Tesla: Color on delivery miss
- Canaccord cuts tgt to $391 from $450. Tesla reported lower-than-expected deliveries last night despite improved overall production that appears to have past the previous growing pains. Specifically, for Q1 the company delivered 50,900 Model 3's and 12,100 Model S's and X's in comparison to consensus of 54,590 Model 3's and 20,300 Model S's and X's, respectively. Overall production for the quarter was 77,100 vehicles, an excess of 14,100 or 22% above actual vehicles delivered. While Tesla noted that over 10,000 vehicles were in transit at quarter's end, and half of all vehicles delivered in the quarter occurred during the last 10 days, concerns regarding potentially flagging consumer demand will surely be front and center with investors. While they were disappointed in the shortfall of deliveries in Q1 versus expectations, they continue to believe that the new lower-priced Model 3 variant will spur additional demand. Importantly, the company cited roughly two weeks of inventory in North America which may help temper concerns of an inventory build. They maintain Buy rating given the overall opportunity that they see for Tesla and EVs in general.
- JPMorgan cuts tgt to $200 from $215
- Oppenheimer believes shares will ultimately trade on GM and operating leverage. They anticipate bulls will look through 1Q19 weak deliveries; Outperform.
- RBC sees potential for $1B+ rev miss; Underperform
Amazon wants to launch thousands of satellites so it can offer broadband internet from space
Amazon is planning to build a network of more than 3,000 satellites federal filings reveal, in an ambitious attempt to provide global internet access.
The move represents the latest space ambition from Jeff Bezos, as Amazon has previously announced its cloud business will build a network of satellite facilities on Earth and his space venture Blue Origin continues to move closer to launching space tourists
“Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement.
“This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision,” the statement continued.
GeekWire first reported the filings on Thursday.
There’s a race among several major players to build a next-generation broadband network in space, as companies lay out plans to use a so-called “constellation” of hundreds or even thousands of small satellites. Last month Softbank-backed OneWeb launched the first six satellites of its network, which plans to begin with a constellation of 650 interconnected satellites.
Boeing, SpaceX and Canadian operator Telesat have also revealed plans for high speed internet constellations.
Facebook's (FB) Instagram sees slowed user downloads after spectacular 2H18 gains, and Checkout is a massive opportunity -- Cascend Research
Cascend: "Our data suggests Facebook's (FB) Instagram has slowed a bitafter 2H18 but is still accumulating -- up on a M/M basis but down Q/Q from the huge 4Q18 ramp. Instagram almost certainly picked up substantial share with new users from Snapchat (SNAP) in 2H18, although SNAP has now stabilized. Instagram's user satisfaction has been steadily at a high level over the past several years...We believe the average user could eventually spend $200/year in Checkout, yielding $8b annually (did we mention high margins?). With just over $80b in CY20 revenues expected, this is an additional 10% not in analyst models. If they can charge brands 5% (they are originating an online sale) our expectations could be low by 60%. Watch out, Amazon (AMZN)."
Researchers find 540 million Facebook user records on exposed servers
Security researchers have found hundreds of millions of Facebook user records sitting on an inadvertently public storage server.
The two batches of user records were collected and exposed from two third-party companies, according to researchers at security firm UpGuard, who found the data.
In the researchers’ write-up, Mexico-based digital media company Cultura Colectiva left more than 540 million records — including comments, likes, reactions, account names and more — stored on the Amazon S3 storage server without a password, allowing anyone to access the data. Another backup file on a separate storage server by defunct California-based app maker At The Pool contained even more sensitive data, including scraped information on more than 22,000 users, such as a user’s friends lists, interests, photos, group memberships and check-ins.
According to UpGuard, neither company responded to requests to have the data removed. Facebook contacted Amazon to pull the data offline, a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“Facebook’s policies prohibit storing Facebook information in a public database,” said the spokesperson. Facebook said there is no evidence yet to show the data has been misused but that it was investigating.
It’s the latest data lapse involving the social media giant since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, which saw more than 87 million Facebook user records scraped without consent by the U.K.-based political data firm. The company was accused of using the data to help build profiles on voters in an effort to help the presidential campaigns for Ted Cruz and later Donald Trump.
In the wake of the scandal, the social media giant rolled out a bug bounty program to cover third-party apps and services that leaked or exposed Facebook user data.
UpGuard found a batch of scraped Facebook profiles involving 48 million recordsin 2018 from LocalBlox, a data firm that scrapes data from social media profiles.
Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at UpGuard, told TechCrunch: “These finds continue to highlight the problems which plague companies that depend on mass data collection.”
“Storing personal information collected from end users is a liability,” said Vickery. “The more you have, the greater that liability becomes.”