Welcome to the official newsletter of CIBC’s Tech & Innovation Capital Markets Group
A curated monthly report to keep our readers abreast on relevant and recent developments within the Canadian tech ecosystem.
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Special Announcement – Mark Usher Effective February 28, 2023, Mark Usher was appointed Executive Managing Director, CIBC Innovation Banking, taking over from Mark McQueen’s pivotal tenure. Mark Usher joined CIBC Innovation Banking with the acquisition of Wellington Financial in 2018 and is a founding member of the Innovation Banking business. He brings more than 25 years of financial services and venture economy experience to this role, including deep relationships with many of CIBC’s existing clients and industry stakeholders. In addition, CIBC Innovation Banking has appointed Paul McKinlay, Vice-President and Head of US Originations, Amy Olah, Managing Director and Head of Canada Originations and Patrick Martin, Vice-President, Portfolio and Credit Solutions. |
Canadian technology sector performance and valuation
| EV / NTM revenue multiples 1 | LTM sector price performance 1 |
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Source: FactSet and Pitchbook; as at February 28, 2023; in C$ unless otherwise noted.
1 Please refer to the end of the document for technology group constituents.
Canadian Venture Capital market update 2
2 9 deals with no announced value are omitted from deal value.
3 14 deals with no announced value are omitted from deal value.
Noteworthy Canadian deals
T&I @ CIBC
Deal Activity
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Beauceron Security – Credit facility CIBC Innovation Banking provided a growth capital facility to Frederiction-based Beauceron Security Inc., a cybersecurity SaaS platform that helps businesses of all sizes manage and monitor cyber risks. Beauceron Security plans to leverage the growth capital facility to continue building new features and products to further assist businesses in reducing their vulnerability to human-centric cyber risks. |
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LandTech – £10 Million Term Loan CIBC Innovation Banking provided £10 million in growth capital financing to LandTech, a London-based proptech firm enabling property developers and property professionals to identify and assess off-market development opportunities. Landtech will use the funds to expand its suite of products to help its clients navigate the complex sourcing, assessment and buying process within the industry. Funds will also be used to support the firm’s recent expansion to the US market, with potential acquisitions on the horizon. |
Announcements
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Structured Equity-Linked Financing 101 – Evaluating trade-offs between dilution and structure in the face of a challenging finance market CIBC Capital Markets hosted a one-hour virtual workshop providing expert insights on the structured finance market. Joining T&I’s Asha Soares, Executive Director, CIBC Capital Markets, were industry experts Kareem El Sawy, Founding General Partner, Arrow Capital, and Jonathan Ziebeth, Managing Director, Sixth Street Partners. |
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CIBC Technology and Innovation Conference 11.0 is approaching – Save the Date The 11th update to CIBC’s Technology and Innovation Conference is scheduled to launch on May 24-25, 2023 at CIBC Square in downtown Toronto. More details to follow closer to the date. This conference is by invitation only. Please contact your CIBC representative for more information.
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Technology & Innovation in‘sites’ with CIBC Equity Research
T&I ‘Bits & Bytes’
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Race to zero – SEC set to increase the climate-related reporting Last year, the SEC unveiled plans to standardize climate-related ESG disclosures, with final details expected in April 2023. The Scope 3 emissions (which include all indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain) disclosures are generating some discussion, with the SEC deciding between two options: 1) detailed reporting requirements; or, 2) a more open-ended standard that relies on materiality. While ESG advocates argue for detailed Scope 3 reporting, many corporates are concerned that restrictive Scope 3 rules will significantly increase reporting costs and add operational complexity. Despite comparatively strong ESG rankings, the tech sector has room to improve its Scope 3 disclosures, with our recent ESG report highlighting that only half of our tech coverage has environmental disclosures and only 30% have communicated net-zero commitments. |
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Tech activism rising – When times are tough, everyone’s a critic With the global economy slowing down and tech valuations having come back down to earth, some investors are searching for additional ways to generate returns in the tech sector. In 2022, Bloomberg noted a 74% increase in activist engagement involving tech companies, with 32 tech sector shareholder activism campaigns registered in Q4/22 alone. While H1/22 tech sector activism mainly focused on hardware companies given supply chain challenges, recently the focus has shifted towards software firms. Most notably, multiple activist investors have built positions in CRM giant Salesforce, including a multi-billion dollar stake by Elliott Investment Management. Specific details of the activist campaigns against Salesforce haven’t been made public, but the company is facing a number of challenges including the departure of co-CEO Bret Taylor, a 10% reduction in headcount, and macro-related pressure on IT spending that has resulted in the company declining to provide 2024 guidance. |
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Regulating AI – Where do you start on regulating a fast-evolving tech? ChatGPT has captured the public’s attention since its unveiling last November, surpassing Bitcoin to become one of the most Googled terms in 2023. The frenzy is leading to accelerated AI investments, with PE investing $2.65B in AI in 2022, up 70% Y/Y. However, regulatory and ethical questions remain. While ChatGPT is uncanny in its ability to provide encyclopaedic answers in a conversational format, it often provides falsely confident answers to opinion-based queries. AI technologies also have the potential to promote bias and misinformation, not to mention the myriad of other ethical considerations around its usage (e.g., the use of AI to generate your child’s homework). |
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Q4/22 U.S. earnings Recap – An overview of large cap U.S. tech reporting Q4 earnings from the U.S. tech giants have been generally well received by the market, as the overall demand environment remained resilient in the quarter with revenue in line with expectations. On profitability, earnings have skewed somewhat to the downside as inflationary pressures persist, leading to EBITDA that was on average 3% below Street. The global demand outlook and forward guidance have also been a focus of quarterly calls, with some management teams striking a cautionary tone while others see the environment improving. Another common theme in the quarter was layoffs, with the majority of Big Tech having announced workforce restructurings. Similar to Q3, we saw outsized market reactions on earnings misses and beats. SNAP was down 14% post earnings, given worsening competitive headwinds and widening losses, while Meta opened up 20%, on the strength of better-than-expected revenue and a constructive 2023 outlook. |
Recent technology news
“GPT is an unreliable information store”
While ChatGPT has mesmerized the internet with how well it can mimic human responses on virtually any topic, by design the platform and others like it, such as Bing Chat and Google Bard, have one detractor – factual accuracy. Whether it is from transformer architecture’s bias or erroneous decoding, their language models are very prone to AI hallucinations, a term coined to describe instances where the model seemingly makes up facts. In a world where misinformation can influence public health, political stability, and social cohesion, the detractor is a major one.
Read the full article at Towards Data Science.
“Even before the layoffs tech workers were quitting. Here’s why.”
What’s happened to the tech workers after they’ve been let go? Danielle Abril of the Washington Post has found they often leave the industry entirely and are finding fulfillment in pursuing their passion projects or lifelong dreams – whether it’s opening a skincare business, bartending, or writing their first fantasy novel.
Read the full article at the Washington Post.
“Yes, lab-grown is vegan”
The vegan community has not yet fully embraced lab-grown meats for the fact that they still contain animal products. As lab-grown meats become more available as cheap, eco-friendly protein options that offset animal consumption, it may change what it really means to be vegan.
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CIBC Capital Markets Insights Leverage leading insights and stay abreast of developments in the markets with CIBC Capital Markets Insights. |
Tech & Innovation Key Contacts
Canadian Technology Constituents
High-Growth Canadian SaaS – Ceridian, Copperleaf, Coveo, Descartes, Dialogue, Docebo, Kinaxis, Lightspeed, Magnet Forensics, Q4, Shopify, Thinkific
Large Cap Canadian Tech – Altus, Blackberry, Celestica, CGI, Constellation Software, Converge Technologies, Dye and Durham, Enghouse, Evertz Technologies, Nuvei, OpenText, Softchoice, Well Health
Mid Cap Canadian Tech – Absolute Software, Calian, Computer Modelling Group, D2L, E Inc., Payfare, Real Matters, Sangoma, TECSYS
Small Cap Canadian Tech – Alithya, Baylin Tech, BBTV, Blackline Safety, Farmers Edge, Kneat, Optiva, Pivotree, Quarterhill, Sylogist, Terago, Vecima, Vitalhub, WeCommerce
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