Independent research on the U.S. markets, Baptista Research

Baptista Research

Independent research on the U.S. markets

Baptista Research is an independent financial research house focused on the U.S. markets. We provide equity research as well as credit research reports on the top-listed U.S. companies with most of our focus on technology, consumer goods and services, automobiles, industrials, oil and gas, pharma, and healthcare. Our research has served more than 3000 institutional investors including mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, family offices, and various buy-side firms. We operate a research subscription service where institutions, as well as retail investors, can have priority access to all our research. We also have a wide distribution of our research reports across some of the top global financial platforms. Apart from equity research and credit research, we also provide advisory services with respect to mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity/ venture capital fundraising, valuation reports, and investment management services for corporates.
Baptista Research is owned and managed by Ishan Majumdar, an ex-Venture Capitalist/ Investment Banker, a Chartered Accountant, and a Masters’ degree holder in Management from HEC Paris. Ishan has nearly a decade of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions, Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs), Venture Capital Investing, Corporate Strategy, and Valuation in front-office roles at the likes of BNP Paribas CIB, Credit Agricole CIB, Groupe Danone, and TIW Private Equity. He has worked on and closed multiple acquisition deals, leveraged buyouts, and start-up investment transactions.

Equity Bottom-Up

International Business Machines / Equity Bottom-Up

<ul><li>The latest earnings of IBM revealed solid growth across all businesses for the last quarter of 2023, with a revenue growth of 3% and over $11 billion of free cash flow.</li><li>The achievements and progress noted by IBM's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Arvind Krishna, corroborate the company's commitment towards strengthening its diversified business model.</li><li>Key drivers of IBM's success during the year 2023 were enhancements in its software portfolio and the bolstering of its consulting position.</li></ul>

The latest earnings of IBM revealed solid growth across all businesses for the last quarter of 2023, with a revenue growth of 3% and over $11 billion of free cash flow.The achievements and progress noted by IBM's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Arvind Krishna, corroborate the company's commitment towards strengthening its diversified business model.Key drivers of IBM's success during the year 2023 were enhancements in its software portfolio and the bolstering of its consulting position.

IBM Corporation: Is The Infrastructure Revenue Decline A Cause For Concern? - Major Drivers

Semiconductor & Technology Specialist, Ingenuity

William Keating

Semiconductor & Technology Specialist

Ingenuity

Our focus is exclusively on in-depth research & consulting in the broader semiconductor industry. We focus on the key players, namely Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC & Global Foundries - as well as some of the lesser known, but nonetheless critical, companies such as ASML (for EUV), Mellanox, Cavium, Xilinx etc. We specialise in their products, roadmaps, process technologies, competitive advantages & threats etc. We also help our clients understand the implications of new and emerging technologies, e.g. 3D X-Point, 3D NAND, Carbon Nanotubes, Autonomous Driving, Graphene, Silicon Photonics, Wafer-Level Optics, Artificial Intelligence, FPGA, GPU, ASIC etc. 

Semiconductor Analysis & Research

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

Since its emergence as the technology underpinning Bitcoin over a decade ago, blockchain has captured the imagination of technologists, investors and charlatans in roughly equal measure. Blockchain has been portrayed by its advocates as the solution to some of the most fundamental challenges facing modern-day society including free and fair elections, the protection of identity records and title deeds, supply chain integrity and, of course, enabling all manner of exotic cryptocurrencies. Little wonder then that we experienced a wave of blockchain mania which coincided with a similar level of cryptocurrency mania in late 2017. During that time, companies were adding "Blockchain" to their names and seeing their share prices soar by many multiples within weeks. Just as the crypto bubble burst in early 2018, so too did the blockchain bubble. Share prices of so-called blockchain companies collapsed just as quickly as they had risen. Testifying before a US senate committee in October 2018, professor of economics Nouriel Roubini was scathing in his criticism of blockchain <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testimony%2010-11-18.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">referring</a> to it as  “The most over-hyped technology ever, no better than a spreadsheet/database”.
 Now, as the dust settles and the mania fades, we witness the emergence of a new class of enterprise-grade blockchain implementations led by the likes Hyperledger, Corda and various customisations of Ethereum. While the blockchain technologies supporting the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum are public in so far as the data they contain is accessible by anybody who wishes to view it, these enterprise blockchain implementations are private, a necessary prerequisite for their potential deployment at major corporations and financial institutions. This distinction, along with a number of other important differences, means that enterprise blockchain represents a significant departure from the original public blockchain concept.
Today, enterprise blockchain is being deployed to tackle challenges across a swathe of verticals thanks to the likes of the Big Four consulting firms striving to position it at the heart of their business process reengineering practices. From Maersk to Walmart, they are convincing some of the world's biggest conglomerates to tackle age-old issues relating to outdated, inefficient, labor intensive business practices, all in the name of  blockchain.
It's not just the Big Four that are cashing in on enterprise blockchain. Professional services firm Accenture is investing heavily in its blockchain consulting practice. Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) solutions are available from enterprise software giants <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/intl-business-machines-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:1064:1" rel="noopener">Intl Business Machines</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/oracle-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:1065:1" rel="noopener">Oracle</a>,  <a href="https://www.sap.com/hk/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SAP</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/microsoft-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:15273:1" rel="noopener">Microsoft </a>and more recently from China’s <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/alibaba-group-holding-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:787:1" rel="noopener">Alibaba </a>and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/baidu-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:179:1" rel="noopener">Baidu</a>. <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/intel-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:16764:1" rel="noopener">Intel </a>wants to ensure that enterprise blockchains runs best on its servers while Microsoft and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/amazon-com-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:409:1" rel="noopener">Amazon </a>want to host them on their clouds. It's little surprise then that enterprise and government spending on blockchain is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 89% over the previous year according to <a href="https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44898819" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IDC</a>. Furthermore, they predict that spending on enterprise blockchain will reach $$ja12.4 billion by 2022.
In common with Roubini, our belief has long been that blockchain as a technology offers little that was not already available elsewhere and before. Enterprise blockchains bear little resemblance to the technical ingenuity that gave us Bitcoin, but which is otherwise largely useless. The populist mantra that enterprise blockchain has the ability to transform the business processes of major corporations, key industry verticals and governments is a largely a delusion in our opinion. <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/blockchains-occam-problem" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This</a> recent report from McKinsey further supports our perspective, noting that blockchain has yet to become the game-changer some expected and recommending that it should only be considered when it is the simplest solution available.
Paradoxically, if the allure of blockchain can be leveraged as the motivating factor to undertake the much-needed digital transformation and business process re-engineering required to modernize outdated, legacy practices and procedures, then it may indeed have some inherent, albeit unintended, value. Furthermore, our interviews with the CEOs of two small, privately held startups clearly indicated that they are actually finding important, albeit niche, use cases for blockchain technologies in their solution stacks.  In this context, it makes sense to view blockchain as an emerging technology actively seeking real-world use cases and likely to be strongly promoted by its proponents in the coming years.
Against this backdrop, how should investors think about the investment opportunities for blockchain? For starters, venture capital interest grew significantly in 2018 with some $5.4 billion invested in blockchain related startups, up from $1.5 billion the previous year according to <a href="https://next.autonomous.com/thoughts/crypto-blockchain-lands-at-24b-in-2018-funding-1b-in-stos-coming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Autonomous Research</a>. Nonetheless, our analysis of multiple categories of companies with blockchain exposure reveals a harsh reality. Neither their blockchain related revenues nor any cost savings directly attributable to the technology are significant enough to have any meaningful impact on their valuations from a fundamentals perspective, a situation we do not expect to change any time soon. The same holds true for the blockchain-related ETFs and hedge funds we examined.
On a more positive note, there are some excellent companies doing exciting things with blockchain and related technologies. Privately held GuardTime and Digital Assets should be on investors watch lists for funding rounds and IPOs. We expect publicly listed <a href="https://www.garage.co.jp/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Digital Garage</a> and <a href="https://www.broadridge.com/intl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Broadridge Financial Solutions</a> to continue to perform well and feel that they should be considered as part of a broader fintech portfolio. By the same token, we are positive on the growth opportunities of blockchain-associated multinationals such as <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-hk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a>, <a href="https://www.ibm.com/hk-en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IBM</a>, <a href="https://www.visa.com.hk/en_HK" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visa</a>, <a href="https://www.mastercard.us/en-us.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mastercard</a> etc, albeit for reasons that have little to do with blockchain.

Since its emergence as the technology underpinning Bitcoin over a decade ago, blockchain has captured the imagination of technologists, investors and charlatans in roughly equal measure. Blockchain has been portrayed by its advocates as the solution to some of the most fundamental challenges facing modern-day society including free and fair elections, the protection of identity records and title deeds, supply chain integrity and, of course, enabling all manner of exotic cryptocurrencies. Little wonder then that we experienced a wave of blockchain mania which coincided with a similar level of cryptocurrency mania in late 2017. During that time, companies were adding "Blockchain" to their names and seeing their share prices soar by many multiples within weeks. Just as the crypto bubble burst in early 2018, so too did the blockchain bubble. Share prices of so-called blockchain companies collapsed just as quickly as they had risen. Testifying before a US senate committee in October 2018, professor of economics Nouriel Roubini was scathing in his criticism of blockchain referring to it as  “The most over-hyped technology ever, no better than a spreadsheet/database”.
 Now, as the dust settles and the mania fades, we witness the emergence of a new class of enterprise-grade blockchain implementations led by the likes Hyperledger, Corda and various customisations of Ethereum. While the blockchain technologies supporting the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum are public in so far as the data they contain is accessible by anybody who wishes to view it, these enterprise blockchain implementations are private, a necessary prerequisite for their potential deployment at major corporations and financial institutions. This distinction, along with a number of other important differences, means that enterprise blockchain represents a significant departure from the original public blockchain concept.
Today, enterprise blockchain is being deployed to tackle challenges across a swathe of verticals thanks to the likes of the Big Four consulting firms striving to position it at the heart of their business process reengineering practices. From Maersk to Walmart, they are convincing some of the world's biggest conglomerates to tackle age-old issues relating to outdated, inefficient, labor intensive business practices, all in the name of  blockchain.
It's not just the Big Four that are cashing in on enterprise blockchain. Professional services firm Accenture is investing heavily in its blockchain consulting practice. Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) solutions are available from enterprise software giants Intl Business Machines, Oracle,  SAP and Microsoft and more recently from China’s Alibaba and Baidu. Intel wants to ensure that enterprise blockchains runs best on its servers while Microsoft and Amazon want to host them on their clouds. It's little surprise then that enterprise and government spending on blockchain is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 89% over the previous year according to IDC. Furthermore, they predict that spending on enterprise blockchain will reach $$ja12.4 billion by 2022.
In common with Roubini, our belief has long been that blockchain as a technology offers little that was not already available elsewhere and before. Enterprise blockchains bear little resemblance to the technical ingenuity that gave us Bitcoin, but which is otherwise largely useless. The populist mantra that enterprise blockchain has the ability to transform the business processes of major corporations, key industry verticals and governments is a largely a delusion in our opinion. This recent report from McKinsey further supports our perspective, noting that blockchain has yet to become the game-changer some expected and recommending that it should only be considered when it is the simplest solution available.
Paradoxically, if the allure of blockchain can be leveraged as the motivating factor to undertake the much-needed digital transformation and business process re-engineering required to modernize outdated, legacy practices and procedures, then it may indeed have some inherent, albeit unintended, value. Furthermore, our interviews with the CEOs of two small, privately held startups clearly indicated that they are actually finding important, albeit niche, use cases for blockchain technologies in their solution stacks.  In this context, it makes sense to view blockchain as an emerging technology actively seeking real-world use cases and likely to be strongly promoted by its proponents in the coming years.
Against this backdrop, how should investors think about the investment opportunities for blockchain? For starters, venture capital interest grew significantly in 2018 with some $5.4 billion invested in blockchain related startups, up from $1.5 billion the previous year according to Autonomous Research. Nonetheless, our analysis of multiple categories of companies with blockchain exposure reveals a harsh reality. Neither their blockchain related revenues nor any cost savings directly attributable to the technology are significant enough to have any meaningful impact on their valuations from a fundamentals perspective, a situation we do not expect to change any time soon. The same holds true for the blockchain-related ETFs and hedge funds we examined.
On a more positive note, there are some excellent companies doing exciting things with blockchain and related technologies. Privately held GuardTime and Digital Assets should be on investors watch lists for funding rounds and IPOs. We expect publicly listed Digital Garage and Broadridge Financial Solutions to continue to perform well and feel that they should be considered as part of a broader fintech portfolio. By the same token, we are positive on the growth opportunities of blockchain-associated multinationals such as Microsoft, IBM, Visa, Mastercard etc, albeit for reasons that have little to do with blockchain.
  

The Blockchain Delusion. A (Mostly) Bearish Investment Thesis.

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs, Douglas Research Advisory

Douglas Kim

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs

Equity Capital Markets

<ul>
<li>On 8 August, Nikkei Asia reported that Arm plans to complete its IPO on NASDAQ in September in a deal expected to be worth more US$60 billion or more.</li>
<li>Global tech giants including Apple, Samsung Electronics, NVIDIA, and Intel are expected to invest in Arm once the company is listed on the market.</li>
<li>The IPO offering amount is expected to be between $8 billion and $10 billion.</li>
</ul>


On 8 August, Nikkei Asia reported that Arm plans to complete its IPO on NASDAQ in September in a deal expected to be worth more US$60 billion or more.
Global tech giants including Apple, Samsung Electronics, NVIDIA, and Intel are expected to invest in Arm once the company is listed on the market.
The IPO offering amount is expected to be between $8 billion and $10 billion.


SoftBank Plans to Complete IPO of Arm in September on NASDAQ

<ul><li>IBM delivered a mixed result in the recent quarter, with revenues below market expectations, but it managed to surpass the analyst consensus regarding earnings.</li><li>The last quarter demonstrated strong execution of their hybrid cloud and AI strategy, with solid growth in their software and consulting segments.</li><li>Additionally, their enterprise AI initiatives, including the Watsonx platform, show promising results with multiple use cases across various industries.</li></ul>

IBM delivered a mixed result in the recent quarter, with revenues below market expectations, but it managed to surpass the analyst consensus regarding earnings.The last quarter demonstrated strong execution of their hybrid cloud and AI strategy, with solid growth in their software and consulting segments.Additionally, their enterprise AI initiatives, including the Watsonx platform, show promising results with multiple use cases across various industries.

International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation: Strengthening IT Automation and Optimizing Technology Investments! - Key Drivers

Equity Long-Short Analyst

Pyari Menon

<ul>
<li>The three companies we write about this week are <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/raytheon-technologies-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:6453:1" rel="noopener">Raytheon Technologies (RTX US)</a><a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/beiersdorf-ag" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:21588:1" rel="noopener">Beiersdorf AG (BEI GR)</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/king-slide-works-co-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:7130:1" rel="noopener">King Slide Works (2059 TT)</a> 
</li>
<li>For the twenty-six weeks since inception ended 19 May the combined innovation portfolio was +2.5%, versus DJIA-0.9%, S&amp;P500+5.7%, Nasdaq+13.6%, Russell2000 -4.1%, MSCI-ACWI-ETF+6.9%, S&amp;P midcap 400 -2.2%, all in US$ terms</li>
<li>Small-Cap (+4.1%) versus Russell2000 (-4.1%) and midcap (+1.9%) versus S&amp;P400 (-2.2%) continues to outperform benchmarks, but the omission of mega-tech names has hurt large-cap portfolio (+2.6%) versus S&amp;P500 (+5.7%) . </li>
</ul>


The three companies we write about this week are Raytheon Technologies (RTX US)Beiersdorf AG (BEI GR) and King Slide Works (2059 TT) 

For the twenty-six weeks since inception ended 19 May the combined innovation portfolio was +2.5%, versus DJIA-0.9%, S&amp;P500+5.7%, Nasdaq+13.6%, Russell2000 -4.1%, MSCI-ACWI-ETF+6.9%, S&amp;P midcap 400 -2.2%, all in US$ terms
Small-Cap (+4.1%) versus Russell2000 (-4.1%) and midcap (+1.9%) versus S&amp;P400 (-2.2%) continues to outperform benchmarks, but the omission of mega-tech names has hurt large-cap portfolio (+2.6%) versus S&amp;P500 (+5.7%) . 


The Innovations Portfolios - Week Twenty Six

United States

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provides computer solutions through the use of advanced information technology. The Company's solutions include technologies, systems, products, services, software, and financing. IBM offers its products through its global sales and distribution organization, as well as through a variety of third party distributors and resellers.

Price Gauge
52-week Range	0.00 - 0.00
Market Cap (USDm)	0.00
P/E	0.00
Dividend (Yield)	0.00

International Business Machines (IBM US)

IBM Corporation: Is The Infrastructure Revenue Decline A Cause For Concern? - Major Drivers

The latest earnings of IBM revealed solid growth across all businesses for the last quarter of 2023, with a revenue growth of 3% and over $11...

Baptista Research

The Blockchain Delusion. A (Mostly) Bearish Investment Thesis.

Back when I wrote this, Blockchain was all the rage, but I struggled to see the true value proposition, felt there was a huge amount of hype...

William Keating

SoftBank Plans to Complete IPO of Arm in September on NASDAQ

On 8 August, Nikkei Asia reported that Arm plans to complete its IPO on NASDAQ in September in a deal expected to be worth more US$60 billion or more.

Douglas Kim

International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation: Strengthening IT Automation and Optimizing Technology Investments! - Key Drivers

IBM delivered a mixed result in the recent quarter, with revenues below market expectations, but it managed to surpass the analyst consensus...

Baptista Research

The Innovations Portfolios - Week Twenty Six

The small-Cap (+4.1%) and midcap (+1.9%) portfolios continues to outperform respective benchmarks, but the willful omission of mega-tech names has...

Pyari Menon

Price Gauge

52-week Range

Market Cap (USDm)

P/E

Dividend (Yield)