Daily Update: Debt To EBITDA Reaches Bubble Levels
STOCK NEWS
T-Mobile (TMUS): Is releasing a new payment plan which aims to bring unlimited data to everyone. The plan trims $5 off the original unlimited plan. The way T-Mobile makes up for this change is by getting customers to agree with autopay which eliminates a lot of calls to customer service. One third of calls to customer care are about billing. 20% of plans use autopay at the moment.
Tesla (TSLA): is filing a lawsuit against the state of Michigan over its ban of direct sales to customers. Tesla has stores in 23 states. It’s funny how the government giveth and taketh away. On the one hand, Tesla cars get a tax benefit for being purchased. On the other hand, direct sales to customers is illegal in some states like Michigan
Amazon (AMZN): is rolling out Handmade across Europe. Handmade is a competitor to Etsy which was launched in October 2015. Product volume has increased 5X to 500,000 items. Amazon’s director made the following statement about the launch “When we introduce a new business at Amazon we think long-term and globally. Since launch, we’ve received feedback from customers and artisans around the world that they want a Handmade at Amazon store in their local marketplace. With our focus on genuine handcrafted products, the Handmade at Amazon store has been a big hit with artisans and customers in the U.S. and we’re encouraged by the strong growth of sales and customer traffic. Amazon has become a one-stop shop for holiday gifting, and this year customers will see hundreds of thousands more handmade items, with thousands eligible for Prime two-day shipping."
Salesforce/Cisco: The two companies are entering into a strategic alliance to bring Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, IoT Cloud and Service Cloud together with Cisco’s IoT and contact center platforms. Cisco (CSCO) made a statement on the collaboration. It said "Our goal is for technology to fade into the background so people can get their best work done. Cisco and Salesforce (CRM) coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive." Salesforce also made a statement saying “Nothing is more important than making our customers more successful. We're thrilled to announce this strategic alliance with Cisco, which will simplify the customer experience across sales, service and IoT and empower our mutual customers to be far more productive."
ECONOMIC NEWS
A chart which was reported by David Stockman is shown below. As you can see, the debt to EBITDA ratio has exploded compared even to the previous bubble levels in 2008 and 2002. This puts the current market into context.
Today the market is up moderately after the Fed’s decision to not raise interest rates was released. Donald Trump continues to gain in the polls which should be a negative for the market, but it is being ignored just like it is ignoring bad economic data.