$TSLA (+10,24%)
$GOOGL (-1,98%) I read a lot here on getquin that Waymo is supposed to be the Tesla killer, which doesn't really make sense because they don't have Robotaxis yet. But so be it.

How does Waymo plan to scale? Every route has to be mapped and trained in advance. It would take years to cover the whole world or even just the USA.

I topped up a little again today and lowered my EK.

Do you have $GOOGL (-1,98%) also in the portfolio?

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, DeepSeek and co have been Googles Gemini have stolen the show for far too long. What Alphabet $GOOGL (-1,98%) has, however, which OpenAI, Anthropic and co. do not (yet) have, but would like to have, is a popular ecosystem in which they can embed their AI and thus scale more easily. Alphabet and Google are increasingly interweaving Gemini with their entire portfolio: Gmail, Maps, News, Finance, Shopping, YouTube, Search, Workspace (especially important), Android etc. (Chrome mal aus Gründen außen vor). This makes Google Gemini an easily accessible and integral part of the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of users, consumers and B2B customers.

With the new Perplexity iOS Voice AssistantPerplexity is trying to simulate a similarly comprehensive ecosystem UX through the integration of third-party providers. OpenAI feels comfortable with the task function and planned acquisitions (womöglich Chrome; Windsurf) in the ecosystem direction. Anthropic's strategy for this was to develop the MCP protocol. My beloved Apple, $AAPL (+0,28%)unfortunately is currently at least two years behind - and that is still an optimistic assessment.

Thanks to constant improvements, Gemini has continuously fought its way up the Arena charts and the current Gemini 2.5 Pro makes the competition look old.

Google Gemini currently has the best chance of becoming the most comprehensive "AI for the rest of us" - for the average consumer.

What is currently dampening reactions on the stock markets to the impressive quarterly figures from Alphabet's Google is, on the one hand, the uncertainty regarding a possible break-up of Google. A US federal court has already ruled that Google has an "illegal monopoly" in the search engine market. However, this ruling was made in August 2024, which feels like light years in the past. Perplexity and ChatGPT are now serious competitors for Google's search engine business. In the best-case scenario, Google will "only" have to part with Chrome. On the other hand, there is also the growing skepticism of international users and business customers towards US tech giants.

#claude
#anthropic
#openai
#chatgpt
#perplexityai
#deepseek
#google
#gemini
#alphabet

$TSLA (+10,24%)
$GOOGL (-1,98%)

3. operational & economies of scale

• Waymo operates the fleet itself. The high capital costs are cushioned by 24/7 utilization, but only open up where HD cards exist. Passenger fares recently averaged ≈ USD 11 per mile, reflecting the capital commitment. The Last Driver License Holder...
• Tesla is planning a franchise-like model: own Cybercabs + privately owned Teslas in a shared "Tesla Network". Elon Musk cites long-term operating costs of $0.20 - $0.40/mile - around a tenth of today's ride-hailing rates - but bases this on assumptions, not real fleet numbers. Reuters

Scale efficiency/risk profile

Waymo

Higher redundancy → expensive hardware; hardware costs dominate production price; scaling by area because mapping is expensive.

Technologically mature (thousands of paid trips daily), but capital-intensive.

Tesla

"Vision-only" saves LiDAR (7 000 - 10 000 USD +) and reduces power consumption & weight. Gigacasting manufacturing and own chip further reduce BOM.

Price and unit cost advantage plausible, but Robotaxi service does not yet exist; regulatory approval uncertain.

In short:

Looking purely at production costs, Tesla's camera approach looks much more efficient (≈ 30 k USD vs. > 100 k USD per vehicle). The downside: the figure is a target value - the vehicle is not yet on the road. Waymo is in commercial use today, but has not yet pushed the cost curve to Tesla's level.

For investors or cities that today robotaxis today, Waymo is the system that works, but is more expensive. If you look ahead to 2026+ and accept higher technical risks, Tesla's robotaxi could achieve significantly lower unit and operating costs with the same passenger volume.

Google's advertising business defies AI rivals and Trump's tariffs + New Intel boss announces 'painful decisions' + Procter & Gamble lowers forecast + Pepsico cuts profit target due to tariff dispute + Evotec beckons with 75 million dollars from research alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb

Google's $GOOGL (-1,98%)Advertising business defies AI rivals and Trump's tariffs

• Google's online advertising business continues to grow - despite competition from new AI rivals.
• In the past quarter, advertising revenue rose by 8.5 percent year-on-year to just under 66.9 billion dollars (58.9 billion euros).
• This was slightly above analysts' expectations.
• The share price rose by 4.6 percent at times in after-hours trading.
• Advertising at Google continues to generate the majority of the parent company Alphabet's revenues.
• The development of the advertising business is being monitored very closely.
• A key question is whether attempts by competitors to use artificial intelligence to display direct answers instead of links will leave a mark on Google's search engine.
• Meanwhile, Google itself is moving in this direction with AI-generated overviews of search queries.
• These "AI overviews" currently reach 1.5 billion users per month, said CEO Sundar Pichai.
• AI is also increasingly being used in another area at Google.
• "Significantly more" than 30 percent of the software code - the millions of lines of program code behind Google services - is now pre-formulated by artificial intelligence and taken over by humans, said Pichai.
• In the past, this was mainly manual work for programmers.
• There was also an unusual factor behind the strong increase in profits: the revaluation of the stake in a company not listed on the stock exchange contributed eight billion dollars, it was said.
• A name was not mentioned - but according to the Bloomberg financial service, this is Elon Musk's space company SpaceX.
• According to the report, the internet company participated in a SpaceX financing round a decade ago.

New Intel boss $INTC (-0,92%)announces 'painful decisions'

• The new CEO of the crisis-ridden chip company Intel has announced "painful decisions" and the prospect of job cuts just a few weeks after taking office.
• Intel must reduce costs and remove bureaucratic hurdles, said Lip-Bu Tan after the presentation of quarterly figures.
• He emphasized that this would also involve cutting jobs.
• Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said at the same time that Intel could not yet give any figures on the extent of the job cuts.
• The company also wants to reduce costs in other ways.
• The financial service Bloomberg recently reported that Intel could soon announce the reduction of around a fifth of its jobs.
• The number of Intel employees had already fallen to just under 109,000 by the end of last year from a good 124,000 at the end of September.
• Intel once dominated the semiconductor market, but has been struggling with problems for years.
• Graphics card specialist Nvidia has conquered a leading position, particularly in the business with chips for artificial intelligence.
• Intel is also under greater pressure in its traditional business with PC processors and chips for data centers.
• Intel disappointed investors with its sales forecast for the current quarter.
• The shares fell by a good five percent in after-hours trading.
• Intel forecast revenues of between 11.2 and 12.4 billion dollars for the second quarter. Analysts had expected an average forecast of around 12.8 billion dollars.
• From the investors' point of view, this weighed more heavily than the results of the first quarter, in which Intel exceeded market expectations.
• Sales stagnated at 12.7 billion dollars, while analysts had expected a decline to 12.3 billion dollars on average.
• At the bottom line, the loss of 800 million dollars was twice as high as a year ago.
• However, Intel's adjusted earnings per share of 0.13 dollars clearly exceeded analysts' forecasts of just 0.01 dollars.

Procter & Gamble $PG (+1,18%)lowers forecast

• The gloomy consumer sentiment and the ongoing trade disputes are making the consumer goods group Procter & Gamble more pessimistic for the current financial year.
• The company lowered its sales and profit forecasts when presenting its figures for the third financial quarter.
• The company announced in Cincinnati on Thursday that revenue in the 2024/25 financial year (as at the end of June) is likely to grow organically by only around two percent.
• Previously, the Group had forecast growth of three to five percent.
• This excludes currency and portfolio effects.
• Adjusted earnings per share are also likely to increase less than expected.
• Procter & Gamble now expects growth of two to four percent instead of five to seven percent.
• CFO Andre Schulten had already reported in February that deliveries to retailers had slowed down - the manager warned at the time that the company could miss its profit forecast.
• He also pointed to a decline in consumption in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, which he attributed to the "anti-Western sentiment" prevailing there.
• Analysts had already expected earnings per share to be below the previous Group forecast, but Procter & Gamble has now cut its profit expectations even more sharply than expected.
• In the third quarter, sales fell by two percent to 19.8 billion US dollars (around 17.4 billion euros), as the company also announced.
• In organic terms, revenue grew slightly by one percent.
• However, this was less than analysts had expected.
• At 3.8 billion dollars, net profit was roughly on a par with the previous year.
• Adjusted earnings per share increased by one percent to 1.54 dollars.

Pepsico $PEP (-1,16%)cuts profit target due to customs dispute

• The US food company Pepsico expects lower profits than before this year due to the global customs dispute.
• Pepsico announced on Thursday that earnings per share adjusted for special effects (core EPS), excluding currency effects, are likely to remain at around the previous year's level.
• Originally, Pepsico had targeted an increase in the mid-single-digit percentage range.
• Sales, on the other hand, are expected to continue to grow organically in the low single-digit percentage range.
• The tariffs are likely to make supply chains more expensive, complained Pepsico CEO Ramon Laguarta according to the press release.
• Pepsico is trying to counteract the higher costs.
• However, volatility and uncertainty are likely to increase.
• At the same time, consumer sentiment remains weak in many regions - here, too, the outlook is uncertain.
• In the twelve weeks to March 22, Pepsico missed analysts' expectations.
• Sales fell by 1.8 percent to 17.92 billion US dollars (15.74 billion euros) compared to the same period last year.
• Net income attributable to shareholders fell by around ten percent to 1.83 billion dollars.

Evotec $EVT (-0,22%)will receive 75 million dollars from research alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb $BMY (-1,17%)

• For the Hamburg-based drug researcher and developer Evotec, the long-term collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb is paying off.
• The Hanseatic company announced on Thursday that it had made significant progress in the field of protein degradation.
• Evotec will therefore now receive a total of 75 million dollars in accordance with the agreement.
• The news was well received on the stock market, with the share price rising by almost four percent in pre-market trading.
• Evotec has been working with Bristol-Myers Squibb since 2018 and extended the partnership in 2022.

Friday: Stock market dates, economic data, quarterly figures

Stock exchange holiday Australia

• ex-dividend of individual stocks
• ENGIE EUR 1.48
• Semperit Holding EUR 0.50
• ABN AMRO Bank 0.75 EUR
• BE Semiconductor Industries EUR 2.18

• Quarterly figures / company dates USA / Asia
• 13:00 Colgate-Palmolive quarterly figures
• 13:45 Abbvie quarterly figures

• Quarterly figures / Company dates Europe
• 07:00 Nordex | Südzucker | Safran | Signify quarterly figures | Holcim Trading Update 1Q
• 07:30 Atoss Software quarterly figures
• 08:00 Yara | Palfinger quarterly figures
• 10:00 Bayer | Continental | Merck KGaA AGM | Holcim Analyst Conference
• 14:00 Nordex Conference Call | Akzo Nobel AGM

• Economic data

08:00 DE: Construction industry, new orders and sales February

08:00 UK: Retail Sales March FORECAST: -0.4% yoy/+1.6% yoy previous: +1.0% yoy/+2.2% yoy

08:45 FR: Business Climate Index April FORECAST: 96 previous: 96

16:00 US: Consumer Sentiment Index Uni Michigan (2nd survey) April FORECAST: 50.8 1st survey: 50.8 PREV: 57.0

16:15 US: Atlantic Council, fireside chat with member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, Greene

19:30 US: IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, IMF Steering Committee (IMFC) press conference.