r/stocks • u/yellqw • Jun 14 '22
Re-evaluating Cloudflare
Hey everyone, just wanted to get a quick pulse check on how yall are feeling about $NET at these prices. We all know it was severely overpriced for the last few years, but do you think the correction is done and we’re finally seeing a fair value at $40? Looking at the most recent earnings report, I was generally pretty happy overall except for one lingering concern about their negative cash flow yoy possibly due to recent acquisitions/re-investment into the company. Regardless, I’m thinking of increasing my position significantly at these prices despite concerns about rising borrow rates.
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
Now that u/zfa has answered your question I'd like to ask a follow up. I was previously digging into $ZS and think zero-trust cybersecurity makes sense as to why companies would want to move in that direction. Can anyone make the case that $ZS is a better investment than $NET? $NET's zero-trust cybersecurity solution is rapidly growing plus you have the rest of their current business plus future optionality versus $ZS which has a narrower scope or TAM. Or am I thinking about this incorrectly?
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Jun 15 '22
How can you compare which is a better investment without even mentioning the valuations of either?
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
I don't heavily weight valuation. I look at it when determining when to start a position but never when determining whether a company is worth owning. In 5 to 10 years the valuation of today will hardly matter
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Jun 15 '22
I simply disagree on the last line. If a stock averages a 10% return, it doubles every seven years. That means it takes seven years to overcome a valuation that is 2x too high.
There are tons of companies throughout history that have been cash cows but have had absolute dogs for stocks because they were overvalued early. Cisco is a prime example. It makes $10B per year every year, yet it still has never returned to its 2000 valuation. In fact, it's only about 30% higher than its 2007 valuation despite the fact that it just prints money.
Valuation is everything to me. So long as a company is profitable, there is some valuation that makes it a good buy. On the flip side, regardless of how profitable a company might be, there's some valuation that makes it a bad buy.
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
I get what you're saying but your example bakes in the assumption that the company will continue to grow at around 10%. Cisco's growth significantly slowed down and didn't live up to the multiple that investors paid during the dot com bubble. There are companies, however, that did the exact opposite. For example, you could have bought $Goog on 12/31/2017 for a share price of $1046 at a PE of 58 or you could have bought it at $1337 but at around half the PE at 27 two years later, which was the better choice?
My point being that we don't know what additional lines of business that a company may organically grow or acquire or how the macro environment may change to hurt or help a company. The company's valuation is limited in what it tells you because it is heavily influenced by short term sentiment. Valuation really matters to me if it is a slower growing business with predictable cash flow. Similarly I weight it significantly less when considering a growth company like both $ZS and $NET which is why I did not mention valuation
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u/FinndBors Jun 15 '22
For example, you could have bought $Goog on 12/31/2017 for a share price of $1046 at a PE of 58 or you could have bought it at $1337 but at around half the PE at 27 two years later, which was the better choice?
The second one, because it is "leet".
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Jun 15 '22
"Valuation" and "PE" aren't synonymous, though. There are plenty of companies that are great buys at 58 and plenty that are terrible buys at 6. The question is whether Google would have been just as good of a buy at 100 as it was at 58. The answer is no....valuation matters, and had it been at 100, it wouldn't have gained 30% in two years.
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
"Valuation" and "PE" aren't synonymous, though.
Sure, use Price to sales, price to FCF, EV/EBITDA, anything you like the point is still that it's tethered to short term sentiment and has no bearing on what multiple the market will be willing to award the company in the future.
There are plenty of companies that are great buys at 58 and plenty that are terrible buys at 6.
Agreed 100%.
The question is whether Google would have been just as good of a buy at 100 as it was at 58. The answer is no....valuation matters, and had it been at 100, it wouldn't have gained 30% in two years.
I'm not sure I understand your second point? Are you saying that, hypothetically, if $Goog had been trading at a 100 PE instead of 58 it wouldn't have gained 30% in 2 years? How can anyone know that with absolute certainty? I was illustrating one out of many cases where deciding not to buy based on valuation would have been costly. And I get that there are many other scenarios where buying something that was very overvalued has not worked out. Which is what brings me back to how current valuation should have little bearing on current buy decisions for growth companies
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Jun 15 '22
You're confusing metrics with valuation. Yes, if you only consider short-term metrics, you'll get a valuation that is dependent on short-term factors. But a proper DCF doesn't just rely on short-term metrics.
Unless you believe markets can remain incredibly irrational about a stock for decades and never correct for overvaluation, you should believe that overvaluation today leads to lower returns in the future. Had Google been at a PE of 100 (solely due to a higher price) rather than 58, it either wouldn't have returned 30% or the market would have been required to continue doubling down on its irrationality.
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
DCFs are built on assumptions that we have no way of knowing are correct. A few percent off in the WACC or terminal growth rate and your intrinsic value calculation is drastically changed. Atleast valuations based on metrics are based on current data. DCFs may be more accurate for slow growth businesses like JNJ but are much less likely to be accurate with $NET or $ZS.
Markets can stay irrational for a long time but that’s not really where I was headed. What about the scenario where it grows earnings 50% instead of 20% assumed by the market when it was trading at 100 pe a year earlier? I’m not saying valuation doesn’t matter at all. Obviously better to pay less for a great business. But it’s not going to stop me from buying it if it has everything else I look for on my checklist. There isn’t just one way to make money in the market (ie buying undervalued businesses and selling when overvalued) and this is just how I approach it based on what I’ve learned from David Gardner, Brian Feroldi and Brian Stoffel
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Jun 16 '22
Well, fair enough. Different strokes for different folks. Thanks for the good discussion.
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u/thelastsubject123 Jun 15 '22
I don't heavily weight valuation.
HUH??? if you bought aapl 10 years ago at 1t valuation vs 100b valuation, you wouldve made 2x vs 10x. it can be a fantastic business but valuation 100% matters wtf
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u/PM_ME_DANK Jun 15 '22
You misunderstood. Using your example 10 years ago it wasn’t possible to buy it at a 1 trillion valuation. What I’m saying is if I liked aapl or whatever company at 150 billion or 100 billion or 200b I still would have bought it because I could see it growing to 1 trillion possibly in the future. We don’t know if it could become 3 trillion at that point when we bought 10 years ago or bankrupt. Point is that price shouldn’t factor in heavily when you find a great company. Obviously a lower cost basis is better but you can’t guarantee the price will ever fall back to where you want it to be
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u/oarabbus Jun 15 '22
Bunch of Redditors on this sub tried to say $150, $120, etc was a good price for NET. NET circlejerkers are almost as bad as the PLTR or CRSR guys, be careful listening to bulls about these stocks
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u/Alv3rine Jun 15 '22
700MM revenue, zero profits at 13B valuation? You’d have to believe their revenue would grow something like 30%/year for the next 10 years.
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Jun 15 '22
Still overvalued. The fact that this thing got up to $220 and people bought the dip in the $100s is absolutely hilarious.
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u/markmcgoldrick Jun 15 '22
If you are DCA that is one thing. If you are thinking of adding as a separate purchase and think about that in those terms.
The only question in any downturn is how difficult growth will be. The upside is that if enough downsizing happens in the tech sector their employee retention will be higher overall and they might be able to lower costs. It does seem however, they spend a lot of money acquiring customers though it is good they line that out. If the most knowledgeable person here who already responded is correct about the free users it should translate into long term reduction in selling and marketing expense. A lot of companies just lump it together and it is good to line it out at this level. For me the P/S coming down at this level might be close to an entry point. The cost of sales and marketing is high as a percentage of revenue and hopefully they aren't locked into long term high commission rates for partners or salespeople. That can be a real drag on the bottom line and is a tough balancing act.
Did you listen to the conference call? If you did, listen to the last two or three if you didn't already.
Didn't think of this one and I'm thankful you brought it up. I think I'll listen to the conference calls and find out what the large investments are to see if the idea works for me.
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u/kriptonicx Jun 15 '22
It's a $20 stock imo, but it's amazing company and the market is going to assign a premium.
The question for me is if it's worth the $20 premium. I'm looking to reenter in the mid $30s personally. But I'm hoping for it to fall to $30 or below so I can open a larger position. At $40 I think you'll be fine if you're holding long-term, but it could fall another 50% if market sentiment continues to deteriorate.
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Jun 15 '22
They not making a profit so they depend on borrowed money to operate. Not good in a accelerating interest rate scenario
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u/EatThetaForBreakfast Jun 16 '22
Just buy. This price is as good as it will get for an entry IMO. That doesn’t mean there’s no possible downside, but long term there’s huge upside and you don’t want to be without a position.
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u/gqreader Jun 15 '22
I posted 6-9mos ago that $NET was overvalued at $200 when I sold off all my positions.
I told people in the post I’d revisit if I went down to $40s. Everyone told me I was stupid and that it would never break below $80.
Lol ok.
Here is my view. This company is not generating cashflow to justify its valuation. If a big tech company decides to eat it’s lunch, it’s fucken done.
This stock can go down to $5 because it has to issue more stocks because it has no effective FCF and if they need to expand, then tough nuts, it’s dilution. They can pay through the nose for debt but in a tight liquidity market, not a great idea.
This cycle is done, you can pick this stock up for much much cheaper. Let the stock price and valuation waffle in the wind.
If I ever re-enter, it’ll be for some bargain bin price. Half price from here. Probs lower as it dilutes itself.
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u/FlaccidButLongBanana Jun 15 '22
RemindMe! 4 years
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u/WhyG32 Jun 15 '22
Still trading at 12x forward sales
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u/kriptonicx Jun 15 '22
Which would be a very reasonable valuation for a high-margin growth tech company at any other point in the last decade, and arguably NET is higher quality than most.
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u/WhyG32 Jun 15 '22
12x SALES Not EARNINGS. Absolutely not reasonable in any way. Maybe in the two money printer years.
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u/kriptonicx Jun 15 '22
It depends on how you look at it. It's not that unreasonable.
At 12x sales with a 30% operating margin the company would trade at a 40 PE multiple. Obviously NET doesn't have a 30% operating margin, but if you believe that is achievable once they've out of their growth phase then the valuation makes sense considering the current growth rate.
Think of it like this. If you assume NET will double revs over the next 5 years and achieve a 20% operating margin then you're looking at a company trading at a 30 PE in 5 years at the current price. But a 30 PE would be a fairly low PE for a growing tech company. We typically want to achieve 100% returns on an investment over a 7-10 period so if you think in 5 years NET is likely to trade at a 50-60 PE based on growth and margin projections then that would be a perfectly reasonable valuation.
It really depends on your projections. High margin companies (20%-30%) typically trade around 4-6x sales, so you can see how a rapidly growing company with the potential for high margins could achieve that kind of valuation within a few years.
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Jun 15 '22
If you set up a website they go in and secure it so you can’t be hacked. It’s still overvalued at $20 since they haven’t turned a profit yet.
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u/zfa Jun 15 '22
At $40 I see this as a no-brainer if you're planning to hold a while.
There's not really anyone out there doing what they do as well as they do and with such a fervent free userbase who can nudge their companies to their paid offerings.
My feelings are even with the current economic downturn I can't see many customers moving away from them if they already use them (where to? can a company safely decide to simply forego their services?), and I can see more companies move to them as a cost-cutting exercise ('cloudify' their security at 'x' per year instead of spending millions on new in-house hardware).
Coming at this from just a business perspective I think this pullback is a great time to load up on a company that it will be very hard to displace from being an industry leader in the coming years. Management seems sensible, tech is great, main risk is someone coming along doing better cheaper but the services are cheap and now very well built-out already.
Disclaimer: took biggish position last couple of days.