INVESTMENT STRATEGY AND THE “NEW” ECONOMY Dr. James R. Forcier Managing Director Bay Analytics 15 June 2000 Copyright © 2000 by Bay Analytics. All rights reserved.
Dec 26, 2015
INVESTMENT STRATEGY AND THE “NEW” ECONOMY
Dr. James R. ForcierManaging Director
Bay Analytics
15 June 2000
Copyright © 2000 by Bay Analytics. All rights reserved.
Bay Analytics
ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Investment Clubs
• Women-only investor clubs earn an average return of 21%
Bay Analytics
ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Economics Defined
• Macroeconomics:
– Economy-wide & inter-economy concerns
• Inflation
• Unemployment
• Trade policy
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Economics Defined
• Microeconomics:
– Firm and market concerns
• Regulation/deregulation
• Pricing
• Competition
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Management Consulting
• Business school tools:
• Quantitative, qualitative methods
• Marketing
• Human resources
• Business law
– Andersen, Deloitte & Touche, McKinsey
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Economic Consulting
• Economic tools
• Regression analysis, modeling
• Antitrust, regulation
• Litigation-support orientation
– NERA, Charles River Associates, Law and Economics Group
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Economic Strategy Consulting• Microeconomic tools applied to business
decision-making
• Market analysis (Round 1)
• Competitive strategy (Digital Island)
• Firm & product positioning (Handtrade.com)
• New offering development (Visa USA)
– Bay Analytics
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy”
• What is the “New Economy?”
– Something other than the “old” economy
• Internet commerce?
• Venture-funded start-ups?
• IPO frenzy?
• Heroic stock valuations?
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Capitalist (“mixed”) Economy
• Markets used for most transactions
• Unconstrained producers and consumers
• Unfettered industry entry and exit, capital & labor flows
• Limited government involvement
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
The “old” economy
+
The application of computing technology
=
Significant changes in long-standing ways of doing business
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
• Microeconomic characteristics (1)– Technology entrepreneurs and enablers
(software engineers, dot.coms, click and mortars, incubators)
– Wireless telecommunications and data (telephony, PDAs, SMS, 3G)
– Business data management systems (SAP, Oracle)
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
• Microeconomic characteristics (2)
– Internet services: electronic mail, WWW, portals (Yahoo, Lycos)
– Internet infrastructure: intelligent networking companies (Digital Island), infrastructure providers (Cisco Systems)
– Internet content providers: NYT, Disney
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The “New Economy” Defined
• Macroeconomic characteristics (1)
– Increased world trade
– Internationalized capital and production flows
– Domestic labor flexibility & mobility
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
• Macroeconomic characteristics (2)
– Low inflation and unemployment from...
• Increased market competitiveness
• Worker productivity growth due to information and communication technology
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
– Worker productivity growth due to information and communication technology
• Business investment in computer technology has grown from 7.7 % of total durable equipment investment in 1990 to 45.7 % in 1998
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
– Worker productivity growth due to information and communication technology
• Increase in output growth as a result of computers may explain productivity growth from 0.33 percent 1993 to 1995 to 2.2 percent 1996 to 1998
• Increasingly accepted by economic policymakers
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
The “New Economy” Defined
– General characteristics:
• Computer-based
• Time-compressed
• Disintermediated
• Rapid evolution/changes
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
“New” Vs. “Old” Economies
• How is the “New Economy” new?
– Moves at a faster speed
– Fewer intermediaries in transactions
– Production factor (capital, labor, technology) shift?
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
“New” Vs. “Old” Economies
• Is the “New Economy”…– No longer capitalistic?– Constraining producers and consumers?– Relying on non-market transactions?– Restricting industry entry and exit?– Imposing greater government interference?
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
“New” Vs. “Old” Economies– Rather than displacing microeconomic
theory, the New Economy magnifies and exemplifies it
• More new businesses, products, services, features
• Greater disintermediation = fewer “middlemen”
• More markets with more participants, greater transparency, greater liquidity
• Greater labor productivity
• Increased wealth across all societal levels
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
“New” Business Valuations
– Excessive for many firms without clear prospects
• Do not reflect discounted future cash flows or earnings
• Do not reflect reasonable economic assumptions about growth or prospects
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Valuation Examples
• Amazon - no earnings yet despite premier Internet positioning
• Webvan - grocery home delivery with huge capital investment in facilities
• Intel - earnings from key position in computing
• Cisco Systems - earnings from ‘Net infrastructure
• Vodafone AirTouch - largest wireless operator
• Palm - enormous potential?
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Business Opportunities
• Retail value of e-commerce estimated to be $20 billion by 2004
• Internet industry, 1999:– Revenues grew 62 percent to $524 billion– Created 650,000 jobs– Now employs 2.5 million people– Revenues could hit $850 billion this year
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Internet Potential - Consumer
– CyberShopper ‘99 Survey of 1,000 American Internet users:
• 53 percent of users surveyed purchased an item online (2x 26 percent in 1997)
• Spending an average of $206 per online purchase, up 38 percent in past 12 months
• 36 percent of Internet shoppers still apprehensive about Internet security
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Consumer– CyberShopper ‘99 Survey of 1,000 American
Internet users:
• Purchasing fewer products from retail stores (35 percent) and catalogs (38 percent)
• 70 percent believe information they find while "shopping" on the Internet strongly influences their overall purchasing decisions
• Concern about online credit card fraud has dropped by about half (to 21 percent) since 1997
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Consumer
– New York Times research on U.S. Internet Users (reported 5/24/99):
• Products leading online sales – books and publications (52 percent)
– computer software (42 percent)
– travel-related items (37 percent)
• Clothing/apparel shows largest growth in online purchases – 149 percent increase since 1998
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Consumer
– New York Times research on U.S. Internet Users reported 5/24/99:
• 99 percent of respondents said they are at least “somewhat satisfied” with Internet purchases
• 79 percent report being “very satisfied”
• 83 percent of users in the market for a new vehicle plan to use the Internet in their purchase process
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business• Online retailing may not be more cost
effective than traditional retail stores
• Example: REI
– Internet site requires smaller staff, but higher salaries for technological knowledge
– 300-person Seattle store and 60-person Internet site payrolls about equal
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business• Online retailing may not be more cost
effective than traditional retail stores• Example: REI
– Incessant requirement for upgrades has forced spending of $15 million on technology since 1996
– Many buyers expect products will arrive more quickly than catalogue orders
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business• Online retailing may not be more cost
effective than traditional retail stores – Cost-reduction from disintermediation, time
and labor savings• For many intermediaries eliminated, new ones
are created
• Example: Amazon.com:– Ingram Book as an intermediate supplier
– UPS and DHL for delivery
– AOL for customer acquisition
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business• Online retailing may not be more cost
effective than traditional retail stores – Real questions are cost and customer
acceptance
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business
• Greatest potential for Internet growth probably lies in business cost reduction and customer-specific marketing & sales– Reduction in production times– Reduced inventory and labor costs– Mass customization
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Internet Potential - Business
• Buyer consortia for production purchasing
– Auto manufacturing: Ford, GM, Daimler
– Electronics
– Aerospace
– Replaces Electronic Data Interchange
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics• “Buy and hold”
– Power of compounding versus risk of market timing
• Minimize transaction costs– Investment advisor versus solo– Load versus no-load funds
• Performance equivalence
• Front-end/back-end loads, management fees, expense ratios, long-term cost amortization
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics • Start-ups and IPOs
– Small business failure rate is very high (80-90%)
– Poor investor returns for most IPOs (in 2/3 of cases share price falls first year)
– Aside from initial share allocation, long-run average returns from IPOs lag S&P 500
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• Start-ups and IPOs
– Over the past 15 years, 68% (average) of the firms going public were profitable
– In 1999, only 25% of firms were profitable
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Stock Market Economics
• Start-ups and IPOs
– IPOs with positive earnings per share in twelve months prior to IPO:
1990 - 85% (97) 1995 - 72% (363)
1991 - 75% (267) 1996 - 63% (431)
1992 - 68% (375) 1997 - 68% (304)
1993 - 70% (468) 1998 - 59% (222)
1994 - 78% (316) 1999 - 22% (441)
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• Stock Market “Bubble” – Price-to-earnings ratios (cost of stock vis-à-
vis profits) are about twice their historic average
– Over long run, stocks will regress towards earnings potential of operating companies
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• The stock market is overvalued because…– Investment capital is readily available– Investors haven’t done sufficient research– Investors have unreasonable expectations:
• Earnings will produce profits to sustain share prices and projected price-earnings ratios
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• The good news:
– Investor exuberance reduces the cost of capital and generates investment funds – much of which fuels business development and economic growth
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics• Internet risks
• Insufficient net space– Petstore.com
• “Land grab”- having customers is not enough– Amazon.com
• Positioning challenge– (see newspaper advertising example)
• Illusive efficiency - many claims as yet unsupported
– Webvan (can you say “Peapod”)
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• Internet risks– Lack of business experience/capability– Example: Riffage.com
• Palo Alto Internet music site
• Recently purchased Great American Music Hall
• “We don’t have anybody on our staff who knows about running the Music Hall. That was part of the attraction for us.”
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• Mounting losses/help needed:eToys Egghead.com
PlanetRx.com Fogdog.com
Autoweb.com Garden.com
Buy.com HomeGrocer.com
CDNow Streamline.com
Drugstore.com Cybershop
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ECONOMIC STRATEGY CONSULTING
Stock Market Economics
• 95% of e-tailers won’t survive to see 2001– iVillage (women’s interest site) - lost $1.30
per dollar in revenue 1Q2000– InsWeb (online insurance) - shares fell 89%
this year; reducing workforce by 40%