Long trade : OKTA +18% (8/17)

Barron's : PayPal shares could rise 40%

PayPal shares could rise 40% as digital wallets proliferate, the Aug. 31 edition of Barron's declared, stating the company has loads of opportunities and cash to grow. Although the former eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) unit's shares have dropped since its recent spin-off, the "promise of PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL) hasn't wavered." The firm is now clear to do deals with big vendors like Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) and move into back office operations and other services.

• Is PYPL a buy?

• 3 weeks later: NO

Tantech Holdings (TANH) : 2-month performance

**  update 3 months later : 15 Aug 2015  **
+100% gain

Etsy (ETSY) began trading on the NASDAQ on 16 April 2015

daily

daily, heikin ashi

Description

Etsy, Inc. operates a marketplace where people connect, both online and offline, to make, sell and buy goods. The Company operates at the center of macroeconomic trends in online and mobile commerce, employment, consumption and manufacturing. Its sellers offer goods in online retail categories, including jewelry, stationery, clothing, home goods, craft supplies and vintage items. The Company supports a range of artists, makers, designers and collectors. The Company's community is made up of entrepreneurs who sell on its platform, consumers looking to buy goods in its marketplace, manufacturers who help its sellers grow their businesses and its employees who maintain its platform. The Company offers a range of services for its sellers, which include promoted listings, direct checkout and shipping labels. It also provides a range of tools for its buyers, including communication, search and discovery and mobile.

Address

55 Washington St Ste 512
BROOKLYN, NY 11201-1060
United States

Website 

http://www.etsy.com/

Key stats and ratios

	Q4 (Dec '14)	2014
Net profit margin	-10.23%	-7.79%
Operating margin	-2.20%	-3.20%
EBITD margin	-	5.61%
Return on average assets	-10.94%	-8.58%
Return on average equity	-39.11%	-42.88%
Employees	685

KLX Inc (KLXI) began trading on the NASDAQ on 3 December 2014

• KLX Inc (KLXI) to be acquired by Boeing (BA) for $4.25 billion. (May 1, 2018)

Description

KLX Inc. is the distributor and service provider of aerospace fasteners and consumables. The Company offers ranges of aerospace hardware and consumables, and inventory management services across the world. The Company operates in two segments: Aerospace Solutions Group (ASG) segment and Energy Services Group (ESG) segment. Its customers include oil and gas companies that are engaged in the exploration, and production and development of oil and gas properties. The Company through its network and information technology systems offer services to commercial airliners, business jet and defense original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) and its subcontractors, airlines, and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operators. The Company provides access to over one million stock keeping unit (SKUs). Its systems support both internal distribution processes, along with customer services, including just-in-time deliveries and kitting solutions.

Address

1300 Corporate Center Way Ste 200
WELLINGTON, FL 33414-8594
United States 

Website 

www.klx.com

Key stats and ratios

	Q3 (Sep '14)	2013
Net profit margin	6.91%	11.64%
Operating margin	16.55%	18.47%
EBITD margin	-	20.62%
Return on average assets	3.29%	5.09%
Return on average equity	3.70%	5.54%
Employees	3,300

WageWorks (WAGE) is working on a new base

WageWorks (NYSE:WAGE), which manages employee benefits programs, is working on a new base amid accelerating sales and profit growth.

The stock has risen more than sixfold from its May 2012 debut at 9 a share. It's now working on a less risky first-stage base after resetting its base count amid a sharp correction in the first half of last year.

San Mateo, Calif.-based WageWorks is benefiting from a growing shift to flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts, which give employees a tax break for contributions. The accounts are portable, which means they can be taken from one employer to another.

WageWorks' best-possible 99 Composite Rating puts it among the leaders of the 24-stock Commercial Services-Outsourcing industry group, which was ranked No. 11 out of 197 as of Monday's IBD. Trinet Group (NYSE:TNET), which provides human resources services, is another industry leader.

Profit has picked up for two straight quarters, from a 20% increase in the second quarter of last year to subsequent gains of 33% and 35%. Sales growth has also accelerated over that span, rising 8%, 27% and 43%.

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Revenue for the period was driven by increases in health care administration fees and commuter benefits plans, which give tax incentives to employees who use public transportation or other environmentally friendly ways of getting to work.

Fund ownership of the stock has slipped in recent quarters, from 335 in the first quarter of 2014 to 324 as of Q4. However, the A+-rated T Rowe Price New Horizons Fund boosted its stake in the latest quarter.
The stock is shaping a base-on-base pattern after a failed breakout over a 62.34 buy point of a cup-with-handle base.


It's pulled back to its 10-week moving average in light volume, which is a good sign. However, its relative strength line is fading, indicating that the stock is underperforming the S&P 500.

For this year, analysts expect WageWorks to post a 22% gain in profit to $1.16 a share, followed by another 22% increase in 2016.

Annual pretax margin has picked up for three straight years, to a robust 21.2% last year.

RetailMeNot (SALE) : 1-year performance

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Twitter (TWTR) : 1-year performance

** weekly chart **

3 weeks later, daily chart:

*****

Twitter's first year performance (Nov 2013 - Nov 2014):

Nov. 19, 2014 -- Twitter Inc. needs a much bigger increase in revenue than the microblogging service expects to justify its share price, according to Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University.

The above compares Twitter’s stock price since going public in November 2013 with his estimate of the company’s value, $20.81 a share. Damodaran, the author of four books on business valuation, cited the figure in a posting on his blog.

Shares of Twitter have never traded for less than their initial price of $26 apiece. 

“Twitter has its work cut out for it,” Damodaran wrote in the posting. “It has to either find ways to grow much faster than it is projecting or it has to work at bringing investor expectations down.”

The estimate was based on a projected $14 billion in revenue and a 25 percent operating margin, or earnings after production costs as a percentage of sales, in 10 years. Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto gave the revenue forecast in an investor presentation. The company had $1.17 billion

of sales for the 12 months ended in September 2014.

For Twitter’s valuation to exceed $40, revenue would have to be almost twice Noto’s projection, based on an analysis of data from the posting. A lower operating margin would require even more sales growth, and vice versa.

Cheetah Mobile (CMCM) : 7-month performance

4 days later

Vitae Pharmaceuticals (VTAE) began trading on the NASDAQ on 24 September 2014

Description

Vitae Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company. The Company is focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs for diseases. The Company’s product candidates include VTP-34072, VTP-37948, VTP-4374, VTP-38443 and VTP-38543. VTP-34072 is being developed for type II diabetes. VTP-34072 is designed to inhibit 11b hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type II, or 11b HSD1, the enzyme responsible for production of cortisol in tissues where active glucose metabolism takes place, including the liver and adipose, or fat, tissue. VTP-37948 is being developed for treatment of Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is characterized by the accumulation of extracellular protein deposits in the brain that are called amyloid plaques.

Address

502 W Office Center Dr
FORT WASHINGTON, PA 19034-3215
United States

Website 

http://vitaepharma.com

Key stats and ratios

	Q3 (Sep '14)	2013
Net profit margin	-29.29%	5.16%
Operating margin	-27.80%	9.73%
EBITD margin	-	10.64%
Return on average assets	-16.05%	3.35%
Return on average equity	-	-
Employees	49

Long candidate : Habit Restaurants (HABT)

Freshpet (FRPT) : 1-month performance

3 days later +20%

RetailMeNot (SALE) : looks like a buy

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update 12/14: SALE went up for another 10 days after we bought it

Buying GoPro (GPRO)

Strike	Price	Change	Bid	Ask	Volume	Open Int

40.00

0.90

+0.33

0.80

1.00

377

371

=== great trade : 6 weeks later :  +125%  ====

Update 11/7/15:

GPRO went up for a couple more days and reached a high of $98 on 10/6/14.

In the following year, it lost 75%.

Splunk (SPLK) looks like a buy

Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets, initiated coverage of the stock with a Buy rating and a $38.25 price target.

Splunk, in White’s view, is “an emerging software platform vendor focused on turning machine data into real-time operational intelligence,” which he thinks is “an exciting play on the trend toward Big Data.”

That “operational intelligence market” may be worth $32 billion this year, writes White, citing market data from research firm IDC.

** weekly chart Dec 2012 **

below: update 1 year later, Dec 2013

The nine-year-old company may be “the next big thing in IT,” writes White, according to his chats with some customers and resellers of its software:

Described by some as the “Google” for log files, we believe Splunk has the opportunity to leverage its proprietary machine data engine technology to be a disruptive force in the IT world, competing with a host of existing solutions across areas such as business intelligence, relational data base, security and other technologies […] Splunk was founded in 2003 by Michael Baum, Rob Das and Erik Swan. The name Splunk was derived from “spelunking” or exploring caves and analogous to searching through machine data with Splunk’s software […] Essentially, Splunk’s proprietary machine data engine technology is at the core of the platform, taking the machine data and turning it into real-time, operational insights that range from customer buying patterns, potential security risks, website service levels, worker productivity, network utilization and a whole host of other instances. Splunk can better support unstructured data (IDC estimates that ~90% of data is unstructured) better than traditional relational database, enterprise applications, IT management software and security software that are focused on supporting pre-defined data structures. In our view, the biggest competitive threat to Splunk will come in the form of a start-up. […] During our research process, we found that customers begin using Splunk for a single use case and are quickly finding completely, new and different uses for the product that they had never imagined. Use cases for Splunk fall into (but are not limited to) four major buckets that include the following: (1) application management; (2) security & compliance; (3) Infrastructure & IT operations management; and (4) business & web analytics.

White also likes Splunk’s approach to how it prices, with the company letting customers use its “Splunk Enteprise” product to index half a gigabyte of data per day for 60 days for free, and then being asked to pay based on amount of data indexed. He thinks that “allows Splunk’s sales to more closely track the high growth rate of data. The average ASP for Splunk is estimated at approximately $35,000.”

White has Splunk making $193.9 million in revenue this year and losing 3 cents per share, and he offers the following observations about near-term spend and longer-term profit:

During 3QFY13, Splunk was operating at an annual revenue run rate of $208 million and the Company’s medium-term revenue target is $1 billion. In terms of profits, we believe Splunk will continue to run the Company near break-even levels in an effort to invest profits back into the business in order to capitalize on the big growth opportunities that on the horizon. That said, the Company’s long-term financial model includes 85-95% gross margin and a 25-30% operating margin profile.

Michael Kors (KORS) is a buy

• earnings 12 June 2012

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Bought GRPN before earnings (today after market close)

Ticker: GRPN
After hours: Groupon (GRPN) rallied 13% to $13.23. The company posted a first-quarter profit of 2 cents a share, exceeding the average analyst estimate of 1 cent. The Chicago-based company also forecast revenue in the second quarter will be as much as $590 million, beating the $558.7 million projected by analysts.

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Yelp (YELP) looks great today

WPX Energy (WPX) looks great

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Zynga (ZNGA) looks great today

** weekly **