Facebook and the power of social data
Over the weekend, The New York Times and The Observer of London published an exposé on Cambridge Analytica’s use of over 50 million illegally obtained Facebook profiles to build out a psychographic platform for targeting American voters and influencing their behaviour during the 2016 Presidential Election. Facebook shares sold off 7% in reaction to the […]
HomePod and Apple’s fork in the road
The release of the HomePod speaker marks Apple’s belated entry into the world of AI voice assistant hardware. The HomePod is quintessentially Apple in every way: its appearance is aesthetically pleasing, its sound quality blows competitors out of the water, it is expensive and presumably earns high margins for Apple, and it works exclusively within […]
Microsoft’s outperformance is shifting the goal posts
Next week will mark the two-year anniversary of Microsoft first being added to Montaka’s long portfolio. At the time Microsoft traded at around $50 per share, which we believed to be considerably cheap. Since then the stock has risen strongly, peaking at $95 last week and trading at $85 overnight. At the same time the […]
Apple as a service company?
Last week, when Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported its much-anticipated December quarter earnings, CEO Tim Cook provided a key update on the health of the Apple ecosystem – as of January 2018, there were 1.3 billion active Apple devices worldwide, an increase of 30% over two years ago. The healthy growth of Apple’s global installed base, and […]
The New Phase of Big Data Part II
Previously, I wrote about the new phase of big data, and how this data revolution has the potential to shape the fortunes of firms. Clive Humby, the co-founder of DunnHumby, a UK-based customer data science company, is widely credited as being the first to coin the phrase “data is the new oil”. Much like crude […]
Retailers rebound as Amazon underwhelms
On Tuesday, the Amazon Australia website finally launched after several false starts, to a lukewarm reception by Australian consumers. Customers complained of an underwhelming selection, uncharacteristically expensive prices, and limited delivery options. The stock prices of local retailers, under pressure for months, rebounded sharply as investors bet that the Grinch would not steal the retailers’ […]
The most valuable group of customers ever assembled
The curious thing about the more than 600 million Apple customers on planet Earth is that they tend to spend more in the Apple ecosystem than they otherwise would elsewhere. This is an amazing feat achieved by the company and something that has significant implications for investors. By way of reminder, Apple today is very […]
We can’t make sense of some tech valuations
Don’t worry, this is not a “calling the top” blog post. We are 100 percent certain that we have no idea for how long, or how little, this bull market has to run. And we believe most other market participants also fall into this category. Instead, we focus primarily on two things: Buying high-quality businesses […]
Is logistics the future of retail?
On a recent flight to Beijing for a China technology, media and telecommunications conference, I read The Everything Store by Brad Stone, a book on Amazon’s early history and its transformation from an online bookstore into the retail behemoth it is now. As I read, a thought occurred to me: is retail the future of […]
Addendum: St James’s Platform…of Platforms
At the beginning of July, I penned a piece on St James’s Place (SJP), the leading UK wealth manager and a business that benefits unassumingly from the wonders of platform economics. The article featured in our second anniversary letter to Montaka clients and is reproduced on this site. Since this time, SJP reported an updated […]
