UPWK | Crap or a Potential 10-Bagger? | NEW BEST IDEA LONG | CALL INVITE

02/05/19 07:32AM EST

EVENT DETAILS:

  • Date & Time: Monday 2/11 @ 12:30PM ET
  • Dial-In & Video Link: To be provided in a follow-up invite
  • Add Call Details to Outlook Calendar: CLICK HERE

I LIKE THIS ONE SO MUCH I THINK I CAN ONLY WRITE IN BULLETS:

  • Mostly untapped, expanding opportunity
  • Very early in enterprise adoption
  • Take rate moving lower will drive open ended market creation
  • Shrink of time-to-hire accelerates booking of labor
  • Which opens up a shift in productivity

UPWK | Crap or a Potential 10-Bagger? | NEW BEST IDEA LONG | CALL INVITE - UPWK 1

WHAT ARE THE KEY DRIVERS?

  • Supply side growth of freelancers on the platform way outpaces demand growth but creates the market
  • Growth of clients on the market is the matching demand vector, at a multi year lag to supply growth; consider that there are 16MM+ freelancers on the site growing mid-high teens % Y/Y (i.e. supply) yet of the 2MM projects served in the 12 months ending June 30 2018, only 375K different freelancers were used. Supply creates demand
  • 23 hour median time to fill a job on UPWK versus 31+ days in the normal economy (2017 data) implies massive flexibility and speed shift, a productivity accelerator
  • Growth of categories and skills; in 2007 four categories made up 90% of billings, in 2012 90% of billings came from 35 categories…today only 40% of clients accessed freelancers across multiple categories; the growth of skills and categories across the site is a supply side driver which begets demand
  • Adoption of large size enterprises: 80% of GSV in 2017 was booked by companies with sub-100 employees, F100 and F500 adoption still low, 1,400 companies with over $100k bookings drove 10% of GSV

UPWK | Crap or a Potential 10-Bagger? | NEW BEST IDEA LONG | CALL INVITE - UPWK 2

THERE IS ALSO A LOT OF CRAP:

  • Macro – the site provides labor efficiency in the long run but in the short run some of the excess labor needs will wane; a review of top projects getting sourced appear mostly discretionary / non-core which can create headwinds in the short run
  • A very uneven merger and a historically uneven and reset cap table (which will make for an interesting lockup expiry)
  • Lots of competition, no exclusivity on clients or freelancers
  • Net expansion rates are non-contractual
  • Take rate % of GSV is moving lower
  • Disclosure of revenue drivers already shifted from S-1 to first 10-Q 

Join us Monday as we take you through all the good & bad behind this name and explain why we think it could be a long term 10-bagger.

Please call or e-mail with any questions.

Ami Joseph

Managing Director

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Yosef Vaitsblit

Analyst

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