13 Current Gaming Trends: 2020/2021 Data, Statistics ...

current trends in casino gaming industry

current trends in casino gaming industry - win

$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)

$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)
Listen up retards. Do you happen to feel regret because you always think “ohhh if I yoloed my savings on TSLA/AMD/NVDA 🚀 leaps years ago I could be rich by now!!!”
Well if you didn't know already, it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past. Hindsight will always be 20/20. You shouldn’t be harsh on yourself on your past self that your past self wasn’t retarded enough to yolo their savings into AMD/TSLA/.... Your past self doesn’t have the same knowledge that your current self has. It’s fine. If you judged those stocks with the best DD you could do at the time and didn’t think they were worth it, then you did a good job.
If you always think about what you could/should have done in the past, then you don't have the right attitude to play the stock market casino imho.
The single most important thing is to be able to look ahead. There are always plenty of opportunities around. There are thousands of rockets that are still on earth right now. Some may depart this year, others will stay a little longer on earth. The true strength lies in being able to identify those rockets with the knowledge you have right now. And if you still miss most rockets that will take-off this year that's fine, maybe you'll learn, get better and you'll do better next year.
Now, what if I told you there’s a big rocket that’s parked right right here on earth and it has decent chance for take-off this year? Maybe it won't quite reach the moon this year yet, but hey leaving the exosphere should already be a cool milestone.
It has rock-solid fundamentals and will see lots of growth in the following years/decade.
It’s a company that has the fundamental technology to power all the computer vision tech, which is bound to boom this decade.
The company we’re talking about is of course Sony, and it is extremely undervalued right now.
Its P/E is only 14. They have a P/S of 1.65, a PEG of 0.92 (< 2 is already somewhat exceptional for a company/conglomerate of Sony’s size, under 1 is a steal)
Much lower than all of its same-sector peers. This indicates significant undervaluation.
Next up Sony has a P/CF 13.2, ROE of 20% (S&P 500 average is 14% which would already be considered pretty good. 20% ROE is excellent), PEGY of 0.89, P/B of 2.65 and finally Sony has $41.6B in cash on hand. This makes Sony one of the cheapest tech/entertainment/EV/semiconductor growth stocks you will find on the market.
(ROE of 20% + PEGY of 0.89 + PEG of 0.92 means this company is a growth stock based on the numbers alone, but we’ll dig into the actual company and overall outlook in a moment)
I challenge all retards to find a company with similar benchmarks in one of the mentioned sectors, seriously.
Quite frankly doing this DD honestly blew my mind. I kept looking everywhere for reasons why the company could be so undervalued and why they may struggle in the future. Very important to look at all the challenges the company faces to make sure I’m not just doing confirmation bias DD. But all I could find was the opposite. After several weeks and months of working on this DD, I can only conclude that it is overall a very solid company for a bargain price. The new CEO is taking the company in a great direction imho and I'm begin to think he could be Sony's Satya Nadella.
So if you want some easy tendies, maybe consider $SNE while it is still cheap, I’d say.
For the autists out there who care about analyst ratings, SONY ($SNE) currently has 18 BUY ratings, 2 OVERWEIGHT, 4 HOLD and 0 SELL. (= analyst consensus is a STRONG BUY). Very little analysts cover this stock compared to other entertainment/tech companies, so this adds to my assertion that the stock is very much under the radar. Which means you have time to get in before it gets noticed by the larger investing world and before it starts to get a more fair valuation (P/E of around 30 would be more fair for this company I think, but still cheaper than many same sector peers). But, anyway the few analysts who do happen to cover this company are basically all saying it’s an instant-buy at its current price.
Most boomer investors still think big Japanese tech companies are dinosaurs that have long been surpassed by China, South Korea and Apple etc ages ago. Young boomers may think Sony = PlayStation and that it's it. But the truth is that PlayStation, while very important (about 24% of Sony's total revenue last year), is a part of a larger story.
Lots of investors in general associate Sony with the passé Japanese electronics companies from the 80’s and the 90’s. Just like a lot people may think BlackBerry is a struggling phone company.
While Sony may not be the powerhouse in consumer electronics it was in the 80’s and the 90’s, in a lot of ways they are more relevant than ever before. Despite being a well-known brand and being known as the company behind PlayStation, for some reason its stock still seems to be under the radar among both retail and institutional investors. And boy, are they mind-blowingly undervalued. Even if a big part of its business would collapse tomorrow, they would still be slightly undervalued. And I am about to tell you why.
(& btw compared to Japanese tech/entertainment stocks $SNE is still super cheap (Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Square Enix, Capcom, Nintendo, Fujitsu all have P/E ratios ranging from 18 to 77 and none of them have the combination of global clout, fundamentals & growth prospects that Sony has))
2021 Sony as a corparation is not the fucking Sony from 2005-2015’s, just like BlackBerry in 2021 is not the fucking Blackberry from 2012. Just like Garmin in 2021 is not Garmin from 2011. Just like AMD in 2021 is not AMD from 2012.
No, in 2021, Sony is the global leader in imaging technology and people do not fucking realize it. Sony has 50% marketshare in the CMOS image sensor market. There’s a very good chance the smartphone in your pocket has Sony image sensors (unless it’s a Samsung phone). Sony image sensors are powering a big part of today's vision/camera technology. And they will power even more of tomorrow's computer vision tech.
In 2021, Sony is a behemoth in video games, music, anime, movies and TV show production. Sony is present in every segment of entertainment. Sony’s entertainment branches have been doing great business over the past 5 years, especially music and PlayStation. Additionally, Sony Pictures has completely turned around.
In 2021, Sony is the world’s biggest music publisher (and second biggest music company overall). Music streaming has been a boon for Sony Music and will continue to be.
In 2021, Sony is among the biggest mobile gaming companies in the world (yes, you read that right). And it’s mainly thanks to one game (Fate/Grand Order) that nets them over $1B revenue each year. One of the biggest mobile gaming companies + arguably biggest gaming brand in the world (PlayStation).
In 2021, Sony is an EV company. They surprised the world when they revealed their “Vision-S” at CES 2020. At the reception was fantastic. It is seriously one of the best looking EV’s. They already sell sensors to Toyota. Sony will most like sell the Vision-S's tech to other car manufacturers (sensors for driving assistence / autonomous driving, LiDAR tech, infotainment system).

40 sensors in the Sony Vision-S
Considering the overwhelmingly good reception of the Vision-S so far, I suspect the Vision-S could be another catalyst that will put Sony as a company on the radar of investors and consumers.
We've seen insane investment hype for anything even remotely related to EV over the past year. We've seen a company that barely had a few EV design concepts (oh wait, they had a gravity-powered truck though) even get a $30B market cap at some point lmao.
But somehow a profitable company ($SNE) that has an EV that you can actually drive, doesn't even have a fair valuation?
In 2020’s Sony’s brand value is at their highest point since 12 years. In 2021, it is projected to be a its highest point since 2001 assuming same growth as average yearly growth from 2015 to 2020. Keep in mind brand valuation is a bit bullshitty as there’s no standardization to compare brands from different sectors, let alone non-consumer-facing brands with consumer-facing brands. But one thing we can note is that Sony both as B2C brand and as a B2B company is on a big upwards trend.
https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/sony/
https://careers.uw.edu/blog/2020/03/17/these-are-the-10-biggest-video-game-companies-in-north-america-shared-article-from-zippia/
In 2021, Sony is an entertainment behemoth. They have grown their entertainment branches by a huge amount over the past 5 to 10 years (they made some big acquisitions in the music space especially and they’re now also all-in in anime). I don’t think people realize how big Sony is as an entertainment company. I dug up the numbers and as of Q3 2020, PlayStation is the second biggest video game company in the world (Tencent is #1) in revenue (I suspect Sony might dethrone Tencent after Sony’s FY Q3 2020 is released). But Sony already comes very close to Tencent especially if you add Fate/Grand Order (which is under Sony Music and not under PlayStation) under PlayStation.
There’s no single other company that has this unique combination of a dominant/important position in all entertainment segments. (video games + music + movies + TV series + anime + TV networks). I guess Tencent maybe?
In 2021, Sony has amazing momentum in the camera space. If you’re familiar with the enthusiast photography space, you should know this. Basically, the market is slowly shifting from SLR to mirrorless cameras. This is because mirrorless cameras tend to smallelighter, have faster AF, better low light performance, better battery life and better video performance. Sony is the company that has been specializing in the development for mirrorless cameras for over a decade while Canon’s bread and butter has always been SLR cameras. Sony is in the lead when it comes to mirrorless cameras and that’s where the market is shifting towards. Because the advantages of mirrorless have become more and more apparent and Sony’s cameras have become technically superior, Sony has gained quite a bit of market share over Canon and Nikon in the last few years. In 2019, Sony overtook Nikon as the #2 camera manufacturer. Sony is in an upwards trend here. (they have the ambition to become the world’s #1 camera brand) Sony also has very good marketing for their cameras. (Sony has a lot of YouTubers / influencers / brand ambassadors for their cameras despite being a smaller brand than Canon)
(just search on YouTube and/or Google “switching to Sony from Canon” just to give you an idea that they do have amazing brand momentum in the camera space. You won’t get as many hits for the opposite)
A huge portion of Sony’s profit comes from image sensors in addition to music and video games. This is in addition to their highly profitable financial holdings division & their more moderately profitable electronics division.
Sony’s electronics division, unlike other Japanese brands, has shown great resilience against the very strong competition from China & South Korea. They have been able to maintain their position in the audio space and as of 2020 are still the global market leader in high-end TV’s (a position they have been holding for decades) and it seems they will continue to be able to maintain that.
But seriously this company is dirt-cheap compared to any of its peers in any segment and there’s various huge growth prospects for Sony:
  • CMOS image sensors & Sony’s overall imaging prowess will boom due to increased demand from automotive sector, security & surveillance industry, manufacturing industry, medical sector and finally from the aerospace & defence industry. On the longer term, image sensors will continue to boom due to increased demand for computer vision & AI + robotics. And for consumer electronics demand will remain very high obviously.
  • Sony is aiming for 60% market share in the CMOS image sensor market by 2026. Biggest threat here is Samsung here who have recently started to aggressively invest in image sensors and are challenging Sony. Sony has technological lead + higher production capacity (and Sony will soon open a new plant in Nagasaki), so Sony should be able to hold off Samsung.
  • The iPhone 12 Pro has 3 cameras + a lidar sensor. Apple now buys 3 image sensors (from Sony) + LiDAR sensor (from Sony) per iPhone 12 Pro they manufacture. Remember the iPhone X and iPhone XS? That one had “only” 2 rear cameras (with image sensos from Sony of course). Basically, Sony will be selling exponentially more image sensors as more smartphones get equipped with more and more cameras.
  • Now think about how many image sensors Sony can sell to Apple if the iPhone 13 will have 5 cameras + LiDAR sensor (I mean the number of cameras on smartphones certainly won’t decrease)
  • Gaming (PS5 hype, PSN game sales are booming, add-on content is booming, PS+ subscribers count is booming and finally PSNow & first-party games sales are trending upwards as well). Very consistent year-on-year profit & revenue growth here. They have a history of beating earnings expectations here. The number of PS+ subscribers went from 4M to 48M in just 6-7 years. Investors love to hype up recurring revenue and subscription services such as Disney+ and Netflix. Let’s apply the same logic to PS+? PS+ already has more subscribers than HBO Max in the USA.
  • PlayStation (video games in general) has not even scratched the fucking surface. Most people who play video games now are millennials and kids. Do you think those millennials will stop playing video games when they grow older? No, of course not. Boomers today also still watch movies and TV. Those millennials have kids and those kids are now also playing video games. The kids of those kids will also play video games etc. Basically the total addressable audience for video games will by HUGE by the end of the decade (and the decades after that) because video games will have penetrated all age ranges of the population. Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the whole entertainment business. By a large margin. PlayStation is obviously in a great position here as you can guess from the PS5 hype, but more importantly imho, the growth of PS+ subscribers (currently a bit under 50 million) and PSN users (>100 million MAU) over the past 5 years shows that PlayStation is primed to profit from the audience growth.
  • On top of that you have huge video game growth in the China where Sony & PlayStation is already much better established than Xbox (but still super small compared to mobile games and PC gaming in China). Within the console market, Xbox only competes with PlayStation in North America. In the rest of the world, PlayStation has an enormous lead over Xbox. Xbox is simply a lesser known and lesser desirable brand in the rest of the world
  • Anime streaming (basically they have a monopoly already + vertical integration, it might still be somewhat niche right now, but it will be big within 5 years. Acquiring Crunchyroll was a very good move)
  • Music streaming (no, they don’t have a music streaming service, but as music streaming grows, Sony Music also gets a piece of the growing pie through licensing/royalties, and they also still have a little 2.8% stake in Spotify)
  • Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are currently battling it out in the streaming wars. When there’s a war you have little chances of winning, you shouldn’t be the one waging the war. You should be the one selling the ammo. Basically Sony Pictures (tv shows + movies) is in that position. Sony Pictures can negotiate good prices for their content because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T are thirsty for content and they all want their own exclusive content. Sony Pictures does not need to prop up their own streaming service just like Sony Music doesn’t need their own music streaming service when they can just license out their content and turn a profit. There will always be demand for TV & movies content, so Sony Pictures is well positioned is as an independent content provider. And while Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are battling it out on the forefront, Sony is quietly building their anime empire in the background. Genius business move from Sony here, seriously. They now have anime production & distribution.
  • Netflix has 200M subscribers and they currently have a 250M market cap. Think about what Sony will have in 5 years? >30M Crunchyroll subscribers (assuming all anime will be consolidated into Crunhyroll) & >100M PS+ & PSNow subscribers? Anime and gaming is growing faster than movies and TV shows. (9% CAGR for anime, 12% CAGR for gaming vs. 5% CAGR for the whole movies & TV show entertainment segment which includes PVOD, SVOD, box office, TV etc etc). And gaming as a whole is MUCH bigger than SVOD streaming. Netflix gets 99% of their revenue & profit through subscriptions. For the whole Sony Group Corporation, their subscription services (games + anime) it’s currently only 4.5% of their total revenue. And somehow Sony currently has a meagre $128B market cap?
  • PlayStation alone is bigger than Netflix in terms of operating profit. PlayStation has a MUCH higher profit margin than Netflix. For Q3 2020 Netflix posted $790M operating profit and PlayStation posted $988M operating profit. Revenue was was $6.44B for Netflix vs. $4.77B for PlayStation. (and btw Sony’s mobile gaming revenue (~$1B / year) is under Sony Music, it is not even in those PlayStation numbers!!!)
  • Think about it. PlayStation alone posts bigger operating profit than Netflix (yes revenue is bit smaller, but it’s the operating profit that matters most). And gaming is growing faster than movies. And PlayStation is about 24% of Sony’s total revenue. And yet Netflix has a market cap that is equal to the double of Sony's market cap? Basically If you apply Netflix’ valuation to PlayStation then PlayStation alone should have a bigger market cap than Netflix' market cap.

PS+ growth and software digital ratio growth

  • Sony Vision-S & autonomous driving tech (selling sensors + infotainment system to other car manufacturers). Sony surprised everyone when they revealed their Sony Vision-S electric vehicle last year at CES 2020 (in-house design and made in cooperation with Magna Steyr). And it’s currently being tested on public roads. Over the past year we have seen absurdly big investment hype into anything even remotely related to EV’s (including a few questionable companies). We’ve even seen an EV company with a gravity-powered truck get a $30B market cap in June last year. Meanwhile Sony, out of nowhere, revealed what is arguably (subjectively) one of the best looking EV’s. It got very positive reception at CES 2020. An EV that you can actually drive. But somehow their stock is still dirt-cheap based on their current fundamentals alone? Yet some companies that had pretty much nothing but some EV design concepts got insane valuations purely due to hype?
  • LTE chips for IoT & Industry 4.0 (Altair Semiconductors)
  • Cross-media IP (The Last of Us show on HBO, Uncharted movie etc). Huge unrealized potential synergy here (it’s about to change). We have seen that it can turn out super well when you look at The Witcher, Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. When The Witcher released on Netflix, sales of The Witcher 3 significantly increased again. Imagine the same thing, but with Sony IP’s. Sony Pictures is currently working on 7 video game IP based TV shows and 3 movies. We know The Last of Us tv series is currently in production for HBO. And then the Uncharted is currently in post-production and scheduled to be released in July this year currently. If Uncharted turns out to be successful, it will mark a big, new milestone for Sony as an entertainment company imho.
  • Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan subsidiary for anime production, distribution & mobile games) had a fantastic year in 2020. (more on this later) There is a lot of room for mobile games growth with Aniplex. Thanks to Aniplex, Sony might beat their earnings forecast.
  • Drones. DJI just got put on Entity List in USA and Sony started developing drones for prosumer / professional a few years ago. Big opportunity for Sony here to take a bit from DJI’s dominance. It only makes sense for Sony to enter the drone market targeting the professional & prosumer video market, considering Sony’s established position in the professional audio/video/photography space
  • Currently Sony also has several ventures & investments in AI & robotics
  • Over the past decade, Sony has also carefully expanded into medical equipment tech & biotechnology. Worth noting that Sony also has an important 33% stake in M3 inc (a medical services through-the-internet company with a market cap of $65.5B) (= just their stake in M3 Inc is worth $22B alone, remember Sony, with their large, diversified revenue streams & assets only has a market cap of $128B?)
  • Sony Pictures has a great upcoming movie slate (MCU Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Venom 2, Morbius, Spider-Verse sequel, Hotel Transylvania 4, Peter Rabbit 2, Vivo, The Nightingale). They will profit from the theatre reopening and covid recovery. They may even become more favourable among movie theatre chains because they won’t release their movies on the same day on streaming services like Warner (and yeah movie theatres are here to stay, at least for a while imho)
  • All the above comes on top of established, mature markets (Financial Holdings & Electronic Products)
  • Oh yeah, btw though TV’s are a cyclical and mature market and are not that important for Sony Group Corporation’s bottomline*, Sony TV’s will continue to do well for the following successive years: o 2020: continued pandemic boost
  1. 2020-2021: PS5 / Xbox Series X/S
  2. 2021 Summer Olympics (tv sales ALWAYS spike during the olympics) (& the effect is more pronounced for high-end TV’s, = good for Sony because Sony’s market share is concentrated in the high-end range (they are market leader in the high-end range)
  3. 2022 FIFA world cup (exact same thing as for the olympics)
  4. You could say it’s already priced in, but the stock is already ridiculously undervalued so idk…
You would think this company somehow has a bad outlook, but that could not be further from the true, let me explain and go over some of the different divisions and explain why they will moon:
Sony Entertainment
While Netflix, Disney, AT&T, Amazon, and Apple are waging the great streaming war, Sony has been quietly building its anime streaming empire over the past years.
  • Sony recently acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175B (it is a great deal for Sony imho and will immediately be more valuable under Sony. Considering the growing appetite for anime I honestly do not even understand why AT&T sold it, they could have integrated it with their other streaming service (HBO Max) but ok)
  • With Crunchyroll Sony now has the following anime empire:
  • Aniplex (anime production & distribution, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan) F
  • Funimation
  • Manga Entertainment UK (production, licensing, and distribution, UK)
  • Wakanam (licensing and distribution in Europe)
  • AnimeLab (licensing and distribution in Australia & New Zealand)
  • Crunchyroll (3 million paying subcribers, 90 million registered users and 50 million social media followers)
* Why anime matters:

Anime growth
“The global size is expected to reach USD 36.26 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing popularity and sales of Japanese anime content across the globe apart from Japan is driving the growth”
(tl;dr anime 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀, Sony is all in on anime and they have pretty much no competition)
Anime is the fastest growing subsegment of movies/video entertainment worldwide.
  • Sony also has a partnership with Bilibili for anime distribution in China:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/26/WS5c990d93a3104842260b2737.html
  • Bilibili already partnered with Sony Music Entertainment Japan to bring Aniplex’s hugely successful Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile game in China.
  • Sony acquired a 5% stake in Bilibili for $400M in March 2020 (that 5% stake is now already worth $2.33B at Bilibili’s current share price ($BILI) and imho $BILI still has lots of upside potential considering it is the de facto video creation/sharing/viewing à la YouTube/Twitch for GenZ in China)
https://ir.bilibili.com/news-releases/news-release-details/bilibili-announces-equity-investment-sony

Sony Music Entertainment Japan
Aniplex
  • Sony Music (mobile games) generated $400M revenue from its mobile games in Q2 FY2020, published through Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan, “SMEJ”) subsidiary
  • They are the publisher of Fate/Grand Order, one of the most profitable mobile video games of the past 5 years (has generated $4B in revenue (!!) by the end of 2019 and is still as popular as ever). Fate/Grand order is the 7th most profitable mobile game in revenue worldwide as of 2020 (!)
Fate/Grand Order #9 game by revenue last year as of Q3 2020

  • Aniplex launched Disney: Twisted Wonderland in March this year. In Q3, it was the #10 most downloaded mobile game in Japan. (Aniplex now has two top ten games in Japan)
  • Fate/Grand Order was the #2 most tweeted game in 2020 and #3 was Disney: Twisted Wonderland. You can see that Aniplex has two hugely successful mobile games. (we are talking close to $1B of revenue a year here). It is the #2 game in Japan by total revenue from Q1 2016 to Q3 2020 and the #9 game in worldwide revenue from Q1 2020 to Q3 2020.
Aniplex has two very popular mobile games
  • SMEJ earns about > $1B from mobile games in revenue from mobile games and there is still a lot of future growth potential here considering Japan’s mobile game market grew a whopping 32% yoy from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020.
  • Aniplex recently co-distrubuted the movie Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in Japan in October 2020. It became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan with a total gross box office revenue of $380M. In the middle of a pandemic. It still needs to release in South Korea, China and USA where it will most likely do great as well.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (Game & Netwerk Services business unit):

  • We all know 2020 was a huge year for video games with the stay-at-home pandemic boost. The whole video game sector brought in $180B of revenue in 2020, a whopping 20% increase yoy.
  • But 2020 will not be just a one-off temporary exceptional year for video games. The video game market has a CAGR of 13% which means it will be worth $291B in 2027. Video games is by far the segment with the highest growth rate in the whole entertainment industry.

US video game market growth (worldwide growth has a 13% CAGR)

PlayStation revenue and operating profit growth

  • PlayStation obviously has a huge piece of this pie and over the past years has seen consistent yoy revenue and profit growth. Think about it, for every FIFA/Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed sold on PS4/PS5, Sony gets a 30% cut. There have been sold a billion PS4 games so far.
  • 5 years ago 20 to 30% of PS4 games were purchased digitally. Flashforward to 2020 and it’s 60-75% and the digital ratio looks set to still increase a bit. This means higher profit margin for game publishers and for Sony at the expense of retailers
  • SIE has seen huge success in its first-party games over the past 5 years. Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank have all been huge successes. This is really big and represents a big change compared to the previous generations where Sony never really hit it big as a games publisher even though most of their games were considered quality games.
  • SIE is now not only a powerful platform holdeprovider, but also a very successful games publisher with popular IP’s (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank). This is an enormous asset, because firstly it increases the chances of success for cross-media opportunities (Sony Pictures can make TV shows and movies out of it to expand the popularity of those IP’s even more). And secondly, it is an obvious selling point for PS5. The more popular and bigger their exclusive content, the more they can draw people to their platform/service. This should increases PS5 total marketshare over its competitor.
  • The hype for God of War: Ragnarok will be absolutely through the roof. Hype for Horizon: Forbidden West is also very good already (10 million yt views, 273K likes which is very good). Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank will also do very well in 2021. (I suspect that GoW oand Horizon might be delayed to 2022)
  • PS5 reception has been extremely good. Demand is through the roof as well all know. The only problem is that they cannot quite capitalize on the demand due to lack of supply, but overall, it is a very good thing that demand is very high, and that reception has been very positive. The challenge will primarily supply and production-related for the following 6 months and to be able to maintain brand momentum. Hopefully, they won’t push disappointed/inpatient customers to competitors.
  • Considering there’s backwards compatibility from PS4 to PS5, users will want all their PSN content to transition with them as well, so I expect them to lose very little marketshare to Xbox. Also, I do not know if Americans realize it, but Xbox is not nearly as big as PlayStation in the rest of the world as it is in the USA. PlayStation just has global brand power that Xbox just doesn’t have, so Xbox isn’t much of threat at all I’d say. Where I live, in Belgium, In Europe everyone is talking about the PS5, nobody really seems to care about Xbox Series S/X that much. Comparing PlayStation to Xbox in terms of mindshare is like comparing Apple to Motorola (not meant to be a diss to Motorola, I have a Motorola phone myself, just saying that Xbox has significantly less mindshare / brand power in Europe).
  • SIE is likely working on PSVR 2, this could be big.
  • Sony has a small stake in Epic Games (1.4%) and they have a good business relationship with them, so this might also make them open to release first-party games on Epic Games Store after exclusivity period on PS5.
  • Remember the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? I believe that was one of the reasons why Sony invested in Epic Games. It serves as an example how music can sometimes converge with video games, and this can play to Sony’s strengths.
  • PlayStation also has way superior presence in Asia compared to Xbox. Have been expanding into China as well. Another great opportunity for revenue growth.
  • PS+ subscribers grew from 5.7 million by the end of 2013 to 46 million by October 30th, 2020. This is an average growth rate of 28% over the past 5 years. Considering most of the growth was early on, it will slow down, but I predict that they will have about 70 million PS+ subscribers by the end of 2023. This is huge and represents a stable, recurring source of income. Investors who keep hyping Netflix/Disney+ will love this, but it seems they have yet to discover $SNE.
  • There is a reason why Amazon, Google, Nvidia have been aggressively investing in video games & games streaming. They know the business is huge and is about to get even bigger. But considering the established, loyal PlayStation userbase, the established global brand of PlayStation and the exclusive games, PlayStation should be able to easily standoff competition from Amazon, Google and Nvidia (GeForce Now) in the next few years. So far, Amazon’s venture into game development, publishing & streaming has completely failed. Stadia and GeForceNow seem to have a bit more success, but still relatively niche. Therefore, I think PlayStation is well-positioned to remain one of the leaders in the industry for the following decade.
I'll get to the other divisions later, I figured this is a good first step.
But so far the tl;dr
Image sensors: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
IoT/Industry 4.0 chipsets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
PS5/PSN/PS+: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Online medical services (M3 inc.): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Anime: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Fate/Grand Order: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Music / music streaming (the performance of Sony Music’s in Sony’s business is seriously understated. The numbers speak for themselves): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Electronics 🚀
Sony Financial Holdings (very stable & profitable business, even managed to grow slightly during pandemic when most insurance companies performed more poorly): 🚀🚀🚀
Still have to cover Sony Pictures, but their upcoming movie slate looks pretty good honestly (Spider-Man sequel, Venom: Let There Be Darkness, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Uncharted, Morbius, Hotel Transylvania 4 so that's worth one rocket as well imho 🚀
tl;dr of tl;dr:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot that's trying to understand why $SNE stock is so cheap.
Positions: SNE 105C 21st January 22
submitted by Audacimmus to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

MCAC and Playboy (PLBY) merger. Why I think Playboy has a bigger future.

As I am sure a lot of you know, Mountain Crest Acquisitions (MCAC) are in late-stage talks with playboy to take them public currently at a valuation of ~$425M meaning we should see the MCAC ticket convert to Playboys ticker, PLBY, within a matter of days, if not weeks. A lot of the people I have seen talking about the Playboy acquisition have argued that Playboy is a dying brand and are far beyond their prime, which is no doubt true, in terms of selling sexy magazines that have all but been made redundant by online pornography. However, this company and its newish CEO (of 2017), Ben Kohn, have given it a new lease of life and are changing the globally recognized brand's direction to be more of a lifestyle and sexual wellness brand. They have been seeing huge year on year growth since Kohn's appointment in 2017 across almost all revenue streams, Kohn has been a part of Playboy for many years and initially helped privatize them in the early 2010s. He is highly regarded for his marketing and sales abilities.
WHY PLAYBOY?
First of all let me offer you CEO Ben Kohn the chance to convince you: Here is his investor presentation. The numbers are extremely impressive.
If you would rather hear it from me, for whatever reason, my take is below:
For me, one of the most notable things about this deal is its the extremely rare opportunity to buy into one of the world's most known brands at such a low valuation. How many SPACs currently on the market would you be able to ask your typical man or woman on the street about the company they plan on buying and almost everytime get an answer about who they are and what they do? Playboy had a WHOPPING $3bn annual spend on thier brand across 180 countries worldwide last year!
Playboy are taking huge strides moving away from the sex negative and very 20th century ideals they built their original empire off, and closing in on an increasingly empowered and sexually liberated young demographic. The sexual wellness market is seeing massive growth among people both young and old and is expected to reach $125 billion by 2026 with an expected anual growth of 12.1% YoY, now think about the size of this market in context of how many brands do you know that are key players in this sector? It should be somewhat obvious that Playboy is in an extremely unique position to capitalize on its massive recognition in a growing market otherwise lacking recognized leaders, they plan on doing this with a strategy of M&A which are outlined below.
First, I will talk about what they are doing now to fit themselves into the market we see today. Playboy has begun a plan to increase growth via acquisitions, and started by buying leading sexual wellness reatiler Yandy at the end of 2019, and have driven direct sales up from $3.7M in 1H 2019 to $29.7M in 1H 2020. On top of this, they are working to make their own playboy.com website into a retail destination, and across Yandy and their own store they were seeing 70,000 orders a month with a AOV of $72.
During the stock redemption period Stockholders requested redemption of a total of 8,842 shares, less than 0.2% of Mountain Crest’s issued shares. As a result, Mountain Crest anticipates that approximately $58.7 million will be released to PLBY Group immediately following the closing of the transactions, with further PIPE investments of $50 million. Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy, said, “We are delighted with the overwhelming support for this transaction, which at closing is expected to inject more than $100 million of gross proceeds into PLBY Group, so that we can aggressively capitalize on our well-defined and exciting organic and acquisition-led growth plan.”.
On top of direct sales increases, Playboy continued to capitalize on their brand recognition by increasing licensing revenues YoY, with ~$400M currently in forward-booked cash flow. Note licensing is one of the most cost-effective way brands can earn revenue, with 80% cost margins and being able to create such licensing demand is a rare feature only attributed to truly globally recognized brands. I read somewhere which I now cannot find that Kohn has said (I am sure somewhat jokingly) that he believes the Playboy Bunny Logo alone is worth a billion dollars, and I can see some truth in it, the Playboy bunny is close to the levels of recognition of the Nike swoosh or the McDonalds M, even among young people who have probably never seen a playboy mag before, myself included (i have never seen it sold in the UK).
As breifly mentioned above, playboy Revenues are growing rapidly. 2020 Projected Revenues is expected to be up 75% year over year, and Projected Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be up 112% year over year, they have projected 2021E revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $166.8M and $40.3M, respectively, with an goal of $100M EBITDA by 2026.
They already have a number of CBD-based products and have plans in place to grow into the legal marijuana industry when it is eventually legalized at the federal level.
They are looking to increase their positions in the gaming industry and have recently opened a poker house in Houston, on top of their London Casino, with further plans to add more casinos in the US, and looking for sports betting partnership opportunities.
Playboy are already an established producer of apparel and maintain a realtively large presence within the market, particularly in China, where their items are sold in over 2,500 brick and mortar stores, and 1,000 online stores across the nation. In the western World they are stocked at household retailers such as urban outfitters, and have done many collabs with well regarded and in fashion millenial brands such as Supreme, Anti Social Social Club, and Alpha industries (all 3 of which have seen extraordinary growth among young people all within very short time). For me this stands out massively and shows promise on both sides of the table; These trendy and modern brands want to associate with the Playboy logo and lifestyle, showing a level of interest from consumers, but more importantly it shows that Playboy is tapped in and aware of the youth culture, an area in which they have the potential to capitalise massively on through all of their revenue streams.
One of the things i think people are most underestimating about this merger is that the current trajectory Kohn is taking Playboy along is very 2021, and is extremely focused on growth. I believe the brand to be undervalued already, and when taking into consideration the trends in Millenial and Gen Z society, I think this brand is ready to once again become a market leader in its new sectors.
A comment I saw on another DD put it well: "If Kylie Jenner thinks its cool, it probably is". It sounds stupid, but the power of social media in conjunction with its recognized logo and brand mean you cannot underestimate this companies value and potential for both short term and long term growth. Coupled with the large cash injection of over $100M and a new focus on M&A, the upside really is potentially enormous. Personally i think it is somewhat criminal this company does not have a current valuation of close to a billion USD considering its recognition, and i think Kohn is the man to enable playboy to capitalise on their extremely unique position in a rapidly growing market.
The above stats are all taken from the Playboy investor presentation given by Ben Kohn here, (as said above I would encourage you all to look at this, it is very impressive), and from MCAC press releases that can be found here.
submitted by jonooo674 to SPACs [link] [comments]

My 2021 Portfolio

Albeit a week late, I want to share my 2021 portfolio for documentation purposes and for whoever is interested. I aimed to balance risk in this portfolio with some growth names and legacy plays. Down to brass tacks, I am putting my money in the highest quality companies (in my view) across a diverse set of industries I find attractive. Some of these names are overvalued in the short term. However, I have realized I am not in the business of beating Wall Street’s pricing, but would rather hold high-quality companies that I believe will grow faster that the market in the long term. In other words, I am totally fine paying a short-term premium for growth and quality. Below is a summary of the portfolio and big picture reasoning behind each investment. I'm definitely open to any feedback.
Company Ticker Entry Price Exposure
ARK Genomic Revolution ETF ARKG $93.26 6.60%
CrowdStrike CRWD $211.82 11.78%
Disney DIS $181.18 10.53%
Enphase Energy ENPH $175.47 7.98%
Evolution Gaming Group EVVTY $101.02 12.77%
Facebook FB $273.16 11.05%
Redfin RDFN $68.63 10.41%
Teladoc TDOC $199.96 9.60%
Sea Ltd SE $199.05 14.09%
Waste Connections WCN $102.57 5.19%
ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (BATS: ARKG) - Invests in companies advancing genomics. The companies held in ARKG may develop, produce or enable: CRISPR, Targeted Therapeutics, Bioinformatics, Molecular Diagnostics, Stem Cells, Agricultural Biology.
CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) - Cybersecurity technology company that provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyber attack response services.
Disney (NYSE: DIS) - Worldwide entertainment company that you all are probably familiar with.
Enphase Energy (NASDAQ: ENPH) - Designs and manufactures software-driven home energy solutions that span solar generation, home energy storage and web-based monitoring and control.
Evolution Gaming Group (OTC: EVVTY) - Swedish company that develops, produces, markets and licenses integrated B2B live casino solutions for gaming operators.
Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) - Enables people to connect through devices. It’s products include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus.
Redfin Corporation (NASDAQ: RDFN) - Provides residential real estate brokerage services.
Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC) - Provides virtual healthcare services on a B2B basis to its clients and provides services to consumers directly and through channel partners.
Sea Ltd (NYSE: SE) - Digital entertainment, electronic commerce, and digital financial services. The Company operates three business segments: Garena, Shopee, and SeaMonkey. The Company’s digital entertainment business, Garena, is a global game developer and publisher with a presence in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Latin America. Garena provides access to mobile and personal computer online games. Shopee provides users with a shopping environment that is supported by integrated payment, logistics, fulfillment, and other value-added services. SeaMonkey business is a digital financial services provider. SeaMonkey offers e-wallet services, payment processing, credit related digital financial offerings, and other financial products.
Waste Connections Inc. (NYSE: WCN) - Waste services company that provides non-hazardous waste collection, transfer, disposal and recycling services.

P.S. I have two other accounts - one with about 40 growth stocks and another with about 10 big names / ETFs. However, this portfolio has the largest allocation for 2021. My first time trying a more concentrated approach.
submitted by bull_doze to investing [link] [comments]

TEKK - Tekkorp Digital Acquisition Corp: Who's Who of Gaming Mgmt Teams!

Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment, Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts
Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap!
If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!!
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Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led.
Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included:
• OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform.
• Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings.
• OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets.
These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018.
Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University).
Robin Chhabra — President
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following:
• TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia.
• TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs.
• William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet.
Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million.
Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our Board of Directors
Morris Bailey — Chairman
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States.
In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless.
Tony Rodio — Director Nominee
Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University.
Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee
Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include:
• TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date.
• TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group.
• TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion.
• TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction.
• TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion.
Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet.
Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities.
Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law.
Sean Ryan — Director Nominee
Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division.
Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division.
We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tom Roche — Director Nominee
Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including:
• Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002.
• Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion.
• Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets.
• MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering.
Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector.
Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association.
We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.
submitted by jorlev to SPACs [link] [comments]

Golden Nugget Online Casino (GNOG) Announces Redemption of Public Warrants

If anyone familiar with sports online betting like DraftKings (DKNG) recently SPAC merger,Golden Nugget Online Gaming Announces Redemption of Public Warrants.
As online gaming expands i use Golden Nugget Online to place my bets whether it be for MMA, boxing, football, hockey, etc...... Pretty intuitive and they take exchange through crypto as well.
I would definitely recommend jumping on this stock before they take off like Draftkings!
HOUSTON, Feb. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Golden Nugget Online Gaming, Inc. (Nasdaq: GNOG) ("GNOG" or the "Company") today announced that it will redeem all of its outstanding public warrants (the "Public Warrants") to purchase shares of the Company's Class A common stock (the "Common Stock") that were issued under the Warrant Agreement, dated as of May 6, 2019 (the "Warrant Agreement"), by and between the Company and Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, as warrant agent and transfer agent ("Continental"), and that remain outstanding following 5:00 p.m. New York City time on March 8, 2021 for a redemption price of $0.01 per warrant. Warrants that were issued under the Warrant Agreement in a private placement and held by the founders of the Company are not subject to this redemption.
Under the terms of the Warrant Agreement, the Company is entitled to redeem all of its outstanding Public Warrants for $0.01 per Public Warrant if the reported closing price of the Company's Common Stock is at least $18.00 per share on each of twenty trading days within a thirty trading day period ending on the third trading day prior to the date on which a notice of redemption is given. This performance threshold was achieved following the market close on January 28, 2021.
All outstanding Public Warrants may be exercised by the holders thereof until 5:00 p.m. New York City time on March 8, 2021, to purchase shares of the Common Stock, at the exercise price of $11.50 per share, payable in cash.
At the direction of the Company, Continental Stock Transfer and Trust Company, in its capacity as warrant agent, has mailed a notice of redemption to each of the registered holders of the outstanding Public Warrants. Holders of Public Warrants in "street name" should immediately contact their broker to determine their broker's procedure for exercising their Public Warrants since the process to exercise is voluntary.
The shares of Common Stock underlying the Public Warrants have been registered by the Company under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and are covered by a registration statement filed on Form S-1 with, and declared effective by, the Securities and Exchange Commission (Registration No. 333-252362).
Questions concerning redemption and exercise of the Public Warrants can be directed to Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, 1 State Street, 30th Floor, New York, New York 10004, Attention: Compliance Department, telephone number (212) 509-4000.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any GNOG securities and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offering, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
About Golden Nugget Online Gaming
Golden Nugget Online Gaming is a leading online gaming company that is considered a market leader by its peers and was first to bring Live Dealer and Live Casino Floor to the United States online gaming market. GNOG was the past recipient of 15 eGaming Review North America Awards, including the coveted "Operator of the Year" award in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, about us and our industry that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including statements regarding guidance, our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans, user growth and engagement, product initiatives, and objectives of management for future operations, and the impact of COVID-19 on our business and the economy as a whole, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "going to," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "propose," "should," "target," "will," or "would" or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions. We caution you that the foregoing may not include all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release.
You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this press release primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside GNOG's control, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include the inability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the Company's business combination; costs related to the business combination; the inability to maintain the listing of GNOG's shares on Nasdaq; GNOG's ability to manage growth; GNOG's ability to execute its business plan and meet its projections; potential litigation involving GNOG; changes in applicable laws or regulations, particularly with respect to gaming; general economic and market conditions impacting demand for GNOG's products and services, and in particular economic and market conditions in the media / entertainment / gaming / software industry in the markets in which GNOG's operates; the potential adverse effects of the ongoing global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on capital markets, general economic conditions, unemployment and GNOG's liquidity, operations and personnel, as well as risks, uncertainties, and other factors described in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in GNOG's filings with the SEC, which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will be made available in other filings that we make from time to time with the SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, including future developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic, except as required by law.
SOURCE Golden Nugget Online Gaming, Inc.
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Related Links

https://www.goldennuggetcasino.com
submitted by Lonesome-Sparrow to u/Lonesome-Sparrow [link] [comments]

The fundaments of Armenian nationalism, cultural/moral standards, the Armenian Honour Codes and political guidelines of the Armenian Renaissance movement (still a concept, needs to be rewritten and there are a lot of points that need to be added).

Lately the extreme leftist Armenians (usually whitewashed, Westernized or NGO shills) engaged an attempt to rewrite and redefine on what Armenian traditional family life means. This is mostly consisted of cheap misrepresentations and presenting the worst examples as being the main drive of our traditional family life - which actually in reality proves to be more stable, lovely and meaningful than the current Western family life that mostly got deconstructed by the academic, cultural and media influences of Cultural Marxism, harmful parts of capitalism/hypermaterialism/consumerism, feminism and egocentrism/hedonism that replaced any sense of belonging and higher transcendent ethnic goals.
Problem with "liberalism" is that it gives people the illusion of choice while this "choice" is mostly decided by the dominant corporates and globalist powerstructures that give the mass selective ideas of "freedom" (through controlled/conformistic ideas that are pushed by their institutions of education, artificial mass-cultures & media). Most people rather let others think for thems & follow their lusts.Thats why any administration that loves the well being of it's own people needs to have a defense-mechanism against external threats & subversive elements that damage the cultural and religious values of your nation (which are essential for the continuation of your ethnic group). It was evident that Armenians were easy to manipulate in 2018 by the effective Western ideologic imperialism and didnt understand the socio-cultural harmful parts of "liberalism" (especially for a country like Armenia that can't afford to be weakened and fragmentized).Western "liberalism" also gives room for other influential parties to spread degeneracy among your people (this happend to Armenia with all these Soros lackeys infiltrating in our government). We cant let the current globalist օտարամոլ traitors of Nikols party rule us any longer. You can also clearly see the negative results of "liberalism" in our diasporan communities where many of our young Armenians are alienated from our traditional culture & rather LARP the values & ideologies of white liberals. Many of them have severe identity-crisises due to this & then call your culture "outdated", "bigoted" & "archaic" for the sole reason that it doesnt represent their "progressive" standards. Liberals and fake neo-conservatists are the true colonizers of the modern world, while the most European nationalists just want their own space. There are many examthes in this document on why certain Western liberal doctrines should be rejected in order to protect the moral and cultural well being of your people. Liberal-progressivist Armenians should wake up from their ideologic arrogance and realize that we cant afford to culturally and morally weaken ourselves. The CM methods are meant to deconstruct our essential values and replace them with what the political Western elite wants.
West-Europeans have ruined many unique cultures in the past by Westernizing/Colonizing them and trying to make them behave and think like them. They still try to do the same by using their political and media influences (to reach Ideologic Western Hegemony > their code word for this agenda is Cultural Globalism, political liberalism/progressivism or mass culture). For example: the Brits used Westernized Indish lackeys for their colonial/imperialistic interests by giving them power and the idea that they are superior over other Indians who wished to stay true to their cultural principles (Im sure any there should ring a bell to any Armenian EU-NGO shill reading this). Be an individual for heavens sake, there is no pride in being a tool of foreign group of people who dont care about Armenia or Armenians (its their own idoelogic, political and cultural agenda that has the priority).
Thats why we non-Western PoC that value our traditionalistic cultures need to have a more aggressive tone and approach towards their indoctrination methods (cultural whitewashing/assimilation), so that we dont fall for the same cultural deconstruction proces that happend to many authentic cultures who were assimilated and Westernized by white West-Europeans (you can compare the contemporary Melting Pot tactics to this development). If you’re proud of your traditionalistic culture say it out loud! You will not conquer us ideologically, culturally or spiritually (by spreading your void, liberalism and nihilism) and we will stay true to ourselves even if it means literally fighting you! Dont trust white liberals, they are just as arrogant like their ancestors who thought that you’re a savage if you didnt submit to their “progressivism”.
The Rebirth of the Armenian Soul in the Modern Era : The Struggle For Survival of The Armenian Diaspora.
The imprortance of a New Cultural Awakening and a Revolution against Cultural assimilation and ideologic liberal colonialism.
The fundaments of Armenian nationalism, cultural standards, the Armenian Honour Codes and political guidelines of the Armenian Renaissance movement.
  1. Family and community are the cornerstones of the society and the guarantee of having a future for the Armenians. Starting a family and having as many children as possible must be encouraged at all time and by any means. This also implies not giving postmodern Western anti-family values any space in Armenia or in our diaspora.
  2. Armenian nationalism should be the default mindset of any nation loving Armenian who prioritizes the well being of his/her people. Protecting our own interests and countering globalists or Panturkic powerstructures is an essential part of maintaining this mindset.
  3. Respecting our Armenian church that ensured the existence of the Armenian identity during the periods of Islamic and Soviet occupation. Christian values are also vital for having a morally balanced society and Armenian Apostolic Church is the main institution to project these values into our people. Every Armenian family is obliged to teach their children proper theology, Church history, teachings of our Church fathers (not seculahumanistic drivel of the current Western churches) and giving the same responsibility to pass this on to the next generation.
  4. (Diaspora): Permanent repatriation should be the goal of all Armenians who live in the diaspora. There is no long term future for the Armenian diaspora since cultural detoriation, Westernization (mass-culture) and mixed-marriages intensify the assimilation process.
  5. (Diaspora): being able to speak, read and write in Armenian is an important part of what makes us Armenian and what makes possible to pass down our cultural identity to the next generation. Speak Armenian at home and with your Armenian friends, there are no excuses of not knowing your own language when we live in the age of accesible information overload. The Armenian soul lives through the breath of our language.
  6. (Diaspora): Our history (see lost diasporas) and many researches already proved that mixed-marriages result into higher rates of assimilation for the upcoming generation (its basically game over when your half-Armenian child also marries a non-Armenian). By knowing this we should teach our children to focus on trying to find an Armenian partner and try to avoid dating otars (this will make it harder for your future children to grow up Armenian (identity crisis). This does not mean that we should exclude half-Armenians (its not their fault that they are half), in contrary: we should encourage them to adapt the same protectionistic mentality and to marry with an Armenian. We cant afford to lose even more Armenians to assimilation since we are less than 8 million in the world (this would have been different if we had 20+ million Armenians around the world). Its important to recover from the Armenian Genocide by increasing our population. Note: this is not relevant for Armenia itself since the mixed Armenians will be overwhelmengly influenced by the dominant Armenian culture and will stay Armenian.
  7. Ensuring a more interactive connection/relation/institutions between Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora (as a means for repatriation or cultural preservation).
  8. Installing diaspora governments that are situated in Russia, USA, France and Middle-East (as a part of guideline 7).
  9. Every Armenian should aspire to have a higher understanding of our history, ethno-genetics, literature, poetry, language, music, traditional/cultural values, dance, customs and spiritualism. Its important to also facilitate this knowledge/insights to your children.
  10. The Western liberal order and its mass-culture bring new challenges in preserverving our culture in the diaspora and in Armenia itself. Armenians must be aware of this ideologic warfare and not replace our values with the ones that go against our own principles and cultural standards. You're not only Armenian by name but also need to be Armenian in your soul, mind, behaviour and lifestyle (by being wise, mentally strong and intelligent enough to recognize Western postmodern poison and protect whats ours - this should also apply to Armenian socialists that reject imperialism and Western neo-colonialism). What use does it have to call yourself an Armenian when you have culturally more similarities with foreign nations? (Becoming more enveloped in and identified with the Western contemporary culture/mindset) Being raised and surrounded by primary Western culture and influences is not an excuse to degrade and feel more superior over the culture/mindset which the majority of our people from our actual homeland cherrish and respect (refind your roots instead of trying to change it for your own comfort or cope for your identity crisis).
No matter what these deconstructionist/Globalist pseudo-intellectual "educated" subversives say, what an Armenian is does depend on essential collective factors (they are interlinked):
  1. Genetics
  2. Cultural identity
  3. Language
  4. Religious identity
  5. Traditional values
  1. The nuclear monogamous hetrenormative family structure remains the standard (by opposing the Capitalistic Trojan Horse of Neo-Feminism ).
  2. Traditional gender norms in the family that generate harmony, healthy relationships and order.
  3. Wholesome protectionistic masculinity.
  4. Virtueous nurturing femininity.
  5. Men have the obligation to take care of their community, be responsible for its people, protect the honour of its women, raise their sons in way that they can take over this responsibility and act as strong moral guidelines.
  6. Having higher standards of sexual morals that is needed to keep the worth of love and intimacy in balance. Not losing the worth of intimacy by normalizing meaningless soulless HookUp and Tindr culture in your community - sexual "liberation" degeneracy (Essentialism)
  7. Respect and decency against older people and our parents.
  8. Egocentrism, selfishness and having cold relationships are not appreciated within the family.
  9. Honour, dignity, sacredness, class & nobleness are concepts that we have the responsibility to keep them alive (see point ... for more explanation).
  10. We don’t hypersexualize our culture or sexually objectify our women (at least not our decent women who dont want to oversexualize themselves and rather keep their class, elegence and dignity).
  11. Honour-codes in the family
  12. Dont let your daughters fall into whoredom and your sons into weak effeminized men or MGTOW lowlives
  13. When we date each other, we have the intention to look at the possibilies of engaging a long term relationship that eventually will lead to marriage and start a family.
  14. We don’t see our women as sexual objects for temporary use but as future mothers and loving wives (unless they present themselves as such).
  15. Reject promiscuity. Valuing your intimacy and not sharing it with everyone is vital for having a healthy marriage & healthy perception of what love is. There is a good reason why promiscuity causes so much misery in the more Western liberal countries (higher divorces, teen pregnancies & degeneracy). Teaching your children that unfiltered "sexual revolution" does have negative consequences on their mental state & commitment is one of the essentials to prevent this damage. They will only accept partners who have serious intentions with them (not solely for their temporary pleasure). This is the an important obligation that parents have towards their children. You need to give your daughters wise directions on how to be modest, elegant and most important of all: to be a woman that has dignity. This will reduce the chances of attracting the "wrong crowd". You need to teach your sons to protect their women, be responsible, be respectable towards women who also respect themselves and focus on finding and recognzing women that are suited for marriage.
  16. Even before marrying, we make sure to involve our parents and create a stronger bond so our families can unite with each other (collectivism > individualism).
  17. After the marriage the other family members are still involved to assist and support you with matters like raising up children, relationship issues or maybe help you out from certain financial problems. We always look for each other.
  18. During the marriage there are clear roles and functions that the husband and wife NATURALLY are taking on them.
  19. Upholding the sanctity of marriage between husband and wife.
  20. Husband: keeps the peace at home, loves his wife and makes her feel the queen of the castle. Loves his wife unconditionally and does everything to fulfil her demands, makes his wife confident and lets her feel special, provides for the needs of his wife and kids, takes important decisions, sets out the essential moral values of the family, is a natural leader that radiates dominance without even forcefully demanding authority. Protects his daughter from intruders who have bad intentions with her (also teaches her how to recognize wrong men and how to bond with men in a more healthy way) - she also needs to understand the concept of the worth of intimacy and selfrespect. Explains to his son what being a man is, the concept of honour and how to take responsibility for his own actions + teach him how to recognize girls who are suited for marriage.
  21. Wife: she is the safe haven of the home and very caring for the whole family. She decides how the house is run, takes care of the household, is the architect of the appearance of the house and makes sure everyone is loved at home. She supports her husband to become more successful and gives him confidence and hope, loves him UNCONDITIONALLY even when he gets struck by misfortune, always doing effort to look good for her husband. Her traits are soft, elegent, classy and she cares the pride of the family with her. The mother must be like a second girlfriend to her daughter and teach her everything what it means to be a good loving wife and protects her from the filth of the outside world (oversexualization, degeneracy, wrong men, harmful subcultures). Also every other aspects of giving them the Christian and Armenian heritage that I described in the sections ...
  22. Active ivolvement of other family members. “To each his own” is a postmodern selfish individualism that diminishes any warm bonds between the family members (cold approach).
  23. Keeping our tradition of valuing and respecting erudition, intelligence, talent, excellence, high education, ancient wisdom and creativity by not being taken away by Western Mass Culture, consumerism-materialism and their shallow decadent entertainment industry that lowers and dumbs down the collective quality of our people (brain drain).
  24. The militarization of our minds and bodies
  25. Rejection of decadentism, hedonism, nihilism and cosmopolitan worldview (duty before pleasure) - having a connection to our homeland and culture rather than identifying with an abstract cosmopolitan feeling of “universalism” or "Global Citizen" (which is a vague artificial Western concept) or worshipping the corporate pushed Western mass-culture (entertainment industry, liberal order and other institutions of social-engineering).
  26. Ethnocentrism
  27. Allegiance to the foreign country first is out of the question (supporting/working for foreign powers that go against our interests)
  28. Understanding the fragile position of Armenia and Armenians in the diaspora by not promoting Western liberal values like pacifism, cultural-moral relativism, anti-patriotism and egotistic fake "individualism" which weakens the fundaments, unity, ethno-cultural identity and the urge to fight for the cause of our people
  29. Defensive Nationalistic mindset and having Historic Realism above Political Correctness if it comes to our enemies (reject all notions of the deluded illusions of "co-existence).
39.The transcendent understanding of our Tribal (pagan), Tseghakron and Christian Spiritualism
  1. Rejection of normalizing and facilitating sins that go against our religion or common cultural moral standards
  2. pornikutsjun
  3. gomikutsjun
  4. alcoholism
  5. drug addiction
  6. cheating
  7. see 7 deadly sins
  8. Healthy dose of “social-control” (keeping each other sharp and on check).
  9. The current Western notions of secularism and "humanism" are counterproductive for the interests of the Armenian people.
  10. Rejection of the progressive religion, 3th wave feminism and the goal of moral/cultural deconstruction to reach their idealistic standards of utopian egalitarianism.
  11. Completely reject the actions of Armenians who degrade themselves sexually but still use the Armenian label, which they have no right to, to advance their evil intentions (ex. lowlife hook-up culture that is spreaded by the likes of Kim Whoredashian trend, materialistic/shallow “Kukla” lifestyle and neo-feminist degeneracy)
  12. Completely reject the throwing down the name of Armenians via cultural, historical, and other means of harassment (attempts of liberalization, whitewashing and Westernization of our ethnic-cultural identity)
THE POLITICAL GUIDELINES OF THE ARMENIAN RENAISSANCE MOVEMENT
  1. Prioritizing the position of the Church and our faith with the use of education, media and public Church activities.
  2. Oppose any form of LGBT-propaganda, anti-family feminism or other ideologic imperialistic movements that are instigated from the West - the true inentions rely behind geo-political hegemonie and dominance in our region (stop being naive and understand the intentions behind the Western NGO infiltration of our government and other public institutions).
  3. Abortions must be more restricted in order to stop the decrease of the Armenian population.
  4. Not allowing any mass-immigration from nations that are not compatible with our ethno-cultural identity (repat of Armenians must be the top priority).
  5. Ban online porn websites in Armenia.
  6. Increase the punishment of prostitution (also for the visitors).
  7. Restrict the requirement for casino permits.
  8. Increase the punishment for the distribution of drugs.
  9. Free speech will only be restricted in cases of physical threats
  10. Aspire for higher standards of aesthetics & beauty in the fields of art, theater and architecture
  11. Improve the Labour Laws and working conditions of the least paid workers (ARF Socialism)
  12. The public schools do not promote or push demoralizing and deconstructive harmful doctrines of Cultural Marxism and other ideologies (see points ...) that go against our Armenian interests.
  13. The Armenian public tv/media do not broadcast and facilitate degeneracy and demoralization.
  14. Not allowing hormone therapy on children to turn them transgender
  15. Localism above Globalism if it comes to fragile markts/branches/sectors (putting some restrictions on hostile/predatory multinationals)
  16. Prohibit any Soros linked NGO’s.
  17. Responsible deep ecology/environmentalism.
  18. Improving our own Labour Market instead of importing cheap immigrant workers.
  19. Criticizing mass bio-industry.
  20. Implementing laws that improve transparancy and monitoring banks.
  21. Maintaining good diplomatic relationships with Russia, Iran and China and be more attentive (in a careful way) on Western hegemony in the region (their imperialistic program of ousting Russia in expanse of Armenia).
submitted by NovaSociete to ArmenianRenaissance [link] [comments]

Sports betting in times of Corona. Here is your ticket to the moon. The next DKNG.

I'm basically quoting u/coinforce here. I discovered this gem, because of him and am already 14% plus since I bought. Thanks mate.
Alright nerds, gather round and listen closely. I've graduated to pennystocks chasing these juicy tendies while serving as an autistic prophet delivering good news to the retards and gambling degenerates in that sub.
"Alright u/Sweet-Zookepergame hurry the fuck up and give us the ticker you pumper"
This ain't a pump.
When I see the next golden ticket, I know when to enter with conviction and realize profits while some of you nerds decide to bag hold XSPA and downvote comments to make yourselves feel better.

Score Media and Gaming Inc. (TSE: SCR) (OTCMKTS: TSCRF)

What the fuck is this?
Score Media and Gaming Inc. empowers millions of sports fans through its digital media and sports betting products. Its media app 'theScore' is one of the most popular in North America, delivering fans highly-personalized live scores, news, stats, and betting information from their favorite teams, leagues, and players. The Company's sports betting app 'theScore Bet' delivers an immersive and holistic mobile sports betting experience and is currently available to place wagers in New Jersey, Color.
Key words for you nerds who can't read and have ADHD: SPORTS BETTING
It's already common knowledge sports betting is already big in the North American market - and will continue to generate tons of revenue as states continue to legalize sports betting. Canada is following suit. Legislations will be passed Q1 2021 and we're soon going to see an influx of CANADIAN online betting. Basically all of Canada uses this app exclusively for sports.
🚀 Let's take a look at DKNG and PENN this year 🚀
🚀 Share prices for these companies have gone up 300% already this year alone, and with more legalization coming through 2021, theScore is just beginning to scratch the surface and will follow suit.
🚀 TIMING: As vaccines begin to be distributed and the economy recovers, states are desperate for revenue and will be looking to ease regulations on sports betting. The more Sport games start promoting and reopening, the more these stocks will gain (especially with March Madness, NBA/NHL playoffs, etc.)
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🚀 Listen - I'm literally handing you a platter of gold here. If you understand this market, the trends and where actual revenues can be generated - then you understand the play here. Canada is UNTAPPED. This thing will pick up steam soon and will graduate from TSX/OTC and can be easily listed on the NASDAQ. Once that happens, Robinhood will have access and the sky is the limit. I'm not here pumping a fucking non-revenue generating, fuelled by hype only, and a company within an industry that I don't fucking understand.
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TLDR: BUY AND GET IN NOW.
Clearly, I'm on Interstellar's Endurance spaceship with TARS and CASE about to enter a wormhole that'll slingshot me into another galaxy... while most of you nerds are fighting to get on wooden sail boats. At the same time, I'm from the future telling Murphy Cooper (you nerds) how to find the tendies.
MURPHY'S LAW: WHATEVER CAN HAPPEN, WILL HAPPEN.
EDIT: FORGOT THESE 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
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submitted by Sweet-Zookeepergame to pennystocks [link] [comments]

$AESE - Parabolas Are Hot

This is an interesting one...

- Allied Esports owns the WPT (World Poker Tour)
- On Aug 4th, teamed up with Riot Games (League of Legends and Valorant) to be one of the main hosts of the first international Valorant tournaments, which included the biggest teams in esports. (Team Liquid fan here.)
- Partnered last month with Esports Entertainment Group to prepare to host the upcoming CS:GO Legends tournament this August 31 in Europe.
- Absolutely beaten down like a rabid dog by COVID as they were left with no way to operate their flagship arenas. Earnings were a painful sight. However, the company is now making big changes to their business model to reverse the damage, as they are lucky to be in one of the few industries that can thrive just as well online as in person. They’re now going to be hitting the front-end of online tournaments too, which is where the majority of the money is. (About time you idiots.)
- Chief Financial Officer stated that despite COVID forcing them to close their arenas, they are now starting to trend back upwards. This is because they recently announced that they are going to be reopening their flagship arena in Las Vegas for bookings and events (which originally accounted for 78% of their revenue). They will also be growing their online revenue stream at the same time. That’s two potential sources of income now instead of what was zero.
- They originally merged with Black Ridge Oil to IPO as $AESE, and over the last two days there have been some interesting insider activity. Now let me break it down:
  1. Blackridge, like all oil companies, has been getting shafted by the pandemic. So in order to cover some of their payroll taxes, they sold back some shares of AESE to Allied Esports at a cost of $2.01. (higher than current price)
  2. Between Blackridge and $AESE, various directors obtained RSU's that lapse this September and some in 2021.Mainly what happened here is just both companies calling an audible. It's not the same as an executive just purchasing shares and that's it. However, there's a lot of activity going on to fix the problems caused by COVID-19 and put AESE in the right direction. I like to see that as a shareholder.
----------------------------------------------------
Zoom out to the 1 week/ 1 month chart. I believe we are at the bottom of the parabola. RSI is oversold at (35). Short interest is $2.3%.
One thing has become certain: While concerts will never feel the same online, Streamed Poker, League, Valorant, and CS:GO are designed to thrive in this environment. That's how most of us have watched video games our entire lives. I expect a correction in the stock price for the short term, and an overall gradual rebound as the company logs more official tournaments and a revived revenue stream from their re-opened arenas. I buy at discounts because I'm a cheap bastard.
submitted by Iskippedfaceday to pennystocks [link] [comments]

The truth about the dbrand Grip...

The truth about the dbrand Grip...
Grips. Let's talk about 'em.
If you've spent any amount of time on this subreddit, you've likely seen at least one post about a Grip case that has fallen apart. Most of you have seen several. We know this because we've seen every single one. We’d like to see less of them. Ideally, none.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve been on an odyssey to fix the underlying problem. What follows is a chronicle of that journey.
Our objectives in writing this post are three-fold. There will be a tl;dr version at the end of this post, summarizing each of the three:
  1. Offer an in-depth technical explanation as to why Grip cases fall apart.
  2. Outline the improvements we've made to the Grip case to mitigate and eventually solve the issue.
  3. Provide some much-needed context as to how widespread the issue truly is, and what our next steps are for affected Grip SKUs.
Since you're still here, you must be in it for the long haul. Assuming an average reading speed of 250 words per minute, this is going to take you nearly 24 minutes to get through. We'll try to make it the most informative 24 minutes of your life. Let's get started.

PART ONE

Why Do Grips Fall Apart?
Most phone cases are made out of a single material. The material itself varies from case to case, though the most common is Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU). The Grip case, as a point of comparison, is made of two different materials: an elastomer and a polycarbonate.
The word elastomer is a combination of the words elastic and polymer. That's because it describes polymers that have elastic properties - like the one that forms the outer rim of your Grip case. The elastomer that we use is responsible for two critical properties of the Grip case: impact protection and grip.
If you fell off of a rooftop, would you rather land on a hard plastic surface, or a rubber surface? If you value your life at all, you'd choose the rubber - its elastic properties would absorb much more force from the impact. Guess what rubber is? First one to answer "an elastomer" wins a prize!
Next, imagine you’re a pervert, gently running your finger across every surface of a No. 2 Pencil. Which part of the pencil do you think would provide the most resistance to the tracing of your finger? If you guessed "the eraser," congratulations: you possess a basic understanding of coefficients of friction. Erasers are made of rubber. Rubber has a high coefficient of friction because of its elastic properties.
The Grip case's elastomer isn't rubber - it's our own specially-formulated compound. It's still a useful comparison, as all elastomers share similar properties - provided they have the same degree of Shore Hardness.
One person reading this is asking: “Shore Hardness?” The next section is their fault.

A Beginner's Guide to Material Science
The Shore Hardness scale gauges the hardness of various elastomers. It can be measured with a device called a durometer. You probably don't have one.
  • Low Shore Hardness = softer, more malleable, less dense, more rubber-like.
  • High Shore Hardness = harder, less malleable, more dense, more plastic-like.
If you fell out of a building and landed on a rubber surface with a high Shore Hardness, injury or death would be much more likely.
If you used an eraser with a high Shore Hardness, you'd find it wouldn't actually do much erasing.
Now, what if you made a phone case out of an elastomer with a high Shore Hardness? It wouldn't offer much grip or impact protection.
The Grip's outer rim is made from an elastomer with a low Shore Hardness. As a result, the material is grippy and impact-resistant, but much more malleable and thus more likely to deform. That's why we bond the elastomer to a polycarbonate skeleton.
Polycarbonates don't require as much explanation as elastomers: they're a category of plastic. On your Grip case, the back plate is made of polycarbonate. The elastomer rim is bonded to the polycarbonate plate on all sides of the Grip, providing structural rigidity to the elastomer, fighting to keep it from deforming. At least, that's the idea. As we've all seen, it hasn't worked out that way.
Bonding two distinct materials together is much more complicated than gluing them together. Instead, we rely on a thermal bonding process. Basically, that means we heat both of our polymers to a degree which would turn you from “rare” to “well done” in moments. This heat melts the polymers, which we then inject at a pressure which would turn you from “solid” to “paste” even faster.
Once injected, these two materials get fused together along the seams. To further reinforce the bonds, we use a series of interlocking "teeth" to provide a greater surface area on which the bonding process can occur. Consider these teeth the mechanical bond, which exists to strengthen the thermal bond.

Pictured: Bonding mechanic between the elastomer and polycarbonate.
With that out of the way: why do Grips fall apart?
The elastomer rim around the edge of the Grip case is naturally inclined to deform and stretch. The bonding mechanisms we described above are designed to keep that from happening, but it often isn’t strong enough. As soon as the bond fails at any point, it's only a matter of time until a total structural failure occurs.

PART TWO

How Are We Stopping Grips From Falling Apart?
Philosophically, there are two approaches to take:
  1. We can investigate why, exactly, the bond between the elastomer and the polycarbonate is failing.
  2. We can tweak and iterate the thermal and mechanical bond - strengthening it to the point where it's statistically improbable that your case will fall apart.
We tried the first approach - it's the road to madness. The number of variables is irrationally large. What's the temperature like where you live? The altitude? The humidity? Do you bring your phone into environments that deviate from the ambient temperature of your location? Does your school or workplace have extremely dry air? Do you bring your phone into a sauna? What sort of soap do you wash your hands with? Do you have oily hands? What sort of food do you cook? Do you smoke? How hard do you press on the buttons? What's your angle of approach when you actuate a button? How big are your hands? How often do you take your phone out of the case? Do you remove it from the top, the bottom, the sides?
We could follow all of these roads, find out exactly which factors are causing the bond to fail, then implement preventative measures to keep it from happening - but that would take a decade. We don't have that long. Much like you, we want this fixed yesterday.
So, from the moment we received our first complaint about a Grip deforming around the buttons, we've been making structural, thermal, and mechanical improvements to the design and production process of the Grip case - some visible, some not. Every new phone release has brought a new iteration on the core Grip design, with each one reducing the failure rate, incrementally. We'll bring the receipts in the next chapter. For now, let's highlight the most noteworthy improvements.

The Most Noteworthy Improvements
The first signs of trouble were the buttons. Months before we'd received our first report of a Grip case de-bonding, we saw the first examples of buttons that had bent out of shape.

Pictured: Button deformation.
Why the buttons? Because you press down on them. The force from button actuation puts strain on the elastomer, causing displacement of the material in the surrounding area. Through a combination of time, repeated button actuations and the above-mentioned force, the case would permanently deform around the buttons. This concept is called the "compression set" of the elastomer - Google it.
The solution to this problem was two-fold:
  1. First, we increased the compression set of the elastomer. Essentially, we made it as dense as we could, without compromising on the elastic properties of the material.
  2. Second, we added relief slits surrounding the buttons - they're plainly visible on any newer Grip case model. These relief slits are an escape route for the force generated by button actuation. They also had the positive effect of making button actuation significantly more satisfying (read: clicky).

Pictured: Relief slits to improve button tactility and durability.
Another early issue, pre-dating the first reports of total de-bonding, was a deformation of the elastomer along the bottom of the case - where the charging port and speakers are.
Since we've covered the basics on how the interlock between the elastomer and the polycarbonate creates a bond, this is how the interlocking teeth along the top edge of the polycarbonate skeleton of the Grip used to look.

Pictured: First-gen interlocking teeth on the top of the Grip.
...and here's the bottom of that very same Grip case.

Pictured: First-gen interlocking teeth on the bottom of the Grip.
Notice anything? Around the charging port, there is absolutely nothing keeping the elastomer in place. No teeth, no structural reinforcements... it's no coincidence that an overwhelming majority of early Grip deformations happened along the bottom.
Since then, we’ve added a reinforced polycarbonate structure around the bottom of the Grip case. You'll see what that looks like in a bit.
So, why didn't the launch portfolio of Grip cases have mechanical interlocks or a polycarbonate support structure along the bottom?
The answer may or may not be complicated, depending on how much you know about plastic injection molding. We'll assume the worst and explain the concept of "undercut" to you with a ridiculous metaphor.

The Ridiculous Metaphor
Imagine you had a tube full of melted cheese. Next, imagine you emptied that entire tube into your mouth. Rather than swallowing the cheese, you decide to let it sit in your mouth and harden. Why are you doing this? We don't know. Let's just say you want a brick of cheese that's perfectly molded to the contours of your mouth - a very normal thing to want.
So, your mouth is completely filled with cheese. It hardens. You reach into your mouth to remove the brick of cheese. As you're removing it, you encounter a problem: your teeth are in the way. This wasn't a problem when you were putting the cheese into your mouth, but that was because the cheese was melted and could flow around your teeth. Now that the cheese has hardened, this is no longer the case.
In the world of plastic injection molding, this is an undercut. Our concern was that, by molding a structurally rigid piece of polycarbonate around the charging port and speaker holes, we'd find ourselves unable to remove the Grip Case from the mold once hardened. Imagine spending $30,000 on industrial tooling only to get a $30 phone case stuck inside of it.
Once we saw Grip cases deforming along the bottom cutouts, we knew we'd need to find a way to remove the cheese from your mouth without breaking your teeth. To make a long story short: we did it. The cheese is out of your mouth, and you get to keep your teeth. Congratulations! Now, keep reading.
On newer models of the Grip case, the result is a polycarbonate bridge extending around the bottom cutouts, adding both structural reinforcement and interlock mechanisms to promote mechanical bond, much like the ones which line the perimeter of the rest of the Grip case.

Pictured: Newest-gen structural reinforcement on the bottom of the Grip.
On the subject of structural reinforcements, this design revision was around the time we flanked the buttons with some fins, working in tandem with the heightened compression set and button relief slits, detailed above, to further guarantee that button actuation would have no impact on the overall durability of the Grip case.

Pictured: Lack of button fins on the first-gen Grip.

Pictured: Button fins on the newest-gen Grip.
As an aside: Unrelated to the de-bonding issues, we've also made a number of smaller improvements to the Grip case with each new iteration. For instance, we chamfered the front lip of the case to make edge-swiping more pleasant and reduce dust accumulation along the rim. Those raised parallelogram shapes along the sides of your Grip case that create its distinctive handfeel? We made those way bigger for a better in-hand experience. In short: product development is a complex and multifaceted process. Each new iteration of the Grip case is better than the one that came before, and that applies to more than just failure rates.
Speaking of failure rates: all of these improvements were in place by the time we launched iPhone 11-series Grip cases. The failure rate for these cases decreased exponentially... but didn't disappear entirely.

The Even More Ridiculous Metaphor
With these improvements, we achieved our desired outcome: the case was no longer deforming around the buttons or the charging port. Instead, the structure of the case began to fail literally anywhere else around the perimeter of the phone.
Think of it this way… you’re a roof carpenter. The greatest roof carpenter of all time. Like the son of God, but if he was a carpenter. Unfortunately, you’ve been paired with the Donald Trump of wall-builders.
You're tasked with building a house. You spend all of your time and energy perfecting your roofcraft. You've designed a roof that's so durable, it may as well have been made of Nokia 3310s. Nothing's getting through that bad boy.
The wall guy? Instead of building that wall he said Mexico would pay for, he's been tweeting about the miraculous medicinal properties of bleach while a plague kills hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The point here is that you can build the greatest roof of all time, but the walls need to be strong enough to match.
To strengthen the Grip case's metaphorical walls, we needed to re-design the inside of the Grip case from scratch. More specifically, the mechanical interlock between the springy elastomer and rigid polycarbonate skeleton. We took every tooth at the bonding point between the two materials and made them as large as we possibly could. Then, we added more teeth.

Pictured: Polycarbonate teeth on the newest-gen Grip.
To jog your memory: this is how the teeth used to look...

Pictured: Polycarbonate teeth on the first-gen Grip.
If time proves that these changes aren’t enough, our engineers still have a number of ideas on how to improve the bond between the elastomer and polycarbonate. Will we ever need to implement those ideas? Again - that’s a question only time can answer. Each change might be the silver bullet that puts this problem to bed for good... but there's only one way to find out: it involves real-world testing and, with each iteration, months of careful observation.

PART THREE

So, Where Are We Now?
Have the improvements we've made to the Grip case been successful? You bet.
For the sake of comparison: we began shipping iPhone 11 series Grips on September 30th, 2019. Within six months of that date, we had received 52 reports of structural failures - a big improvement over the early days, but still not good enough.
Fast forward two months. We began shipping Note 10 Plus Grip cases on November 21st, 2019. In the first six months of availability, we received exactly eight reports of Note 10 Plus Grips falling apart. Again, a major improvement over the iPhone series in the same stretch of time. If we'd launched the first Grip cases with a failure rate that low, we wouldn't be writing this post right now and you’d have nothing to read while pretending to do work.
How about the Galaxy S20 series, which began shipping on February 10th, 2020? They're the most recent and improved set of SKUs we’ve made to date, leveraging everything we've learned and making further improvements over the Note 10 Plus. No reports so far. Same goes for the iPhone SE and OnePlus 8 series - these SKUs share all the improvements we've made to the underlying design of the Grip case thus far.
Does that mean these numbers will hold forever? Who knows. That's the thing: every improvement we make, we need to wait several months to see how effective it's been. No amount of internal testing can replace the real-world data of shipping cases to hundreds of thousands of users across nearly 200 countries.
We could always just throw in the towel, make the entire case out of rigid plastic, and call it a solved issue... but that would be the easy way out. The Grip case and its unique design properties can't reach their full potential unless we make incremental improvements - then wait and see how they pan out in the real world.
All of which is to say: it's far too early to say the newest set of improvements have officially solved the problem. While the failure rate is still zero, we need to keep watching. We've made a ton of progress, but we're not going to rest until we've killed this issue for good - without sacrificing the unique properties that make the Grip case stand out in a sea of derivative hard plastic and TPU phone cases.
That's probably enough to inspire confidence in someone who's on the fence about buying an S20 Ultra Grip, an iPhone SE Grip, or any Grip we release in the future. But what if you're one of the people who bought an older Grip model?

"I'm One Of The People Who Bought An Older Grip Model!"
We won't sugarcoat it. The failure rates for older Grip models is way higher than we deem acceptable. Why has it taken us this long to publicly address the issue, then?
Easy: it's not as widespread as you might think. Some humans reading this might be looking at their iPhone X Grip, purchased in 2019 and still intact, wondering what all the fuss is about. That's an important consideration: most people who have functioning, still-bonded Grip cases aren't posting on /dbrand about how unbroken it is. The people who've had issues around total product failure are in the minority.
We're not using the word "minority" as a get-out-of-jail-free card here. It's still a way larger number than we'd ever be comfortable with. We simply don't want our transparency and candor in writing this to be misinterpreted as an admission that every single Grip case we've made for older devices is going to fall apart. Statistically speaking, this is an issue for a minority of Grip owners.
Our philosophy at first was that, while it was unfortunate and frustrating that Grip cases were falling apart, dramatic PR action wasn't necessary. Instead, we resolved to:
  1. Quietly and diligently work in the background to improve the underlying design of the Grip case.
  2. Ship free replacements to anyone whose Grip case had failed.
To date, we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on shipping fees alone for replacement Grips. As you can imagine, that number gets a lot higher once you add in the cost of actually making the thing. We've been fine with writing these costs off as sort of an R&D expense, since every example of a deformed or de-bonded Grip provides invaluable data on how to improve the product.
Where our strategy backfired was in the narrative that began to take root as Grip cases continued to fall apart. Look at it this way: the failure rate of older Grip case SKUs is anywhere between 1% and 20%, depending on how early we released the SKU. Since the improvements we've already made to the underlying design were rolled out incrementally with each new phone release, that number has been on a steady downward trend.
For the purpose of this thought experiment, we'll go with the earliest, shittiest Grip cases - putting us at a long-term failure rate of 20%.
So, 20% of customers for this device have a Grip case fall apart at some point in the product's lifespan. Every single one of those people writes in to our Customer Experience team about the issue. They all receive a replacement, free of charge.
Since this replacement is identical to the first Grip case they'd received, it also has a 20% failure rate. We're now dealing with percentages of percentages. Stop panicking, we'll do the math for you: that means 4% of these hypothetical Grip owners will have a second Grip case fail on them in the long run.
Four percent is a lot better than twenty… but it's also a lot of people who've been burned twice. These people are going to be extra vocal about how shitty the Grip case is. To be fair, they've got every right.
So, we've got four groups of customers for this SKU:
  • Group A: Has had two or more Grip cases fail (4%).
  • Group B: Has had exactly one Grip case fail (16%).
  • Group C: Bought a Grip which has not failed (80%).
  • Group D: Has not purchased a Grip case (NA%).
Group A is livid about the repeated issues they've had - rightfully so.
Group B, having been burned before, reads about Group A's experience. They take it to mean their replacement will inevitably fail on them as well, and they'll one day get the dubious honor of joining Group A.
Group C, despite not having had any issues yet, reads the experiences of Groups A and B. Then, a significant portion of this group begins to operate under the assumption that it's only a matter of time before their Grip falls apart as well.
Group D reads all of the above and decides they don't have enough confidence in the Grip case to ever purchase one.
A narrative begins to form that this hypothetical failure rate is close to 100%. Worse yet: people with newer phones, unaware that each new iteration of the Grip case has a dramatically reduced failure rate over the last, start to assume their case also has a 100% failure rate. That's where our original strategy - the one where we quietly improved the product in the background while offering replacements for defective units - backfired on us.
This narrative only exists because we've continued to leverage existing stock with too high a failure rate, which, in hindsight, was like pouring gasoline on a gender reveal forest fire of disappointment and regret. This brings us to our next chapter.

Mass Destruction
At this point, you're probably aware that a number of Grip SKUs for older phones have been listed as "Sold Out" on our website, and haven't been restocked since.
We stopped production on these cases because we knew they'd have all the same issues as the original production runs. See, it's not as simple as pushing a "make the Grip not fall apart" button at the factory - we'd need to redesign the case from scratch, implementing all of the design improvements we've made up to this point, then re-tool our existing machinery to produce this new version. We'll have more to say about re-tooling a bit later - for now, focus on the fact that some Grips have been listed as "Sold Out".
If someone's Grip case falls apart while listed as "Sold Out", we don't have any replacements to send them. Instead, dbrand's Customer Experience team has been issuing refunds wherever possible, and store credit otherwise. Just in case you're wondering what we mean by "where possible": PayPal doesn't allow refunds on transactions that are more than six months old. Store credit, on the other hand, can be offered indefinitely.
What we've come to realize is that we're never going to be able to escape this downward spiral until we rip the band-aid off and stop stocking these old, flawed SKUs.
Today, we're ripping the bandaid off. As you're reading this, we're disposing of all of our old stock. All of the flawed Grip SKUs are now listed as "Sold Out".
Head over to our Grip listing and take a look at what's available. Everything that you can currently buy is up to spec with the improvements we've made over the past year - meeting or exceeding the standard of quality set by the Galaxy S20 series, the iPhone SE, and the OnePlus 8 series. In some cases - take, for instance, the iPhone 11 series - this means we've already re-tooled our production lines to meet that quality benchmark.
If a Grip case is listed on "Backorder", it means we've begun the process of re-tooling the SKU to match the improved quality standard you've spent the last five hours reading about.
However, if a Grip case is now listed as "Sold Out", that means no more reshipments.
If you own a sold out Grip case that hasn't fallen apart yet: that's great! Don't assume that your Grip is doomed to fail just because we devoted 5661 words to explaining why it might fall apart. You've still got better odds than you would at a casino.
As always, if you run into any issues with your case, sold out or not, shoot an email to one of our Robots. They'll still take care of you - it just won't be with a replacement case… for now.

Mass Production
Remember when we said we'd talk more about re-tooling a bit later? That's right now.
So, why are so many Grip models not being fixed? Why haven't we re-tooled these old SKUs with all of the quality improvements made to the case's build quality? It's a little complicated.
Taking the improvements we've made to the most recent suite of Grip models and retroactively applying those changes to older SKUs isn't a simple task - it would require us to throw out our existing production tools and create new ones, from scratch. Suffice it to say that doing so is a wildly expensive endeavor.
To recoup that cost, we'd need to produce more Grips than we're likely to ever sell for aging, irrelevant hardware. Let's use the Pixel 3 as an example.
If we replaced every single de-bonded Pixel 3 Grip, that would account for about 3% of the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) on a re-tooled Pixel 3 Grip case. Now we're sitting on 97% of that MOQ as overstock. Pixel 3 owners have had their phone for nearly two years now. If they want a phone case, they already have one. They're not looking for new Pixel 3 cases, they're getting ready to buy a new phone. Simply put, it’s no longer a viable market.
Now, say the Pixel 3 was a significantly more popular phone - enough that we'd be shipping out, say, 50% of the MOQ as replacements on day one. Now, that's a lot more tempting to us - we'd still lose boatloads of money, but at least it would go towards some consumer goodwill.
To figure out how much money we'd lose on re-tooling, we gave our bean-counting Robots a giant jar of beans and told them to get to work. They emerged three days later. When asked how many beans were in the jar, they gave us a blank stare. When asked if it was possible to re-tool any of our production lines for old Grip SKUs without losing obscene amounts of money, they said:
"Absolutely not."
Still, we're no strangers to throwing away obscene amounts of money to make the internet happy. Remember Amazon gift cards? Those were the days. The only question that remains is "How much money are we willing to set on fire?"
We can't tell you yet. Why? Because we're currently running a detailed cost-benefit analysis on the subject of re-tooling old production lines, on a SKU-by-SKU basis. That's business talk for "the bean-counting Robots have been given more beans to count."
The objective is to determine the viability of producing new-and-improved Grip stock for older phones: how many units would be tied up in replacements for that model, how many we could reasonably expect to sell to new customers, and how much overstock would be left from the MOQ.
From there, we can determine what the financial impact of re-tooling would be and make the final decision on how much cash we're dumping into the ocean somewhere off the coast of the Seychelles. We'll have our results by early next week.
These re-tooled models, if produced, would feature every improvement we’ve made thus far to the Grip case line, plus a few that have yet to be released. Remember how the S20s, the iPhone SE and the OnePlus 8s haven't had any reported failures yet? Picture that, but for the phone you've got.
If we go ahead with re-tooling production lines for your phone, a few things will happen:
  1. The Grip case for your phone will go from "Sold Out" to "Backorder".
  2. Our Customer Experience Robots will shift their communication strategy from "we no longer support your phone," to "we'll get you a replacement once we've got improved units in stock."
None of these things will happen until we've run the simulations on which phones are getting restocked. Why are we posting this today, then? We could have waited a week and had concrete answers to offer about the future of our out-of-stock Grip cases. Well…

Take Our Survey
This is it: your chance to have some say in how much money we set on fire as a goodwill exercise for this whole R&D clusterfuck.
Those simulations we're running? They'll be great for telling us how much money we're going to lose on each Grip SKU, but it won't tell us anything about how much money our customers want us to lose on each Grip SKU.
To that end, we've prepared a survey for people who have purchased a Grip case. We'll be taking your feedback into consideration during our decision-making process.
We have only one request: don't be a jackass. Answer the questions honestly.
Click here to take the survey.

In Closing...
We're sharing a special moment right now. We're all seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
For us, that light is "we're almost done with a year-long R&D effort to stop the Grip case from falling apart."
For you, the light is "the end of a 5661-word marathon of a Reddit post."
We just want to take a minute to recognize that we couldn't have gotten this far without your collective support. At any point in the past year, we might have pulled the plug on the Grip project entirely if we'd reached a critical mass of negative sentiment from our customers. Instead, we've got an army of devotees who have no problem paying us for the privilege of being our guinea pigs.
Product development isn't a one-and-done process. It's easy to forget, but our skins weren't always to the world-class, record-setting, Michael-Jordan-in-his-prime standard you expect from us today. If you happen to have an iPhone 4 skin lying around, apply it and let us know how it goes. You'll immediately appreciate how many process improvements we've made. We weren’t born as the greatest skin manufacturer in history. We got there through a process of methodical improvement. Each jump in quality was driven by a bottomless well of user feedback, sourced from millions upon millions of customers. That, and the competition was comically inept.
It's the same story for the Grip case. Your continued support has enabled us to make huge strides in developing a product that's on the cusp of blowing everyone else out of the water. We're going to keep working until it gets there.

TL;DR VERSION

Please note that by reading this tl;dr, you’re missing out on several outlandish metaphors, including classics such as:
  • Plastic injection molding melted cheese into your face hole.
  • What if Jesus and Donald Trump built a house?
  • How to turn yourself from “rare to well done” and “solid to paste”.
  • Pencil Perverts.

WHY DOES THE GRIP FALL APART?
  • The Grip case is made from two materials: a polycarbonate skeleton and an elastomer frame.
  • The elastomer frame provides the majority of the case's impact protection and grip, but is prone to deformation.
  • We prevent deformation by bonding the material to a polycarbonate skeleton (i.e. the rigid back plate on the Grip case).
  • The bond between the two materials was not as strong as we'd originally anticipated, causing the elastomer to de-bond from the polycarbonate skeleton and the case to sometimes fall apart.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO FIX IT?
  • Through a series of design revisions, we've made countless improvements to promote a stronger bond between the two materials.
  • These changes have incrementally reduced the failure rate of Grip cases. Our most recent SKUs are yielding extremely promising results.
  • Each time we improve the Grip case, we need to play a months-long waiting game to observe the real-world effects.

HOW ABOUT THE GRIPS YOU'VE ALREADY SOLD?
  • Since we're using you as guinea pigs for the purposes of product development, we've been uncharacteristically generous with our warranty policy.
  • However, that warranty policy only lasts as long as we have stock. Once we're out of Grips, we're out of replacements.
  • We've finally reached the point where we need to rip off the bandaid and dispose of all of our Grip stock produced during 2019.
  • If your Grip for any of these older phones falls apart, you can no longer get a replacement.
  • You should still write in to our Customer Experience team if it happens to you - we'll work something out.
  • On the bright side, our Grip SKUs from 2020 onwards have dramatically reduced, if not outright eliminated, the failure rate of previous models. We have no reported cases to date.
  • It's not economically viable to re-tool production lines to apply our improved industrial designs to any of the Grip cases that are currently marked as "Sold Out".
  • We're probably going to do it anyways.
  • We're running the simulations right now to determine which older devices will be re-tooled.
  • Take our survey to help determine which devices we'll be re-tooling.
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current trends in casino gaming industry video

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