CDON - Nordic mini-Amazon

What will be its position after Amazon sets up an online store? Will big A allow products to be sold elsewhere than on its platform, and which one would a customer or entrepreneur prefer…?

Check message number 8

Here’s a fresh, light analysis package to ponder, and you can decide for yourselves which parts you agree or disagree with :slight_smile:

A few excerpts

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Here you can see the difference in retail vs. marketplace margins. Referring to the discussion above, it’s completely pointless to compare this to Verkkokauppa.com, Tokmanni, etc.

Forecasts:

Risks. Of these, the last box isn’t really a “risk” for me. Instead, the actual appeal of the brand in Finland is questionable, at least based on this forum.

Another significant factor is the end of the COVID boost. The platform clearly received a boost due to COVID in 2020-2021, but what will the growth rate be after that? Some of the benefit from COVID is permanent growth in demand for digital channels, but not all of the increased demand is permanent.

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Reasonably well-founded, but these marketplaces have one problem; their customer base is almost 100% price-driven. Can they compete with Amazon on price?

I personally actively buy goods through such a marketplace only as a last resort, because I want to deal directly with the entity that sells me the item. HihhuliPutiikki A/S doesn’t need to be interested in its brand’s reputation when trading on CDON’s or Amazon’s platform, and notoriously, those online reviews are constantly gamed, so their reliability is a bit hit or miss. To put it bluntly, as long as there is no reliable auditing of these reviews, they are mainly for entertainment value. The sample size is often also so small that it is difficult to draw conclusions.

Despite all this, this could still be a quite interesting company as an investment case. I just see a lot of the same flaws as Amazon has today - because service and quality are completely random since the supplier is often random, only price matters. Amazon at least has “shipped and fulfilled by Amazon,” which gives some assurance that the delivery process itself isn’t screwed up, but still… if you go for the price first and buy from anywhere, why not go straight to the source, i.e., order from China…

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The risk in that last box comes from the fact that if the case suddenly takes a turn for the worse or there’s, say, a bad quarter, a large number of investors will likely want to sell the stock at the same time. When there are too few buyers due to poor liquidity, the price will plummet, and the investor will have to make a difficult decision: Sell at a clear discount or hold on to a weak company?

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It’s worth remembering, of course, that Marketplace growth was over 60% in 2019, even before the corona boost. Additionally, I believe that e-commerce penetration will continue to grow faster than before Covid, as many players have realized the importance of online retail. CDON Marketplace GMV of SEK 5bn is entirely possible already next year. I expect CDON to provide more metrics to track in the future, e.g., GMV per merchant, etc. Getting more information on these will help to better understand the platform’s “health.” A deep value, average quality case will re-rate first, and perhaps if the metrics look good after re-rating, the company can start to be priced as a higher quality case. I eagerly await the first report since the IPO (early February).

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The thread, by the way, is full of such depressing feedback, so allow me to interject with a little ATH hype in @Masse’s honor. We’ve still risen over 40 SEK today. At least the owners are smiling, if no one else is :slight_smile:

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The next hype will be after we cross 400SEK.

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Congrats! Investing isn’t hard, you just have to follow Aston’s advice :D. I bought Tokmanni myself, not this one. Will follow suit around Q4!!

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The number of merchants is mentioned in Qliron’s last four quarterly reports, which should give some indication:

2019

  • q4: GMV 3P 399.5M / 1000 merchants = 399,500 SEK per merchant

2020

  • q1: 302.6 / 1117 = 270,904 SEK
  • q2: 421.7 / 1248 = 337,901 SEK
  • q3: 426.1 / 1385 = 307,653 SEK
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This is true, by the way, and many people view the company mainly through their own experiences (which are usually negative because CDON :cowboy_hat_face:). This stock should be examined from a more neutral perspective, because otherwise, it’s possible that your investment decision is based on wrong prejudices instead of facts. Additionally, it’s possible that you yourself are not the company’s target market and therefore don’t like the product, even if the product and company are otherwise perfectly fine.

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This is absolutely true and a valid point, but at least for me, I only have a limited amount of money available and too many interesting stocks on offer, so it’s easy to just dismiss the case.

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Very well said back there. In CDON’s case, the most important target market is the marketplace sellers, and when measuring customer satisfaction, the satisfaction of these sellers is crucial. Of course, the general reputation of the platform also affects the operating conditions of these sellers, so experiences are not insignificant in themselves.

But there’s also a certain similarity here with Kamux; the business is such that bad feedback is inevitable. That doesn’t mean it should be brushed aside with a shrug, but one needs to see the forest for the trees. In my opinion, more weight should be given to the company’s numbers.

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Exactly. That’s why we’re in a great upward trend right now.

For those struggling with this issue, I recommend reading point 3 of the article below. The first degree is seen a lot in the comments, the second degree less often.

According to Howard Marks, second-degree thinking in investing takes into account things like:

  • What are the company’s possible future scenarios?
  • Which of these scenarios do you believe will materialize?
  • What is the probability that I am right?
  • What does the mainstream of investors think about this matter?
  • How does my view differ from the majority of investors’ views?
  • How does the current price take into account the consensus future outlook in relation to my own views?
  • What is the sentiment in the stock? Are investors too eager or unnecessarily pessimistic?
  • What happens to the stock price if the general view turns out to be correct? And what is the price if I am right?
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https://twitter.com/t_i_m_p_p_a/status/1351539638129844224?s=21

Just to be clear, huge thanks to @Arimatti_Alhanko for tipping me off about this case. You are an amazing professional :gem_stone::flexed_biceps:

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Yesterday, from the 320 levels, I promised no ATH-glow before 400kr.

Well, let’s put it on now…

kuva

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Awareness is rising, and so is appreciation. We are still about -60% “cheaper” than the best comparable companies (Allegro, Ozon).

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Benchmark has 25k followers and a “buy alert” went out :blush::flexed_biceps: The account’s style includes “a little hype” but they open up cases quite well in their tweet threads.

Thread:

https://twitter.com/getbenchmarkco/status/1351588009293058056?s=21

Excerpt:

https://twitter.com/getbenchmarkco/status/1351588076058009605?s=21

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Thread :backhand_index_pointing_down:t2:

For some reason, Israeli investors are excited about the stock :slightly_smiling_face:

What bothers me about this are my own and others’ bad experiences with the company, but then again, that’s also reflected in the valuation :thinking:. I’m not quite sure what to think, and it will be really interesting to follow how the company’s transformation progresses.

https://twitter.com/vperelman/status/1351661775238934529?s=19

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It’s good to remember the context here: Amazon’s P/S 4.5 and P/E 90; Alibaba’s P/S 7.3 and P/E 26; CDON’s P/S 2.x and P/E negative. There’s hardly any reason for its relative valuation to rise to the level of those giants (both of whom also have many other businesses). I used to buy a lot from CDON, but nowadays, practically only packages from Amazon and Aliexpress arrive at my home (yesterday, I received from both, but Aliexpress had to be picked up from the post office).

I recommend checking out cdon’s offerings. I used the site a lot back in the day to buy games and movies, for example. In my mind, cdon represents everything that is now bought digitally. So I’d say there’s room for renewal in terms of offerings, and they’ve been moving in that direction by expanding their selection.

From time to time, I’ve ordered mostly books, fragrances, and other small items from there. Most experiences have been flawless, but there have been times when delivery takes a long time and there’s no tracking code for the package. Often, you can also get the same product cheaper through the seller’s own online store.

In summary, I’d say cdon isn’t a bad online store, but in these marketplaces, quality varies according to the sellers. A single store’s poor performance reflects on the entire site in consumers’ minds, because for consumers, cdon is cdon, not an individual seller behind the site. However, I think the cdon brand protects the consumer.

The strength of this marketplace is that you can buy from several stores with a single shipping fee. A bit like the Farfetch online clothing store. In addition, cdon is a traditional, long-standing operator. The downsides are related to occasional slow delivery, as many buyers today want the product quickly. These issues have certainly been considered for the future.