Category Archives: oud

GoPro Rockets After Hiring Key Apple Designer

GoPro ( GPRO ) stock soared Wednesday after the action camera maker hired a key designer from Apple ( AAPL ). GoPro shares were up 20% to near 14 in late-afternoon trading on the stock market today . The San Mateo, Calif.-based company hired Danny Coster as vice president of design, effective at the end of April. He will report to GoPro CEO and founder Nick Woodman. Coster was a core member of Apple’s elite industrial design team for more than 20 years. His work can be seen on products ranging from the iPhone 4 to the iPad wireless keyboard. He holds more than 500 design patents and several utility patents. Coster will work on all aspects of design at GoPro, including hardware, software and services. GoPro says that Coster aims to improve the GoPro user experience from end to end. “I’m honored to join the GoPro team,” Coster said in a statement . “This extraordinary company is close to the hearts of so many people around the world. Its brand and products inspire us to capture and share our lives’ most important moments.” His hiring comes at a critical time for GoPro, which is seeing demand flag for its action cameras. To spur sales, the company is expected to launch a quadcopter “flying camera” and 360-degree video cameras. Even with Wednesday’s jump, GoPro stock is down more than 20% in 2016.

Apple Faces ‘Existential Threat’ From Messenger Bots

Apple ‘s ( AAPL ) strength in mobile devices is due largely to its app store platform, but the company faces an “existential threat” from software bots that could replace apps, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich said Wednesday. Apple’s App Store leads the $50 billion app economy and has been critical to the company’s success, Milunovich said in a research report. However, software bots that automate tasks could take on many of the roles that apps now provide, he said. Bots mostly reside in messaging apps, providing apps within apps, Milunovich said. “In China, WeChat provides high functionality, such as paying bills, hailing a cab and checking into flights through apps within apps,” he said. “ Facebook ( FB ) just announced the Messenger Bot Store, a bot platform that allows businesses to interact with consumers.” At Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed how third parties can build chat bots into its Messenger service. He demonstrated a chat bot from 1-800-Flowers.com ( FLWS ) that could carry on a conversation with a customer who wanted to order flowers. Last month, Microsoft ( MSFT ) CEO Satya Nadella called chat bots the next big thing after apps and said that his company is aggressively investing in the technology. Chat bots offer a “more natural (way) for people to get things done” instead of having a separate app for each task. Chat bots use artificial intelligence to interact with people and complete tasks. Milunovich maintained his buy rating on Apple with a 12-month price target of 120. Apple stock was up 1.5% in late-afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 112.

The Small-Cap Premium Is Still MIA As A Buy & Hold Strategy

Yesterday’s post focused on the discouraging record for value investing over the last decade, but history looks even worse for the so-called small-cap premium in the US stock market. Yes, there have been periods when small cap shines relative to large caps, but the strategy has been a loser as a buy-and-hold proposition since 1980, based on Russell indexes. Excluding the “junk” or focusing on the “value” opportunities in the small-cap realm offers possible solutions, but the original concept using the Russell benchmarks is battered and bruised. Consider the cumulative results of the daily return spread for the Russell 2000 Index (a popular measure of US small caps) less the Russell 1000 (large caps) since the close of 1979. A dollar invested at the start of this period has faded to roughly 70 cents as of yesterday (Apr. 12, 2016). To be fair, there have been multi-year periods during the interim when small caps have outperformed large caps. But over the grand sweep of the last 35 years or so, sans timing, the small-cap concept has been a dog. Click to enlarge There are several explanations for why the small cap premium has been so elusive across the decades, although the most devastating view is that it was all a big head fake. Critics are quick to point out that the disappointing returns for small caps followed the arrival of the famous study by Rolf Banz in 1981 that put the strategy on the map and launched an industry dedicated to mining this premium. But as NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran recently asked: “The Small Cap Premium: Where is the beef?” Arguably the best case for salvaging the strategy lies with the notion that it’s best to ignore the financially troubled firms. As I discussed last year, a recent study by Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management and several co-authors – “Size Matters, If You Control Your Junk” – points to a fix by focusing on small companies with relatively strong financials. Nonetheless, small-cap investing as originally conceived comes with a hefty degree of empirical baggage these days. Optimists counter that the general run of disappointing small-cap performance lays the groundwork for hefty opportunities for the years ahead. Meantime, there’s another argument to counter the skeptics: small-cap value is where the real action is, as per the Fama-French research. In a future post, I’ll crunch the numbers and run a reality check on that idea. As for traditional small-cap investing a la Banz, history hasn’t been kind to the original strategy, at least when measured in the Russell indexes as a buy-and-hold setup. That doesn’t mean that the small-cap concept is dead. But some fancy footwork is required to make it work.