World War Z

From wknd notes by Eric Peters:

World War Z: “M&A activity’s down 50% from last yr,” explained the banker. “Buyers wildly chase growth, but there’s no growth.” The backlog of companies with no top-line growth, sitting in private equity portfolios is staggering. “Yet the IPO mkt for fast growing tech companies is on fire, no one cares about profitability.” So why’s the stock mkt near the highs? “I guess it’s a growth story, prices rise so people keep buying, but from everything we see in the real economy, it’s stalled – welcome to Zombie-Land.”

World War Z II: So I asked the same banker for an example of something outrageous. “This company CVENT just went public, it’s does event services, the sellers put some nice lipstick on it, dressed it up, told a story.” CVENT earns something like $12mm with a mkt cap near $1.4bln, while it’s private market competitors trade at a fraction of this multiple. “There’s nowhere near the growth potential they claim.” And this banker would know. “This stock is a screaming sell, it’ll fall 90% once people figure it out.”

Source:

wknd notes (sub req)