a cura di Morningstar
Gli analisti azionari di Morningstar hanno iniziato la copertura di Snap, la società produttrice dell’applicazione social di video e immagini, Snapchat. Il mercato ha promosso il suo lancio, mentre Morningstar preferisce la prudenza e schierarsi con i contrarian. Gli analisti Morningstar mettono in evidenza i pericoli di un contesto competitivo difficile. Sul futuro di Snap pesa la minaccia di Facebook che, con la sua applicazione Instagram, può essere considerato un perfetto sostituto. Anche il trend in crescita degli investimenti pubblicitari su Internet e mobile rischia di far soffrire a Snap lo strapotere di competitor come Alphabet e ancora una volta Facebook. Dalla sua, però, Snap gode di una clientela molto ben targhetizzata (utenti tra i 18 e i 24 anni) e questo potrebbe farla preferire da chi con la sua pubblicità vuole catturare l’attenzione di quella fascia di popolazione.
Qui di seguito il commento di Ali Mogharabi, Equity Analyst di Morningstar:
“We are initiating coverage of Snap with a no-moat rating and a fair value estimate of $15 per share, or a $21 billion market capitalization based on our estimated share count. Founded in 2011, Snap is the maker of one of the most popular social networking apps, Snapchat, which has captured 158 million users to date, most of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24. We believe that Snap and its users benefit from a network effect among its customer base and is starting to attract the attention (and dollars) of advertisers with a growth trajectory toward $1 billion in revenue. However, there is no guarantee that Snap will effectively monetize these users on a consistent basis. In turn, we are not yet convinced about the firm’s ability to generate excess returns on capital over the next decade.
Snap, which refers to itself as a camera company, is a popular player in the social network space. The firm helps its users communicate with one another mostly by using pictures and videos (to which the firm refers as Snaps) on the Snapchat multimedia app, which is usable only on mobile devices such as smartphones.
Ultimately, Snap’s competition, which includes wide-moat Facebook with nearly 2 billion users, is overwhelming, in our view. In particular, Facebook’s Instagram may emerge as a substitute for Snapchat. The larger ecosystems of Snap’s competitors may have also created somewhat of an exit barrier for their users, which we think could further limit the growth acceleration of Snapchat users. In terms of Snap’s addressable market, while digital ad budgets continue to grow, so does the number of ad inventory providers in the space, and there is no guarantee that a larger portion of new digital ad dollars will flow to Snap. We believe wide moats such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google, which have proven the value of their ad inventories to advertisers over the years and together dominate the market, will probably continue to take more digital ad dollars over time.”