João Leão: Economia precisa de imigrantes (e não só dos qualificados)

[Ulisses Pereira]

Interessante o artigo que o Cramer escreveu hoje sobre questões estratégicas no mundo das dot.coms:

"Barriers to Entry Help Yahoo!, eBay Dominate"

By James J. Cramer
10/10/2003 09:53 AM EDT


"Holy cow, T. Rowe Price's Rob Gensler owns Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq - commentary - research) and eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq - commentary - research) and he's one of the best there is. He owns them not because they are going up but because they have terrific business models that can explode in earnings. He owns them because he can see lots of businesses and streams of profits coming that haven't materialized yet.

Most important, he owns them because of the barriers to entry that have been built up over time, over the last five years.


So what, you might ask? So what if Robert Gensler owns these stocks for some mutual fund?

First, Gensler's a terrific manager, one of the best. Second, he is no yahoo; he's been in the business for years. He knows that you can't just buy and hold and he knows you can't just buy and forget valuation. But when we were discussing stocks during and after "Kudlow & Cramer," he expressed pride -- well-deserved, I think -- in having stayed in Yahoo! and eBay. What struck me as most interesting about his logic is something that just now is beginning to dawn on others: With each passing quarter, it is getting harder and harder to compete with Yahoo! and eBay. The barriers are getting higher and higher.

Think about it like this. Five years ago, we didn't know if AOL (AOL:NYSE - commentary - research) was going to be the dominant "station," and let's call them stations because they are watched like television now and increasingly are going to be watched like television as broadband is adopted. We didn't know if NBC.com was going to be dominant. Remember XOOM? Or About.com? Remember them? They are in Primedia (PRM:NYSE - commentary - research) now, if you are looking.

Or ABC.com, or Go.com or whatever Disney (DIS:NYSE - commentary - research) was calling its portal. Disney, in fact, had a huge head start, working with Paul Allen to develop new, great sites. Disney should have won.


Or how about Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - commentary - research)? Who ever wins against Microsoft? Or, remember these: Magellan, Excite, AtHome? They were all more dominant or as dominant as Yahoo! at one time. They were peoples' homepages! Or how about Pathfinder? Why shouldn't Time/People/Money dominate, because that is what Yahoo! is now? Or Reuters (RTRSY:Nasdaq - commentary - research)? Big news site with lots of data. New York Times.com? Any one of these had a shot at being Yahoo!, any one.

In fact, I thought there would be four or five competitors in this business doing what Yahoo! did. But the shakeout from 1999 to 2003 eliminated all of them but Yahoo! -- the only one with real growth!


I could do the same litany with eBay. There were tons of auction sites, tons of them. Heck, I invested in a bunch of them. Only one paid off, eBay. Now it is the auction site.

If you don't see the logic in that, ask yourself what would happen if any one of those other companies -- including the incredibly well-endowed Microsoft -- tried to take on Yahoo! or eBay now. It would be suicide, and it would cost billions before you admitted that it wasn't working. You'd have to give it away, which Yahoo! does, but makes it back through elaborate search and ad businesses that take forever to hammer out, to get any traction. Heck, I think you would have to pay people to do it. No business can afford that.

eBay? It's ingrained now. It's in the culture. Very hard to get something new in the culture.

In fact, if you want to know how to get in to compete against either, I think you would have to pay $10 billion, at a minimum, to buy the only viable competitor right now, Google. And the dilution would be astonishing. But getting it for less, given the amazing market for dot-com IPOs again, would be highly unlikely.


When you get barriers to entry, lots of good things develop over time. Yahoo! becomes, like NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox, a channel to advertise on. But television splits the ad pie a number of ways, including cable networks. It all seems to be accruing to Yahoo!.

eBay's growth will come not just from auctions. It can become the national classified business. In fact, if I were at eBay right now, I would be trying to get a classified jobs acquisition -- Monster (MNST:Nasdaq - commentary - research)? -- to make sure you could recreate the endlessly profitable print components of help wanted and classifieds and used cars. (Might eBay buy Autobytel (ABTL:Nasdaq - commentary - research)? Hey, I will take it.)


The only companies that possibly can stop eBay's growth are Amazon (AMZN:Nasdaq - commentary - research) and InterActiveCorp (IACI:Nasdaq - commentary - research). They have the critical mass. But they have so many other fish to fry, I don't know why they would want to go after eBay.

And that, in the end, is why the four horsemen, InterActiveCorp, Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon, are so great. The CEOs of most companies look around every day for places they can possibly grow their businesses, either through acquisition or internal production. Growth is extremely difficult to come by for just about everybody -- except for these companies. These companies seem constrained only by their own imagination. They have unlimited capital on hand or that can be tapped, they have great or developing brand names, they have terrific managements all and they have the world on a string right now.

Years ago, the now-disgraced Henry Blodget suggested you buy a basket of dot-coms because you didn't know which ones were going to get big or win. You would have lost a fortune doing that and probably would have sold in 2001-02 anyway. Worse, if you had picked the winners, you just now would be getting back to even on some and still be way down on others, except for InterActiveCorp. Given that the wrong ones, the Infospaces, would have lost you gazillions, I don't think the winners would have made you whole. You simply couldn't have "wheeled" the group, so to speak.

But he was right, there were four winners. And now, in 2003, they are making a lot of money for those who waited and then plunged.

Guys like Robert Gensler at T. Rowe Price. "

(in www.realmoney.com)

[Ulisses Pereira]

MVC2000,

Realço que o meu gráfico está completamente corrigido dos "splits" que ocorreram, pelo que a minha comparação já é feita de uma forma "real", ou seja, já descontados os "splits".

Quanto à questão da valorização da EBAY...´Há um aspecto que não podemos descurar: Com o desmoronar das dot.coms, centenas de empresas desta àrea fecharam as portas. Há um ano atrás, havia poucos sobreviventes cotadas em bolsa. Sobraram as líderes. Quem queria investir no sector tinha (e continua a ter) poucas opções e o capital começou a acorrer em força`aos líderes que sobreviveram no mercado...

Na minha opinião, a EBAY é um ´modelo de negócio de sucesso. Provavelmente, o modelo de negócio que mais acredito na net. Provavelmente, a EBAY não vale isto. Mas a procura no mercado é que manda...

Um abraço,
Ulisses

[mvc2000]

Apenas para lembrar que em Agosto a EBAY fez um stock split de 2 para 1. Embora isso afecte o histórico todo, não é de menosprezar.

As cotações antes do stock split andavam na casa dos 120 USD (embora também fosse esse o valor máximo em 2000).

Fica mais esta achega, embora o split seja apenas uma operação para "cosmética" da cotação (preço mais acessível para investidores, embora não mais barato) e para aumento da liquidez.

Mvc2000

[Ertai]

Pois, eu não queria dizer bem que estava justificado o preço da EBAY com fundamentais..

Era mais dizer que o valor máximo a que a EBAY vai não será a um nível de especulação tão alto como o de 2000

Mas isso de serem emitidas mais acções era coisa que eu não sabia, talvez tenhas razões quanto ao mercado estar agora bastante especulado..

Mas o mesmo será estar no lado da tendência, eventualmente a AT poderá disparar a tempo o sinal de inversão da tendência (esperemos)

De qualquer maneira eu nunca investiria na EBAY, nem virtualmente! sempre achei uma "má" acção. É apenas uma opinião pessoal sem verdadeiras razões por detrás..

Prefiro até certas SmallCaps mais arriscadas do Nasdaq do que a EBAY

Para bons lucros com AT e Fundamentais por detrás é mesmo as minhas favoritas: NVDA, ATYT, INTC e AMD

[****]

Não.
A valorização da EBAY não se justifica, por um simples motivo: A empresa cresceu, certo, o business model até é bom, certo, mas a empresa também emitiu milhões de novas acções. Ou seja, chega-se a este momento com o mesmo preço mas uma brualidade a mais de papeis. Depois em termos de fundamentais a coisa também não é certa - 75% dos resultados vêm da emissão de stock options. Todo o problema deste rally tem sido este. Toda a gente compra cada vez mais sem ser dar conta que o insiders estão a criar e a despejar papel a um ritmo alucinante e isso têm de ser incluido em qualquer avliação do mercado (na semana passada por cada 1 dólar de compras foram despejados 36 de vendas).
Um abraço

[Ertai]

O tamanho da empresa EBAY

Escritórios, pessoal, o mercado na internet de leilões, o número de "HITS" e negócios na página da EBAY..

Acho que podem justificar de certa maneira os novos máximos da EBAY..

Se em 2000 era pura especulação, em 2003 não o será.. a Empresa cresceu mesmo, logo estes valores não serão os valores reais para podermos medir a quantidade da especulação na empresa hoje em dia..

Diria que uma % acima dos valores máximos de 2000 seria um bom valor para dizer que está sobrevalorizada.

Isto é tudo muito relativo

[Visitante]

Parece que nestas alturas ha justificaçao para tudo.De que servem os fudamentais ?? De que serve saber que uma casa e feita com n sacos de cimento ,com n numero de horas,com n toneladas de ferro,com n gastos fiscais etc.? o que conta e que apareça um qualquer que compre aos preços que sao pedidos .Se uma empresa com uns escritorios(alugados) num qualquer 3º esquerdo vale tanto como uma empresa implantada ha anos com contas solidas e um patrimonio que a sustente sera pelo facto desta estar sub-avaliada jamais alguem ousa pensar que sera o contrario .Ja agora existem as palavras sub e sobreavaliadas?????Se existem que querem dizer???''

[Ulisses Pereira]

urso, não invalida nada.

A este propósito (se os fundamentais contam ou não) houve hoje uma troca interessante de posts no Realmoney que passo a transcrever:


Jeff Linderman

Valuations Are High?
10/09/03 01:04 PM ET

Here's the problem: Any argument made today about "high valuation" could have been made a month ago, three months ago, six months ago, etc. Meanwhile, the market has had a boffo seven-month rally and the Ministers of Valuation have made nothing or possibly lost money by shorting into this. I think notions of "the market is high/overvalued" is basically an excuse that people use to justify missing out on rallies. Does the market trade lower over the next six months? Maybe. But don't use "recognition of high valuations" as the reason, unless you can simultaneously explain to me why we had this seven-month rally in the first place. For example, Amazon was "overvalued" at 20, 30, and 40, according to a wide majority of pundits. I'll have more to say about this in a column to be published early next week.

shorting market strategists who pontificate on valuation, yet have no track record of successful money management."
(in www.realmoney.com)

Aaron Task

valuations aren't high?
10/09/03 01:48 PM ET

Jeff, I see/hear what you're saying. Here's the problem: It sounds an awful lot like the "valuations don't matter anymore" arguments we heard in 1999/early 2000. And, for a time, they didn't matter, until they *suddenly* did. I suspect the same fate ultimately awaits stocks today, though not today.
As for the data Paul cited earlier (via Tobias Levkovich), the S&P is trading at 18.3x 2003 "operating" earnings. Are we're now supposed to accept those as clean? Have the abuses of one-time write-offs and other accounting shennanigans ceased?

The S&P is trading at 23.7x 2003 "reported" earnings and 31.8x "core" earnings, based on yesterday's close. Based on 2004 estimates, the S&P is trading at 23.1x "operating" and 27.8x "reported". Not outrageous given still-low bond yields but not cheap either, esp with yields creeping up (again).

I think what's happening is what Jim described earlier: hedge funds/traders are coming up with rationalizations and mutual funds never care about valuations so it's "party on!" time. "

long parties, short hangovers

(in www.realmoney.com)

[****]

ehehehee

Em grande Ulisses. Tinha estado a olhar para o gráfico hoje e a comentar isso mesmo. Acho é que a EBAY já está no máximo histórico, porque o spike maluco de Março de 2000 já foi à conta de um rumor de fusão com a YHOO.

Um abraço

[urso pardo]

Onde e que isso invalida o que tinha sido anteriormente dito?????'

[Ulisses Pereira]

Muitos apontaram a EBAY como um dos exemplos da bolha e de valorizações irreais em Março de 2000, no topo da euforia nos mercados financeiros.

Se a sessão de hoje terminasse agora, a EBAY fecharia acima do seu mais alto fecho de sempre!

Sinais dos tempos...

Ulisses