Atlas Q&A [Part 2]

Part two of our Q&A Series is centred around how Atlas can help with evaluating new products, aiding in due diligence, and conducting in-depth product research.

To submit a question, please email atlas@util.co. 

Overview

‍Atlas was born out of a need for our models to better understand impact by mapping companies, products and relationships in a completely different way from anything currently available. This new technology is built on a brand-new, dynamic structure that can adapt to a constantly changing economic reality, and the possibilities for how to best utilise it are numerous‍

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1. How can Atlas help firms with various due diligence processes?

• Financial due diligence: Atlas provides a more granular understanding of a company’s revenue streams, helping investors more accurately assess a company’s financial health. For example, a company may appear profitable overall but may be reliant on a single product, which is a risk factor that traditional financial analysis may overlook.

• Operational due diligence: Atlas’ product-level categorisation can help investors better understand the operational dynamics of a company, revealing the level of diversity in their operations and/or dependency on specific suppliers or customers.

• Market due diligence: With clearer understanding of a company’s product suite, Atlas can help assess its market position. For example, a company classified as “automotive” may actually have a strong position in the electric vehicle market. Similarly, knowing what other products a company makes can help identify potential synergies or conflicts within existing investor portfolios. 

• Legal due diligence: Detailed product mapping can help support legal processes, such as helping to identify potential antitrust issues or reveal connections to industries subject to specific regulations. 

• Commercial due diligence: Atlas can assist investors in understanding the competitive landscape of specific product markets, aiding in an effective audit processes.  ‍

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2. Can Atlas keep up to date with classifying new products?

Existing product classifications have a long lag when introducing new products and product categories into their databases, such as new, branded product releases (i.e. Threads) and new product classifications (i.e. conversational AI). 

Atlas keeps up with the ever-changing nature of companies and their activities to deliver accurate information to be used in research, benchmarking, procurement and other settings. Below are two examples:

New product: Meta & Threads

• Meta released its Threads service (competitor to X, formerly Twitter) on July 5th 2023. 
• Atlas automatically identified Threads as a service provided by Meta Platforms 
• Our models classified Threads accurately and identified it as a competitor to X, formerly Twitter

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New product classification type: ChatGPT

• OpenAI and Microsoft released ChatGPT at the end of 2022
• Traditional classification systems take months, even years, to capture the classification of these new ChatGPT-based new technologies 
• Atlas automatically identified ChatGPT as a product and is able to classify it as a number of product classes

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3. How does Atlas help with product research?

There are numerous reasons for a user to be interested in specific product classes. Below are some examples of how Atlas can help with product research for various use cases. 

A) Research and Benchmarking

Questions

• Who makes wind turbines?
• How are they related to each other in other ways (e.g. what companies are similar to GE or Schneider Electric or Siemens)?

How information can be used:

• Groundwork for investment research 
• Bottom-up  approach to industry-level/ macro analysis: how saturated is a market?
• Building better/dynamic peer sets for benchmarking

B) Value Chain

Questions:

• As a product class, under what classes/industries/ sectors do wind turbines interact with?
• What are other companies in those classes/industries/ sectors?
• What other companies have related products that may benefit or be hindered by a new product announcement?

How information can be used:

• Mapping out the value chain of the product 
• Identify vertical and horizontal M&A opportunities
• Diversification on investment baskets 
• Identify companies adjacent to the market you are interested in to diversify, minimise concentrations risk

C)Supply Chain

Question: 

• What other companies sell wind turbines?

How information can be used:

• Procurement
• Diversification of supply chain

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Stay tuned for part 3 of our Atlas Q&A Series!