Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - A Marijuana Mirage?

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

A Canadian cannabis company produces big returns for shareholders. Amazon unveils new products. Medtronic makes a big buy. Olive Garden delivers for Darden Restaurants. And Disney gets a boost from ESPN+. Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Ron Gross analyze those stories along with the latest from FedEx, Under Armour, Eventbrite, United Natural Foods and more. Plus, Bloomberg Businessweek writer and best-selling author Ashlee Vance talks Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and weird technologies.  Thanks to Molekule for supporting Motley Fool Money. Get $75 off your 1st order at http://www.molekule.com and use the promo code “fool”.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Hill, This episode of Motley Fool Money is brought to you by TD Ameritrade. Whether you want to place a trade on Twitter or get market news from your smart speaker, TD Ameritrade has everything you need to invest on your favorite platforms and devices. See what's new at tdameritrade.com slash innovation. Also brought to you this week by Molekule, the world's first molecular air purifier that reduces symptoms for allergy and asthma sufferers. For $75 off your first order, visit Molecule.com. That's M-O-L-E-K-U-L-E.com. And use the promo code FOOL.

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. Joining me in studio this week, senior analysts Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen.

Hey, how are you doing? We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. Best-selling author Ashley Vance is our guest. And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week with Tilray, the well-known Canadian cannabis company that I've never heard of until this week. It started the year with a market cap of around $2 billion. And Jason, it's going to close this week with a market cap of just north of $12 billion. I'm used to seeing this kind of exponential rise with technology companies. What is going on with this cannabis stock? I'm not even used to seeing that kind of

rise with tech companies, at least not in the course of a week. And I think that's what we're seeing, more or less. But coming from someone, me, who supports legalization, I I am for it, OK? You need to avoid this thing like the plague. I mean, this is, it's mania. That's the only real word I can offer that fits the mold. And I think a lot of it is based on speculation, perhaps what will be one day here domestically. With Tilray, it is a Canadian company, and I think a lot of people are sort of thinking that what is going on now with Canada will one day be that same way here. But this is just a wicked combination of speculation. And in Tilray's case, it's a very low float on the open market. Of the

93.1 million shares outstanding, only 19.1% of them trade on the open market. That means it's only about 17.8 million shares. Very low float means high volatility, which is what we're seeing. And when I talk about high volatility, just go back to September 19th, the stock hit a high of $300 and a low of $151, all in the same day. On the 20th, high of $244, low of $158, all in the same day. That is not normal. We don't see that. And that's why we tell people with stuff like this, this business and the stock, it's not based on anything fundamental. That's why you've got to steer clear of this thing and wait until we have a better idea of how legalization is going to take form here domestically before you start placing any crazy

Yeah, and speaking of fundamentals, Chris, I think you mentioned a $12 billion market cap, if I heard correctly. Well, this company, in the last 12 months, did $28 million in revenue. So, that seems reasonable. Right. Even if the day it all becomes legal in Canada, and as Jason mentioned, maybe more legalization here in the U.S., even if that revenue went up 10X in the next year, it would still be a ridiculous valuation. I think this ultimately is, just as Jason described it, it's a total mania. And this is kind of, for me, a buy the rumor, sell the news kind of thing. In other words, I think these companies are still going to be rallying. And it's not just Tilray, you have

companies like Canopy Growth, Aurora Cannabis. And the day it goes legal in Canada, I feel like that's the day these stocks probably turn over. And just ask yourself, what would be their competitive advantage? I mean, what they do is grow and distribute marijuana. I mean, I knew guys that did that in college, and we won't run a $13 billion business. I mean, it just was, I don't know. It didn't have all the staging and optics of Apple's recent event, but this week, Amazon unveiled more than a dozen new hardware products, including a microwave oven that works with its voice assistant, Alexa. Ron, I'm not even sure where to start with this.

I want it all. I want every single one of them. It's very interesting to me, whether it's the Echo Auto or the microwave, as you say, or the clock. Who doesn't need an Echo clock? But I think what's happening here, in all seriousness, is that we see Amazon creating an ecosystem, which is what we've time and time spoken about with respect to Apple and what's been so interesting for Apple. They want to be in your home, your car, your business, and they want it all interconnected through the Alexa X Echo system. And I actually think it makes good sense, and I think they've got a nice head start on the folks that are competing against them. I think it's amazing to think about five years ago, we really would have all just given Apple

the first place ribbon in this race. And fast forward to now, and it seems like Siri just can't get out of her own way. And Amazon has just flooded the market with Echo-enabled devices everywhere. It's pretty amazing. Well, and also, Matty, we've talked for years about the smart home, and you look at Alphabet, their acquisition of Nest. I mean, where is Google in all of this? What do you suppose the reaction was at Google headquarters? Because again, this was a very quiet event in some ways. Yes. And I just think it speaks to the fact that Amazon feels like it's a lot closer to home for us, because most of us use Amazon regularly. I mean, we're not always going

out and buying Apple products every month or Google products every month. We're using the services and things like that. But Amazon, we're tangibly buying things for the home. And this technology aspect, this platform now that we have for the home from Amazon feels more like a natural extension, I think. Yeah, 5% away from $1 trillion catching up on Apple. I think announcements like this will help them. Stock still has room. Well, speaking of the stock, we've got a question from Steven McRae. He writes, I've developed a good problem in my portfolio. I purchased shares of Amazon several years ago at just under $300 a share. At the time, it represented about 5% of my portfolio.

Today, it represents close to 20% of my portfolio. I've heard people talk about trimming a position when this happens and putting the money somewhere else to increase diversification. My problem is, I still believe in my original thesis, and I believe the future is still bright for Amazon. What are your thoughts when you find yourself in this position? Matty? Well, Stephen, this goes definitely in the bucket of great problems to have. Many investors don't experience this at all in their lifetime. So, congratulations on buying a great company and holding it for this long. 20% to me personally seems a little high. If I was looking across all my portfolios, I would say, this feels like me an opportunity.

If you still love the company, maybe consider, I wouldn't trim it all at once, but consider maybe selling 1% a quarter, get it down to 15%, slowly allocate elsewhere. That might be the way I'd approach it. Yeah. And everyone's risk tolerance is different. Some folks would be OK with 20%. I'm not one of those folks. I wouldn't sleep well at night, which no amount of money can beat a good night's sleep. So, I would trim it back. It'd be interesting to see if there's tax consequences. I'd love it if it's in a retirement account for him and he can make this switch tax-free. Given the push towards all of this Echo stuff, and I really can't top the answers

these guys gave. I mean, it's everybody's risk tolerance is unique to their own behavior. But going back to all of the Echo-enabled stuff, I mean, I'm trying to figure out exactly What problem does that solve, for the most part? I mean, I'm a big fan of the Echo device. We've got a few in our house. But beyond asking Alexa to play music, or a podcast, or give me the weather forecast, or convert something, I'm just not sure that it is going to solve as many problems as perhaps the headlines would have you believe. But Ron wants everything. He wants it all. I want it all.

Ron wants everything. Why do you want it all? It's going to connect my home in many different ways. It's now going to be email-enabled. It's going to be able to handle a lot of your business aspects. It's going to be in video conferencing. Obviously, in your car, you can have a new app that basically gives you nav, music. It's great stuff, but when it doesn't work, it does get pretty frustrating. I'll just use my lights as an example. I have it set up to work and turn on my lights, but every once in a while it fails, and I'm like, golly, now I've got to get up and hit the switch

on the wall. It's killing me. Now you know what to get Ron for his birthday. Well, there you go. Thank you. This week, Medtronic, the medical device giant, got even bigger when it announced the acquisition of Mazor Robotics for $1.6 billion. I'm guessing they got a good price, Matty, because shares of Medtronic were up on this news. I think they did. I'm a shareholder of Mazor Robotics, and so, I think this is one of the situations where I'm supposed to say, well, this feels bittersweet. But actually, there's nothing really sweet about it for me, because I was really excited to see Mazer

remain a small, independent company and see if they could grow. They're a real innovator in the area of robotic spinal surgery, and they're demonstrating great efficacy in that. When they made the deal with Medtronic a couple of years ago, they did it for the right reasons. In other words, Medtronic has a massive sales organization. It would give them wider distribution, a lot more traction. But I knew as soon as Mazer had any sort of success, Medtronic was right there to buy them out. And they already own 12% of the shares coming into the deal. So, not surprised by the buyout. A little bitter that I'm going to lose my Mazer shares pretty soon. It's not to be confused with Moza Robotics, which is something I haven't invented yet,

but I've got a couple of ideas. United Natural Foods is the largest supplier to Whole Foods. Fourth quarter results came in lower than expected, and shares of United Natural Foods down more than 12% on Friday, Jason. Yeah, it's been a tough year for this company for a couple of reasons, really. Amazon buying Whole Foods has put them in a little bit of a different position in the value chain, But also, if you go back to July, and this merger with SuperValue, and essentially this effort to consolidate on the wholesale side, it makes sense, but I think it really shines a light on how difficult this space is.

And so, with United Natural Foods, that relationship with Whole Foods was very meaningful, it was responsible for about 33%, 34% of their yearly revenues. The acquisition from Amazon is going to change that, most likely, that relationship ends in 2025, but it's not to say that they couldn't, perhaps, end it sooner. And so, I think that management at United Natural Foods is feeling a little bit of the fire there. That was the impetus behind the super value merger, and the super value merger is not going to come cheap. And at the end of the day, they are still caught in this massive price squeeze as these grocers just compete for the lowest cost. So, I don't know that the future really looks bright for

these guys, even if they execute this merger flawlessly. It's a really difficult business, the grocery space. And more and more, United Natural Foods seems like they're kind of in that middleman spot. Coming up, we've got a surprise from Disney and a hot IPO. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Hey, before we get back to the news, quick shout out to TD Ameritrade. You're always on the cutting edge of technology. Yeah, you are. You might not think you are, but if you're listening to this show, you are. TD Ameritrade prides itself on being ahead of the curve, too. Their latest innovations put their resources and services

on the popular platforms that you carry and use every day. So now, to stay on top of the markets, all you have to do is enable the TD Ameritrade skill for Amazon Alexa, or message them on Facebook, and you can learn more about their commitment to innovation by going to tdameritrade.com slash innovation. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argesinger and Ron Gross. Shares of FedEx falling a bit this week after first quarter profits came

in lower than expected. Ron, part of this is FedEx is paying its employees more. That seems like a good thing for FedEx in the long run and that seems like a bad reason to sell this stock. Yeah, I have no problem with that. It was two things. Higher bonuses for management and wage increases for hourly workers. Management, okay, I won't begrudge them a few bucks. I'm fine with the hourly increases for their workers. And I think that will bode well down the road. I think what hit the stock a little bit here is the whole tariff thing. So far, 10% of FedEx's business in China has been affected by the tariffs. And FedEx gets about

2% of their overall revenue from that region. So, I think there's some fear there. But I think it's overblown. Tariffs, I assume they're going to work themselves out. I think about it like I think about currency. I don't know how to predict it. I don't know where it's going to go. But I assume it's going to work its way out. So, overall, though, I think it's a strong report. Revenue up 11%. Earnings up 38%, which was actually worse than expected, but pretty good on the heels of a lower tax rate, which everyone is obviously benefiting from. But they raised guidance. Shares were only 14 times earnings. I thought the report was great.

Back in April, Disney launched its ESPN Plus streaming service with a price tag of $5 a month. This week, Disney announced it now has 1 million subscribers. Obviously, they're looking for more than that, Matty, but this is a pretty good start five months in. I think it is, because I think a lot of us, a lot of the investing community was pretty skeptical about this when they first announced it in 2017, and then certainly after they debuted it just a few months ago. But hitting a million is huge, and I think Bob Iger on the last conference call, kind of hinted at that. He said, you know, conversions from free trials were going well, subscription numbers were stronger than expected. And so, I think this

is good news, because I think it makes investors feel a little more confident about what's happening next year, which is the Disney app, which I think is the bigger platform, the bigger subscription service they're going to launch. And it comes on the heels of ending the distribution agreement they had with Netflix. And so, I'm still a little bit worried. I'm glad to see the traction, but I worry still that there's just too many choices now in front of consumers. It's nice that people seem to be paying up for this incremental ESPN content. But I feel like Hulu is still out there as, they're going to get a majority stake in that. I feel like that's their best bet. That's the best platform for them to

compete with the Netflix's and Amazon's, YouTube's of the world. And I imagine eventually a lot of that content, Disney content, is going to flow there as well. So, that's one thing to keep in mind, though, is, when they get that access to Hulu, do you think on some level they are building these apps with Hulu as the backup plan? Maybe not so much with ESPN+, but certainly with the movie streaming app. In the same way that there's original content on ESPN+, Katie Nolan's show and other things like that, there's also original content in the works for the movie streaming service they've got next year. That's right. I think you put it great, Hulu is the backup plan. They're trying

out these separate brands, ESPN Sports, Disney, Disney content, Star Wars, Marvel, all that, Hulu probably feels a little too broad, almost like a cable service. I know, Jason, that's kind of how you start to think about Hulu Live and things like that. And maybe you're right, I think if these apps don't gain a lot of traction, all that stuff ends up on Hulu anyway. The restructuring continues for Under Armour. The sports apparel company announced its second round of layoffs in the past year. Jason, we don't like seeing people lose their jobs, So, hopefully, Under Armour is, if nothing else, getting smarter about how to run their business.

Yeah. I mean, on the headlines, it is more people losing jobs. But from the investor's perspective, this really is an indicator that CEO and founder Kevin Plank is listening to his team and acting on their advice. And in this case, CFO David Bergman. I mean, they laid this goal out earlier in the year to, instead of focusing on top-line revenue and growing this business as fast as they can to kind of get back to where they are at this stage of the game. Focus on what they have, trim the company down, get rid of the fat, focus on profitability, become more efficient, become leaner. And then, over

time, if you run a good business, it will grow. If you have a brand that people want, it will grow. If you make products that people want, they will buy them and your business will grow. So, this really is in line with that goal. I think it makes a lot more sense. I think that one of the biggest mistakes Kevin Plank made, with all of his success, I think the mistake that he made was always pinning his desire to supplant Nike as the No. 1 athletic brand of the world. I think you can do that, but you can't ignore the fact it took Nike a while to get there. So, you can't just say you want to do that and then do it overnight. Time is a part of that equation. And so, Under Armour is going to have to put in some time

to do that. But I think that they've got some decision-making going now that has got this company headed back in the right direction. In terms of the next 12 months for Under Armour, how big is the e-commerce channel? Because one of the things we've seen recently with Nike is, they've done a good job of building that out. Yeah. And with Under Armour, it's very much the same story. We see, with the Sports Authority going under, with Dick's Sporting Goods obviously having its own challenges, Nike and Under Armour continue to push that direct-to-consumer channel. It's responsible about a third of Under Armour sales today. I expect it will become more as time goes

on. Definitely, we'll continue to invest in that channel. The award for IPO of the Week goes to Eventbrite. Shares of the ticketing and event technology platform rose 70% on its first day of trading. You tell me, Matty, is Eventbrite a stock I need to put on my radar? Well, it's an interesting company, and I'd qualify that 70%, because even though the IPO price was $23, it actually opened trading at $36. So, us public investors never had an opportunity to buy at $23, but still very impressive debut. The company, as far as I understand, it's really focused on the smaller creators. So, anywhere from small artists to fundraising, things like that,

and creating events, selling tickets to those things. You have $255 million in revenue over the last 12 months, that's growing about 50% per year. Market cap right now is around $3 billion. So, the valuation's high. And I'd say I'd wonder how they compete or measure up against a company like Live Nation, which also does events, but obviously on a bigger scale, and also owns venues and has relationships with artists. I think Eventbrite is probably a company that's going to focus on the smaller events, smaller artists, and maybe that's their niche. Well, and that's the thing, when you look at Eventbrite's business and the venues they're working with, the acts that they're working with, in the same way that we talk

about young startup beverage companies. Part of their goal is, we just want to be bought by a much bigger beverage company. I'm wondering if part of Eventbrite's idea is, hopefully at some point, Live Nation is going to buy us. It's possible, but I wonder if Live Nation would ever be interested in doing things at this kind of scale. But, you know, hey, if Eventbrite proves the model out, and I think they've obviously had some nice traction. They served 700,000 creators in events last year. There's probably something to the business. Alright, Matt Argesinger, Jason Moser, Ron Gross. Guys, we'll see you later in the show.

Up next, Bloomberg Businessweek writer Ashley Vance will share a few thoughts on Elon Musk, the future of Tesla, and a couple of technologies that are just flat-out weird. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. If Elon Musk is not the CEO of 2018, he's certainly the most talked about CEO of 2018. Ashley Vance is a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, and he's the author of the bestselling book, Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future. He joins me now from Palo Alto.

Ashley, thanks for being here. Hi, thanks for having me. So we've got investigations by both the SEC and the Department of Justice. We have high-ranking executives leaving Tesla. The interview that Elon Musk did on Joe Rogan's podcast and other erratic behavior, you literally wrote the book on Musk. Has any of what has transpired in the last six weeks surprised you? Well, I guess in some ways, yes, and in some ways, no.

I mean, you know, it's no secret. Elon has always kind of been his own guy and beat to his own drum. And, you know, when I was reporting the book, I guess I would say that a lot of these types of behaviors were known to me. And, you know, I write about them. But Elon was a little bit less famous then, and he certainly was not on Twitter as much as he is these days. And so I think that the public is getting a full dose of what Elon can get up to. On the other hand, especially this year with him just making these huge pronouncements on Twitter and engaging with people, this type of behavior seems to be something very different than what we've seen before.

In some ways, I kind of feel like there's a good Elon and a bad Elon, and the bad Elon has come out. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Twitter, because that's a conversation we've been having here at The Motley Fool, is to what extent is the behavior that we see on Twitter from Musk or any public company executive merely just an amplification of who they are? Or if, in fact, in the case of Musk, we're seeing an unraveling of sorts, because certainly he has talked about in interviews the pressure that he feels like he is under. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, it's different this time around. He's been on Twitter for a long time, and he's used it as this amazing tool. Tesla doesn't spend any money on advertising, unlike all the other car makers who are among the

leading advertising spenders in the world. And for years, he used Tesla really deftly, and he would generate all this marketing for the company and it had the shine. This is the first year where we've seen him pick fights with people, make these huge kind of crazy announcements and really snipe at journalists and things like that. And so it's been kind of frustrating to watch. I mean, I am neither like pro or anti-Elon. I admire what his companies have done, but it's been a little sad to me just to see all this goodwill that he built up over the years and this shine for the companies and his personality. It's certainly taken a huge hit. And I think there's something of a trap with Twitter where if it taps into your personality and you get kind of addicted to this

interplay with the public, just about everyone who tweets seems to get undone at some point. It really is kind of this opening to do yourself in. It's interesting, because some of what he tweets about is much more of a personal nature. Some of it is very business-focused. And earlier in the week, we had Musk tweeting out that Tesla has gone from production logistics hell to delivery logistics hell. Is one of those worse than the other? Because I honestly have no idea.

I think they're probably about just like equally as bad. I mean, this is the other funny thing is that you look at 2008 is this period I write about a lot in the book where Tesla was struggling to get its first product out. SpaceX had its rockets blowing up. It looked like both companies were going to go bankrupt. Elon was going through this very nasty public divorce. That was a crisis the likes of which I don't think most people would handle. And he actually came out of that one remarkably well. It's hard for me to imagine that this year is actually worse than that, although he seems to say it is.

And Tesla really does seem to move from one terrible crisis to the next, which is also perplexing because they've been at this now for 15 plus years. They've been making Model S's and Model X's by the tens of thousands. And, you know, you just sort of felt like they would have ironed out some of these kinks by the time the Model 3 came around. But it really has just been one calamity after another. And, again, it's frustrating to watch because here's this company that I always think of as kind of like its iPhone moment when it has this lead over all the competitors and could just be taking over the market for electric cars so clearly. and it really feels like it's missing its moments and allowing everyone to catch up. You mentioned the grand pronouncements that Musk is prone to making.

Early August, he makes the famous comment about funding secured. Shares of Tesla are down about 20% since he did that. They report earnings in seven weeks, and he came out of the last earnings call talking about how we're going to be a profitable company. Do they really need to deliver a profit in this next report? Or can he find some wiggle room somehow? Well, it would sure help. I mean, the funny thing about Elon, even though he's been on this kind of Twitter campaign

for the last year or so, or the last few months, he still seems to have a ton of goodwill, especially from maybe not institutional investors, but the consumer investors out there. And to that end, he seems to be able to get away with just about anything. Turning a profit or showing proof that they have fixed some of these problems with the Model 3 manufacturing, I really think that would go a tremendous way to getting rid of a ton of these ills. I mean, basically, it's still Tesla can make cars in this quarter, in the next quarter, and get these things out the door. It takes care of a lot of problems the company is facing.

That's what it basically comes down to. And but, you know, otherwise he's Elon's always been prone to making these big announcements, setting these aggressive timelines and missing them. But people afford him a lot of leeway because he is trying these very ambitious things. It's just that in this particular environment that he's put himself into now, when you start missing numbers or under under delivering, you know, it seems to come with like a much you would think it would come with a much bigger cost. One of the things you wrote about in the book was his passion for space. How soon before Elon Musk quits working at Tesla and moves over to run SpaceX full-time? So this is something that I don't think gets as much attention as it deserves. And Tesla, contrary to popular belief, Elon did not actually found Tesla.

He was the first money into the company, and he was chairman, but he basically came in to rescue the company. And even though he is very passionate about electric cars, Tesla was sort of foisted upon him as this thing he had to fix. And I think he's been trying to fix it ever since. But SpaceX is absolutely his baby, and space is what he cares about the most. And so part of me does wonder if all of this is some sort of self-inflicted, crazy play to – I don't even know. I mean, sometimes I think this is a conspiracy theory to actually drive the price of Tesla's stock down so that someone like Apple or Google could actually afford to acquire them. And so Elon could save a bit of face and just go off and run SpaceX full time. I know that that's where his heart is.

And there's part of him that wants to prove all the short sellers against Tesla wrong and prove out the market for electric cars. But especially on the electric car front, everyone's doing it now. I think he could kind of leave Tesla and go to SpaceX if an opportunity presented itself. Last question on Tesla, and I want to go back to something you touched on earlier when you mentioned the potential that Tesla has built this lead in the electric vehicle space, and they are on the precipice of potentially losing it. And one of the other comments from earlier in the week came not from Musk, but from a former executive at General Motors, who said that Tesla is headed for the graveyard. And I saw that comment, and one of my thoughts was, well, if I were an executive at General Motors, I would probably not be a big fan of Elon Musk.

And I took it with a grain of salt. Should I have taken it with a grain of salt, or should I just take that at face value, that this is a company at a pivot point, and if things don't break their way, Tesla could be in serious financial trouble. Well, that came from Bob Lutz, who used to work at GM and has never had much love for Elon or Tesla. I mean, he's been banging the Tesla is dead drum, I think, almost as long as Tesla has been alive.

You know, to his point, the company is burning through so much cash that if it just cannot figure this manufacturing stuff out in some reasonable amount of time, there's no question it has to go out to the market, raise more money. It's unclear exactly what that would look like and how favorable the terms would be or who's going to keep believing in Tesla. So there obviously is a scenario where this could all end horribly wrong. I think if I was betting on Elon versus Bob Lutz, I personally would bet on Elon just because he always seems to figure a way out of these things. And so that is where – if I was a betting man, that's where I would go.

Before I let you go, I have to ask you about Hello World, which is the video show that you have on Bloomberg. One of the recent episodes was about Zoox, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, Z-O-O-X, a company working on robot taxis. Give me the thumbnail sketch on robot taxis. Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, so Zoox is, to me, maybe the most interesting self-driving autonomous car company. If you look at everybody else from Waymo, which is a Google spin-out to what General Motors and Cruise, It's kind of a self-driving startup are doing.

Everybody else is just shoving sensors onto existing cars, and it's the car that we all know just with a whole bunch of stuff glued onto it. And so Zoox, their whole idea is to do a robotic self-driving car from the ground up, and so that means it looks a lot more like a London cab where you've got no steering wheel, you've got no front seat, it's just these seats facing each other in the middle. And from day one, this car will have all the sensors integrated in and just look, I would say, like a lot more futuristic than sort of the cars we're seeing today. And it has raised an incredible amount of money. I think it's up to $900 million they've raised to date.

And so there's a lot of venture capitalists out there betting that they have the right idea. Although, you know, to me, it's the kind of coolest idea in self-driving, but it's definitely the riskiest idea as well. On the Hello World website, it says that you're all about finding fresh and weird tech creations. What's the weirdest technology you've encountered while you've been working on this show? Well, so for the last, like, two years doing the show, I've flown all over the world. I've been in guys who have made homemade flying cars and gone up with them and sort of like, you know, risked my life. When I was in Chile, I was injected with frog poison by a shaman while I was exploring the technology of the Atacama Desert. So I've seen just about all of it.

I'd say possibly some of the stuff we saw in Russia might be the absolute weirdest, where we had a company that was doing cryogenics on the cheap and so freezing people's heads and bodies in tanks that were just in the backyard of a house in the suburbs of Moscow. And so that was something I never thought I would see firsthand. You know, at The Motley Fool, one of the things we're about is helping people save money. I don't know that cryogenics is where you want to skimp. It's cheap, man. It's like a tenth of the price of big cryogenics. And, you know, I can attest that there's a very nice Russian guy who comes by and dutifully cools your head down once every couple weeks.

And so, you know, if you've got a few hundred bucks stashed away as you're nearing the end of life, maybe it's worth the risk. Maybe, but right now the frog poison is sounding a little more attractive. It's more enlightening in the here and now, for sure. You can follow Ashley Vance on Twitter. Definitely check out his video series, Hello World. You can find it on Bloomberg.com. And you can pick up a copy of the New York Times bestseller,

Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future. Ashley, always good to talk to you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Coming up, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. All right, before we get to the stocks on our radar, quick thanks to Molecule, the world's first molecular air purifier that reduces symptoms for allergy and asthma sufferers.

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based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio once again with Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Ron Gross. You can listen to past episodes of this show and all of The Motley Fool's podcasts, just go to podcasts.fool.com. And By the way, earlier in the show, we talked about Tilray. Our Industry Focus podcast actually has a bonus episode this weekend, and it's all about Tilray, so check that out. First quarter profits for Darden Restaurants came in higher than expected. Darden is the parent company of Longhorn Steakhouse, Capital Grill, and, of course, Olive Garden. Darden shares falling a little bit, Ron. This was a good quarter.

It's a very strong report. As you say, they beat on both sales and earnings, so that strong. The one dark spot is that Cheddar Scratch ain't making no scratch. Same-store sales for that chain down 4%. But overall, the blended same-store restaurant sales increase was 3.3%, with Olive Garden, of course, leading the way at 5.3% comp sale increase. So, I think things are going well. Labor costs are higher. They are pretty much across the board. That's not surprising. But they did see a drop in food marketing and other restaurant costs, which helped to offset it. They raised guidance. Very strong report. Let's go to our man behind the glass, Steve Broido. Steve, before we get to the

stocks on our radar, how much credit would you like to claim personally for Darden Restaurant's strong quarter? I did eat there yesterday, and I'm not kidding. It was delicious. The thing is, I get a lot of gift cards, because people think I love the Olive Garden, because I do love the Olive Garden. So, I came with three gift cards. I was like, I don't know how much money is on these, and I got a free meal. It was great. That's fantastic. So, that's going to show up in next quarter. Next quarter, yeah. You're welcome, shareholders. Let's get to the stocks on our radar, and Steve will

hit you with a question. Ron, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm going to go back to Oaktree Capital, OAK. This is a stock that has not done well. Year-to-date down 6%. That's because they are an alternative asset manager that just, quite frankly, does not do well in this extended bull market. They work on distressed investments and investments that typically don't really go up in this type of a market. So, their time will come, though. They have a stellar track record. They have a dividend in excess of 5%. And when things finally go down, they will benefit. Steve, question about Oaktree Capital?

If you were to give the elevator pitch for Oaktree, what would it be? Long-term stellar track record that will eventually benefit when the cycle turns. Jason Moser, what are you looking at this week? Yeah, in the spirit of the Ryder Cup, which starts next Friday, looking a little bit more closely at Callaway Golf, ticker ELY. I've, for the most part, just eschewed investing in golf altogether, just with my experience in the business. It's just not the highest margin game. But I'm actually more interested in Callaway's minority stake in Topgolf, which is the driving range concept that marries hitting golf balls with the social

dynamic as well. You meet your friends there for food, drinks, they have sports on TV and whatnot. There are around 41 top golfs today. The goal is to open another 100 here domestically as well as 100 internationally. Already very profitable, and Callaway has about a 14% minority stake in it, and they intend to continue investing in it. So, you know, hey, it's got my attention. Steve, question about Callaway Golf. Do people buy golf clubs online, or is this something you need to really touch and feel and buy this, you know, hold onto the thing to make the purchase? That's a good question. A lot of people do buy them online, but club-fitting today is more popular than ever before. So, most

people who are serious about the game typically go get fit for clubs before they buy them. So, that means Jason doesn't buy online. That's what I take from that. Matt Argersinger, what are you looking at this week? I'm going with Disney, ticker DIS. We talked about it earlier in the show. The Fox acquisition is probably going to happen. It's going to muddy the waters a little bit. But ultimately, I think you have what was already the premier entertainment company in the world, but even by far now the premier entertainment company in the world. I really applaud Bob Iger a year ago for really essentially going all-in on streaming and really shifting

the direction of the company. It was bold. We're seeing a little bit of traction now finally with that. So, I think the table might have turned for them. Stock trades for less than 15X earnings. I just don't think that lasts very long with a company like Disney. Steve, question about Disney? What was going on with that Han Solo movie? Can someone tell me that was in the theaters and then 10 days later it was gone? What happened? Yeah, you know, I actually didn't see the movie. Well, there you go.

That's the problem. No one else did either. That's right. Can't explain it. Disney, Callaway Golf, Oak Tree Capital. You got a stock you want to add to your watch list, Steve? I might go golfing. Hey, now.

All right. Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, Ron Gross. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks, Chris. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Fool Money. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.