Communications

Report by Hedgeye

Andrew Freedman initiates a short on RBLX, contending the market is underestimating structural headwinds that will pressure the stock over the next 12-18 months. His proprietary Metaverse Tracker shows strong 2Q25 DAU trends - driven primarily by the success of Grow a Garden and favourable calendar dynamics - marking what he views as peak growth. However, Andrew’s analysis points to limited runway for sustained user acquisition at current growth rates, a more challenging competitive landscape and increasingly difficult comps. He expects a sharp deceleration in growth and monetisation, diverging meaningfully from consensus. At ~$95, he sees limited upside ($10-15) and significant downside risk ($30-40).

Report by Paragon Intel

Paragon’s latest offering on their ManagementTrack platform highlights evasive answers near real-time during earnings seasons. Their model can also flag abnormally high evasiveness % and if past instances have led to underperformance. Recent examples include 1) Lamb Weston - management's evasiveness increased significantly to 60% from 25% and 33% the prior 2 quarters. 2) McCormick - evasiveness increased to 36% from sub-10% the prior 2 quarters. 3) Disney - last quarter executives answered 78% of questions evasively. 4) Click here to access a report Paragon created overlaying their earnings call analysis with a recent note a short seller published on Roblox.

Report by Radio Free Mobile

A rotten year for The Metaverse which has one more gift to give with the cancellation of ByteDance’s Pico 5 headset, one of the most popular devices for developers. Cancellations like this and a market that halves will only serve to delay the take-off of The Metaverse as well as slow the development of the ecosystem around it. While the release of the Apple Vision Pro in 2024 could trigger renewed interest, Richard Windsor believes the segment remains uninvestable at the moment. He is keeping tabs on Roblox and Unity, but both companies are too expensive and their shares look set to stagnate / decline for a while yet.

Report by Vermilion Research

Is a collection of technically vulnerable charts culled from the “Negatively Inflecting” and “Toppy” columns within Vermilion’s Weekly Compass report or from various technical screening processes. The charts contained in this report have developed concerning technical patterns that suggest further price deterioration is likely. For these reasons Short Shots can also be a great source of ideas for investors interested in short-selling candidates.

Charts highlighted include Corteva (see above), Enphase Energy, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Hershey, MarketAxess, Moderna, Newmont, Penumbra, Roblox, SolarEdge and Valmont Industries.

Technology

Report by LightStream Research

An Epic partner - Mio Kato has been arguing that significant collaboration between Sony and Epic Games is likely in forming the key infrastructure for the metaverse. The recent Matrix Awakens demo starts to reveal some of the possibilities. In addition, it demonstrates why Mio believes popular metaverse theme names like Meta and Roblox have no realistic chance of competing. Mio also discusses the (increasingly high) likelihood that Tencent decides to sell its stake in Epic with Sony expected to be one of several interested parties.

Report by Niko Partners

Several factors including strict regulations on young gamers and a temporary freeze on game approvals, sees Niko Partners lower their forecast for the first in their 20-year history - they now expect China’s market to generate $47bn in 2021 (down $460m from previous estimate). The Asia games market specialists have also recently produced a Mobile PaaS Cloud Gaming white paper (this technology has the potential to dramatically impact the mobile and F2P games market); provided insight on how Chinese tech and gaming giants are embracing the metaverse despite state warnings; and why Roblox’s China ambitions risk falling flat.