Is Life360 still an opportunity after shares have surged?
Morningstar Equity Analyst Roy Van Keulen goes through the case for Life360.
Mentioned: Life360 Inc (360)
Mathew Hodge: Okay. So, a stock that's been of interest – I guess there's been a lot happening – Life360, we had a differentiated view, and that quickly evaporated. What's going on there?
Roy Van Keulen: Yeah. So, I'm not sure where the price is exactly today, but close to up 100% year-to-date. So, there's clearly something that happened. And we thought they had a large customer base that was going to be valuable some somehow some way. And what they ended up doing is announcing that they're going to put advertisements in the app for the non-paying users. And there's a real lesson there I think when it comes to tech companies generally that they focus so much on creating value and having an attractive value to price ratio proposition that once they're forced to make the financials work, they can find ways even beyond your expectations on how to monetize things, how to reduce costs in other places. So, I think it was a really interesting case study in that.
Hodge: And what is the dynamic that they're looking into Roy, just for those that don't know?
Keulen: As in the…
Hodge: What are they selling? Why is it in such demand?
Keulen: Look, basically, if you have kids and you ask them, text me when you arrive at your friends, text me when you leave and then you find your kids don't do it, this app will just outsource that process and make it automatic. So, it's a peace of mind app. You could say that it's a bit of stalking by parents or something else. But it seems to be popular. And if the people who are being monitored voluntarily throw away their privacy online anyway, then maybe they don't care that much. But that's the essence of it.
Hodge: The power of wanting an iPhone pretty much.
Keulen: If that's the condition that your parents put on it. Yeah.