Posted: 03 Jun 2020 12:16 AM PDT

DKNG has gained a lot the week of May 24 2020, mostly focused on May 26 (Tues) and May 28 (Thurs). Both days saw intraday spikes on sports-world news. On May 26 afternoon, a presser with Gary Bettman was announced, and on May 28, it was announced that the Premier League would return in June. Oddly, the stock did not drop at all, after Bettman's announcement turned out to just be an expanded playoff format, and nothing about a return to the ice. The Premier League news didn't impact other sports betting stocks either. Both events clearly imply that DKNG' stock is hugely overpriced, but it's being driven up just by trading. I'm not affiliated with DKNG in any way.

The company's lousy Q1 earnings was quite the spin job, and I was shocked to see the stock rise that day! Growth in marketing expenses can be written off as entering new states, but no growth in net revenue, despite 30% growth in gross revenue, means that the company can't actually grow. In other words, almost all revenue was grown by offering free bets and reducing vigorish. Let's examine revenue growth further.

I was stunned that the company led with "30% revenue growth" when, in fact, that was only at Old DKNG, which constitutes 75% of New DKNG revenue. SBTech makes up the rest and grew at only 3%, giving the public company a 23% growth rate for the quarter, not the 30% spin job. DKNG might've unintentionally unveiled COVID19's impact. At Old DKNG, they noted 60% growth through March 10th. If we assume that each day through the quarter is equal, that means the last 21 days of the quarter would have been down 70% vs Q1 '19!!! This difference is hefty! But we know not all days are created equal in the world of sports, and Q1 included 5 NFL playoff days and the Super Bowl. If we assume NFL betting days are 3x a normal day and the Super Bowl is 3x a normal NFL day, revenue post-March 10th will drop 95%. Similarly, because SBTech's dropped from +19% to only +3%, revenue post-COVID19 will drop at least by half.

Also examine how they pitched themselves when the merger was announced in Dec. 2019. On slide 22, DKNG compare their valuation to competitors', trying to show that the valuation is fair, probably trying to counter DKNG's valuation that was4x what Paddy Power paid for FanDuel 18 months earlier. Let's ignore the "EV / 2021E Revenue – Growth Adjusted" multiple that they highlight, because it's completely unreliable to adjust a forward looking multiple based on your own forward-looking growth projections. Instead look at EV / TTM 3/31 Revenue for those same comparisons.

At $39 per share, DKNG has a market cap over $15 billion on TTM revenue of $451 million. So their revenue multiple is 33.7x, which is too overvalued! The "High Growth Consumer Internet" category that they selected is at 8.1x and "EU Sportsbook Operators" at 3.6x. Their best competitor is Flutter, which is Paddy Power + Fanduel + Stars, and it trades at 7.8x. DKNG deserves a higher multiple than Flutter because DKNG is pure-play USA, and Flutter earns retail European revenue that isn't high growth. But the two companies currently have the same market cap, despite FanDuel competing directly with DKNG with more market share in the fast growing business segments. Even if you are generous to DKNG and believe they should trade at a 50% premium to Flutter, DKNG's share price ought be just $13.50.

No, this isn't about more states allowing sports betting. Let's examine what must happen at the state level to value DKNG's current valuation reasonably. In their December investor presentation, DKNG estimates their sports book net revenue at $2.3B given 25% market share and 65% of the US having online betting, with a 22% allowance for promos from Gross to Net. Consider their $4.5 billion of gross revenue at 100% of the population. Let's bump that by 30% bump for iGaming. DKNG's current $15 billion valuation and the same 50% premium to Flutter's revenue multiple above (11.7x), mean that DKNG need $1.28B of revenue, or $831M more than they currently have. $831M more revenue needed means 14% more of the population must legalize in the very short term. Of the big five states, CA, TX, FL, NY and PA, none will add any population, because PA is already online, NY chose retail-only and researchers and lobbyists don't think the other three will legalize for another 5 years. The remaining 46 states, including DC, average 1.3% of the population each, meaning you need a windfall of states to add 14% of the population.

Forget nationally legalized sports betting, because no one is even pushing for that and it won't happen. SCOTUS invalidated PASPA to remove the Federal Government's ability to make national decisions like (dis)allowing sports betting. Sports betting will roll out throughout the US, but will slog state-by-state.

Now that DKNG's stock has rocketed, DKNA's management has two good strategies, like TSLA did when TSLA's stock price rocketed in Jan 2020.

The first is obvious: follow-on equity offering. In going public via a reverse merger with a SPAC, DKNG barely tapped the big institutional investors. This follow-on can add cash to the balance sheet. If you watched TV in 2015, you know DKNG love to spend money on ads, at a very attractive valuation for the company. What's the problem? New shares, or if the follow-on prices poorly, can lower the current share price.
The less obvious option is to buy a competitor, William Hill, that has a market cap of about $1.5B. They have a huge footprint in Europe, a market that DKNG previously tried and failed to enter. Europe threatens DKNG' DTC approach in the US, and Europe has the IT that powers much of the land-based casinos' sportsbook operations in the US. DKNG could buy them with their cheap stock, or issue new equity to raise money for the acquisition. DKNG would add much revenue, can cut lots of duplicated costs, diversify across countries and sports to temper their seasonality, and replace William Hill's outdated tech with DKNG's better apps. The downside is that these two companies' CEOs dislike each other.

What's one reason the stock has risen so much since the "IPO"? Because DKNG has a teensy number of liquid shares. Remember this wasn't an IPO at all, it was a reverse merger with a SPAC, so a much higher percentage of outstanding shares are currently locked up than in a typical IPO. That constraint on supply with big retail demand could boost the stock price! I'll summarize the 3 cases for DKNG.

Short term bull: Sports come back, stock (irrationally) trades up on it.
Short term bear: Stock price corrects to a more realistic valuation. Bulls take gains. Any of NHL, NBA, MLB announce they won't play again in 2020. Company decides on more financial maneuvering.
Long term bear: Q2 or Q3 earnings disappoint. The NFL cash cow drops or NBA or NHL '20-'21 season gets delayed. Lockup ends in October 2020.

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Daily Guide to the Markets by JP Morgan

Posted: 02 Jun 2020 09:32 AM PDT

https://am.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/en/institutional/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets/mi-daily-gtm-us.pdf