On this edition of the Futurum Tech Podcast, host Daniel Newman and Futurum analysts, Fred McClimans and Olivier Blanchard, talk about Apple’s performance. Not just their financials, but their stock market trillion-dollar valuation performance. They also talk about Cisco as well as a surprisingly successful Chinese retail company, Alibaba, that’s killing it without being Amazon.
Our Main Dive
There’s tech news everywhere such as companies reaching trillion-dollar valuation, but today’s main focus is on Apple. This week, Apple received their earnings report and can now be considered a trillion-dollar company. But it’s a little perplexing because although the numbers are undeniably good and Apple is a successful company, the user numbers are similar to Facebook.
By comparing Apple’s growth numbers to its phone calls, Mac sales and new tablet sales, Apple’s numbers fell a bit flat. In fact, in the case of Macs the numbers are actually going down. Facebook seems to be in a similar situation where their growth end users, not new users, is also stalling out.
Bottom Line:
Apple is massive in today’s marketplace and has done an excellent job transitioning from the risk-taking innovation company of the 80s and 90s to a much more operationally focused company. They’ve done well in the last few years and even when sales don’t meet what is anticipated, they aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
Our Fast Five
We dig into this week’s interesting and noteworthy news:
- Macy’s is the number two top retail performer behind Amazon. In the past few years, Macy’s has reorganized and come back with a renewed focus on digital technologies internally, a strong focus on digital sales to the consumer, and a strong focus on providing information and relationship through their apps with the consumer. And it’s paying off.
- Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos is on his way out the door and instead of replacing him, they are eliminating the position altogether which is an interesting move given Facebook’s place right now.
- Cisco acquired Michigan-based Duo, a software security company that provides the same level of protection as a physical key without the key, this week showing that they are moving beyond the data center.
- Alibaba’s workplace collaboration tool DingTalk is starting to receive some pushback from users as it is starting to become a workplace monitoring tool and forced productivity app.
- A new Neilsen study on media habits was released showing that US adults consume nearly six hours of video per day.
Tech Bites
Our winner of this week’s “Tech that Bites” award is Samsung. They released their earnings report this week which included 11 billion in profits, which is great, but it kind of fell short when comparing year over year. The flagship product for Samsung, the S9, isn’t doing well and Wall Street is beating them up over it and the stock took a bite. Samsung just doesn’t have the same pull or excitement about it that a brand like Apple has.
Crystal Ball: Future-um Predictions and Guesses
Our Crystal Ball this week continues with Apple. Will Apple’s trillion-dollar bubble ever burst? And if so when? Or will their growth continue? Across the board, we don’t think the bubble will burst anytime soon. Their numbers might dip below the trillion-dollar mark a little, but Wall St. Likely won’t punish them as much as they would to another company.
Finally, we think that the next trillion-dollar company will either be Amazon or Microsoft. Both have made some acquisitions and advancements positioning themselves for growth that will be interesting to watch.
And there you have it, this week’s Futurum Tech Podcast.
Transcript:
On today’s edition of FTP the Futurum Tech podcast, we’re talking about Apple’s performance, not just their financials, but their stock market trillion dollar valuation performance. We’re also talking about Cisco, Alibaba, a surprise retail company that’s killing it in the market that’s not Amazon. All that and more on this week’s Futurum Tech podcast.
Daniel Newman: Welcome to Futurum Tech podcast, FTP. I’m your host today, Daniel Newman, Principle Analyst at Futurum Research and here with my Futurum teammates, Fred Fred McClimans and Oliver Blanchard. Good morning gentleman.
Olivier Blanchard: Morning,
Fred McClimans: Good morning.
Daniel Newman: Another great week, tech news everywhere, company reaching trillion dollar valuation and you are going to hear this and more as we’re going to talk a lot about mobile today. We’re going to talk a lot about Apple today because how can we not follow the herd and talk a little Apple. However, we’re not just going to follow the herd, we’re going to go against the grain a little bit and you’re going to see that throughout this show.
But, gentlemen, I want to jump straight in and straightaway into the first topic of the day, the trillion dollar company. Apple had their earnings this week. Overall, the numbers were okay but, Olivier, I want to start off with you. What do you think about this, the earnings this week, what do you think about what was going on with Apple?
Olivier Blanchard: Well, you know, it’s great, I’m glad that Apple is reaching that milestone. I’m glad when any company is reaching that milestone. I’m just a little bit perplexed though because, although the numbers are good and Apple is undeniably a really successful company, as it should be, its numbers were kind of similar or parallel to Facebook’s numbers.
So if you compare Apple’s growth numbers in terms of its, kind of like refreshing install base with new phone sales, with new Mac sales, with new tablet sales, they were flat. In the case of Mac’s they’re actually going down. Facebook is in a similar situation where their growth end users, net new users, is also stalling out. So those are the two parallels that I see on the one hand, they’re kind of negative or worrisome.
And on the positive side, their revenue growth, year over year, was relatively close to one another. And yet, on the street, Facebook took a 20% hit or at least Facebook stock took a 20% hit and they really thought that the sky was falling. But then everybody is really excited about Apple for what are essentially the same results. I want to throw this back to you guys and ask you is this just a question of bias or is it a question of just not so much guidance but managing expectations differently for those two different companies. So, yeah, Daniel, I’m going to throw it to you.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, I want to get Fred’s take as an equities guy, but I do want, as always, to remind everybody out there that while we do talk a lot about technology companies and their stock performance and their revenues because that really is a driver of how the market is doing, this show is not a show making financial recommendations. So do not look for us to make your stock picks or to buy any stocks because of what we say, but we hope to entertain and to share with you our perspective as industry tech analysts who are everyday reading and paying attention to what’s going on. But, Olivier, that was a great assessment.
Fred, you are and have historically been an equities guy. You look into the numbers. My first take on it was okay, services are up, but services at Apple are based upon a fixed installed base, as Olivier alluded to. But you know what? We actually talked a day ago about having one of our themes in the show going into when will they get to a trillion. Well, we didn’t even have time to finish our conversation before Apple’s numbers show up based upon their earnings and based upon this bull market that we’re in. But what’s your take, Fred? What was your take on this week’s earnings.
Fred McClimans: It’s impossible to understate just how important and how massive Apple is in the marketplace today. They really have in the post-Jobs era, they have transitioned I think very successfully from being that innovation kind of risk-taking company to much more of an operationally focused company, operational excellence under Cook. They’ve had their moments, but they’re firing on all cylinders here.
The trillion dollar valuation, that’s one that I think has gotten a lot of hype that might not necessarily be so much, so deserved out there. Realistically, a trillion dollars is a relatively arbitrary number. If you look at that, when Apple was launched back in ’76, a trillion dollars today was worth only $235 billion back then. Now, we didn’t have a lot of $235 billion companies at that time, but it kind of puts a little bit of perspective on the number here.
In terms of Apple, we talked a bit offline, you’re right, they hit the trillion dollar mark much sooner than we had the opportunity to talk about here in advance. But if you look at Apple relative to other companies, this quarter’s guidance was a very strong guidance. Facebook, on the other hand, Facebook had almost no guidance and what they had given out was incredibly inaccurate. That was sort of a huge question mark that was hanging over the stock drop for Facebook. Not only did they miss in a couple of areas, but their guidance moving forward was weak and you had a lot of people, including myself, saying, when did they figure this out, why are we now all of sudden at the last minute realizing that Facebook’s guidance is abysmal moving forward.
So, it’s kind of a different level set of expectation there. But even from a peer comparison perspective, you know, you mentioned the services revenue, when you think about Apple and some of the larger companies that it’s up against in the market, I mean Facebook is a good example there, Amazon is a good example, Apple actually trades at a significant discount to those. When you look at the price to earnings ratio, Apple’s PE number is in the low 20s, or I’m sorry, upper 19s. Compare that to Facebook and others that are up in the 50, 60, 70 PE ratio range, Apple still looks like a pretty decent buy and doesn’t necessarily look overpriced in the market today. Doesn’t mean the market couldn’t pull back, but Apple, I think they’re looking pretty solid right now.
Daniel Newman: You know, it’s something that this’ll become thematic throughout the show, but I said some of it is there’s still a logic and emotion element here. I’ll say this, I think this is going to come up when we get into our section later, our tech bites section and then we get into our crystal ball section because we’re going to keep talking about Apple in the mobile space, but how much, Fred, do you think that the results really end up landing on how the market wants Apple to perform? I think the market wants Apple to do good. So I think when an average to above average quarter comes out, they love to make it look great, the media loves to make it look great. Everyone wants to make it look great.
Facebook’s more of a mixed bag, people have stronger, more visceral up and down emotions about how they feel about Facebook. We talked last week about Twitter showing tremendous earnings, their best quarter ever, and then getting smashed on Wall Street. Can we rule out the ethos, the emotions and the logic as a big part of what actually sprung this trillion dollar valuation?
Fred McClimans: You know, that emotional aspect it’s there and we’ve seen it in the performance of some of the major equities. But we’ve also seen it in how the investors are looking to justify some of the valuations out there. In fact, as impressive as Apple’s earnings were, they hit, they did well. The iPhone 10 over-performed, which was a good thing because overall iPhone sales declined from the number that was anticipated there. But iPhone X it had a very high price point, $1,000 plus, made up the difference there, and then some.
But even with that, you see people now talking about the iPhone itself and starting to say, if you look at the iPhone what does it really do in the marketplace. It’s bought or acquired through a carrier and your cellular service, somebody uses it for a couple of years and then they upgrade. Well, at a certain point that starts to look a bit like a service and services are valued higher than products. Services are renewable, they’re recurring, and that’s one of the reasons why on the other side of the equation the equity aspect of Apple is looking good right now because their services revenue is up and we love services revenue, it’s recurring, it’s predictable.
So, you see people starting to justify, or trying to justify somewhat of a potentially even higher valuation based on considering the iPhone as a service type of revenue. Certainly, there’s I think a sense of pride perhaps, there’s a sense of run-up, there’s a sense of excitement when a company like Apple that has been around for so long, 42 years this company has been around, and it’s still leading in the marketplace. So, is there an emotional quotient? Absolutely.
Daniel Newman: And Olivier, I want to have a comment from you to close out our opening segment here on Apple and that is, we work at lot at Futurum Research with the semiconductor companies, companies like Intel, companies like Qualcomm, and we know for a fact that Apple has ignored for generations now staying up-to-date with the most advanced technologies. Yet we also still hear the market constantly beating the tom-toms of companies who are on the front edge and the cutting edge and Apple is not there, they are not there. Why do you think they get away with that?
Olivier Blanchard: Oh man, I have no idea. Apple has such brand equity. And they’ve done such a good job for such a long time in training us to love them and coming up with really great designs and really great UI that they’re still riding that wave. There’s still an expectation that they’re innovators when, in a lot of ways, they’re not. They’ve like the anti-innovators. But they’re very good at design. They’re very good at marketing. They’re very good creating technological crack, so it might not be the best thing for you. It might not be the best thing on the market, but you just need it. You want it, and you don’t know why. When you bring up logic and emotion, it’s a theme that’s come up a lot this week in conversation with regards to technology.
There’s not really a rational explanation why Apple does really well. And what concerns me is, because they’re falling further and further behind with every generation of their device compared to everybody else in the market, that there’s going to be some point where Apple’s performance … Not so much on Wall Street. Not so much in terms of how we perceive the brands, but in terms of value proposition against their competitor’s products. I think Apple is going to start seeing some negative numbers. Not so much in profitability, not so much in just the amount of just massive revenue that they can generate, but in terms of growth and in terms of market share and terms of customer satisfaction. What worries me about this trillion dollar valuation all of a sudden and how much emotion goes into it is that Apple is kind of in a bubble. I’m worried that when the bubble bursts … And it will at some point. It’s going to make Facebook’s very bad week last week look like small potatoes.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, and I want to come back to that a little bit later in the show. I think, Olivier you made some great points, Fred, both of you while weighing in here on this segment. We’ve got to move on to our Fast Five. I will leave one little note here on the Apple issue as a whole. I think the street, we can agree they love them. But you said there has been some fallback. I mean, last week we talked about India, the loss of popularity there. We’ve talked about China. They are not the most popular phone in other markets where maybe emerging technology is more important. By the way, they also lost almost $150 million patent lawsuit in Canada this week, which they’re paying out again. Which again, no one notices because emotion is bigger than logic with big brands like Apple.
Daniel Newman: So on to the Fast Five, Fred. What do you got? Let’s start us off.
Fred McClimans: Dan, one of the things that we as analysts in the marketplace talk a lot about is the impact of digital on businesses, how it’s transformed the consumer market, how it can transform the customer and brand relationship. I came across an interesting piece the other day. If you think about the stock market, right now Amazon is, boom, massive performer out there. Nobody can deny that. Their numbers are on spot. And while they generate the majority of their profit from the AWS cloud service, they’re still mostly known for the retail aspect of Amazon.
So the question comes up, who’s the number two performer in that marketplace? In fact, who’s the number two performer overall behind Amazon and in the top 10 in the market? It turns out it’s Macy’s. The brand that has been around for probably about 1,000 years and has been closing stores and reorganizing through things. But that kind of surprised me. Macy’s, the number two retail performer behind Amazon and the number 10 performer in the market this year. So how did they do it? What are they doing? And I’m not suggesting that they’re out of the woods yet. They are still in an interesting place. But they’ve gone digital, strong focus on digital technologies internally, strong focus on digital sales to the consumer, strong focus on providing information and relationship through their apps with the consumer. And it’s paying off. I like to see this kind of a story.
Daniel Newman: Old industries disrupting themselves, driving with customer experience, doing well. Olivier, what do you have?
Olivier Blanchard: I have kind of a weird one. I’m not obsessed with Facebook or anything. It feels like I just keep going back to it. Alex Stamos is Facebook’s outgoing chief security officer. He’s got about two weeks to go on the job. He’s leaving. He’s going to be an adjunct professor, and good luck to him. But what’s interesting is that amid all of the crisis of conscience and identity that Facebook is going through and the importance that security plays in their brand, Facebook has apparently decided not to replace Alex Stamos with another chief security officer. They’re getting rid of the position all together, disbanding the team, and focusing instead on trying to, I guess, embed security operationally into teams but without any kind of leadership or structure through the organization to manage it all. That’s very, very strange and odd.
Daniel Newman: It’ll be really interesting to watch how that goes.
Olivier Blanchard: Yeah.
Daniel Newman: Speaking of security. Cisco made an interesting acquisition this week. Approximately 2.3 billion to by Michigan-based Duo. This move was … I wouldn’t say it’s a super interesting move for Cisco. I think it’s fits right in with what Chuck Robbins has talked about. He really continues to beat the drum that security has to be front and center of everything Cisco does, so you’ve seen them make lots of these kinds of acquisitions.
I thought it was interesting they’re going to keep operations running out of Michigan. The former CEO of Duo will stay on the general manager of the business unit. Just as a quick note about the technology. You heard a few weeks ago by … I believe it was Google … how they had reduced intrusion and hacks within the organization by giving everybody these physical keys. The whole purpose and premise behind Duo is basically to be able to do that in a software environed environment where you can have that same level of security as a physical key, but you can do it without that physical key, which I think really does present an interesting opportunity and shows Cisco moving beyond the data center to really starting to think about, “How do we protect our workforce and those that have critical data at the edge and on their personal devices and workstations?”
All right. One more time back around. Fred?
Fred McClimans: DingTalk.
Daniel Newman: DingTalk?
Fred McClimans: Go ahead. You can ask. DingTalk? What is DingTalk?
Daniel Newman: What is DingTalk, Fred?
Fred McClimans: Most people have heard of Facebook’s Workplace, their business chat software. And of course, we are big users here of Cisco’s Webex software and Slack and a number of other chat products. Back in 2014, Alibaba launched a tool called DingTalk, and it is, at this point, with over 100 million users, it is the largest office chat productivity app that’s out there today.
It’s starting to run into a bit of pushback, though. And here’s the interesting aspect of the story. DingTalk, typical fashion with a lot of the software that we see in China, being very highly integrated with multiple functions and very controlling. I mean, one software app can do everything from your finance to your scheduling to hotel reservations. We don’t see that so much in the major Facebook apps and so forth here, outside of China, but in China it’s very popular.
But it’s gotten to the point where users are starting to push back. They’re looking at it and going, “Yes, I love to be able to reach people 24/7. But having my employer be able to reach me 24/7, that’s a bit much.” And some of the features in DingTalk, they speak to the sort of alert or notification fatigue that we see in the consumer space. With DingTalk, a lot of users are saying, “This is great, but … You sent me a message, and then you followed it up.” The system automatically follows it up it again in five minutes or in 10 minutes, and then it sends a text message, and then it calls you on the phone.
So there’s this interesting point where I think we’re starting to see what happens when technology in the workplace for productivity’s sake becomes more of a monitoring tool and a forced productivity tool. Just sort of an interesting tidbit out there. But DingTalk, I’m going to have to find a way to trial that.
Daniel Newman: No DingTalk for us, guys. But Olivier, take us home because there will no reminders on what the last four were.
Olivier Blanchard: All right. Cool. So something to actually go digging for, and I encourage all of our listeners to go check this out. The new Nielsen study came out that tracks all of our media habits. It’s a great report. It has a ton of really granular graphs and data. But what I get from it is that US adults now watch 11 hours, or interact with media for 11 hours per day. One big chunk of that is video. It’s almost six hours at 5 hours and 57 minutes. And surprisingly, most of the videos that we consume still comes from television. It’s not just the internet. So, yeah. Look for that on The Verge. Do a Goggle search for it, and enjoy hours of fun going through that data.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. And I just don’t believe some of that. I wonder if Nielsen still has those boxes out there but they forgot to attach themselves to people’s phones and computers, Olivier. Because I just don’t see that much TV being watched, unless you’re talking about my son who turns on Toy Story every single morning when he wakes up.
So guys, I want to get on to the Tech Bites section. Tech bites, or one company each week, we talk about who’s either had a bad week, a company who’s just not doing so well overall, or a company who maybe could be doing just fine but the market is really beating them up. This week it stayed with our mobile theme. Samsung reported their earnings this week. And Samsung made like … I don’t know. Was it like 11? What was it? I think it was like 11 billion in profit. I don’t have the exact number right here in front of me, but it was a really pretty good profit number, but they fell short of … Year over year, their guidance wasn’t very positive and the street gave them a beating over the head. And the theme of it was the S9, which was their kind of flagship device, just isn’t doing as well. Isn’t selling as many units as they had hoped for. And even though the overall performance of the company is pretty strong, the device has done bad. Wall Street’s responded. They’re not happy. Stock took a bit of a bite. Fred, I gotta ask you this, ’cause this kind of goes back to the ethos, Apple reports pretty flat device sales overall. Decent performance from the 10, but not terrific. They go up. Samsung has a good quarter. Shows good numbers. Maybe not great numbers for the specific device, and the street really beat them over the head. What gives?
Fred McClimans: Well you know, I think there are a number of factors that are kind of contributing to this. One that you alluded to, Samsung just doesn’t have the same pull or excitement about it that a company like Apple has. And even if you look at the past quarter, yeah, the market was good, but everything comes down. Everything is quarter cyclical, so it’s kind of tough to necessarily or sometimes compare one company to the other. But I think what is happening here a bit, is a bit of Samsung’s reputation that has involved some questionable or some exploding products in the past, I think that’s kind of sitting out there a bit. I think also that you’re seeing more competition in some of the big markets. In China, which is ultimately going to be the largest mobile market, it’s Chinese companies that are dominating that space. I think that Samsung people are starting to question do they really have enough in the bag to really out-innovate and out-perform a lot of these other companies. Especially if Apple continues as strong as it is in the marketplace.
Daniel Newman: I can tell you as someone that’s used the S9, the Note 8, and I believe the Note 9 event’s coming out. That’s gonna be coming out very soon. Those devices are absolute class. Now, having a family with an Apple ecosystem, they definitely suck you in and make it hard to leave, but I’m a multi-device user. And I don’t think they’re lacking innovation, Fred. I just don’t think that’s it. But I think you did touch on it. Olivier, when the performance is pretty good, the company makes 11 billion dollars, they show really great earnings, but have maybe one product fall a little bit short and then the street just absolutely thrashes them. What’s with this? I mean, it feels like a little bit thematic, but are we just like … Is the future of tech podcast uncovering an unknown trend that stocks aren’t really based upon numbers, but maybe sometimes they’re just purely based upon emotion?
Olivier Blanchard: Yeah, you should see my shocked face right now. Uh yeah. No. So much of this stuff … It’s just stocks are like phones in a way. So we’ll go full meta-circle with that one. A lot of it is guided by emotion, not so much … People don’t necessarily look at specs with phones. They don’t necessarily really get into the weeds of … Or the average investor doesn’t get into the weeds of a company’s performance and doesn’t … Especially for tech companies, doesn’t really know what’s on the horizon and how they might be falling behind and how they might be either gaining or losing traction. They’re just basically looking at numbers and getting a feel for how everybody around them tells them to feel. Including the companies in question. So, yes, absolutely, all of this is very, very much based on emotion more so than logic. And it’s counter intuitive because we think that it’s financial, it’s stocks, and people are rational. No, people are absolutely not rational. A lot of this is conformation bias.
Fred McClimans: Olivier, I agree with you there. I think there’s also, though, a bit of a component of what Dan referenced, sort of that family tie-in. There is a very strong ecosystem around Apple and right now, the marketplace for mobile phones, it’s pretty saturated. It’s been kind of full for a while. And when you start looking at that, you start to think in a saturated market, who survives or who thrives here? The company that has a stronger ecosystem and a stronger lock-in, they have a better mote around their company, around the stock price.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, you guys make some great points. And, of course, sometimes tech just bites. And Samsung, the industry, the analysts, the reviews, I think their products are stronger than their brand affinity. So this actually goes to show the polarity when you have two companies like an Apple and a Samsung. One that’s kind of loved by markets and one that’s kind of loathed by markets a little bit. And Samsung’s definitely come a long way and I would say they are worldwide. In certain markets they absolutely kick the snot out of Apple. But when it comes to brand affinity. You know, as tech guys I want it to be logical. As a numbers guy I want it to make sense, but sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.
And so I wanna have a quick two-part, crystal ball session here at the end for you guys. Staying with the theme of mobile. Staying with the theme of Apple. Apple hit a trillion dollars. First question for you guys, in the next how many days before that bubble bursts? How long will they stay above a trillion in your eyes? And how long will they continue to see growth like they’ve been seeing? Fred, kick me off.
Fred McClimans: You got it. So yeah. I’m one of those people that doesn’t necessarily believe it’s a bubble as big as people think. That said, this trillion dollar mark is in part driven by the number of shares that Apple continues to repurchase. The more shares they repurpose, or repurchase, the harder it is. The higher the stock price needs to be to get there. I don’t think they’ll stick above a trillion. They could drop down next week. But I don’t see them dropping significantly in any time of pull-back unless they have a really bad quarter coming up. And right now, you got the guidance is the next quarter should be good.
Daniel Newman: Yeah, and I think even if they miss, they don’t miss by enough that the street punishes them like they do other companies.
Fred McClimans: No.
Daniel Newman: Olivier, what’s your take on the bubble?
Olivier Blanchard: Yeah, I don’t think the bubble will burst any time soon. I think, yeah, like Fred said, if it kinda goes up and down and hovers near and about one trillion, that’s probably gonna be … The stock’s gonna go up and down. But things to look out for, I think, in the next six to twelve months in terms of something that could negatively affect Apple. One, is if people are disappointed by what comes next for the iPhone, so we’ll know a little bit more in a few months. But also, there’s a lot of litigation going on around the world. Some patents-related litigation in China. In Germany with the ITC. And some of those cases are going to start maturing and coming to the forefront of our news in the next six months. And I’d be looking for that because there are chances that Apple could see iPhones either bands, or iPhone sales rather, could be banned in certain big markets like the United States, Germany, and China. And even there’s the possibility that iPhones could, at least temporarily, no longer be manufactured in China if Apple loses some of these cases. So stay tuned. We’ll probably be talking about that some more-
Fred McClimans: You know, gentlemen, just looking at the ticket right now, Apple is not at 999.94 billion.
Daniel Newman: Oh man, so they fell during our show. It’s not a live show. So I can’t take credit, but this is recorded and put out a few hours after we’re … You know, I got one comment. If you are interested in what Olivier was just talking about with the future research has actually been very, very involved in covering the global litigations specifically related to Apple and QualCom. So we have some insights out there that kind of talk about the innovator and the implementer. And really they are a marriage made in heaven, but right now it’s in a fiery ball of you know where because the two companies are not getting along. So instead of innovating together, they’re innovating in opposing forces, which could cause, as Olivier said, some really, really big news.
Daniel Newman: Last question. I don’t want … No explanation gents. I just wanna know, next trillion dollar stock. Olivier?
Olivier Blanchard: Oh, no. In the U.S. or worldwide?
Daniel Newman: Next trillion dollar company. Sorry, let’s do that.
Olivier Blanchard: I don’t know. I’m still really bullish on Amazon.
Daniel Newman: Fred?
Fred McClimans: Yeah, I’d have to say Amazon as well.
Daniel Newman: Oh man, you suckers. I’m saying Satya Nadella. Microsoft. I just-
Fred McClimans: Oh yeah.
Daniel Newman: Love that guy. I love everything he’s doing. He’s got that company over 800 billion market cap and I think he’s the next one to go. So that wraps us up for today’s Future of Tech podcast show. Fred, Olivier, thank you so much for joining me, as always. Each and every week bringing you guys the big news from tech. Some tidbits that are interesting. We’re telling you who bites and we’re predicting the future. But of course, we’re not telling you which stocks to pick. So thank you very much for joining and we will see you back here, same place, Future of Tech podcast. We’re out.
Outro: There will be plenty of more tech topics and tech conversations right here on the Futurum Tech podcast. FTP. Hit that subscribe button, join us, become part of our community. We would love to hear from you. Check us out. Futurumresearch.com or the Futurum Tech podcast, Daniel Newman, Fred McClimans, Olivier Blanchard. We’ll see you later.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
