It was the morning of September 11th, 2001 - 19 years ago today. 1 New York Plaza, where I worked at Prudential Securities in equity research, had just been evacuated after the second plane struck the South Tower. We were unaware of the full extent of the attack as we gathered outside of the building.
With two planes having hit each of the Towers, it was evident it was a coordinated event, not an accident, but many of us still believed the latest news report that it was small planes that were purposefully crashed in into the Towers, not commercial airliners with hundreds of people onboard. There was no Twitter back then so real-time updates were not available. Our building was located on the southern tip of Manhattan, near Battery Park, and right next to the FDR Drive.
It was a short 5 minute walk to the Towers, and while we couldn't see them we could see smoke pouring through the air. Several of us discussed walking up to get a closer look, being curious twenty-somethings, and fully unaware of what would have occurred within 15 minutes. Just then, our Senior Beverage analyst George Thompson, who worked on the other side of the research floor and a person I had little run in with, shouted out that he had driven to work that day and was headed up the FDR if anyone wanted a lift.
Looking back, I don't know what made me jump at the opportunity for a ride to the Upper East side, versus getting a closer look at the Towers, but as we headed north up the FDR along the East River I looked back to see a massive amount of heavy, dark smoke pouring across the FDR Drive, much more than before. When I finally got to my apartment and turned on the TV, that heavy smoke turned out to be the first Tower falling and I watched in horror and disbelief as the second one fell minutes later.
While my story pales in comparison to the thousands of others, I think about it and George all the time. He unknowingly changed my life forever. Moral of the story, I guess, is always accept a ride home and keep your eyes wide open to unexpected life changing people.
Ok, enough about me, let's talk about something more light hearted - the quarterly ETR Earnings Report Card Awards winners and losers. Like playoff hockey in September, the award announcements got slightly delayed with various Smaldon family prior engagements and complexities of Back to School for 4 kids. I also didn't have time to secure Ricky Gervais for some opening jokes and taking whacks at audience members (why'd the CIO buy curtains? Because he heard all his servers had windows - ba dum chhh)
As a reminder, the 3-tier ranking system for awards includes the sum of quarterly revenue surprise vs expectations, Sentieo management sentiment score and next day stock return. The winner for Best Earnings (we do the best award first at ETR) goes to WFH-fan favorite Zoom whose %-surprise and next day return (~40%) lead it to the best overall combined score. The 4 runners-up include Liveperson, Sailpoint (#1 in revenue surprise), Salesforce (top-5 management sentiment with upbeat Benioff) and Nutanix, whose sub-par beat and management score were overshadowed by its next day return largely driven by the unexpected Bain investment.
Also slightly different than other awards ceremonies, we celebrate the losers as there's no more powerful motivator to do better than humiliation (ba dum chhh .. pause for sip of beer). We expect more from Alteryx, New Relic, Pager Duty, Dell and Splunk – who all gave it the ol'college try but came up a little short across all three categories.
Congratulations to all award winners, RIP to all those lost on 9/11 and be on the lookout for updated 2H'20 IT spending trends.