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The case for investing in the video games sector – a pandemic winner with plenty of wind left in its sales

In 2019, market statistics company Statista estimated that the global video games market would…
The post The case for investing in the video games sector – a pandemic winner with plenty of wind left in its sales first appeared on Trading and Investment…

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In 2019, market statistics company Statista estimated that the global video games market would be worth around $160 billion in 2020. That was an already impressive figure resulting from impressive year-on-year growth of between 5% and 15% between 2012 and 2020.

chart

Source: Statista.com

Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck. With millions stuck at home around the world for extended periods, it is no surprise that the gaming industry has proven to be one of the ‘lockdown winners’.

Market intelligence company IDC now says the industry’s actual 2020 revenues came in at $191 billion with almost 3 years of previously forecast growth fast-forwarded. To put that near $200 billion in global revenues in context, the global music industry was worth a comparatively measly $21.6 billion in 2020. Even the home/mobile entertainment industry, which includes streaming services like Netflix, was only worth $68.8 billion.

Investors with exposure to the video games industry have had a good year with the share prices of companies in the sector up significantly. Tokyo-listed Nintendo has seen its value double between March 2020 and now. Video games publisher ElectronicArts is up 65% over the same period.

pandemic boost

Source: The Times

After breakneck industry growth in 2020 and early 2021 has the moment for investing in video games been and gone?

Investors who don’t yet have exposure to the video games industry, either directly through companies like Nintendo and EA which derive all their revenues from the sector or others like Microsoft and Sony who count video gaming revenues as one of several business units, the assumption might be it’s now too late. If anything, might ‘pandemic winners’ not now be in store for a stock market correction as growth rates inevitably fall back?

Video streaming service Netflix, for example, has repeatedly warned investors that pandemic conditions front-loaded new subscribers which will inevitably result in periods of weaker growth to follow. Instead of the pool of potential new Netflix subscribers being spread out over a couple of years, many brought their decision forward.

While that’s generally good because it means additional months of higher subscriber numbers boosting overall revenues, it could lead to a share price correction. Markets have a tendency to over-reward higher than forecast growth rates and then overreact when growth rates slow. Even if that’s exactly what they’ve been told to expect.

The Netflix share price over the past year has seen a level of volatility that reflects how markets have reacted to quarters that have seen a flood of new subscribers due to lockdown restrictions then a slowdown due to the pattern of front-loading.

netflix inc

With lockdown restrictions gradually falling away in many parts of the world and growing optimism the end of the pandemic is now in sight, will the video games sector suffer a similar slide in valuations?

While there might be some short term impact if revenue growth does dip, which it may well, the smart money would be on that proving a temporary blip. And one less likely to be felt to the same extent as in other ‘pandemic winner’ industries.

The gaming industry is different to the video streaming sector in a number of ways. Firstly, margins are much better. Netflix expects an operating margin of around 20% in 2021. Nintendo’s current operating margin is around 30% but held consistently at over 80% between 2012 and 2016.

Nintendo operating margin

margin

Source: MacroTrends.net

Video games maker Activision Blizzard has an operating margin of over 30% and it has been as high as over 60%. The profits on a hit game are hugely attractive and the big publishers all consistently produce blockbusters.

It’s also not as a release-intense industry. Games publishers do have to release big selling games with a degree of regularity but it’s not the same as having to produce a new big-budget TV show or film every other week. Especially challenging with social distancing rules in place as Netflix, their streaming peers and film studios have recently found out to their cost.

Gaming hardware makers, specifically console makers like Nintendo (Switch), Sony (Playsation) and Microsoft (Xbox) are also still developing the lucrative ‘app store’-style business model where they sell new games directly online in digital format with few overheads.

Xbox and Playstation are further ahead of Nintendo, which is only now embracing the model. Having combined its handheld and traditional consoles in the new Switch format, and new hardware releases over the next several years expected to be iterations on the Switch, Nintendo is moving away from the insecurities of hardware cycles to a business model that more resembles Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play.

Stephen Yiu, fund manager of the £695 million Blue Whale growth fund, counts Nintendo as one of his top 10 holdings. The fund also holds Microsoft. While a less direct play on the video games industry than Nintendo, Microsoft’s other units are also doing well and gaming contributes around 9% of the company’s total revenues.

Microsoft is also committed to growing its exposure to the video games industry and recently acquired Fallout and The Elder Scrolls developer ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.

Sony, which generates 27% of its profits from its video games business offers a halfway house between full exposure to the gaming sector like Nintendo and more diluted exposure like Microsoft. And Sony is winning the console wars with the PlayStation4 estimated to have sold over twice as many machines as Microsoft has of its latest Xbox.

Another interesting stock in the video games space is Paris-listed games publisher Ubisoft – Europe’s biggest and behind the Assassin’s Creed series of games. It has a bigger portfolio than many of its U.S. rivals, who often rely on just a few blockbuster franchises. Ubisoft spreads its risk across multiple releases every year.

It’s also one of the few companies in the gaming industry to see its share price fall over the last year – down 12% over the past 12 months. Analysts put the dip down to market uncertainty around Ubisoft’s planned push into free-to-play games that make their money from in-game sales.

Free-to-play games can be the most lucrative of all the industry’s sub-sectors but involve more upfront investment and a greater degree of uncertainty. But if Ubisoft makes even a modest success of the new strategy its valuation could well soar.

UK games creator Team 17, behind the Worms franchise, listed in London in May 2018 and its share price has quadrupled in four years.

One development that could see the valuations of mobile games developers go through the roof is the court case between Apple and Fortnite developer Epic Games. Epic is suing Apple for uncompetitive behaviour after the iPhone maker kicked it out of the App Store for attempting to circumvent its 30% cut of everything spent in apps downloaded from it.

The case concluded early this week and while the verdict is not expected for another several weeks, the judge made several comments that hinted at potential sympathy for Epic’s position. Legal experts who previously didn’t hold a great deal of optimism over Epic’s chances now believe their odds of winning concessions from Apple are slightly better than even.

Even if the judge were to order Apple drop its cut to 25%, 20% or 15%, from its current 30%, any difference would see billions of dollars in new revenue flow directly into the coffers of the games’ makers.

Augmented and virtual reality technologies are also expected to finally break through into mainstream gaming over the next several years, which could also change the picture again in favour of new, additional growth potential.

Esports is another quickly growing sub-sector of the gaming industry. In fact, the industry’s highest growth sub-sector. Whole stadiums are now being sold out to fans who want to watch high-profile Esports tournaments live, with millions also watching online. Prize money for winners is now regularly in the millions of dollars.

The Olympics Virtual Series, licensed by the IOC, even opened earlier this month. Esports gamers will compete across five virtual sporting events including sailing, cycling and rowing and many analysts see it as a pilot event to explore the possibility of one day introducing virtual sports into the summer Olympics.

Even if that sounds far-fetched, an official IOC Esports Olympics would be far less so and has the potential to one day compete with the traditional summer and winter Olympics in the popularity stakes.

The post The case for investing in the video games sector – a pandemic winner with plenty of wind left in its sales first appeared on Trading and Investment News.

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Spread & Containment

Another major retailer cracks down on self-checkout at its stores

The value retailer is discouraging theft at its self-checkout counters by introducing more associate-assisted checkout transactions in its stores.

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Huge retail chains like Walmart  (WMT) , Target  (TGT) , CVS  (CVS) and others have faced a high amount of retail theft, or what they call inventory shrink, since 2020 and have been implementing measures to eliminate those costly losses.

Among the most common measures used by Walmart, Target and some others has been locking up popular items behind glass cases to prevent shoplifting. Customers shopping at these stores have encountered a lot of their favorite products, such as cosmetics, shampoo, over-the-counter drugs and even laundry detergent locked up in those cases.

Related: Target limits self-checkout, makes a change customers will love

Shoppers need to either push a button near the product to alert a worker to unlock the case or, in some situations, run around the store looking for a worker with the proper key to open the case. It's a very inconvenient problem for shoppers, and not all stores are consistent with their lockup policies.

For example, one Walmart store might lock up some of their instant coffee products, while another cross-town Walmart location, or even a Target competitor, doesn't lock up any coffee.

Retail stores have also implemented new self-checkout rules to discourage inventory shrink, but again, stores are inconsistent with their rules. Walmart stores have a 20 items or less rule for their self-checkout lanes to try to steer shoppers with more items to checkout clerks that might help reduce the occurrence of theft. But neither customers, nor workers seem to be observing that rule. Target on March 17 implemented a new 10 items or fewer rule in its self-checkout lanes, but we'll see if anyone enforces it.

These self-checkout requirements are also supposed to speed up the checkout process, but that only works if all the self-check registers are working and an adequate amount of checkout clerks are working registers as well.

The next step for retailers in addressing inventory shrink at self-checkout would be to eliminate self-check altogether.

Shopping in a Five Below store.

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Five Below cuts back on self-checkout lanes 

After finishing the fourth quarter of 2023 with a "higher-than-planned shrink," or higher level of theft than expected in its stores, value retailer Five Below  (FIVE)  has implemented associate-assisted checkout in all of its stores for 2024, CEO Joel Anderson said on the company's earnings call on March 20.

"In addition, in our high-shrink stores, the primary option for checkout is more of the traditional, over-the-counter associate checkout," Anderson said. "We expect to have 75% of our transactions chain-wide assisted by an associate with a goal of 100% in our highest shrink, highest-risk stores to be fully transacted by an associate."

The retailer also checks receipts and adds guards

"Additionally, in those stores, we’re implementing further mitigation efforts, including receipt checking, additional store payroll and guards. We intend to measure progress as soon as Q2 when we perform a limited number of store counts," Anderson said.

Five Below tested several inventory shrink mitigation initiatives late in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter of 2023, which included product-related tests, front-end initiatives and guard programs, Anderson said in the earnings call. He said the most significant change the Philadelphia-based company made across most of the chain was to limit the number of self-checkout registers that were open, while positioning an associate upfront to further assist customers.

Anderson said he is confident the company's measures will help it over time, but the company has not included any financial impact for shrink reduction in its 2024 guidance. The company, however will aggressively pursue returning to pre-pandemic levels of shrink or offsetting the impact over the next few years, he said.

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Government

CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg To Wuhan Resurfaces In China – And Is Collaborating With Military Scientists

CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg To Wuhan Resurfaces In China – And Is Collaborating With Military Scientists

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CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg To Wuhan Resurfaces In China - And Is Collaborating With Military Scientists

A virologist who had a "clandestine relationship" with Chinese agents and was subsequently fired by the Trudeau government has popped back up in China - where she's conducting research with Chinese military scientists and other virology researchers, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where she's allegedly studying antibodies for coronavirus, as well as the deadly Ebola and Niaph viruses, the Globe and Mail reports.

Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada and stripped of their security clearances in July of 2019.

Declassified documents tabled in the House of Commons on Feb. 28 show the couple had provided confidential scientific information to China and posed a credible security threat to the country, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The Globe found that Dr. Qiu’s name appears on four Chinese patent filings since 2020, two with the Wuhan Institute of Virology whose work on bat coronaviruses has placed it at the centre of concerns that it played a role in the spread of COVID-19 – and two with the University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC. The patents relate to antibodies against Nipah virus and work related to nanobodies, including against coronaviruses. -Globe and Mail

Canadian authorities began questioning the pair's loyalty, as well as the potential for coercion or exploitation by a foreign entity, according to more than 600 pages of documents reported by The Counter Signal.

Highlights (via CTVNews.ca):

  • Qiu and Cheng were escorted out of Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory in July 2019 and subsequently fired in January 2021.
  • The pair transferred deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019.
  • The Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessed that Qiu repeatedly lied about the extent of her work with institutions of the Chinese government and refused to admit involvement in various Chinese programs, even when evidence was presented to her.
  • [D]espite being given every opportunity in her interviews to describe her association with Chinese entities, "Ms. Qiu continued to make blanket denials, feign ignorance or tell outright lies."
  • A November 2020 Public Health Agency of Canada report on Qiu says investigators "weighed the adverse information and are in agreement with the CSIS assessment."
  • A Public Health Agency report on Cheng's activities says he allowed restricted visitors to work in laboratories unescorted and on at least two occasions did not prevent the unauthorized removal of laboratory materials.
  • Cheng was not forthcoming about his activities and collaborations with people from government agencies "of another country, namely members of the People's Republic of China."

Following their firings, Qiu returned to China despite it being under a pandemic travel lockdown until January, 2023.

"It’s very likely that she received quite preferential treatment in China on the basis that she’s proven herself. She’s done a very good job for the government of China," said Brendan Walker-Munro, senior research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland Law School. "She’s promoted their interests abroad. She’s returned information that is credibly useful to China and to its ongoing research."

More via the Globe and Mail;

Documents reviewed by The Globe show that Dr. Qiu is most closely aligned with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei. In March, 2023, a document posted by a Chinese pharmaceutical company listed Dr. Qiu as second amongst “major completion personnel” on a project awarded by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association for study related to an anti-Ebola virus therapeutic antibody. Most of the other completion personnel were associated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

USTC was founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and initially established to build up Chinese scientific expertise useful to the military, which at the time was pursuing technology to build satellites, intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic bombs. The university has continued to maintain close military ties.

The document says Dr. Qiu works for USTC. Jin Tengchuan, the principal investigator at the Laboratory of Structural Immunology at USTC, lists her as a co-inventor on a patent. Mr. Jin did not respond to requests for comment.

A person who answered the phone at USTC told The Globe, “I don’t have any information about this teacher.”

In 2012, USTC signed a strategic co-operation agreement with the Army Engineering University of the People’s Liberation Army, designed to strengthen research on cutting-edge technology useful for communications, weaponry and other national-defence priorities.

Dr. Qiu is also listed as a 2019 doctoral supervisor for students studying virology at Hebei Medical University.

Well, that makes me wonder what circumstances she was under when she emigrated to Canada. Why did she come?” asked Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of medicine who has worked extensively in China in the past. “People leave for more freedom from China, or to make more money. But China keeps tabs on most people so I am not sure if she came over to infiltrate or whether she came and the infiltration happened later through contact with China.”

It may be impossible to answer that question. Three former colleagues at the National Microbiolgy Lab have indicated that Dr. Qiu and her husband were diligent and pleasant to deal with, but largely kept to themselves outside of work. They say Dr. Qiu was a brilliant scientist with a strong work ethic, although her English was weak. The Globe is not identifying the three who did not want to be named.

Dr. Qiu is a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She started at the University of Manitoba, but began working at the national lab as a research scientist in 2006, working her way up to become head of the vaccine development and antiviral therapies section in the National Microbiology Laboratory’s special pathogens program.

She was also part of the team that helped develop ZMapp, a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016.

“My sense is this was part of a larger strategy by China to get access to our innovation system,” said Filippa Lentzos, an associate professor of science and international security at King’s College London. “It was a way for them to to find out what was going on in Canada’s premier lab.”

Initially trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Qiu graduated in 1985 from Hebei University in the coastal city of Tianjin, which lies southeast of Beijing. Dr. Qiu went on to obtain her master of science degree in immunology at Tianjin Medical University in 1990.

Her career at Canada’s top infectious disease lab in Winnipeg began in 2003, only four years after Ottawa opened this biosafety level 4 facility at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health.

Over time, she built up a reputation for academic collaboration, particularly with China. It was welcomed by management who felt her work was helping build a name internationally for the National Microbiology Lab.

By the time Canadian officials intervened in 2018 and began investigating, documents show, Dr. Qiu was running 44 separate projects at the Winnipeg lab, an uncommonly large workload.

Her work with former colleague and microbiologist Gary Kobinger vaulted Dr. Qiu into the international spotlight. The pair developed a treatment for Ebola, one that in its first human application led to the full recovery of 27 patients with the infection during a 2014 outbreak in Liberia.

Mr. Kobinger’s career continued to soar and he is now director of the Galveston National Laboratory, a renowned biosafety level 4 facility in Texas. In 2022, he told The Globe that it was “heartbreaking” to see what had happened to his colleague. He declined to speak for this article.

“She had lost a lot of weight with all the stress. She was so convinced that this was all a misunderstanding … and she would go back to her job,” he said in 2022. “ Her career has been destroyed with all this. She was one of the top female Canadian scientists of virology and Canada has lost that.”

Over a period of 13 months, though, the Chinese-Canadian microbiologist and her biologist husband’s lives were turned upside down.

She went from being feted at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall with a Governor-General’s Award in May, 2018, to being locked out of the Winnipeg lab in July, 2019 – the high-security facility where she had made her name as a scientist in Canada. By January, 2021, she and Mr. Cheng were fired.

Last month, after being pressed into explaining what happened, the Canadian government finally disclosed the reasons for this extraordinary dismissal: CSIS found the pair had lied about and hid their co-operation with China from Ottawa.

A big question remains following their departure: Why would Dr. Qiu risk her career, including the stature associated with developing an Ebola treatment, for China?

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/21/2024 - 18:40

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International

You can now enter this country without a passport

Singapore has been on a larger push to speed up the flow of tourists with digital immigration clearance.

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In the fall of 2023, the city-state of Singapore announced that it was working on end-to-end biometrics that would allow travelers passing through its Changi Airport to check into flights, drop off bags and even leave and exit the country without a passport.

The latter is the most technologically advanced step of them all because not all countries issue passports with the same biometrics while immigration laws leave fewer room for mistakes about who enters the country.

Related: A country just went visa-free for visitors with any passport

That said, Singapore is one step closer to instituting passport-free travel by testing it at its land border with Malaysia. The two countries have two border checkpoints, Woodlands and Tuas, and as of March 20 those entering in Singapore by car are able to show a QR code that they generate through the government’s MyICA app instead of the passport.

A photograph captures Singapore's Tuas land border with Malaysia.

Here is who is now able to enter Singapore passport-free

The latter will be available to citizens of Singapore, permanent residents and tourists who have already entered the country once with their current passport. The government app pulls data from one's passport and shows the border officer the conditions of one's entry clearance already recorded in the system.

More Travel:

While not truly passport-free since tourists still need to link a valid passport to an online system, the move is the first step in Singapore's larger push to get rid of physical passports.

"The QR code initiative allows travellers to enjoy a faster and more convenient experience, with estimated time savings of around 20 seconds for cars with four travellers, to approximately one minute for cars with 10 travellers," Singapore's Immigration and Checkpoints Authority wrote in a press release announcing the new feature. "Overall waiting time can be reduced by more than 30% if most car travellers use QR code for clearance."

More countries are looking at passport-free travel but it will take years to implement

The land crossings between Singapore and Malaysia can get very busy — government numbers show that a new post-pandemic record of 495,000 people crossed Woodlands and Tuas on the weekend of March 8 (the day before Singapore's holiday weekend.)

Even once Singapore implements fully digital clearance at all of its crossings, the change will in no way affect immigration rules since it's only a way of transferring the status afforded by one's nationality into a digital system (those who need a visa to enter Singapore will still need to apply for one at a consulate before the trip.) More countries are in the process of moving toward similar systems but due to the varying availability of necessary technology and the types of passports issued by different countries, the prospect of agent-free crossings is still many years away.

In the U.S., Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was chosen to take part in a pilot program in which low-risk travelers with TSA PreCheck can check into their flight and pass security on domestic flights without showing ID. The UK has also been testing similar digital crossings for British and EU citizens but no similar push for international travelers is currently being planned in the U.S.

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