United States

• Hesai Group (HSAI US) has launched a Nasdaq IPO to raise up to US$171 million at an indicative price range of US$17-19 per ADS.
• In Hesai Group IPO: The Bull Case, we highlighted the key elements of the bull case. In this note, we outline the bear case.
• The key elements of the bear case rest on continuing pricing pressure, declining contract liabilities, gross margin decline, ongoing losses, worsening cash conversion cycle and FCF burn.

• Hesai Group (HSAI US) has launched a Nasdaq IPO to raise up to US$171 million at an indicative price range of US$17-19 per ADS.
• Hesai is a global leader in LiDAR technology for autonomous driving and ADAS. In the ADAS market, Hesai is the global leader in terms of shipment volume in 2022.
• The key elements of the bull case rest on a solid competitive positioning, large addressable markets, high growth and a strong balance sheet.

• Caterpillar delivered a mixed quarterly result as its revenues surpassed Wall Street expectations on account of a healthy demand over many end markets for the company’s products and services.
• Sales rose better than expected, and the adjusted operating profit margins also increased but the company failed to meet the earnings expectations of analysts.
• Despite the challenges of the supply chain, Caterpillar generated robust ME&T free cash flow and achieved double-digit top-line growth.

• L3Harris finished the year on a high note and delivered an all-around beat while continuing to build momentum going into 2023.
• The RL10 is a high-end upper-stage engine that the ELA has ordered well over 100 of for the new Vulcan launch vehicle.
• We remain optimistic about the company’s future growth and maintain our ‘Hold’ rating with a revised target price.

• McCormick delivered a disappointing result, failing to meet the analyst consensus with respect to revenues as well as earnings.
• The management claims that it is seeing an improved momentum given the changing consumer consumption patterns, Flavor Solutions demand, and steady service levels and supply.
• In Q4, their sales growth was decent in the Flavor Solutions area and kept up momentum across all geographies.

• Mondelez delivered a strong quarterly result and surpassed market expectations in terms of the revenues as well as earnings.
• The strong top-line performance of the company was driven by continued volume strength and pricing execution.
• Mondelez delivered robust top-line growth in both developed and emerging markets.

• Moody’s delivered a strong result in the quarter with an all-around beat and a major update with respect to the acquisition of SCRiesgo to expand its presence in Latin America.
• This quarter demonstrates the resilience and positive momentum of Moody’s Analytics (MA) and also reflects the impact of the challenging market situations on Moody’s Investor Services (MIS).
• Across MA, Moody’s enhanced several workflow offerings via analytics and data integration, creating new products to meet rising consumer needs.

• New Ruipeng Pet Group (RPET US) is looking to raise at least US$100m in its upcoming US IPO. 
• New Ruipeng Pet Group (Ruipeng) is a pet services platform, primarily offering pet care services, supply chain services and local services, covering the entire lifecycle of pets.
• In this note, we will talk about the not-so-positive aspects of the deal.

• Amazon’s share price has fallen 25% since April of last year, sparking a fear of missing out.
• The pressure for cost-cutting measures will likely increase as profitability and free cash flow remain elusive, according to Amazon.
• Amazon has seen a 25% drop in its share price in January.

• Comcast achieved a strong result that surpassed Wall Street expectations in terms of revenues as well as earnings.
• The company is slowly growing its ARPU as it is working towards building its customer relationships by steadily introducing new capabilities, services, and benefits.
• In 2023, ARPU growth should continue to be the main factor influencing their residential broadband revenue growth.

• Intel delivered a weak result, failing to meet Wall Street expectations in terms of revenues as well as earnings given the persisting macroeconomic headwinds in the semiconductor industry.
• Intel continues to integrate AXG into CCG and DCAI to deliver a more effective go-to-market capability, accelerating the scale of these businesses while further cutting costs.
• The management believes their first EUV-deploying modes, Intel 4 and 3, will significantly improve transistor performance per watt and density.

• Snap continued to encounter massive challenges due to increased competition and macroeconomic headwinds.
• In the quarter, the company released communities to expand its content offerings and onboarded several new media partners.
• The company has also launched new Snapchat+ features to increase audience engagement on the platform in the quarter.

• AWS revenue grew 20% YoY to $21.3B, about $400M or ~2% below consensus…and a 700bp deceleration.
• AWS margins of 24% were down 200bps QoQ / 600bps YoY as continued optimization of customer contracts continues to weigh on margins.
• Amazon advertising continues to dramatically outpace all other online platforms, highlighting the moat of first party data at the point of purchase, unimpacted by Apple.

• SAP delivered a mixed set of results in the final quarter of 2022 as it surpassed the revenue expectations of Wall Street but missed out on earnings.
• This year, cloud revenue also surpassed support revenue to become SAP’s single-largest revenue stream.
• Their overall SaaS and PaaS portfolio grew significantly, with SaaS cloud revenue increasing by 25% and PaaS cloud revenue increasing by 45%.

• ASRT has setup 2023 with the potential for growth even though Cambia now has generic competition. ASRT had been mentioning the generic competition for more than a year.
• Looking ahead to 2023, ASRT should benefit from having samples of Otrextup available for physicians.
• Indocin remains the primary revenue generator for ASRT. We are expecting greater revenue contribution from Indocin to offset Cambia

• Sherwin-Williams’ fourth quarter results were mixed as the company failed to meet the revenue expectations of Wall Street despite a high single-digit percentage sales growth.
• The company managed an earnings beat as a result of the significant year-over-year gross margin improvement.
• Sales in North and Latin America increased by double-digit percentages in the industrial sector, offsetting some of the weaker circumstances in Europe and Asia.

• At the EGM held on January 31, O2Micro International (OIIM US)’s shareholders voted in favoor of the Merger Agreement.
• The Offerors didn’t have the necessary two-thirds for the voter to be a foregone conclusion, therefore the outcome wasn’t assured. Although it was an okay offer. With proxy advisor support.
• Yet even after the vote, this is still trading 7.1% below terms. The drawn-out completion of Glory Star New Media Group Holdings (GSMG US) is evidently uppermost in investors’ minds. 

• New Ruipeng Pet Group (RPET US) is looking to raise at least US$100m in its upcoming US IPO. 
• New Ruipeng Pet Group (Ruipeng) is a pet services platform, primarily offering pet care services, supply chain services and local services, covering the entire lifecycle of pets.
• In this note, we will talk about the positive aspects of the deal.

• Meta lowered 2023 expense guide by $5B (or 5%)  to $89bn-$95bn and capex guide by $4B (or 11%) to $30bn-$33bn
• Metaverse spending continues, META lost $4.3B on $700M in revenue this quarter and losses are expected to accelerate in 2023. 
• Zuck said the word efficiency 18x and AI 15x…Evidently, these are his priorities!

• Visa’s performance in the last quarter was solid and it managed an all-around beat as a result of consistent domestic volumes and transactions, as well as a persistent improvement in international travel.
• Therefore, they are working to position Visa favorably for the future, whether with conventional issuers or co-brand partners.
• Baptista Research looks to evaluate the different factors that could influence the company’s price in the near future and attempts to carry out an independent valuation of the company using a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) methodology.

• Mastercard delivered a decent result in the last quarter as consumer spending has been steady.
• Mastercard has strengthened and expanded its long-standing relationship with Citi and Bank of America.
• Mastercard’s open banking initiatives are supported by connections to over 3000 banks and other financial institutions in 18 markets.

• HWKN reported fiscal third quarter (January 1) results where sales benefited from price increases while the firm dealt with supply bottleneck for sourcing fertilizer.
• HWKN has been relying on price increases to drive sales higher and generate gross profit dollars. Volumes have not increased as much as sales prices have.
• The water treatment business is seasonally soft in FYQ3. However, the segment reported sales greater than we were expecting. We believe this is mostly to HWKN renewing its annual contracts.

• NTGR continues to face the challenges of retailers reducing shelf inventory while the Company shifts to in-demand product lines
• NTGR reported fourth quarter revenue of $249.1 million, exceeding our estimate of $242.8 million due to more product shipments to service provider customers
• NTGR’s inability to source enough components is hampering the growth potential of the Company’s ProAV switch

Newmont will update guidance for 2023 when it releases Q4 results on 23 February 2023. We anticipate a strong close to 2022 (production up 6% quarter on quarter and costs down 13% in Q4) and believe a dividend recalibration is possible, albeit reflecting industry inflation rather than a reassessment of capital allocation policy in general. In this context, we see Newmont as a sustainable choice among gold producers, not only in an ESG sense, but also in its ability to maintain 6Moz pa of low-cost production.

Pan American Silver (PAAS) has reported that its shareholders approved the proposed share issue to acquire all outstanding Yamana Gold shares as part of its recently announced plan of arrangement to buy all non-Canadian assets of Yamana. At the same time, Yamana shareholders voted in favour of the special resolution approving the acquisition by PAAS of all the issued and outstanding shares in the company following the sale of all Canadian assets to Agnico Eagle. The transaction is expected to be completed in Q123 subject to receiving a number of regulatory approvals.

• This piece was originally going to compare the average and median size of liquidity events – meaning any mint (deposit) or burn (withdrawal) to/from a DEX liquidity pool – on the most popular Ethereum DEXs: Uniswap V3, V2, and Curve. 
• There have been some excellent Twitter threads comparing DEXs and considering whether providing liquidity on Uniswap V3 can be profitable.
• But after taking a look at the Uniswap V3 liquidity event data, it became clear that I had to write about an under-explored and rapidly developing topic: just-in-time (JIT) liquidity.

• O2Micro International (OIIM US)‘s US$5.00 per ADS privatisation offer from FNOF Precious Honour Limited was overwhelmingly approved by shareholders.
• The key remaining condition precedent is obtaining the required regulatory approvals related to the listing rules of NASDAQ and the Cayman Islands. There are no Chinese regulatory approvals required.
• The conditions precedent should be satisfied shortly. At the current price and for an end-March close, the gross and annualised spread to the offer is 6.4% and 45.6%, respectively. 

• Inline performance and inline guidance…the stock mistakingly traded down on Tinder’s optically weak sub growth.
• Longer term, CEO BK Kim is making the right moves reorganizing the company to focus on the growth engines (Tinder, Hinge), the idiosyncrantic drivers (Asia), and cost cutting (Evergreen Brands).
• Reiterated 2023 guidance will prove conservative, with the stock still trading at alltime lows despite the 30% move up so far this year…we buy this dip.

• Lam Research ended the previous year on a strong note and posted an all-around beat in the last quarter.
• The CSBG revenues in the company’s installed base business expanded faster than its growth in the installed base units.
• We provide the stock of Lam Research with an ‘Underperform’ rating with a revision in the target price.

• ServiceNow continues performing well as its recent quarterly result met market expectations in terms of the reported revenues.
• The company exceeded its subscription revenue guidance and drove strong expansion and renewal rates.
• The free cash flow was above its guidance, and it beat the guidance with the growth in subscription revenue and also managed an earnings beat.

• IBM delivered a strong result for the last quarter and managed an all-around beat as a result of excellent execution with respect to its AI and hybrid cloud strategy.
• It delivered decent revenue growth in its business across geographies, infrastructure segments, consulting, and software.
• The company added a series of innovative IBM software offerings in the AWS marketplace available as-a-Service.

• Pfizer Inc (PFE US) reported 13% operational revenue growth in Q4, driven by strong performance of the COVID products and ongoing launch of Prevnar 20 for adults in U.S.
• Pfizer has provided full-year 2023 revenue guidance of $67.0–71.0B (-31% YoY at mid-point) and adjusted EPS guidance of $3.25–3.45 (-49% YoY at mid-point).
• The company is in the midst of an 18-month period during which Pfizer expects to have up to an unprecedented 19 new products or indications in the market.

• This was a strong quarter for Freeport with the company managing an all-around beat.
• Indonesia’s operations by PT Freeport Indonesia are characterized by very low costs due to the gold content and the grades, large volumes, and the world’s largest goldmine is a byproduct.
• In the quarter, gold and copper sales exceeded the guidance of the company and the company generated strong margins.

• Procter & Gamble’s share price appears to be running ahead of business fundamentals.
• P&G has a limited upside over the short to medium term, according to the recent earnings report.
• The company has a free cash flow point of view, but has a limited upside over a short-term term.

• Hesai Group (HSAI US) is looking to raise at least US$100m in its upcoming US IPO.
• HSAI is a manufacturer of three-dimensional light detection and ranging (Lidar) solutions. It has shipped over 103,000 Lidar units from 2017 to the end of 2022.
• In this note, we will undertake a peer comparison with domestic and US-listed peers.

• Boeing had another weak quarter and failed to meet Wall Street expectations with respect to revenues as well as earnings.
• The company managed over $3 billion in free cash flow driven by the progress in its performance and continued demand.
• Boeing has a strong pipeline of development programs, and it has been preparing itself for the next generation of products.

• Pet medical industry is the second largest core industry after pet food industry.Pet hospital,with dual attributes of medical treatment and consumption,represents the direction of consumption upgrading and has huge potential.
• New Ruipeng maintained rapid growth these years, but its business is still in the investment period. The Company is hard to generate high profit/returns due to low gross margin level.
• There’re still technical bottlenecks in China.If New Ruipeng can fill these market gaps in time and provide comprehensive pet medical solutions, its development space and moat will be much higher.

• Digital Publisher BuzzFeed’s stock has seen an epic rally in the past week, with most of the gains driven by the company’s decision to use Artificial Intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to build quizzes and write content.
• Essentially, investors have been cheering about the potential for improved profitability and content that can be written at scale by using these various tools.
• This is a welcome change for the media outlet, which has seen its advertising revenues plummet, its site traffic decline across the board, and its balance sheet crumble.

• Despite a series of macroeconomic challenges, Dropbox had a good last quarter and managed an all-around beat.
• They also continue to return a sizable percentage of their free cash flow to shareholders through share repurchases.
• Although they are experiencing moderate growth in their Sign business, it is important to set Dropbox Sign apart from conventional eSign solutions.

• Jabil’s Q1 performance was impressive and the company delivered an all-around beat which helped propel its stock price.
• The company’s strength resulted in the quarter’s double-digit rise in revenue, core operating income, and core diluted profits per share.
• Baptista Research looks to evaluate the different factors that could influence the company’s price in the near future and attempts to carry out an independent valuation of the company using a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) methodology.

• Kimberly-Clark delivered a mediocre performance in the last quarter of 2022 as it failed to meet the revenue expectations of Wall Street.
• Despite that fact, the company managed to get 1/3rd of profit from the international market in the last quarter.
• The new products created by Kimberly-Clark in the last 3 years have contributed to 60% of the total sales growth in 2022.

• Levi Strauss had a successful fourth quarter with strong fiscal 2022 performance.
• Levi Stauss managed to enhance its brand positioning and market share in the global market.
• 40% of the company’s revenues came from outside of denim bottoms in this quarter.

• MongoDB performed well in the third quarter in both financial and operational terms.
• In addition, ISVs are continuing to develop their solutions using MongoDB in an increasing number of cases.
• MongoDB is looking to achieve profitable growth and focus on acquiring new workloads from both existing and new customers.

• Schlumberger maintained its growth momentum throughout the fourth quarter, producing significant revenue growth and additional sequential and annual margin increase.
• They had sequential revenue growth and margin expansion in North America and internationally.
• On the other hand, exploration data sales, INNOVATION FACTORI, and AI solutions saw a significant increase in the digital sector.

• Textron delivered a decent result in the last quarter with revenues of $3.6 billion which surpassed Wall Street expectations.
• The company faced a strong demand, a strong pricing net of inflation, and a higher aftermarket volume in this quarter.
• It was a quarter of strong customer demand and solid cash flow.

• How many kitchens does Intel have? Intel guided 1Q2023 revenues to $11B, down 40% YoY / 22% QoQ and 21% (!!) below consensus $14B. 
• 1Q23 gross margins ex-accounting change guided to 36%, the lowest since 1986!
• Intel’s worsening FCF means dividend cuts are on the table.

• What is Kyber Network and how does it work?
• The relatively old protocol might not be the most popular option with its meager $15 million TVL, but future updates have the potential to turn Kyber into a liquidity hub for the entire DeFi market.
• There are almost too many decentralized exchanges in DeFi, which contributes to a rising problem of liquidity balkanization.

• Teradyne delivered a solid result in the last quarter as the company surpassed analyst expectations with respect to revenues as well as earnings.
• At the operating level, it cleared some supply bottlenecks that allowed the company to ship more of semiconductor test products than previously planned.
• Automation Group’s quarter revenue, in constant currency, grew.

As of recently, Binance Smart Chain’s elusive PancakeSwap became quite popular among DeFi investors, reaching a level where it competes against traditional DEX options like Uniswap and SushiSwap.

Did PancakeSwap rightfully earn its fame and if so, how?

PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange on Binance Smart Chain, one of Ethereum’s top competitors.

• Rocket Pool is undoubtedly the most popular name in the arena of Ethereum 2.0 staking pools, but how does it work and is it secure enough for beginners?
• Ethereum 2.0 is here, and everyone is now interested in making profits from their existing crypto assets by staking.
• Ethereum 2.0 is here, and everyone is now interested in making profits from their existing crypto assets by staking.

• Five9 delivered an all-around beat in its last result as the company stock has seen a reversal in fortunes over the past few weeks.
• The company gets leverage from its channels, ecosystem of partners, and system integrators, which helped it build its pipeline in its last result.
• Overall, we provide the stock of Five9 with a ‘Hold’ rating and a revision in the target price.

• Even if the Tether FUD is only typical FUD, we still have to search for other healthy alternatives that help investors with hedging against the market.
• For some, algorithmic stablecoins are the best option and one popular project that stands out is Frax Finance.
• Without a shadow of a doubt, stablecoins are the most boring type of cryptocurrencies.

• DocuSign delivered solid quarter results despite the challenging operating environment, surpassing Wall Street expectations in terms of both, the top and bottom lines.
• However, the company stills see healthy results with customers recognizing DocuSign high-ROI applications that are cost-effective, efficient, and easy to use.
• DocuSign is continuing its innovation on the CLM front, solidifying its execution, customer validation, and vision within the CLM space.

• Are NFTs more than just pictures issued on a blockchain?
• There must be surely something more to non-fungible tokens, given that one sold for $69 million last week. Not an avid reader? That’s fine.
• You can also learn about NFTs in video format! Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have, for better or worse, expanded into new territory: mainstream circles.

• After combining the Norton LifeLock and Avast businesses, the company has been renamed as Gen Digital – a corporation with the goal to develop technological solutions that will allow users to profit fully from the online environment while maintaining their privacy and confidence.
• Today, the company’s brand portfolio includes well-known brands, including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner.
• In this report, we have carried out a fundamental analysis of the historical financial statements of the company.

• Tesla reported a 6% Q4 EPS beat, but stripping out a one-off deferred revenue booking & higher than expected regulatory credits, Q4 results missed by 9%.  
• Tesla rose +5.5% post market close after Musk said YTD orders are “2x” output. None of the data we have seen implies such demand, especially weekly China sales. 
• What went unnoticed on the earnings call is that Tesla created a $7bn credit facility this month, which should dash all hopes of them doing a share buyback in 2023. 

• S&P (the company) may be a lot more exposed than S&P (the index) if rates stay higher for longer and bets against the Fed unwind in 2H23.
• While we like the rating agency and financial data provider’s business portfolio, valuation is looking a bit stretched based on fundamental, relative and technical valuation metrics.
• We believe it is unlikely that the stock will push through the USD375/share resistance level in the near term, and would look for entry opportunities closer to USD325/share.

• Exxon Mobil Corporation is engaged in energy business. The Company’s principal business involves the exploration for, and production of, crude oil and natural gas, and the manufacture, trade, transport and sale of crude oil, natural gas, petroleum products, petrochemicals and a range of specialty products.
• The Company’s segments include Upstream, Downstream and Chemical.
• The Upstream segment is organized and operates to explore for and produce crude oil and natural gas.

• The EUR/USD exchange rate has been moving upwards, as seen in Graph 1. There were four secondary movements throughout the considered time period.
• More specifically, the currency pair showed an upward movement from November 30th up to December 2nd.
• From 3rd to 12th of December, the exchange rate fluctuated up and down, ending with a higher price range on December 14th.

• We might get a reasonable amount of flak for this article, as many investors fear a recession, and concurrently are staying away from high-yield bonds.

• However, credit spreads are narrowing, and the equity market is receiving substantial support.

• Thus, we believe the time is right to “risk it” on cyclical, high-yield corporate bonds with favorable interest rate sensitivity.

• The enterprise segment has fueled revenue growth at Ubiquiti (UI) and it should remain the same in the fiscal second quarter
• Ubiquiti has expanded its product offering for enterprise customers where it includes a complete solution down to the EV charging station
• We have made several adjustments to our earnings model. We continue to assume gross margin rising sequentially due to lower costs

• Broadcom delivered a strong result in the last quarter with revenues growing 21% year-on-year, surpassing Wall Street expectations.
• This growth was driven by the company’s strong partnerships and increased R&D investments that enabled accelerated adoption of its new-generation technologies.
• In the quarter, semiconductor solution revenue and infrastructure software revenue grew.

• Juniper’s stock has seen good upward momentum with its results around the corner.
• The company had delivered better-than-expected results in the last quarter with its total revenues as well as earnings exceeding Wall Street expectations.
• The cloud business of Juniper also delivered solid quarterly result with revenue growth.

• GoDaddy delivered a mixed set of results for the last quarter.
• However, it did manage an earnings beat which was largely a result of the robust consumer retention.
• This quarter, GoDaddy launched free SSL on almost all innovative web hosting plans in its major markets.

• Exxon Mobil continues to defy gravity even as markets rolled over in 2022.
• There are better alternatives for those looking for passive income streams, but shareholders should be prepared for more turbulence ahead, according to the author.
• Exxon Mobil’s long-term success is still optimistic on the long- term success of the company.

• SunPower delivered an all-around beat in the last quarter as the value of the company’s storage and solar systems continues to rise with the rise in utility rates.
• Consumer demand in the quarter continues to be quite strong and it added 23,1000 new customers this quarter which displays a persistent level of robust consumer demand for residential solar, particularly SunPower.
• We provide the stock of SunPower with an ‘Outperform’ rating and a revision in the target price.

• Amidst all of the De-SPAC Bankruptcies, liquidity issues, and frauds, it’s been hard for investors to pinpoint strong, established businesses that deliver consistent returns.
• In fact, only a handful of companies in the three years since SPACs became a popular vehicle retained or saw their valuation increase.
• So it’s good to see businesses like jewelry wholesaler Quality Gold to debut through a SPAC deal.

• Paramount had a disappointing set of results in the last quarter as it failed to meet the revenue expectations as well as earnings expectations of Wall Street.
• The company maintained its strength in TV, expanded in cinema, and benefitted from the worldwide surge in streaming during the third quarter.
• Among major updates, Walmart chose Paramount+ when looking to add a streaming service to its Walmart+ package.