i came across this post on Reddit this morning when i was doing some research for another ticker. i’ll post the Reddit post and link below. i’ll add my personal opinions here:
WHY WE CARE
it’s a tech growth stock that i feel is severely overvalued. it’s market cap is around $26 billion with annual revenues around $800 million. it’s been on a downtrend for the last couple months and it needs to smash earnings, not just beat it, to stay at this value.
INSIDER TRANSACTIONS
insider sell off caught my attention. just in the month of Nov, there’s been several open market sales by insiders. this server preaches taking profit so maybe they were just locking in their gains. or maybe they sold for tax purposes or to pay for whiplash’s girlfriends OF subscriptions. who knows. i see this as bearish.
https://www.chartmill.com/stock/quote/path/ownership
PREVIOUS EARNINGS
their last earnings was on Sep 7 for Q2:
EPS - beat by 117.51%
Revenue - beat by 4.84%
stock price closed at $62.46 on Sept 7 and went down and closed at $56.45 the next day on Sept 8.
!!! DISCLAIMER !!!
i haven’t done enough personal DD on this ticker. like i mentioned, i came upon the reddit post this morning and wanted to make a post here in Vahalla to get eyes on it right away. this is strictly an earnings play and earnings is today AH. since it’s an earnings play, it’s a gamble.
the bearish case is that they smash earnings and get back on a positive trend. i’m betting they don’t. i have 35p for Dec. good luck everyone.
REDDIT POST
Date: 2021-12-07 15:45:53, Author: u/terdferguson9, (Karma: 1257, Created:Mar-2020)
SubReddit: r/vitards, DD Click Here
Tickers mentioned in this post:
PATH 46.98 |DOCU 138.6 |PTON 41.78 |
Like many of you, I have been looking at the gain porn from some of these recent COVID stock dumps through this earnings season green with envy. I had a feeling Zoom would dump but then saw the decline into earnings and thought it was priced in already (it wasn’t) same deal with PTON. I didn’t see the DOCU dive coming but have been looking at all the companies in this weeks earnings calendar to try to find one I think is primed up for a similar nose-dive.
Alas, I believe I have found a wonderful set-up!! UiPath (PATH) releases Q3 Earnings on Wednesday AH.
UiPath (PATH) is a newly IPO’d tech company which issued shares publicly April 20th at $56/share.
It is a RPA software provider which stands for “robotics as a service”. I have used their service at my job and I’ll admit it is pretty cool. It is essentially a “macro” just like Excel, which can replicate a repetitive computer process by recording the mouse click-path or short-keys to do a simple data process. For example: if you sign in ever day to a website, export data into an Excel workbook, format and scrub it with formula’s and then sent an email with the report to a team, this could be automated with UiPath’s RPA. So they would record you doing all those steps across platforms, and then it would be able to run that process on a daily script each morning saving you the time of all that manual, repetitive steps. As a client, you pay ~$5-10k per “process” they help automate. This can usually be justified as it saves me 1 hour a day x 250 business days per year therefore its greater human time savings then the cost of the bot.
My case for why this is primed for a come to jesus moment is its current valuation. It currently generates revenues of ~$200 million/quarter, so you are looking at ~$800 million year revenues and the market cap is $26 BILLION (32.5x trailing P/S ratio, yikes!). This company has not and will not turn a profit for YEARS. Despite impressive growth over the last year, I think they are in store for a big re-rate on what they are worth on a forward looking basis.
Bullet points for my bearish read:
· Insiders all started selling following last quarter’s earnings report black-out including CEO, CFO and Directors (they are selling in the $50’s…)
· Mama Cathie Wood is the 6th largest shareholder with 24 Million shares. We know how her recent track-record has played out on some of her other high-growth, unprofitable holdings…
· Company lost $340 million in the last six months, $100 million in the last three months, although current client base is “sticky” I don’t think they will be able to out-grow more significant losses in the future.
· DOCU took a multiple hair-cut after their Q3, looks like they trade now at 14.3x EV/Revenue. PATH is currently trading at 30.2x, re-valuing at DOCU’s multiple, puts PATH at a $12 Billion valuation (50% lower than current).
TLDR: PATH has a similar set-up and valuation going into earnings as DOCU. Their current valuation is heavily influenced by high growth in the next 3-5 years. Anything less then stellar should see it trade < $40/share in my opinion. Today’s rally in my opinion was a gift for entry into puts. * Not financial advice, just my reasoning behind my position below*
Position: 20 x Dec 17 $50 Puts
https://www.reddit.com/r/MillennialBets/comments/rbjc1s/the_next_docuthe_path_to_nowhere/