Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Amazon Up, Walgreens, Nike & McPlant Down

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Amazon joins the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Alphabet above $2T. Who is least likely to stay there? (00:21) Jason Moser and Bill Mann discuss: - Tips for playing the long game with the 2024 election cycle ramping up - Amazon joining the $2T club, and which member is most likely to experience a big fall. - Disappointing earnings for Walgreen’s and Nike, while McCormick keeps business zesty. (19:11) Author Nicola Twilley talks about her new book Frostbite, the development of modern refrigeration, and what its evolution can teach us about the development of other technologies today. (31:22) Jason and Bill break down two stocks on their radar: Disney and Itron. Stocks discussed: AMZN, RMD, WBA, NKE, NVDA, DIS, ITRI Host: Dylan Lewis Guests: Jason Moser, Bill Mann, Nicola Twilley, Ricky Mulvey Engineers: Tim Sparks, Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From morning hockey with a cup of coffee to Timbits and road trips, Tim's and Canadian Tire have always gone together. Now it's official. You can now earn Canadian Tire money at Tim's. Link your Triangle Rewards and Tim's Rewards accounts to earn twice with every Tim's run. Terms and conditions apply. Visit timhordens.ca slash triangle for details. We've got a message for investors in 2024 and a new company crossing the $2 trillion mark.

This week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show 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 Dylan Lewis. Joining me over the airwaves, Motley Fool Senior Analysts Bill Mann and Jason Moser. Fools, great to have you both here.

Hey, hey. Good to see you, Dylan. We've got a rundown on the history of refrigeration, some big earnings moves, and of course, stocks on our radar. We're going to kick off with some of the biggest stories of the week, though, and maybe starting off with the most unavoidable one. Last night was the first 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta. We're going to put politics on the side here and just acknowledge it's an election year and much ink is going to be spilled on that over the next few days, weeks, and months. Bill, we know the market likes predictability.

Elections are not exactly predictable. What do you want listeners to have in mind as we look out to the back half of the year and are processing a lot of election-based news? And 2024, I think, will be even much less predictable, particularly after some of the wake from last night's performance. You know, I say this every four years, and every four years, people get really angry with me for making this point. But the market and our economy has survived really, really bad and really, really great administrations in the past. I don't put as much weight into who is sitting in the Oval Office in terms of the performance of either the markets

or the economy, as a lot of people do. There are huge cycles at play. I think most people who watched the debates probably came away with something that was somewhere in between disgust in terror. And, you know, I felt the same. We have survived all sorts of, you know, of administrations. This is a land of rule of law and regulations and not power. I think we will ultimately be just fine, although it's going to be an interesting six months. Jason, what about you? What is your message to voters, or should I say investors, those who vote with their dollars as they look out over the next six months. I like that. Investors more. I would imagine most voters came away from this more firmly entrenched in their opinion than when they went

in. I think for investors, the thing that really came to mind immediately was just that the market in the short term is a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing machine. That old saw that Ben Graham gave us. We've seen so many greats use it. Jeff Bezos stands out as one. It's about taking that longer-term view. Bill really hit on something there. There is plenty of data out there that shows you that our economy, that we as a nation, have prospered under both kinds of administrations, really, and everything in between. We've seen great performance and poor performance across the aisle. I think that's something just to keep in mind there. Now, I do recognize that this election cycle, and I think this is important to note,

there is more uncertainty and there are more potential outcomes at this point than we probably have ever seen in any election cycle in our lives. And so, yeah, we will see a lot of ink spilled here in the coming weeks and months. And I would just encourage investors to not let those headlines cause hasty or irrational decisions. Because, yeah, I think at the end of the day, we're going to continue to move forward regardless of the results, and I think things will be okay. Yeah, not to sound too Pollyanna-ish, but the U.S. economy is one of the most resilient economic machines that's ever been devised. It's really, really hard to screw it up. A piece of that resilient economic machine celebrating a major milestone this week,

We have a new entrant to the $2 trillion club, Amazon joining Alphabet, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple as one of the only companies to hit the milestone. Jason, it feels like kind of a nice opportunity for us to reflect on Amazon, the business here, because I think that they have managed time and time again in this climb to $2 trillion to embody the nature of whatever got you here will not get you there and have been an incredibly flexible business. Well, it is, after all. It started out as just a purveyor of books, right? Jeff Bezos was just out there trying to more or less democratize the book market. And lo and behold, look where we are

today. This is a company now, that valuation, incidentally, represents $8,700 per Prime member in market capitalization, something like 230 million Prime members at this point. And I mean, that's that's hey, listen, I feel I feel from the man household that feels about right. Yeah. From our household, it feels about right, too. But I think, you know, when you look at Amazon today, I mean, you've got a business that reported close to 50 billion dollars, billion dollars in advertising revenue alone in 2023. You go out, it is 2020. It wasn't even its own explicit line item on the earnings report. We've talked ad nauseum about AWS and that opportunity, $90-plus billion in revenue in 2023, and no signs of slowing down, clearly capturing a lot of this AI opportunity.

And to boot, I think the CEO transition has been just a total success. It's really hard to argue that it's not worked out well. So, you've got a lot going for this company right now, and it sounds like Andy Jassy is going to be steering this thing for a good while to come. And so far, so good. Listen, I mean, it was September 4th, 2018 when it crossed $1 trillion. I think we're going to see $3 trillion here in the blink of an eye. I'm going to throw an intentionally hard question at you and revisit that $1 trillion milestone a little bit. I mentioned the five companies to top $2 trillion, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia,

Alphabet, Amazon. Bill, if I were to say five years from now, one of them is a sub $1 trillion company. Which one is it? Oh, no. You're really going through, are you? Okay. I'm going to hate this answer, but I'm going to give it anyway. I think the answer of those is actually NVIDIA. And the reason why I think that, it's not so much, hey, it's gone up so much, but right now NVIDIA has a lower revenue base than Accenture. And Accenture is a sub $200 billion company. So you're talking about something that is 9% the size of NVIDIA. there is so much that is being based on things that are not yet in evidence for NVIDIA that you having come up with this absolutely horrible exercise, that's the one I'm going to have to go

with. It's a thought exercise, Bill. It's not a prediction. I just want to give you guys something to play with here. It's mean. I was told there would be no meanness here. Jason, I'm going to ask you to respond to my meanness. Which one is going below $1 trillion? I mean, I'd probably wager none of them. But I think Bill strikes some important points there. And I will throw in there, I do think that we should at least acknowledge NVIDIA's ascent here over the last five years. I mean, it's up better than 3,000% over the last five years. Now, of all of these companies that we mentioned, the next closest competitor there, it's Apple at 343%. So, it just goes to show you, if you think about that hype cycle,

I mean, AI is going to be something that will follow that hype cycle to some extent, right? Are we at the peak of inflated expectations? Maybe. I mean, what if we hit some trough of disillusionment at some point? What's going to be the company that feels that the most? I don't know, but it seems reasonable to expect that there could be some type of correction in NVIDIA's share price. But I wouldn't say that would be something to have longer-term implications on the business. It's still a very good business. All right, we're going to wrap this segment talking through another one of the hottest markets in 2024. Bill, ever since the weight loss management drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have hit the market and consumers have started

using them, there has been a ton of speculation about some of the industries that they may affect outside of pharmaceuticals. This week, we got a look at one potential avenue for disruption. Shares of medtech company ResMed down as much as 10% this week after studies of Eli Lilly's ZepBound showing the drug may help reduce the severity of sleep apnea. ResMed is in the business of treating sleep apnea. Bill, how are you processing this news? ResMed is the leading producer of CPAP machines. They're sleep apnea airway machines. They are directly in the path of the GLP-1 drug companies. They are definitely not Eli Lilly proof. The data that came out of this ZEPP-bound weight loss treatment study was astounding. It reduced sleep apnea by almost 63%

and a large number of the people who were in the trial said they no longer had sleep apnea. Now, the interesting thing about this is that for ResMed, GLP-1 drugs have actually been around for a while, and there has not been a reduction in the revenues at ResMed. They've continued to see a growth in sales. And longer term, I do wonder that the part of the science that we don't know yet, which is, what is it going to be like for people to be taking GLP-1 drugs chronically over a very long period of time? We don't really have data yet. So, I think that investors are right to be nervous. I feel like this is pretty much overblown, given the evidence that we have now.

All right. Coming up after the break, we've got a down outlook on two huge brands in retail. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. You just found out that your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic. Just ask Rippling AI. Since it's built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting-ready dashboard showing quota attainment,

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to rippling.ai slash fool to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot A-I slash F-O-O-L. Sign up for exclusive access today, rippling.ai slash fool. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined on the air by Bill Mann and Jason Moser. Next wave of earnings kicked off this week and some big movers on quarterly updates for us to go through. First up, shares of Walgreens down over 20% this week following the company's earnings that were below expectations. The company also reduced its outlook for the year and signaled that it will be interested in closing some of its 8,600 locations.

Bill, what is going on at Walgreens? I am not so old that I don't remember when Walgreens was being described by Charlie Munger as being one of the best retailers in America. What you're seeing now is a continuation of a process that's already starting. They actually came out and said that 25% of their stores are at risk of being closed. It won't be that number that they are closing, but they are considering 25% of them to be underperforming. They've already closed almost 500 stores since February, and they're stepping away from VillageMD, which was their primary care, the offices, the minute clinics that you see in Walgreens. So they're in the middle of a huge retrenchment. And the biggest problem for them is, once again,

Amazon and a lot of the other online pharmacies that are taking foot traffic away from Walgreens because it's the front of store. You go in and you fill a prescription, and then you also buy things in front of store, which are very high margin for this company. So they've got some problems that they need to solve. I am confident that Walgreens will be able to do so, though, in time. One of the interesting things I saw in the earnings results and some of the commentary from management, we were just talking about the impact of the GLP-1 drugs. CEO Tim Wentworth noted they are losing money on the pharmacy-filling prescriptions for those GLP-1 drugs, so the impact of them being felt within their own industry, in addition to some of the ancillary

industries. Jason, anything to add on the Walgreens side? Yeah. Just to reiterate something Bill said, I mean, a quote from Tim Wentworth said, 75% of our stores drive 100% of our profitability today. So, clearly, they have a real estate problem, right? They are going to be closing down some underperforming. This is a company that needs to right-size the business. And then, just the general state of the consumer, I mean, he noted, and I quote, the consumer is absolutely stunned by the absolute prices of things. I think it just goes to say that perhaps the consumer is not in as good a place as we could be hearing these days. Sticking with the downbeat earnings theme, shares of Nike down over 10% following earnings Thursday after the bell. Jason, results came in

ahead of expectations on the bottom line, but the company fell short on revenue and on outlook for the year. You were just talking about the state of the consumer. Are we seeing that show up in Nike's results as well? Partly, and partly this is the result of some missteps from management. We talked a little bit about last quarter, and I'll talk to that in a minute here. But, I mean, I guess ultimately, we just say, for Nike, this is a marathon and not a sprint. It's going to take a little time to get this thing going back in the right direction. And this was a quarter that, to me, very much rhymed with their last report. And back to that misstep, there was this intentional move to more Nike Direct that they made,

and that's really been a bit stifling. Nike Direct revenue for the quarter down 8%. Obviously, a problem. They saw fourth quarter revenue down essentially flat. Then their wholesale revenue, which is where they're taking the business back to as they try to correct that Nike Direct misstep. Wholesale revenue up 8% on a currency-neutral basis. That's encouraging. But again, your point, the guidance, when a company ratchets back the way they did, you have to expect the market to take a different perspective and offer a new valuation on the stock. And that's exactly what's happened today. Bill, what are your thoughts on what we saw from the Greek goddess of victory?

There was no win. Those results were awful. They were so awful that the cynic in me wonders a little bit whether they kitchen-synced all of their problems. Just throw it all in, get it out of the way, and so they can, next time around, show some improvements. I'm only saying that because it's been done in the past. We can dump on it all over Nike. They were never going to turn the company around in a single quarter. It was not going to happen. The competitive pressures for Nike are as strong as they have been since the days when it seemed like Under Armor was ascendant. They are basically out of trend right now. Athleisure is beating workwear, And so that's Lululemon, that's On Holdings, that's Adidas. I feel like it'll come back.

Fashion is a funny thing. It does cycle and it cycles in a way that a lot of times people can't predict. I did think it was interesting by my count in the conference call, a Nike executive used the word innovation 47 times. You have to innovate, obviously. That's how you get out of those issues, Bill. Got to super-innovate 47 times. We're going to wrap with a look at McCormick. It came up last week on the show as Bill's radar stock. But Jason, we couldn't talk McCormick without bringing your name up as well. I'm going to go to you first on the earnings take here. The company's up around 5% on earnings. What did you see? Yeah. All things considered,

it was a respectable quarter. I think we've seen enough evidence that the consumer is in a tough spot right now. I mean, that's another theme that was reiterated here in McCormick's call. But it's not a McCormick-specific problem. I mean, this is something that's really been playing out on a lot of CPG-related companies. And they just kind of need to tread water right now. They can only pass through so much on pricing. But again, I think it's encouraging, reaffirming their guidance for this fiscal year. They did note in the flavor solution side of the business, which is that commercial side, some lower demand from quick service restaurants and packaged food customers, which is interesting because you're seeing that dynamic play where

people are trying to figure out, okay, where can I get the best value here? Is it going out to dinner or is it cooking dinner at home? And what we're seeing is that a lot of folks, and I think we'll talk about this a little bit later, we're seeing the quick service restaurants, your fast food restaurants, maybe having a little moment here focusing more on the value. Let's focus on the really important stuff here, Dylan. I mean, we're talking about 2024. McCormick is launching nearly four times more grilling rubs and seasonings compared to 2023. And importantly, the grilling season of 2024 is off to a great start. That's all I needed to hear. I leave assured. I will never short the grilling market. Bill, now that Jason has gotten his contractually

obligated first take on McCormick out of the way, what did you see? I'm not sure that I should speak on it at all since last week I was accused of stolen valor for even bringing it up outside of Jason's presence. I'm going to defer to the grill master and simply point out that much more of McCormick's business comes from the restaurant channel than we maybe think. We think of all the spices that are in our cabinets. That is huge margin business for them, and it has struggled almost across the board. It will cycle back. All right, Bill, Jason, we're going to see you guys a little bit later in the show. up next we've got a look at the history of refrigeration stay right here you're listening

to Motley Fool Money It makes me wonder if I've ever had to knock on wood And I'm glad I haven't yet Because I'm sure it isn't good Let's see the pressure that I get Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Dylan Lewis. If you're stepping inside after working out in the yard or coming home after a run this time of year,

you're probably heading to the fridge for something to cool you down. It seems obvious now, but the road to refrigeration in the home was not a slam dunk from the start. Cold storage went through all the same cycles as most new technologies, from full dismissal to misuse and abuse. Author Nicola Twilley's new book, Frostbite, details modern refrigeration. This week, Motley Fool Money's Ricky Mulvey caught up with her about the history and what its evolution can teach us about the development of other technologies today. Nicola Twilley's book is Frostbite, How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet,

and Ourselves. She's also the host of Gastropod, a podcast I enjoy, and a contributor to The New Yorker. Thanks for joining us on Motley Fool Money. Thanks for having me. Your book follows the history of refrigeration. I think it's relevant to investors because there was a hype cycle involved. And for a retail investor listening, you're going to consistently see hype cycles. The one we are contractually obligated to mention is artificial intelligence. Refrigeration follows a general hype cycle in an interesting way and also breaks from it because as the technology rose, there was still a lot of distrust in it. But let's go through the hype cycle with refrigeration. What was the technology trigger? What triggered the interest

in mechanical refrigeration and not just sending things around in ships and ice boxes? Well, there are a couple of things there that triggered the interest. So first of all, our waterways were getting more polluted. So the ice trade was doing great. But unfortunately, as cities grew, and before we had the sort of water treatment that we have now or the EPA or any of those pesky things that try and keep our water clean, the waterways for harvesting that ice were filthy and people were getting sick. So there was a real trigger there, but actually the sort of overall motivator was one, cities were getting bigger. And when cities are big, they were bigger than they'd ever been in history and they need to be fed. And it was increasingly

a problem of how to do that. You know, there were complaints, you know, 3000 pigs living in Kensington, London, you know, trying to herd flocks of turkeys into Philadelphia to be killed. Because how did you get your meat? It had to be walked into town and slaughtered there for you to eat because it couldn't be shipped under refrigeration. So that was an issue. The other thing is, honestly, a scientific mistake. So chemists at the time had discovered protein. They were all excited about protein. And they had mistakenly concluded that protein was the only nutrient that people needed to be strong and work. Carbohydrate was just like a fancy extra. They hadn't discovered vitamins at all. So good luck to you on produce. But they were like,

protein is it. And protein in their minds came from meat and dairy, flesh forming foods. So they weren't like, great, let's all eat lentils. They were like, wow, we really need to eat more meat. If we are to have strong workers in our cities, we have this meat famine. And so that was the real urge. And it was a crisis at the time in the early 1800s, you know, the finest minds in science were engaged on this question of how do we get this flesh forming food to our urban dwellers so that they can be strong and productive. And people were thinking about fumigation and coatings and drying meat and shredding it into little kind of like whole wheat shreddies that you could rehydrate and compressing it into little pills and powders. There were all sorts of solutions.

And actually, cold was thought to be the least practical of them all because no one had figured out how to do it at scale mechanically. At the time, they were just thinking, oh, we have to use ice. And natural ice is just too ephemeral and can't be scaled up. So that was sort of what triggered it and led to people actually finally figuring out how to make cold on demand and eventually shrink it a little. The first refrigeration machines were these steam-powered behemoths that just went up in flames all the time. With electrification, they were able to be shrunk and become a little more reliable. It's easy to take our refrigerators for granted, but they were incredibly unreliable. And before then you would have had tremendous gambles being

placed on shipping various produce or meat to different sides of the country and the world, hoping that it doesn't melt before it gets there. So was it just the technological failures as to why the idea of mechanical refrigeration was dismissed? Was it that or was there more to the story? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, first of all, literally no one thought it was possible. Cold, this is one of the things that I think is so remarkable about this. You know, humans have had control of fire for millennia. People argue it's one of the things that made us human. We have had control over cold for a couple hundred years max. It was sort of discovered by accident as a party trick by a Scottish professor how to use what is a chemical known as a refrigerant

to actually create cold on demand. And for a century after he discovered it, everyone ignored that and didn't think that cold could ever be mechanized and at scale. And it really wasn't until this global ice trade took off that people thought, you know what, cold is useful. And if we could figure out a way to do it at scale, it would be handy. And a lot of people had taken a lot of time at that point. So American entrepreneurs like Gustavus Swift of Swift Meat Company in Chicago, I mean, he invested enormous amounts of time and money trying to ship meat using ice from Chicago to New York. Eventually succeeded, not before he had had to dump, I mean, train car after train car into the Fall River in Boston after it arrived completely rotten. He lost a lot of money on the way.

so it was the people trying to use ice to deliver meat and dairy at scale who really gave the impetus to the sort of and honestly they were pretty oddball inventors one was an Australian journalist there was a Florida physician I mean they're these are the they're they're just kind of random individuals who kind of just built their own steampunk machines and made it work And those early machines, I mean, they're uninsurable, they're unreliable. People would ship meat from, say, Argentina to Paris and the whole thing would go rotten en route because the machine broke down. So it was people died, people committed suicide when they lost all their money. It was a troubled beginning for the industry, for sure. Yeah. I think if we look, if we continue

the theme of the hype cycle. The things that seem to switch are the peak of inflated expectations where people are very excited about this new technology and the trough of disillusionment. So usually there's a huge amount of excitement and interest, and then people immediately lose interest and they say, we were way too excited about this. With refrigeration technology, it seems that that switched because there was so much distrust in eating produce that had been you know, sitting around for a while. It couldn't possibly be fresh. I think that's the most interesting thing about this is because nowadays it's the exact opposite. People don't trust that food is fresh if it hasn't been refrigerated. And if it's been out

of the fridge for a couple of hours, they're not sure it's good anymore. But it was literally the exact opposite. In 1911, the dairy poultry and egg warehouse men got together to hold a promotional cold storage banquet to try to convince Americans that they could eat refrigerated food and not die. You know, there was editorials in the Journal of the American Medical Association being like, this proves nothing, you know, cold stored food is still deadly. And honestly, at the time, it kind of was because, and this is the aspect of the hype cycle where there are these inflated expectations, food warehouse men and food wholesalers saw this new technology and were like, great, immortal life for food. I can take something out in the morning. I can have it out

all day. And if it doesn't sell, I'll just put it in the refrigerator and it will be good the next day. So there are headlines from the time, there is no death, only cold storage. Food was sort of being stored for much longer than it should have been in ways that we now know aren't safe at all. And no one had done the scientific research to figure out, okay, how long will refrigeration really keep food good? And what temperature do things need to be at? And any of that didn't exist. Those mistakes also led to a lot of distrust because things spoiled, people got sick. what did it take for what did it take for folks to eventually trust and rely on refrigeration particularly in the western world yeah i mean people at first were just like well i don't i

mean i don't know how am i supposed to know that this chicken previously if you'd bought a chicken and it looked like it was freshly slaughtered it was freshly slaughtered and now if you bought a chicken it could have been slaughtered six months ago a year ago you had no idea and you had to trust and people didn't trust. And there were a lot of foodborne illnesses associated with chilled foods. And so what it really took actually was government regulation. The government hired this rockstar scientist, a woman, which is very, very unusual at the time. Her name was Polly Pennington. She had got herself a degree in chemistry against all the odds. The University of Pennsylvania was refusing to let her do a PhD and she kind of finagled her way in.

She set herself up in business and she is the one who made refrigeration scientific. She traveled around the country. She worked out, you know, the answer to the questions like how long does a chicken stay good in cold storage and what temperature should you keep it at and how much ice do you need in your rail car to keep it at that temperature and so on. And she is the one who restored that, or really not restored, created that trust in refrigeration. The end of her life, she sort of said, this is my legacy. People now trust that refrigerated food is safe. And so that's what it took.

Listeners, we'll be airing more of Ricky's conversation with Nicola Twilley this weekend on our Sunday show. You can catch it and all of our episodes in the Motley Fool Money podcast feed, wherever you listen to shows. And don't worry, no issues with bad leftovers here. Our engineer, Dan Boyd, has been keeping the tape fresh and crisper. Coming up next, Bill Mann and Jason Moser return with a couple stocks on their radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Dylan Lewis As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations

for or against, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined again by Jason Moser and Bill Mann. Gents, we've got stocks on our radar coming up in a minute. But first, as we often like to do on the show, some fun with food. We've got two great stories on McDonald's this week. First up, Bill, the McPlant is struggling. The head of McDonald's America, Joe Erlinger, noting the company's plant-based burger developed with Beyond Meat, struggled in test markets in the Bay Area and in Texas. We have not seen any developments of the McPlant. I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of the branding. I'm not all that surprised that it didn't really work out. The McPlant seems like one of the most

desultory names I think I've ever heard. I'd like a McShrub, please. Look, it's easy for meat eaters to laugh about something like this. And the results were terrible. They expected to sell 40 to 60 units per day per store in the Bay Area, where you'd think the market would be primed. They sold fewer than 20. In East Texas, it was three per day. So it was a miserable trial for them. But I always think back to one of the greatest CEOs that I've known, a woman named Cheryl Batchelder, who ran Popeyes, who once said, people don't come to Popeyes for salad. So I kind of wonder maybe if the trial was poorly conceived. Like, hey, come in and try this McPlant. People who don't go to McDonald's already are not likely to come in and do that. But if you

were to structure it as, hey, families who have a member of the family who are vegetarians, come give this a try, I feel like they would have had a much better shot. So, we're going to see it again. I hope it succeeds, but McPlant, I mean, come on. Bill, I think what I'm hearing there is a know your lane and stay in it for McDonald's. Is that right? A bit. A bit. I would say that's right. You can build a new lane, but don't just tape it on and expect people to show up. Jason, as you teased earlier, we also saw some developments from McDonald's this week indicating they might know what they need to be focusing on. The company coming out with a $5 value meal in an attempt to reach more value-oriented

customers. For $5, you get a sandwich, small fry, four-piece McNugget, and a small drink. A little bit more in what I would expect to be getting from McDonald's. Yeah, yeah. I mean, speaking of sticking to your knitting, I mean, this is something that McDonald's at Owl are very, very good at, presenting value. I think this is going to be their moment to shine. As we've seen with many of these consumer packaged goods companies and retail in general, we're just seeing that trend go on, where the consumer is facing headwinds

and having to make choices and trade-offs. I think that McCormick call was noteworthy there, in that consumers are really starting to focus on value at the grocery store as well as restaurants. Typically, what that means is your quick service, your true fast food restaurants are going to have a little bit more of a moment in the sun. I absolutely commend these restaurants on taking advantage of this moment in time. By the same token, we don't eat a lot of fast food. Obviously, the longer-term implications on health, I don't know that you want to be taking your family out for McDonald's or Burger King or Wendy's three, four, five times a week. So so maybe that's a problem. But, you know, at least they're taking advantage of this little window they've got. I will say, you know, it's the summertime. I'm doing a decent number of drives up I-95 and up the Garden State Parkway going up to visit New Jersey.

I've made some stops into the fast food restaurants along the way. Not thrilled to be dropping fifteen dollars at Wendy's at the rest stop for a burger and a meal. So I welcome the five dollar menu options. I hope we see more of them. It's a little sticker shock. I hope we see more of that Wendy's dreamsicle frosting, because that thing is fire. More menu innovation. Never bet against it. Let's get over to stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, as always, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. Bill, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? My company is a microcap that maybe you all have never heard of before. It's called Disney.

And Disney has, yeah, I don't know if you know this, they've got parks, they've got movies, they've got ESPN. What they really have had over the last couple of years is trouble. They have almost no part of the business has been firing well, except for actually maybe the theme parks, oddly enough. They have a legitimate blockbuster on their hands in the movie studios with Inside Out 2. They've had a resolution of a lot of their political arguments with the state of Florida. And they're in the process of revamping the park ride reservation process. So I sense from Disney and the Disney shares that people have extrapolated a whole lot of the trouble. And Disney is starting, at least in parts of their business, to see green shoots and is coming out on the other side.

Dan, a question about Disney. More of a comment, Dylan. And Bill, I have a toddler and my wife is pregnant with our second due in October, and she's starting to make noise about going to Disney World. And I am terrified. I've never been never wanted to go. And I know I don't want to drop that much money. Start saving now because you're going to Disney. That's going to be a new banking product, I think, in the next couple of years. The Disney savings account just just to put the money there. So it's there when you know your child is five or six. All right, Jason, what is on your radar this week?

Yeah, a company called iTron, ticker is I-T-R-I. And iTron, they have a portfolio of smart networks, software services, devices, and sensors that help their customers better manage operations in the energy, water, and smart city space. So, you think about their customers, those are primarily large electric, natural gas, and water utilities, as well as smaller utilities. But those offerings ultimately help these companies take advantage of this industrial internet of things, right? All of these devices and networks and things are all being connected and transmitting all of this data all the time. We talk about AI, the benefits there of running things more efficiently. And this is just really right up Itron's alley there. 60% of the

business is thanks to its network solution segment. That's a combination of communicating devices like smart meters, modules, and sensors, as well as network infrastructure and software. An interesting business as we start to see our nation's energy needs expand. Dan, a question or a comment about Itron? You might think that Disney might be the flashier choice here and get my nod, and this could be a wild statement here, but I think that infrastructure and water and utilities might be a little bit more important than Disney these days. All right. Disney, you're going to have to wait. That little microcap might grow up to be a big company someday, but not today. Dan, appreciate you weighing in, putting

Itron on your watch list. Jason, Bill, appreciate you bringing your radar stocks in your analysis, as always. That's going to do it for this week's Motley Fool Money radio show. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Dylan Lewis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you.