Thoughts on the Market: April Edition

Markets fell sharply in April. There’s a lot to cover… Read on! 

Written by Jamie Murray, CFA 

We wrote in the past about the 2000 technology bubble and the similarities and differences between today’s companies and the tech giants of 2000. To summarize, many companies caught in the 2000 bubble, such as Cisco (or Nortel) and Oracle, were reliant on high value one-time sales. These firms sold an abundance of technology products or software into the Y2K/fibre networking/ internet revolution, only to see demand exhaust itself and product sales decline. Both Cisco and Oracle’s sales were 16% lower in 2003 than they had been in 2001. Even Yahoo, whose model focused on advertising more akin to Alphabet or Facebook, experienced a fall in revenue of 44% in 2001. Yahoo had traded at a $120 billion dollar valuation near its peak (120x revenue). For comparison purposes, Cisco and Oracle traded around 22x and 17x revenue. Today, those numbers are 4x and 6x, respectively.  Read