關於 conservative estimate ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

🌻Docusign(DOCU), Crowdstrike(CRWD)財報結果
上週這兩家公司發表財報了.

這兩天看了一下他們的財報結果. Again, 兩家的表現都很好, 但發現分析師給DOCU的調價(往上)幅度比較多, 就好奇研究了一下SaaS公司是怎麼被估值的. 有興趣的話可以看看(從中學習到很多. 非常推薦一讀):
https://makingsenseofusastocks.blogspot.com/2021/09/blog-post.html

(By the way, 分析師對CRWD的價格調幅沒那麼大, 主因是成長趨緩了. 而DOCU的free cash flow佔營收比, 以及顧客黏著力在這季創了新高, 是讓分析師按讚的幾個原因).

關於CRWD: "The Street is already modeling revenue growth deceleration in 2022 to 36%, down from 60% expected in 2021, which on its own might prove a hurdle for a stock already trading at a high multiple," said Bank of America analyst Tal Liani in a report.

分析師對於DOCU的評價:
• 11位buy; 給的價格分別是: $310, $320 (x2), $330 (x2), $340 (x2), $345, $350, $350, $389
• 給Buy的分析師的評語:
o Baird: The analyst continues to view them as a best in class way to play digital transformation trends with strong growth, cash flow and profitability, and a strong competitive position. Power said DocuSign remains one of his top long-term compounding growth ideas.
o Citi: While slightly shy of the double-digit billings beat in recent quarters, DocuSign still delivered a solid 8% beat to Q2 billings, which grew 47% year-over-year, Radke tells investors in a research note.
o Evercore ISI: he calls "another strong quarter." While some may have wanted to see more aggressive Q3 billings guidance, he believes estimates "continue to leave room for upside," Materne said.
o JMP Securities: While revenue growth decelerated to 50% from 58% in Q1, the company is the clear leader in electronic signature and the broader system of agreement having crossed over 1M customers with a $2B run rate this quarter, the analyst tells investors in a research note, adding that he sees lots of room for growth as DocuSign targets a $50B total addressable market.
o Needham: The analyst commented, "Docusign reported another strong quarter in 2QF22 with typical DOCU upside to revenue and profitability. Sales metrics and growth decelerated Q/Q, as we expected against a massive pandemic quarter, but at a much slower rate than we believe much of the Street was anticipating. 65k net new customers was lower than the 70k - 90 range of CY20 but was still more than 2x greater than any pre-pandemic quarter, highlighting a strong end-market driving 47% billings growth against a strong comp. Commentary on incremental Agreement Cloud demand was positive, suggesting an additional growth tailwind combined with solid international can further aid 2HF22. Although DOCU shares could be lower near-term due to weak 2H OpMg guidance, we think this guidance is conservative, as the recent OM was greater than the pre-pandemic level even with tough comps."
o RBC Capital: The quarter highlighted the sustainability of the company's tailwinds post-pandemic as most of its underlying metrics such as billings and net revenue retention were solid, the analyst tells investors in a research note, adding that the traction with CLM and Notary was also "impressive".

分析師對於CRWD的評價:
• 12位buy; 給的價格分別是: $300, $310 (x2), $313, $315 (x2) , $305, $320, $325, $330 (x2), $340
• 1位給hold: $280 (from $220 by J.P. Morgan(same))
• 給Buy的分析師的評語:
o Baird: The analyst believes the company has significant room for growth with core modules, opportunities with Humio and in cloud workload security, among others, should help drive a continuation of strong growth over a long time horizon.
o BTIG: The company's "strong" Q2 results "cleared every hurdle", even though the buy-side benchmarks may have been slightly higher, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Powell adds that Crowdstrike is clearly gaining share in its core endpoint security target market at a rapid pace and gaining traction with new products across multiple categories.
o Canaccord: The analyst said the stock is down from its recent highs, and he thinks the re-rating creates a more favorable entry point for longer-oriented investors for a foundational security name. He views Crowdstrike as a long-term secular winner in security due to its native cloud platform advantage versus closely held peers in endpoint security combined with platform expansion into tangential segments to capture greater share of security budgets.
o Goldman Sachs: CrowdStrike last night delivered "another beat and raise quarter as the company benefited from another quarter of elevated demand," Essex said. But it traded lower following net new annual recurring revenue growth guidance that was slightly less than investors had hoped for. Essex, nonetheless, said the quarter demonstrated CrowdStrike's "ability to continue to go down market efficiently."
o JMP Securities: The analyst notes the company's Q2 annualized recurring revenue of $1.34B topping his estimate of $1.30B, with "sustained" 70% ARR and revenue growth along with margin upside seen as key highlights for the quarter. Suppiger adds that the metrics reflect Crowdstrike's "strong execution and robust demand environment".
o Mizuho: "very good" fiscal Q2 results. The annual recurring revenue growth of 70% year-over-year "was strong and still nicely surpassed" the Street's 65%-66% estimate, Moskowitz tells investors in a research note. He believes "strong execution can propel" Crowdstrike's stock higher.
o Piper Sandler: The company's metrics "outperformed across the board" in Q2 with 70% annual recurring revenue and revenue growth and record net new customer adds in the quarter, Owens tells investors in a research note.
o RBC Capital: Hedberg adds that CrowdStrike's record pipeline entering Q3 should continue to fuel the company's "land-and-expand" momentum.
o Stifel: Q2 results that he said "exceeded consensus estimates across all major financial metrics." He continues to believe that Crowdstrike's growth opportunity "remains in the early days" despite the company's scale given continued share capture within its core endpoint security market and incremental module adoption on the Falcon Platform, Reback tells investors.
o UBS: the company reported "pretty good" Q2 results against high expectations.

🌻趨勢: 跨境電商 Cross-border commerce
Morgan Stanley:
From our perspective, we think many are underestimating what the cross-border eCommerce demand could ultimately be, once key friction points like FX rates, tax and duties, shipping, language, etc are smoothed—all issues that Global-E directly addresses.

Cross-border ecommerce brings new, high-yield volume: We think elevated levels of cross-border ecommerce (ex-travel) is a structural shift thathas yet to be fully contemplated in MA (and V)'s long-term forecasts. MA's cross-border CNP ex-travel volume was 69% above 2019's level in 2Q and 63% higher in 1Q. Strength reflects both broader ecommerce adoption plus globalization of commerce, as marketplaces and services that reduce cross-border friction (such as those from GLBE) make international online ordering more readily adopted. Early data at V suggests greater cross-border ecommerce spend is persisting even in areas with pre-pandemic levels of international travel. Cross-border transactions also come at a higher yield, making us more optimistic that the trend can bring incremental long-term growth to the networks.

產業的潮流是有連貫性的. 疫情讓電商更發達後, 接下來應該就是加速電商跨境了. 跨境的話, 有很多問題需要解決(稅率, 語言, etc.) 這就需要有公司來做整合的動作. 這種跨境, 也可以想像是omnichannel的一種呈現.

Harley Finkelstein (President of Shopify): "I mean I think commerce in 2021 is cross-border."

🌻SPAC熱潮退卻，初創市值蒸發750億美元
"SPAC熱潮已經退卻。分析顯示，在2月中旬以前完成合併的137家SPAC的總市值已經蒸發25%，市值回落幅度上個月一度超過1,000億美元。"

"像貝萊德(BlackRock Inc., BLK)和富達投資(Fidelity Investments Inc.)這類企業管理的基金，以及許多對沖基金、養老金管理公司和其他一些投資者，都在SPAC的回落中遭受了衝擊，他們在去年年底開始的熱潮中競相投資SPAC。其中許多基金由於在價格還很低的時候就早早入場，所以現在仍坐擁可觀收益。事實上，SPAC市值仍有約2,500億美元，高於一年前的約1,000億美元，反映出這期間股價上漲和新公司上市的影響。

但即便如此，今年年初令人炫目的回報還是讓許多後來者做了接盤俠，扎堆投資所謂穩賺不賠的領域，其永恆的風險可見一斑。在過去的幾個月裡，一些投資者眼睜睜看著帳面財富縮水。"

"股價下跌會在SPAC領域形成惡性循環，因為投資者有權在併購交易前從空白支票公司撤資。一旦SPAC跌破發行價，投資者就更有可能這樣做，而許多SPAC的股價現在正處於這樣的水平。目前，在尚未宣布併購交易的空白支票公司中，超過95%的公司股價低於發行價。

投資者的大規模撤資會讓已經上市的空白支票公司手上的現金大幅減少，讓其更難實現業務目標，並可能加劇股價跌勢。"

https://on.wsj.com/3n6JznC

🌻BNPL (buy now pay later)
But most BNPL providers including Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay have been losing money despite breakneck revenue growth as they invest heavily in marketing to win share. Sweden-based Klarna’s credit losses more than doubled in the second quarter. Affirm has projected adjusted operating losses of $50m-$55m for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

The path to profitability for many of these companies was to achieve massive scale, analysts said.

https://www.ft.com/content/ca201a37-a16d-4223-b123-04d38350a972

Pictures: 一葉知秋; from EarningsWhispers

根據計算，100萬人遊行隊伍要從維多利亞公園排到廣東；200萬人遊行則要排到泰國。

順道一提香港15～30歲人口約莫100出頭萬人。以照片人群幾乎都是此年齡帶來看，兩個數字都是明顯誇大太多了。

另一個可以參考的是1969年的Woodstock Music & Art Fair，幾天內湧進40萬人次，照片看起來也是滿山滿谷的人。（http://sites.psu.edu/…/upl…/sites/851/2013/01/Woodstock3.jpg）

當年40萬人次引發驚人的大塞車，幾乎花十幾個小時才逐漸清場。

而香港遊行清場速度明顯快得多。

順道一提，因此運動而認定「你的父母不愛你」的白痴論述也如同文化大革命時的「爹親娘親不如毛主席親」般開始出現：

https://www.facebook.com/SaluteToHKPolice/videos/350606498983830/UzpfSTUyNzM2NjA3MzoxMDE1NjMyMTM4NjY3MTA3NA/

EVERY MAJOR NEWS outlet in the world is reporting that two million people, well over a quarter of our population, joined a single protest.
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It’s an astonishing thought that filled an enthusiastic old marcher like me with pride. Unfortunately, it’s almost certainly not true.
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A march of two million people would fill a street that was 58 kilometers long, starting at Victoria Park in Hong Kong and ending in Tanglangshan Country Park in Guangdong, according to one standard crowd estimation technique.
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If the two million of us stood in a queue, we’d stretch 914 kilometers (568 miles), from Victoria Park to Thailand. Even if all of us marched in a regiment 25 people abreast, our troop would stretch towards the Chinese border.
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Yes, there was a very large number of us there. But getting key facts wrong helps nobody. Indeed, it could hurt the protesters more than anyone.
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For math geeks only, here’s a discussion of the actual numbers that I hope will interest you whatever your political views.
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DO NUMBERS MATTER?
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People have repeatedly asked me to find out “the real number” of people at the recent mass rallies in Hong Kong.
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I declined for an obvious reason: There was a huge number of us. What does it matter whether it was hundreds of thousands or a million? That’s not important.
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But my critics pointed out that the word “million” is right at the top of almost every report about the marches. Clearly it IS important.
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FIRST, THE SCIENCE
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In the west, drone photography is analyzed to estimate crowd sizes.
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This reporter apologizes for not having found a comprehensive database of drone images of the Hong Kong protests.
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But we can still use related methods, such as density checks, crowd-flow data and impact assessments. Universities which have gathered Hong Kong protest march data using scientific methods include Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Baptist University.
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DENSITY CHECKS
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Figures gathered in the past by Hong Kong Polytechnic specialists using satellite photo analysis found a density level of one square meter per marcher. Modern analysis suggests this remains roughly accurate.
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I know from experience that Hong Kong marches feature long periods of normal spacing (one square meter or one and half per person, walking) and shorter periods of tight spacing (half a square meter or less per person, mostly standing).
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JOINERS AND SPEED
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We need to include people who join halfway. In the past, a Hong Kong University analysis using visual counting methods cross-referenced with one-on-one interviews indicated that estimates should be boosted by 12% to accurately reflect late joiners. These days, we’re much more generous in estimating joiners.
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As for speed, a Hong Kong Baptist University survey once found a passing rate of 4,000 marchers every ten minutes.
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Videos of the recent rallies indicates that joiner numbers and stop-start progress were highly erratic and difficult to calculate with any degree of certainty.
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DISTANCE MULTIPLIED BY DENSITY
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But scientists have other tools. We know the walking distance between Victoria Park and Tamar Park is 2.9 kilometers. Although there was overspill, the bulk of the marchers went along Hennessy Road in Wan Chai, which is about 25 meters (or 82 feet) wide, and similar connected roads, some wider, some narrower.
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Steve Doig, a specialist in crowd analysis approached by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), analyzed an image of Hong Kong marchers to find a density level of 7,000 people in a 210-meter space. Although he emphasizes that crowd estimates are never an exact science, that figure means one million Hong Kong marchers would need a street 18.6 miles long – which is 29 kilometers.
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Extrapolating these figures for the June 16 claim of two million marchers, you’d need a street 58 kilometers long.
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Could this problem be explained away by the turnover rate of Hong Kong marchers, which likely allowed the main (three kilometer) route to be filled more than once?
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The answer is yes, to some extent. But the crowd would have to be moving very fast to refill the space a great many times over in a single afternoon and evening. It wasn’t. While I can walk the distance from Victoria Park to Tamar in 41 minutes on a quiet holiday afternoon, doing the same thing during a march takes many hours.
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More believable: There was a huge number of us, but not a million, and certainly not two million.
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IMPACT MEASUREMENTS
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A second, parallel way of analyzing the size of the crowd is to seek evidence of the effects of the marchers’ absence from their normal roles in society.
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If we extract two million people out of a population of 7.4 million, many basic services would be severely affected while many others would grind to a complete halt.
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Manpower-intensive sectors of society, such as transport, would be badly affected by mass absenteeism. Industries which do their main business on the weekends, such as retail, restaurants, hotels, tourism, coffee shops and so on would be hard hit. Round-the-clock operations such as hospitals and emergency services would be severely troubled, as would under-the-radar jobs such as infrastructure and utility maintenance.
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There seems to be no evidence that any of that happened in Hong Kong.
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HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS MESS?
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To understand that, a bit of historical context is necessary.
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In 2003, a very large number of us walked from Victoria Park to Central. The next day, newspapers gave several estimates of crowd size.
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The differences were small. Academics said it was 350,000 plus. The police counted 466,000. The organizers, a group called the Civil Rights Front, rounded it up to 500,000.
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No controversy there. But there was trouble ahead.
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THINGS FALL APART
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At a repeat march the following year, it was obvious to all of us that our numbers were far lower that the previous year. The people counting agreed: the academics said 194,000 and the police said 200,000.
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But the Civil Rights Front insisted that there were MORE than the previous year’s march: 530,000 people.
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The organizers lost credibility even with us, their own supporters. To this day, we all quote the 2003 figure as the high point of that period, ignoring their 2004 invention.
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THE TRUTH COUNTS
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The organizers had embarrassed the marchers. The following year several organizations decided to serve us better, with detailed, scientific counts.
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After the 2005 march, the academics said the headcount was between 60,000 and 80,000 and the police said 63,000. Separate accounts by other independent groups agreed that it was below 100,000.
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But the organizers? The Civil Rights Front came out with the awkward claim that it was a quarter of a million. Ouch. (This data is easily confirmed from multiple sources in newspaper archives.)
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AN UNEXPECTED TWIST
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But then came a twist. Some in the Western media chose to present ONLY the organizer’s “outlier” claim.
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“Dressed in black and chanting ‘one man, one vote’, a quarter of a million people marched through Hong Kong yesterday,” said the Times of London in 2005.
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“A quarter of a million protesters marched through Hong Kong yesterday to demand full democracy from their rulers in Beijing,” reported the UK Independent.
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It became obvious that international media outlets were committed to emphasizing whichever claim made the Hong Kong government (and by extension, China) look as bad as possible. Accuracy was nowhere in the equation.
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STRATEGICALLY CHOSEN
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At universities in Hong Kong, there were passionate discussions about the apparent decision to pump up the numbers as a strategy, with the international media in mind. Activists saw two likely positive outcomes.
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First, anyone who actually wanted the truth would choose a middle point as the “real” number: thus it was worth making the organizers’ number as high as possible. (The police could be presented as corrupt puppets of Beijing.)
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Second, international reporters always favored the largest number, since it implicitly criticized China. Once the inflated figure was established in the Western media, it would become the generally accepted figure in all publications.
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Both of the activists’ predictions turned out to be bang on target. In the following years, headcounts by social scientists and police were close or even impressively confirmed the other—but were ignored by the agenda-driven international media, who usually printed only the organizers’ claims.
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SKIP THIS SECTION
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Skip this section unless you want additional examples to reinforce the point.
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In 2011, researchers and police said that between 63,000 and 95,000 of us marched. Our delightfully imaginative organizers multiplied by four to claim there were 400,000 of us.
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In 2012, researchers and police produced headcounts similar to the previous year: between 66,000 and 97,000. But the organizers claimed that it was 430,000. (These data can also be easily confirmed in any newspaper archive.)
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SKIP THIS SECTION TOO
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Unless you’re interested in the police angle. Why are police figures seen as lower than others? On reviewing data, two points emerge.
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First, police estimates rise and fall with those of independent researchers, suggesting that they function correctly: they are not invented. Many are slightly lower, but some match closely and others are slightly higher. This suggests that the police simply have a different counting method.
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Second, police sources explain that live estimates of attendance are used for “effective deployment” of staff. The number of police assigned to work on the scene is a direct reflection of the number of marchers counted. Thus officers have strong motivation to avoid deliberately under-estimating numbers.
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RECENT MASS RALLIES
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Now back to the present: this hot, uncomfortable summer.
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Academics put the 2019 June 9 rally at 199,500, and police at 240,000. Some people said the numbers should be raised or even doubled to reflect late joiners or people walking on parallel roads. Taking the most generous view, this gave us total estimates of 400,000 to 480,000.
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But the organizers, God bless them, claimed that 1.03 million marched: this was four times the researchers’ conservative view and more than double the generous view.
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The addition of the “.03m” caused a bit of mirth among social scientists. Even an academic writing in the rabidly pro-activist Hong Kong Free Press struggled to accept it. “Undoubtedly, the anti-amendment group added the extra .03 onto the exact one million figure in order to give their estimate a veneer of accuracy,” wrote Paul Stapleton.
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MIND-BOGGLING ESTIMATE
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But the vast majority of international media and social media printed ONLY the organizers’ eyebrow-raising claim of a million plus—and their version soon fed back into the system and because the “accepted” number. (Some mentioned other estimates in early reports and then dropped them.)
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The same process was repeated for the following Sunday, June 16, when the organizers’ frankly unbelievable claim of “about two million” was taken as gospel in the majority of international media.
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“Two million people in Hong Kong protest China's growing influence,” reported Fox News.
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“A record two million people – over a quarter of the city’s population” joined the protest, said the Guardian this morning.
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“Hong Kong leader apologizes as TWO MILLION take to the streets,” said the Sun newspaper in the UK.
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Friends, colleagues, fellow journalists—what happened to fact-checking? What happened to healthy skepticism? What happened to attempts at balance?
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CONCLUSIONS?
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I offer none. I prefer that you do your own research and draw your own conclusions. This is just a rough overview of the scientific and historical data by a single old-school citizen-journalist working in a university coffee shop.
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I may well have made errors on individual data points, although the overall message, I hope, is clear.
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Hong Kong people like to march.
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We deserve better data.
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We need better journalism. Easily debunked claims like “more than a quarter of the population hit the streets” help nobody.
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International media, your hostile agendas are showing. Raise your game.
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Organizers, stop working against the scientists and start working with them.
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Hong Kong people value truth.
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We’re not stupid. (And we’re not scared of math!)

Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay at 7:15p is a sea of protesters.

It’s the march against an #extradition bill that would allow the extradition of suspected criminals to China.

HK police estimate 153,000 are taking part — and that’s believed to be a conservative number.

Here’s the latest.

Allen Iverson wrote a piece for The Players Tribune on Thursday that, like most things involving Allen Iverson, was absolutely tremendous. Iverson has long been one of the NBA’s most fascinating figures, both because his game was endearing to basketball fans and his personality as an undersized dude who was tough as nails made him an easy guy to root for. Plus there are — and this is a conservative estimate — about 500 million stories about Iverson that add to the lore surrounding him.