Latest news with #SpenserSkates
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
2 Cash-Heavy Stocks with Promising Prospects and 1 to Approach with Caution
A cash-heavy balance sheet is often a sign of strength, but not always. Some companies avoid debt because they have weak business models, limited expansion opportunities, or inconsistent cash flow. Not all businesses with cash are winners, and that's why we built StockStory - to help you separate the good from the bad. Keeping that in mind, here are two companies with net cash positions that can leverage their balance sheets to grow and one that may struggle. Net Cash Position: $203.7 million (13.7% of Market Cap) Born out of a failed voice recognition startup by founder Spenser Skates, Amplitude (NASDAQ:AMPL) is data analytics software helping companies improve and optimize their digital products. Why Does AMPL Fall Short? Offerings struggled to generate meaningful interest as its average billings growth of 8.7% over the last year did not impress Suboptimal cost structure is highlighted by its history of operating margin losses Lacking free cash flow generation means it has few chances to reinvest for growth, repurchase shares, or distribute capital Amplitude is trading at $11.36 per share, or 4.3x forward price-to-sales. If you're considering AMPL for your portfolio, see our FREE research report to learn more. Net Cash Position: $737.3 million (1.3% of Market Cap) One of the oldest service providers in the industry, Paychex (NASDAQ:PAYX) offers its customers payroll and HR software solutions. Why Do We Like PAYX? Estimated revenue growth of 15.5% for the next 12 months implies demand will accelerate from its three-year trend Highly efficient business model is illustrated by its impressive 41.5% operating margin Robust free cash flow margin of 29.5% gives it many options for capital deployment At $153 per share, Paychex trades at 8.8x forward price-to-sales. Is now the time to initiate a position? Find out in our full research report, it's free. Net Cash Position: $37 million (0% of Market Cap) With roots dating back to 1833, making it one of America's oldest continuously operating businesses, McKesson (NYSE:MCK) is a healthcare services company that distributes pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and provides technology solutions to pharmacies, hospitals, and healthcare providers. Why Will MCK Outperform? 13.9% annual revenue growth over the last two years surpassed the sector average as its offerings resonated with customers Unparalleled scale of $359.1 billion in revenue gives it negotiating leverage and staying power in an industry with high barriers to entry Share repurchases over the last five years enabled its annual earnings per share growth of 17.2% to outpace its revenue gains McKesson's stock price of $728.06 implies a valuation ratio of 19.8x forward P/E. Is now the right time to buy? See for yourself in our full research report, it's free. The market surged in 2024 and reached record highs after Donald Trump's presidential victory in November, but questions about new economic policies are adding much uncertainty for 2025. While the crowd speculates what might happen next, we're homing in on the companies that can succeed regardless of the political or macroeconomic environment. Put yourself in the driver's seat and build a durable portfolio by checking out our Top 5 Growth Stocks for this month. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 183% over the last five years (as of March 31st 2025). Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+351% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today for free. Find your next big winner with StockStory today. Find your next big winner with StockStory today Sign in to access your portfolio
Techday NZ
12-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Amplitude launches AI Agents to streamline product optimisation
Amplitude has introduced AI Agents that continuously analyse user behaviour, conduct experiments, and suggest optimisations to enhance product experiences for businesses. The new Amplitude AI Agents are designed to work alongside product, marketing, and data teams by automatically performing data review, pattern identification, and experimentation, which the company says will allow teams to focus more on strategic and creative tasks. Teams can instruct AI Agents to focus on specific business goals, such as checkout conversion, feature adoption, retention, or campaign performance, and the agents operate in the background to monitor relevant data streams and user interactions. Once anomalies or opportunities are detected, the AI Agents suggest potential changes, run tests, and report back on results. Amplitude has developed several templated AI Agents to address frequent challenges for digital product teams. Current templates include Website Conversion Agent, Onboarding Agent, Feature Adoption Agent, and Monetisation Agent. Each template is configured to tackle a core aspect of the user journey or business goal. The Website Conversion Agent, for example, automatically identifies where users might be dropping off in the checkout process and provides targeted recommendations for improvement. The Onboarding Agent tracks where users struggle or abandon onboarding, offering tailored in-app guidance to improve completion rates. The Feature Adoption Agent analyses engagement patterns with new features, while the Monetisation Agent recommends actions based on signals indicating readiness for purchase or upgrade. Amplitude states that its AI Agents do not autonomously implement customer-facing changes unless explicitly approved by the customer. The platform enables organisations to set levels of autonomy, establishing guardrails for the agents according to trust and experience with the system. "AI has been a part of Amplitude's DNA since our founding, and now we're delivering the first AI Agents in the data space to do anything meaningful beyond code and SQL generation," said Spenser Skates, CEO and co-founder of Amplitude. "Companies often tell us they have the data, but they don't have the resources to analyse or act on it. With Amplitude's AI Agents working around the clock, product development shifts from a slow, step-by-step process to a high-speed, multi-track system where strategy, analysis, and action can happen at the same time. This isn't just about doing what you've always done, faster. It's about doing what you wouldn't, couldn't, or didn't know how to do before." Skates indicated that while AI and analytics have become common, Amplitude's AI Agents intend to go beyond traditional dashboarding and insights by directly supporting hypothesis creation, intervention, and outcome analysis. The company underlines the level of control kept by its customers, particularly where user-facing changes or communications are involved. According to the company, as trust in AI Agents grows, customers can opt to increase agent autonomy or keep manual oversight in place. Jenny Hock, Vice President of LogMeIn products at GoTo, said: "Most analytics tools stop at insights, leaving you to figure out the rest of the puzzle: what are the drivers behind a trend, and what to do next. What excites me most about Amplitude's AI Agents is their ability to go beyond observations and into intelligent action. They can formulate hypotheses, analyse outcomes, and roll out changes – all tailored to your unique business goals. It's like gaining a dozen expert teammates who free up your time to focus on innovation and impact." Amplitude notes that demand for these AI Agents has been consistent in its customer advisory boards, with Skates adding: "AI Agents were our most-wanted new product at multiple customer advisory boards this year. They give our customers an edge in building products people love, and they mark the beginning of a broader AI evolution at Amplitude." Amplitude's AI Agents operate using data captured via its broader Digital Analytics Platform, which includes modules such as Analytics, Session Replay, Experimentation, and Guides and Survey. The system draws on patterns observed from over 4,000 existing customers. According to Amplitude, companies utilising these AI Agents include organisations such as Atlassian, Shopify, NBCUniversal, Under Armour, and Jersey Mike's.
Forbes
10-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why This Nasdaq Listed CEO Changed His Mind About AI, And What It Took
The climb toward AI maturity begins not with code, but with conviction. Anyone who's survived a stint in tech or graduated from a MBA program has brushed up against the idea of maturity curves. What emerged from the work of Richard L. Nolan and was later formalized by Watts Humphrey in the Capability Maturity Model now outlines a commonly shared intuition about how organizations grow: from chaos to structure, from instinct to optimization. But as anyone with a heartbeat in 2025 can attest, no framework quite captures the urgency that AI has dropped on the world of business. In fact, the ecosystem resembles a pressure cooker more than neatly staged evolution. McKinsey's latest research shows 52% of companies having established a dedicated team to lead AI adoption, and BCG has been hiring aggressively to respond to the boom in AI work. When an industry accelerates this fast, anxiety is sure to follow and a growing number of CEOs aren't asking whether to build with AI. Instead, they're wondering if it's already too late noting how the race to relevance has never been so unforgiving. And yet, not everyone has rushed in. Spenser Skates, CEO of Amplitude, a publicly listed digital analytics platform that serves product and marketing teams in particular, was one of the skeptics. For a long time, he wasn't sure if the AI wave was substance or just another hype cycle dressed up in neural net clothing. In October 2024, all that changed, and we can learn much from his turn from a skeptic to a convert. Even better, we can see the results of his conversion in how Amplitude is now launching a suite of AI agents to automate product management, built directly into its platform. The first lesson is how even amidst all the hype the pivot was never inevitable. Instead, driven by a desire to understand the value of AI for clients, the conversion process carries a lesson every executive should hear. In a sense AI adoption has been the business world's biggest game of chicken where no one wants to be first to crash, but no one can afford to be last to move. For leaders like Spenser Skates, that tension was front and center. 'I was nervous about being too early,' Skates admits. 'The last thing I wanted was to invest heavily in something that didn't deliver value. You can burn trust that way, and it's hard to recover from launching something that hits a negative chord with clients who are looking to you for guidance,' he continues. It's a familiar worry among founders and established CEOs alike. Investing before the market is ready, or before the underlying technology is robust, can lead to zombie features, bloated R&D, and customer disillusionment if not the death of the entire company. This is a threat especially in the realm of SaaS, where credibility with technical users is currency and being deemed vaporware is a mortal sin. Pat Grady, partner at Sequoia, puts it bluntly: 'Bad products have nowhere to hide. If the features aren't useful, people churn, which means whatever AI CEOs invest in, it needs to actually work for the client.' Waiting for others to chart the path can be the safest way to ensure that what you build actually works for the client. However, it can also come at a cost and significant risks involved. In markets moving at AI's pace, the penalty for waiting too long is being outcompeted before you even get to ship your features. Skates was acutely aware of that trade-off. 'We didn't want to be there before the value exceeded the hype, but we also couldn't afford to be late and lose the confidence of our customers,' he says. 'It was about timing something that felt inevitable but still immature. You don't want to drive a bunch of hype with customers before the product is ready to deliver an experience they're going to find valuable. We took the time to do it right before we launched Agents." We've already seen this movie play out far beyond its trailer. In March 2024, Cognition Labs' Devin, the self-operating software engineer, grabbed headlines as a proof-of-concept for what agentic AI could be. In the months since, a wave of agentic AI products followed: prompt-chaining copilots, automated workflows, low-code agents. Many of them, lauded at launch, now look outdated just a year later as enterprise platforms like Salesforce and emerging infrastructure like the MCP (Multi-agent Collaboration Protocol) set new bars for interoperability and performance. Going early may be as bold as it is necessary, but going without a strategy to remain relevant when the market shifts again will get you wiped. 'We don't shy away from bold bets,' says Grady. 'But bold doesn't mean blind. The real unlock comes from timing your move with a thesis about where the value is going to concentrate, and staying nimble enough to adjust when the terrain changes.' This insight reframes the risks of inaction for more than just Sequoia. With AI, the bigger risk is no longer moving too soon but failing to move at all, something which Skates grappled with in his own decision to time the move. The Amplitude leadership team, after the jump to AI The turning point for Amplitude came when its leadership began asking a different question; not can we build something cool with AI, but would it help our customers to win? That reframing may sound deceptively simple, but it reflects one of the most difficult moves a CEO can make: choosing to walk away from today's high-margin core in order to invest in tomorrow's unproven edge. As Clayton Christensen warned in The Innovator's Dilemma, incumbents often fail not because they miss the technology shift, but because they stay too loyal to the models, customers, and performance metrics that made them successful in the first place. Inertia is a powerful drug, but rarely a performance inducing one. In Amplitude's case as with many other companies today, it would have been easy to keep optimizing their current platform, stay focused on power users, and leave generative AI to Sam Altman and Marc Benioff to figure out. What stands out in this turn of the maturity curve is how the future isn't going to reward AI sophistication for the sake of sophistication. Instead, it is going to reward accessibility and client-side value generation. This mindset shift, toward long-term value over short-term certainty, is the same one we've seen behind other historical inflection points. Apple didn't reimagine the phone because consumers were clamoring for a touchscreen device; they saw the latent potential in turning hardware into a lifestyle platform. Amazon didn't build AWS because cloud services were getting investor attention; it was a necessity born from their own scaling bottlenecks delivering unquestionable value. Paradigm shifts of the AI-kind truly begin when companies act not on consensus, but on conviction of where the value of it all is, well before the ROI spreadsheet says yes. For Amplitude, that conviction meant going from hesitation to acceleration. And that acceleration started with an acquisition. James Evans, founder of Command AI and now Head of AI at Amplitude, puts it this way: 'When I joined, I realized Amplitude had the ingredients but not yet the recipe. Together, we built the kitchen.' But even with the right team and the right conviction, building that recipe takes time. 'We weren't going to just slap a chat box on top of analytics and call it innovation,' Evans says. 'The hard part was embedding agents into workflows in a way that actually made people faster, not just feel futuristic.' This is the part of innovation that rarely makes it into investor decks or product launches; the patience needed to pull it all off. Adoption, like invention, is a curve, not a click. Which brings us to the hard part: transformation. Most transformations fail, and according to Planview, 70% of digital transformation efforts underdeliver. Often the challenge stems from what's in the culture instead of the code. 'Real AI transformation takes more than a pilot,' says Razat Gaurav, CEO of Planview. 'It takes sustained investment, clear outcomes, and permission to fail fast. That's what separates the 30% that succeed from the rest.' 'This is particularly true for AI adoption, where the pace at which the industry is developing necessitates a more agile approach to transformation projects, including the ability to reorient them towards entirely new goals midway,' Gaurav continues. The 70% failure rate shouldn't surprise us. If innovation were easy, we'd call it a transaction. True transformation is messy, political, iterative. It demands more than integrating a new feature or acquiring a shiny startup. Instead, it requires rethinking how your company learns, decides, and adapts. This holds true for Amplitude as well, for which acquiring the tech wasn't the hardest part. The real transformation came from within. 'Every company that has been around long enough has technical debt,' says Francois Ajenstat, Amplitude's Chief Product Officer. 'Most also have a cultural debt. You can't bolt on AI and expect magic if you don't also update your culture. We had to rethink how teams collaborated, how we prioritized, how fast we moved. In essence, that's an entire system reboot.' Skates agrees. 'Our purchase of Command AI and our push towards AI was ultimately an act of evolving the company.' It is worth remembering that evolution didn't start with belief; it started with doubt. Amplitude's story shows that skepticism, when rooted in care for the customer and clarity of purpose, is a strength instead of a weakness. Their pivot wasn't driven by hype, but by a conviction that the value was real and the timing was right. And perhaps most crucially, they treated the change not as a campaign, but as a process. A transformation, not a transaction. For other leaders navigating the AI curve, three insights stand out. First, healthy skepticism can be a strategic asset. Skates' early hesitation gave his team the space to build deliberately, not defensively. Second, the decision to go all in came not from pressure, but from purpose, once it became clear that AI would genuinely help users win, the direction followed naturally. And finally, Amplitude's journey reminds us that real change is infrastructural, not theatrical. It took six months of rewiring how decisions were made and how teams collaborated before the agents reached customers' hands. As AI matures, more CEOs will find themselves in that same uncomfortable middle: too aware to ignore it, too uncertain to act. The ones who win won't be the ones who jumped first, they'll be the ones who jumped with intent and a clear view of the value they are bringing.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
3 Inflated Stocks Skating on Thin Ice
The stocks featured in this article are seeing some big returns. Over the past month, they've outpaced the market due to new product launches, positive news, or even a dedicated social media following. But not every company with momentum is a long-term winner, and plenty of investors have lost money betting on short-term fads. All that said, here are three stocks getting more buzz than they deserve and some you should buy instead. One-Month Return: +31.3% Born out of a failed voice recognition startup by founder Spenser Skates, Amplitude (NASDAQ:AMPL) is data analytics software helping companies improve and optimize their digital products. Why Are We Hesitant About AMPL? Customers had second thoughts about committing to its platform over the last year as its average billings growth of 8.7% underwhelmed Historical operating margin losses point to an inefficient cost structure Poor free cash flow margin of 1.2% for the last year limits its freedom to invest in growth initiatives, execute share buybacks, or pay dividends Amplitude is trading at $12.39 per share, or 4.7x forward price-to-sales. To fully understand why you should be careful with AMPL, check out our full research report (it's free). One-Month Return: +15% Begun as a Chicago hot dog stand in 1963, Portillo's (NASDAQ:PTLO) is a casual restaurant chain that serves Chicago-style hot dogs and beef sandwiches as well as fries and shakes. Why Is PTLO Not Exciting? Disappointing same-store sales over the past two years show customers aren't responding well to its menu offerings and dining experience Lacking free cash flow generation means it has few chances to reinvest for growth, repurchase shares, or distribute capital High net-debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 6× increases the risk of forced asset sales or dilutive financing if operational performance weakens Portillo's stock price of $12.02 implies a valuation ratio of 32.9x forward P/E. Read our free research report to see why you should think twice about including PTLO in your portfolio, it's free. One-Month Return: +40.4% Created through a settlement between NRG Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission, EVgo (NASDAQ:EVGO) is a provider of electric vehicle charging solutions, operating fast charging stations across the United States. Why Does EVGO Worry Us? Historically negative EPS is a worrisome sign for conservative investors and obscures its long-term earnings potential Cash-burning tendencies make us wonder if it can sustainably generate shareholder value Limited cash reserves may force the company to seek unfavorable financing terms that could dilute shareholders At $4 per share, EVgo trades at 33.5x forward EV-to-EBITDA. If you're considering EVGO for your portfolio, see our FREE research report to learn more. The market surged in 2024 and reached record highs after Donald Trump's presidential victory in November, but questions about new economic policies are adding much uncertainty for 2025. While the crowd speculates what might happen next, we're homing in on the companies that can succeed regardless of the political or macroeconomic environment. Put yourself in the driver's seat and build a durable portfolio by checking out our Top 6 Stocks for this week. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 183% over the last five years (as of March 31st 2025). Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-small-cap company Exlservice (+354% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today for free. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Have $1,000? This Stock Could Be a Bargain Buy for 2025 and Beyond.
Amplitude had a promising public offering, but the stock mostly struggled since 2022. After the recent acquisition, the company has finalized its platform, making its analytics software more compelling. It's set to launch an AI agent in June that could be a significant growth driver. 10 stocks we like better than Amplitude › Driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, large-cap tech stocks soared since the pandemic. Even factoring in the recent correction in the Nasdaq Composite, the tech-heavy large-cap index is up 16% from its 2021 peak, and the Nasdaq-100, which features the 100 largest Nasdaq-listed companies, is up more than 25%. However, small-cap stocks haven't been so lucky. The Russell 2000 small-cap index is now down 16% from its peak in 2021, and small-cap tech stocks have struggled, too, as they've largely missed out on the AI boom. One such stock is Amplitude (NASDAQ: AMPL), a cloud software company that specializes in digital product analytics. Amplitude went public in September 2021 just as the pandemic stock market was peaking. After initially surging out of the gate as its sales were booming, Amplitude tumbled in 2022 along with the much of the rest of the software sector. Sales growth slowed as many of its customers had overbought during the pandemic when digital tools were seen as a necessity and the business struggled to grow as customers reduced their spend. However, three years since that crash, the company is now moving forward as those churns have finished, and it's made acquisitions and product launches that have built out its platform to where management has wanted it to be. The stock currently trades at nearly $12 a share and has a market cap of $1.5 billion. That along with its growth potential make it an attractive stock to buy even with just $1,000. Following the acquisition of Command AI last October, Amplitude finished building out its platform so that its customers no longer need to supplement it with point solutions. Amplitude does everything its customers want from a product analytics platform, which they use to track how their e-commerce websites perform. Those products include guides and surveys, which allow companies to add bubbles to guide users along and survey them about their experience; session replay, which allows companies to see how users moved through their website; and heat maps, which indicate where users are spending the most time with their mouses. Amplitude is introducing a marketing analytics tool next week, and will launch its AI agent in June, which will allow its customers to get recommendations directly from the AI agent rather than interpreting the data themselves. In an interview with The Motley Fool, CEO Spenser Skates said customers will "have hundreds of agents that are always looking over your data for you ... and finding trends and insights about how you can improve your product from that." Amplitude's financial results have improved in recent quarters, but there is still room for its growth to accelerate. Reported revenue rose 10% to $80 million with annual recurring revenue (ARR) up 12% to $320 million. However, there are other metrics that point to stronger underlying growth in the business. The number of customers with ARR above $100,000 rose 18% to 617 as it continues to attract more enterprise-level customers and its remaining performance obligations grew 30% to $325.9 million as its customers sign longer contracts. The company also announced a $50 million share buyback authorization to take advantage of volatility in the stock. Amplitude currently trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 4, which is reasonable for a stock with its growth rate, but the company has the potential to be significantly larger, especially as it's emerging as the leader in product analytics, taking market share from Alphabet's Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. The launch of its AI agent next month could be a catalyst for long-term growth, and the business appears to be at an inflection point as the components for its platform have come together. Keep your eye on the AI agent coming out in June as that could help build momentum in the stock and make Amplitude a winner over the coming years. Before you buy stock in Amplitude, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Amplitude wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $614,911!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $714,958!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 907% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 163% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 12, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jeremy Bowman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe and Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Have $1,000? This Stock Could Be a Bargain Buy for 2025 and Beyond. was originally published by The Motley Fool
