Podcasts about Q1

在之前的節目中，我們談過台灣股市狂飆又暴跌的年代、還有1997年亞洲金融風暴。到了2008年，金融海嘯襲擊全球，這場由美國次級房貸問題而衍生的金融風暴，造成全球資產價值崩跌，房地產市場、債券市場及股票市場連續重挫，世界各地都傳出慘重的災情，從股市崩盤、信貸危機、到通貨緊縮、失業率攀升，連冰島也從人均GDP 63,000 美元的幸福國度，瞬間淪為破產邊緣的失敗國家，全球一起捲入蕭條的漩渦，台灣也無法置身事外。 當年台股最高到最低點跌幅達60%，經濟成長率從2008 Q1的正7.66%跌到2009 Q1的負7.88%，台幣也貶了17%之多。 這集節目，與我們連線的是新光銀行副董事長李紀珠，2008年她是金管會副主委，在金融海嘯這個議題上有最直接的親身經歷。她將以金融監理單位的視野，來為大家回顧2008年金融海嘯發生的背景因素，以及台灣的因應措施。 美國的房產泡沫，為什麼最後竟演變成全世界的金融海嘯？台灣當時的財政、股市受到什麼衝擊？政府推動「存款全額保險」為什麼能減緩震盪，將損害減到最低？我們從這場金融海嘯，得到什麼啟示，在快速變化的世局中如何面對各種挑戰？ 此外，野村證券今年六月底的時候發表風險預警模型，警示美國、德國、日本、荷蘭、台灣及瑞典等6個經濟體在未來3年內可能出現金融危機，央行回應則認為「台灣總體經濟及金融部門健全發展，應無發生金融危機之虞」。雙方之間著眼點為何不同？而在中美貿易戰的夾擊之下，台灣的金融體系又面臨什麼樣的挑戰？我們可以從過去的金融風暴經驗中得到什麼啟示呢？ 主持人：涂豐恩 與談者：新光銀行副董事長、前金管會副主委 李紀珠 ＊訂閱進步的軌跡電子報：https://forms.gle/mQJd9Ki2y8HfUNty6 ＊2000s回憶徵件｜填表單，我們替你說故事：https://forms.gle/oxdj4gGnPBdunTTf7 ＊留言信箱：bill@cw.com.tw ＊天下40網站：40.cw.com.tw ＊好好說那年歌單：http://bit.ly/3rP3uHZ

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT It's now been five years since Stratacache acquired the CMS software company Scala, which had kind of devolved from the digital signage industry's dominant player to just one of many options. When Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel did the deal, there were lots of people wondering what might happen. Was he buying the company for its customer base and vast reseller channel, or did he have other plans. In short order, he jokingly made up Trump-style red ball caps that said: "Make Scala Great Again." Five years later, Scala is a wildly different company and product - with a much smaller reseller channel and an integrated, retail-centric platform that has largely been re-written and re-structured. Riegel has been a frequent guest of this podcast, and that's because he's wickedly smart, and frank about what's going on in the industry. We talk about the five-year journey he's had with a renewed Scala, but also got deep into what's happening in the marketplace globally. And we nerd out on the microLED factory he's spinning up in Oregon, and when it will start producing both small and large format display material. As always, a valuable, insight-filled 30 minutes or so. Side note - Chris was coughing up a storm during the chat, but he says he's fully vaxxed and it's not THAT. Just a bug and allergies. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Mr. Riegel, thank you for joining me.  Chris Riegel: Thank you for the opportunity.  So about five years ago now, you bought Scala and at the time there were lots of industry people who were looking at that going, okay, what's going to happen now? Is it going to be absorbed by Stratacache? Is it going to accelerate or what's going to happen? And you sent me a note the other day, saying, “Hey, we're coming up on five years. It's an interesting story to tell.” So what's the story?  Chris Riegel: Yeah, it's been a hell of a ride. Probably the best way to say it. So five years ago we decided, there's something here in Scala and something absolutely worth growing and saving. When we stepped into the acquisition, Scala was arguably one of the I think top brands from visibility and great legacy, great history, but had atrophied, to be honest, so we saw what was truly a global footprint and its Scala was really one of the first in the market that had grown out of a global entity and it was a good acquisition for us to be able to buy that asset, bolt the power that we have in the North American markets and in the Indian markets to that Scala infrastructure in Europe, in the Nordics, in the Middle East, in Japan and Australia, and really convert that Scala was the entity that allowed Stratacache to convert from being a pocketed global, to a fully global entity, and now really hitting every country around the world, but principally, 28 offices around the world being able to service those global customers and Scala gave us that global reach.  Now that was not without some interesting challenges and some interesting discoveries during the path. So it's been quite a ride.  Yeah. I can remember going to InfoComm back in the late 2000s, I think it was 2007 or something like that, and yeah, Scala was the company in digital signage in terms of visibility and everything on the floor, like they were the monster, and I just slowly over a matter of the next five, six years saw it, as you say, diminished.  Chris Riegel: And what you have in Scala, and what is amazing about Scala is that there is such tribal knowledge and such capability towards digital visual communication and optimizing that experience for the customer. It's really this amazing retail practice with a skillset I've never seen matched throughout.  What we did in coming in was really update that, bring that more modern, more current. In some examples, Scala was always principally a Windows platform. Windows is not the same thing it was 20 years ago, so we brought Scala into Linux. We brought Scala from x86 processors into the ARM processor world. We've updated big chunks of the code to modernize and refresh, and then updated a lot of the technical teams within to say, “what do you do for the next 20 years?” And coming in as a change agent, what I saw was the equivalent of the old house with great bones, but needed to be updated and refreshed. Some of that was tech, some of that was people, but to say, what do you do to stabilize and turn around this business and make it valid for the next 20 or 30 years looking forward? There was too much looking back and too much resting on the laurels. And we're very much about challenging and growing people in technical teams, and how do you make that better and really tackle that problem every day. The beauty and the horror of technology is that yesterday means nothing for tomorrow. You have to go out and hit every single day, focus on where is that market going, how are you evolving that experience? Because the market doesn't stand still.  One of the things about Scala at the time was, as we were saying, it was a platform that was getting some hair on it, so to speak, and what you had though, was this huge reseller channel, or just like resellers all around the world and you re-positioned things, where you went away somewhat from channels to much more direct sales?  Chris Riegel: I'd counter that a bit. What Scala had when we did the acquisition, Scala had about 300 resellers around the world. Of those 300, 200 of them or companies that did $5,000 or $10,000 a year, negligible revenue. What we've done, we continue to have within Scala, a full reseller channel that has grown significantly. What we've done is really focused that to say, “I want fewer and better resellers in that environment.” The crown jewel of Scala is, you have 16,000 customers around the globe as an existing life customer base and some of those customers, you take Citibank as an example, Citibank should not be buying products from Dave's AV Barn in Baltimore, because they have requirements that are much more stringent and much more tiered towards needing direct manufacturer support.  So in that environment, we've continued to grow that channel. You've seen partnerships like Hakuhodo with Scala and others on the global side. You'll see later this year, two other big announcements of reseller partnerships. So what we've really done is said, it doesn't make sense to have 300+ resellers that you're just a line item on the card. The other part to that is with 300 resellers, you'd see a deal that pops up in Italy and you'd have 10 guys racing each other to the bottom. For us and resellers, the key point is that we want them to be profitable. We want them to have success in having that success, and I'll use Latin America as an example. In Latin America, when we acquired Scala, there was a channel, but it was just a doggy dog environment. The guys were trying to win deals based on pennies. We cleaned that channel up, went from 50 to really 5-6, and deployed a Scala operation center in Mexico city to be able to support the entire region, then work with the partners to bring profitable deals to them and recurring profitable deals so that they have a vested interest. There are hundreds of guys in the CMS space with very little differentiation, and I'll use an example. One of the partners that we work with in Brazil said, “Hey, I can get a 35% margin on your competitor's product”, and I said, “That's great. What are you selling that product at?” “Oh, $1 a month.” “So 35% of that?” You can't run a business on that. How do you do profitable deals and make sure that channels are profitable and clean that up quickly?  Is it a challenge when you go around the world with all these different options out there and all these companies going out with, as you say, a buck a month SaaS licensing deals, they'll look at Scala and, I don't know what the number is, but it's going to be higher and they'll say you're too expensive? Chris Riegel: Quite candidly in those environments, the customers are willing to pay a dollar a month for SaaS and nothing more. There's no revenue there, and I would applaud my valued competitors. We call the gangsters of Gangnam and try to just liquidate the value of software industry-wide, but there is a difference in when you get into the mid-tier and the large-tier enterprise space that we hunt. If you want to pay a buck, go buy somebody else's product. There's no value there. You can't afford to support it, can't afford to provide services on it, and you're going to get exactly what you deserve. It's funny to watch in these dollar SaaS guys, customers that literally change every year. They'll just go from vendor A to vendor B to vendor C to vendor D, there's no consistency of experience. There's no feature set there and okay, knock yourselves out, but there's no margin and if there's no margin, why take the headache?  So your lead company, Stratacache tends to focus on banking and QSR more than anything else. Do you get into retail or when that opportunity comes along, you're going to tend to angle the prospect towards Scala?  Chris Riegel: It depends on the environment. What we have done within Scala is really built a group of people globally that have what I'd call agency-level chops within that retail space.  So we've got designers, graphic artists. We've got retail practice experts that can go in and really engage a retailer from the Scala's side and help them with the mission of what do you want to do? What are you trying to accomplish? Not how do I put the screen on the wall at the lowest possible price? That's really further evolved into analytics, into artificial intelligence, where we're able to say, when I take Scala as an example and bolt that to our walk base mobile sensor business when I bolt that to our Artificial intelligence retail tracking business.  The ability to say, “Hey, you saw this image on a sign. I'm tracking your cart or your basket. I know you're in that area. I know that you saw it. You converted it.” Here's the efficacy based on demographic or time or visit to unique shopper eating customers. You've got to go to that retail practice down to more closing the loop, providing the evidence, the detail around it, because it's such a results-driven business  Is retail evolving, in terms of what the ask is for a Scala and other companies?  Chris Riegel: Tremendously. So I would contrast now with having a little bit of a different view, retail in the west is atrophying at the moment principally, because you have Bezos, that's just out cracking heads left and right. Amazon continues to grow and strengthen amazingly and online grows globally. But what you're starting to see now, and especially if you look at Asia, you're starting to see is the emergence of what we call organized retail. You take a market like India that has literally 2 million small retail shops, and those are starting to organize into actual retail chains, organized chain-based branded consistency of experience, the way that you see it in the West, the opportunities and where we're seeing ridiculous growth is in India, in China, in Indonesia, Malaysia, in these emerging markets where retail is organizing now and becoming much more structured. And I think, and I say this knock on wood, hopefully, COVID goes away but within 2022, that's probably the first year within the company that we see selling 1 million plus screens players software licenses that's up from 300,000 to 400,000 a year on average. So we're just seeing this aggregation now of critical mass, but that's really being led by the Asian markets  You would think between India and China and these emerging economies, that those would be the guys more than anyone else who would migrate towards the “a buck a month” kind of SaaS thing?  Chris Riegel: Yes and no. There's always a cost pressure there, don't get me wrong, but there's also a value in experience, there's a value in being able to deliver that solution.  The retail systems in many of these countries are just not quite as mature on the IT side and at the infrastructure side. So when you're talking to a retailer in the US, we do a lot of work with Walmart, combined close to 5,000 stores, but then you step into Reliance in India and Reliance is deploying 200,000 plus locations in India in the next 18 months. It's just a different scale and coming into that understanding of scale, yes, numbers are different pricing models to do that, but if I'm up a factor of 40 on the number of stores, you'll still come out on the other end of that.  Is the feature set in terms of what they want different in these emerging markets like if you're talking to Walmart, that's a very sophisticated retailer. They're probably interested in analytics, probably interested in front-end advisory consulting, creative, all those sorts of things.  When you're talking about the scale in India, is it just more that they need the core functionality of digital signage software?  Chris Riegel: What you're seeing is more of a hybrid in India of the on-prem and online kind of merging within those stores. But you're also seeing, for lack of a better phrase, an absolute hunger, and desire. If you look at some of the large retailers in India and China who have said, “Hey, we're going to be the biggest company in the world.” They have the drive, they spend money. The existing US and western big retailers are still dealing with, “Hey, things are good enough that we don't really have to press and change quite as much”, but you've got a drive in India and China that I think you'll see within the course of the next three years this flip whereas these Eastern markets start to really organize the retail systems, they'll be orders of magnitude bigger than what you see here in the West. When I look in the West at digital signage in retail, it seems to have gone away from stores that were putting a whole pile of LCDs all over the place to now it seems like they put in one direct view LED feature wall maybe a couple of other signs that checkout, that sort of thing, but that's it. What's happening in these emerging markets, same thing?  Chris Riegel: In emerging markets, you're usually dealing in a much smaller format. So instead of having the 200,000 square foot supercenter approach, you might have the 2,000 square foot cell phone store or the 2,000 square foot health and beauty store. As those are organizing up, you're seeing that becoming a more multifunction point to say, what is this new hybrid of having a retail store that could be a small corner market bodega, but I could also order a cell phone there, I could order products remotely, I can have it delivered in and you're dealing with a population there that's not nearly as wealthy as you have in the western world, but the ability to say, how can we lower costs? How can we improve capabilities where that retail store might be the real lifeline out to the bigger e-commerce environment?  I'll use an example with one of the customers that I work with within India. They partnered with Google on a new cell phone. So you have a new Google cell phone that's being introduced to that market, or the cost of the phone is $4. Not $4 a month, not $4 a quarter, but $4. So how do you unleash the power between China and India of two and a half billion people from a retail perspective to streamline that, to bring more and more opportunities to those two and a half billion people of which two billion of them are not particularly wealthy, but still have needs and still can take advantage of these services.  Is it fair to say they're doing digital posters more than anything else in these kinds of small footprint places?  Chris Riegel: You're typically seeing a hybrid digital sign interactive kiosk use case from 20-inch to 32-inch. We did the acquisition in China a few years back of what we call now, our Link Tablet series, but those hybrid devices that are multifunction could be a digital sign, could be interactive, can have payment, can have mobile device scan. It's that multi-function Swiss army knife that's extremely popular.  Through the pandemic, I've been curious ‘cause I get carpet-bombed with PR all the time with companies saying we're going away from interactive touch and so on, it's gotta be contactless that we're gonna use voice, we're gonna use QR code scans, throw the controls of the screen to the phone and so on, and I've always been extremely skeptical of the adoption of that. What have you seen?  Chris Riegel: You're a hundred percent right. When the pandemic really hit, I've continued to travel pretty much non-stop but I was in Portland, Oregon checking into American airlines and they had 20 check-in kiosks there and they didn't say, we're going to have voice check-in, or we're going to have haptics, so you don't have to touch it or, and have gestural. They just had 98 cents container of Lysol wipes. So once you touch the screen, you sanitize your hands, you move on.  The haptics, the voice, the mobile there's capabilities with each of them, but the retrofit costs are not trivial, and think of what you've had with gesture-based interaction systems that've been around forever. It's still never really used. It's the magic mirror syndrome. Bad ideas don't go away, they just come back every three years within these things like haptics and others. Can they have a benefit? Sure. Is it going to be broadly used? No, it's still it.  Before we turned the recording on, we were talking a little bit about where the industry more broadly is at, and I was saying stupid busy and I get a sense from a number of people that they're also stupid busy and you said the same.  Chris Riegel: Absolutely. The markets are quite choppy simply because of shutdowns and customers trying to figure out what the future looks like, but it's incredibly busy. And as we've seen consolidation, COVID is going to shake a lot of companies out of the space, especially coming from the older, what I call AV sector, that market's compressed dramatically especially in Europe and the Asia Pacific,  Especially if they add live events as a big part of it.  Chris Riegel: Even that, or, if you have something that requires your services when people are in the office. If they're not in the office, forget about it. We've talked with literally dozens and dozens of companies trying to sell or trying to find a new sponsor to be able to survive. So that's going to be rough, but the market as a whole, especially as we're looking at 2022 as is white-hot with projects and opportunities and COVID is putting some chlorine into the digital signage gene pool for sure. And why is it so hot now? Like one of the things that I've written about and observed is the thing about all the lockdowns and all the changes that were enforced on how people did their everyday tasks and activities were that things changed, and the only way to communicate that was using dry erase marker boards in the lobby of a store, and stuff taped to the doors and the whole bit, and those companies that had digital signage already had a lead. They had something they could use. Is that part of it?  Chris Riegel: I'll give you a pretty good example. So we do all of the software and systems for McDonald's in the US, several hundred thousand digital mini boards, both indoor and outdoor, and have had the privilege of doing that for the last 13 years.  In that environment where you deal with product shortages like there's a distribution problem for pork at this distribution plant, there's an opportunity for a delay of this product at another plant. The digital menu boards at drive-through and an indoor can adjust at a moment's notice based on supply chain disruptions. They can change prices based on commodity change.  The other part that's really coming into our business very heavily in those same use cases is now the labor shortages, “do I go from a complex menu when I have a crew of 14 people to only seven people showed up this morning and I need to simplify that menu because I don't have the ability to deal with the same velocity because I'm crew light at that point.” So you're seeing digital use cases in areas for us, whether it be the mini-board practices in QSR or retail than the ability of digital to adjust on a moment's notice, and where I can take as an example, sensors, and know how many people showed up as crew, how many customers are in that drive-through line? What are my products, supplies looking like? Because I have access to point of sale or product logistics information and change that on a dime. You can really help keep those businesses moving, and within the pandemic, when indoor dining was shut down, the amount of work, and I'd say conservatively today, we have a greater than 50% market share in QSR in the US and about a 40% market share globally.  The ability to help our customers continue to operate as close to flawlessly as possible through the pandemic has been a really big success across multiple brands, as we've continued to expand the business dramatically. That's not a trivial thing to do to stitch all those systems together. Do you have to fight against companies to say we're API driven, we can integrate all these systems, we can do that for you versus actually doing it and having the experience?  Chris Riegel: Yeah, it's kinda funny. We always run into that challenge that we call the “Competitor's Magic Wand” So you go into the presentation and you're competing with little guy XYZ and he says, you know what? I've got 6,000 signs out there, and this is super simple and it's easy and it's not going to cost anything, and it's magic. And I say, I have three and a half million signs and fleet. I have 1100 people. We run 24/7 operations and it's not easy, it's not simple, and there is no such thing as magic. If you want to buy the magic beans from my competitor, more power to you, but having the experience to say large scale, big customer complex projects. We've earned our place at the table in those discussions to be able to say, “Hey, choose or not choose us, that's your call, but we'll give you a full view of what the reality of this thing is like.”  In a use case of McDonald's with 400,000+ screens that are under our management, there's something that breaks every day. That's the nature of the beast, but how do you stay ahead of that power curve in the large customers that we work with globally? I had a really fun customer interaction about two months ago. One of our larger retail apparel customers who decided to speak out against the Uyghurs situation in China called and said, “Hey, I have PLA troops in my store telling me to turn off our digital signs. What should we do?” “Do they have guns?” “Yes.” “Then you should turn off your digital signs, and by the way, we told you this would happen, not a political statement, but you were hosting outside of China against our advice. We warned you, now you see what happens.”  Unfortunately, it's just a diverse and complex world. There are no magic wands, and a lot of customers, we call them “rebound customers”. In our environment, the customer that says, “Hey, I'm going to buy from the competitor that's going to do a dollar a month in SaaS and is making me all of these promises.” We say, okay, cool. Here's our information. Call us back in six months when you see that's hollow because the amount of work that it takes in any scale retail network to keep this stuff going is not trivial regardless of the technology. Yeah. I would imagine you see that over and over again, a company X that tried the cheap route and then discovered that wasn't a great idea. Now we're going to actually pay some rules.  Chris Riegel: My favorite current theme is the customers that say, “It's not that complex. We're going to build it ourselves.” We've done this for 22 years. We have 600 million plus invested in capital and tens of thousands of man-years in development. But if you can put it together in six weeks with your internal teams, good luck. With Scala and retail, are there retail vertical markets that are more active than others?  Like I'm thinking that you're talking about the bodegas or equivalent of bodegas in India, and so on. Those are essential services. People need food, they need cigarettes, or just whatever. They don't necessarily need fast fashion. Chris Riegel: Scala has been really successful both previously and within our stewardship in automotive, in retail apparel, in high-value goods, luxury environments but also in, chain grocery C-store that the depth of that practice, and especially as we brought order to some of the chaos we saw day one the ability to engage those customers that are understanding that digital signage is not just having to put a pretty picture on that screen and it's going to do something.  “What is it going to do?” “I don't know.” No, this has to have business metrics. Why are you making the investment? What's the return? Define success, and this is a tool you're going in any of those environments and competing for an investment to say, why am I going to spend money on digital signage versus a new retail store, or X or Y or Z? Earn your place at that table. Keep that place at the table by delivering value to a customer.  I can go into a lottery environment or QSR environment or retail environment, and say, I'm going to give you X lift with Y percent greater margin. I'm going to prove that point and I'm going to give you full access to all the statistics so you can double check my math. If you can find somebody else that can do that, knock yourselves out. But if I can deliver you in a retail or QSR or gaming environment, 1 to 3% lift and a margin lift of 3 to 5%, that's a big number.  Yeah. So tell me what's going on with the microLED plant that you're retrofitting out in Oregon? Chris Riegel: It's a pretty wild ride. MicroLED, as a tech, we've been researching it for 5+ years, made the dive into buying the fab two years ago, and have been spending a tremendous amount of time on research and development. MicroLED is an unbelievable dislocator, and when I say dislocator, today if you look at the Asian display cartels, they have been able to control a market, not unlike OPEC, by having a very high cost of entry, having a bunch of barriers around that. The typical government sponsorship to go into that marketplace.  MicroLED is a different beast. In the intersection that it's coming, between what would be called the epitaxy of world, growing LEDs, and the Silicon world. All of a sudden the cost to pin up a plant is 1/10th to 1/20th of what it was before. So you can have companies that can compete and can build out next-generation displays without having to have government sponsorship. If you look at it, I'm not trying to wave the nationalist economic flag. But if you look at the last two, three generations of the display, whether TFT, LCD, or AMOLED or OLED or other, a lot of that tech is developed in the US and North America, none of it's manufactured here.  Why? Because we don't have a great industrial policy at the government level to compete. When you look at Korea and China, how the government sponsored the building of those fabs, that's the way that they do it, that's the game. That being said, you're never going to have that happen here. I thought that was happening in Wisconsin? (Laughter) Chris Riegel: Yeah. Don't hold your breath on that one. But the central planning model has changed and with microLED, you can bring up a fab at a fraction of the cost, but also then have a product that is less expensive because of the simplicity of a direct view product. So there's some really exciting stuff going on here.  You're not focused on large formats for microLED. The volume is all in wearables and things like that, right?  Chris Riegel: There's a big space in large formats. The initial microLED use cases have been small format: wearables, optics, precision optics, things like that, simply because there are some challenges in the technology like mass transfer that had not yet been figured out or distilled that made it really, you can only be cost-competitive in those small environments. But if I take the equation of a square meter glass, microLED can deliver a square meter of glass at an equivalent resolution to TFT, LCD or O LED for between 50 and 60% of the fab cost of that product. So it can be super competitive, and in our use case, we'll absolutely go for a large format and I want to make sure that our friends at solar are aware of it.  So at some point, I think you told me before in the past that you thought by the end of the year, you'd be at least doing rapid prototyping.  Chris Riegel: Yeah, so we're now in the joy of receiving all equipment late, just because of the pandemic and the slower nature of manufacturing and getting anything in. That being said by Q1, we'll be in the prototype stage. What we're doing is putting a lot of focus on, without nerding out on it too deeply, a 300mm epitaxy on Silicon. So today, most LEDs are built on 150mm Sapphire, which has worked for 20 years and is very precise. We're taking the step to go 300mm GAM on Silicon, which is a more complex process, but once you're in the Silicon world, the ability to then scale-out silicon-based emitters directly to bond to see 300mm Silicon wafers, you can start doing some really interesting stuff that breaks the mold.  I understood most of that, but at that point, the idea is that the way conventional LED is made, it's machines that are picking LEDs or batches of LEDs and placing them on substrate and it just takes a long time and a lot of cost and energy to do that, right?  Chris Riegel: It does and within the LED industry today, that LED can be grown. that the large format, large emitter, one millimeter plus LED. Those are grown in epitaxy processes that are not particularly clean. When you get into microLED, we're talking emitters that are 3 microns by 3 microns, 5x5, so you're dealing with super small stuff by an order of magnitude. The LEDs that we're making are smaller than the Coronavirus. So when you deal with making extremely small emitters, the ability to say, “Hey, wait a minute, I'm able to build-some would call a smart pixel, some would just call it a digital Lego-I'm able to build an emitter directly bonded to a micro IC and build a smart pixel concept.”  There is some really cool stuff that you can do there. You'll probably see the first mass commercialization of that coming out from Apple with wearables, but the applications around it are myriad and it is hundred percent a game-changer. Do you see the end product for the digital signage market being the equivalent to a flat panel display, like you'd be selling 85-inch microLED panels, or do you see it as like big ass LED video walls?  Chris Riegel: Yeah, great question. I think our core mission is that I'm not going to fight Xi Jinping to win aisle seven at Costco for the 85-inch $399 television. Chinese can have that market, no question.  In microLED, if you're getting into large-format sizes, you'll most likely be within the container of tiled panels. So maybe you're at 200mm to 300mm tiles to be able to get to large formats. But within that, I think that the differentiation there between microLED and call it miniLED, 50 mics or up is minimal. What you're going to find in the greatest benefit of microLED are those environments where using the fact that your emitter is so small, it's not visible to the naked eye. So you can do transparency through window glass. You can bend and curve it. So the curved surfaces, the bend surfaces, the flex surfaces, because the emitters are so small, they're within the bend radiuses of the substrates. There's a lot of really cool stuff you can do where you're not just fighting the low price commoditized markets. I've been to Shenzhen thirty times and there are a hundred thousand companies in Shenzhen.  Unless you can differentiate yourself from that mass market, you're dead day one. So you have to pick your battles correctly  So the set of Corning videos that have come out in the past 10 years or so, about a day in glass, where you have all these dynamic visuals are just showing up on countertops and windows and everything else that's what's going to happen with this technology, right? Chris Riegel: Absolutely. The ability to make the display a more natural interface to the consumer, where it doesn't have to be a standalone display device, where it's integrated into third-party devices or features, Corning had great vision. Around that obviously with the goal to sell more glass, but the idea was right. And now that this is continuing to transition, think of your smart home, think of your smart car, think of your smart whatever, all of that is microprocessor driven in one form or another. So how do you associate displays that are much more natural to the user's experience as opposed to something that's a bulky bolt-on whether that's in a car, on a refrigerator. in a window making that just part of that infrastructure. All right. Always a pleasure. Thank you for spending some time.  Chris Riegel: Thank you.

We got blood on our hands and oil in our tanksPATREON: https://www.patreon.com/LFABEMAIL: askletsfightaboss@gmail.comTWITTER: https://twitter.com/LetsFightABossINSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/letsfightabossQuest Log:How It Ends, F9: The Fast Saga, The Fate of the Furious, You Got ServedStrategy Talk:Xbox Game Pass, The Forgotten City, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Death's Door, Guilty Gear -Strive-, Ganbare Goemon 3: The Mecha Leg Hold of Jurokube Shishi, The Ascent, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel LinksQuicktime Events:- Luke announced for Street Fighter V- Horizon Forbidden West reportedly delayed into Q1 2022- Fulbright founder steps down after toxic and hostile work culture allegationsLoot Drop:Niamh:Mark Rober on YouTube - Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0 - https://youtu.be/hFZFjoX2cGgJohn:The Infinite Review on YouTube - Neon Genesis Evangelion - https://youtu.be/TLrKZcY2ScIBryan:Hats Off Entertainment on YouTube - Jim Varney - https://youtu.be/VNOpADr1vKsEditing:Oni Dino - https://twitter.com/Oni_DinoOutro Music:Twinkle Park on SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/twinklepark/lets-fight-a-boss-outro-theme

BEWARE! Here there be spoilers! If you haven't finished season 1 of QD we recommend doing that first before listening to this Q&A! If you'd like to skip to a particular question, please use the handy directory below. 1:50 Q1. Summarise the campaign in 10 words 3:36 Q2. Was this originally where the campaign was meant to go? 7:46 Q3. How long have you been playing Dungeon World? 9:50 Q4. Sammy, how much do you plan ahead? 14:32 Q5. What was the inspiration behind each character and their class? 26:04 Q6. At what point was it decided that Cygnana was a swan? 28:14 Q7. Will we see any more of Cygnana? 28:57 Q8. What would it be like if Cygnana and Patsy met? 30:31 Q9. How much of Nim and Kremora's relationship was discussed off-air? 36:58 Q10. Kremora did do the whole ghost-zone expansion thing right?? 37:15 Q11. Can we have a Nimora wedding next Pride Month? 38:38 Q12. What does Jolene do after the final battle? 40:04 Q13. What is Brumpo's deep lore? 42:31 Q14. Did the Revomootion ever reach Molten Gorge? 43:07 Q15. Did the two Queer Buckaneers get together in the end? 44:14 Q16. Who is your favourite NPC? 47:47 Q17. Sammy, who is your favourite NPC to portray? 51:15 Q18. Was Patsy's original concept that he was a bundle of souls? 54:37 Q19. How will Patsy be reunited and who will raise him? 56:18 Q20. What is the baby's name in the end? 56:57 Q21. What's the deal with Patsy's rebirth and how did the souls work?? 1:02:48 Q22. Was it absolutely necessary to make Cygnana's death so soul crushingly sad? Episode Transcripts: https://www.queerdungeoneers.com/episode-transcripts  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/queerdungeoneers Discord: https://discord.gg/kYgt5Ag Twitter: @QueerDungeons Website: https://www.queerdungeoneers.com/home  Merch: https://queerdungeoneers.threadless.com/ Music: 'We Collect Shiny Things' by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue), 'Fallen Down' by Toby Fox

Canada Goose Holdings Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 11, 2021

In this episode of Success That Lasts, Jared Siegel is answering questions that come up again and again amongst Delap clients. Find out whether or not you should focus your portfolio on dividend-paying stocks, and how to really think about the implications of tax policy changes on your portfolio. Q1: Is focusing your investments solely on dividend-paying stocks a reliable investment strategy? [01:15] Common misconceptions lead many investors to prioritize dividend payments at the expense of diversification, flexibility, and total investment return. Dividend payments aren't guaranteed - in 2009, 50% of dividend-paying companies either eliminated or reduced their dividend payments - for investors looking to earn an income from their stocks, they should focus on their total return, not just dividends. Q2: What impact would a proposed tax hike have on the stock market?  [06:05] As part of the Biden Tax Proposal, various spending programs were included, of which some will be paid from an increase in taxes. While tax changes, specifically hikes, are always a source of angst, investors should be careful to extrapolate the impacts of tax policy on their portfolio.  Get in touch with your team member at Delap to talk about your personal mix of investment products, and how tax hikes might impact your own portfolio. Resources Jared Siegel on LinkedIn | Twitter DelapCPA.com

Doximity, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 10, 2021

Mentioned in this episode:a previous episode about my 2021 plot twistmy original 21 goals for 2021 listmy Q1 check-in episodemy Q2 check-in episodeLearn more about my products and services:my coach training programProlific, my online community devoted to meaningful productivitythe Blend by Design online coursethe SoTL by Design online coursePlease offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by connecting with me on Twitter @Katie__Linder or by emailing me. You can also come find me on Instagram!If you listen to the podcast on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and/or review the show.

Nautilus, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 09, 2021

StoneCo Ltd., Q1 2021 Earnings Call, Jun 01, 2021

And we have quibbles! Of course! Also, if you got Q1 wrong, consider yourself lucky because then you didn't have that one line going through your head all day.

Digital Turbine, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 09, 2021

Q1. 15 yr son used $2K money we put in his savings to pay for uber eats and games.  Q2. Grade 3 daughter is clingy and likely won't want to go back to school in the fall.  Books on teaching children financial literacy:  Financially Fit Kids  Do you have a parenting question for me?  Email me at alyson@alysonschafer.com  Sign up for my monthly newsletter at www.alysonschafer.com

Nuance Communications, Inc., Q1 2021 Earnings Call, Feb 08, 2021

LiveRamp Holdings, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 05, 2021

Lightspeed POS Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 05, 2021

Learn Australian English in this latest AMA (Ask Me Anything) session I had over Instagram! So I thought it'd be awesome to kickback and relax and just answer questions from you guys. And you certainly did not disappoint me - I was thrown the best questions ever and here they are! Q1 How to answer the question (Do) you mind? Q2 How to say 'north' and 'south' Q3 How to say 'shit' vs 'sheet' Q4 Difference between 'buddy' and 'mate' in Australia Q5 Which non-Aussies do the best Australian accent Q6 How to improve listening skills Q7 Will your children speak Portuguese or English? Q8 Have you been in Brazil? Q9 Specially vs Especially Q10 How to say "I don't want to interfere, but..." Q11 How to say 'You're welcome' with an Aussie accent Q12 Which is the best city to live in Australia? Q13 Can you call someone older 'mate'? Q14 What do you know about Brazil? Q15 Are you a bit racist? Truly enjoyed that AMA with you, I'll see you all next time!

Jerry Parker is on the show with us today to discuss Ethereum's recent rise after a new ‘hard fork', auto-correlation and its effects on Trend Following strategies, how trading extra markets can improve performance, drawdowns as a key to profiting from huge trends, how Trend Following firms who try to be too unique often end up underperforming, the power of pure Trend Following versus over-optimisation, why ESG investing should also take into account human rights issues, why you should love your trading rules but not your positions, and how trading in smaller sizes can lead to much bigger returns. Also check out my interview with Turtle Trading legendary mentor Richard Dennis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94nUnXsYpLY (here). In this episode, we discuss: The recent comeback in crypto markets and trading crypto futures Thoughts on autocorrelation The benefits of trading a wide range of markets How over-optimisation can result in underperformance Why ESG investing should consider human rights issues as well as environmental Why your rules are more important than any one position How decreasing position size can increase a system's profits Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Jerry on https://my.captivate.fm/@RJParkerJr09 (Twitter). IT's TRUE

8x8, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 04, 2021

The Most Horse-Powerful Podcast On The Internet, The Xbox Drive is back with Episode 201. This week Sean played The Ascent. Ryan played Friday The 13th. Cleaning the GarageIf you like what we do, support the Show. Subscribe to YouTube.com/YouMeCapriYou can get early access and exclusive content at Patreon.com/YouMeCapri. The PlaylistRyan: The Ascent, Friday The 13thSean: The Ascent Braking News TOP STORY: Halo Infinite's bots are teabagging real players, and it's hilarioushttps://www.windowscentral.com/halo-infinites-bots-are-teabagging-real-players-and-its-hilarious Halo Infinite beta: 5 things you might have missed. Weapons have damage types. Some weapons have alternate firing modes. You (mostly) can't camp weapon spawns. You can drop weapons for teammates. Maps have alternate versions. https://www.windowscentral.com/halo-infinite-beta-5-things-you-might-have-missed Launching on Game Pass Helps Ascent Reach Record Sales Success. The Publisher “Curve” has announced that The Ascent earned more than $5 million in sales on its opening weekend. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-ascent-made-over-5-million-in-sales-on-its-first-weekend/1100-6494773/ Microsoft has announced a new special-edition Xbox Series X|S controller with a pretty blue finish. The Aqua Shift Special Edition controller has a prismatic paint job that shines in the light. It's available for preorder now and will be available starting August 31.https://www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/new-xbox-series-x-aqua-shift-controller-up-for-preorder/1100-6494702/ MLB The Show 21 was noted as a key contributor to significantly increase sales and profit during Q1.https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1422902239702618120?s=20 The following games are coming to Xbox Game Pass:Curse of the Dead Gods - August 5thDodgeball Academia - August 5thKatamari Damacy Reroll - August 5thLumines Remastered - August 5thSkate - August 5thStarmancer (PC) - August 5thDirt 4 - August 10thDirt Rally - August 10thDirt Rally 2.0 - August 10thF1 2020 - August 10thGrid - August 10thArt of Rally - August 12thHades - August 13thMicrosoft Solitaire Collection: Premium Edition - August 17th 12 Minutes - August 19thThe following games are leaving Xbox Game Pass on August 15th: Grand Theft Auto V (August 8th)Ape OutCrossing SoulsDarksiders GenesisDon't StarveFinal Fantasy VIITrain Sim World 2020https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/08/03/coming-soon-xbox-game-pass-august-2021/Forza Motorsport 7 will be delisted on September 15th, 2021. The game will see a permanent sale until it's removed from the store.https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4404442728339-End-of-Life-for-Forza-Motorsport-7-Marvel's Avengers' War for Wakanda expansion will officially launch as a free update on August 17th! It'll feature an 8 hour campaign, new villains, environments and of course, Black Panther as a new playable character. https://www.ign.com/articles/marvels-avengers-war-for-wakanda-release-date-black-pantherThe Carpool - follow on Twitter, leave a comment on YouTube, or join the Discord to leave a question and be part of the show. Dan @dannoh12 - do you guys ever just look at your backlog of games and go, “yea, i might not even bother with you at all”?? also…(don't know if it's been asked before) was there ever a game you're relieved you didn't get/play due to bad reception??WilliamOutbreak (Discord) - One question that keeps circling my mind, especially with Halo all over my social feeds, is do you think that one game came be enough to sell you on a game console? Not sure if you've answered this in the past, but I know for me back in the day Halo was a major factor in me getting an Xbox 360 instead of PS3.Todd Oxtra @toxtra - So Ryan wasn't excited about a dead space remake, so what remakes do you both want?Eric Cave (YouTube) - My first destination in Flight Simulator was my neighborhood, which was so much fun. I am super excited about the upcoming Maverick DLC. What do you guys think this DLC content will include? I am intrigued by the devs comments about looking forward to some surprises by this DLC. What do you think those could be? Could there be dogfighting, or are we simply going to get to fly some very fast planes while trying to land them on an aircraft carrier?PlugsiTunes: https://goo.gl/CMv4frSpotify: https://goo.gl/Vh4DH4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/youmecapriSean:http://twitter.com/seancaprihttp://twitch.tv/seancaprihttp://patreon.com/youmecapriRyan:http://twitter.com/ryanturfordhttp://youtube.com/ryanturfordhttp://twitch.tv/ryanturfordDiscord [You, Me & Capri]:https://discord.gg/zN4cZbA

New Relic, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 03, 2021

Mimecast Limited, Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 03, 2021

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Aug 03, 2021

US stocks had a mixed Monday. Plus, Zoom reaches an $85m privacy settlement, Foot Locker goes on a buying spree, and Grab's sales jump 39% in Q1.

No matter what the situation, our minds have a tendency to think negatively.  For most, it spirals into self – sabotaging, thoughts, feelings, then actions. Almost everyone in the world has struggled with this.  When our thoughts and feelings take us to a dark place, causing us to react in ways that become detrimental to our health and relationships.  Today's guest is going to talk about a “simple yet powerful practice” of LOOKING DEEPLY INTO THE CAUSE OF ALL SUFFERING AND HOW YOU CAN END IT, called The Work.Join Byron Katie and Jason Stella discuss....The story on how she came up with “The Work”Meeting Your Internal Wisdom,What is the process?Q1. Is it true?Q2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?Q4. Who would you be without that thought?The TurnaroundWhy is it vital to go through The Work and ensure you Write down the information, opposed to just thinking it through the process?What are the most common road-blocks that people face when going through The Work?Everything you need to do The Work is available to you free on this website.The Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet and other downloadables are available by clicking the  in the top right corner of every page of this website.The Judge-Your-Neighbor WorksheetA guide for putting mind on paper. Modified versions for children and teens are available as well.https://thework.com/

Q1. 9yr old can't explain why she is crying Q2. 9yr old says “don't cheer for me” when I say “way to go – you did it” Q3. 9 &13 yr old boys who complain about nothing being fair between them Q4. 9 &13 yr old boys who constantly fight and bicker  Q5. 9 & 13 yr old boys with a dad who is a bad role model and the marriage is not working Q6. 13 yr old boy who is sneaking Aug 4th Do's and Don'ts of Managing Teens' Partying webinar link for details and registration here.  Books on encouragement:   Encouraging Children To Learn https://tinyurl.com/26h25w82 Turning People On: How to be an encouraging person:  https://tinyurl.com/59e88bta Calvin Armerding podcast interview on the co-operative family: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/parenting-the-adlerian-way/id1508655119?i=1000522893991 Paul Rasmussen podcast interview on emotions: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/parenting-the-adlerian-way/id1508655119?i=1000503066250 Do you have a parenting question for me?  Email me at alyson@alysonschafer.com  Sign up for my monthly newsletter at www.alysonschafer.com 

What happens when you take on a new role as CMO and develop a new marketing strategy, only to have a pandemic hit just months later? This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Planful CMO Rowan Tonkin talks about his experience since taking on the role of head of marketing at Planful. It all started with a complete rebrand (including a company name change) that was rolled out at a company meeting in January 2020, just prior to the onset of COVID. Rowan explains how a focus on the customer, and their needs and pain points, helped his team determine how and when to shift their marketing strategy, and he talks about what it means to create a new category (including why it's so important that your competitors embrace it).  Planful's ability to remain nimble and adapt to their customers' changing needs helped fuel significant increases in pipeline and revenue, much of which was driven by organic and branded search. Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.) Resources from this episode: Check out the Planful website Connect with Rowan on LinkedIn Follow Rowan on Twitter Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Rowan Tonkin, who is the CMO or chief marketing officer at Planful. Welcome to the podcast, Rowan. Rowan (00:27): Thanks Kathleen for having me. Really excited to be here. I've listened to lots of episodes of inbound, and I'm really glad that I can, I can actually be on the show. Kathleen (00:35): I'm really excited to have you here. I think you have such an interesting story, especially in the last few years, and I can't wait to dig into it for listeners. Before we do that, maybe take a moment, introduce yourself, tell us who you are and your background, and also what Planful is. Rowan (00:52): So firstly, you may notice from my accent, I'm not American. I grew up in Australia in a little place called Woolongong, which is about an hour south of Sydney. And I actually started my career in, in technology in Australia, working in customer support for a marketing company back then we would provide services to agencies and white goods and brown goods manufacturers to basically get the best images for, for, for catalogs, right, for, for the things that we all receive in our, in our letterbox. And and that turned into a MRM space where I worked in pre-sales. So for those that are familiar with MRM, it's kind of like the old Asana and Monday.com and helping marketers do all that project management, budget management, things like that. I moved to London for 10 years selling MRM software, working with lots of marketers over there. Rowan (01:44): My role was increased sales and customer success and doing actually implementation work as well. And I managed to convince myself that product marketing was actually where I had most fun. So I joined product marketing and and have been in the marketing space ever since. I'm now at, at Planful. Planful is a financial planning and analysis platform for finance and accounting professionals. We basically help finance professionals basically become super agile in the way that they work by getting them out of spreadsheets and getting them into a connected and collaborative platform. And you know, my background in marketing planning, if you will, helping marketers manage their budgets has kind of translated into me telling the stories of, of those finance professionals and how they do their work for, for all of us. Right. If you think about the team of finance you know, there's the accounting team that are recording everything that happened and there's fantastic FP and A teams that are kind of helping us trying to figure out what will happen in future. Kathleen (02:47): Yeah. And speaking of what has happened and what will happen, you joined the company, was it in 2019? Is that right? Rowan (02:54): In September of 2019. Yeah. Kathleen (02:56): Yeah. So, you know, at interesting time and I know that you came on board and there was a lot of change already happening in the company. And you proceeded to, to make some really significant changes on the marketing side, and this is all happening, like on the eve of COVID, it's crazy. I say 2019 and that feels like a really long time ago, but, but it really wasn't and a lot has happened since then. So let's actually rewind the clock and start when you came in and, and what was, what were you setting out to do and what was the scenario when you joined? Rowan (03:31): Yeah, sure. So Planful had been actually called Host Analytics before that. And many of your listeners may know of Host Analytics. And we were acquired by a private equity firm in December of 2018 and they went on the search to to find a new CEO and they found someone that I'd worked with before. Grant Halloran. And Grant joined as CEO, I believe like 1st of July or something like that. And in 2019, 3 months later, he brings me in and had devised a lot of the strategy. And the strategy that we were going to to execute upon was to really focus on segments specific segments. So what we call the lower mid-market and the upper mid market and selectively play in the enterprise, right. And, and traditionally, you know, Host played across all of those segments. So we really wanted to focus. Rowan (04:24): The second thing that we wanted to do was reposition the company. The world of FP and A, and the space that we play in has a category definition called enterprise performance management or, or corporate performance management. The funny thing is only analysts talk about that. Buyers don't call it. They call it FP and A software or planning, budgeting, and forecasting. They don't, they don't call it CPM or EPM. And so and then unfortunately for Host Analytics created by Jim Eblen back in 2001, the word Host and Analytics has changed a lot in that time. Right. And so really important to us that as we repositioned, we decided to change the company name. And when you think about doing that, that's a really intense exercise. So we decided to just put the guard rail of let's do it in 12 weeks. Kathleen (05:17): Ripping the bandaid off. Rowan (05:20): Correct. Yeah. And, and so actually we did that at our company kickoff. We everyone walked into the company kickoff in January at San Diego all of the swag. Yeah. And, and everything was branded Host Analytics. Everyone got their gifts as Host Analytics in the keynote, we dropped the big reveal, switched to Planful and all the signage and everything had been changed outside the room. And everyone had new swag bags and everything like that. And at the time we, we repositioned the company to, from, from enterprise performance management to what we continuous planning. And that's now the kind of category that we, we have tried to define if you will. Now as you do that, you want to create new campaigns and new things to go to market with. And we did a lot of that and continuous planning sounds great now, after everyone's been planning for the last 18 months, but back then it was a new concept. Rowan (06:20): And we were trying to evangelize that concept and created lots of great top of funnel campaigns, ready to launch posts. That event had them live for six weeks and then the pandemic hits. And we're sitting there with this fantastic campaign that was beautiful for the moment. Beautiful for the time, very positive, very uplifting, very empowering for our audience. But as soon as the pandemic hit, that's not what they want to hear. Then like they're in, we call it the ambush they're in the ambush mode. If you think about what your finance team may have been doing in the middle of March, it was trying to figure out, are we going to thrive, survive cashflow. Kathleen (07:03): It went from, I imagine, continuous planning to crisis planning. Rowan (07:06): Effectively. Yeah. Cashflow forecasting became, you know, scenario planning. What if analysis became the, the top use cases, if you will, or the top things that finance professionals wanted to care about. Right. And capital management, liquidity, all of those things. And and so we're sitting there with this fantastic campaign that we've spent lots of money and worked with some amazing agencies on. And and the, the other thing is our audience. We're just in a bunker trying to figure out what's going on. They didn't want to talk to us. So we went very like many companies, we went very much into support mode, right? How can we help our audience through this? What can we do? And did a lot of those things, built communities, hold weekly meetings, you know, how can we support? You tried to educate them on, you know, different ways that they could use the platform. Rowan (07:59): And and, and internally I, I, I converted my product marketing team to a research analyst firm, you know, who will survive, who will thrive and, and how can we go and target those people and educate them on what we do, but the message just wasn't right. You know, selling and telling the story about continuous planning in the middle of that environment, wasn't what people wanted to hear. And so we spent you know, we spent probably too long trying to continue to evangelize that, you know, the, the commitment and consistency of like, oh, we put this great thing together. Let's just keep doing our work. Kathleen (08:39): Gosh darn it, we planted our flag in the sand. Rowan (08:42): Exactly. And so you know, I had a conversation with Grant one day and I said, I just don't think like, this is the time to, or this is the place to be pushing this message. And and, and we thought back to kind of core marketing principles, and many of your audience will know about, you know, the five stages of awareness from, from sports. Right. And so we looked at that and we said, well, where is where is continuous planning fit here? Right. Well, it fits for the most aware people are customers or people that have bought this technology before, and they really understand it. So we can keep pushing it to that audience for the completely unaware per person. It makes, it actually makes sense as a thought leadership play as a play around storytelling and, and actually evangelizing that. Rowan (09:30): But for the people in the middle, right, the people that we're actually trying to get to buy or get you know, get into our final or convince them to buy versus a competitor, it didn't work because they were trying to figure out, well, actually my pain point is not continuous planning. I kind of, you haven't really even explained what that means, what that is, how that works, you know, where am I on that journey? They want to know, how can I do scenario management? How can I do cashflow forecasting? Can I do direct method, cash flow, forecasting, or indirect method? Where are we with our, what if scenario analysis and, and those types of things. So what we did was we stepped right back and said, all right, let's create a use case strategy. Very tactical, very much at the pain point level of, of what our audience is going through. Rowan (10:22): And so, you know, as, as all businesses where, you know, we're going through, what's going to happen for us. And, and actually coming out in the back of you know, that first initial ambush, we were hitting record pipeline numbers in kind of Q3, right? Amazingly everything was going well, we had this use case campaign. It was going well, what we did tactically for that campaign was create landing pages all around. Those specific use cases, I actually used the pandemic. One of my strategies as I was planning to come to, to plan for we we'd been very much a lead acquisition company. And I wanted to use the reposition and that mode to, to move the market into demand creation mode, as opposed to lead acquisition mode. Now it was kind of good because everyone was just so focused on, you know, how many opportunities are we getting every day into our, into our funnel. Rowan (11:23): And so effectively, I was able to turn off every MQL report that we ever had which is great. And now no one really asks me about MQL. They're always asking me about, you know, opportunities. And so I was able to use that time to transition away from, you know, classic sales and marketing, talking about MQL calls. Well, now we're talking about pipeline creation and, and what we call, you know, stage one opportunities, S ones. And so during that period, I was also trying to shift our strategy away from very much, you know, purchase nurture leads, right? And, and then hopefully that they convert over time. I wanted us to move to a, build a brand, build awareness in the market and, and, you know, bring them to us. And and, and over that time, that sort of started to happen which was great. Rowan (12:18): And, and we saw the results of that in Q3. And then as the second wave of the pandemic came again in Q4 and Q4, for those that don't know, every finance professional is about to enter their either favorite or their worst time of the year planning season. And so again, you know, these people had been planning for so long Q3 was pent up demand, and then Q4 became a really hard time for us as well, because, you know, you're starting to see people get back into their planning season. And and, and, and now we're back into that mode of just really accelerated growth. I mean, we've, we've hit all of the kind of records that we would want to be hitting as a software company this year, so far growing like crazy, which is, which is really fun. And a lot of that is off the back of the fact that we really just stepped back to basics and created these use case use case plays. And so, as I was saying before, it's a landing page. It's a, an ungated demo on that landing page. It's having case studies on each of those landing pages. It's, it's the social proof inside of that. It's telling a story about how you go from use case to use case and the value chain that is associated with that for someone when they buy a platform, right? Because like most technology, we're a platform. You can do lots of things with it. Kathleen (13:40): So I have so many questions for you. Going back to the beginning, you talked about coming in and the company being founded in the early two thousands and being called Host Analytics. And what had changed in the time from when it was founded to when the PE firm bought the company. And it was funny, you, you said something along the lines of like the meaning of Host had changed. And the first thing that popped into my head was, was it that Airbnb happened and everybody thought, you know, is your company about analytics for like hosts who rent their houses out? Or like, what were you alluding to there? Rowan (14:18): Yeah, actually we'll say, let, let me start. So Host Analytics and the name was, so Jim Eblen founded the company, created the name. Back then we were taking a box into someone's office and hosting their financial analytics for it. Right. So very literal and, and Host actually means army of angels. And so that was another reason for the name, you know, the army of angels are coming to help you with your finance department. Now, you know, fast forward to 20 where hosting is now all about service providers, right. Or in your, in your mind, Airbnb? Kathleen (14:59): Well, certainly not on-prem software. Rowan (15:01): Yeah. Yeah. Correct. And actually host was the first FP and A platform, EPM platform to move to the cloud. So I think we did that in, in 2011, 2012. And and then there was a race for, for cloud financial planning platforms you know, Anaplan and, and Adaptive Insights and some other other companies came along. Rowan (15:25): And so there was this, you know, a big race for, for people to, to move to the cloud from the on-prem world. And and so Host was a big part of that, that, that race and that shift from on-prem to the cloud. And unfortunately though, like, you know, if you sit back in the middle of 2019, and you're calling someone in finance, and you say I'm from Host Analytics, the first thing that I think of is maybe Airbnb analytics, depending on their industry, or most of the time it was what you're going to analyze my cloud service usage or something like that. Like, they, they kind of be like, actually there was this cognitive dissonance that people would have, and ultimately they wanted us to like, they're like, oh, you should speak to it. This is, this is not for me, I'm in finance. Why, why are you trying to talk to me about hosting and analytics? Like so that was the major trigger there. In terms of what had changed is frankly, just cloud, on premise, all of that had changed and, and the term hosting had become synonymous with, with cloud cloud platforms, cloud software, cloud. Kathleen (16:38): Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. When I hear you talk about this, you know, the CEO was new, you came in, you were new, the company had just been acquired. And the it's the first big meeting of everyone. And you introduce a new brand and you start, like I said, earlier, you rip the bandaid off. Right. I feel like that could go in two directions as, as somebody who's been a head of marketing has navigated rebrands being the new people. If you don't play it right. It can definitely, I think exacerbate like friction, fear frustration, et cetera, amongst people who've been around for awhile. If they think, oh, this new person's coming in and they're changing everything and they haven't taken the time to like really understand us and, you know, kind of build consensus, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Or it could, or if you navigate it correctly, it could really engender a lot of excitement and breathe new life and et cetera. So I'm curious, how did you navigate that in a way that it built excitement and trust and momentum and didn't cause friction? Rowan (17:45): I don't think you can do a rebrand without causing friction. This is my second one that I've led. And you're going to have naysayers. I think, you know, for anyone listening, that's contemplating a rebrand. You're going to have those people that basically say, I don't like the new name. I don't like why you're changing it, what's wrong with the current name, you're going to get all of that. And, but most importantly, you've really got to focus on you know, what's the intention and why are we changing it? We weren't changing the name for, for our employees. We were changing it for our audience, for our customers. Like they, they deserve a name that is more befitting of, of what they actually do. And so for us, when I think a couple of things helped us. Rowan (18:40): So firstly Grant and myself had come from this space before and we had created, Grant,was the CMO at one of our competitors and had created a category over there. And that company is doing very well and had gone public. And so there was a perception that, okay this new CEO is coming and he knows what he's doing. I'd also led rebrands before. So, you know, able to sit there and say, Hey, I, I also know what I'm doing as part of this process. So we were able to create some trust because it wasn't, you know, the first time it wasn't a first time category creating it. Wasn't the first time rebranding. Secondly we anchored the rebrand very intentionally on our customer. And at the same time we were going through things like a rebrand at a culture level, we had a new chief people officer and she's out building a new company values, right. Rowan (19:40): For the new new company and our number one value is customers. So as you think about that, we're able to anchor on, okay, well, we now have our new values and isn't it befitting for our customers to have a name that recognizes them. And if we think about financial planning and analysis folks, they are Planful. It's a real word. It means to be rich and methodical and full of plans. And that's what our buyers and our audience and our customers are. They espouse that every day. So that was really the way that we tried to overcome a lot of that by, by making it or intentionally making it about other people, other than us, it wasn't us trying to rebrand the company. Cause we, we like rebranding companies. It's very expensive to do. It's very hard to do, and it creates lots of friction and you know, lots of people, you know, people believe and perceive that there's lots of brand equity as well. Rowan (20:40): Right. And so lots of people had those questions. Well, what about, you know, we're an 18 year old company, what about all the brand equity that we've built up? And those types of questions are really important that you have answers, which is okay, that's, that is true. Yes. but actually psychologically people move on for a rebrand really quickly. They adapt we humans, we adapt really well to things and, and also we wanted to espouse the new vision for the company. Right. And, and having a name that fits that new vision was also really important. Kathleen (21:15): Now you have mentioned a phrase a couple of times that I want to ask you about, because it's a phrase that gets thrown about a lot these days in the world of marketing and that is category creation. And I feel like it's, it's almost become this very generic term that people use for a lot of different things. So can you just explain a little bit about when you think about category creation, how do you think about it? Why did you think it made sense to do that? Because, I mean, it's something I've looked at, and I know it's, it's, it's quite an undertaking and you have to go in with your eyes open and be realistic about what you're going to be able to achieve. And then, can you just talk a little bit about your strategy for doing that in this case? Rowan (21:59): Yeah, so, I mean, I may be quite simplistic in my view of category creation, but I think you need to just think of it from your audience's perspective, your audience needs to quickly recognize what do you do and where do you play in the ecosystem? And your definition of that category, if you will, whether that's creating a sub category, if you, if you've you know, read those books from the 22 immutable laws, right. If you can't create a category, create a sub category. The that's the simple way I look at it, right? And, and we had been playing in the enterprise performance management category, and when buyers are searching for for products, they're not looking for that they're looking for planning software. So the first thing that we wanted to do as we were going through this category creation and reposition, rebranding, the company, reinvigorating you know, changing the way that the company operated new segmentation, things like that, where it's to make sure that people could find us really easily. Rowan (23:08): And so if you think about that, it's okay, well, what do you do? Well, we're in the planning space. And you know, we also have capabilities, you know, you know, in our platform for, for accountancies and things like that. But the majority of people are looking for a planning platform. So we wanted to create a category inside the planning space that play to our strengths. And so when you think about planning, what we have is some capability in our product that allows us to do that more frequently than other competitors. So that's continuous, right. And, and that had already been coined by other analysts. So we were able to basically co-opted from them and, and then use it as our position. And, and so when I think of category creation, I think we just simply think of it as, how do I want my buyer to perceive me, what ecosystem do they want to think about me in? And and then can they find our USP inside of my category description of that? Kathleen (24:11): I like it. So it's funny that you, you, you phrased it that way, because one of my questions was going to be, when you set out to do this, were you hoping that, that, you know, analyst firms would build a quadrant around you, but I really didn't hear you say that. I mean, I heard you say analysts have used the term, but it sounds like success for you. Is, are customers using the term not so much is like Gartner using the term, is that accurate? Rowan (24:34): Yeah, that's accurate. I mean Gartner have changed in our category, right. So they have gone from FP and A to what's called XP and A, and they're going to have now two quadrants for us. Other analyst firms call it the enterprise performance management category still. Now we want them to change away from that whole term because that's, that's pretty old. Now it's about 30 years old as a category. And our perception is buyers just don't use it. Consultants use it you know, us in the industry. We use it, that buyers don't use it. They don't know what it means. So we'd rather, they yes, we want them to change it, but I don't necessarily mind what they call it. And yes. Do we, do we care about being in those those quadrants, those waves, those, yes, absolutely. Rowan (25:28): But it's not about naming, like trying to define the category for an analyst. I think the, you know, this is a it's a more mature market as well. So the analysts already have their perspectives of, of what's in the market. And so our positioning was, should never really have been about trying to do that for us, like at our stage, at our maturity of market. I think if, if I was at an early stage company where there was no quadrant, yeah. You'd absolutely be trying to get them to, to redefine or create a quadrant around you having been there before you, the other thing you have to do though, is you have to go and get your competition to also call it the same thing. So that becomes interesting. Kathleen (26:13): There's no such thing as a category of one. Rowan (26:16): Yeah, correct. Kathleen (26:17): Yeah. So, so one of the other things I wanted to dig into you, you talked about you joined shortly before COVID hit, you did the rebrand, you had all these plans, then the pandemic hits and the customer's priorities started to change, and their immediate pain points started to change. Talk a little bit about how that changed, how you approached your strategy. Rowan (26:43): So the first thing I think it's really important to recognize is prior to that, you know, customers had gone through their annual planning cycle, right. And they were in the midst of rolling out and trying to operationalize their 2020 plans, you know, finance teams or like, okay, well, we've just, you know, some of them hadn't even closed Q1 yet. And normally we all joke, you know, every, every annual plan is, is dead on arrival. Well, that is even more true of 2020. Everyone's plans had been thrown out the window for a finance team's perspective though. Their first thought was, how do we make it through like firstly, a lot of customers just delay payments, right? Cashflow becomes super important. So rather than have a net 15 on invoices, my new standard is net 60 net 90, and you're trying to hold all the cash inside of your business. Rowan (27:45): Everyone's doing it to each other. And so, you know, cash becomes king. And so one of the use cases that we can operationalize with our customers is cashflow forecasting. So firstly, we wanted to make sure that customers of ours that had an implemented that use case realized that they could do that. And the other thing that became really important was speed became super important. You know customers and prospects, aren't going to want to go through a big finance transformation in the middle of a situation like that. They want things to happen fast. So we created a package of implementation services. We call Planful now, right. Get up and running in less than 30 days, make it make the, the folks that do want to buy or can buy, make them realize that it's not a, it's not a 12 month ERP implementation or CRM transformation or anything like that. Rowan (28:43): So very much focused on, okay, what can we do for people? What can we do for them right now, if it's if it's an existing customer, how can we help them with, with those key priority use cases which were cashflow forecasting for them and scenario on what if analysis, you can imagine the, what if analysis that folks needed to do in in kind of March and April of last year, that's all many companies were doing was trying to figure out what if, what if, what if, and looking at it from all sorts of lenses. Kathleen (29:14): Yeah. And then I also loved the thing that really stood out from what you said to me. Cause I really believe this so strongly is about really focusing on brand and knowing that if you, it, it, it is very much a kind of a longer play. But knowing that if you build a really strong brand, the demand is going to follow, right. People love working with brands that they love and it fo it, it functions like a magnet to pull in the right leads. A lot of times though, and I, and I've talked to other marketers, who've experienced this you can, as the head of marketing strongly believe in the power of brand but unless you work for a CEO and and you are a part of a leadership team that also believes in the power of brand, you can get a lot of pushback because it can be very tempting for those people to say, no, we just need, you know, keep the MQL flow going. And sometimes during that pivot, when you're like really shifting your focus, sometimes things can slow down as you do that, but you have to kind of like do it, knowing that you're slowing down to speed up if you will. So I'd love to hear just what your experience was with that. Rowan (30:32): Yeah. So, so firstly, I think your key point there was having a CEO that understands the power of, of brand. And I'm thankful that Grant was a CMO that is a blessing and a curse for those that ever want to go work for a CEO who has been a CMO. They can get right into the weeds as well. And that can be, you know, not as enjoyable as you want it to be. But it does mean that they understand the power of the marketing machine and you know, Grant has very similar philosophies to me on, on that. Like he's done rebrands before. He's done brand refreshes. Really cares about the power of brand. And that's a lot of what we talk about. You know, position brand, narrative, things like that. We talk about that a lot. Rowan (31:23): And so as I think about going through that exercise, it was much easier, right? I didn't have you know, it was part of why I came was I knew that we were going to get to build a brand and rebrand the company. So that was part of the excitement of joining the company was, oh, wow, we're going to do this. This is going to be fun. Now I wish, you know, I wish the timing had been different because as I said, we had a great campaign ready to go. It was really fun. And we had, you know, all this spend that we wanted to put behind it, well, in the middle of a pandemic, you know, you're not going to get the same return for that dollar. Right. As I said, our, our audience was ambushed. So we pared back a little bit responsible thing to do, make sure that we hit our growth goals in an economical way. Rowan (32:14): The, I think the second part about brand that you mentioned is the leadership team actually also valuing that. And I think that's something that I was lucky to have. Here was people that understood that this is a transformation and to do the transformation we needed the power of a brand behind it, as well as the flexibility to to really go through that change. Now, the I guess the, the benefit of doing that through the middle of the year, like 2020 is, no one knows what the numbers would have been like before. Right. Like, you know, we talk about this a lot internally, like never compare to 2020 cause who knows what those numbers should have been or could have looked like. So we always do a lot of, you know, a year over year, but year over 2019 as well. Right. Rowan (33:07): Because that was a more normalized year. Yeah. So I did get the, the lock or the the challenge of doing that through a pandemic. And that meant that no one knew what the numbers would have been anyway. So I was able to focus on what we wanted to do, right. The intentionality of, you know, the power of that brand. And so there was no, well, we're expecting this many MQL this week, this month, and you're not getting them because we weren't expecting a normal period at that time. So that was actually I won't say luxury. Kathleen (33:44): It sounds like take advantage of those black Swan events when they happen. Rowan (33:49): Take advantage of a crisis. And so frankly, that's what we were able to do. And actually, that's, that's also, when you think about how you want to build that brand, we want to do it in the most economical way possible, right? Like when I worked for a PE company, I don't just have billions and billions of dollars to spend on, on brand. So we're able to focus on the places where building a brand actually makes sense. So I have a podcast like you have a podcast, right? We very much focused on organic social and doing that in a way that is, is really powerful for us. We focused on being more creative than our competition. So as you look at our advertising, you look at our color scheme, it's very different to what's out there and that's all intentional to, to kind of be a pattern interrupt for our audience. And so those things allowed us to, I believe, build faster. You know, a lot of our competition do you use blue, right? What's a safe, trusted finance finance colors, right? Blue, everything's good, no red. We're able to use color and creativity in a way that our competitors aren't using. And so that's how we're trying to stand out to our audience. Kathleen (35:03): I love all of that. I'm a huge fan of the pattern interrupt. And it's funny because I've always, I've always worked in B2B tech and my dream has been to work for a company where I can have the primary color and our brand be purple just because nobody ever picks it. And I'm like, the fact that no one picks it is why we need to do it. Like let's pick crazy colors and go with that. But I, you know, still working on that, the dream of purple someday. Rowan (35:29): Well, I'm getting to live the dream of purple and for those that ever want to know why, why purple. Well purple actually has association with royalty, rich and richness, and wealth. So it's actually a great color for a finance company. Kathleen (35:43): Yeah. And sometimes, honestly there doesn't need to be a reason, like just the fact that it's different is great reason. Right? well, we're coming close to the end of our time. And so I want to sort of wrap up this segment of the interview by just asking, can you, are there any like results that you can speak to? Like we talked about the journey coming in and changing things up and then having to grapple with the pandemic hitting and your customer's priorities suddenly shifting, like what's, what's been the outcome of all of this so far? Rowan (36:18): Well, so I think in, in a couple of key things, so firstly right now in 2021, we our, our pipeline creation to one ratio has increased by 5%. And, and well, not by 5%, it's probably by like 150% or something silly like that, but it's a five percentage point increase if you, if you compare the two numbers. And so that means we're getting high intent buyers coming to us. And that means our deal velocity is much faster. So, so that cycle of what we're trying to create with a brand, people come to us, giving us that momentum has absolutely worked. Our website traffic is up you know and it was 180% year over year, and it's like 140% year over 2019. And, and that is all organic. So not the paid stuff, it's not paid, that's driving all the website visits. Rowan (37:16): That's, that's organic traffic. Branded search terms are up, right. So people are looking for the words like continuous planning or Planful. And, and so that's really important to us. Ultimately for me, it's about it's about revenue and, and that's up, you know, we're we're about to have a press release soon. And, you know, our, our revenue numbers, sales, bookings numbers are drastically up like year over year, but also again, you're over 2019. And so that changes significantly that marketing shift, that, that fundamental shift is starting to have the realization now. And a funny blessing is that now also lots of other organizations are using continuous planning. And I, I suspect that's because everyone planned continuously last year. So we were lucky in the fact that we kind of coined it and owned it prior to everyone realizing that that's actually, it's the new, it's the new normal. Rowan (38:19): So everyone is planning all the time and it's going to be an interesting for us planning season, because for those folks listening in marketing, go and give you a finance professional, a hug, please, because they have been going through a really, really tough time, consistently planning, planning, planning, re-planning. And now they're about to go into planning season again, which means sleepless nights for them. And we really want to make sure that we can alleviate that. And I think burnout and finance teams is something that's going to really appear soon. And we're hoping to alleviate that for, for organizations. Kathleen (38:56): Amen to that, because I work with an amazing CFO, Josh Shenker at my company clean.io, and he has been continuously planning for, since I've met him and we are already in planning for next year. So everything you just said is absolutely spot on. So shout out to Josh. All right. Shifting gears. I have two questions that I always ask my guests at the end of every interview, and I'd love to hear your answers to them the first being I, you know, and you just really gave me the perfect segue, which is that things change so quickly in every industry, marketing certainly being one of them. You know, in marketing, we have the added elements of, you know platform changes, algorithm changes, regulatory changes, et cetera, all of which affect how we do our jobs. And I think most of the marketers I talk to say that staying on top of all that is one of their biggest challenges. And so I'm curious how you do that. How do you keep yourself educated and are there certain sources you turn to, to stay on the cutting edge? Rowan (40:00): I would actually counter that and say, I, you know, you've heard me talk today. It's been a lot about brand. It's been a lot about fundamentals. And so you know, I started my career very much in the tech side, always being like, you know, very big fan of Scott Brinker's MarTech slide, and always priding myself on knowing who was what and who was who and how it was all going. And then I couldn't keep up. You know, I don't think even Scott could probably keep up. And so what I found myself gravitating back to is actually more of the fundamentals, more of the psychology, more of behavioral, you know, behavioral understanding of buyers, psychology of things like color and words, and, and coming back to basics of things like copywriting. Now I have a great team, thankfully that stay on top of all of the technology aspects, but I also see the trends going away from more relying on that technology now, you know, with all of the Apple's privacy changes and impending, Google, privacy changes and things like that. I actually think coming back to basics is, is what more of us should be doing. And so I've been doing a lot more of that, like rereading the classics and you know, going in you know, a lot of kind of persuasion and reading a lot of psychology books which has been interesting, but that's what I've been doing. Kathleen (41:20): Well, I think that's, that's so smart and I agree with that. You know, if you solve for people, you will always win. If you try to solve for machines, the machines are trying to solve for people. So you'll just be one step behind the machines, right. So solve for the people. It works every time. Second question is the, in terms of this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular person or company that you think is really setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days? Rowan (41:56): So I work with Eddie Schreiner at Very Good Copy. And I think Eddie, like it, I look forward to Eddie's email every week, right. So if I think about inbound marketing, right? Yeah. That's outbound, but I'm excited to get his email all the time. And so, you know, I think someone like Eddie is out there creating demand for his services, but doing it in a way where he's consistently educating me and my team and I'm sure his audience the other folks that I really admire right now is the team at Metadata. Some of their advertising captures my attention. We talked about pattern disrupts, you know, they're doing things that other companies aren't doing. And, and even though it's, you know, it's, it's MarTech and it's one of the things that I'm not keeping up to date with. They're using more of the core principles to actually get my attention. And so I would say, you know, the, the folks there at Metadata are doing really good. Kathleen (42:55): Awesome, well, we'll have to check those out. And I also love Very Good Copy. I get that newsletter and I'm a huge fan of it. So check that out if you haven't done that already. And if you are listening and you want to get in touch with Rowan, Rowan, what is the best way for somebody to do that? Where can they find you online? Rowan (43:15): Yeah, so definitely my LinkedIn is the best for business chat. My, my Twitter, which is @RowanTonkin is mostly golf and rugby. So unless you're, unless you're in that golf, rugby and marketing cohort, I would go to my LinkedIn and simply just Rowan Tonkin. You'll, you'll find a picture of a man behind a purpose. Kathleen (43:34): All right, fantastic. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes and if you are listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love for them to be my next guest. That is it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me Rowan. This was a ton of fun. Rowan (43:57): Well, my pleasure. Thanks so much, Kathleen.

Deckers Outdoor Corporation, Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 29, 2021

No one has a crystal ball, least of all Wall Street traders and analysts. But every quarter, Wall Street tries to flex its muscles by forecasting a company's quarterly performance and suggesting how you should trade based on those estimates. In this episode of The Bull & The Bear, I'll tell you about trading on earnings and whether it's a good idea or not. The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing, and a lot of companies have been blowing past Wall Street expectations. Six of the 11 main sectors of the S&P 500 are reporting higher net profit margins for the second quarter of the year than the first. Some standouts are: ·     Information tech — 24.6% net profit margin in Q2 compared to 23.4% in Q1. ·     Communication services — 14.1% net profit margin in Q2 compared to 12.1% in Q1. The numbers show that companies are growing. Comparing second-quarter net profit margins to five-year averages shows that all sectors but real estate — which has no five-year average — grew at a faster rate in this quarter than over the last five years. But does this suggest we should be buying and selling based on earnings? Check out this week's episode of The Bull & The Bear to find out. Be sure to also subscribe to our https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt9RDMMAOPBAIWODmDGactQ?sub_confirmation=1 (YouTube channel) for more videos like my weekly Marijuana Market Update. Have something you want us to talk about? Email thebullandthebear@moneyandmarkets.com and give us your thoughts. Check out https://moneyandmarkets.com/ (moneyandmarkets.com), and sign up for our free newsletters that deliver you the most important and unbiased financial news, commentary, and actionable advice. Also, follow us on: https://www.facebook.com/moneyandmarkets (Facebook) https://twitter.com/TheMoneyMarkets (Twitter) https://www.linkedin.com/company/money-and-markets (LinkedIn)

NextGen Healthcare, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 29, 2021

Dynatrace, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 28, 2021

NortonLifeLock Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 27, 2021

Commvault Systems, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 27, 2021

Agilysys, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 27, 2021

Bitcoin maximalist, founder and CEO of Parallax Digital, and host of the 'What is Money' podcast, Robert Breedlove is not backing away from his bold BTC price prediction. In a new interview with Stansberry Research, Breedlove tells Daniela Cambone that despite the recent price hurdles, Bitcoin is still on track for $307,000 by the start of 2022. Whereas he previously predicted BTC reach this target by October, he has moved his forecast to Q1 of next year. The Freedom Maximalist also predicts the Bitcoin price to reach $12.5 million per BTC within the next decade due to the M2 money supply expanding out of control and describes Bitcoin to be the ultimate, unstoppable counter-party insurance policy against central banks. For complete show notes and for the full premium experience with video, visit our YouTube channel at http://CryptoNewsAlerts.net

Kroger has closed a few stores during the pandemic on the west coast. A new article released this week calls them out for buying back stock of over 1 billion dollars. The team takes a look at Kroger's finances for Q1 2021 and if there were any pay increases for employees or if the corporation kept all the profits for themselves. Tanner reviews his take on whether this is a capitalism problem or if there should be a boycott of Kroger. The team also reviews the new Delta Variant and what the CDC says we should be doing to protect ourselves and the public. The show will contain the recurring segments Answering Conservative Questions and Quick Saves. Subscribe: http://www.spreaker.com/user/cellardoorskeptics YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CellarDoorSkeptics/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CellarDoorSkeptics RSS Feed: https://www.spreaker.com/user/8326690/episodes/feed iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cellar-door-skeptics/id10 Website: http://cellardoorskeptics.com Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/cellar-door-skeptics Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cellardoorskeptics PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/CellarDoorSkeptics Intro Music: https://aloststateofmind.bandcamp.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYKbTG3MdQI Links ---------- https://bit.ly/RogueMediaCoop http://twitter.com/RogueMediaCoop ---------- https://www.businessinsider.com/kroger-closed-grocery-stores-worker-raises-stock-buyback-2021-7 https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/12/04/kroger-walmart-amazon-profits-covid-19-pandemic/6458910002/ https://ir.kroger.com/CorporateProfile/press-releases/press-release/2021/Kroger-Delivers-Strong-First-Quarter-Results-and-Raises-Full-Year-2021-Guidance/default.aspx https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2021/03/04/how-much-kroger-profit-during-pandemic/4507949001/ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kroger-stock-rises-after-earnings-beat-1-billion-share-buyback-program-announced-2020-09-11 https://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/041702.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/why-would-company-buyback-its-own-shares.asp ---------- https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/oqszwr/hobbies_and_socialism/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf ---------- https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/5-things-to-know-delta-variant-covid https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/22/walensky-pivotal-moment-delta-variant/ ---------- Quick Save Tanner: Giant Donut https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aqjkn/the-universe-is-a-giant-donut-that-we-live-inside-new-research-suggests?fbclid=IwAR3hfDHjdW0D6dmdvr2kZ1O0wjXN-MiYjOtd20pkYVZTFBBqoB8hyAULJdk Hanna:The Belgariad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belgariad Buddy: Common cognitive bias https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo

PetMed Express, Inc., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 26, 2021

Panelists: Brian Norton, Josh Anderson, Belva Smith, Tracy Castillo. ATFAQ148 – Q1. Extendable/Retractable Stylus, Q2. MindMapping software for O365, Q3. Health Maintenance Apps, Q4. Elopement Devices, Q5. Time management apps, Q6. Wildcard: Resources for making technology purchases —- Transcript Starts Here —- Brian Norton: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host, […] The post ATFAQ148 – Q1. Extendable/Retractable Stylus, Q2. MindMapping software for O365, Q3. Health Maintenance Apps, Q4. Elopement Devices, Q5. Time management apps, Q6. Wildcard: Resources for making technology purchases appeared first on Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads.

1. Twitter Earnings Highlights- First off, on users - Twitter's Monetizable Daily Active User (mDAU) count is now up to 206M, an increase of 11% YoY, and an additional 7 million on its Q1 figure. In terms of revenue, Twitter posted a strong result of $1.19 billion in Q2, a 74% increase YoY. As per Twitter:“Total international revenue was $537 million, an increase of 69%, or 64% on a constant currency basis. Japan remains our second largest market, growing 40% and contributing $151 million, or 13% of total revenue in Q2. Revenue from Japan declined on a sequential basis in Q2, reflecting typical country-specific seasonality.”Twitter included this generic note on Blue take-up within its shareholder letter:“We've been encouraged by the initial response and look forward to further innovating and growing this new revenue stream with additional features, geographic expansion, and other offerings as part of our revenue durability strategy.”Read the Q2'21 Shareholder Letter here: Q2'21-Shareholder-Letter.pdf (q4cdn.com)  2. Snapchat Earnings Highlights- First off, on users - Snapchat added 13 million more daily actives in Q2, rising to 293 million, which represents a 23% increase, year-over-year. On the revenue front, Snap posted a huge 116% YoY increase to $982 million for the period.Review the Q2'21 Earnings Report here: Q2'21-Earnings-Slides-Final-7.22.21.pdf (q4cdn.com)   3. LinkedIn Offers Free Marketing Certification Program to Help Showcase Your LinkedIn Marketing Knowledge - LinkedIn is allowing professionals to become accredited LinkedIn marketing experts by completing a free course. This program is for professionals who want to show that they not only have experience with social media marketing, but they have specialized knowledge in LinkedIn. The two courses available are:Fundamentals Certification (Basic): Demonstrates expertise in launching LinkedIn Ad campaigns and tactics. With this certification, you can run successful LinkedIn Ad campaigns that drive business results.Marketing Strategy Certification (Intermediate): Demonstrates expertise in leveraging LinkedIn Ads for full-funnel strategies, including Brand Awareness and Lead Generation. Once certified, you can create marketing strategies that leverage the full suite of LinkedIn marketing tools.The process for earning your certification involves first learning about LinkedIn's ad products, via a range of courses available on the LinkedIn Certifications page.After you've gone through each module - or if you're confident that you know all the key details - you can then take the relevant certification exam, in which you'll have 60 minutes to answer 60 multiple choice questions on LinkedIn's ad tools and processes. You can retake the test up to 3 times, and the certification expires in 2 years. And while you do have 60 minutes, if you know your stuff, you can get it done in significantly less time than that.4. YouTube Introduces Super Thanks for Fans to Support Creators of Uploaded Videos - Until now, creators on YouTube were able to earn money directly from fans on their live streamed videos and Premieres, via Super Chat and Super Stickers, but fans had no way to support on-demand videos uploaded by creators until Tuesday's introduction of Super Thanks. It is essentially an expansion of its Super Chat streamer donation feature to regular video uploads, providing another way for creators to generate income from their content.  As explained by YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan:"Since launching Super Chat in 2017 and Super Stickers in 2019, creators from around the globe have wanted us to bring this magic beyond live-streams and Premieres to video uploads. Enter Super Thanks! Fans watching YouTube videos can now purchase Super Thanks to express their gratitude and show support. They will see an animated GIF and, as an added bonus, get a distinct, colorful comment to highlight their purchase, which creators can respond to."5. 4 Additional YouTube Updates You Need To Know - YouTube announced four new features that will make make way for YouTube to be a more interactive experience for creators and viewers. They are: Comment Translation Polls - Live polls can be used, for example, to ask your audience's opinion on the current topic of discussion. Subscribers-only chat - A new option to make live chats available only to subscribers can help with moderating the live chat and creating more connections. This feature can be enabled during live stream setup or while broadcasting live – directly from Live Control Room settings. Expansion of Clips feature - YouTube is expanding the rollout of Clips, a feature which has been in testing with a limited number of creators. Clips allow viewers to select a 5-60 second segment of content (both video uploads and streams) that can be shared with others on YouTube and across third-party platforms. FYI: YouTube is not breaking any new ground with these features. Rather, it's catching up to what are standard offerings from live streaming competitors like Twitch.6. TikTok Adds New Features to Live-Stream, Including Live Guests and Q&A Panels - This week, TikTok has added some new elements to its live-streaming options, including scheduled events that you can promote, live Q & A, and a co-streaming option to enhance the experience.First off, on scheduled events, you can now create an event card for your upcoming stream, which you can then share on TikTok and across other platforms. Users can tap the 'Register' CTA for an in-app reminder, which provides another way to increase awareness and interest in your upcoming streams, which could be great for brands considering the option.Next up is live guests, which, like other platforms, will display you and your guest in split-screen mode in the live broadcast window. Which is actually not new. All TikTok users with more than 1,000 followers (who are over the age of 16) are able to live-stream, while those with more than 5,000 followers have been able to stream with guests in this mode for some time. It seems that TikTok is reducing this requirement, with all users that are able to stream (i.e. those with 1k followers) now also able to add guests.And last is the updated Q & A overlay on-screen, which provides another way to engage with streamers in the app. Live viewers have always been able to post questions via the comments, while the Q and A option has been available on selected creator profiles since January this year. This new option combines the two, adding another engagement option for streamers, which will improve the context for viewers, and give those posting questions more individual focus.7. TikTok Launches New 'Spark' Ads Which Enabled Brands to Tap into Trending Organic Content - TikTok has launched a new ad option which essentially enables brands to sponsor already trending organic content that aligns with their offerings, in order to get an association boost without having to create anything themselves, or even commission a creator to do so. Through TikTok's new 'Spark' ad option, brands can identify existing organic videos that might fit their campaign - like, say, if a beauty influencer has showcased your product in his or her organic clips. Brands can then reach out to these creators and repurpose their clips for paid campaigns. Per TikTok:"TikTok is made up of creators who are redefining entertainment, starting trends, and sharing with the world their take on popular products and services. Brands can now tap into the plethora of creative, diverse content and connect with the creators who help bring these products and services to life."8. Instagram Announces Sensitive Content Control for Its Explore Feed - Instagram has added a new way to help users better manage their on-platform experience with a variable 'Sensitive Content Control', which provides three options for restricting the content that you are shown in the app. If you head to Settings > Account > Sensitive Content Controls, you'll now be able to choose between these options: Allow - You may see more photos or videos that could be upsetting or offensive Limit (Default) - You may see some photos or videos that could be upsetting or offensive Limit Even More - You may see fewer photos or videos that could be upsetting or offensive The middle ground 'Limit' is the default setting for all users, while only those over the age of 18 will be able to select the 'Allow' option, which removes any restrictions on displayed content.9. Google Launches Free Deals Listings in Search Results - Google is highlighting deals in the shopping tab of search results. When searching for a product, the shopping tab will now organize and show product listings that are competitively priced or discounted from retailers across the web. When people search for deals during major sales events, like “Black Friday deals” or “Cyber Monday sales,” they will see a new section highlighting relevant deals, alongside other related sales information.When retailers upload promotions and deals in Google Merchant Center will be automatically surfaced for relevant queries in the Shopping tab.Google will surface offers based on factors such as the discount itself, how popular a product is, how popular the site it's listed on is, and more.10. Google Adds ‘About This Result', Which Explains Why You're Seeing Each Result - Google has added a new element to its 'About This Result' panels in search results, which will provide more context about each result that you're seeing, including a brief overview as to why it's being shown in response to your query. Per Google,"Starting today, About This Result will show searchers information about some of the most important factors used by Google Search to connect results to their queries. Because just as these factors help Google decide if a result may be relevant, they may also help people decide what result is useful for them."11. Google Launches New Way to Optimize Videos For Search - Google now officially supports SeekToAction markup for videos on your site, so that you can use the SeekToAction markup to communicate the key moments (timestamps) Google shows for videos in Google Search. Google said this is "a new way for you to enable key moments for videos on your site, without the effort of manually labeling each segment. All you have to do is tell Google the URL pattern for skipping to a specific timestamp within your video. Google will then use AI to identify key moments in the video, and display links directly to those moments in Search results."12. Google's Ads New 3-Strike Policy - What Counts As a Strike? - Google announced a 3-strike policy, which would effectively suspend ad accounts that have received repeated violations. Google does have some checks and balances in place to try to ensure that only accounts that have truly violated policy are being penalized. For now, these penalties are only applicable to three categories: Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances, and Dangerous Products or Services. These are policies that monitor deceptive behavior, hacking services, spyware, drugs, weapons, etc.Wrongful violations that are successfully appealed will result in the removal of the strike. So that means, if your business receives a violation for ad content and you are able to appeal it (without making any edits to the ad), you will not receive a strike as the disapproval was not truly a violation.The first incident will result in a warning. After that, advertisers will receive strikes. Each expires within 90 days. So if an advertiser receives a warning and then, within 90 days, violates the same policy then they will receive a strike. If it has been more than 90 days, they would receive a warning and the process would start over. Once they've received their first strike, the account will be placed on a temporary hold for 3 days. Regardless of when the warning occurred, if another violation happens within 90 days of the first strike, then they would receive a second strike which would result in a 7-day temporary hold.Finally, if the violation occurred again within 90 days of the second strike (regardless of when the warning or first strike happened), then the account would be suspended for repeated violation of policy. Keep in mind, if any of those strikes were successfully appealed as being incorrectly flagged for violation, the strike would be removed and it would not count.

Karooooo Ltd., Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Jul 20, 2021

This week, Richard Brennan from ATS Trading Solutions makes his debut on the show, and we discuss the complexity behind successful Trend Following strategies, momentum trading versus Trend Following, the importance of average win rate, how a weak edge can still lead to strong returns, deflationary environments and their past effects on the Trend Following models, which markets, and how many, to include in a profitable trading system, and how to find the perfect exit strategy with minimum risk. In this episode, we discuss: Why there may be no such thing as a 'simple' successful Trend Following strategy How to profit across multiple timeframes How momentum investing is often confused with Trend Following methods Average win rate versus average loss rate Why inflation is usually a good thing for systematic investors Trailing stops and risk management How many markets are ideal for a profitable Trend Following system Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Richard on Twitter. IT's TRUE

Flying private was once inaccessible to most, but the industry has changed, boasting flexibility and convenience for work and leisure. A veteran of the business, Rick Sitomer, CEO of Star Jets International, spoke with Say Yes to Travel host Sarah Dandashy about the changing environment.Sitomer started the first private jet brokerage firm in 2001 after witnessing the inefficiency in the marketplace. He ran that business for 15 years before selling up but started back again in 2016. The company just announced its highest revenues to date in Q1 2021, which is the result of tremendous demand.“In any disaster, aviation thrives. Many people were scared to fly commercial. The business did change when COVID hit. We made a few big trips for clients in the beginning with cargo jets moving over 14 million masks,” Sitomer said.Sitomer noted that he thinks revenue gains will continue. He expects his business to reach $200-300 million in revenue a year. So, who are private jet clients?“Flying first-class costs a fortune. You might as well fly private and get the convenience and flexibility that comes with it.” - Rick Sitomer“It's a lot of referrals. We look for clients that fly all the time for business or leisure. We do use marketing tactics like pay per click and are looking to do more TV ads to create brand awareness on business channels,” Sitomer added.Experts agree that the private aviation industry is booming, with projections for it to hit $100 billion in five years. “The growth in the industry and business is exponential,” Sitomer said.Now that countries are opening back up, Sitomer is witnessing a huge demand for luxury travel. It's more convenient for travelers, and if they were going to fly first class, they might as well take a private jet.

In this episode, Joe and Clint talk with Tony DeNicola, Founder and CEO of White Buffalo, Inc, and Pig Brig Trap Systems, about the damage wild hogs, do to your property trapping and the best ways to trap and control them. Plus, Jonathan Smith, Executive Director at TimberMart-South, gives the latest Timber Market Update for Q1 for Louisiana. See all the feral hog trap systems  at Pig Brig Trap Systems Have More Land Investment Questions?Contact Clint or Joe at pros@landhuntin.com or click here!  Show Sponsors: Photonis Pryamid Air First South Farm Credit SunSouth Brush Clearing Services Farm Credit of Northwest Florida Buck's Island Marina MDH Foundation Repair National Land Realty Great Days Outdoors Magazine   Follow Huntin' Land Podcast on Facebook

 Want more great hunting and fishing news, tips, and what-not? Check out greatdaysoutdoors.com Thanks for listening, be sure to email us your questions to pros@landhuntin.com

Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, discusses Q1 earnings and the outlook for the auto industry. RJ Gallo, Senior Fixed Income Portfolio Manager and Head of the Municipal Bond Group at Federated Hermes, discusses the bond market. Angie Hannam, Global Chief Talent Officer for R/GA, discusses TikTok's resumes program, and global hiring trends post pandemic. Louis Navellier, Chairman, CEO & CIO of Navellier & Associates, discusses earnings season. Hosted by Matt Miller and Paul Sweeney. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Business leader Jeanne David describes the founding of her company Outer Aisle Gourmet, which provides a healthy alternative to high-calorie foods. Rapidly growing due to being the first company of its kind, Outer Aisle is poised to hit $50M this year alone! • In five years, 75% of the US will be diabetic or pre-diabetic. • 1st quarter 2021 up 379% compared to Q1 2020. • They were in the growth phase when COVID hit. • Took a year to decide the future. • Magic question: If you could do anything what would it be? TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [1:10] COVID's effect on her business. [7:50] Her background in health. [14:30] Getting back into the game.

Mark Rzepczynski joins us this week to discuss ‘algorithm aversion' and the science of how ‘model anxiety' shows investors to be naturally wary of rules-based systems. We also discuss how to evaluate momentum data, how a busy week for market news can still be a quiet week for Trend Followers, the benefits of moving away from ‘peak complexity' as soon as possible, why having too many filters can expose a trader to large opportunity costs, the optimal percentage amount of risk per trade, as well as portfolio construction versus signal generation and which is more important. In this episode, we discuss: How behavioural finance leaves investors under-allocated to Trend Following strategies How to perceive momentum data Why the steady flow of market news often has little value for Trend Followers Embracing simplicity The need to avoid too many filters in your system How much should be risked per trade Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Mark on https://twitter.com/mrzepczynski (Twitter). IT's TRUE

Mark Rzepczynski joins us this week to discuss ‘algorithm aversion' and the science of how ‘model anxiety' shows investors to be naturally wary of rules-based systems.  We also discuss how to evaluate momentum data, how a busy week for market news can still be a quiet week for Trend Followers, the benefits of moving away from ‘peak complexity' as soon as possible, why having too many filters can expose a trader to large opportunity costs, the optimal percentage amount of risk per trade, as well as portfolio construction versus signal generation and which is more important. You can find Mark's latest writings here. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

In today's episode, Trey Lockerbie welcomes back Ben Claremon and Eugene Robin from Cove Street Capital. They quickly touch on the performance of Lumen Technologies, a stock they pitched on our show back in December 2020, whose price subsequently has risen 50% in Q1. But for this episode, Claremon and Robin mainly discuss the Race to Space and their position in Viasat. If you only follow the headlines, you would think Elon Musk is on an unencumbered path to space domination, especially with his satellite business under SpaceX called Starlink.IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:(24:49) How Viasat might currently be wildly underappreciated by the market(06:15) How Starlink compares to Viasat in the future of satellite broadband(01:02:49) Their intrinsic value of Viasat and much much more*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCES:Preston, Trey & Stig's tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) hereSupport our free podcast by supporting our sponsorsHELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a recent article in STAT news, TJ Parker, the VP of pharmacy at Amazon and the founder of PillPack, explained that Amazon's plan to stand out in the pharmacy space is simple: “Better selection, better convenience, and better prices.” He added, “It really is the Amazon playbook.”  Better selection, better convenience, better price. The playbook of arguably one of the most successful companies ever, Amazon has decimated and bankrupted anybody standing in its way toward total market dominance. This same better selection, better convenience, better price trio—maybe with “better selection” inferred to mean “getting the right care to the right patient at the right time”—is the vision of many of the virtual-first health care providers starting to pop up. And when I say “pop up,” I mean that in Q1 of this year, according to data from Rock Health, $6.7 billion was invested in digital health companies.  In this health care podcast, we're talking about the proliferation of these “virtual-first” health care solutions. Before we begin, though, let me just clarify that in our conversation, virtual first doesn't mean virtual only. Most of the time, actually, virtual first means that the connective tissue of the operation is virtual/digitized. In other words, we're not just talking about some random mobile app here. There are likely human providers involved, and the goal is to offer patients not only a sticky engaging entry point and journey but then also a continuous longitudinal care experience. The patient journey should be clear, and the virtual-first solution is making sure that the patient isn't getting lost somewhere in their journey from diagnosis to better outcomes. Here's my main point: The big contrast between these newer virtual-first solutions and traditional health care enterprises is that humans involved in these virtual-first solutions are connected to each other and to their patients with technology designed for that purpose—as opposed to software and systems designed to maximize billing, which, sadly, many software tools and systems used in legacy health care were. The promise of these virtual-first solutions is to fill care gaps for patients who are currently having issues. It sometimes takes 10 years for people to get properly diagnosed. Care for chronic conditions is also abysmal in this country. Now, this all being said, much of the promise of these virtual-first, also called point solutions when someone is not a fan, has yet to be realized. Tune in to my interview with Al Lewis next week for more on that front. One area of concern is that if you have a point solution for MSK (musculoskeletal) care and a point solution for diabetes and a point solution for mental health, you wind up with silos. PCPs have complained that they don't know what's going on with some of these solutions, and it makes it harder to manage patients. Here's my inadequate response to these two criticisms: Well, how many silos currently exist in the health care system? When a specialist gets ahold of a patient, do the specialists talk to one another much less the PCP if we're talking about an average here? Sometimes patients have multiple PCPs even, who, I'm not exactly sure if they hold regular discussions. So, if the status quo is the benchmark to beat, then at least with some of these virtual-first silos, you have the patient getting longitudinal care within that silo. That's not the case with many specialists who, at best, manage one episodic or a series of episodic visits. On the other hand, consider that $6.7 billion of investment. Some PE company there is looking for 4x on their investment, so $6.7 billion of PE investment means that they expect to get $28 billion out of health care spend, meaning $28 billion paid for by patients, employers, or taxpayers. On the other other hand, $28 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the almost $3 trillion that this country spends annually on health care. I talk about all this and more with Joe Connolly in this health care podcast. Joe was originally in medical devices and has created his share of digital health solutions. Currently, Joe serves as CEO and founder of Visana, a virtual-first solution for women's health. You can learn more at visanahealth.com or by emailing Joe directly at joe@visanahealth.com.  Joe Connolly is the founder and CEO of Visana Health, a virtual-first women's specialty care clinic focused on high-cost chronic gynecologic conditions like endometriosis. Visana works with payers and self-funded employers to improve access to best-practice women's health care. Joe also writes a popular blog consisting of long-form, in-depth analyses on the burgeoning virtual-first care industry. Prior to Visana, Joe led digital health and strategy efforts at Boston Scientific, a large medical device company.  05:01 What does it mean to be virtual first? 05:50 “It's meeting people where they are and where they want care to be delivered. It does not mean virtual only.” 07:01 How do payers and purchasers know that a virtual-first program is available to them? 07:34 “We need to come up with new ways to increase engagement with these services.” 10:59 Will virtual care replace in-person care? 15:01 What needs to happen in order to have an empathetic care delivery? 18:06 How should employers try to wade through the virtual health space? 19:41 What's the value in administration within virtual care? 20:27 How does virtual care affect the relationship of the patient with their PCP? 22:05 What does physician abrasion mean? 25:31 What do virtual-first providers need to make sure they're doing? 27:16 “There is the possibility for perverse incentives, and it's up to the virtual-first space to make sure that we don't give in to those perverse incentives.” 28:28 Who is Visana and what do they do? You can learn more at visanahealth.com or by emailing Joe directly at joe@visanahealth.com.  @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions What does it mean to be virtual first? @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions “It's meeting people where they are and where they want care to be delivered. It does not mean virtual only.” @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions How do payers and purchasers know that a virtual-first program is available to them? @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions “We need to come up with new ways to increase engagement with these services.” @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions Will virtual care replace in-person care? @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions What needs to happen in order to have an empathetic care delivery? @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions How does virtual care affect the relationship of the patient with their PCP? @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions “There is the possibility for perverse incentives, and it's up to the virtual-first space to make sure that we don't give in to those perverse incentives.” @JConnol of @VisanaHealth discusses #virtualhealth on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #virtualfirst #healthcaresolutions

Show #1143.   If you get any value from this podcast please consider supporting my work on Patreon. Plus all Patreon supporters get their own unique ad-free podcast feed.   Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Wednesday 14th July. It's  Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to.   Thank you to MYEV.com for helping make this show, they've built the first marketplace specifically for Electric Vehicles. It's a totally free marketplace that simplifies the buying and selling process, and help you learn about EVs along the way too.     VW LIFTS PROFIT TARGET AS BATTERIES AND SOFTWARE BOOST SALES   - Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess is elaborating further on VW's plans to phase out combustion engines and equip cars with software systems that enable automated driving and can be updated over the air.   - Although EVs aren't as profitable as combustion cars now, VW expects overall parity to be reached within two to three years.   - Even as EVs take center stage, Diess has repeatedly said that software and self-driving functions will to bring about an even deeper transformation of the industry with cars becoming sophisticated connected devices   - First-half operating profit rose to 11 billion euros, ahead of pre-pandemic levels   Original Source : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-13/vw-targets-higher-returns-as-batteries-and-software-boost-sales   VOLKSWAGEN GROUP PRESENTS NEW AUTO STRATEGY THROUGH 2030   - Individual mobility, based on cars, is expected to still account for 85% of the market and Volkswagen's business.   - A robust-margin ICE business, generating strong cash-flows will finance and accelerate the shift to BEVs. A disciplined ramp-up driven by synergies from lower battery and factory costs and increasing scale is expected to improve BEV margins.   - Volkswagen has already earmarked €73 billion for future technologies from 2021 through 2025, representing 50% of total investments.   - Synergies are expected to arise in many areas: from a universal BEV product architecture to CARIAD's global software platform, own cell and battery production at scale, all the way to a mobility platform that bundles a range of services seamlessly.   - From 2026 onwards, the Group plans to start the production of pure electric vehicles on the SSP. This next generation will be all-electric, fully digital and highly scalable. Over its lifetime, more than 40 million vehicles are projected on this basis. Like the MEB today, the SSP will be open to other auto manufacturers. To improve and speed up its mechatronics platform competencies, the Group will invest around €800 million into a new Research & Development facility in Wolfsburg, where the core of the SSP platform and its modules will be designed.   - Volkswagen Group's automotive software company CARIAD aspires to develop the leading software platform by 2025, as one software backbone for all group cars. Currently, the entity is working on three software platforms: E 1.1 allows for upgrades and over-the-air updates of the MEB product portfolio, such as the Volkswagen ID.4, the Skoda Enyaq or the CUPRA Born. In 2023, CARIAD will release the premium software platform 1.2 (E 1.2): It will enable a variety of functions including a new unified infotainment system and over-the-air updates for Audi and Porsche vehicles. In 2025, CARIAD plans to launch a new unified, scalable software platform and end-to-end electronic architecture:   - Volkswagen Group plans to establish a controlled battery supply chain by setting up new partnerships and tackling all aspects from raw material to recycling. The goal is to create a closed loop in the battery value chain as the most sustainable and cost-effective way to build batteries.In order to reach its goal, Volkswagen Group is advancing battery competence and reducing complexity. To that extent, it is introducing one unified battery cell format with up to 50% cost reduction and up to 80% use cases by 2030. Six giga factories in Europe with a total production capacity of 240 GWh by 2030 will help to secure battery supply.The first location in Skellefteå, Sweden, will be operated by Northvolt AB. Volkswagen Group just invested an additional €500 million in its premium cell partner and works with Northvolt towards starting production in 2023.For the second location in Salzgitter, Volkswagen Group yesterday signed an agreement with Chinese cell specialist Gotion High-Tech as its technological partner for a start of production in 2025. Together, both partners will develop and industrialize the volume segment of the unified cell in the German plant.As a third location, Volkswagen Group intends to make Spain a strategic pillar of its electric campaign and is considering to establish the entire value chain of electric cars in that country.   Original Source : https://electriccarsreport.com/2021/07/volkswagen-group-presents-new-auto-strategy-through-2030   ELECTRIFY AMERICA ANNOUNCES ITS "BOOST PLAN" TO MORE THAN DOUBLE ITS CURRENT EV CHARGING NETWORK BY END OF 2025   - Electrify America today announced its “Boost Plan” to more than double its current electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in the United States and Canada, with plans to have more than 1,800 fast charging stations and 10,000 individual chargers installed by the end of 2025. The expansion will increase the deployment of 150 and 350 kilowatt chargers – the fastest speed available today – and help pave the way for more electric vehicles in North America.   - Electrify America will also expand its Electrify Canada charging network which began installations in 2019. Both initiatives are part of a global announcement today by the parent company Volkswagen Group to substantially increase public charging infrastructure in North America, Asia and Europe.   - The company has installed on average four stations per week since its first charging station opened a little over three years ago in May 2018. As part of the expansion, Electrify America will not only multiply its presence in established U.S. regions, but also add the states of Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and Vermont, bringing Electrify America's network to 49 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Building upon Electrify America's current two cross-country and two coastal routes for cross-country travel, part of this expansion will add a new electric vehicle charging highway to the upper Midwest   - Customers will experience easy payment solutions, such as Plug & Charge for capable vehicles, to make charging convenient and simple at every station. Additionally, the company is investing in integrated battery storage solutions that reduce the impact on the grid and allows deployment of charging stations in areas where it would not previously be feasible.   Original Source : https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-newswire/canada-business-technology-609968f79fa62b0387b635444d179e49   40,000 CHARGING STATIONS FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES PLANNED FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   - Southern California Edison announced on Monday, July 12, that it plans to exponentially increase the number of passenger car chargers installed in Southern California from about 3,000 today to more than 40,000 over the next four years. A Rosemead-based investor-owned utility that serves parts of the Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, SCE offers customers to public schools, city halls, libraries, hospitals, and more. Spend $ 436 million to encourage the installation of charging ports. Shopping centers, apartments, town homes, apartments.   - SCE had approximately 5,500 charging ports in its service area at the end of 2020, counting large and medium-sized charging stations for buses, trucks and fleet vehicles, as well as passenger car charging. SCE officials estimate that more than 9,000 will be added annually under the new program.   Original Source : https://californianewstimes.com/40000-charging-stations-for-electric-vehicles-planned-for-southern-california-daily-bulletin/436919/   AUDI LAUNCHES E-TRON GT IN THE US STARTING AT $99,900   - Audi is officially launching the e-tron GT electric car in the US today with a starting price of $99,900 before incentives.  Now the vehicle is available in the US market as Audi opens the online configurator today. The electric car starts at $99,900, and it goes up to $139,900 before options for the RS e-tron GT.   Original Source : https://electrek.co/2021/07/13/audi-e-tron-gt-us-launch-price-options/       TESLA ANNOUNCES Q2 EARNINGS DATE   - Tesla has announced the date for their second quarter earnings report: July 26, 2021. In early July, Tesla announced record quarterly deliveries of 201,250 vehicles, up 9% from Q1. Investors will be looking for record earnings as well.   Original Source : https://www.thestreet.com/tesla/news/tesla-announces-q2-earnings-date   TESLA WILL IMPORT MODEL Y FROM CHINA AMID GERMAN PLANT DELAYS   - Tesla is expected to start European deliveries of its China-built Model Y SUVs in a few weeks. The first vehicles will be handed over to customers in Germany in August, the German news agency dpa reported, citing an official Tesla communication. The vehicles will be exported from Tesla's factory in Shanghai.   Original Source : https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla-will-import-model-y-china-amid-german-plant-delays   APPLE REPORTEDLY WANTS BATTERIES FOR THE APPLE CAR TO BE PRODUCED IN THE US Original Source : https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/13/apple-reportedly-wants-batteries-for-the-apple-car-to-be-produced-in-the-us/   TESLA'S RIVAL XPENG LAUNCHES G3I SMART SUV Original Source : https://pandaily.com/teslas-rival-xpeng-launches-g3i-smart-suv   FOR STARLING BANK, ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING STATIONS ARE A TACTICAL MEDIA BUY Original Source : https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/07/13/starling-bank-electric-car-charging-stations-are-tactical-media-buy?utm_source=pocket_mylist   CHINA'S ELECTRIC SUV OFFERING 1000KM OF RANGE Original Source : http://autonews.gasgoo.com/china_news/70018409.html   VIETNAM'S VINFAST TO LAUNCH ELECTRIC CARS IN US, EUROPE NEXT YEAR   Original Source : https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210712-vietnam-s-vinfast-to-launch-electric-cars-in-us-europe-next-year   WITH NEW EVS COMING, HYUNDAI CANCELS IONIQ ELECTRIC Original Source : https://www.kbb.com/car-news/with-new-evs-coming-hyundai-cancels-ioniq-electric/   QUESTION OF THE WEEK WITH EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM   What's your ideal stop time on a long distance road trip? Whether you're driving an EV or not, how long would you usually be stationary? Let's find out how far away we are from EVs being a non-issue for extended driving.   Email me your thoughts and I'll read them out on Sunday – hello@evnewsdaily.com   It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast.   And  if you have an Amazon Echo, download our Alexa Skill, search for EV News Daily and add it as a flash briefing.   Come and say hi on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just search EV News Daily, have a wonderful day, I'll catch you tomorrow and remember…there's no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.   PREMIUM PARTNERS PHIL ROBERTS / ELECTRIC FUTURE BRAD CROSBY PORSCHE OF THE VILLAGE CINCINNATI AUDI CINCINNATI EAST VOLVO CARS CINCINNATI EAST NATIONALCARCHARGING.COM and ALOHACHARGE.COM DEREK REILLY FROM THE EV REVIEW IRELAND YOUTUBE CHANNEL RICHARD AT RSEV.CO.UK – FOR BUYING AND SELLING EVS IN THE UK EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM/