For those of you who are intimately familiar with Burford (there seem to be a lot of you!), bear with me for a few paragraphs as I run through some preliminary concepts for newcomers. Here is how Burford represents the returns it has generated on its portfolio: ROIC is simply the profits realized on […]
This is a two-parter. Part 1, today’s post, discusses the industry and Burford’s putative moat; Part 2, which will be posted a week from today, digs into Burford’s reported returns (including Cannacord Genuity’s skepticism thereof) and valuation. Law firms are staid institutions, averse to change and culturally ill-suited to bearing risk on high stakes IP […]
Google and Facebook have come to dominate online advertising in the US, claiming 60% of the industry’s revenue. It’s easy to understand why. With billions of users persistently logged into their properties, Facebook and Google have broader reach than just about anyone in the ad ecosystem and can ensure that impressions are served to as […]
In the Spring 2019 issue of Graham and Doddsville, John Hempton was quoted as saying: “In my case, [I usually want to own] a company that makes a widget that is a small yet important part of a bigger thing, has high switching costs, and has incrementally improved over time. I call this the trifecta. […]
You don’t recognize the value of an Everbridge system until things go bad – bad like a class 5 hurricane is closing in on your warehouse, or a tsunami descending upon your town, or an active shooter roaming the streets outside one of your coffee stores. The headlines scuttling past you on the TV don’t […]
Every few years, I parachute into the cybersecurity space and conclude my tour bewildered by the expanse of technology and reminded of familiar plotlines. There are new focal points and different players occupying the Magic Quadrant, but the basic script remains the same, with analysts and management teams touting arcane feature advantages, speculating on impending […]
Prior to their July 2008 merger, Sirius and XM were locked in a bloody Betamax/VHS-like standards war: each company operated its own satellite constellation and broadcasted on separate frequencies; each had its own radio to receive and digitize signals; each spent extravagant sums marketing their services and mirror imaging the other’s content – Sirius had […]
“A lot of guys watch Bruce Lee movies. Doesn’t mean they can do karate.” – Bobby Axelrod (Showtime series Billions) If I were pitching this stock as a short 9 years ago, here’s what I would have said: Align’s main product, an expensive orthodontic appliance called Invisalign, is a joke. Rendered in plastic, easily replicable, […]
