Recycling

This is not a recycled post – it’s about recycling! And because we are visualising financial data, it’s about financial properties of recycling companies.

But wait! I’ve been away for over a year, so why suddenly a post? Well, as I told back then I abandoned this blog and started another one, but I put all my graphs safely away at another site, so AnRep3D would survive. But guess what: the provider killed that site accidentally. After some correspondence and phone calls it was restored, but all the links remained dead. This meant the 3D-graphs were no longer accessible, unless one downloads the 3D-graph package with the white paper.

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels

And then suddenly something happened! I was planning to invest in shares of recycling companies, but I wanted to have a better feeling about their properties. Of course I read a lot of annual reports and then creating a 3D-graph was the best thing to do. Really – I still believe in the AnRep3D generator myself!

Browsing through a lot of Annual Reports I collected the well-known RPEA sets (Revenue, Profit, Equity and (total) Assets). After putting the numbers in the right structure I generated the graph and … saw only one company! Well, actually there were some dwarf buildings next to the graph, because Glencore turned out to be so large that I had to remove it from the set to give the others a chance to be visible.

There it is – the unexpected 3D-graph in this post of an abandoned blog!

Of course it’s much better to have the real graph and it should be available, but the provider still has some settings wrong. The animated gif below will be am acceptable alternative and you can also have a look at this video.

Now what did I learn from this graph? Well, apart from Teck (really, that’s the name of the company) and probably Anglo American Platinum (not platinum credit cards but the real precious metal) the companies don’t have a lot of debt. Does this mean that they are very wealthy, like the big tech companies (think about FAANG – be aware, some links will be dead). Personally my impression is that this industry is still too risky for banks and just won’t get loans. The alternative? Get some money from fools like me, but that will be shares sold and therefore equity. Let’s see whether the green deal will make them the heroes of the next decade!

Disclaimer: I bought a couple of shares from these companies. This post is not providing any advice. It’s just showing the power of the 3D-graph generator, which can still be downloaded without any charge (zip-file from the Charles Warter site, the artist. It holds the .jar file which is a Java executable, a manual and some stuff to practice).

Don’t be afraid!

Some time ago we announced the end of our activity at this blog. However, this didn’t mean that AnRep3D would not be available anymore. It was just about the active promotion coming to a halt. The 3D-graph generator is still available for download without any charge.

Photo by KELLEPICS on Pixabay

Now the next step will be to reduce the costs and that will be done by a downgrade of our website, scientassist.com. As a result we won’t be able to offer our packages and 3D-graphs there and without any mitigation the blog posts would not offer links to the real 3D-graphs, the free package would disappear as would the white paper.

Fortunately we can move all our materials to the site of Charles Warter, the artist. Visitors of this blog won’t notice anything different, except when inspecting the links. Those will change (the first part that is) from “http://graphs.anrep3d.com… ” to “http://anrep3d.charles-warter.com/….”

So the message is: don’t be afraid when the links are changing gradually from the old location to the new one at Charles Warter. It’s not a scam, it’s not phishing. Just saving money! The the website for anrep3d is gone and we are back at scientassist.com again, but the materials offered will point to Charles Warter’s site. Except Youtube, Twitter and other external locations of course. It is the cheapest way to keep AnRep3D alive (at least for a while).

Good luck!

I want to go with a Big Bang!

Since a couple of months – actually after the summer of this year (2021), I’ve seen the number of visitors decline. That’s not much of an issue, but at the same time it seems less people are clicking through to the real 3D-graph and the download of the generator packages has come to a halt. All this together is a clear signal that AnRep3D has lost its significance and is end-of-life.

Photo by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Since somewhere around 2005, I’ve been working on the concept. The first years were mainly a struggle with hardware: shutter glasses, graphics cards and old CRT-monitors. I also had to master VRML. Then the flatscreens came in, making things even harder for 3D. A very long intermezzo called VRBI followed (roughly May 2011 to September 2016). VRBI was about 3D-scatterplots. Rather easy to understand and to use, but that part was handed over to one of my sons, together with my company Scientassist. He graduated on the marketing of the product.

Five years ago, I decided to start with the visualisation of financial ratios in 3D again (2016). AnRep3D was originally (2005) inspired by Michael Ridpath’s novel “Trading Reality” (1997). I still believe in the value of 3D-graphs – preferably in a stereoscopic setting using polarised glasses like in a 3D movie theatre. It would be even better when a VR-headset would allow us to actually walk around and through the 3D-graph. Unfortunately my technical skills are limited and I discovered that I would have to hire several experts for a longer period to create something close to my actual vision. This would take al least a million euro. Before doing so, I’ve been testing the concept iself and now it’s very clear it’s not well-understood and doesn’t resonate. That’s completely my fault!

I could go on and change the world’s view and attitude like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did among others, but I think for me only one possible conclusion is to quit!

However, AnRep3D won’t just fade away. I want to go with a big bang! What would this mean? Well, I decided to combine the data used for previous posts and combine them to a single, very large 3D-graph. Of course not all data, because some posts were about energy, healthcare or telecom and then we had some specials about cash-flow or quarterly results. There is also a scaling issue, because some companies are huge and others small. Yet a lot of times we simply used the standard RPEA-sequence (visualising Revenue, net Profit, Equity and total Assets) or something close which could be converted easily like Equity and total Liabilities. The size of most companies was measured in billions.

Now the question is what do we get? Well, a large graph. In size it’s similar to the dummy we show in the manual, but this one presents real companies and real values!

Click here to view the real 3D-graph in your browser

I won’t comment this time and the legend hovering in front shows the meaning of the dimensions. Be aware that a green roof means profit – as a part of the revenue. A red roof indicates a loss and shows the additional expenditures on top of the revenue.

For those who didn’t know: our website is scientassist.com but the 3D-graph generator-package can be downloaded here for free, at Charles Warter. The zip contains an executable jar file (Java – that’s the generator), some examples of inputfiles and also outputfiles (3D graphs in HTML5 format).

Instructions are in the manual, but our videos on YouTube may be helpful.

This blog will remain active and the links to the 3D-graphs will remain valid for several months (and then we will probably move them to another URL). The website will be downsized within a year.

That’s all. Thank you for visiting my blog! I wish you all the luck.

Exit AnRep3D

Curtain

Hydrogen V – all at once!

Originally the plan was to add one company at a time for the 3D-graph. Nevertheless the series has to remain appealing and if it’s not, the approach should be adjusted. Previously we noticed that the Hydrogen companies looked rather similar: thick red “roofs”, indicating massive losses and the floor-shape of the buildings being close to square. Such a shape indicates that equity (width) is close to the total assets (depth), meaning there is hardly room for liabilities. This makes sense, because these companies are all very innovative and mainly R&D driven. No bank would lend them money because of the high risk, so all the money has to come from shareholders.

Photo by Robert Balog on Pixabay

Looking ahead it seemed like this is really a feature of this Hydrogen driven market, so would it be wise to keep adding one company at a time? Then we still had the other issue (see Intermezzo), about screenshots of 3D-graphs being misleading. On the other hand the creation of an animated gif is quite laborious and in the end our purpose is to show people the real 3D-graph in their browser.

The jury’s verdict is clear: we will put all the remaining companies in to prevent boredom! All of them? Well, looking at the original list (NEL ASA, PowerCell, Ballard, Bloom Energy, dynaCERT, ITM Power, AFC Energy, Ceres, FuelCell, PlugPower) we have to leave one out, because it’s too “young”. It turns out Bloom Energy did not publish annual reports for 2016 and 2018 and therefore it will be ignored in the 3D-graph. Only nine companies went in, but ninety percent of an unknown selection is not bad at all!

After generating the graph, a couple of other issues came up. Some of these companies are relatively large whilst others are quite small. Putting them together in one 3D-graph dwarfs out some and even makes their buildings invisible.

^{Don’t forget to double-click one of the gifs to see the real 3D-graph in your browser! Then, manipulation is rather easy:  Clicking the right mouse-button, moving the mouse up and down will zoom the graph in and out. Clicking left and moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions (or move the observer’s viewpoint around a fixed graph – it’s relative of course). Double clicking in the graph translates it and moves the centre at the same time. As a result the way the graph tilts will change. Just try it. If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, just refresh the graph.}

Click here to see the real 3D-graph in your browser

Splitting was the best option, so we created a 3D-graph for the giants and another one for the dwarfs (as said it’s all relative, because the real giants like ExxonMobil or Volkswagen would wipe out all of them).

Click here to see the real 3D-graph in your browser

Another complication was a very rare event. PlugPower presented negative revenue for 2020. We already knew AnRep3D is capable of dealing with negative equity. Negative revenue isn’t a big deal either, but on top of this negative revenue a big loss was reported and a loss is added to the revenue as a red roof to show the total costs. With negative revenue the building would show something meaningless, so a manual intervention was needed: the loss was presented as a positive amount (which is subtracted from the negative revenue showing the costs below the baseline), but then this “roof under the ground” would be green. This was corrected in the 3D-graph directly, by changing the (X3D) colour code from 0 1 0 to 1 0 0.

Click here to see the real 3D-graph in your browser

We have to admit: AnRep3D can handle losses, negative equity and even negative revenue but the latter not in combination with a loss. Since negative revenue will always come with a loss this is our Waterloo! Fortunately it’s a very rare situation.

Then there is something peculiar when looking at PlugPower, because it was the only company in the whole 3D-graph to report a (very small) profit (2018). Such a single green roof really looks like an anomaly and because in 2018 there was hardly any equity left, the building is extremely narrow at the same time. As a result the green roof can only be observed from a very short distance (zooming in on the PlugPower building for 2018 completely). Yet it is a profit after all, in a sea of losses.

The tiny green roof represents PlugPower’s 2018 profit.

For more background on the 3D-graph generator, download our white-paper  together with the 3D-graphs (html-format, available as zip). Or go to our website and download the free 3D generator package to try the 3D-graph generator yourself! Our Youtube-channel offers short explanatory movies on the 3D-graphs and the generator creating them.

Intermezzo: Is AnRep3D data visualisation?

Some readers will respond immediately that this is a stupid question, because a 3D-graph generator is clearly visualising data. Yet it’s a bit more complicated, because the definition of “data-visualisation” has been narrowed down during the last decades. It is about sharing a message with the help of graphs. Of course a lot of people will know Stephen Few and Hans Rosling, but they are not the only ones talking about sharing information with the help of images. Recently I contacted a professor in the Netherlands, who told me he objected against 3D graphs, because this type of graph does not share the right message. His movie on vimeo is about the dangers of 3D and I agree. Firstly, because it is dangerous to show 3D pictures in 2D and secondly because he was talking about bringing a message across and then 3D can also be confusing!

Photo by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels

But… then why did we launch AnRep3D in the first place?  Readers who witnessed the start of AnRep3D – and perhaps even know about VRBI by Scientassist – will realise that we created the 3D-graph generator as a tool for “Visual Mining”. It’s also stated on our website that we want to give the experts control over their own data again, without all kinds of nerds making the decisions for them. The human eye and the related visual system is a very powerful data mining tool. Visualising data indeed, but not to spread a message. It’s meant to offer a different perspective at one’s own data.

And then I suddenly realised that this will only be understood by people who actually click on the screenshot and watch the real 3D-graph. If they don’t, it looks like we are just showing 3D-data in a flat picture. That would be the wrong message.

However, the only thing we want to communicate by offering a demonstration is the power of our 3D-graphs and the 3D-graph generator. Unfortunately the number of people watching the actual HTML5 graph is going down rapidly. The Dutch professor may be right after all, because it seems we are spreading the wrong message (or the right message in a wrong way).

We are offering real 3D-graphs in HTML5 (JavaScript and WebGL underneath, with the help of X3DOM) and people can watch such a spatial graph by rotating, tilting, translating, changing viewpoints and so on. Our 3D-graphs are not a flat picture, but offer real depth. In the past we even created stereoscopic images, but those days are gone now.

I probably should not have shared screenshots of the 3D-graphs, but only animated gifs or short movies. It turns out WordPress supports animated gifs after all, so probably I won’t present such a screenshot again.

click here for the original 3D-graph

In the end I have to thank professor Dullaert, because he warned me that I am sending the wrong message. The message should be that we offer a powerful (visual) mining tool for experts who want to look at their own data – just like Tableau does in 2D. No more screenshots again, because 3D-graphs are just 3D. They will lose their meaning when reduced to a flat image.

For those who want to try the 3D-graph generator themselves, the package can be downloaded here for free. The Scientassist website offers some background and a white paper with graph package are available at Charles Warter. More explanations and instructions can be found at our YouTube-channel.

Hydrogen IV – Ballard

The holidays are over for most of us, so it’s time for the next Hydrogen-company. I really didn’t have any prior knowledge about the set I chose, so the 3D-graph is a bit of a surprise to me as well.

Photo by Peter Brandes on Pixabay The photo above has nothing to to with the company. The company’s name simply is equal to the name of its founder, but the picture shows a place named Ballard. Yet I thought it was funny to have a picture of a lot of water as an illustration for a Hydrogen-company.

After including Ballard in the 3D-graph and looking at the result, my first thought was “Is Hydrogen contagious?” NEL ASA and Power Cell Sweden looked a bit odd. That’s why I added an additional 3D-graph of automotive companies: to provide some reference about what a “normal” company would look like. Normal is a bit dangerous, because we already noticed that the tech giants are a bit different from the oil majors and looking at Boeing and Airbus things were very different from the automotive companies. Banks and insurance companies have their own pattern, so what would be normal? Well, profit is a way to build up more equity (unless it is all given to the shareholders of course). Sometimes losses can happen, but most companies will try and get back to profit as soon as possible. However, for this third Hydrogen-company the pattern is different – more like the other two. By the way, it is a Canadian company, reporting in USD, which I had to convert to EUR – the standard for this series.

Double-click the screenshot to open the real 3D-graph in your browser

^{Remember: clicking the right mouse-button, moving the mouse up and down will zoom the graph in and out. Clicking left and moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions (or move the observer’s viewpoint around a fixed graph – it’s relative of course). Double clicking in the graph translates it and moves the centre at the same time. As a result the way the graph tilts will change. Just try it. If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, just refresh the graph.}

The legend is hovering in from of the graph and tells us that the height of the individual buildings is determined by revenue, with the coloured roof either profit (green) or loss (red). The width represents equity and the depth is “total assets”.

The legend (key), hovering in front of the buildings in the 3D-graph.

Of course it’s not because these companies infected each other that their “buildings” look similar. They are just in the same – innovative- market. The pattern reminds me of the good (or bad) old days of the dotcom bubble. Investors would bring in money and all that mattered was the burn rate! Now the same must be happening here, because the combination of huge losses and an increase of equity can only mean one thing: money is coming in from shareholders. And that’s because we (I invested a little bit in NEL ASA and Powercell Sweden myself) all hope that one of these innovators will be the Google, Apple or Facebook of Hydrogen. Which one? If we only knew!

The million dollar question is whether the others in the series will show the same ratios. Of course you can find out before I do by creating the 3D-graph yourself. The 3D-graph generator can be downloaded for free, even without registration (Java .jar executable). The package comes with a comprehensive manual and some examples. A white paper with a 3-D graph package is available at the Charles Warter website and short movies about the properties and the use of the 3D-graph generator are available at our YouTube-channel!

Hydrogen III – Powercell Sweden

Last time we looked at NEL ASA, the Norwegian Hydrogen company, well-known for electrolysis (making hydrogen from electricity). Now it will be Powercell  Sweden AB. Technologically it’s the counterpart of NEL ASA, because the company manufactures fuel cells, generating electricity from hydrogen.  Actually it was a Volvo spin-off.

I picked this one as the second company to populate the 3D-graph, because then I won’t forget to warn you that I own some shares in Powercell Sweden AB as well. Again, there is no relationship with this blogpost, as its main purpose is to demonstrate the power of our 3D-graphs. No advice on investments is given whatsoever.

Photo by Anastasia Gepp on Pixabay

Back to the annual reports of Powercell. What do they tell us? Of course it’s again 2016, 2018 and 2020 we will take. For some reason the one for 2018 was in Swedish, but with all the standardised formats it’s not an issue and then Swedish is similar to Norwegian. After putting the numbers in a spreadsheet and saving it as a .csv, the 3D-graph was generated within a couple of seconds and a few mouse-clicks. The result is all about ratios: equity to total assets, revenue to equity, profit (or loss) to revenue and so on Remember: the yellow height is the revenue – the red loss comes on top of it, the width is equity and the depth is total assets).

Click here to see the actual 3D-graph in your browser

^{Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: thegraph haw so many companies that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.}

From the front-side we can see the ratio of the revenue (height) to the equity (width). It’s rather low, meaning that the company may be rich, but doesn’t sell a lot. Is the money going to R&D or to marketing?

If we compare this revenue to equity ratio with the automotive companies from an earlier series or the series on the big tech industry, the differences are very clear!

Click the image to see the actual 3D-graph in your browser or go the the automotive post

Click the image to see the actual 3D-graph in your browser or go to the post on Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (Alphabet) or watch the short movie showing the 3D-graph

What do we see with the two companies next to each other? Well, Powercell started out about as less than a tenth of NEL ASA for all the directions, but is growing faster now. As a result it was only six times smaller in 2020 when is comes to revenue. Neither of these companies show any profit. The red roofs are indicating the additional expenditures on top of the revenue, making the total heigtht of the building equal to the total costs. The revenue is just not enough to cover the costs – far from it – so there is a big loss!

Yet this is quite normal for a new technology struggling to get accepted by the market. During the dotcom bubble a lot of companies were burning money and also Tesla was not profitable for a long time. However, the red roof being more or less half of the building’s height means that the total costs are about twice the revenue. Normally this would mean an evaporating equity (the width of the building), but these two companies have something more in common.

Click here to see the actual 3D-graph in your browser

Looking from above their shape is not completely square, but close to it. This means that the equity (again: the width of the building) is rather close to the total assets (the depth). The difference between total assets and equity is (usually) total liabilities and being close to a square means that hardly any liabilities like loans or accounts payable are in place. Of course this makes sense, because no bank will lend money to a very risky business and the money has to come from investors who will be shareholders. This industry may be on the verge of a breakthrough and people who believe in it are willing to bring their money in to make it happen. However, nothing is guaranteed!

OK, now I will emphasise again that you are able to create these 3D-graphs yourself. Just download your free copy of AnRep3D or have a look at the Scientassist website first.

Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel

The white-paper and its inspirational graphs can also be downloaded (Charles Warter website)

Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

Hydrogen II – NEL ASA

Now we will present the 3D-graph with the first hydrogen company in it. It is NEL ASA, the Norwegian manufacturer of electrolytic devices and other solutions related to hydrogen.

Here I have to warn again: my portfolio holds some shares NEL ASA, but there is no relationship with this post, as its main purpose is to demonstrate the power of our 3D-graphs. No advice on investments is given whatsoever.

Founded in 1927 NEL ASA is certainly not a startup. Actually it’s a group now, holding very different companies in several countries. The history of NEL ASA is certainly interesting, but here we will focus on finance.

What do we expect from a company with a long history in hydrogen? Probably a sound profit and reasonable gearing. To have a longer period for comparison, the years 2020, 2018 and 2016 were taken and we went back to our well-know RPEA: Revenue, Profit, Equity and (total) Assets. I hope you’re not disappointed. If so, create your own alternative 3D-graph with our free software Anything can be fed into the generator, like cash flow from operations, EBITDA, current liabilities, current assets and so on – it’s up to you! The manual will explain how to deal with several alternatives.

Anyhow, here we will stick to our list of companies, the years 2016-2018-2020 and work with RPEA.

The legend, hovering in front of the graph indicates that revenue is the height of the building (with the roof representing the profit part), the width is the equity and the depth represents total assets.

Picking the numbers from the annual reports, we had to convert the currency (Norske Kroner – NOK) to a more general one. This time it will be EUR again. As usual for the balance the end of year exchange-rates were taken and for revenue and profit we used the mid-year exchange rate as an estimate. The rates were obtained from the ECB this time.

Click here to view the real 3D-graph in your browser

After loading the standardised amounts into our generator, the graph emerged and it was a bit of a surprise (well, not completely, because we could see the losses when filling the input-file). Thick red roofs indicate solid losses. Remember that a normal profit will show a part of the revenue as a green roof – red represents a loss, placing a red roof on top of the revenue, indicating that costs were higher than the revenue.

You may ask why the roof is red for 2020 whilst profit was shown in the annual report. It was, but the profit was actually higher than the revenue. This is because of something reported as “financial income”. Some firms do have financial income, but NEL ASA only has a huge one-off by selling a lot of shares. This amount was subtracted from the profit, making it an operational loss.

Then it seems that revenue and equity are growing rapidly, despite the losses. NEL ASA clearly has some funding (like the 2020 emission) and can live without profit for a while as hydrogen is a promising industry. Then some smart acquisitions were also helping of course. The gearing is really impressive: the equity is almost equal to the total assets, meaning hardly any liabilities are in the balance sheet.

Looking from aside we can clearly see it’s not the perspective – NEL ASA grew rapidly from a financial perspective. Even the revenue went up, although all three years show an (operational) loss.

Click here to view the real 3D-graph in your browser

That was it for the first company to populate the 3D-graph for our hydrogen-series!  Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D (Charles Warter website) or visit Scientassist.

Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel

The white-paper and inspirational graphs can also be downloaded (Charles Warter website).

Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

Hydrogen I

Warning: I, the author of the posts at this blog, own shares in some of the companies mentioned in the upcoming series. This blog however, is not providing any advice on investments, but is solely meant to illustrate the power of our 3D-graph generator (software called AnRep3D).

After the end of 2020 some posts were added to this blog, but none of those were actually about annual reports. Apart from one the topic “Rare Earth Elements”, which presented a real 3D-graph, it was more about the next step for our generator. Eventually we decided it would be “energy” and a second blog was added with the name EnRep3D. Although a lot is going on there, AnRep3D is still alive and available, so we should not neglect our fans over here. And of course energy also has a financial component!

Picture by Enrique Meseguer on Pixabay

People who follow my tweets will know that I’m a hydrogen believer. This doesn’t mean that I’m against electric cars or batteries. Sometimes different options in energy seem to become a religion and their preachers are explaining why the other ideas are bad. That’s not wise, because at this moment we should explore all viable (and even less viable) solutions we can think of. Hydrogen (and it’s not even the only chemical option) is able to store an enormous amount of energy. Some renewables, like solar and wind are intermittent and it’s not a good idea to let the energy we could harvest going to waste because of a mismatch between demand and supply. There hydrogen can play a role. Not only as storage, but also because hydrogen is already important in several industries and it could also help to make the production of steel and cement “greener”.

Where am I going with this? Well, several companies are working on hydrogen solutions – some even for decades. These companies are doing business and have annual reports showing their financial statements. That’s where energy meets finance. The only question is where to start. The easiest way to start was to search the Internet for something like best hydrogen stocks or top of hydrogen shares. Indeed I got answers, but the funny thing is that a lot of different sites had their own ideas about e.g. a top 3. On some of the companies they agreed. It was probably also depending on their geographical scope and the moment the list was issued:

https://www.ig.com/uk/trading-strategies/what-are-the-best-hydrogen-stocks-to-watch–210420

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/3-hydrogen-stocks-to-watch-in-january-2021-2021-01-07

https://news.financial/comments/the-best-hydrogen-stock-plugpower-ballard-power-new-asa-dynacert

https://bullishbears.com/hydrogen-fuel-cell-stocks/

https://engineforex.com/best-hydrogen-and-fuel-cell-stocks/

Which are the companies emerging from the links above (in no particular order)?

ITM Power

AFC Energy

Ceres Power Holdings

Bloom Energy

FuelCell Energy

PowerCell Sweden

Plug Power

dynaCERT

NEL ASA

Ballard

Again a nice series (of 10 after this post) and from now on I will add a company to the 3D-graph for this subject every now and then. I did not do any research yet, so surprises may come up. It’s also not determined for how many years we will visualise data and over which period this will be. Let’s see how the final 3D-graph will look in a couple of months.

I you’re impatient, just take the annual reports, pull out e.g. Revenue, Profit, Equity and Total Assets and feed them into our AnRep3D-generator. The package (a zip with examples, a manual and of course the 3D-graph generator: a .jar file) is free and can be downloaded (Charles Warter website) without any registration!

Short update

Some time ago I decided to change subject and focus on energy. With all climate change going on, I expected this to be relevant to a broad public. Because I kept the same Twitter-account (only changing the name) and connected the other blog to LinkedIn as well, the target group won’t be very different. Of course not all people interested in finance will care about energy, but after a good start the visits were dropping. To me this means that energy somehow is not as interesting as finance. By the way, the location of the energy blog is https://enrep3d.wordpress.com and the most recent post is https://enrep3d.wordpress.com/2021/05/29/and-ill-take-my-clothes-off-and-it-will-be-shameless/

To change this, I can do several things. Start a Google ads campaign, make the posts more exiting, or simply kill the experiment and go on with finance, adding new posts to this blog. Actually I didn’t start a blog on energy because I knew people were waiting for it. It’s simply a subject I’m familiar with and I wanted to share my knowledge with the help of the powerful 3D-graphs you already know about from the financial posts in this blog.

At this moment I don’t know yet, but a small investment in Google’s assistance might be worth a try. I’ll be back!

In between you can still download the free 3D-graph generator package for finance (Annual Reports visualised in 3D) to create your own 3D-graph from a table of numbers, with a couple of mouse-clicks. No fees apply and even no registration needed. Just go to: http://scientassist.com or download the zip-file immediately by clicking here.

No, I’m not back!

It has been a while since I said goodbye, but on the other hand I never really left. As announced our primary focus is on energy now and recently we started a new series about the production, import and export of energy in a series of European countries. The subject is very different from annual reports and so are the sources, but the graphs will look familiar: a chessboard-like pattern of buildings, showing all kinds of ratios.

Throughout the weeks countries will be added. For now only Germany and France are in, but it is already interesting to see the differences and changes over the decades and the UK will be added soon. The links to the real 3D-graphs are in the captions of the screenshots now, but that’s probably the only difference. Well, the location of the blog is also different of course: https://enrep3d.wordpress.com

If you are interested in energy as well, just have a look!

Photo by Quang Nguyen vinh

Goodbye! But not really…

In the most recent series of posts we were discussing the direction we could and should go (quo vademus, meaning “where are we going?”). Finally we decided that we will keep the generator the same. Technically that is, because the instructions on the screen will change eventually. After three years of illustrating the power of our 3D-graph generator in finance (with some side-steps now and then), we decided to focus at energy. Visualisation of energy is better done in 3D, because this will show all kinds of ratios at a glance. After all the 3D-graphs are meant for visual mining!

Changing our primary market also meant changing our name and from now on we will work with the name EnRep3D – Energy Represented in 3D Graphs (not around anymore, like AnRep3D: scientassist.com is covering it all now) and the new blog is found at enrep3d.wordpress.com. Indeed it’s just the replacement of one letter, but the subjects will be very different. Probably some readers who are interested in finance will be interested in energy as well. If so, let’s meet again! If not, I just want to thank you for your interest throughout the years. Of course the 3D-graph generator-package AnRep3D can still be downloaded for free, without any registration. The whitepaper and related set of 3D-graphs is still available and so are our YouTube-videos.

Photo by RA at Unsplash

Quo Vademus III

Suddenly I thought of a third option: apart from moving forward in technology and switching market focus, it is also possible to go back in time.

Time – photo by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Of course it’s not done to go back, but let me explain. I always was very fond of the power of the language VRML. Originally VRML stood for Virtual Reality Markup Language (just like XML is eXtensible Markup Language  – also derived from the old GML), but soon it became Virtual Reality Modelling Language. That’s basically what it does: it is able to create spatial models in a computer. These models can be looked at from different angles and of course a lot of calculating power is needed, but nowadays that’s not an issue. A major drawback, however, is that a VRML-viewer is needed. In the beginning a couple of well-known viewers were around. Cortona and Blaxxun Then a very powerful VRML-viewer called FreeWRL was available (.wrl is the extension of VRML-files, hence the name).

It was all very promising and Virtual Reality was coming up again (it’s like nuclear fusion, isn’t it?). I was experimenting with stereoscopy and shutter glasses with an NVidia-set, but things were changing fast – too fast.

Working with VRML and publishing .wrl-files, I noticed that the threshold too look at the real graphs was too high, because such a viewer was needed. Nobody would download and install one. That was many years ago. Try and find “VRML” or “3D” in the Google playstore now and you will be sursprised. Probably the threshold has gone with all those apps. Beware, most of the apps I didn’t try myself and if I did, it was a much older version.

Back then it was different. One by one the VRML-viewers disappeared and some didn’t even support all features, like background, text or viewpoints. VRML was officially declared “legacy” and its successor was X3D, but nobody knew the language. Only one very expensive book was available (I had to learn it first of course) and most viewers didn’t support it (and today we know VRML is still alive and probably more alive than X3D ever was).

That’s why I decided to to move to HTML5 instead. Most readers will know HTML, but version 5 had special properties and supported JavaScript. I hate JavaScript, because it’s chaotic and confusing. Not like Algol, Pascal, Ada, Java, C or Lisp from my perspective (as said before, although I am able to write functional pieces of code I’m not a software engineer and I always need the help from my sons).

Fortunately I discovered a way out! A cloud-service or actually a community, called X3DOM offered a service, translating a kind of X3D dialect (I had to learn it after all, but a document about the standard used was available) into JavaScipt – on the fly! This meant our generator had to create a kind of X3D-file with an X3DOM-call and immediately JavaScript would come back and be shown in the web-browser. It was very funny to see the output-file coming from the AnRep3D-generator and the code saved by right-clicking the browser-screen. Below I show two pieces of the code as an illustration.

First the pure geberator-output:

<html>

 <head>

  <title>

   ANREP3D visualisation

  </title>

  http ://www.x3dom.org/download/x3dom.js

  <link rel=’stylesheet’ type=’text/css’ href=’http ://www.x3dom.org/download/x3dom.css’></link>

  <style>x3d { background: rgba(160, 160, 220, 1); } </style>

 </head>

 <body>

  <x3d width=’1200px’ height=’670px’>

   <scene>

    <transform translation=’ 0.5 -4 0 ‘>

     <shape>

      <appearance>

      <material diffuseColor=’  1  1  1  ‘> </material>

      </appearance>

            <box size=’ 1 0.1 0.1 ‘> </box>

     </shape>

    </transform>

 

Then the actual code processed by the browser (modified by X3DOM:

<html><head>

<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″>

  <title>

   ANREP3D visualisation

  </title>

  http: //data_oil14_files/x3dom.js

  <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”data_oil14_files/x3dom.css”>

  <style>x3d { background: rgba(160, 160, 220, 1); } </style>

 </head>

 <body>

  <x3d width=”1200px” height=”670px” style=”width: 1200px; height: 670px;”>

   <scene render=”true” bboxcenter=”0,0,0″ bboxsize=”-1,-1,-1″ pickmode=”idBuf” dopickpass=”true”>

    <transform translation=” 0.5 -4 0 ” render=”true” bboxcenter=”0,0,0″ bboxsize=”-1,-1,-1″ center=”0,0,0″ rotation=”0,0,0,0″ scale=”1,1,1″ scaleorientation=”0,0,0,0″>

     <shape render=”true” bboxcenter=”0,0,0″ bboxsize=”-1,-1,-1″ ispickable=”true”>

      <appearance sorttype=”auto” alphaclipthreshold=”0.1″>

      <material diffusecolor=”  1  1  1  ” ambientintensity=”0.2″ emissivecolor=”0,0,0″ shininess=”0.2″ specularcolor=”0,0,0″> </material>

      </appearance>

            <box size=” 1 0.1 0.1 ” solid=”true” ccw=”true” usegeocache=”true” lit=”true”> </box>

     </shape>

    </transform>

 

It’s also nice to show a piece of old VRML-code, from the predecessor of the current 3D-graph generator:

#VRML V2.0 utf8

Viewpoint {position 105 525 840 }

Background { groundColor [0.7  0.7  0.7 ]

      skyColor [ 0.5  0.5  0.5 ] }

#frame

Transform {

translation 105 68 -420

 children [

Shape {appearance Appearance

 {material Material

  {diffuseColor  1  1  0  transparency 0.1} }

 geometry Box

  {size 28 136 70 }

 }   ]}

Transform {

translation 105 139 -420

 children [

Shape {appearance Appearance

 {material Material

  {diffuseColor  0  1  0  transparency 0} }

 geometry Box

  {size 28 5 70 }

 }   ]}

 

In all three cases the first part of the output-file was taken.

For me the idea of “going back” meant working with VRML again. The viewers are more powerful, because it is possible to look at the graphs stereoscopically. Anaglyph or double images (left eye, right eye). When the CRT monitors disappeared I had to drop the stereoscopy, because a normal LCD-screen won’t work with shutter glasses. FreeWRL offers stereoscopic images and I tried with a headset and a mobile phone, but then the generator was rebuilt for HTML5.

Enthusiastically I opened one of my old .wrl-files. At first it was a trip down memory lane. Revisting all the old and long forgotten attempts to design 3D-graphs. Encountering the prototypes in QuickBasic. Several files had “AEX” or “business” in their names (AEX is the index for the Dutch Stock Exchange), but as a matter of fact all kinds of weird patterns came up. Below a collage of screenshots.

One attempt I remembered. It was a combination of the stock prices of companies in the index’s basket, together with the index itself. A screenshot is presented below. No use to make it clickable.

It didn’t last long. It was hard to work with the 3D-image in the viewer. In HTML5 double clicking will just change the viewpoint, but now I was confused. OK, I was able to look at the graph from different angles, but it wasn’t enough. It seems I’m addicted to the new, simple 3D-graphs, presented in a normal web-browser. Turning, tilting, zooming in and out, changing viewpoints (the instructions were shown with every clickable screenshot in the previous posts) – it’s all very easy!

No, going back to the old VRML is definitely not an option and neither is moving forward to new technnologies and languages. This means the second option is the valid one: changing from finance to energy. Let’s have a look at some interesting 3D-graphs again in 2021!

The AnRep3D-generator can still be downloaded for free as a zip-package with examples of input and output and a manual. Videos, blogposts, examples, white-paper and so on can also be found at our website!

Quo vademus II

Quo vademus – where are we going? Previously I discussed the option to change the application and use other technologies than the current Java-jar with X3DOM for the 3D visualisation. It is a valid option in general, but because I lack the technological skills to even make the right choices when it comes to programming environments, it’s probably not a valid option for me.

Yet there is another possibility. When the original concept of AnRep3D was developed (the first primitive sketches were made about fifteen years a go), I was focusing at the financial market and I have been doing so for most of the time.

Very old drawing to show the concept of AnRep3D (with comments in Dutch)

Over 90% of the posts and 3D-graphs were about finance, but a small number was showing the power of the 3D-graphs in other areas. From time to time I mentioned the possibility to keep the code unchanged, but adjust the texts in the interface and rewrite the manual to switch to the energy market. I am familiar with energy and provided some examples in the past. AnRep3D could become EnRep3D. Not “Annual Reports visualised in 3D-graphs”, but “Energy Represented in 3D-graphs”. Only one letter to be changed, a new website and of course a new jar with an updated manual would do. Last time I said I could write a book instead of of annoying myself with code. Well, rewriting the manual is close to writing a book, isn’t it?

Of course I cannot be sure if the issue is the concept (if so, nothing will help – probably I’m too early), the technology (then I have to collaborate with people compensating my lack of experience in programming) or the market (energy instead of finance could mean a fresh start).

Let’s face it: when it’s about the concept, then AnRep3D is lost and it might be better to leave it alone, but how would I know? The technology is not a very likely option to be honest. AnRep3D is a tool for professionals and I’ve worked with and observed several tools for profession, being much more complicated than AnRep3D. Sure, the user interface is not for consumers, but we never aimed at consumers. Business only and that won’t change.

In the end, switching the market might be a valid path. The quesion is still: Quo vademus – where are we going?

Photo by David Reig Fernàndez on Unsplash

The AnRep3D-generator can still be downloaded for free as a zip-package with examples of input and output  and a manual. Videos, blogposts, examples, white-paper and so on can also be found at our website. Remember, currently it is about finance, but that might change in the future. Let’s see!

Quo vademus

Quo vademus – where are we going? That’s the question for AnRep3D right now. It was already shared on Twitter, but the message won’t have reached the full audience of this blog. A lot of readers reading this are coming from LinkedIn, so I repeat that no new posts have been planned for a while. Of course that’s a contradiction, because this is a blog-post after all. What I meant however, is that no new series illustrating the possibilities of AnRep3D will be started anytime soon. In short: no new 3D-graphs to be expected here for a while.

Photo by danfador on Pixabay

Why, you might ask? Well, the first reason is Return on Investment. Yes, I know it’s free software, but here I’m talking about time invested versus recognition of the value of the concept. Creating a new 3D-graph is a matter of seconds, but finding the sources and collecting the data can take an hour. Then looking for the right angle, selecting pictures and actually writing and thinking is even more time-consuming. The time invested on average is about three to four hours a week. The expected return was to get feedback on the use of the generator at least once for every post, but it’s very silent now. The main purpose of this blog actually is to have interaction and get feedback, but it seems like interaction is fading. I don’t refer to interaction on Twitter or views of this blog, but feedback about the actual use of the AnRep3D-generator.

The other purpose of this blog is to provide all kinds of examples, showing what the 3D-graph generator is capable of. By now there is an extensive white-paper, offering a more structured approach and still a whole list of posts on very different subjects, mostly offering a real 3D graph to be watched and manipulated in a browser. No need for more of the same, I think, as I would only start to repeat myself – hence the stop.

Photo by shibang on Pixabay

AnRep3D is about visual mining. Visual Mining uses the power of the human visual system to discover patterns. Similar to what machine learning does, but the human eye and related parts of the brain are still more powerful and more accurate than computers are. The only way to perform visual mining with the help of AnRep3D is to create one’s own graphs (using own data that is) and look for patterns. There we encounter an issue. We would love to hear from people who processed their own data and looked at the resulting 3D-graph, discovering new patterns. Unfortunately, that’s the part I am missing! My WordPress- and Google-stats show that people from all over the world are reading the posts, look at the 3D-graphs and visit our website and downloads happen from time to time, but there it becomes a bit obscure.

Photo by Skylar Kang on Pexels 

Although I am very experienced in working with the generator myself by now, I can imagine there is still a threshold to actually use the generator – the first one being the download.  The idea was to lift the Java-code and make the AnRep3D-generator a web-application, to lower this hurdle. I looked at several options, but most of the low-coding and no-coding environments are very primitive (or really expensive). The results are somewhere between shopping lists and front-ends for databases. AnRep3D is a bit more complicated. Something like Java Applets is too complicated for me as I’m not an engineer. I could code my concept only with the help of one of my sons (in Java) and for the JavaScript in the 3D-graph I call the cloud-service X3DOM. ShinyApps is the only one looking very promising. Nice buttons and sliders could replace the parameter-line and the content of an input-file can be pasted in a window. However, it will take me a lot of time to move to a new environment and I could also use the time to write another book. Let’s see. For now the question remains: “Quo vademus – where are we going?”

Photo by Free-Photos on Pixabay

The AnRep3D-generator can still be downloaded for free as a zip-package with examples of input and output and a manual and videos, blogposts, examples, white-paper and so on can also be found at our website!

Is the volume meaningless? An example with critical metals, including REEs.

In several previous posts I warned to avoid comparing volumes when looking at the 3D-graphs. This was because the “buildings” were representing very different values in their three dimensions. Ratios can be determined by looking at such a graph by comparing two dimensions (e.g. width and depth), but the volume – being the product of e.g. revenue, equity and total assets – is meaningless from an accounting point of view. And so are the surfaces, by the way.

Photo by Matthias Böckel on Pixabay

Although it’s an important warning, it doesn’t apply to all visualisations to be made with the help of the 3D-generator! In some cases the three dimensions can be multiplied and then the volume will have a meaning after all.  If we break down a value in three dimensions, making the volume meaningful, we can easily compare values we cannot show in a simple bar-graph.

 

Think about a series like 10, 15, 25, 100, 125, 175, 500, 1200, 10000. It would be boring to show them in a bar-graph (left).

 

Presenting those values s a volume however, will be much more interesting and now comparisons can be made because height, width and depth will be like (or equal to) the cubic root of the values. In short: when it is allowed to multiply height, width and depth, the volume has a meaning. This is another strength of 3D-graphs we didn’t reveal before.

To present a nice example, I took the annual production of some critical metals. A lot of so called “Rare Earth” metals are in this set (neither rare nor earth as the latter used to refer to the Boron-group) and then some others like Cobalt and Lithium. Below a concise overview will be presented.

Before we go on, I have to disclose that I hold some positions in REE-related companies. Yet the only purpose of this post is to show the power of 3D-graphs! 

The 3D-graph will present real volumes of materials traded. Although we are talking about critical metals – including the “rare earth elements” (REEs), the trading is usually done with their oxides (Rare Earth Oxides – abbreviated REO – be aware that not all metals in the graph are REEs). Two exceptions are Cobalt which is traded as a pure metal and Lithium, mostly traded as a carbonate (kind of soda).

What will be in the 3D-graph? We will show the annual consumption volume of oxide (cubic metres) at the front row (represented by the volume of the blocks) and at the second row the amount of tonnes (weight). The tonnes-row will show larger buildings, because the density of most oxides is between 6.5 and 8.5 g/cm³ (or tonnes per m3). Be aware that if the density is 8 g/cm3, this will mean that the length, width and depth of the “building” for the volume will only be half of those values for the weight, since 2 x 2 x 2 = 8! This time I thought it would be fun to make all buildings green (entering four times the same cubic-root value). The only exceptions are the red reference-buildings showing 10000 m³ and 10000 tonnes respectively (same size of course, because here the artificial “density” would be 1).

Some properties of the metals for which the annual consumption is shown in the graph:

– Yttrium: Atomic weight 39. Used in superconductors and exotic light sources.

– Lanthanum: Atomic weight 57. Used in specialty glasses and optics, electrodes and hydrogen storage.

– Cerium: Atomic weight 58. Makes an excellent oxidizer, used in oil cracking during petroleum refining and is used for yellow coloring in ceramics and glass.

– Praseodymium: Atomic weight 59. Used in magnets, lasers and as green color in ceramics and glass.

– Neodymium: Atomic weight 60. Used in magnets, lasers and as purple color in ceramics and glass.

– Gadolinium: Atomic weight 64. Used in magnets, specialty optics, and computer memory.

– Dysprosium: Atomic weight 66. Used in magnets and lasers.

– Samarium: Atomic weight 62. Used in magnets, lasers and neutron capture.

– Europium: Atomic weight 63. Makes colored phosphors, lasers, and mercury-vapor lamps.

– Terbium: Atomic weight 65. Used as green in ceramics and paints, and in lasers and fluorescent lamps.

– Tantalum: Atomic weight 181. Used in electornics, alloys and orthopedic implants.

– Scandium: Atomic weight 21. Used to strengthen aluminum alloys.

– Cobalt: Atomic weight 59. Used in lithium-ion batteries, magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys, deep blue color: glass, ceramics, inks, paints.

– Lithium: Atomic weight 7. Used in lithium-ion batteries, alloys, ceremics, pharmaceuticals.

For those who want to know more about these valuable elements, the links below might be useful. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5 and Link 6

How did I get the annual consumption for all the metals (or their oxides)? Well, it is not easy to get the numbers and often the values are contradicting – or at least they don’t match. The annual global consumption of REOs seems to be around 158000 tonnes (in 2018 – it’s increasing every year). In an article by Goodenough Wall and Merriman I found a pie-chart showing the distribution (also changing but at a slower rate). That one I used to derived the individual values. Then using the commonly available densities I calculated back to m³. The other values – like for Cobalt and Lithium – were found on the internet. Of course the values will have high error-margins, but again: this post is only meant to illustrate the power of 3D-graphs. As usual, the input-file is available. Finally the result is shown below.

Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: the graph haw so many “buildings” that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.

To see the relative sizes of the buildings a top-view is helpful, but remember that the the volumes have to be compared and not the surfaces!

Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D at our website. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel The white-paper and inspirational graphs can be downloaded at our website Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

 

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it IX – Microsoft (series completed)

Finally we added Microsoft to the graph, but…  it is a huge company – more like BP or Munich Re. This means all companies had to be presented together again. Of course this will make the small ones almost invisible, but then the previous 3D-graph showed those already, so it’s time for the big ones now – with Microsoft among them. I have to admit that it wasn’t easy to take all the necessary numbers from all documents, because Microsoft has a broken book-year. Not just broken, but actually shifting half a year and as a result e.g. 2020 is a combination of 2020 H1 and 2019 H2. To get the semi-annual numbers for the second half of the year we had to take Q1+Q2, but for the first half we had to take the annual values and subtract the Q1+Q2 values (being Q3 and Q4 in the normal calendar). I’m rather good at numbers, but time always confuses me. Yet I managed to get everything in the input-file.

Small step aside: for every blog-post I look for a nice picture, somehow related to the subject. The three sites I prefer are pixabay, pexels  and unsplash (thank you photographers!). Today I was looking for Microsoft and also related words like Laptop, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Computer, Azure, Surface and Xbox. For some reason the photographers on these sites seem to think “Laptop” is a synonym for “Apple”. Then the other pictures were the most uninspiring ones I ever encountered. To be honest, even the pictures of Microsoft offices were quite boring. It seems like somehow Microsoft is an uninspiring company, but look at its Cash-flow! In the end I found a photo which was clearly related to Microsoft.

Photo by Carlos Gil on Unsplash

OK, back to Microsoft itself. What can be observed, looking at the new 3D-graph? Well, we know the green (or red) roof represents the Cash Flow from Operating Activities, but Microsoft is not like the others at all. Half the building being green can hardly be referred to as a “roof”. It’s unbelievable, especially when compared to BP with similar revenue (bit higher), equity (bit lower) and liabilities. Actually I thought I made a mistake, so I checked again and again.

Then I remembered that we looked at Microsoft before in the series “Data is the new oil”. Although there profit instead of cash-flow was shown, I still wondered why it the roof was quite normal there. Looking at the profit throughout the years it turns out 2018 (used in the previous graph) was a “bad year”, obviously because of some additional costs. With such a “bad year” still looking completely normal, one can imagine what the other years would be like. Indeed, what we are showing in this post starts in 2019 – being a “good year” again. No mistakes, just a matter of different periods!

Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: the graph haw so many companies that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For manipulation of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.

Although Corona and COVID-19 are mentioned several times, it’s not clear what the impact “has been for Microsoft in the first half of 2020. The declarations are rather vague, but then we have the highlights of the 2020 fiscal year (H2 2019 + H1 2020):

Highlights from fiscal year 2020 compared with fiscal year 2019 included:

• Commercial cloud revenue increased 36% to $51.7 billion.

• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 12%, driven by Office 365 Commercial growth of 24%.

• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 11%, with continued growth in Office 365 Consumer subscribers to 42.7 million.

• LinkedIn revenue increased 20%.

• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 14%, driven by Dynamics 365 growth of 42%.

• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 27%, driven by Azure growth of 56%.

• Enterprise Services revenue increased 5%.

• Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 18%.

• Windows original equipment manufacturer licensing (“Windows OEM”) revenue increased 9%.

• Surface revenue increased 8%.

• Xbox content and services revenue increased 11%.

• Search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, was relatively unchanged.

Personally I think Microsoft profited from the pandemic, but that’s just my opinion. Just have a look at the green “roofs” for 2019 H1, H2 and 2020 H1…

Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D at our website. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel. The white-paper and inspirational graphs can be downloaded at the homepage of our website and follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

As this post completes the series about Corona, the next one will be completely different. It will take some time because of the Christmas holiday-period. Then I noticed that the number of visitors of the website – especially the number of downloads for the free software-package is dropping, although this blog is visited frequently. Please have a try and use the software yourself and let us know what you think! Commercial use is also OK, so don’t be afraid. Of course we are not responsible for the 3D-graphs  created by our software and their potential impact.

 

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it VIII – Netflix

Today another representative of an industry that might profit from the pandemic: Netflix. With people staying at home for more hours than before the lock-down, we see jigsaw-puzzles, knitting equipment and tools and materials for home-improvement becoming more popular. We expect people also to watch more movies and series and then Netflix would profit from the situation.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Again the Annual  and Quaterly reports were all in USD, hence no calculations. We agreed to take revenue, cash-flow from operations, equity and total liabilities and those could be obtained very easy. As promised the input-file is available (the output-file is the 3D-graph itself, of course – a .htm-file) and everybody who wants to try the 3D generator can download the full package for free – even without providing an email-address. It’s completely anonymous! If you like it I would appreciate if you drop me a line of course.

At a first glance, the conclusion might be that Netflix is really impacted in a positive way by the situation around COVID-19. Two red roofs in 2019 and suddenly a firm green one in 2020.

Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: thegraph haw so many companies that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.

If we would have taken the net income, then all roofs would have been green and the more recent, the thicker. The funny thing is that the revenue for 2020 H1 was only slightly higher than for 2019 H2, so what’s going on? (Be aware that a red roof means the height of the building represents the total costs/cash outflow and the yellow part is the revenue. If the roof is green, it’s a part of the revenue).

Well, we know that Netflix invests a lot in their content and that’s really expensive. By the way:  they have to buy the content to be able to put it on the balance-sheet, because for content developed themselves that would not be allowed. Think about the major difference with the software-companies we wrote about in the past in comparison with e.g. Volkswagen. Buying content means a net outflow of cash, but not necessarily a decrease in net income, because the value remains in the company. It’s an investment! And what has happened with the investments during the three half years we show?  The Cash-flow statement has an entry called “Additions to content assets” (Q2 2020 statement – In the annual report a note is available for this topic). For our three periods the values are:

2019 H1	2019 H2	2020 H1
6.3 mln.	7.6 mln.	5.8 mln.

Keeping 1.8 (7.6 – 5.8) million in you pocket helps, although it doesn’t fully explain the sudden increase in cash-flow from operations, because that’s a change of over 3 mln. but it certainly helps.For the people who are curious and want to create an alternative graph: try and replace the cash-flow from operations with the net income as shown below:

2019 H1	2019 H2	2020 H1
615	1252	1429

Was this really a post about the financial upside of Corona? It wasn’t that easy to tell because so many things are changing with Netflix and in the end the revenue went up but then Netflix is growing anyway!

The financial input for 2020 H2 was taken from a spreadsheet. Because of this I didn’t see comments about COVID-19. A little bit later I found the 2020 Proxy and looked for relevant comments. I found something, but it was merely an operational statement: “In connection with the recent COVID-19outbreak, management, with the support of our Boardand Audit Committee, quickly engaged, assessed andled our efforts to mitigate operational, employee andother risks to our business associated with thepandemic.”

Then I found a post on Forbes telling us that Corona is bad for Netflix. I think that’s more what the graph tells is. The revenue is not exploding at all and although the cash-flow from operations went up – mainly because of cost-reduction. The profit (create the alternative graph yourself!) is rather stable.

Next time we will present the last industry profiting from the pandemic: information technology. Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D at our website. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel The white-paper and inspirational graphs can be downloaded at the homepage of our website: https://anrep3d.com Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it VII – Tesco

Let’s move to the industries that might profit from the pandemic. We cannot know for sure of course, but entertainment, information technology and grocery-stores are candidates for the positive impact part of this series. It’s easy to say that we are leaving the doom and gloom behind, but let’s not forget that both Munich Re and BP were still doing rather well and showed a green roof (positive cash-flow from operations) in 2020. BP was left out because it is too large, but Munich Re is left out because of its huge liabilities (quite normal for a financial institution) as this affected the overall 3D-graph too much (stretching it out from front to back). Bombardier with its negative equity is still shown as a set of hollow boxes and Qantas and Wyndham will also stay, showing their red roofs for 2020.

Photo by Simone Hutsch on Unsplash

How is Tesco doing? It’s a British company, so the amounts in GBP had to be converted to USD. This was done with the help of xe. It turned out that Tesco has a very special broken book-year. This must be some British tradition as the year 2020 starts at the first of March, but the mid-year ends after 26 weeks creating dates like 29^th of August 2019 and 24^th of August 2020. We will ignore this and present the semi-annual amounts as if they were in the same periods as the others.

And now for the big question: did they do well? Looking at the graph we can see rather tall buildings (high revenue compared to equity (width) and total liabilities (depth) and the roofs are green. The revenue for H1 2020 is lower than for H2 2019, but very similar to H1 2019. Supermarkets usually have a higher turnover at the end of the year so this will bias the graph. The upside is that we don’t see a collapse in H1 2020 when compared to H1 2019 and the thickness of the related roofs is similar. Actually it’s slightly thicker in 2020, but there is also some financial juggling going on so we cannot be sure without a thorough investigation. I leave that to you as I don’t have time for it. Of course you can create you own 3D-graph using (and probably improving) the input-file for this post in combination with our free 3D-graph generator (even no email-address required, just a download).

However, looking in more detail from the top, the equity went slightly down and the liabilities went up a little bit – even in comparison with H1 2019.

In the end it looks like Tesco has been resilient, without really profiting from the pandemic. In the end the half year report H1 2020 tells what has been going on:

Cash profitability

• Response to COVID-19 leading to £(533)m 1H UK costs as we prioritise customer and colleague safety
• Retail operating profit before exceptional items and amortisation of acquired intangibles4 of £1,192m, +4.4%, margin 4.2%; – UK & ROI volume and business rates relief offset COVID-19 costs; CE held back by COVID-19 costs and new Hungarian tax – UK & ROI £1,133m, +6.4%, margin 4.3%

– Central Europe £59m, (23.4)%, margin 3.0%

• Bank operating loss before exceptional items £(155)m driven by provision for potential bad debts and reduced income; continue to expect operating loss of £(175)m-£(200)m this year; capital ratios and liquidity remain strong
• Retail EBITDA8 £1,994m, +4.1% higher YoY

Retail and bank-part respond differently, but in the end the Retail profited, despite the additional costs for safety measures.

That was it for the first post about the financial upside of Corona. Next time we will have a look at information technology and then (home) entertainment. Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D at our website Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel The white-paper and inspirational graphs can be downloaded at the homepage of our website. Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

Photo by Matheus Henrin from Pexels

 

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it VI – Bombardier

Before starting I have to admit that I hardly knew Bombardier. A Canadian company manufacturing trains, to be taken over by Alstom. Somehow I got the impression that it was a powerful giant, but after analysing the annual and quarterly reports I changed my view.  Not only trains, but also aeroplanes and then half of the revenue is coming from European subsidiaries, but powerful? Well, the products might be good – I don’t know – but their finances are not healthy at all.

Photo by Andi Graf on Pixabay

The reports are very transparent and easy to obtain, but is this company a money incinerator? It shows negative equity to start with. Then the cost of sales is very close to the revenue, leaving hardly any money for other expenses and indeed losses were reported for the more recent periods.

In this series we are not looking at net income, but at cash-flow from operations and this was even worse. Looking at the calculation I was confused for a moment by the large negative amounts, but then I realised that some parts of the profit might not come from “operations”, hence their removal. It turned out that parts of the company were sold. Jumping from note to note I landed at note 31 of the annual report 2019 where it is explained that the trainings services were sold for more than USD 500 mln.  (precise amounts are mentioned in the note). Then in H1 2020 the trick was repeated by selling an aircraft programme to Mitsubishi for a similar amount. This means that the cash-flow from operations is a much better indicator of what’s going on.

The 3D-graph was not easy to obtain. The generator is able to deal with negative equity and the “building” will be shown as a hollow one. The issue was Munich Re being too large like BP was previously. I had to remove it from the input-file, but then the parameters had to be adjusted because a negative width (the equity) messes with the distances, but in the end the result was ok. The negative cash-flow is reflected in the red roofs for H1 2019 and H1 2020. Only H2 2019 had a small positive cash-flow from operations and therefore the roof is a thin green one.

_{Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: thegraph haw so many companies that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For manipulation of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.}

Rotating the graph will show the depth of the buildings (liabilities) better. Remember that with a positive equity the ratio would not have been healthy for a manufacturer (for a bank or insurance company it’s a normal shape) and here we are dealing with negative equity!

The question is still: ”what about Corona?”. Looking for the code “COVID-19” several occurences were found in the Q2 report 2020. The most relevant on probably being the one quoted below:

_{“Operations Status and Financial performance Revenues of $2.7 billion during the quarter reflect a lower level of production activity and deliveries as operations at key Aviation and Transportation sites across North America and Europe were temporarily suspended due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Revenues from services proved more resilient during this period.”}

That’s a way to put it: hundreds of millions of revenue being missed as a result of the pandemic. On the other hand, have a look at the finance expenses: the liabilities are extremely high and a lot of money has to be paid – most likely not only interest but also high fees (hundreds of millions and even over a billion in 2019).

On page 58 of the Q2-report a whole chapter is explaining the impact of COVID-19, but it seems that the liabilities are even more dangerous to the company than the virus. Yet the desease might be cured, as Alstom acquired Bombardier in 2020 and the annual report 2020 will be its last.

Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel

Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it V – Munich Re

In our series about Corona we should have a financial institution and Munich Re is the candidate we selected. Munich Re is a re-insurance company, based in Germany. A re-insurance company is an insurance company for insurance companies – covering for extreme claims or unexpectedly high volumes of claims.

Photo by Lavir_Hamil on Pixabay

Our big question is still whether Munich Re felt the impact of Corona. Let’s have a look at the 3D-graph visualising our selection (Revenue, Cash-flow from operating activities, Equity, total Liabilities: RCEL). There is no real “revenue”, but the inflow of premiums can be considered as an equivalent. The way to survive is park the premiums in investments during the good years (low total claims amount) to have buffers for the bad years (the ones with high claims). The premium-income as revenue, free cash-flow, equities and liabilities are found in the annual (2019)  and quarterly/half year reports (2019 H1 and 2020H1). Not all reports were found easily, but then also spreadsheets with the financial details can be downloaded from the site. Munich Re publishes its figures in EUR and therefore I had to convert to USD again, but this time conversion rates used by the company were offered in the documents themselves. No need to look for the rates!

_{Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Beware: thegraph haw so many companies that zooming out is necessary to see the whole picture! Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.}

Preparing the input-file, I realised that I made the same mistake as last time with BP: Munich Re is huge, especially compared to Qantas and Wyndham. This giant looks more like an oil-major than like the largest hotel-chain in the word or a large airline! Again we will have a graph where the new company is pushing the others close to invisibility (although zooming is always possible of course).

Then there is something else which surprised me: the three “buildings” look very similar! Only the green roof (Cash-flow from operating activities) was much higher in 2019 H1 and that’s odd! Althoug Corona started in China at the end of 2019, it could hardly be responsible for the high impact (decrease in Cash-flow) in 2019 H2. Looking for Corona in the annual report for 2019, this sentence was found (p. 175):  

“Munich Re does not expect the consequences of the coronavirus to have any overall material effect on the annual result. However, the more this virus spreads, the greater the impact could be on Munich Re.”

It’s clear that is wasn’t Corona, causing the drop in Cash-flow, but what else could have caused it? In the same annual report it says [edited]:

“Aggregate losses from natural catastrophes totalled EUR 2053 mln. for the full year. […] The biggest lossevents of the year were Typhoons Hagibis and Faxaiin Japan, for which we expect total expenditure of around EUR 1300 mln…”

Even with an annual Cash-flow of over 10 bln. It’s a lot of money and it will certainly lower both cash-flow and profit. For 2020 H1 the situation isn’t any better. Despite the expection that Corona most likely would have a limited impact, the worst case scenario became true [edited]:

“Overall, we incurred COVID-19-related losses totalling around EUR 1.5 bln in reinsurance in the first half of the year.”

In the end we can conclude that the natural disasters in 2019H2 camouflaged the losses due to Corona in 2020H2.

After completing the series, we will create separate graphs combining BP, Munich Re and probably other companies and then the smaller ones like Wyndham and Qantas on another 3D-graph. Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel

Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.

COVID-19 – we cannot ignore it IV – British Petroleum (BP)

Of course I realised that an oil-major would be a terrible match when combined with the previous two companies, Qantas and Wyndham. Yet I took BP, because I expected it to be hit as hard as the other two. The huge BP-buildings in the 3D-graph make the others almost invisible, but to be honest I expected the pattern to be the same: lower revenue, negative cash flow, equity going down and liabilities going up.

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

I was wrong! Although the revenue dropped and the equity went down, the cash flow did not become negative and the liabilities even went down instead of up (see input-file)! Yet a major loss was announced, so what happened?

An important difference between profit (loss) and cash flow from operations are all kinds of depreciation, amortisation and write-offs. The Q2 report says (p 22, note 3):

“Impairment charges for the second quarter mainly relate to producing assets and principally arose as a result of changes to the group’s oil and gas price assumptions.”

This is a huge part of the loss and it’s hardly related to Corona (consumption of fossil fuels went down because of Corona, but it’s not the major cause of the low oil price).

The note 4 at the same page says: “Exploration expense in the second quarter and half year was $9,674 million and $9,876 million and includes exploration expenditure write-offs of $9,618 million”

As a matter of fact it seems like significant parts of both the loss and drop in equity for 2020 H1 are caused by a changing strategy! This would mean that BP is not a good example of a company suffering from the pandemic, although it’s not helping them either.

Then we still have the liabilities. Looking at the group balance sheet (still same Q2 report, now page 17), we see the impact is mainly coming from the current liabilities, where “Trade and other payables” dropped. This would mean that debts were paid sooner – probably to help their suppliers to survive. This might be in indirect Corona-effect after all, but be aware, it’s just me speculating!

As a result of all those changes, the BP-building in the graph is lower and narrower for 2020 H2, but the depth is even less and the roof is green (positive cash flow)!

_{Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.}

The next time we won’t show BP in the graph. Not because it’s a bad example, but because it would dwarf out all other buildings in the graph, like it does now.

Don’t forget to download your free copy of AnRep3D at our website. Short tutorials, explaining different parts of AnRep3D are available at our Youtube-channel Follow @AnRep3D on Twitter, to be informed about new posts.