NexOptic Technology Corp (TSXV: NXO)
You’ll Never See The World The Same Way Again
On July 8, Airbnb (AIRB) guests booked more than 1 million nights’ worth of future stays around the world, the first time the 1M threshold was crossed since the pandemic hit in March.
Half of the bookings were to locations within 300 miles of the renter and two-thirds were within 500 miles, suggesting that travelers aren’t willing to go too far as coronavirus cases continue to spike.
Two-thirds of the bookings were outside of cities.
Earlier this year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said he expected Airbnb’s 2020 revenue to come in at half of 2019’s figure
Chesky recently told Axios he doesn’t think travel will go back to the way it was before the pandemic. He also predicted travelers would stay closer to home in the near future.
Citing the underappreciated NAND business, Bernstein starts Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) with an Outperform rating and $60 price target.
Analyst Mark Newman sees fears of an “aggressive expansion” in the NAND market as “overdone.”
Newman notes that the roughly $4.4B valuation for the NAND business implied by WDC’s share price is only a quarter of comparable transactions.
The analyst also sees Western Digital’s broad diversification helping shares achieve long-term outperformance.
Western Digital shares are up 0.3% after hours to $42.18. The company has a Bullish average Wall St. Analysts rating.
Google (GOOG -0.5%, GOOGL -0.3%) is favoring video links to its own YouTube site over nearly identical clips in other locations, The Wall Street Journal says – alleging a secret advantage in a high-stakes battle for eyeballs in the growing world of online video.
The WSJ ran automated search tests for popular videos that were cross-posted in nearly identical versions to various video sites, and found the YouTube version featured much more prominently than versions on sites like Facebook (FB -0.5%).
In particular, the report examined the “carousel,” a side-scrolling set of results usually placed in prime real estate atop search pages, and found YouTube results were the first carousel result more than 82% of the time (vs. Dailymotion, Twitch and Facebook Watch).
“All else being equal, YouTube will be first,” a source tells WSJ.
The report comes alongside ongoing scrutiny of Google search by regulators examining whether Google is suppressing competition. (It also comes amid an ongoing dispute between WSJ parent News Corp. (NWS +2.8%, NWSA +3.3%) and Google over roles in journalism, and how it’s paid for in the new digital era.)
Shopify (SHOP -1.4%) rival BigCommerce (BIGC) files to go public on the Nasdaq under the “BIGC” ticker.
The filing lists the raise at the $100M instead of $500M common placeholder amount, which means the IPO will likely fall in the lower part of the nine-figure range.
In 2019, BigCommerce brought in $112.1M in revenue (+22% Y/Y) with a GAAP net loss of $42.6M. In Q1 2020, revenue totaled $33.2M (compared to $25.6M in Q1 2019) with a $4M net loss (last year: $10.5M.)
Adjusted EBITDA improved from -$5.7M in Q1 2019 to -$5.7M in this year’s quarter.
Long-term debt, including its current portion, stood at $71.7M at the end of Q1.
Google (GOOG -1%, GOOGL -1%) is eyeing an entry into food delivery service in India, according to business channel ET Now.
The tech giant would handle the search and transaction directly on Google.com, with third parties like Google-backed Dunzo performing actual last-mile deliveries, according to the report on ET Now’s Startup Central.
That’s coinciding with a drop in Uber (NYSE:UBER), now down 3.5% on the day. The ride-share giant recently confirmed a deal to acquire Postmates for $2.65B.
Dunzo may not be the exclusive delivery partner, as others could be integrated into an API.
The market in India is already occupied by players including market leader Swiggy, Zomato and Amazon.com (AMZN -2.1%).
