πŸ’°How are the Investment Banks Doing?(Long Chapter 15s?)πŸ’°

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On Sunday, we wrote about the stellar earnings reports from Evercore Inc. ($EVR) and Houlihan Lokey ($HLI). Are they outliers?

Apparently…no.

PJT Partners Inc. ($PJT) reported earnings this week and they, too, knocked it out of the park. The firm reported a 28% increase in revenues YOY ($167mm) and a 35% increase in advisory revenue ($133mm). These guys are killing it. Regarding the restructuring team, CEO Paul Taubman said:

Revenues grew significantly in the second quarter compared to the prior year and are ahead of last year’s levels for the six-month period. Our Restructuring business maintained its leadership position, ranking Number One in US and global completed restructurings for the first half of 2019. Our outlook for the full year remains essentially unchanged, notwithstanding near record low interest rates, historically low default rates and extremely benign credit conditions, we expect restructuring revenues for the full year to be flat to only modestly down. Despite this muted macro backdrop, we are working on an increased number of Restructuring mandates, which should serve us well entering 2020.

In addition to pounding his chest, Mr. Taubman provided some market commentary as well β€” particularly with respect to the notion that all of the β€œdry powder” in the market will impact M&A and distressed situations and Europe:


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πŸ₯‘#BustedTech: Munchery Filed for Bankruptcy.πŸ₯‘

Short VC-Backed Hyper-Growth

We've previously discussed the process of an assignment for the benefit of creditors and posited that, as the private markets increasingly become the public markets, (later stage) "startups" will be more likely to file for chapter 11 than go the ABC route. Our conclusion was based primarily on three factors: (a) a number of these startups would have highly-developed and potentially valuable intellectual property and data, (b) more venture-backed companies have "venture debt" than the market generally recognizes, and (iii) parties involved, whether that's the lenders or the VCs, would want releases with respect to any failure and subsequent chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Given continuing low β€” and as of this week, lower β€” yields and a system awash in capital looking for alternative sources of yield (read: venture capital), there's been a dearth of high profile startup failures of late. And, so, technically, we've been wrong. 

Yet, on February 28th, Munchery Inc. filed for bankruptcy in the Northern District of California (we previously noted the failure here and again here in a broader discussion of what we dubbed, β€œThe Toys R Us Effect”). Munchery was a once-high-flying "tech" company founded in 2011 with the intent of providing freshly prepared meals to consumers. It made and fulfilled orders placed on its own app and also had a meal kit subcription business where customers received weekly kits with recipes and ingredients. Its greatest creation, however, might be its shockingly self-aware first day declaration β€” a piece of work that functions as a crash course for entrepreneurs on the evolution and subsequent trials and tribulations of a failing startup. 

Interestingly, the meal kit business wasn't part of the original business model. This represented the quintessential startup pivot: originally, the company's model was predicated upon co-cooking (another trend we've previously discussed) where professional chefs would leverage Munchery's kitchens (and, presumably, larger scale) to sell their products directly through Munchery's website and mobile apps. Of late, the co-cooking concept β€” despite some recent notable failures β€” has continued to gain traction. Apparently, former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, is very active in this space (see CloudKitchens). 

At the time, "food delivery was in its early stages." But local restaurant delivery has exploded ever since: Grub HubSeamlessDoor DashPostmatesCaviar, and Uber Eats are all over this space now. Similarly, in the meal kit space, Blue Apron inc. ($APRN)PlatedHello Fresh and SunBasket are just four of seemingly gazillions of meal kit services that time-compressed workaholics or parents can order to save time. 

As you can probably imagine, any company worth anything β€” especially after nearly a decade of operation and tens of millions of venture funding β€” will have some interesting proprietary technology. Here's the company's description of its tech (apologies in advance for length but it marks the crux of the bankruptcy filing): 

"The team’s early focus was to develop a proprietary technology platform to operate and optimize the entire process of making and delivering fresh food to customers. The technology developed and deployed by the company included: a front-end ecommerce platform, which allowed the company to post items daily and consumers to select, purchase and pay for meals through the company’s website and native apps; the production enterprise resource management (β€œERP”) system, which enabled the company to develop and launch new recipes, manage the supply chain for fresh ingredients and supplies, produce the meals through batch cooking, and plate individual meals; the logistics and last-mile platform, which enabled the company to accurately and quickly pack-and-pack individual items and assemble orders using modified hand scanners, distribute orders via a hub-and-spoke system where refrigerated trucks would transport orders to specific zones and hand-off the orders to the assigned drivers; and, a driver app that assisted in managing and routing orders to arrive in the windows specified by customers. All of this was managed through a set of proprietary tracking and administrative tools used by the teams to monitor and mitigate operational issuesβ€”and connected to a customer relationship management platform. The team later developed algorithms to optimize the various aspects of the service to scale operations, increase efficiency, and improve the quality of the service. In addition, the company developed over three thousand meal recipes, including descriptions, nutritional information, and photographs. Over the life of the business, the company invested significantly in its technology capabilities, believing that the company’s ability to efficiently scale its operations leveraging technology would be a competitive advantage in the food delivery market."

All of that tech obviously required capital to develop. The company raised $120.7mm in three preferred equity financing rounds between 2013 and 2015. Investors included Menlo VenturesSherpa Capital, and E-Ventures. The company also had $11.8mm in venture debt ($8.4mm Comerica Bank and $3.4mm from TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp.). 

The bankruptcy filing illustrates what happens when investors (the board) lose faith in founders and insist upon rejiggering the business to be operationally focused. First, they bring in a new operator and relegate the founders to other positions. With new management as cover, they then cut costs. Here, the new CEO's "first action" was to RIF 30 people from company HQ. Founders generally don't like to lose control and then see friends blown out, and so here, both founders resigned shortly after the RIF. This, in turn, gives the investors more latitude to bring in skilled operators which is precisely what they did.

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πŸ‘šResale is Real Real. Eff β€œThe Amazon Effect.β€πŸ‘š

The #RetailApocalypse is More Than Amazon Inc.

The force is strong.gif

In September 2017 in β€œMinimalistic Consumption by Inheritance,” we wrote:

Much has been made about the death of retail and the "Amazon Effect." We mention it quite a bit … but we are also on record as calling the Amazon narrative lazy. After all, there's a reason why resale apps are among the highest downloaded apps in the Itunes app store. We've noted this before: millennials have no problem buying, reselling, buying, and reselling. I mean, sh*t, we're now seeing commercials for OfferUp on television. We've noted the rise of Poshmark and other apps here and here. Perhaps there's more here than meets the eye.

We doubled down with β€œEnough Already With the β€˜Amazon Effect’” in April 2018. Citing the ThredUp 2018 Resale Report, we noted:

…the resale market is on pace to reach $41 billion by 2022 and 49% of that is in apparel. Moreover, resale is growing 24x more than overall apparel retail. β€œ[O]ne in three women shopped secondhand last year.” 40% of 18-24 year olds shopped resale in 2017. Those stats are bananas. This comment is illustrative of the transformation taking hold today,

β€œThe modern consumer now has a choice between shopping traditional retail or trying new, innovative business models. New apparel experiences and brands are emerging at record rates to replace old ones. Rental, subscription, resale, direct-to-consumer, and more. The closet of the future is going to look very different from the closet of today. When you get that perfectly curated assortment from Stitch Fix, or subscribe to Rent the Runway’s everyday service, or find that killer handbag on thredUP you never could have afforded new, you start realizing how much your preferences and behavior is changing.”

Finally, we wrote in January β€” in β€œ Retail May Get Marie Kondo'd ,” β€” that the Force is now strong(er) with the resale trend.

We concluded:

…The RealReal is signaling that resale is so big that it’s ready to IPO. Talk about opportunistic. No better time to do this than during Kondo-mania. The company has raised $115mm in venture capital … most recently at a $745mm valuation.

None of this is a positive for the likes of J.C. Penney. They need consumers to consume and clutter. Not declutter. Not go resale shopping. We can’t wait to see who is first to mention Marie Kondo as a headwind in a quarterly earnings report. Similarly, we wonder how long until we see a Marie Kondo mention in a chapter 11 β€œFirst Day Declaration.” 

So, where are we going with all of this?

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