As some traditional luxury automakers release electric vehicles amid promises that range, charging, & performance will all improve in a few years, Lucid › LCID › is launching its brand & already beating the top numbers from Tesla & any others.

The 2022 Lucid Air, which went into production last week & begins deliveries in late October, boasts an EPA range of up to 520 miles, & in the Dream Edition Performance version I drove, an output of up to 1,111 hp, a 0-60 mph time of 2.5 seconds, & a quarter-mile time of just 9.9 seconds. & on a 350-kw DC fast-charge connector the 112-kwh battery pack can recover up to 20 miles a minute, or up to 300 miles in 20 minutes.

Based on a very brief first drive last week, I can report that it feels just as quick as it teases—supercar-quick not just at American freeway speeds but well beyond. 

But it’s not just a numbers game, & we’ve all seen plenty of YouTube EV acceleration videos. For a car that arrives, in its Dream Edition version, at $169,000, it had best charm buyers in other ways as well. Mission accomplished. Around the brilliant engineering put into dramatically downsizing the propulsion system & focusing on efficiency, Lucid has built a true driver’s car. 

After less than 30 minutes of actual drive time split between me & a driving partner, plus about an hour in & around the car, that’s the biggest surprise. The Air doesn’t withhold some of the inherent sensations of driving enjoyment. From chassis to interface, Lucid has been just as relentless in getting the whole car right as it has in perfecting the power & energy pieces to hit the magic numbers. & it shows. 

Leading-edge aero, but a presence unlike any other

The Lucid Air has one of the best coefficients of drag in the industry, at just 0.21, & yet as a sedan it doesn’t have the telltale “kammback” design or look like it’s sacrificed its proportions for the sake of aero. That’s quite the triumph for this beautiful design, from Lucid VP Derek Jenkins, who also penned the current ND-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata & contributed to the Mazda CX-9 that helped solidify the look of Mazda’s crossovers. 

Although the Air can be a chameleon in pictures, in person it has a presence unlike any other vehicle. The thin, wide themes that apply to the nose &, inside, the dash, look aircraft-inspired & bring out the low-&-wide look of the car, while the thick rear pillar, & the French curve arches ahead of it & around the rear window, form a memorable signature.

At 195.9 inches long, 76.3 inches wide, & 55.5 inches high, & riding on a 116.5-inch wheelbase, the Lucid Air is within an inch of the Tesla Model S in most of its critical dimensions—except for height, where it’s 1.4 inches lower. Although the back seat requires some to duck their heads when getting in, that’s the only exception to the impression that the Air feels quite a bit roomier inside than the Model S, especially in back. The trunk is spacious, with a flexible cover that can conceal a deep well at the rear. You can fold the split rear seatbacks forward for larger items, or use the pass-through. In addition, there’s a frunk—not just a token space for a handbag, but what’s claimed as the largest frunk of any electric car. Numbers are forthcoming.

With downsized drive components, more space for people

Lucid has applied its persistent engineering approach toward downsizing all the critical electric-drive components. The shockingly small motors are not much larger than motors that I’ve seen used as part of a far less powerful hybrid system. They’re packaged elegantly with their gearbox & inverter.

Getting into the Air for the first time, it’s impossible not to focus on what’s above. The available Glass Canopy roof spans from the base of the windshield all the way to a crossmember behind the heads of those in the front seat, & it’s interrupted only by the rearview mirror module & sunshades.

The use of soft, porous materials elsewhere in the cabin balances out the sound quality & ambience for all the glass above—although in the back seat we noticed some pavement “patter” at the rear wheels. 

That’s something you might not notice if you’re enjoying the Air’s 21-speaker immersive audio with Dolby Atmos. The infotainment system is compatible with Apple CarPlay & Android Auto, while voice commands are via a native installation of Amazon Alexa.

The front seats in our test car provided plenty of support & adjustments, with built-in massage & cooling backing up that all-day comfort. An optional Executive Rear Seating package will add more recline & long leg rests, much like what you’d encounter on a first-class plane seat. 

Tuned for the driver as much as the passengers

But really, you’ll want to be the one driving. The Air has a five-link strut suspension in front, with an integral-link setup in back. The five-link setup, one of the late-stage engineering changes to the Air, along with the mechanically variable steering rack, constitutes an analog solution to counter the digital overload of the propulsion. The layout effectively purges torque steer & helps assure predictability, with weight transfer staying the same whether in regenerative braking or foundation (friction) braking. 

The Air lacks an air suspension like there is in the Model S. It just has solenoid-controlled semi-active dampers on all four wheels. The hysteresis, or lag, from an air-spring setup would have meant too many compromises in the damping that would affect ride & handling, according to Zach Walker, engineering manager for chassis mechanical. 

It has a confident, easygoing feel in straight-ahead driving. Given a few chances to attack some exit ramps, I found the Air’s ride & handling to be isolating yet tidy & responsive, with a certain playfulness in the way its 5,050 pounds transfer front to back. We can’t wait to get this model out on a track. 

The Air uses all four wheels for regenerative braking, & it can torque-vector during regen, so it makes the most of it given the road surface. Like Tesla, Lucid doesn’t like the idea of brake-blending. When you use the brake pedal, you’re using the pads; lift off the accelerator & you’re in regen. It’s as simple as that, & it makes everything more predictable & easier to tune, as Lucid sees it.

Pirelli tires, specially developed with Lucid for the Air, carry a high-load (HL) rating & were engineered for grip as well as low rolling resistance & minimizing rolling noise. Our test car was equipped with them in their larger 21-inch size—HL 245/35R21 99 Y XL in front & HL 265/35R21 103 Y XL in back. 

Modes cover preferences, not party tricks

Through three drive modes: Smooth, Swift, & Sprint, Lucid tweaks the available power from the propulsion system, accelerator responsiveness, steering boost, & suspension firmness & behavior. Regenerative braking is offered in two settings for each of these drive modes & it provides 0.12g or to 0.3g of resistance. 

Separately, you can opt to turn on or off idle creep (what it does when you lift off the brake), or have the car roll or hold after a stop. Drive modes are also decoupled from stability control, & there’s a mode—probably best left for the track—to turn off the stability systems but keep rear-wheel torque vectoring. 

On that track, you won’t find a launch mode, per se—or a drift mode or track mode. To get peak launch times you need to be in Swift mode, with more than a half battery charge, & the system will do a bit of anticipatory pre-conditioning. 

Lucid, like Tesla, will provide periodic over-the-air updates that could extend to improving performance, efficiency, & range. 

The Air’s screen interfaces, which are quick & lag-free, feel a bit like they split the difference between Tesla minimalism & Mercedes-Benz’s Hyperscreen that essentially occupies the entire dash. Altogether they’re elegant, use crisp fonts with light lettering on a dark background, & position pertinent info up top. There’s a physical gear selector. You pull the shift lever down to engage drive, up to engage reverse, & press in for park, just like in a Mercedes-Benz. Functions like drive modes, charging, setting navigation destinations, & other in-depth settings that you might need only when parked sit farther down in the line of sight, in a Pilot Panel that retracts into the dash when you want.

The Air also has Dream Drive, Lucid’s limited hands-free driver-assist system, with functionality like Navigate on Autopilot in the works. It includes up to 32 sensors, with camera, radar, & ultrasonic sensors, as well as Lidar. At this point, it tells the driver to take charge after 15 seconds of hands-free driving, but it trains a camera on the driver & allows an extended period of hands-off drive as long as the driver stays focused. Details here are still being finalized.

Never mind this business of only dual motors & 1,111 hp. A tri-motor model that’s maybe a year out has CEO Peter Rawlinson giddy with anticipation. 

We can’t wait for more time in the Air. There was never any reason to doubt that Rawlinson & his team would come up with one of the quickest & most efficient EVs yet. That it’s such a strong entry as a luxury sedan & driver’s car caught me by surprise. For a company that has big plans & more models in the works, that’s a very good sign. 

Entices with the numbers & charms with the driving experience

Lucid Group › LCID › drove its first customer-quality Lucid Air electric sedans off the assembly line on 28-Sep at its AMP-1 factory in Arizona. The company expects customer deliveries for the most expensive Dream edition to begin in late October & ramp up thereafter.

Lucid is launching its brand & already beating the top numbers from Tesla & any others.

Investors in electric vehicle company Lucid Motors have been waiting for this moment for a number of years. On 28-Sep the company announced that the first customer-quality Lucid Air sedan rolled off the production line at its facility in Arizona. With deliveries only a few weeks away, it is now time for the company to deliver on growth prospects that have been years in the making.

When the company first announced the planned construction of its Casa Grande factory, the hope was that cars would be coming off the line in early 2019. Financial problems led to some delays, & the pandemic certainly did not help. Earlier this year, there were hopes that deliveries would start in Q3, but that timeline eventually was pushed back.

The Air Sedan starts at $77,400 before EV incentives, & maximum range versions can go over 500 miles on a charge, easily beating the Tesla Model S. The Dream Edition variant will start at a whopping $169,000, but due to strong demand, Lucid has upped its production run to 520 vehicles. On Tuesday, the company also revealed that it now has over 13,000 reservations for the Air, up from more than 11,000 just two months earlier. Lucid will also have an SUV coming in 2023 as it looks to increase its presence in the EV space.

Lucid rolls first EV off assembly line & begin deliveries in late October

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund › BXSL › a business development company externally managed by Blackstone Credit BDC Advisors LLC, today filed a registration statement with the Securities & Exchange Commission › the SEC › relating to a proposed initial public offering of its common shares.

BofA Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC & Wells Fargo Securities, LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund › BXSL › is a specialty finance company that invests primarily in the debt of private U.S. companies that focuses primarily on making originated senior secured, floating rate loans to private U.S. companies, specifically small & middle market companies.

BXSL is externally managed by Blackstone Credit BDC Advisors LLC, an investment adviser within Blackstone Credit.

Blackstone hired two Wall Street veterans as partners & promoted another executive to work in its Blackstone Credit unit as fresh demand from institutional & retail investors made it the private equity firm's fastest-growing segment. 

In Las Vegas, skill combined with luck is the best way to come out ahead. That’s how private equity firm Blackstone hit the jackpot with a $5.7 billion deal to sell the Cosmopolitan casino. It caught a break when it bought the business seven years ago & is applying its know-how with some slick shuffling.

A day after it unveiled plans to operate The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, MGM Resorts International said it closed a sale-leaseback of two other towering hotels on the Strip — Aria, Vdara with the Cosmo’s seller, Blackstone, no less.

Blackstone Inc. › BX › together with its subsidiaries, is one of the world's leading investment firms with approximately $684 billion in assets, including its credit, real-estate & hedge fund businesses under management as of June 30, 2021.

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund is expected to list its common shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol › BXSL

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund Files Registration Statement for IPO

In Las Vegas, skill combined with luck is the best way to come out ahead. That’s how private equity firm Blackstone › $BX › hit the jackpot with a $5.7 billion deal to sell the Cosmopolitan casino. It caught a break when it bought the business seven years ago & is applying its know-how with some slick shuffling.

A day after it unveiled plans to operate The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, MGM Resorts International said it closed a sale-leaseback of two other towering hotels on the Strip — Aria, Vdara with the Cosmo’s seller, Blackstone, no less. 

Blackstone scooped up the Cosmopolitan after a rocky run in Sin City. Deutsche Bank › DBKGn.DE › which never intended to own a casino, took it over in mid-2008 when the developer defaulted. Las Vegas was in a deep rut after the financial crisis & took ages to recover, according to figures from the city’s Convention & Visitors Authority Research Center. When Blackstone arrived, Cosmopolitan had yet to generate a profit.

Las Vegas was heading in the right direction, however. Clubs & restaurants, including the Cosmopolitan’s Marquee & Eggslut, became attractions beyond the blackjack tables. Visitor numbers blew through pre-crisis levels the year of Blackstone’s acquisition. In the 12 months leading up to Covid-19 lockdowns, the company booked $316 million of EBITDAR, earnings that back out rent & other items, & if the second quarter is any indication, the upcoming year will be even better.

If Blackstone invested a quarter of the original purchase price, or about $400 million, in 2014, the implied return would be an impressive 10 times its money. Even though only half as many people visited Las Vegas in 2020 as in 2019, public market valuations have soared. That suggests Blackstone got a lucky with the timing.

After years of speculations that The Blackstone Group had been looking to offload The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the New York private equity firm announced 27-Sep-21 that it has entered into an agreement to sell the Strip casino resort for $5.65 billion.

Las Vegas-based casino & hospitality giant MGM Resorts International would pay $1.63 billion for The Cosmopolitan’s operations.

Additionally, a partnership that includes the Cherng Family Trust, headed by the family of Panda Express founder Andrew Cherng, real estate investment firm Stonepeak Partners, & Blackstone-controlled Real Estate Income Trust Inc. will pay more than $4 billion the resort’s real estate assets.

The first round of rumors that the buyout firm was looking to sell The Cosmopolitan emerged in 2018. It was reported at the time that Florida-based Hard Rock International was in due diligence to buy the property. However, both Hard Rock & Blackstone denied those rumors promptly & the latter noted that selling the complex was not under consideration at the time.

Blackstone said recently that The Cosmopolitan’s performance over the past several months has been stronger than ever & that it even exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2021.

The New York private equity company confirmed the sale of its Strip resort a few weeks after Bloomberg reported that it was looking to snatch at least $5 billion for The Cosmopolitan & named Apollo Global Management & MGM Resorts International as potential buyers. The property’s sale is expected to close in the first half of 2022, subject to regulatory approval.

It should be noted that MGM is currently in the process of divesting its Aria Resort & Casino & Vdara Hotel & Spa resorts namely to Blackstone. 

In other news › Blackstone › $BX › hired two Wall Street veterans as partners & promoted another executive to work in its Blackstone Credit unit as fresh demand from institutional & retail investors made it the private equity firm's fastest-growing segment. 

Blackstone Secured Lending Fund filed a registration statement for IPO on October 1, 2021. Blackstone Secured Lending Fund is expected to list its common shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol › BXSL.

MGM Acquires The Cosmopolitan casino for $5.7 Billion from private equity firm Blackstone

Blackstone Hit the Jackpot in a $5.7 Billion Deal to Sell The Cosmopolitan

Blackstone › $BX › hired two Wall Street veterans as partners & promoted another executive to work in its Blackstone Credit unit as fresh demand from institutional & retail investors made it the private equity firm's fastest-growing segment. 

Carlos Whitaker, a Credit Suisse executive, & Chris Sullivan, an executive at Barclays, will join Blackstone as senior managing directors while Kate Rubenstein, who works in Blackstone portfolio operations, will move to Blackstone Credit as a managing director.

Whitaker will become president of the Blackstone Private Credit Fund › BCRED › & the Blackstone Secured Lending Fund › BXSL › both part of the firm's global direct lending platform. At Credit Suisse he had been head of New York & co-head of EMEA Advisory Sales.

Blackstone Credit, run by Dwight Scott, oversees $163 billion in assets, & launched BCRED earlier this year to tap in to growing demand from retail investors for strategies including direct lending to securities backed by corporate loans. The portfolio had swelled to $14 billion by the end of July. The firm is taking in an average $4 billion in new cash a month for BCRED & its sister real estate portfolio for retail investors, BREIT. 

Sullivan will join as head of sponsor coverage at Blackstone Credit after having been global head of financial sponsors at Barclays. Rubenstein will return to work at Blackstone Credit & be chief operating officer for BCRED & BXSL.

Blackstone Inc., together with its subsidiaries, is one of the world's leading investment firms with approximately $684 billion in assets, including its credit, real-estate & hedge fund businesses under management as of June 30, 2021.

Blackstone oversees some $684 billion in assets including its credit, real-estate & hedge fund businesses.

Blackstone Hires Executives For Global Direct Lending Platform

Ray-Ban Stories are the first product to come out of a multi-year partnership between Facebook & EssilorLuxottica. Facebook › $FB › is working on a long-term project — an augmented reality metaverse. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount. Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing augmented & virtual reality devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce. Facebook took the first step on this road in 2014 with the acquisition of VR headset maker Oculus, & they are three generations into commercial versions of that. The latest is the Oculus Quest 2, the first mass market VR headset that did not have to be tethered to another device like a PC or gaming console.

VR remains a niche product for gaming, & besides the price, there are other barriers to adoption even in gaming. But that is not Facebook’s endgame. Their endgame is something that Apple › $AAPL › is also working on — a pair of AR glasses, as light & fashionable as Ray-Ban Wayfarers › OTCPK › $ESLOF › that will replace the touchscreen smartphone as people’s main device by the end of the decade.

Facebook is coming at this project from three directions

The Oculus headset, which is big and bulky, & is about as powerful as a top end Android smartphone. The new Facebook/Ray-Ban Stories glasses. These are much more light & fashionable, but have few features, & are a smartphone accessory. On the software side, Facebook has begun previewing their version of the metaverse, first for CBS This Morning in August. The end goal is a device that brings that all together, dispensing with the compromises of the two current devices, creating a new experience, and the first entirely new user interface since the graphical user interface was invented in the 1970s.

VR, or virtual reality, is a system that feeds the user an entirely computer-generated environment via a headset and usually a glove or other handset for control. Everything the user sees and hears is computer-generated. The best current example is Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 headset.

AR, or augmented reality, mixes computer-generated elements with the real world. This can be a heads-up display, or computer-generated objects that are situated in a real world environment and move with it. The example that many will be familiar with is Pokemon Go.

You will also hear of “mixed reality” or, tortuously, “augmented virtuality,” but they are offshoots of these two main categories.

You can think of the metaverse as a massively multiplayer game, except it includes all social activities: meetings, conferences, education, live events, and of course gaming. As such it subsumes gaming, webcasts, video meetings, distance learning, & just about any activity where two or more people are together virtually.

These “smart glasses” are a pricey smartphone accessory, but it is best to think of them as a transitional device. They have camera, speakers and microphone, along with a touch interface on one of the arms for limited control. More control comes via Facebook Assistant voice control, which will be a key part of the eventual interface. Facebook’s aim here is too get people used to the idea of wearing a computer on their faces, & learn about use-cases.

The glasses are primarily Ray-Ban branded. I think this is a recognition of two hurdles here for Facebook.

For a device worn on the face, fashion is crucial, & Ray-Ban is the fashion brand. Facebook has lost a lot of trust regrading privacy, & that is one of the key hurdles to adoption. On the user end of privacy, Facebook is taking a relatively hands-off stance. You need a Facebook account to use them, but it collects a fraction of the data that the Facebook app does, & the data it does collect by default is entirely related to operation of the device. Users can choose to send more data, but again it is not the usual Facebook highly invasive stuff; it is more general data about how customers are using the device. This is a transitional device that is more about Facebook learning about how users want to use a face computer.

Trickier than user privacy is the privacy of everyone around the user. The Facebook page on Stories privacy highlights the challenge:

Are there going to be some ugly headlines coming out of this? Yes there will. Relying on users for 100% compliance is a losing bet. But Facebook has seen years of ugly headlines, including a week of relentlessly promoted “Facebook Files” articles in the Wall Street Journal just recently. They have very thick skins at this point, and they have a very big fish to fry here — the future of computing.

Facebook imagines this will be a much broader thing than just meetings, think free-to-use courses online that teach everything from language to technology, an open-source project needs a contributors, a community charity that needs a volunteer fundraiser, a co-worker who needs coaching on a new presentation, a story that needs to be told. Facebook, the service we now know, will be entirely subsumed by the metaverse.

Facebook realizes that there are a lot of scary dystopian elements to this, and in combination with all that lost trust, this can derail the whole thing. They have recently allocated $50 million to research ways in which to alleviate these issues. Facebook is working with experts in government, industry & academia to think through issues and opportunities in the metaverse.

Here are a few key areas where we’ll work with others to anticipate the risks and get it right:

Economic opportunity: how we can give people more choice, encourage competition and maintain a thriving digital economy

Privacy: how we can minimize the amount of data that’s used, build technology to enable privacy-protective data uses & give people transparency and control over their data

Safety and integrity: how we can keep people safe online & give them tools to take action or get help if they see something they’re not comfortable with

Equity & inclusion: how we can make sure these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that’s accessible

—Andrew Bosworth, VP, Facebook Reality Labs and Nick Clegg, VP, Global Affairs, September 27, 2021

Facebook and Apple are the two primary companies working on this in my mind. There are others playing in this space for sure, but those two companies have the clearest idea of what the end product looks like, something we will not see in stores for years.

The device is a pair of AR glasses that many believe will eventually replace the touchscreen smartphone as people’s main device.

Each computing platform becomes more ubiquitously accessible and natural for us to interact with. While I expect phones to still be our primary devices through most of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology...

Even though some of the early devices seem clunky, I think these will be the most human & social technology platforms anyone has built yet.—Mark Zuckerberg, January 9, 2020

The big idea here is that we spend all this time looking at two-dimensional screens as a representation of reality, which dissociates us from the world around us. AR combines the real world with computer-generated elements & brings the virtual world of our phones & the real world together.

This is not just a new device, but a new human interface, the first invented since the graphical user interface was invented in the late 1970s. Multitouch replaced the mouse with a finger, but the 2D representation of a desktop has remained. A key part of the new interface will be using voice control to replace the mouse or finger.

In augmented reality, you're going to really need a pair of glasses that look like normal looking glasses in order for that to hit a mainstream acceptance. & that, I think, is going to be one of the hardest technical challenges of the decade. It's basically fitting a supercomputer in the frame of glasses.—Mark Zuckerberg, April 28, 2021

On the hardware side, Facebook is now coming at it from two directions. The Oculus Quest 2 is a standalone device built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform, as most Android smartphones are. It has limited AR features, more geared towards letting developers play around with it. It’s successor, which we should see within a few months, will have more AR features, now for end users.

The Quest 2 weighs about a pound, & any vigorous use will make your face sweat because of the light seal. They look awkward, & cannot be used for long periods. It is primarily a niche product for gaming.

The other direction is the Ray-Ban Stories glasses, with far less hardware & features. They look very much like a regular pair of classic Wayfarers, except with camera hardware where the hinge rivets usually go. The strategy here is twofold. In the first place, Facebook loves data, & as I alluded to, the important data they are getting off these devices is not personal — it is usage data. They want to learn how people use these devices so they can tailor future development around that. The Quest has an installed base of about two million. This is a relatively small user base, but a very large test group.

Secondly, they want to meet in the middle, dispensing with the problems with both devices. The product they envision will look like Ray-Ban Stories, and also be a far more featured version of the Quest — less a niche VR device and more geared towards being an all day device that displaces the touchscreen smartphone sometime towards the end of the decade.

This is more or less where Facebook & Apple split in their approach. Facebook’s ambitions here are even broader than Apple’s because they are also building a metaverse. Apple is looking to transition the iPhone experience to a new device & interface. This will involve a lot of metaverse-like features, such as the soon-to-be-released SharePlay shared-experience interface. But they are not working on a full-blown virtual world like Facebook and others.

15-Sep-21 › $TEAM ⤳ 240 17-Sep-21 c ↑ 904% 👽

Atlassian › TEAM ‹› ☎️  240 17-Sep-21c ↑ 965% 👽✨ 

16-Sep › 394.40 ‹› 17-Sep ‹› ↑ 403.91 +9.38 ↑ 2.4%  

📈 support › 400.07 ‹› 📉 resistance › 404.15

📈 $ 65.9m / 49 trades ‹› 📉 $ 846.3k / 3 trades 

📈 🐍 x 49 𝑥¯ 2.15m v.s. ‹› 📉 🪡🐁 x 3 𝑥¯ 282k = ↑🐍

Atlassian › TEAM › produces software that helps teams work together more efficiently & effectively › offering a broad set of › easy to deploy & use tools ⤳ Jira › Confluence › Bitbucket › Trello.

83% of Fortune 500 companies use Atlassian software products › utilized by more than 212K customers at both large & small organizations › for open teamwork models & autonomous project planning & management › that provides an environment for enterprises to experiment & optimize employee experience › for frictionless work environments › business partners › in a connected vendor ecosystem › for easy interaction back & forth & quick response to market signals › & connect with customers › to deepen relationships via those processes.

As teamwork becomes increasingly digital › investing in a connected enterprise is the clear path forward for 10 million monthly active users who use Atlassian cloud collaboration management tools & help desk solutions › to support a variety of collaboration styles & provide standardization to innovate & cut costs. 

Atlassian operates in 4 segments ⤳ 1 › subscriptions › term licenses & cloud agreements ⤳ 2 › maintenance › annual maintenance contracts that provide support & periodic updates & are generally attached to perpetual license sales ⤳ 3 › perpetual license › upfront sale for indefinite usage of the software ⤳ 4 › other › training › strategic consulting & revenue from the Atlassian Marketplace app store.

What sets Atlassian apart is its first mover advantage in its core market. Given the time sensitive nature & delivery windows of most software projects › most of Atlassian's customers simply don’t have the appetite for risking project execution nor the time to adopt a new platform. This has resulted in creating a moat ›  as there are indirect costs associated with the learning curve & switching altogether to another platform. 

Atlassian delivers the tools & platforms that developers need to build applications › with every company in every sector becoming a software-driven company › there will be almost infinite demand for new applications. As developers raced to build new applications to help their companies cope with the pandemic › they gravitated toward the tools that enabled them to work the fastest & most efficiently. Every company from the smallest mom & pop shop to the largest multinational realized with utmost clarity that they would live or die by software.

“We are a multi-product company. We differ from many companies that get product/market fit & grow to $500 million in revenue before their second product. We introduced a second product › Confluence › before we reached that scale. We found that customers perceived that software documentation is poor — we developed a product for document collaboration that’s like a Google Doc on steroids. We have multi-product in our DNA. We now have 14 different products.” ⤳ Cameron Deatsch - Chief Revenue Officer.

Atlassian applies the now-popular agile systems development mindset to all its operations. 

“As far as process › we use an agile approach. This differs › from the traditional waterfall approach › in which system requirements are developed over two years & handed off to the systems development people to build. With agile › we start with customer goals & iteratively build versus the goals. Every two weeks we ship something & learn from it. We can apply this approach to marketing › closing the books › & so on. We have daily stand-ups & two week sprints."

Atlassian products meet a unique market need for business customers › modernizing collaboration through human-centered technology ⤳ including office productivity tools › video conferencing platforms › file synchronization › sharing solutions › content management apps & more ⤳ empowering companies to design experiences that unlock less fragmented workflows & bring people together in seamless › interconnected & digital experiences.

They are able to land customers at a low cost with little human intervention. In the latest quarter › Atlassian brought in 17k new customers who never talked to people at Atlassian or its partners › equating to a robust 9.5% sequential QoQ growth › driven by 5.7k  Trello accounts › as a result of new product features & TEAM’s recent sales funnel optimization initiatives.

The addressable market size in total is an estimated $125 billion › in terms of potential users › including 800 million knowledge workers at the highest level › drilling down to 100 million technical team members & 23 million software developers. Atlassian noted during the recent industry conference › the company continues to out its online ecosystem › with a marketplace for over 4k apps that utilize its product technology ⤳ recently launched Forge › which provides runtime for these apps.

Atlassian invents new products through processes propelled by its employees. › it builds on its strengths ⤳ a focus on teams› of which there are many different kinds in different industries › come up with new products by looking at customer use cases & trends outside the norm. Service management is the fastest growing product.

Atlassian continues its strong track record of growth › Q3’21 revenue growing 38% YoY › driven by subscription revenue growth of 43% YoY. Subscription now comprises 62% of TEAM’s total revenue & its recurring nature helps to smooth out the revenue stream › resulting in higher predictability.

Atlassian has grown impressively over the past few years because it adopts a low-cost web-based marketing & lean transactional operating model › going without a traditional enterprise salesforce & marketing team. Atlassian has a large opportunity ahead › demonstrating strong profitability relative to peers › with a gross profit margin of 84% › far higher than the 49% sector average › a strong balance sheet & plenty of cash to fund future growth initiatives › its FCF margin is 43% › comparing favorably to 12.6% sector median. 

Given the subscription-heavy nature of the business › Atlassian's revenue stream has resulted in sequential quarterly revenue growth over at least the past 3 years & this includes pandemic quarters. Atlassian stopped new sales of server license › increased pricing & created pull-forward effects that incentivize users to renew early › leading to strong revenue & billings growth. Atlassian has demonstrated impressive revenue growth since its IPO in 2015 › growing by 513% over this timeframe to $1.96 billion for the trailing 12 months. Atlassian maintains a fortress balance sheet to fund growth initiatives › with $1.56 billion in cash & short-term investments › no long-term debt › and just $206M in capital leases.

15-Sep-21 › TEAM has outperformed the market in the last year with a price return of ↑ 133.7% while the SPY ETF gained ↑ 34%. TEAM has also outperformed the stock market ETF in the last 3 month & 2 week periods returning ↑ 57.3% & ↑ 7.5% › respectively › SPY returned ↑ 5.6% & ↓ 0.8%. Last quarter › Atlassian reported $560 million in Revenue & $.24 earnings per share › this beat revenue expectation by $35 million & exceeded earnings estimates by $.06.

Potential for competition from legacy software provider Microsoft › MSFT › in the space in which TEAM operates. Atlassian will directly compete against ServiceNow › NOW › as it encroaches on the service desk space. Atlassian’s formal planning processes are adjusted so it can adapt to new threats or opportunities. That’s what happened last year when a competitor’s IPO gave it extra capital to spend on marketing to Atlassian’s customers. Atlassian reprioritized go-to-market resources to keep customer acquisition up in light of that competitor’s spending. One product leader got less. They have OKRs & they adjust.

The reason usually for companies like $TEAM to morph overnight is that they operate in a fast-changing environment & one should not be expected to predict what the stock is going to be worth in 6 months › because 6 months suddenly feels like 6 minutes › that may be true.

Also what's true is that once a $TEAM is established › or committed to a line of attack › it must remain in a state of pure possibility. A Bloomberg terminal recently pointed out what must be one of the purest examples of pure possibility › a management software company called Atlassian. Atlassian is smaller than its software cousins. It has a market capitalization of 97.4 billion. Still it stock price has soared-up more than two-fold to 394.5 since last year.

What distinguishes Atlassian is the spirit in which it doesn't have to do anything. The mere fact that Atlassian is a public company › with the share price that goes up everyday › apparently makes it desirable to an investor that wants to avoid the hassle & the wait involved in cycles of steady growth. Atlassian offers itself as a kind of supernatural bandwagon › albeit one that resembles a spacecraft & without wheels.

This is the beauty of Atlassian. by doing nothing › it has avoided ruling out the possibility of not doing something else. It's list of possible ventures includes › but not limited to › high tech › supernatural resources & communications › r&d › icenses › maintenance › consulting & all software related industries › leaves itself open to so many opportunities & of course there aren't any risks here. it has extremely unlimited assets & sources of revenue. 

But the most telling passage of the possibility-disclosure section in Atlassian's confessional is the one that describes, incredibly, the dangers competitors face. You might think that Atlassian does nothing, & which is something looking to be ironically stated › would have the field to itself › but no › as the beautiful company website explains › 

G’day, we’re Atlassian. We make tools like Jira & Trello that are used by thousands of teams worldwide. & we’re serious about creating amazing products, practices, & open work for all teams.

This article was written by Dogefather's protégé › who ascertains as a result of research › to provide thorough › readable › analysis. His trading strategy is Long only › value › growth › with a medium to long-term horizon. He is generally wary of tech stocks › as this sector is ripe for disruption. However › due to Atlassian's steady predictability & rapidly growing revenues › he aggressively solicits a posture of Atlassian long game › as one can make room in a portfolio for tech companies that are the disruptors that carry a moat. 

a boy brings his pet viper to work which intrigues some of his team but frightens others. 

A certain sense of futility arose within $TEAM shorts when a date was determined in which the moon came down & bounced upon us all. 

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