Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - 4 Beach Reads for Investors

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Heading into Memorial Day weekend, investors got some sunshine as the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all rose for the first time in over a month. (0:30) Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher discuss: - Why they're watching inflation and increased talk of a recession - Costco posting stronger results than Walmart and Target - Baidu and Alibaba rising in China - Ulta Beauty's record sales in Q1 - Snowflake trading below its IPO price - Farfetch fighting on the front line of so many tough macro trends - The latest from Workday, Nvidia, and Williams-Sonoma (19:00) Asit Sharma talks with Georgetown University business professor and author Christine Porath about how Traeger's CEO changed the company's culture and other takeaways from her book, Mastering Community. (31:00) Maria and Emily respond to a listener's question about beach reads for investors with four recommendations (Money, The Fish that Ate The Whale, Red Notice, and The Coffeehouse Investor), discuss Unilever's new drone delivery ice cream business, and shares two stocks on their radar: 1Stdibs.com and Doximity. Stocks discussed: COST, BIDU, BABA, ULTA, SNOW, WDAY, NVDA, WSM, FTCH, COOK, UL, DIBS, DOCS Host: Chris Hill Guests: Emily Flippen, Maria Gallagher, Asit Sharma, Christine Porath Producer: Ricky Mulvey Engineer: Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time in a long time, the lights were green on Wall Street. Motley Fool Money starts now. Everybody needs money That's why they call it money The best things in life are free But you can give them to the birds and bees From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill, and I'm joined by Motley Fool

senior analysts, Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher. Good to see you both. Nice to see you too. Good to be here, Chris. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. Author Christine Porath is our guest this week. And as always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar. But we begin with what appears to be a break in the pain for investors. We're recording this in the middle of the trading day on Friday, so I do not want to jinx us. But at the moment, it looks like the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq are all going to finish in positive territory for the week. This breaks the streak of seven to eight weeks of falling indices. So Emily, let me start with you. As we get ready to head into summer,

there are a growing number of narratives in the investing world, the housing market cooling down, the latest inflation data looking more promising, some companies cutting expenses while others are spending more. What is the dominant headline to you right now? It's funny, you would think the dominant headline would be a lot more positive after the week that we've had. But actually, over the last week and even further, I feel like my headline has just been the fears alongside a recession, conversations I haven't had for a number of years alongside the fears of what the economy is going to do in the back half of 2022. It's interesting because those fears are there, but the conflicting data coming across from different sources, I think are causing

confusion in the market. For instance, we saw a quarter of negative GDP growth earlier this year, that would contribute to the fears of a recession. But that was after nearly 7% gain last year, so a lot of economists were coming out and saying, the factors impacting this quarter probably won't persist into the back half of 2022. Unemployment rates are still very low, less than 4% across the country, but there's still so much fear. More and more businesses now planning for a pullback in consumer spending, also pulling back their job listings, even pulling back, reducing their forces, laying people off. All of those fears, I think, are just causing confusion in the market this week. Maria, what's your headline? My headline is just going to be inflation question

mark. So we saw consumer spending up 0.9% in April. Consumers are buying more new motor vehicles, clothing, recreational goods. We're seeing growth in spending on services and demands. At this point in the economic cycle, consumers are still spending a lot, which is helping keep that recession wind at bay. And I think it's really interesting to look at how much of a recession, how much of inflation is psychological. So if you have people who think their prices are going to continue to rise, they start spending less. And so then prices have to rise so that people will spend. And so you just see that loop consistently. And so I think that's going to be interesting to watch too, is saying, well, right now we still have consumer spending. And so

hopefully that helps keep kind of those recession and inflation conversations a little bit at bay. All right, let's get to some of the companies that are making headlines this week. Costco's third quarter revenue up 16%, profits were up 10%. And unlike what we saw recently from Walmart and Target, Maria. Looks like Costco is just chugging right along. Yeah. So with Costco, we saw net sales up about 16.3% this quarter. Comparable sales were up 10.7% in the U.S., 11.2% in Canada, and 9.6% internationally. Something that I kind of want to drill down with Costco on is they had this one-time $77 million pre-tax charge, which part of that is incremental benefits awarded under new employee agreements. So when we're

talking about inflation and we're talking about potential recessions, a lot of people are talking about there's going to be a cut in spending and either by raising prices or we're going to slash employee benefits or sometimes both. And I think Costco is proof of importance in retention, importance in customer loyalty and importance in treating your employees well. So it has over 200,000 employees, over 17,000 of them are unionized. Their average wage is $24 an hour. they have really nearly unheard of high retention rate of 94%, which is almost unheard of in retail and hourly environments. They have medical, dental benefits. And so 76% of their managers start out as hourly employees and have long tenured careers at the company. And I think

Costco is pretty unique in the retail space in that type of employee treatment. And I think that's going to be a continued conversation as we're talking more about companies either stopping spending or increasing their prices. And I think Costco is a really great example of being able to maintain good prices and maintain a good treatment of their workers. Good week for big Chinese tech companies, Baidu and Alibaba, both out with their latest quarterly reports. Baidu is known for its search business, but its cloud division was one of the highlights this quarter. And Alibaba suspended guidance for the rest of the fiscal year, but the market shrugged that off. Shares of both up nearly 10% this week, Emily.

Let's add context to why these businesses are doing well, because for a long time the market has struggled to make sense of what holding Chinese businesses mean, especially for American investors. That uncertainty provided by COVID lockdowns, that impending delisting in the U.S., and more importantly, just confusing regulatory policies from the CCP themselves all contributed to really low expectation. That narrative just within China has been so uncertain that even guiding for what we expect from even some of the largest most successful tech businesses in China has been extremely challenging for investors. But despite these challenges, we're still seeing solid results from these businesses. Let's talk about Alibaba. Admittedly,

low expectations headed into this quarter, but they beat their expectations for revenue growth. the revenue growth of 9% was the slowest rate of growth since the company went public, and GMV actually declined year-over-year, largely thanks to those COVID lockdowns, and they suspended guidance. It all sounds very negative. But let's not forget that that growth rate was still faster than Amazon in its most recent quarter, so that provides some context here. But here's the thing that surprised me the most for Alibaba. Their Ulema business, which is their food delivery business, is near breakeven. This is critical because I think if Alibaba proves that they could have a profitable food delivery business that has great things for

U.S.-based food delivery and even South Korea, their coupang business there, which does food and grocery delivery. Lots of good positive signs coming out of Alibaba this quarter. Same thing could be said for Baidu. Ad revenue has consistently moved away from its core platform of search, but they have so many different initiatives, one of them being autonomous driving and more importantly, their AI Cloud that has really kept this business afloat as well. Am I wrong in thinking that U.S. companies that have a significant presence in China are given a little bit of cover by Alibaba's suspending guidance? If you're a U.S. company, can't you just point to Alibaba and say, hey, look, they're suspending guidance,

so don't expect us to have greater insight than them? I love that, because we'll actually talk about a company that I think is doing just that later in the show, but I certainly think that it gives an out for a lot of companies that derive a large portion of their revenue from China. Alta Beauty posted record sales in the first quarter and shares rose nearly 10% on Friday. On top of the results, Alta's guidance for the rest of the fiscal year was higher than Wall Street was expecting. Maria, this really is an under-the-radar standout stock over the past 12 months. Yeah, absolutely. They saw net sales of $2.3 billion, up 21%. Comp sales were up 18%. They increased their guidance to sales growth of

6% to 8% compared to 3% to 4% originally guided. They have over 25,000 products from over 600 brands. They have over 100 Ulta Beauty at Targets that were opened in 2021. Their e-commerce sales grew by a kicker of 35% from 2017 to 2021. And they have 37 million members in their loyalty program. So definitely under the radar in terms of stock. Maybe if you talk to people who are interested in beauty, they will definitely talk about Ulta Beauty. This is such a huge market and it's so fractured. So there's about a $91 billion US beauty products market. And it's really scattered as to where you get each thing. And that's really where Ulta shines is that they've streamlined this process. And we talked a little bit the other week

about the lipstick effect. So when you're restricting spending elsewhere, you still have these little indulgences like lipstick. I think Ulta consistently sets itself up with their customer loyalty, their ease of use to continue to thrive in any type of environment. You can add Snowflake to the list of stocks now trading below its IPO price. First quarter revenue was higher than expected, but the data analytics software company's guidance for the current quarter was not what Wall Street wanted to hear. Shares of Snowflake down 11% this week, Emily. Yeah. For context, headed into this report, Snowflake's market cap has dropped from over $100 billion at its peak to less than $40 billion today. But this report itself was not

bad. Revenue grew 85%, customers grew 40%, and most importantly, was that customers that are paying over a million dollars a year for Snowflake services was up nearly 100% in the quarter, largely thanks to that amazing net revenue retention rate of over 170%. This is a really solid business, but it's more of the same narrative that we've heard in this market recently, which is if you are guiding for slower growth rates, if you are a tech business, then you are going to see your stock get whacked. That's what we're seeing here. The slower growth rate of 66% for top-line growth at the midpoint was lower than what the market wanted to see. But I have to think that the real story here is what Snowflake said about

its customers. Guidance has been impacted by the reality that the operating environment these companies are working in is projected to be more challenging than that they had expected even just a few months ago. That's important because Snowflake is a usage-based business model. If consumption on the platform pulls back, the company will see a quick drop in their backlog, a quick drop in their revenue, and I promise you the stock will see a quick drop in its share price as well. More headlines after the break, so stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher.

Workday's loss in the first quarter doubled and shares of the enterprise software company fell 10% on Friday. Maria, at a time when more profitable companies are cutting back on expenses, it's interesting to see Workday talking about how they want to spend more to increase hiring? It's a really interesting one to look at. So they had revenue of $1.4 billion, up 22%. Their subscription revenues were up 23%. Their total subscription revenue backlog is up 25%. But like you said, that operating loss was about $72.8 million compared to $38.3. So they're creating 1,000 new jobs in their European headquarters. In Dublin, they're building a new European headquarters. They raised their guidance for revenues to be in the range of

$5.5 billion with a growth of 22% for the year. And so I think it's pretty interesting because if we're thinking about times with tighter spending, a lot of relationships with these types of cloud applications is land and expand. So they're getting companies on for payroll and then they're growing with them to all these different areas of financial management. And that's great. But when the company is tight in spending, which of these offerings will go and will that hiring be necessary if that spending does end up tightening? So that's something that I think is going to be really interesting to watch with this company for the next couple of quarters to see those retention rates with their customers. To their credit, they have 9,500 global customers,

50% of the Fortune 500, and it's a real range. So they have anywhere from Chiquita Banana to Etsy to FedEx to Hulu to Shake Shack. So I think that it'll be really interesting to see how those companies continue their spend on Workday in the next couple of quarters. NVIDIA's first quarter results got a nice reception from investors this week. Profits were higher than expected for the graphics chip maker, and Nvidia said they're going to work on controlling costs in the near term. Emily, nice change from three months ago when Nvidia put up great numbers and the stock got whacked. No kidding. You know when Nvidia is facing hard times that the market is not doing well, and it's good to see a beat on both the top

and bottom lines here for Nvidia with the revenue rising nearly 50% year-over-year and earnings coming in at also a nearly 50% increase. A really solid quarter. It was even a record for Nvidia's data center and gaming divisions, which grew 83% and 31% respectively. For the first time ever, their data center revenue actually surpassed gaming. That's important because their data center processing products are actually a little bit more niche than their gaming products. I like this transition away from Nvidia, changing from a crypto company to a gaming company to now maybe a data center business. It's good to see that resilience in this business model, but a guidance, as you mentioned, was where the market got hung

up here. The revenue growth guidance of next quarter of 24% was about 4% less what the market was expecting, although a lot of this, again, due to the conflicts that we're seeing on the global scale here. It's worth noting before moving on that Nvidia has always been a bit of a sandbagger, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them come out and actually surpass these expectations when they report next quarter. But regardless, this is a company that despite its large size is priced for growth. If that growth falters, the stock will as well. Given what the stock market has done over the past six months, shouldn't every company's executive team be sandbagging their guidance?

You'd think so, but I'll tell you what, I think sandbagging gets a lot harder when we're in this unpredictable macro environment. I wouldn't be surprised if management thinks that they're sandbagging. And then next quarter comes along and it's like, oh, darn. Oh, I guess that wasn't as overestimating as he thought it was. William Sonoma is proving to be one of the better performers in its industry this earnings season. Shares of the home goods retailer up nearly 20% this week after record results in the first quarter. Maria, what stood out to you? So I really like William Sonoma. They had their comparable brand revenue growth of 9.5%. West Elm grew 12.8%. Pottery Barn grew 14.6%. What's really interesting to me is this overall

market. So it's an $830 billion market, and Williams-Sonoma still has less than a 3% share. There is a $450 billion global home category, $300 billion U.S. home category. So they're planning to get to $10 billion in revenue by 2024, which is, as of 2021, their revenue was $8.2 billion. So it's really interesting. I think they're going to continue to steadily grow their business. In 2021, the business grew 22%, which outperformed the growth in the U.S. home furnishings industry as a whole. And I think it'll be really interesting to monitor as we shift more to work from home life. Are people still going to end up spending more for their home? Will that continue to be a top priority for people with their disposable income? And I think that's going

to be something that will really be important to monitor for this company. Anytime we talk about Williams-Sonoma during earnings season, I'm always reminded of the fact that they owned West Elm and they've got that exposure to the furniture business. Do you think they should maybe take a page out of the restoration hardware playbook and really go after that loyalty program? Because that, much to my surprise, probably not to others, but I was always surprised that restoration hardware rolled that out and made it work as effectively as they have. I love a loyalty program. I think it's so smart to always have one. Between Pottery Barn, West Elm and Williams-Sonoma, I think that you can have that trifecta of people getting

different things at different places. I think that it could be really helpful for customer retention. A bit of good news for Farfetch shareholders. Shares of the online luxury fashion company up nearly 20% on Friday, despite the fact that its loss in the first quarter was bigger than expected. Emily, with the rise on Friday of shares of Farfetch, now the stock is only down 80% in the past year. Oh, the power of low expectations. But revenue rose 6% to just under $515 million. And let me tell you why that's actually really good for this business, because this business is a type that is truly on the front lines of many very negative macro trends. I could pull out inflation and supply chain as two examples, but also let's talk about China.

China is Farfetch's second largest market, and we had COVID lockdowns in China. China also has the highest average order value for Farfetch as well. It's that one-two punch here when you see the pullback in China. Even the regulatory policies in the country itself, given its investor in Alibaba, those sorts of uncertainty, I think, really kept expectations low for this business. It's hard to look at what's going on in the world, in China in particular, and say, yeah, I think demand for luxury goods is going to be higher next quarter. The fact that revenue rose at all. Nonetheless, 6% I think was a very good thing for the market here. But I will say, this is a business that is truly trying to do it all. They're a digital retailer of luxury goods.

They also have physical retail stores. They're even building out an ad tech marketplace in addition to having just a platform that they're trying to sell to other luxury retailers. So it's a really interesting business model. It's a very aggressive business model. And you can tell from management team that they are aggressively going after growth. I will say the stock price has been hammered. They did try to expand in China in the past with JD to not much success. If you're buying from this point forward, I think you're really betting on their new expansion into China with Alibaba succeeding in future quarters. Real quick before we go to break, should they be streamlining what they're doing given how challenged the business is?

Can't you make an argument that they need to maybe cut the ad platform? I completely agree. I think this might be a growth at any cost type of business, and that concerns me a little bit. I will say, if they are successful, it's easy to see this being a great investment from this point forward, but they are trying to do a lot. When they have losses the size that they've experienced in past quarters, they have to be careful about where they're spending their capital. All right, Emily and Maria, we'll see you later in the show. Up next, how one CEO came up with a radical plan to improve his company's culture. Stay right here, this is Motley Fool

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. The rise of remote work has led to efficiencies in the workplace, but it's also led to an increase in coworkers feeling more disconnected from one another. More than ever, companies are trying to figure out how to maintain and strengthen their corporate culture. Christine Porath is an associate professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. She's a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and she's the author of the recently released book, Mastering Community, The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us from Surviving to Thriving. Asit Sharma recently talked with her about key takeaways from her book, including how one public company CEO

came up with a radical plan to change his company's culture. I was curious about this idea of respect because I've heard that respect is something that has to be earned. It's not granted. In your interviews and your studies, your academic research, what are your takeaways about respect, the place in an organization, and how one builds respect as they go along? whether you're a nominal leader or just someone who's playing on a team? Yeah, well, I think the bottom line is respect really pays and that people that work, for example, for leaders where they feel regularly respected, they are far more engaged. They're much healthier, much more likely to stay with the organization, things like that. And so it really

does pay. The other thing is that a lot of this work kind of stemmed from the costs of disrespect, you know, when people feel small or put down or not feeling a part of the team. What happened also was the idea that over 50% of people, when we surveyed them, felt like if they were nice at work or respectful at work, that they would be at a disadvantage. They would appear less leader-like. So part of my idea was show how respect pays. And in fact, what we found in various groups from biotech firms to very international samples to large global consulting firms was those that are seen as more respectful tend to perform much better. Um, and part of this is people are more comfortable. They are more likely to seek and share information with you if they see you as respectful. So one of the messages I was just trying to convey was that, you know, respect is, is good for a lot of things. And if people don't

feel a sense of respect, uh, I don't think they will feel a part of the team or the tribe that you mentioned earlier. Uh, and this idea of psychological safety, which, you know, it's really just a sense of trust and respect, but are you going to speak up? Are you going to share your ideas? Are you going to point out if there's a mistake or an error? Like if there's not that, those seeds of respect at the beginning, I don't think that that happens. And I don't think, for example, that idea of radical candor where people are challenging one another, you know, in a reasonable way, it won't, I don't think happen, or at least the outcomes won't be the same as if people feel like you're coming at it with a genuine, at least baseline level of,

you know, you're a human and I respect you. I might not agree with you. I mean, I think there's a lot of disagreement these days, you know, whether that's politically, whether that's masks, whether that's, you know, around investing ideas, religion, I mean, you name it. But I think if there's a foundation of just like, even if we disagree, we can come at it with a sense of respect and ideally trying to understand, then that will be a huge advantage for not only the individual, they win, they're seen as more likable, more warmer and more competent, tend to perform better. It lifts up those around them. It really tends to pay. In the book, you use an example of a culture which seemed to be lacking in respect at all levels. Fun because I had covered this

company on a podcast. So it's Traeger Grills. They came public, I believe it was early last year. And you tell the story of the new CEO who found himself in a company that was sorely in need of respect at all levels. Could you tell us a little bit about this story? And then I would definitely love to then extend to this idea of radical candor and how it's helpful as well. Sure. So, the Traeger story was a dramatic one. So, after Jeremy Andrus took over as CEO, he realized pretty quickly that the owner, majority owner, was quite rude and ended up affecting how he felt and even planting some seeds of fear in things like this. But the dramatic part came when he was driving up to work early one morning and saw that there

were a bunch of policemen and fire engines there putting out a fire, an 18-wheel big rig truck was burning to the ground. And he was, of course, surprised by this and pretty quickly knew it was arson and that it was employees that were lashing out because of a recent decision they made to outsource some of the shipping. And even though employees were taken care of, they were upset and they got even. And it was that day that Andrus decided that he needed to do something radical, that the changes he was making to move the culture and this idea of what he picked up on was toxicity. Because as we find, you know, leaders and employees were emulating this majority owner, like, you know, that he was role modeling it. So he decided that he was going to

have to reboot basically. And he moved the headquarters from Oregon to Utah and basically assessed everyone deciding who fit the culture, you know, were you against, were you neutral and so forth and offered positions to those that were neutral and competent or kind of positive with respect to the culture. And there weren't many, I think there were 15 offers made. I think something like five ended up moving and really had to start over. And what I found so interesting is, you know, that I've never heard of kind of that reboot idea, you know, where, uh, they really just had to, you know, hit start again and he built them up, uh, and has invested in the culture deeply for everything from meeting with anyone that he's hiring, to kind of assess himself and

to also provide a little bit of a connection there for the employee. And he built the new headquarters with cooking together in mind. So they actually make breakfast every Monday morning, they have kind of a Monday meeting, team meeting, and then they cook lunch together every Tuesday day through Friday. And the thing that struck me was that in, I think it was 26 years, they were up to about $70 million in revenue. And about 7 years later with Andrus at the helm, I think it's over $700 million. And he spoke to me and said, it's still the same wood pellet grill, generally, um, or marketing pretty much the same ways. It's all about culture as he sees it. And he really highlighted how costly a toxic person is and how it pays to get rid of them

sooner versus later. Uh, that's something that he's learned, you know, uh, throughout his career, but it was just, I thought a wonderful example about, you know, how much culture matters, which you at The Motley Fool know oh so well, advise people to take into account. But what you may have to do to make changes and how that can pay off. When I was reading through, I was trying to put myself in those shoes in my daily investing. And I kept coming back to something that we talk about. We have a weekly mindset show, which I'm part of, which is the value of doing nothing. in terms of buying and selling stocks, right? We talk about holding for the long-term at the Motley Fool. And so it kept coming back to me that, okay, if I'm in the moment, my next move

is probably just doing more research because the market's down. If I start to succumb to six plays behind or 11 plays ahead, I'm just going to sell my stocks. And I'm always preaching, don't do that and focus on the businesses. But something occurred to me also, which is, I think something that Tom Gardner is very keen on, and some other really great investors that I know, which is about the people in investing as much as it is about the businesses. And I think your book drove that home all the way through, the examples that you used of different leaders implementing their ideas of community building. And I may be making a stretch here. You're the expert. But maybe part of applying a neutral mindset to investing could just be this,

an objective state, maybe you take an afternoon to watch some YouTube videos of leaders of the companies you own. Would you say that's an okay analogy there for an investor? Yeah, I love that. And I should give Tom Gardner a lot of credit because I think it's in the book, but the idea was, I actually saw him speak at a Google event and met him there and was so grateful that he spoke about the idea of culture mattering, you know, in terms of investing and how they, you weigh that, you at The Motley Fool. And I think it's so important because it's hard to make that business case. And I think you guys have done it in a really great way and tracking that has been super helpful. And then also living it because I obviously used you in the book,

Motley Fool, for taking care of each other and member well-being and things like that. So absolutely, I think that culture pays and you at The Motley Fool have demonstrated that probably more than anyone else. The book is Mastering Community. The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us From Surviving to Thriving. Coming up after the break, Maria Gallagher and Emily Flippen return. We're going to dip into the Fool mailbag. They got a couple of stocks on their radar. So stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool money as always people on the program may interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for

or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here once again with Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher. Our email address is podcastsatfool.com. Got a question from Alexandra in California. She writes, I'm looking to understand more about business and investing, so I'm looking for book recommendations. But since summer is almost here, it would be great if they were the beach read versions of investing books. No disrespect to the business professors of the world, but I'm not likely to finish a textbook while I'm at the beach this summer." Great question. Thank you for that. Maria, I identify with this. I'm looking to get smarter,

but sometimes it'd be nice if the book was a little breezier. I love a breezy book. I love a breezy story. So I have a couple of recommendations. The first is Money, which is the real history of a made-up thing by Jacob Goldstein, taking you through the history of money. The second is called The Fish That Ate the Whale, The Life and Times of the Banana King by Rich Cohen. And that's through the life of Sam Zen Murray and kind of his arc as an underdog to running United Fruit and seeing the change in a person as business changes. And then the third is Red Notice by Bill Browder. And it kind of feels like a spy thriller, but it's about investing in Russia at the fall of the Soviet Union. So those are three recommendations from me.

Red Notice is not the basis for the action movie on Netflix with The Rock and Ryan Reynolds? I thought it was, and I was very excited. And then I started watching the movie and I was very upset. Yeah, you're not alone. We all were. Emily, any book recommendations, a little bit on the lighter side? Well, hard to compete with Maria. She always has the best recommendations. But the one author out there is The Coffeehouse Investor, How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life by Bill Schultes. And I apologize, Bill, if I'm pronouncing your last name wrong. But I like this book because it kind of gets at the heart of what it means to be a long-term buy and hold

investor, which is don't spend too much time thinking about finance, right? If the world is making it seem more complicated than it is, they're probably just trying to sell you something. So I like the simple approach to finance. And I also might have picked it because I like imagining somebody sitting on a beach drinking a coffee while also reading The Coffeehouse Investor. Unilever is a consumer products giant with over 400 brands, including Dove Soap, Axe Body Spray, Hellman's Mayonnaise, and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. This week, Unilever announced a new partnership with a drone delivery company called Flytrex. It offers ice cream delivery to residents in Texas in North Carolina. Maria, I have never wanted a market test to be more successful in my life than

I am right now with this. Well, I have some questions because ice cream has to be cold and frozen, but I am really excited about the idea of it. I'm a huge Ben & Jerry's fan. I recently learned that the most popular flavor of Ben & Jerry's is half-baked, which is my favorite flavor. So I feel like everyone is on the same page and everyone has good taste when it comes to Ben & Jerry's. Emily, all kidding aside, when you think about drone delivery, it seems like the sort of thing that can work for certain items, not all items. When it comes to food, as long as the refrigeration is there, it seems like this one should work. Yeah. Maria has questions. I have answers. One of the things that they're doing as part of this test is guaranteeing a three-minute

delivery time. I appreciate the fact that no ice cream can melt in three minutes. So if they can do that, that's great. But I'm deeply concerned about the fact that there is ice cream that is three minutes away by drone that somebody is ordering on their phone instead of picking up themselves. There is something deeply concerning about that to me. But the fun factor, Emily, I mean, just sitting on your back porch or your front steps. And shooting down some drones. Yeah, it sounds like a blast. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. Maria Gallagher, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm looking at a company called First Dibs, which the ticker symbol is D-I-B-S.

It's an e-commerce marketplace for really high quality furniture, jewelry, other luxury items. They have 4,200 sellers across 55 countries. They have 3.5 million users. The median order value is $1,200 and the average order value is $2,500. And so I think that is one that I'm going to spend some time looking at. Dan, question about firstdibs.com? Absolutely, Chris. Maria, we're talking about a company, e-commerce, very, very competitive landscape there. And the stock is down, looks like 76% all time. Is this company really going to bounce back? I think it depends on who their customers are and how much they're willing to spend and how they can get people to continue to spend on the platform. A lot of famous people

like it. It's been talked about on multiple Architectural Digest YouTube tours. The Dakota Johnson one, she talks about it. But I think it's going to be interesting to see how people continue to spend on e-commerce places. They might need some of those famous people to all of a sudden become investors in the stock, and maybe that helps a little bit. Emily Flippen, what are you looking at this week? I'm looking at Doximity. Doximity, I've mentioned before, but it's essentially a social media platform for physicians across the U.S., a necessary evil for many of these doctors. However, they actually had a crazy ride here after reporting their most recent quarter. They raised full-year guidance, they beat their earnings and

revenue expectations, but guidance for the first quarter was a little less than what the market expected. Stock went down dramatically after market before quickly recovering when management reminded Wall Street investors that yes, there is some seasonality in their business given the demand for pharmaceutical companies to buy ad space. So other than that, everything looking really great after this quarter. Definitely one that I think investors should have on their radar. It's a profitable, strong, growing business. And the ticker symbol? D-O-C-S. Dan, question about Doximity? Not necessarily a question. I just really want to praise Doximity on its very clever naming

with combining doctors in proximity and also documents and, you know, because they can share cases and telehealth stuff and everything through their platform. I just think it's a really clever name. Do you think it's more clever than Accenture, you know, combining Accent and the future? Oh, yes, much more. Accenture is a garbage tier name for a company. I'm sorry, Accenture shareholders out there. What do you want to add to your watch list, Dan? All right. I'm going to go with Dibs this time because I really don't like social media when it comes to investing. I really don't like it at all. And I'm sorry, Emily, it is a cleverly named company, but I think e-commerce to me is more compelling than social

media. Maria, real quick, since we have a minute left, we've talked about online fashion a couple of times in this show. First Dibs, Farfetch, do you see consolidation coming in this industry? Because it seems like there's a market there. It's maybe not a market for everyone though. Yeah, I have to imagine there will be. I think it's a really fascinating space because there's the rise of consignment luxury. I think it's really fascinating and the brands are pretty enduring and seeing how people will spend up for those brands. So I think that there's value. there's a value to be had in these companies, but I think that there is some likely consolidation coming. All right. Maria Gallagher, Emily Flippen, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having us. Keep the email questions coming. Drop us a note, podcasts at fool.com. That's podcasts at fool.com. Remember, the stock market is closed on Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. That is going to do it for this week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Chris Hill. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.