This quarterly presentation from Octahedron Capital is becoming a staple inclusion in Thought Starters. Every quarter Octahedron listen to all of the public company earnings calls and summarise what they learned for the sectors they’re investing in (digital advertising, gaming & content, payments & Fintech, eCommerce and software).
Before getting to the sectors they’re investing in, Octahedron summarise the macro commentary from a number of listed American companies. We can sum it up in two words: rising costs. As a result of these rising costs, as well as falling revenue and a slump in stock prices, many of these Q1 earnings calls were opportunities for companies to highlight their cost cutting programs. Octahedron has pulled out quotes from Meta and Alphabet as examples of this.
One interesting trend that Octahedron notes is the rise of advertising on eCommerce platforms. This has been a story playing out at Amazon for the past few years, but this quarter Mercado Libre, Uber and Delivery Hero all called it out in their earnings calls. So if you feel like you’re getting more push notification ads from Uber and more sponsored results on UberEATS, you are.
Octahedron’s quote of the quarter went to Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella who reminded those listening that they made Google “dance” by rushing out Google Bard.
If you are investing in individual companies or are just interested in where technology is going, this deck is full of insights. We find we always pick up a few great nuggets, so chances are you’ll be seeing it again when Octahedron produce it for Q2 in a few months.
This is an excerpt from our Thought Starters email. Once a week we send you 5 interesting articles that have caught our attention, to get you thinking. No spam, we guarantee.