Macroeconomic Headwinds Leave BILL Stock in the Doldrums

We parse through a lot of transcripts from quarterly and year-end earnings reports so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.) We find this is often the most efficient way to understand the current and future picture of a company with the highest resolution into the financials. Press releases are too ra-ra-ra, while making our overworked MBAs slog through 10-K and 10-Q reports to find insightful nuggets is just plain cruel (though these SEC documents are useful as reference guides if you know where to look). The throughline from many, if not all, of these transcripts is that the ye olde macroeconomic headwinds have been steadily blowing for the last couple of years. 

We’ve been throwing out the term “macroeconomic headwinds” so often that it has become kind of meaningless, precisely because it can mean just about anything, from full-blown recessions to geopolitical instability. In our current economic climate, it generally refers to high inflation and rising interest rates, which increase costs for businesses, make borrowing more expensive (and slows investment), and reduce consumer buying power. The wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine are also often wrapped up in stormy forecasts from many companies when they cite macroeconomic headwinds these days.

BILL Slowed by Macroeconomic Headwinds

So, it was not entirely surprising to hear that BILL (BILL), which offers a cloud-based platform that automates and streamlines various financial processes for small and medium-sized b