Raymond grew up in Budapest, Hungary, where he played tennis for the Hungarian Junior Davis Cup team. At the age of 16, he received the Davis United World College Scholarship, which was established by legendary investor Shelby Cullom Davis, allowing him to attend the Taft Boarding School in Watertown, CT. After Taft, Raymond received a Presidential Scholarship to the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, where he studied Quantitative Economics and Finance. Raymond is a CFA Level III Candidate. Prior to joining Taylor Hoffman, Raymond worked at various financial institutions in the insurance, asset management, and financial consulting space. Outside of the office, Raymond enjoys playing tennis at ACAC and Westwood Country Club.
Stock Market Commentary for 11/27/2020:
– By Raymond Kanyo
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Top Investment Story #1: Will Salesforce Pay $17 Billion for Slack?
What is Happening?
Salesforce talks to acquire Slack in a deal that would value the corporate messaging platform at over $16 billion. Slack stock traded up 37.59% on the news, while Salesforce declined 5.37%. Let’s explore why Salesforce wants this acquisition.
Why does this Matter?
Slack shares were down 20.53% since the company’s public debut in June 2019. They have been on a mission to upgrade the corporate email experience with a fun, efficient, and organized messaging and file-sharing platform. Even though Slack arguably has the best product in the space, the stock has been weighed down by fierce competition from Microsoft Teams. Teams has over 115 million users, while Slack only has an estimated 12 million. So why is Salesforce interested in acquiring the company?
The Takeaway:
Slack would be the largest acquisition of Salesforce to date. Acquisitions tend to underdeliver, but Salesforce is one of the few companies that have an impressive track record of acquiring businesses and creating shareholder value. Slack isn’t valued cheaply, at 28.13x sales, but the stock hasn’t surged nearly as much as others in the same space. Slack was only up 28.50% YTD prior to the announcement, while Zoom Video surged 544%.
– Written by Raymond Kanyo
– Published in MarketBites Daily Newsletter
Top Investment Story #2: Consumers Hurt After Amazon Web Services Outage
What is Happening?
Amazon Web Services experienced an outage Wednesday, which temporarily shut down the websites and programs of dozens of high-profile clients. Adobe, Twilio, Roku, Autodesk, and more were directly effected.
Why does this Matter?
Outages of various kinds have caused issues in the past. Cloudflare outages have cost firms hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential orders. This episode from AWS, its first since 2017, is concerning as we enter the Cyber 5.
The Cyber 5 are considered to be the busiest eCommerce days of the year in the United States. From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, eTailers need to be assured that their sites will not be adversely effected by their CDN’s (such as AWS), or any third party vendors.
Although AWS has a spectacular track record, the timing of this issue is alarming. One should not expect any outages over the weekend, but if there is, AWS clients could potentially lose millions in collective sales.
The Takeaway:
CDN issues and outages are scary in this environment. With in-store restrictions varying from state to state, AWS clients cannot afford to have their sites go down in the coming days.
– Written By Jack Dunne
– Published in MarketBites Daily Newsletter
Meet the Authors
Raymond grew up in Budapest, Hungary, where he played tennis for the Hungarian Junior Davis Cup team. At the age of 16, he received the Davis United World College Scholarship, which was established by legendary investor Shelby Cullom Davis, allowing him to attend the Taft Boarding School in Watertown, CT. After Taft, Raymond received a Presidential Scholarship to the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, where he studied Quantitative Economics and Finance. Raymond is a CFA Level III Candidate. Prior to joining Taylor Hoffman, Raymond worked at various financial institutions in the insurance, asset management, and financial consulting space. Outside of the office, Raymond enjoys playing tennis at ACAC and Westwood Country Club.
Jack graduated from the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond with concentrations in Marketing and Finance in 2019. Prior to joining Taylor Hoffman, he worked in high-growth B2B SaaS marketing; assisting Fortune 100 firms to improve their web performance experience. A Long Island New York native, Jack’s hobbies include passionately supporting the Mets and Islanders, and he enjoys skiing whenever he can.
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-Ben Franklin