Delocalization Effects on CASY AMZN

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
1

All-
One of the trends I believe we will see over the next ten years is a delocalization of the workforce due to self driving cars. I was listening to one of TMF podcasts (Money?), and they talked about the reduction in teen driving. 25% of 16 year olds have licenses today vs. 43% 10 years ago. Wow! This coupled with the advent of driverless cars and the ability to telecommute or work while commuting will probably lead to more and more people working from home. A home office is more environmentally friendly due to a reduced commute, and it is less expensive for the employer. I think of it as another form of the sharing economy. And the self driving car that can double as a mobile office would also permit people to travel more or spend more time in remote locations. What if tiny motor homes merge with self driving cars and a home offices? This all boggles my mind. Anyway, my point is that the more people that can work in remote locations the more people will have to rely on CASY and AMZN for goods and services.

I remember last time my mind was this boggled I talked my wife into letting me get into individual stocks. One of our first purchases was a communications company that made these switching doohickeys that was used in something I called the internet. I thought that the internet and a company called Cisco Systems might have a few possibilities. I happily sold Cisco in 2000. Now I smell more change in the air.

bulwnkl

Long CASY and AMZN

5 Likes
2

Very interesting and thought-provoking.

I was just reminiscing yesterday about how, many years ago, we had to worry about how expensive long distance phone calls were, and we had to pay for our “on-line” computer time by the minute.

The world is certainly changing and, in so doing, providing some very exciting investment possibilities.

Thanks for this very insightful post.

1 Like
3

bulwnkl,

It is indeed mind-boggling to try to figure out the impact of autonomous cars (truly “automobiles”, finally!). But there are so many ways that the impact could evolve.

For example, self-driving cars would eliminate congestion in cities, and allow a lot of parking lots to be re-used for either green spaces or building sites. Couple that with work-at-home, and it might just have the opposite effect – people may flock to the cities where they could walk to whatever stores/entertainement/attractions they want, and leave CASY in a long decline due to shifting demographics.

I doubt that self-driving cars would result in a rural renaissance. Working from home and having easy and cheap transportation would make rural life possible, but not necessarily more desirable. Those who prefer country life are probably already there; there are many who live in small towns and rural areas that would much prefer to be in the big cities. A migration to the major urban areas would spark growth in retail and services, allowing many who wouldn’t otherwise consider moving to the city for economic reasons to do so.

That is one scenario, you posited another. Who knows which one is correct (my guess is neither of us has nailed it!). But one thing is for sure, AMZN looks to profit and grow regardless.

Tiptree, Fool One guide, long AMZN

4 Likes
4

Never heard of Casey’s (CASY) so I looked them up:

CASY 30: http://invest.kleinnet.com/bmw1/stats30/CASY.html

An average growth of 13.7% over the past 30 years is nice and it seems to be accelerating. My fast growers software shows the following


 **20 Y    15 Y    10 Y     5 y** 
13.5%	17.2%	20.0%	22.8%

Maybe “delocalization” is benefitting the general store.

Thanks,

Denny Schlesinger

1 Like
5

I was just reminiscing yesterday about how, many years ago, we had to worry about how expensive long distance phone calls were, and we had to pay for our “on-line” computer time by the minute.

I remember once, 40 years ago, a connecting plane arrived late, I missed my connecting flight, and I had to call home from Frankfurt. The operator had to set up the call and call me back in 20 or 30 minutes when it was ready. It cost $40 for three minutes (and back then $40 was worth even more than it is now. Much more.) Now my T-Mobile plan lets me call practically free from Europe and free from the US to Europe. And in Europe calls to the US and pretty much around the world are included in your plan for no additional cost. And if someone calls my cellphone in the US, it rings even if I’m in France. It’s a different world.

This is less striking, but 55-60 years ago, planes were limited in range and to fly to Europe we had to make three stops for refueling: New York to Goose Bay Labrador, Labrador to Ireland, Ireland to Paris.

And, for you young people, this will be hard to believe, but 25 years ago, the idea of walking down the street, talking on a telephone would have been science fiction, sort of on the order of Star Trek’s “Beam me up Scottie”.

And for a business I had 30 years ago we needed a computer. It was an IBM System 34 computer, the size roughly of a classic Volkswagen car, and it had a one-hundredth or less the computing power of my MacBook now, cost over $50,000 as I remember, and required that we hire a programmer to set up the simple things we wanted that now would be off the shelf, actually come built in.

In the early 50’s I started skiing. At that time no one you knew actually went skiing. It was something you saw on newsreels in the movie theatre. At that time there were three (count them, three!) chair lifts in North America. All single chairs. One at Aspen, one at Stowe, Vermont, one at Mt Tremblant in Canada. Mostly it was rope tows that pulled you up a few hundred yards. T-bars and Poma lifts that pulled you along the snow were luxury. Ski bindings were cables, were called “bear traps”, and had no releases. There were no purpose made ski boots. We skied in paratrooper lace up boots that were not waterproof. Took off the boots and set them infant of the roaring fire in the ski station to dry them out (and our socks).

The first very primitive internet (AOL), was 1994, as I remember. Now if you are 25, that’s ancient history, you don’t remember a world without internet, but for someone my age that’s a blink of an eye. How could we have gone from AOL to social media taking over the world in 22 years?

Yes, a different world. If you think you can predict what the world will be like in 20 years, forget it. Sixty years ago, we had landed men on the moon. Everyone believed we’d have people living on the moon in 20 years. Oops…

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings.

Saul

48 Likes
6

If you think you can predict what the world will be like in 20 years, forget it.

And if you think you can predict what companies will rule in 20 years, think of this: (Now this is just from memory, and I may be off by a year or two or three, so don’t bother writing to tell me it happened two years earlier or later. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about predicting 20 years into the future.) Okay, here we go…

30 years ago (about 1986) - IBM was computers. Hardware, anyway. There was no significant software (what’s that?) There was no internet.

25 years ago (about 1991) - IBM was still computers. Computers were for businesses only. Personal computers were a curiosity. In fact they were pretty much Apple (which was a small company, way less than 1% of its current valuation. Microsoft was also a small company. It had started software and also copied anything that Apple created. Internet? What’s that?

22 years ago (about 1994) - AOL starts its own private internet. Looked like a dominant force. Now a footnote to history.

18 years ago (about 1998) - Yahoo dominant in search. Google? Just founded this year. Never heard of them! Currently Google is $500 billion. YHOO is $35 billion, worth 7% as much as Google. Amazon was still mostly just a bookstore, selling books, videos and music. Founded in 1995. Revenue in 1998 was $600 million. Losing money.

Pick the winners 20 or 30 years out? I don’t think so! You might have picked IBM, YHOO, and MSFT, over all the rest. Not that you wouldn’t have made money. IBM would have given you all of a 6-bagger in 25 years. MSFT would have done better, but is only up about 10% or so from its prices in 1999. Yahoo is down 67% from its peak in 1999.

Saul

14 Likes
7

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings.

Saul

As a teenager I went skiing at Mt Tremblant. Boy, was Montreal cold in Winter!

In 1945 my grandmother in Budapest had a coal stove, gas lights and no electricity or telephone. She kneaded the dough for the bread at home and took it to the baker to bake! That’s what bakers did, bake people’s bread! That’s just 71 years ago.

I prefer the good new days to the good old days!

Denny Schlesinger

4 Likes
8

Hi Denny, As I remember, skiing in Vermont was awfully cold too. Colorado was better. Wish I could still ski. (Finally broke my leg a few years ago)
Saul

9

Remember Dick Tracy. He was always talking on his watch. LOL.

1 Like
10

Hi Saul, great read. Your MacBook probably had some where north of one hundred thousand times the computing power of the IBM 30ish years ago. Absolutely mind boggling no?

2 Likes
11

Freaking awesome fireside story telling. Keep it coming.
Ant

12

In the early 50’s I started skiing. At that time no one you knew actually went skiing. It was something you saw on newsreels in the movie theatre. At that time there were three (count them, three!) chair lifts in North America.

Back when I still skied, my principle was that you had to ski up the mountain in order to deserve to ski down it. :slight_smile: Who needs a lift?

1 Like
13

Back when I still skied, my principle was that you had to ski up the mountain in order to deserve to ski down it. :slight_smile: Who needs a lift?

You’re a better man than I am, Tamhas

14

My first car was a 1948 Chevy with a rod knock. I paid $85.00 for it.
I was 15 1/2 yrs old and had a learners permit.

My first PC was a Victor with green screen. Used it for CNC tool path programming. Then for office use I bought two IBM PCs. Each had two floppy drives and no hard drive.

My First cel phone was a device that looked like a home telephone sitting on the floor of my car and plugged into the cigarette lighter.
Hand held cels looked like walky talkies.

1 Like
15

My time in the navy: I did navigation on a world war two re-commissioned sea plane tender using a sextant and dead reckoning…No GPS yet in 1965.

16

Maybe I just picked short mountains! :slight_smile:

17

My wife and I skied most of the Colorado mountains ( where we live )
went from long skis to short skies cold boots to heated boots…Primitive lifts to fast 4 seaters… while skiing bumps my wife broke both thumbs
on two separate occasions…insisted on skiing out the day both times.

We can no longer ski, hike, or climb mountains but we had some great times over many years :)!

1 Like
18

Wow. I was out two days at a horse show with my daughter, and came back to an amazing discussion.

I agree with everyone about predicting the future being impossible. However, what we are really doing when we discuss self driving cars, medicine, or IOT is trying to understand what is happening today.

Self driving cars are no longer science fiction.

Best,

bulwnkl

PS I miss the simpler times of a warm cup of coffee and the morning paper to review my stock prices.

19

…many years ago, we had to worry about how expensive long distance phone calls were…

Agree, and admittedly, they do much more than just a phone line did, and are a necessary evil in my opinion, but my family’s cell phone bill is 3X what I used to get frustrated with that our home phone line cost (with long distance).

1 Like
20

I just received this and thought it would be interesting to add to this thread.

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide.

Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they
went bankrupt.

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next
10 years - and most people don’t see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures
on paper film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had
10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law.

So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a
long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a
few short years.

It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous
and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Welcome to the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years…

Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the
biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb, Worldwide Accommodations Leader, is now the biggest hotel
company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in
understanding the world.

This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years
earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already aren’t getting jobs. Because of IBM
Watson, you can get legal advice (for more or less the basic stuff)
within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done
by humans.

There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only the specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate
than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize
faces better than humans.

In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans, most are already.

Autonomous cars: In 2020 the first self driving cars will appear for the public.

Around 2025, the complete industry will start to be disrupted.
You won’t want to own a car anymore.

You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location
and drive you to your destination.

You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and
can be productive while driving.

Our kids may never get a driver’s license, and may never own a car,
except for off-road sports or vintage purposes.

It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that.
We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people
die each year in car accidents worldwide.

We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving
that will drop to one accident in 10 million km.
That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies might soon become bankrupt.

Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build
a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the
revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

Some Engineers from Volkswagen and Audi have said, they’re completely
terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without
accidents, the insurance will become 100x’s cheaper.
Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change.
Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further
away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream around 2025.
Cities will be less noisy because most cars will run electric.

Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production
has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now
see the impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil.
The price for solar will drop so much that almost all coal companies
will be out of business by 2030.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water.
Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter.

We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water.
Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water
as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: The Tricorder-X has been said that it will be announced this
or next year.

There companies who’ll build that medical device (think Doc McCoy’s
from “Star Trek”) that works with you phone, will take your retina
scan, your blood sample and you’ll breath into it.

It will/would then analyze 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease.
It will be cheap, in a few years everyone on this planet will have
access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from
$18,000. to $400. within the last 10 years.
In the same time, it became 100 times faster.

Most major shoe companies have started 3D printing shoes.
Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports.
The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the
large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.
At the end of this year, new smartphones may have 3D scanning possibilities.
You can then 3D scan your feet and be able to print your perfect shoe at home.
In China, they’ve already 3D printed a complete 6-story office building.
By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask
yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” and if the
answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea.

And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is already being
doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years.
There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be
enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a $100. agricultural robot in the future.
Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field
instead of working all days in their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water.

The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be
cheaper than calves produced veal in 2030.

Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cattle.

Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore.

There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly.

It contains more protein than meat.

It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most
people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is already an app called “Moodies” which can analyze which mood
you are in.

At this rate, by 2020, there will be apps that can tell by your facial
expressions if you are lying.

Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they are
telling the truth and when not.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year.

Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it’s 80 years.

The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more that
one year increase per year.

So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way more than 100.m

Education: The cheapest smartphones are already at $10. in Africa and Asia.

It’s been forecast that by 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone.

That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at
school in First World countries.

Already released software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic,
Swahili, and Chinese this Summer, because of an enormous potential.

English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in
English within half a year…

37 Likes