the number of rides Uber has booked from 1 billion in March 2016 to 10 billion rides today. This 10x chart doesn’t tell the whole story like the charts above.
AVs – Long Ways Off:
This is where the story gets even more risky as the solution to the upset drivers is that these drivers will not be needed soon due to autonomous driving. Any company who is publicizing autonomous driving right now as a near-term way of driving profits is a good company to run from – and quickly.
We saw Lyft use this tactic to distract from their disappointing earnings this week with PR timed to the earnings report that “Waymo and Lyft partner to scale self-driving robotaxi service in Phoenix.” On closer look, Waymo will only add 10 vehicles to the Lyft app in their Arizona testing sites in Phoenix.
That aside, let’s go into the time machine for a minute to revisit stock prices relative to important product releases. Apple was priced at $11 in 2009, two years after the iPhone came out, and was priced at $35 in 2010, when the economy was doing a little better. Facebook was priced in the $25 range for years after they pivoted to a native mobile app and launched Messenger, both of which greatly contributed to the data collection and ad targeting that drives ad revenue today. Amazon was priced under $100 for nearly three years after the company launched AWS.
Point being, not only are autonomous vehicles a long way off from being commercially deployed to the public and able to generate profits, (and there is a ton of competition), but to invest in tech before it hits the market is high-stakes speculation. There is not one example where it made sense to invest in the company years before a tech product was released. Meanwhile, there are many examples where the stock price and valuations were low even after profitable products had gained traction. I’m not saying you want to be late to the market for AVs, rather I’m saying it can be just as costly to be this early – especially with companies that have ten digit losses.
Note: If you’ve read any of my previous analysis, you’ll know that I’ve been writing about the realities for autonomous vehicles for awhile now and how this does not match investors’ expectations. I won’t repeat my AV bubble thesis here but you can read quite a bit of this under my profile.
Don’t Get Duped on Uber IPO:
Sometimes investors get it wrong. We see this on the public markets frequently when a legendary investor goes all-in at the wrong time or a darling stock has a sudden drop. Well, guess what? Private investors get it wrong too sometimes. And the venture capitalists who invested in Uber and Lyft really got it wrong with ride-sharing. Their eyes lit up with the promise of a serviceable available market (SAM) and total addressable market (TAM) that would replace personal car ownership around the world. User growth is phenomenal and the brand is ubiquitous. VCs kept fueling more and more capital into the leaky ride-sharing business model and something prevented these VCs from using discipline to require proof of the following:
Question: will charging below a fair market price and subsidizing rides at up to 60% create a profit margin? Answer: No
Question: if we charge a fair market price to stop the losses, will there be enough demand? Answer: No.
The ride-sharing business model as we know it today will never be profitable. Meanwhile, the venture capitalists who bought into the world’s most valuable startup want their money back. Do you want to donate to the “pay VCs their $90-$120 billion” charity cause? If so, shares will be available Friday.
Will Roku miss earnings? I believe Roku will miss earnings at times, but for the big picture, Roku is at the center of an important trend in advertising and this will make for decent returns now and sizable returns in the future. I also don’t play the earnings game often with stocks as my analysis does not change monthly or quarterly. My conviction on Roku is high and can withstand trade war news or a fledgling quarter, which is normal for smaller companies on the edge of incipient trends.
What Investors Got Wrong With Roku
The first thing Wall Street got wrong with Roku is that investors thought Roku was a hardware player. Although it is clear now that the ad platform is what will drive the profits, this wasn’t evident in the financials for a few earnings reports. My three pieces of analysis in 2018 were the opposite; I made my readers aware the ad platform was where the growth potential was.
The second thing Wall Street gets wrong is assuming Google or Amazon can dominate over-the-top television because they are Big Tech and smaller companies don’t have a chance. Google struggles here and recently raised the prices on YouTube television to $49, which for the most part, negates the purpose of cord-cutting when you add a few subscriptions like Netflix or HBO Go, and end up at the monthly cost of cable. Amazon is pushing into ads for OTT, however, there will be privacy regulations to face as the data powering those ads is being brokered without consent from e-commerce and Prime purchases. You can ask Facebook how that is going for them.
Roku has all of the pieces to the stack. The hardware is a razor-razor blade model that locks in their ad-supported platform. They’re OTT-only, and this prevents privacy issues for the data they collect from the device (this is why Apple is always in the clear with privacy issues – data stay s on the device).
Interestingly, the consensus EPS forecast for Roku is negative $0.24 compared to negative $0.07 same quarter last year with analyst expectations of declining growth. Meanwhile, Roku had posted EPS of $0.05 last quarter. Here’s a screenshot of Roku’s earnings per share vs. consensus:
TradeDesk is also a Connected TV advertising player and reports on May 9th with analysts expecting declining growth from the previous quarter with estimates at $0.07 per share.
With that said, advertising is driving record profits for many companies who have already reported this quarter, such as Facebook and Twitter. This is why I’m surprised (and don’t necessarily agree with) the low analyst expectations for both Roku and TradeDesk as these expectations of -$0.24 for Roku and $0.07 for TradeDesk are some of the lowest in these stocks’ earnings histories (1+ year or more).
My Opinion “Long on Roku Even if They Miss Q1 Earnings”
That was my headline last May in 2018 even though Roku did not miss Q1 2018 earnings. My stance on this stock remains the same. Roku is a core holding of mine because of the mega trend towards Connected TV advertising. To put it simply, and as I wrote before Q1 2018 earnings were reported, Roku beating or missing earnings is not my focus for a long strategy based on an important trend. I fully expect tech companies to miss earnings from time to time (this creates better buying opportunities). This won’t change my conviction that Connected TV advertising is on an important upward trajectory.
Here’s some more information on the Connected TV market:
“Two of the big trends in digital media aren’t compatible: The drive to enforce viewability standards and the shift to mobile, particularly apps.” – Digiday
Viewability issues are a serious issue for big brands who are averse to mobile in-app advertising because it’s too challenging to track. In addition, many big brands do not need immediate purchases which is called “purchase intent” – which is mobile’s main value over television.
For instance, Coca-cola doesn’t expect you to buy a soda immediately after seeing an ad. Audi doesn’t expect you to buy a car immediately either. So, a lot of the benefits of mobile aren’t worth the downside to these big brands. Advertising budgets shifted to mobile because they had to find audiences, not because it’s a superior method to advertise.
Here’s how the two compare:
Pay TV has high completion rates as viewers are comfortable in their homes and better prepared to receive advertisements.
undefinedundefined
Mobile offers audience data to better target viewers based on individual preferences.
undefinedundefinedundefined
Connected TV advertising, which is Roku’s specialty, combines the best of both television and mobile. It offers 100% viewability and completion rates with the audience data and dynamic ad insertion found on mobile. Forbes covered this in a recent article which stated Ad Supported OTT is the future reporting OTT ads have a 97% completion rate and 100% viewability.
In a recent study by FreeWheel, 200 billion video starts found OTT ads had ballooned from 2% to 32% in a four-year period due to heavier investments from advertisers.
In the Q2 2018 Video Advertising benchmark study released by Extreme Reach, a tech platform for video ad campaigns, connected TV impressions overtook mobile, accounting for 38 percent of all video ad impressions down from 33 percent in Q1.
“CTV is clearly on the path to becoming the dominant platform for media consumption, and premium inventory is the most sure-fire audience draw.”
– Mary Vestewig, Senior Director, Video Account Management at Extreme Reach.
AppNexus, the world’s leading independent advertising technology company, announced in July of 2018 that advertiser spend in its connected TV marketplace grew 748% year-over-year versus the second quarter of 2017 and 68% quarter-over-quarter. AppNexus currently sees 20 billion monthly connected TV impressions per month.
From an investment standpoint, the implications of attracting more advertising dollars than mobile is enormous. Big brand budgets have been looking for a solution to traditional television that isn’t confined to the attention span and limited screen size of mobile viewers. With Roku, that option is finally here.
Please note: I’ve also covered TradeDesk, another stock doing well by capturing the Connected TV advertising trend. You can read that analysis here on FATrader and why the risks with TradeDesk have personally kept me from buying the stock although many of my readers have seen 400% returns on $TTD.
This analysis is not an earnings call. The purpose of this article is to revisit a few trends and predictions I made around this time last year in regards to Roku.
This last week, we saw Tesla take advantage of the lack of information available on autonomous vehicle technology. Unfortunately, the facts around autonomous vehicles are elusive as PR copywriters fuel journalists, who are churning out content to meet deadlines.
For starters, to get machines to respond like humans, within milliseconds, is one of the most difficult problems that technologists have aimed to solve. The truth about autonomous vehicles includes regulations, production cycles, and delays in implementation. I predicted when I wrote my analysis six months ago, that the gap between investor expectations (perception) and commercial deployments (reality) had created an autonomous vehicle bubble that would pop in 2019.
One example is Intel, which has been propped up under hope that AV is close to deployment. “How Intel Plans to Win Self-Driving Cars,” is a headline published by Motley Fool and there are dozens of more like it. Meanwhile, six days ago, Intel laid off dozens from the autonomous vehicle program in Palo Alto.
In my updated analysis, I want to dive deep into the reality around autonomous vehicles, and draw some important conclusions as to why it is impossible to deliver robotaxis in 2020. This will help investors and consumers understand a few basics around what needs to happen for full autonomy so that both constituents can make better, informed decisions. Investors should especially pay close attention because for the handful of companies who are overhyped and pushing for sky-high valuations too early, there are many more quality small cap and mid cap stocks that are underhyped and perfectly timed relative to valuation.
Truth Number One: Driver-Assisted Vehicles
We are at level 2 autonomy and all auto manufacturers are halted at this level. Tesla cannot release more advanced features than what Ford, Mercedes, or BMW have on the roads today. On that note, autonomy is a misnomer as Level 2 is considered “driver-assisted.”
Please note: I wrote about the disconnect between SAE’s AV levels and reality around commercial deployment long before it appeared in the press. My previous analysis is a must-read for anyone interested in more information on the AV bubble or AV software.
Here is an overview from my analysis published in October of 2018:
Level 0-1: No automation and driver assistance. Level 2: Partial automation. The vehicle assists with steering and accelerating functions. Level 3: Conditional automation: The vehicle controls the monitoring of environment using sensors. The driver’s attention is critical but the AV system runs the safety critical functions. Does not require human attention under 37 miles per hour Level 4: High automation: Vehicle is capable of steering, braking, and accelerating, as well as responding to events and changing lanes. Vehicle cannot determine dynamic instances such as traffic jams or merging onto the highway. Level 5: Complete automation. No human attention required. No need for pedals, brakes or a steering wheel. The AV controls all critical tasks, monitoring of the environment and identification of unique driving conditions like traffic jams.
Level 2 (where we are today) and Level 3 (where we might be in 2-3 years from now) are not considered autonomous. These levels are considered “driver-assisted.” Audi, not Tesla, was going to be the first to commercially deploy a Level 3 autonomous vehicle in January of 2019 with the Audi A8 Traffic Jam Assist, but has been delayed due to “foggy federal regulatory framework, infrastructural differences, and a lack of consumer understanding of self-driving technology.”
As of January 2019, any presentations on releasing Level 3 driver-assisted technology (again, the next level is not categorized as autonomous) would be remiss to not address the regulatory framework that is preventing deployment of Level 3 at this time. The presentation would also be remiss to not discuss why regulations would skip Level 3 and go to Level 4 – or as robotaxis would require, Level 5 commercial deployment.
Truth Number Two: AVs Heart 5G
5G was absent from Tesla’s recent presentation on autonomous vehicles, which is odd to say the least. 4G speeds are simply not fast enough for the sensors on a vehicle to react or brake in milliseconds. We need the network capacity of 5G for machines and vehicles to think as fast as humans, and to remove latency in critical moments.
On my podcast about 5G, I recently interviewed Anthony Pellegrino from a disruptive startup called Mutable, which provides edge computing for microdata centers. Microdata centers are miniature data center racks that enable faster, easier and a more cost-effective way to build and deploy applications at the network edge. Because 5G microdata centers will be more omnipresent, so to speak, and located closer to the device or vehicle, you can improve response time from 60 milliseconds to 20 milliseconds. In the case of braking for a pedestrian, these 40 milliseconds are crucial.
Pellegrino provided the following example in the podcast, “Think about Ford, if they want to do autonomous vehicles, are they going to put redundant compute literally in thousands of locations, or are they going to, when a car comes by in the neighborhood, and you’re connected to 5G, send a request across? You can just spin up an instance of these applications on demand, and use it when it’s needed … that’s very cost effective.”
At MWC in Barcelona this past year, a semi company called Einride, set up a simulator for autonomous driving that allowed attendees to demo driving an 18-wheeler from roughly 3,000 miles away. The speed was limited to 5 kilometers per hour for safety purposes andEricsson provided Einride with a 5G network for the successful simulation.
Although 5G has deployed in two cities, Chicago and Minneapolis, we will need the semi-ubiquitous presence of 5G for the commercial deployment of personal-use vehicles on public roads. For instance, one critical feature of 5G is that the signal from connected devices do not need to travel to a cellular tower first in order for vehicles to quickly send and receive information. One reason many auto companies are putting the next level of AV deployment at 2022 when many optional autonomous features will be released, is that 5G networks will be available. However, fully autonomous (without human driver) will still have serious hurdles as 5G is an urban technology rather than a rural technology – and privately owned robotaxis, without a human driver, deployed outside of urban areas is skipping many crucial levels and steps, that it should not even be discussed right now.
Keeping this in mind, we are more likely to see 5G-enabled autonomous transportation within urban areas for mass transportation before you or I have the ability to buy an autonomous vehicle from a dealership. China hopes to do this by 2022 through a partnership with Mobileye/Intel, Beijing Public Transport Corporation (BPTC), and Beijing Beytai.
Truth Number Three: Driverless is Prohibitively Expensive
Notably, there are vehicles that have all of the data onboard and do not need to communicate with IoT sensors or the cloud to brake or respond to obstacles. Caterpillar is currently operating driverless machinery today although these machines drive in areas where there are few unknown obstacles, such as pedestrians or bicyclists. However, self-driving with computing resources built into the machine or vehicle is prohibitively expensive today for personal vehicles and for most industries outside of the manufacturing industry or defense industry.
Historically, autonomous vehicle technology was first developed for the military to prevent deaths from roadside bombs. I spoke with Michael Fleming of Torc Robotics in a separate podcast interview, who has been developing AV software for the defense industry for over a decade, and is the software provider for the Caterpillar driverless machinery currently operated today.
Here is what Fleming said about the current state of AV software “Self-driving is a very difficult problem. It’s a very complex problem, but in reality, think of the software architecture as hundreds of different software modules all being interconnected, which is pretty incredibly complex. Now, we’ve been working in this space for over 12 years, and these complex technologies do not come together in short order. And for that reason, I think it’s important that the organizations take a slow and methodical approach to not only developing, but deploying self-driving vehicles.”
In the podcast, Fleming also pointed out that “defense vehicles and mining vehicles are a little bit more expensive than the consumer car that you and I would buy, so they can justify a higher price point for autonomy.”
Elon Musk is priming people to rent out their cars “while they sleep” because full self-driving that doesn’t rely on 5G edge computing will be too expensive to sell to consumers for personal use. This doesn’t address the more holistic issue which is the battery of the vehicle may not be able to handle autonomous workloads with reasonable battery life.
As Pellegrino pointed out, “So with autonomous vehicles, when you have cars, you can fill them up with batteries, and you can go from point A to point B. But the more compute that you have on the car, or servers that you have on these cars, the less you’ll travel because you’re now using that energy not just to move the car, but to make decisions.”
Truth Number Four: Very Little Differentiation Right Now
Tesla’s Autonomous Investor day revealed basically two things: the company has built an in-house AV chip and the company does not plan to rely on lidar sensors. Instead, Tesla will rely on cameras. Musk emphasized that the hardware was ready to deploy.
Keep in mind Waymo has had the hardware ready for nearly a decade and has already tested the hardware and software with over 10 million miles recorded, with a human driver on board to intervene when needed. Waymo will not be commercially deploying AVs for the public anytime soon because the software is the challenging part, and the AVs they are testing with beta testers in Arizona are confused by pedestrians and rain storms.
The cars released today with connectivity features have the computing power of 20 personal computers and feature over 100 million lines of programming code. Next decade’s semi-autonomous cars will have 300 million lines of code, and the distant future of fully autonomous will have 1 billion lines of code. The challenge is in the software – not the hardware.
Security is another challenge that needs to be solved before AVs can be commercially released to the public. This is because the electrical components in a car (known as the electronic control units, or ECUs) are connected via an internal network. The peripheral ECU introduces vulnerabilities such as the vehicle’s infotainment center, which means WiFi or Bluetooth can grant access to core systems such as the brakes and transmission.
Regarding AV-specific chips, Qualcomm has been doing some interesting things in the AV chip space with the Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset solution launched in 2017 which enables C-V2X technology or cellular-to-vehicle everything. This is the technology of choice for China’s Intelligent Transportation System and Connected Vehicles, and Ford plans to roll out C-V2X in global fleets by 2022. C-V2X uses LTE networks to enhance driver safety by allowing vehicles and infrastructure to communicate (machine to machine communication), although 5G networks is where true autonomy can occur. C-V2X can offer direct communications outside of cell networks, although features are limited in this transmission mode, as ideally traffic lights and pedestrian crosswalks communicate with the vehicle rather than relying on the vehicle to discern these situations without IoT communication. Audi, Ford and Ducati motorcycles with C-V2X chips were on display this year at CES 2019.
Truth Number Five: Autonomous Vehicle Leaders Work Together for Public Safety
Companies developing AV technology are being irresponsible if they are not working together for public safety before they work towards individual company gains. We’ve recently seen what can happen when a veteran like Boeing rushes the deployment in transportation. Today, there are 6 million auto collision per year in the United States and 2 million permanent injuries. The risks are too great to rush deployment for AVs, and a company acting alone can become the target for lawsuits and negative sentiment following the first high-profile accident.
At CES 2019 this year, a new coalition called PAVE was formed which stands for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education. The purpose of PAVE is “to bring realistic, factual information to policymakers and the public so consumers and decision-makers understand the technology, its current state and its future potential – including the benefits in safety, mobility and sustainability.” The partnership list is lengthy and includes Audi, Daimler, General Motors, Toyota, Waymo, Volkswagen, Nvidia and Intel.
Notably, Tesla is missing from the list of Autonomous Vehicle Education (PAVE) participants.
Conclusion:
Rather than write a new conclusion, I’ll copy what I had written in October of 2018, as my analysis written then is even more pertinent today.
“Short sellers of Tesla this year and last year may have been basing their calls on the CEO’s behavior but we are now about to enter major technology road blocks and consolidation that unbiased analysts predict will put even the highest performing AV companies to the test – which many low performing AV companies will not survive. The current shorts [October 2018] are not wrong, they are simply too early in the maturation process for AVs and [the shorts] have had a bumpy ride because of this.
Telsa shorts were right but their timing was off. We are in a Level 2 AV bubble, and it will burst as Level 3 and Level 4 experience growing pains (lots of cash has poured in with too high of expectations on when AV will start to turn a profit). Tesla, a luxury electric car company, will struggle greatly in the competitive hurricane for reliable and safe automation. Therefore, I’m considering a short on Tesla in 2019 or 2020, which I plan to time with the AV bubble bursting.”when AV will start to turn a profit). Tesla, a luxury electric car company, will struggle greatly in the competitive hurricane for reliable and safe automation. Therefore, I’m considering a short on Tesla in 2019 or 2020, which I plan to time with the AV bubble bursting.”
As I posted on FATrader, I entered my short at $300 in early March 2019 based off my understanding of the AV bubble and expectations vs reality. It surprised me to see an Autonomous Investor Day scheduled and occur this month, as although it supports my thesis, it is also disappointing that the misinformation has reached this level.
My overall advice would be to question any company who is making big AV claims and to look for small companies who are designing a workforce around testing right now or supply a critical piece to the stack for driver-assisted and autonomous. Look for industries that can justify the high price for vehicles to carry AV load or look for pure plays in the 5G market at very low prices.
I am updating my analysis on Xilinx, which I consider a solid investment. Xilinx is well diversified in 5G, AVs and my favorite – AI and data centers. My original analysis called for a 20% pullback and we hit a 15% pullback this earnings season. I have not built a position in Xilinx yet but am patiently waiting to do so.
You can read my previous analysis on autonomous vehicles here:
