Hey, everyone, this is Alex Kagin and I’m part of the team at Strategic Tech Investor. The tech markets have really been hot this year and we found this deal we thought you all would like to know about. M&A has really taken the spotlight these last few weeks. We had Zoom make a $15 billion dollar bet on the enterprise with its acquisition of Five9 and then earlier this week Square announced the acquisition of buy now pay later provider Afterpay for $29 billion dollars.
But I’m focused on a much smaller deal, that could potentially have even a greater impact on tech markets and one of my favorite types of stocks, a pick and shovel play; Investing in the companies that make everything run.
We’ve talked about Shopify powering eCommerce and companies like Roku powering steaming, but I’m going to take it back one step further to an industry that powers all of these megatrends, the data center. Without the tech that goes into the data center, the internet would come to a screeching halt.
We are only in the first few weeks of tech earnings, but we have already learned a lot. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TSM), the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world continues to ramp up production as the semiconductor...
If you hear someone suggesting you invest in “containers,” please don’t get confused.
Most folks would naturally think of these as giant metal shipping boxes that are integral for global trade. You may recall their 6 days of internet fame when an overburdened ship was stuck in the Suez Canal back in March.
However, the containers I have my eye on won’t be found lodged in a waterway because they reside deep inside remote data centers.
Basically, they’re modules that hold software code that allow clients to use their data storage and servers more efficiently. Only a few highly trained individuals are able to operate them correctly.
Nowadays, it seems like everytime you open a newspaper, there’s another major cyber attack.
When JBS, the world’s largest meat packer, fell victim to a massive ransomware hack the White House confirmed it was courtesy of our “good friends” in Russia. With its computer networks under assault, JBS was forced to shut down its five largest beef processing plants, hurting food supplies.
This hack was just one of the many examples of recent “ransomware” attacks -whereby hackers breach a victim’s computers, encrypt them so the victim can’t access their files, and then demand a ransom payment to reverse the encryption. What’s more, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Russian hackers have staged cyberattacks on more than 150 government agencies and other organizations around the world.
And who could possibly forget the Colonial Pipeline attack from early May. Colonial carries 45% of the East Coast’s fuel supply, so when Russian-based hackers from the DarkSide criminal group forced the company to close the system down, there was panic buying of gasoline across the East Coast.
Keeping track of the major hacks can just about make your head spin. It’s no wonder the cyber security sector is growing at more than 10% a year and is worth $180 billion.
In the time it took you to read this sentence, the Web was simply flooded with new data.
For each second of the day, every human on earth creates 1.7 megabytes of data on average. That’s about seven books worth of information.
Multiply it by the global population of 7.8 billion, and you have 54.6 billion entire books worth of data added to the internet every second of every day.
That’s just a small look at how totally mind-boggling the amount of voice, data, streaming videos, music and more moving through the Internet at any point in time is.
Research firm IDC estimates that 59 petabytes of data were made and consumed in 2020.
For reference, 59 petabytes of 4K movies would take 147.5 years of non-stop binging to watch.
We’re surrounded by these data generators: Smartwatches, fitness bands, smartphones, smart speakers, laptops, gaming consoles, security cameras…
At first glance, this would seem to be a terrible time to invest in law enforcement technology.
After all, officials in several cities have joined the movement to defund police departments.
Consider that Austin, TX, and Los Angeles, CA have recently cut more than $143 million from their police budgets. Minneapolis has moved to slash a more modest $8 million.
Here’s the thing. As cities cut police budgets and either furlough officers or see them resign, police officers will still carry on with their everyday work.
And that actually plays to the advantage of a law-enforcement tech leader that is pioneering cloud computing for police.
The firm also sells non-lethal weapons and body cameras
that fit right in with the current environment and is set to double its earnings in less than two years…
Streaming media was one of the biggest success stories of 2020. You’ve can see what I’ve already had to say about it here, here, and here. Now, that trend is shaping up to carry right on through 2021.
Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) Disney Plus gained almost 90 million subscribers in less than a year and became a platform to release its newest movies.
As much as my wife and I like the Marriott in downtown Oakland, we would have much preferred to stay and work from home.
But a combination of dry heat and high winds made that virtually impossible.
As you may have heard, here in California PG&E Corp. (PCG) will cut power to areas like ours if there is a high fire risk.
So, we once again found ourselves working out of a hotel room for nearly three days.
The reason is simple. While we have a portable generator, it doesn’t provide us with good Wi-fi or cell-phone coverage – meaning we can’t work.
Between weather events like these and the massive push to working from home that has come with COVID-19, the need for businesses and workers to stay connected has never been more apparent.
Luckily, it turns out there is a clear tech leader highly skilled at providing cloud-based unified communications, and tapping into the $56 billion market that goes along with it.
And today, I’ll show you why this savvy tech firm is set to double its earnings in as little as 18 months…
COVID-19 stimulus has not only been a tremendous deal, but it’s also still a highly pressing matter.
Congress and the administration responded to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic with a $2.2-trillion stimulus last March.
It was the largest stimulus package ever adopted and amounts to roughly 10% of the nation’s economic value. And I expect that it won’t be the last one, either.
Make no mistake. This is a very complicated package totaling more than 800 pages.
It provided $500 billion in loans for large firms and $377 billion for small ones. Families received $300 billion in one-time cash payments.
No doubt, this was a godsend to millions of workers and employers alike.
But there’s just one problem – accounting for all that cash flow is no simple matter, but, as the Deloitte accounting service company points out, that record keeping is necessary to see all the benefits of the program.
If a beneficiary business wants to apply for loan forgiveness, they need to be keeping track of where all of that money they received is going.
The term “cloud” in “cloud computing” has always been a metaphor, until now. Traditionally, it refers to the fact that users can access data and applications anywhere in the world via the Web.
Of course, the information has always been coming from here on earth and resided in remote data centers. The idea was to say the world’s wealth of information was so ubiquitous it was like it was streaming down from a cloud.
And now, that image is about to go from metaphor to literal real-life. See, privately held SpaceX is planning to provide civilian and military cloud services by beaming them from low-orbiting satellites.
The project is projected to be able to give internet access to nearly every populated region of the globe in 2021.
Here’s the thing. To accomplish the bold mission, SpaceX has teamed up with one of the world’s top cloud computing firms.
