Marble Financial, PayPal, Palantir: Fintech, Payment and Data, powerful trio!

Marble Financial - Creditworthiness as a basis

In 2006-2008, a credit bubble of remarkable proportions took place in the US. Millions of properties were sold to subprime customers. Creditworthiness was under the radar of many banks. Smart investment bankers laced so-called asset-backed securities (ABS) with the backing of precisely these mortgages generated from the purchases of not exactly creditworthy prospective home buyers. The local banks ceded the credit risks to the investment banks, putting together AAA packages and selling these subprime bonds to large investors and insurance companies. The bubble burst with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 14, 2008.

Marble Financial from Canada has also dedicated itself to the subprime credit segment and provides its services to around 12 million Canadians. In Germany, private rating agencies such as SCHUFA facilitate the formation of credit scores for banks. Marble has developed systems that analyze the customer's financing structure and income situation and use optimization tools to improve them. The customer is provided with valuable information for his "Financial Behaviour." The banks' data analysis in the background thus leads to a better and often fairer classification of the credit customer. If we had already had such systems in place in 2006-2008, it would have been virtually impossible to grant loans incorrectly.

But Marble has other tools in its pocket. Their customers are offered learning tools on how to plan household accounts and expenses to avoid mistakes in the timing of debits. What is a real asset is the flood of data that can be used extensively. Marble Financial announced a partnership with VoPay International Inc. to provide its open banking payment solution to thousands of new and existing MyMarble customers. This partnership, which enables new payment options for consumers, simplifies the process of providing a single API integration for banking service providers.

With VoPay's integrated single-payment API, Marble can improve customer engagement while lowering costs, rapidly expanding and simplifying payment options for MyMarble users and enabling the Company to expand its top-end revenue channels. Marble Financial is valued at only CAD 20 million and has recently attracted greater attention around Big Data and financial services.

PayPal - Rising volumes and excitement ahead of numbers

PayPal is enjoying ever-increasing transaction volumes and customer numbers. As a first-mover in the email banking space, it has built a substantial lead over the competition. Now PayPal is bringing its 2020 numbers this week, and expectations are very high given the newly introduced crypto payment options. More and more people are also using their significantly increased crypto holdings for consumption.

For the fourth quarter, the Company expects revenue to increase by 20-25% year-on-year, both based on the current closing rate and with all currency effects netted out. Analysts estimate USD 6.1 billion in sales, representing a 22% improvement over the same quarter the previous year. For earnings, they expect growth of 17-18% for the quarter, which would mean about USD 1 per share. With earnings of about USD 3.2 per share on an annual basis, the P/E ratio stands at about 75, double the current growth rate.

The chart technique tells us how it could continue the day after tomorrow. Since March, the PayPal share has been moving upwards in a steep upward trend, marking one record high after another. After the most recent all-time high on January 25 at around USD 254, the strongly overheated value corrected. However, within two trading days, it fell back to the 50-day line at USD 225, which currently runs parallel to the long-term trend line. Yesterday again up to USD 240 - the last display is not yet seen here! Beware!

Palantir Technologies - The lockup ends in February

The business model of Palantir Technologies makes more and more progress. The US Department of Homeland Security is using their services as well as the British government concerning Covid-19 movement analysis in the UK. With the IPO of SAP subsidiary Qualtrics, three prominent 3Data analytics experts are now romping on Nasdaq with their tracking software technologies, in addition to Snowflake.

There are two key factors that investors should currently pay attention to. First, the lockup period for Palantir will end in February. Secondly, the stock has already gained 50% this year alone and is up a whopping 200% since going public. With many shares likely to hit the market with the lockup gone, Palantir could see a significant setback. In the meantime, however, it also remains to be seen how quickly Palantir will benefit from a Biden administration. After all, the pandemic still rages on, especially in the United States.

Palantir practices relationships with both major US political parties and has already done sound business with them. As much as some people would like to turn the Company into an ideological game, the factual situation so far does not support that. Palantir is looking to do USD 1.4 billion in revenue this year, up from USD 742 million in 2019. We leave it to the inclined investor to decide whether this justifies a price-to-sales ratio of 35, as good growth has been bought for months. No one speaks of valuation ratios; the prices rise and rise.