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Our Order Pad | Playside Limited (PLY:ASX) & Microsoft (MSFT:NAS)

HOSTS Alec Renehan & Bryce Leske|15 July, 2022

In this episode, Felicity and Candice compare notes on their Order Pads. Felicity talks about her choice – Playside Limited – a Melbourne based company that develops both its own games and partners with movie studios like Walt Disney, Pixar and Universal Studios to develop branded gaming content. Felicity walks us through its track record, and recent milestones. Then Candice chooses another company known to many of us – Microsoft. They’ve expanded over the years into productivity software, server software, internet services, video games, and PC hardware and accessories. 

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Felicity Thomas and Candice Bourke are Senior Advisers at Shaw and Partners, and you can find out more here

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Candice: [00:00:11] Welcome to talk money to me. This is your financial need to know podcasts. I'm your co-host, Candice Bourke. 

Felicity: [00:00:17] And I'm Felicity Thomas, and we're really excited to bring you once again one of our favourite episodes, our order pad. Now, I know we haven't done this in a while, so we'll give you a bit of a recap. In these episodes, Candace and I discuss listed companies which have caught our eye. Maybe they're companies displaying impressive growth numbers that we simply can't ignore. Perhaps the business recently reported solid financial figures. Are they in an interesting sector with a lot of potential, or has the market oversold these shares? Leading us to the conclusion that now is an ideal time to buy these businesses or buy more? 

Candice: [00:00:51] Well, one thing's for sure right now, Felicity, the market has been sold off quite a lot lately. In fact, you know, there's a couple of stocks that we're going to be pitching today, which we think are good buying opportunities. But there's a lot out there because of the market's rerating. So the NASDAQ index is actually the outcome of nearly 30%. So beginning of the year 2022, it's actually off 28% and the Small Ords index similarly off 24% year to date. But amidst the sell off to businesses which have caught our eye both actually falling in these indexes and we're going to talk about why they're a buy and explain why we like the business models. But as always in our episodes, in particularly our own iPad episodes, as we're talking about stocks and financials and the outlook, please note that our chat is not considered personal advice, even though we are registered financial advisors actuary partners. Please note this podcast and the content discussed does not constitute as financial advice, nor is it a financial product. In fact, the content discussed on the podcast is genuine nature and you should always go out there and seek professional, appropriate advice before making your decisions. 

Felicity: [00:01:55] In fact, all companies discussed on our show are offered in good faith based on the facts known at the time. So today is the 12th of the seventh 2022 and does not contain all relevant information in respect of the financial product to which they relate. 

Candice: [00:02:09] Yeah, so long, long, long legal disclaimer just don't take this as personal advice. We're having a general educational chat about stocks. We're looking at the moment. 

Felicity: [00:02:17] That's it

Candice: [00:02:17] And we want to add it to the order iPad. So here we go. Felicity, kick us off. What company are you bringing into the iPad this week? 

Felicity: [00:02:24] So my stock isn't actually covered by shore and partners. However, analysts in a recent morning meeting pitched their top ideas for FY 23, and I was pleasantly surprised when one analyst said Play side. I was actually kind of jumping out of my seat in a conservative way. 

Candice: [00:02:40] In the boardroom. 

Felicity: [00:02:42] Now the code is p l y on the ASX and when it listed it was a profitable Melbourne based game developer. 

Candice: [00:02:49] Hang on, profitable. So not speculative?

Felicity: [00:02:51] No, it wasn't speculative. It was profitable then and it still has great revenue growth. 

Candice: [00:02:57] Okay, so place I'd kind of gives away the name, but tell us exactly kind of what the business does in a nutshell. 

Felicity: [00:03:03] Play side is in esports and gaming. It develops both its own games and partners with movie studios like Walt Disney, Pixar and Universal Studios to develop a branded gaming content. Now, this is a company that our clients and myself have actually been invested in for a while because in my opinion, it's an absolute no brainer.

Candice: [00:03:24] That's your word. I know you're stealing my words. All right. I know you're happy to see play side. So am I. So run us through it. Why is it a no brainer, do you think? 

Felicity: [00:03:32] All right, so I'll tell you a little bit about the company first, and then I'll give you my key points as to why it's a by so side actually listed on the ASX on the 17th of December 2020 at $0.20. Now we started buying for our clients early 2021 around the 33 to $0.45 level and it's actually reached peaks of a dollar 42 and also a 52 week low of $0.28. So that's in quite some big swings there. Now the market cap is currently 88 million. Now, if you're already a shareholder, you might be a little bit concerned as the share price has dropped over 40% in the last quarter. So it's a little bit of a setback, but I'll tell you why you shouldn't really be worried. 

Candice: [00:04:12] Yeah, I mean, that's not a nice pullback, right? But as we started the episode, a lot of the indexes are off quite a bit. So. But we see this a lot in the microcap space, right? 

Felicity: [00:04:22] Yeah, exactly. Now, this company has a really proven track record. It was actually established in 2011 and is one of Australia's largest independent video game developers. They've actually got over 70 game creators and staff that work at play. They've got office in Queensland actually, and they've got a portfolio of over 50 games across mobile virtual reality, augmented reality and PC platforms. 

Candice: [00:04:46] I can imagine it'd be a really fun office place to work for, right? 

Felicity: [00:04:49] I know. I think so. We need to go visit. Maybe after this podcast they might invite us.

Candice: [00:04:55] Let's hope so.

Felicity: [00:04:55] Now they have a really interesting work for hire model. 

Candice: [00:04:58] Okay, so what are the. Recent milestones that you want to highlight.

Felicity: [00:05:02] They acquired the intellectual property rights of the Banes Domains to Die franchise at the end of 2021, which actually drew a lot of attention to this company as it launched its own NFT. Two passionate gamers and followers. Why is this important? As the launch of the Banes NFT effectively enabled play to crowdfund its game development, they actually made 8.4 million on this collection. In February of this year. 

Candice: [00:05:29] On that game alone.

Felicity: [00:05:30] On the NFT. Yeah. Now they're currently working on the Bane MMO, which has been land as well as being Pets and 3D and a 3D wallet which started in January.

Candice: [00:05:40] I love this name. 

Felicity: [00:05:42] I know, I know so well. It is really quite interesting. If you had a bane. You can get a Bane pet that will actually accompany their beans in England and follow them around for all of the excitement. Gosh, actually saying that out loud really makes me laugh.

Candice: [00:05:57] Is it targeted for kids? Do we know? 

Felicity: [00:05:59] No, it's not. So you'll get your bane in England. And have you been, pet? I don't think I've seen I don't think I've said Bane so many times in my life. And also another really exciting thing is they've got exclusive licence to develop and publish The Godfather and Legally Blonde Game. This is very exciting for me because I actually The Godfather is one of my favourite favourite movies. Now, Legally Blonde entered the soft launch phase already with a hard launch at the end of Q4 this year. And The Godfather will do a soft launch Q4 this year with a hard launch Q1 of 2023. 

Candice: [00:06:35] I can just imagine what these games are going to entail. Right. 

Felicity: [00:06:37] I know you should actually see the imagery for it looks really, really realistic and really cool. So, I mean, I might actually have a little play. 

Candice: [00:06:46] Well, games have come such a long way. They look like a marvel movie now, like an actual blockbuster, right. Compared to. Did you ever play that game on your first phone where it was like the snake going around biting? 

Felicity: [00:06:57] Oh, the Nokia. Yeah, of course. Yeah, 100%. That's all you could really do with your Nokia. 

Candice: [00:07:01] Okay, so gaming, right? What about the metaverse and playing into, you know, other social media platforms?

Felicity: [00:07:08] Yeah. So look, there work for hire deals and they've actually got quite a lot of exciting ones going on. They've actually successfully extended and significantly expanded its work for higher deal with meta platforms, which is the old Facebook. In the initial work for hire agreement with Meta actually involved the conceptualisation, creation and development of prototype explorations and game services on Mirror's Horizon Worlds platform. And the new agreement actually extends that for another six months. So that's really, really exciting for play side. Play side is provided with a separate six month contract to also provide a new virtual reality initiative for Midgar to be delivered in October of this year. So it seems like it really likes play side. Now the second work for Hire Deal, which is also very exciting and very relevant to this conversation, is a ten month work for hire contract with Activision Blizzard. 

Candice: [00:07:59] Yes, that's that is a funny coincidence because the stock that I'm going to go through is actually going to be all about this announcement. So stay tuned. 

Felicity: [00:08:07] So a little bit about Activision Blizzard, if you haven't already heard of it, it's actually one of the largest game development and interactive entertainment content publishers globally and has been taken over by surprise, surprise Microsoft. Now, the deal is strategically significant for play side in that it adds to the competitive tensions for its work for higher resource given recent deals with Take-Two Interactive and obviously Mira as well as being further testament to the company's capabilities. Right. If all of these big businesses are working with play side, that brings a lot of credibility. Now, Activision Blizzard is a major player in the gaming space. Their portfolio consists of names that you would have heard of, right? First person shooters, Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft. That's one that definitely everyone's heard of, as well as titles like Candy Crush. 

Candice: [00:08:57] I confess I used to play it. 

Felicity: [00:08:59] Yeah, I think. I think it was you that was playing. 

Candice: [00:09:01] Yeah, I was really good at it. At one stage, you. 

Felicity: [00:09:03] Know, place I would perform a co-development role. So production, engineering, UI development. Now they've also got other work for hire deals in the mix, which is with two K games. You would have heard of Shiba Inu and Wax. 

Candice: [00:09:16] It's funny that we've both gone down the gaming route because I guess in the last week doing a bit of research on on this sector. So in the last I guess couple of months, so in the US in particular, Call of Duty was actually the six most downloaded game in the month of May. And what surprised me was number one was Lego Star. So Lego's sorry was number one was Lego the Star Wars, the new Skywalker saga? 

Felicity: [00:09:41] That's interesting. The Star Wars saga. 

Candice: [00:09:42] It's an but code has still been one of the most successful games out there, which is really impressive. 

Felicity: [00:09:48] Look, all of this is well and good, right? But you kind of want to look at the financials in this current market. So I think what's really important is place on has extremely fast revenue growth growing by 70% over. The last 12 months. Now the latest Q3 FY 22 financials reported record 403% increase in quarterly revenue to 13.76 million. They also generated a record 14.77 million cash from customers during the quarter and a strong increase of 642% on PCP, a 167% Q-on-Q. Now what's also really important in this current climate is a strong cash position, so they are very strong on the balance sheet, 40.13 million as of the 31st of March 22. Now their unaudited commercial revenue for the nine months through to March 22 actually grew rapidly as well to 23.16 compared to 7.76 mill in the nine months through to March 2021. Wow. So that is 199% increase. Now Candace, are you ready for this zero debt? 

Candice: [00:10:55] I love it. 

Felicity: [00:10:56] Zero debt. 

Candice: [00:10:56] It's funny, like I know this business and I know it well for our clients in the portfolio. But just listening to those numbers again and how impressive their high growth margin is, it's exciting. 

Felicity: [00:11:06] That's it. And look, their cash burn. Like if we want to look at negatives, the cash burn has also really increased significantly. But again, we're not really concerned due to this extremely high revenue growth. Now, place, I'd really has a cash runway of about 3 to 4 years, but a lot of analysts believe it will actually reach cash flow breakeven well before then. So I think with all of that being said, the work for hire continues. It's very strong contribution to revenue and profitability, a lot of credibility. And although we don't cover it at Shaw and Partners, other analysts do with the buy now the bullish price target is a dollar 30. Consensus is around $0.90. The current price is around $0.60, so upside from current prices at about 116%, which is huge. 

Candice: [00:11:50] Yeah, well, love a good triple digit upside. But as we said in the context of this episode, look, everything is is off quite a bit in your high, high growth names are as well. But great to see that, you know, the valuations are stacking up in in this type of market so upside 116. Let's go. 

Felicity: [00:12:06] That's it. Now that's enough for me. So we're actually going to hear Candice's top pick from one of our analyst series. But before we do, we're just going to take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. Okay. Candace, what is your stock pick for the iPad?

Candice: [00:12:21] All right. So kind of we have audio alluded to it, but I'm going to go with a giant software name on the Nasdaq, and that's Microsoft. MSF is the code for those of us not familiar with it, but I'm pretty sure we nearly. All right. We should be market cap of 1.9 trillion and it's currently trading around $264 US per share. Now I'm sure we're all familiar with the company, but just turning back the clock, the very famous Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft back in 1975 at the dawn of the personal computer era. And it really kind of kickstarted the PC operating system and software sector that we know today. So the company's Windows operating system came to dominate the PC landscape. It's expanded over the many years into different services and productivity, mainly known today for productivity, software, service software, the cloud, Internet service providers, gaming. We're going to talk about lots of gaming and obviously PC hardware and accessories. 

Felicity: [00:13:20] You know, I think it's very safe to say that nearly everyone at some point in their lifetime has used Microsoft product. To be honest, even when I had a mac computer, I still had Microsoft downloaded on it. 

Candice: [00:13:32] That's right. You got to you've got to pay for the windows and all the other tools that we use. 

Felicity: [00:13:35] We need it. All right. So, Candace, can you let us know why are you really liking Microsoft right now for the old iPad? 

Candice: [00:13:42] Look, they are the language for business, right? Nearly every business, enterprise, government, whatever it is, they're using Microsoft in some form. And when Bill Gates did step away from the business, you know, there was a lot of concern. He was the lifeblood of the company. But all those negative dances have really been proven wrong because the current CEO, Satya Nadella, took the reins back in 2014 and has done an astounding job at leading Microsoft into the cloud computing era. So to answer your question, there is a lot that I like about the business model, but I want to narrow it down just for this episode to three key reasons. Number one, cloud software. Number two, gaming. And number three, cyber security.

Felicity: [00:14:24] Okay, great. So we've got three points that we're going to get through. So talk us through cloud software. 

Candice: [00:14:29] The company cloud offering today really comprises of as your infrastructure services. Office 365 which is what we were just referring to and dynamics enterprise software also fun fact Microsoft owns LinkedIn, Skype and Grid Hub. So if you're thinking about thematic investing, right, which a lot of people do, cloud computing has been one of the strongest growing segments of the tech sector and given much of the world's digital data and software applications, you know, and it's all basically seeing upside continue its growth in its forecast. So still growing massive sector.

Felicity: [00:15:03] Okay. So how much are businesses really spending on cloud software services? 

Candice: [00:15:07] It's estimated that businesses are spending about 494.7 billion so far in 2022, which is a growth year on year of about 20%. 

Felicity: [00:15:17] Yeah, look, that's no question in my mind that software is a great theme to be invested for for future growth. So where does Microsoft sit in the competitive landscape of the cloud? 

Candice: [00:15:27] Yeah, very good question. So Microsoft is gaining on Amazon Web server, which is obviously the number one player in this space. In the first quarter, Amazon service providers was actually owning 33% of the market share or dominating, I should say. And Microsoft was coming in second place at 21% market share. 

Felicity: [00:15:44] And what about any other competitors in this space that we need to be worried about? 

Candice: [00:15:48] Can't ignore Google's alphabet. They have the Google Cloud product. And also in China, you've got Alibaba and Tencent. So Microsoft is obviously very dependent for their cloud business for the Asia and Office 365 to support the overall growth rate. 

Felicity: [00:16:03] Okay. And so you talk about the growth rate. How are these products holding up currently? 

Candice: [00:16:07] So the user growth rate is not down to nothing. So that's good. That's what analysts are telling us at the moment. Very good. Yeah. I'm going to add a little caveat, though. We are very close to the next earnings season. So this all could change in two weeks time, right? 

Felicity: [00:16:21] Yeah, hence a disclaimer.

Candice: [00:16:22] Hence the disclaimer at the top. But what the opinion on the street the moment is the company continues to call out strength, you know, broad based strength in the growth of their backlog or volume commitments in the continued migration of Taiwan workloads from on premise data into the cloud. Right. So going from traditional into the cloud. So that being said, however, with the climate that we're in, investors are quite rightly questioning the durability of the growth going forward, mainly because you've got ding, ding, ding more competitors in this space as always. So, you know, weakness flagged by cloud proxies such as Snowflake and MongoDB that's also employed usage or consumption based models. 

Felicity: [00:17:06] You know, think about it. Microsoft is such a giant. I mean, these companies could easily just be bought out, right? 

Candice: [00:17:11] Correct. It really comes down to, you know, Amazon and Microsoft, in my opinion. And. Obviously third place Google. 

Felicity: [00:17:19] That's it. And look, we really like Snowflake as a business, so that would be a nice little takeover. 

Candice: [00:17:24] Well, that's true. The other point and the other kind of elephant in the room is, are these software businesses going to come off a material deceleration in revenue growth because of the COVID crisis that we've had? You know, we're all we're all going working from home more. So is this going to slow down? So I don't. 

Felicity: [00:17:42] Know. I've not noticed that. I mean, people are still really working from home a lot. 

Candice: [00:17:46] That's true. And I think in particular the US like trying to come up with this like three two arrangement. Yeah, which is nice. So businesses are really kind of incentivising you to come back to the workplace. I know in Australia that's that's definitely happening here and a lot of our listeners are Australian based, so we shall see what happens. 

Felicity: [00:18:03] So you also mentioned point two, right? You're really keen on Microsoft giving given their gaming exposure. Now there's no doubt that gaming is an attractive, lucrative sector. So could you elaborate a little bit further on why gaming for Microsoft? 

Candice: [00:18:16] Yeah, that's right. In fact, the global gaming market generated 180.3 billion hundred and 80 billion back in 2021. Thanks. COVID, according to lots of research houses, which they're also predicting the gaming revenue will soar even more to 218.8 billion by 2024. Lots of people at home playing cod. So at the moment, it's estimated that around the world, 2.96 billion people are playing a form of a digital game, whether it's on the console, computer, mobile device. And that number is also going to increase to about 3.9 billion in 2020 to about a third of the planet's population is obsessed with the game at right now, as we're speaking. 

Felicity: [00:19:01] That is a lot of billions. Now we think of gaming. We think of Sony, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, but not necessarily Microsoft. 

Candice: [00:19:10] Yeah, but I think that's going to change. Right. So a lot of listeners may not know that Microsoft actually first ventured into the video gaming world back in 2001 with the release of the Xbox console, and it's now in its fourth generation enjoying 14% jump in sales in the previous third quarter. Today the Microsoft Gaming Division, headed up by CEO Phil Spencer, now comprises of 23 different game design and software studios and hundreds and hundreds of games. So they're they're subscription based model business is proving to be a winner. There's more than 25 million customers worldwide with nearly 10 million having streamed games on the Xbox Cloud Gaming Service. You're either a PlayStation household or an Xbox household. Right. And as you mentioned earlier this year, in June 2022, Microsoft announced their plan to buy activation blizzard for a whopping 68.7 billion. And you were talking about it. So they're well known for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, which we discussed. 

Felicity: [00:20:13] How obsessed you were with Candy Crush. 

Candice: [00:20:15] Yes. 

Felicity: [00:20:16] But now. 

Candice: [00:20:17] I graduated. 

Felicity: [00:20:18] And now you don't have that much time on your hands, so you can't play it as much. Then Microsoft CEO framed it as the largest acquisition ever as a boost to the company's growing metaverse strategy would be interesting. I reckon Microsoft might come off the place. 

Candice: [00:20:33] I'd yeah. 

Felicity: [00:20:35] You never know. 

Candice: [00:20:36] Nothing is out of it's you know, potential opportunity for that I reckon so yeah. You're right. It was a bit of a shock. It was sort of seen out of left field. But you can kind of see where Microsoft's going with this, right. If we look at one particular proportion of our population, Gen Z, right. So they spend on average twice as much time hanging out with friends in the metaverse than they do in real life. They've also said that more than half of them would like to experience making money in the metaverse 33% of in fact would like to build a career in the metaverse and 20% of, you know, the gens in population are consuming all the entertainment and such like in the metaverse and making actual purchases predicted for the next five years. 

Felicity: [00:21:22] It's crazy to think you can live your whole life online in the metaverse, buying assets, making money, building a career. Does that mean the same economic risk the global economy is facing will also factor into the gaming industry? Or can we just escape to the metaverse? 

Candice: [00:21:38] Yeah, we can all just escape to the benefits. Yeah. No, it's a really interesting fact. And maybe in like 100 years time, we're going to have new economic theory about that. Right? But for now, let's just let's look at what we know. Okay. So in terms of recession risk, which was everyone's factoring in, Microsoft has factored in for FY 24 that they argue, you know, in one of the recent announcements, in fact, that the gaming industry is actually usually more resilient as consumers rotate into gaming because it provides low cost, high value entertainment. So you can sit at home for low entry cost to be completely stymied. Related in terms of entertainment, video gaming and if teased metaverse the whole thing. So as the company pointed out, however, the difference is the impact of inflation. So will consumers. You know, kind of answering the question that we just started on. Will consumers rotate into the gaming sector more as gas and other commodities are rising? We shall say. 

Felicity: [00:22:38] So. They don't want to leave the house because petrol's too expensive, so they'll just drive in the metaverse. It might be a little bit cheaper. 

Candice: [00:22:45] Exactly. Wonder how much gas is in the metaverse. 

Felicity: [00:22:49] Well, I guess you could just choose and you could have a really cheap petrol station. Maybe that's an idea for us listeners. Don't steal that idea. 

Candice: [00:22:58] But coming back to, I guess the risks. Right, and the opportunities, you know, gaming margins, they are under pressure because of the one rising cost, which is your gamer development salaries. They're obviously going up there. We're hearing a lot about that in the market. But this is kind of also offset from a business opportunity for the tailwind in the subscription fees so they can be rising. Right. They have pricing power as a business. Right. So all of these millions consumers will just probably pay the extra $1 a month or whatever it is. So long term, you know, I don't see this as a major risk. And for the gaming sector, it's still going to grow in double digits is what they're forecasting. In fact, long term growth of about 10% is what Microsoft is forecasting. 

Felicity: [00:23:43] Look, we love double digits. All right. So we've got a third point of why Microsoft of the order pad cyber. 

Candice: [00:23:50] Yes, correct. So just briefly, the reason the third reason why I like Microsoft at the moment is their cybersecurity. So Microsoft cybersecurity portfolio, last estimated, is to be worth about 15 billion and growing 40%. And the company claiming that the sadly, the number of cyber attacks is at material year to date. Very for example, Microsoft is now saying 900 plus passwords related attacks per second, which is up from 580 last year.

Felicity: [00:24:19] And I think that's why we also have cyber security is such a big thematic for the next ten, 20 years because with more and more connected devices, there's more and more opportunities for cyber attacks. Yep. 

Candice: [00:24:30] And the business, which I would argue is Microsoft, that can effectively go into non platforms and cross-pollinate for cybersecurity purposes is going to win. Right. So Microsoft has reaffirmed that 785,000 security customers have experienced 50% year on year growth. Tick, tick, tick. And in terms of their products suite, Microsoft has now broadened out to just be beyond the core identity model, but it's now looking at multi platforms, multi-cloud affect to enable for an instance more Microsoft security products to be digested and integrate into infrastructure that's non Microsoft data. 

Felicity: [00:25:08] So essentially they're becoming more multi-platform, user friendly to really help tackle the cybersecurity issue that we're facing. 

Candice: [00:25:15] Yep. Yep. So really smart shift here. And you know me, I can't ignore the business metrics. Whenever I talk about a large cap like Microsoft, you know, the fundamentals are signalling a solid buy. So let's just take a quick look under the hood. So EPS of 7.97 was actually reported in June 2021 and nicely, surprisingly love it. It's growing to 9.28 EPS for estimates of June 2022. It's great revenue growth for their cloud software provider as you're expected to increase by 46% on year to date. Figures sales consensus also impressive, increasing from 160 mil last June. 298 costs, as we alluded to, is going up but not too dramatically and expecting to return shareholders with all this uplift in sales, you know, to a payout ratio of about 1% dividend yield, which is not amazing when you think about the Australian context, but it is for a large cap US company and it's currently paying about 0.8 per cent return on assets, 18% return on equity 37%, even our margins expanding lots of free cash flow, not a lot of debt to worry about of less than 20%. So all these estimates of the company and the fundamentals right now, it's probably going to hopefully be surprise in a couple of days time because they're expecting to release their latest numbers on the 26th of July. So let's see what those numbers entail. 

Felicity: [00:26:43] Looking at these kind of companies, it's a long term game, so there's going to be short term noise with everything that's going on. But this is, you know, a really solid business to have in your portfolio for the next ten, 20 years. All right. So that's really exciting. What about the upside and valuation? Can we expect the price targets to change potentially when they have additional announcements later this month? But what are we kind of looking at now? 

Candice: [00:27:05] Yeah, definitely. Like whenever there's announcements, obviously analysts around the globe are lifting their valuations or decreasing it or whatever it is, where either surprised or not, the street at the moment has a can. Census long term growth rate of 15.8% for Microsoft. So you know, to answer your question, Felicity, like you said, Microsoft is still on a consensus basis, is expected to grow 15%, which is fantastic. UBS, who we use for our US large cap research, has a price target of 330 consensus a little bit higher, 349.05 being about 30% upside from current price levels. So just to add one final point if I can, that's quite interesting. Microsoft has a really good track record of actually beating expectations and surprising the markets, and that reaction leads to a share price jump typically post reporting. So for example, last time we heard Microsoft update their numbers, the average beat EPS was about 1.4%, which if you look back on the next day reporting the share price jumped 4.8% shortly after. So fingers crossed. We're going to be nicely surprised this time around. 

Felicity: [00:28:14] Fingers crossed. So that's a wrap on our order pad episode. We really hope you enjoyed listening to us go on about the world of gaming software, cloud computing, cyber security and e-sports. We'll be adding play side and Microsoft to our order pad portfolio and will monitor their progress. You know, it's a good reminder that soon a one year anniversary is actually coming up in September. We plan to go through each position in the order pad and discuss whether we are keeping it, selling it or topping it up. And look, it's been a pretty difficult year for us, right? We started it at the peak of the market and we'll probably be going through it at the bottom. 

Candice: [00:28:49] Stick with us to hear how we dive deep into our one year anniversary of the order pad stocks. Please remember, although Fallacy nine, our financial advisors at Shaw and Partners all have had episode. You know, we obviously talk about a lot of investments and financial jargon and numbers, so please note our discussion today does not constitute as personal financial advice. As always, go out there and seek professional advice before you make your investment decisions. We created the order pad portfolio really for a bit of fun and hopefully you're learning something along the way about these companies that we're reporting on and also your style of investing, you know, and what you like and don't like. 

Felicity: [00:29:25] That's it. Now feel free to reach out to us on our social media channels or send us an email which is displayed in the show notes below. Make sure you follow us on at Talk Money to Me podcast for daily market updates, which I think is even more important at this time. We would also appreciate a five star review. Until next time. 

Candice: [00:29:43] Stay safe and look after your pets. Bye guys.

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Meet your hosts

  • Alec Renehan

    Alec Renehan

    Alec developed an interest in investing after realising he was spending all that he was earning. Investing became his form of 'forced saving'. While his first investment, Slater and Gordon (SGH), was a resounding failure, he learnt a lot from that experience. He hopes to share those lessons amongst others through the podcast and help people realise that if he can make money investing, anyone can.
  • Bryce Leske

    Bryce Leske

    Bryce has had an interest in the stock market since his parents encouraged him to save 50c a fortnight from the age of 5. Once he had saved $500 he bought his first stock - BKI - a Listed Investment Company (LIC), and since then hasn't stopped. He hopes that Equity Mates can help make investing understandable and accessible. He loves the Essendon Football Club, and lives in Sydney.

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