ed note: This article was first published on March 31, 2016 — the ad has been changed a little bit and now we’re seeing a version that leads with “Virtual Reality Pornography” and catches your attention that way, though the company being teased and hinted at is still the same. What follows was published on 3/31/16 and hags not been updated or revised.
Ray Blanco is flogging his Technology Profits Confidential with an ad that promises “three companies almost no one knows about” in the virtual reality space — which, given the widespread interest among investors in virtual reality as the “next big thing,” means our interest is piqued.
So what’s the idea?
Well, first you have to sit through a long presentation about the potential of virtual reality — walking on the Great Wall of China, having dinner with Shakespeare, standing on top of Everest, exploring King Tut’s tomb… all without leaving your home. Obviously pretty cool, and gradually getting closer to reality as we see better visual processing, better cameras, more robust chips, higher resolution visuals, etc.
Don’t worry, I won’t make you endure that. You can check out the ad here if you want the full magilla, we’ll jump straight to what he thinks the investment opportunities are and see if the Thinkolator can parse his clues and give us some answers. Heck, you can even subscribe to his letter if you want to — but please let us tell you what the stocks are first, that way you’ve got a chance to think about them rationally for yourself.
(Are you familiar with the concept of “anchoring” in behavioral psychology? In the context of investing, anchoring often means that we subconsciously overweight the first information we learn about an investment — the first piece of research or analysis often holds much more sway than subsequent research, regardless of the merits of any of it. If the first thing you read is that a particular stock is going to dominate the market for decades, then it’s very hard to dislodge that notion completely even if the forecast is perhaps irrational… that’s why I try to make sure to look at least somewhat critically at new stocks or ideas that come our way, as a quick counter to the wild promises made in most of the ads. The initial greed impulse, once implanted in our brain, is hard to dislodge even if subsequent research makes the initial claims look spurious. We must all try to be vigilant in facing up to our staunchest investment enemy: our own brains.)
So what does Ray Blanco tell us? Well, the clues are a little thin… but we’ll see what we can do. Here’s the first bit that caught my eye:
“This Company Could Be Bigger Than Apple, Google, or Microsoft… It’s the Future in a Nutshell
“When Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality device comes out in the months ahead, one company I want you to know about today will be responsible for a big part of the guts of that device.
“Even better, if the Oculus takes off and becomes a worldwide sensation, this company wins big.
“If the Oculus gets surpassed, however, by a device from Google, Apple, or some other competitor, chances are good this company will make the guts of those devices too.
“This company, in short, is the far-and-away worldwide leader in the visual technology that makes virtual reality devices work.
“Put another way, if you don’t have this company, you don’t have first-class virtual reality!
“Think of it like this… this company takes all the “content” we talked about and makes it look REAL.
“We’re not going to see virtual reality turn into a $30 billion business by 2020, in other words, without this company’s technology.”
Huh. Sounds like clues… but not particularly specific. What else?
“Fortune wrote in late November, for example, about how this company is getting into eSports – basically, how in-person gaming experiences can be beamed to anyone anywhere.”
OK, that’s a little better. More?
“For example, the company recently posted a video of a virtual reality experience showing what it’s like to stand at the top of Mount Everest.”
OK, so the Thinkolator is telling me that Blanco is almost certainly pitching Nvidia (NVDA) as this first stock. Nvidia makes graphics processing chips/units (GPUs), and is the leader in that business. Most of their revenue comes from advanced gaming computers at this point, with the special graphics cards that make the best games faster and better, but they are also turning that processing power toward self-driving cars, data centers, and, as Blanco notes, virtual reality.
They did “double down” on their investment in “esports” late last year, and that was reported in Fortune. Their chips were also used to create the Everest VR experience that wowed a lot of tech journalists in recent months (and there is indeed a video of it on their website)… here’s how they describe the role their tech played in that VR experience:
“NVIDIA GPUs not only render the VR experience, but also were used in the creation of the ultra-realistic 3D model of Everest from more than 300,000 high-resolution photographs taken of the mountain.”
I like Nvidia, and have some exposure personally through 2018 LEAP options, but I’ve not bet big on the company because I think the virtual reality talk and the self-driving cars talk has probably driven the price of the shares up a bit too quickly (if you recall, Michael Robinson at Money Map has also been touting NVDA for virtual reality, and the Motley Fool has pitched them as an entree into self-driving cars for almost two years), but the core gaming business is still about 60% of NVDA’s revenue and, given the costs of ramping up new businesses, probably more profitable than most of their business lines at this point (other than IP/patent licensing, which is always high margin). You can see the rough breakdown of NVDA’s quarterly sales here, from their fourth quarter presentation.
Nvidia beat analyst estimates in the last two quarters, and is currently showing nice year-over-year growth in revenue and earnings, but analysts seem to expect it to plateau a bit after this year — they’ve got NVDA penciled in for $1.45 per share in earnings this year (that’s after $1.08 last year, so nice growth) and $1.40 next year, with pretty tepid revenue growth (6% this year, 1% next year). That’s what worries me a bit about NVDA, that there’s this disconnect between investor enthusiasm and analyst earnings projections — which is probably based on expected slowness in GPU growth from some of their older, lower end products (like graphics cards for “regular” PCs and notebooks, as opposed to advanced gaming cards or services) and the expectation that their newer businesses, data centers and autonomous cars and virtual reality (which is really mostly part of the gaming business, since virtual reality’s first commercial application of any scale will be high-end computer gaming) will fail to grow quickly enough to take up any slack… or are, at least, new and volatile enough to be a bit riskier, so maybe more analysts are just being conservative.
NVDA is also paying a small dividend and doing substantial share buybacks (they’re likely to buy back 5% of the company this year, for example), so that could help to boost the per-share numbers a little bit — but that’s been going on for a while and analysts are no doubt fully aware of the situation. They are not generally super-specific with their guidance, and the guidance is only for the current quarter, so the analysts are doing quite a bit of guessing — which is why they have a wide range of forecasts, and why NVDA often “misses” the earnings.
I’m still very positive about the company, and think they have some real potential to continue the aggressive growth in their data center and artificial intelligence/autonomous cars businesses, and virtual reality is likely to gradually become meaningful as a bigger driver of the gaming business as well if the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and other products are as big and “mainstream” a hit as expected… I just have some suspicion that we’ll hit some speed bumps this year and might have the opportunity to buy at a better price (that’s means there’s potential “risk of missing out,” of course — I often “nibble” at stocks that I like but that I think will present better buying opportunities later — if I own it, I’ll watch more closely for those opportunities). NVIDIA leads in a lot of these markets, but they’re immature and revenue is not very predictable and there’s a lot more competition in the “growth” segments than there is in their more commoditized old “graphics card” business or core gaming services business. The stock has been highly volatile over the past four or five months, and my expectation is that the volatility may well continue.
And… we’re out of time for today, but Ray Blanco did also hint at two other companies in the sensors/chips arena that he’s picking for VR excellence, I’ll dig into those for you next time around. Until then, feel free to chat amongst yourselves — like the potential for virtual reality? Think NVIDIA will be a huge player? Have other favorites you prefer? Let us know with a comment below.
Disclosure: I own 2018 LEAP Call Options on NVDA, and also own stock and/or call option positions on Apple, Facebook and Google/Alphabet, all of which are mentioned above. I will not trade in any of those names for at least three days per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
People get a little crazy about VR stocks. Look at Oculus Visiontech (OVTZ). Stock has nothing to do with Oculus VR (Oculus Rift), is in the digital watermarking business, lost its single customer about 13 month ago, did revenues of just 5500 $ (no typo!) last year. Nevertheless stock is rising like crazy. Even traded in Germany (Frankfurt) now and some German news sites linked the stock number (WKN) of OVTZ with Oculus VR. So the “stupid german money” also bought the stock: http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=OVTZ&insttype=Stock
Take care!
Ugh. Hadn’t heard of that one, I expect we’ll see penny stock pump-and-dumps emerge in VR just as they did in 3D printing, Graphene, Gold Mining, etc. Heck, in some cases they’ll probably even be the same companies after they make another quick name-and-ticker change and make a new website.
WOW on the name, amazing they haven’t been served.
I really like the educational possibilities of VR. These will likely develop after the entertainment options, but I think they are a real value-adder for this technology. Schools could have a “VR lab” the way they used to have computer labs. Students would visit this for science and history classes, for things like a class walk-through of a museum or historical location or visualization of complex 3-D shapes in calculus. The incorporation of technology might even get a few kids interested in these subjects who wouldn’t have been otherwise, since the subjects may seem abstract without a 3-D representation.
Like everything in publishing, it will be used for porn first!
Let me toss one additional company into the mix, VIRTUIX. They just completed a second round of funding via SEEDINVEST and have a unique take on the VR market. Their system is based on a stand that allows a game player to run, walk, jump, crawl whatever in the course of a game, an actual 3D presence. It also allows for a full 360 degree view. What struck me as solid foresight is that while they have their own “head piece” their system is fully compatible with others headsets coming to market so an Oculus owner for example, can take advantage of the VIRTUIX 3D adventure without having to purchase a second headset. Rumor has it that the military is testing for use in multi “player” training.
RPaul, Do you have the ticker symbol?
My guess would be if they are in the seed funding stage they likely do not have a stock symbol…….anyone?
Correct, they are not listed. They are doing venture “seed” fundraising through SeedInvest, which is one of the “crowdvesting” platforms, and it looks like they’ve raised about $10 million so far, 20% of which is from preorders.
You can learn a bit more about them at https://www.seedinvest.com/virtuix/series.a — despite the opening up of the “seed investing” market to more individuals recently, these are still individual investments directly with a company, information is not generally as complete as a public company prospectus would offer, and the offering may have confusing terms or restrictions or be illiquid (ie, it might not be easy to sell if you change your mind). Companies raising money in this way are obviously riskier than much larger public companies with proven or established businesses.
Does look kind of cool, though. Not for my living room, but as a general idea.
Whereas NVDA has the patents, INTC has the chips and supplies all the major VR firms, per Bill Petalon and Michael Robinson of the Money Map Press team. And apparently INTC is the supplier to ALL of the big players in VR. Bil makes INTC sound like a Pic-and-Shovel situation. Sounds good to me. Regards.
I imagine Intel does supply all the VR players — these headsets and the computers that run them use a bunch of different chips. But Nvidia is still far and away the leader in high-performance GPUs for gaming, which is what the virtual reality stuff is being built on. Intel ships graphics processors as part of all of its system chips (for your desktop computer, for example), but no one upgrades to an Intel graphics processor — ugprades are to AMD or NVDA to get more processing power, and NVDA has taken a lot of market share from AMD over the past few years.
More importantly, Intel is working from a base of $55 BILLION in sales and it takes a LOT to move the needle in that business. The best reason to buy Intel is if you believe semiconductors in general will recover a bit, and that either sales of desktop and laptop computers will come back or Intel’s position in servers will be maintained versus encroaching competition. Or you just like the dividend and think Intel will keep chugging along. Intel is a solid company, and analysts think they’ll get back to 10% earnings growth next year, so it’s nothing to scoff at… but it’s not going to be a big “story” stock for virtual reality or get meaningful revenue growth from VR’s slow emergence even if they do have chips in the Oculus Rift, etc.
Virtual reality by itself probably won’t be enough to drive NVDA’s income statement over the next year or two either, of course, but it could be more than a footnote (which is what it would be at Intel, if anything) — and Nvidia does do have some substantial growth businesses and big R&D investments that have a chance to keep evolving and are already under a head of steam as AI and autonomous driving and other high-performance computing areas get to be bigger stories.
Thanks, Travis. You’re really working overtime recently.
I admit I have a hard time differentiating between the different chip manufacturers. We’ve hear pitches for NXPI, INVN, NVDA, others. They each have a niche, but what I don’t fully understand is whether each has a large enough moat and there are enough barriers to entry to prevent each of these chip markets from losing any competitive advantage? Isn’t INTC big enough that it could swallow any one of these markets if it wanted to compete there? Or, say, GOOG, who apparently wants to control the entire world?
So what assurance is there that even if VR takes off, taht NVDA will be the one to benefit–couldn’t these chips become so generic that the margins would evaporate? Just asking….
Some of them sure could be. The biggest competition in GPUs is AMD, which is showing some signs of coming back to life, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of strong competition yet in the high end GPUs for advanced gaming and VR and the advanced machine learning accelerators or processing units that are built on GPUs (like the Tesla and Jetson products). Don’t know where it will go for them, of course, but they seem to be getting a lot of press and interest in those advanced products and those segments, though they’re smaller than the GPU gaming business, are generating 20-25% revenue growth.
Didn’t Lisa Su announced that AMD is heavily invested in the VR industry and have 80% of the market in processor chips? If so, I would think AMD would be a better investment even with their high debt. Personally, my only VR investment is HIMX. They provide the timing controllers for the oculus rift and is said to be a part of the Microsoft Hololens. I bought them at $5.90 and bought more around $9.
There isn’t really a market yet in “VR chips,” but I think AMD does have the graphics slot in both the Xbox and the PlayStation — which is where we’re probably likely to see most of the volume in VR go for the next couple years, since the Xbox/Playstation addressable market is huge. Sony’s product will be much cheaper and probably the best candidate for mass adoption, since those who already have a Playstation wouldn’t need to buy a high-end gaming computer (as you would for the Oculus Rift).
I expect the Sony Playstation VR headset to be by far the biggest seller in VR headsets when it comes out in October… but it’s still unlikely to be a “chip” story that drives revenue for anyone in any big way, the chip story for folks like NVIDIA or AMD is a longer-term one, with lots more VR headsets requiring lots more advanced GPU units for computers or game consoles (or, eventually, for stand-alone headsets as they get miniaturized over time). Chip stories generally require huge volume to make a big difference to midcap or large cap companies, and virtual reality doesn’t seem likely to me to be a huge volume story this year. I could be wrong, but I think it will take a few years to ease into VR as a major consumer electronics category — and there is, of course the risk that it could still flop when it comes to wide adoption, it might be that if hardcore gaming is the only arena where it takes hold then it just replaces the existing high-end gaming market over time. Maybe people will hate wearing the headsets, or we’ll need a few more years of advancement before the headsets get lighter or the visual experience less harsh on your eyes over longer time periods, or whatever.
Often overlooked is the value play in 2D & 3D Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD). All of my current Work Stations are equipped with NVIDIA chips. Having started the CAD revolution in 1982, as my engineering business was a beta test site with Hewlett-Packard hardware and VersaCad software. Over the years the computer power has been nothing short of outstanding and I have been privileged to participate in this revolution.
Before I found Gumshoe, I would also try to figure out company names from clues in the many teasers that filled my inbox. Movidius.com is what I found when I worked on this teaser. Sounds a lot like Nvidia, no? Private chip company, though. Check it out. They talk about vpu vs gpu; pairing their product with Nvidia’s; and being part of the guts of the Google (is it?) Tango. Your thoughts?
This one interests me – as I am involved with computers/marketing and also gaming on Steam at night. Valve’s partnership with HTC should bring the Vive to the masses and in 2-3 years I expect it more mainstream – morphing into education and all sorts of areas. Nvidia seems a bit inflated right now.
Am interested in the other companies you mention as well.. looking forward to articles on them.
PS: The 970 is a nice card
With any of my wisdom for foresight absent from all the above analysis, my only relevant comment would simply be “WOW” and “Thanks” for the discussion. I have donated so much tuition money to the tech revolution getting in when best out and out when best in, just to lighten the discussion one micron level
Here’s one from Google VR … happy April Fools Day!
https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/plastic/
Any other thoughts on HIMX? From what I’ve read their hardware is in Google Glass, Oculus and Hololens so they’re “covered” in whichever one becomes dominant. They have an existing revenue stream from flat panel displays (TV’s, etc) so they’re not entirely dependant on VR.
INTC invested in VUZI and if often mentioned in VR space
INTC invested in VUZI and is often mentioned in VR space
For those who are keeping track, HiMax and NVIDIA are both reporting next Thursday… neither one is likely to have a meaningful line item for “virtual reality” in their income statement, though both will probably chat it up in their commentary.