Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Fed Warnings, Stock Worries, and Mark Cuban
Episode Date: June 12, 2020The market tumbles as the Fed Chairman warns the recovery might take a couple of years. Adobe hits an all-time high on record revenue. Lululemon slips on earnings. Starbucks closes some locations in t...he U.S. and Canada. Five Below hangs in. Chewy delivers. Grubhub snubs Uber. And Hertz revs up on news that the bankrupt rental car company is attempting to offer a billion dollars in stock. Analysts Ron Gross and Jason Moser discuss those stories and share two stocks on their radar: Fastly and Globus Medical. Plus, Motley Fool CEO Tom Gardner and analyst Abi Malin talk with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about the future of sports, the future of work, and the value of money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.
People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,
and two out of three women rocked the Rachel.
While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get
when WestJet welcomes you on board.
Here's to WestJetting since 96.
Travel back in time with us, and actually travel with us, at westjet.com slash 30 years.
everybody needs money that's why they call it money
from fool global headquarters this is motley fool money it's the motley fool money radio show i'm
chris hill joining me this week jason moser and ron gross good to see you gentlemen hey you doing
Chris. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We will get into the shark tank with our
guest, Mark Cuban. As always, we've got some stocks on our radar, but we begin with the market
in general. The stock markets rise over the past month, hit a speed bump on Thursday when all the
major indices fell more than 5%. Coincidentally or not, this was the day after Federal Reserve
Chief Jay Powell, gave a press conference and was candid about his belief that economic recovery in
America will take a couple of years. Ron, I got to be honest, I was a little surprised to see the
reaction in the market. I know it wasn't just all in response to Powell's comments, but he didn't
really say anything that sounded outrageous to me. No, I think we're seeing two related things
unfold. We're seeing COVID cases increase as we reopen our economy. And then, as you say,
at the same time, we saw a J-PAL of the Fed come out and say the recovery is going to be long
and slow. So, I think those two things caused investors to say, well, listen, the market has
had quite the recovery. Those institutional investors out there that are more day traders
than us fools say, I'm going to take some money off the table. I'm not feeling so good about this.
the Fed is saying interest rates will be near zero through at least 2022, which, by the way,
sometimes the market loves to hear, and sometimes the market gets nervous about hearing things like
that. And on any given day, you can pick which reaction investors will have. But I also heard
some good things coming out of the Fed, like GDP will be 5% in 2021, they think. Unemployment will
be down to 5.5% in 2022. These are relatively reassuring data points if, of course, they're
able to predict the future, which we know they certainly can't. But listen, some money came off
the table. It's been quite a run. The markets were actually up at some point over the last five days
or so. Now we're back down. But the recovery still, I think, is intact. But let's take a
measured approach, folks. Jason, what do you think?
You know, I mean, I don't feel like it's a big leap to get to this point where we feel like,
okay, COVID-19 cases will increase as we reopen the economy and the recovery is going to take
a long time. I mean, I feel like we've been saying this ever since this really started,
right? I mean, that to me is really nothing new. So, you know, I mean, I take big sell-offs like
yesterday, obviously, with a grain of salt. I mean, it certainly is going to be a while
until we get back on firmer footing. And there's no question that we're not through the coronavirus
situation yet. I mean, that's just, we're going to have to figure out how to live in a world where
this exists for some time to come. And there was, you know, I saw a point made earlier,
Secretary Mnuchin said, there's no way we can shut the economy down. Like, again, right? I mean,
if COVID-19 cases do start getting a little bit more out of hand, it doesn't necessarily mean
they're going to be able to go back there and just shut down the economy. And I think he's right to
say that, because you have to start weighing the cost versus the benefits. And yes, clearly,
there's a public health issue here. But when you think about how connected everything is
when you shut down an economy and the livelihoods that you impact there, and we've already seen,
while there are certainly some good intentions from our government in trying to help people
keep their heads above water, that's way easier said than done. So, you know, I think that we
are just going to be living in a world here where COVID-19 is a concern until we, you know,
come up with treatments and or a vaccine, I think that it's fair to assume that the economy is going
to take a little bit longer to recover than perhaps maybe we anticipated. And that will
probably play out in market volatility. But it certainly, to me, does not mean investors should
be hanging on the sidelines. My guess is that if we come upon a time, and I hope we don't,
but if we come upon a time where the hospitals start to get overrun again, and our first
responders are overrun again, and people start to get nervous that if they get COVID, they won't be
able to get a ventilator, or they won't be able to readily access the hospital. I think lots of
folks are going to go, oh, I went a little too far too fast, and I'm going back home, I'm putting on
my mask, and things are going to slow again, which I hope it doesn't get to that. Looks to me like
it could end up getting to that, certainly in certain pockets. We're already seeing it in
certain states, certain municipalities. So, again, we're going to watch this play out. And
the economy, obviously, will be greatly affected by whatever the virus ends up deciding to do.
Let's get to some company news and shares of Adobe hitting an all-time high on Friday
after the software company posted record revenue in the second quarter.
Jason, Adobe must be selling a lot of PDFs.
Hey, man, I'm feeling really good about building this position during that short-lived bear market.
This was a company I had on my radar for a while.
And, you know, when we think about the strongest businesses out there and companies that just have a stranglehold on a massive market
and continue to iterate and bring more to the table, I mean, Adobe is at the top of the list for me.
And CEO Shantanu Narayan said on the call, I think this was a good quote, he said,
great companies are defined by how they lead through adversity.
we've successfully navigated several crises and have always used them as a catalyst to make
strategic and structural change to emerge stronger. And I think the numbers certainly bear that out
as we talk about this shift, this tectonic shift towards all things digital. I mean,
it was a strong quarter, top lineup, 14% on strong digital media performance,
annualized recurring revenue up across all three segments of the business, document cloud revenue,
which I think is a really interesting part of the business. That's kind of a competitor
to what DocuSign offers. That document cloud revenue was $360 million, up 22%. They're going
to continue to ramp up investments in that side of the business. I think all things told, what
you have here is a market-leading company in a very good position balance sheet-wise. The business
model enables just really attractive margins. We're talking about 90% plus gross margins there.
and in 90% of its business is subscription related. So we talk about this move towards
the digital economy. Adobe is definitely one of the companies leading us there.
The market's reaction makes sense. And I think share owners of the stock today should feel very
good. Shares of Lululemon Athletica down 8% this week. Overall revenue fell 17% in the first
quarter. Although Ron, and we've seen this from a lot of retailers, online sales, definitely the
bright spot. Yeah, this is a rare miss for Lulu, but it's almost like, how can you fault them?
It's possible that the analyst expectations were just too frothy. It's not that Lulu didn't really
perform. As you said, revenue down 17%, but all stores were closed, obviously, for a decent
part of the quarter. But the app and website sales, as you mentioned, up 70%. So a very robust
part of their business there, that was 54% of total revenue, where it normally is about
half, about 27% of revenue. So, you saw that spike, certainly, both absolutely and relative
to total revenue. Those direct sales up 170% in Europe, 150% in Australia, so really strong overseas.
Interestingly, they didn't give any comp store data, which I certainly can understand why,
If you have stores closed, the data doesn't make that much sense, but yet, I do see most
retailers still providing that data.
So, just a little bit interesting note that they decided not to, not surprisingly, both
gross margins, operating margins were down, earnings per share down 70%, again, no fault
of their own, but they began to reopen as of May 3rd, 295 stores out of their 489 or
so, were open as of June 10th. All China-based stores are now open. So, I think they'll get
back on track, of course, depending on what happens with the economy going forward. And
as all retailers are doing, they refuse to give guidance, which is no surprise there.
But that is interesting about not giving out the comp store data. And now I want to
fast-forward three months to see if they do it again, because it could just be a blip
Or it could be something that they're testing the waters on because, you know, if they don't
have to give all the information, then maybe they start ratcheting it back.
It's possible, my guess is it's a blip, but we have seen companies come out and say,
we're done with guidance, this is not just because of COVID, it doesn't make sense for
us going forward, so we'll see if there's a little bit of a shift.
This week, Starbucks announced it will be closing up to 400 locations in the U.S.
and another 200 in Canada.
Jason, they also updated guidance and said they're going to take a $3 billion hit in
the third quarter. Yeah. I think it's fair. We were talking
about this earlier in the week regarding what the Starbucks of the future looks like. I
think the Starbucks of the coming decade is going to look very different from the Starbucks
that we've grown up with. I think for investors, honestly, and for consumers, that's a good
thing. We've always talked about that notion of the third place, the work and home and
that other place where you can go to kind of feel comfortable and get some work done.
And Starbucks was built on that notion for a long time.
Now, I think we're seeing, and COVID-19 wasn't even really the catalyst here.
I think even before, what we're seeing is a consumer base that's more focused on grab-and-go, right?
I mean, we saw that COO Roz Brewer actually noted that their business was essentially over 80% grab-and-go
before we even came into this pandemic.
So, folks aren't as interested in sitting into those stores.
And that, to me, makes sense. I certainly feel that way. I definitely think our consumer behavior
has changed that way. Now, they did note they typically close around 100 company-operated
stores in North America each year. And a lot of that is due to leases expiring.
Now, going forward, whereas about one-third of Starbucks locations in the U.S. today have a
drive-thru, 60% of the locations in the pipeline will have drive-thrus going forward. So, I think
all in all, what this does, it gives them the chance to more or less right-size the cost
structure of the business for this new grab-and-go consumer. Ultimately, as investors, we have to like
that because it's still going to be the same powerful brand selling that same legally addictive
substance and coffee and the food to go with it. All in all, yeah, it does sound like they're
making a big shift. They have to evolve, and I think they're going to be able to pull it off.
I have never, not once, grabbed a book or my laptop and gone to hang out at Starbucks.
Have you guys?
I would say the only time I've ever really done that is at full HQ when we would have the fire
drills and we'd get kicked out of the building for like an hour. I'd grab my laptop and go to
one of the Starbuckses right by work and sit down for an hour so I could keep getting some stuff
done. But yeah, I just think now more and more people, they're not really looking to sit around
a restaurant for an extended period of time, particularly now when, you know, the pandemic
is requiring everybody to stay six feet apart and everything has to be cleaned and recleaned
and sanitized and whatnot. So I think this just gives them a chance to write as their cost
structure. And if they do it, you know, in a thoughtful fashion, that certainly should carry
down to the bottom line for investors at the end of the day. Coming up, the latest reminder that
it's one thing to announce a deal, but another thing to actually close the deal. Don't touch
that dial. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here
with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. First quarter results for discount retailer Five Below were
about as bad as you would think, considering the overwhelming number of Five Below locations that
were closed. But Ron, buy below stock is hanging in there a little bit better than I thought it
would. Not bad. Down 15% still year-to-date, so a little bit worse than the overall S&P 500,
which has recovered nicely. But these guys have had a nice run, significantly beating the S&P 500
over, let's just say, the last five years. So, they can take a little breather there here.
And again, with all retailers, all stores were closed as of March 20th, nothing they could do
about it. They began to reopen in late April. 90% are open as of June 9th. So, of course,
we'll continue to watch what it looks like going forward. But for the quarter, sales down 45%.
Comp sales, which they did offer, unlike Lululemon, down 52%. They lost $50 million in the quarter
versus a profit of $26 million in last year's same quarter. To shore up the balance sheet,
they increased their line of credit from $50 million to $225 million. You see this across
the board, everyone making sure they have enough cash to survive, and they gave no guidance
as all retailers are doing. They did reiterate their goal of 2,500 stores, and that's up
from about 900 today. They still see growth. Obviously, they'll have to wait this out and
then they'll get back to business. Shares of pet retailer Chewy flat over
the past week. Despite the fact that first quarter revenue looked good, and Jason, Chewy
he's doing a really nice job of growing their base of active customers.
Yeah, they are. I mean, you know, I love the pet market. It's a big market. It's got a lot
of tailwinds, it does seem now, as more folks, particularly younger generations, are taking to
pets. And, you know, when you look back to the S-1 for this company, they listed their total
market opportunity at $70 billion. I mean, frankly, with the numbers they're turning out,
I think that Chewy might just be one of the best ways to play that. The first quarter net sales
increased 46% from a year ago to $1.62 billion. They added a record 1.6 million net active
customer accounts in the first quarter. And that was double the average quarterly pace of ads in
2019. And ultimately, they ended the quarter with 15 million active customers. It was up 3.7 from
the first quarter a year ago. And the fastest acceleration that they've ever seen in the
company's history. And that makes a lot of sense, as we were shut down and e-commerce played a
bigger role. And I think that Amazon now, we're seeing that Amazon isn't necessarily the only
game in town. I think a lot of companies are jumping in there and trying to prove their
mettle in this e-commerce space, and Chewy's certainly doing that. They had that auto-ship
customer relationship there. They exceeded $1 billion for the first time in a single quarter.
And they launched a new fulfillment center in Charlotte to be able to shorten the distance
from the product to the consumer. And their customer acquisition costs are coming down
as well. That ultimately boosts margins. It's sort of comparable to what we talk about Wayfair,
right? They pay a lot to acquire those customers, so they want to keep them. And Chewy is doing
a good job of acquiring those customers and then keeping them. And that results in repeat
sales, which ultimately flows down to the bottom line. I'm just really impressed with
what these guys are doing. And based on what I've seen from Amazon over the past couple
of months during this pandemic, while they're doing an okay job, it's certainly not the
Amazon that I've been used to buying from over the past several years. So, hey, listen, we've
got a couple of dogs here. I'm going to give Chewy a try and see if they can't meet my high
expectations, Chris. One month ago on this show, we talked about the news that Uber was planning
to buy Grubhub, and that is not going to happen because this week, a European delivery company
called JustEatTakeaway.com announced that it is buying Grubhub in an all-stock deal worth $7.3
billion. Ron Gross, what happened? You know, this is interesting because Takeaway and Just Eat
recently received regulatory approval for their $8 billion merger. So they got together. Now
they're going even one step further and they're trying to take out Grubhub, as you said, for over
$7 billion, where Uber was probably around mid $6 billion, $6.6 billion. So kind of upping the
ante there. We could still see another competing offer come in here. This isn't necessarily over
it'll be interesting to watch that. But this creates a pretty big company at this point,
probably be No. 2 behind Uber Eats, presence in 25 countries, 70 million active consumers.
Just Eat Takeaway shares were selling off on the deal, perhaps folks are thinking they overpaid.
Grubhub, $1.4 billion in revenue, not profitable in recent periods, but they are cash flow positive,
which is interesting, because I've never been a fan of this model. I am a big fan of using it
as a consumer, but it's tough to make money, it's tough to keep the drivers happy, so they're making
enough money. My son recently started working for DoorDash and he thinks it's great, but once he
figures that I'm not going to pay for the gas and there is depreciation on the car, the proposition
isn't as exciting. But this is going to create a pretty big company and it'll be interesting
to watch the competitive environment. How long before we know whether
Uber dodged a bullet in letting this get away or that they blew an opportunity? Do you think
we're a year from now we'll be able to call that? Two years. I'm going to give it two years
and we'll have a pretty good indication. Can I just say that other countries
seem to do a better job of naming these types of services, like DoorDash is fine, Grubhub is fine.
Justeat, that's great. Takeaway.com, great. The best one I've seen, I don't know if you
guys have seen this, Canada has a company called Skip the Dishes. That's the best name. They win.
Before I realized this was a merger, Justeat Takeaway seemed a little long for me.
All right, guys, we'll see you a little bit later in the show. On May 27th, Motley Fool CEO Tom
Gardner and senior analyst Abby Mallin got together and interviewed Mark Cuban. Part of
that conversation is next, so stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill.
Next week at our FoolFest event, one of the headlining guests was Mark Cuban. Interviewing
him were Motley Fool CEO, Tom Gardner, and Senior Analyst, Abby Mallon. Now, Mark Cuban
is an entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, but he's also one of the main shark
investors on the hit reality TV series, Shark Tank. Since Cuban is used to hearing investment
ideas, Tom Gardner decided to pitch him one of his own.
I know you get pitched on Shark Tank. Obviously, you get pitched outside of Shark Tank. Your world
is probably a Shark Tank pitch experience. You are so right, Tom.
So then we're going to introduce that concept right now. And I'm looking for you to shoot
this one full of holes because I love my bad ideas. When I look at Facebook, Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, Apple, when I look at their balance sheet and see, let's say, $450 billion plus,
I think even more than that in cash, not necessarily earning great rates of return.
Obviously, it's a great thing for them to have that ballast through crisis, and they've earned
that money, and it's great that they built that cash cow up. But if each of them took 10% of that
cash, let's say $45 billion, and put it into a fund, Shark Tank runs the fund, The Motley Fool
can partner, an app is created, and they invest $150,000 into 300,000 different startups.
Through an app, there will be a certain amount of fraud. Many of the companies will fail.
1% will do well.
One quarter of 1% will actually be awesome.
And I actually think they'll make money on that fund
and possibly create a million plus jobs
out of pooling some capital
and putting it not through the traditional VC channels,
but through an app at scale
that is different than universal basic income.
It's universal basic investment.
It tells entrepreneurs and people,
you can get resources to get something started now.
Agree, disagree, like, dislike.
how would you modify that? Don't dislike but disagree, and not for the reason you expect.
I get where you're going with it. I think it'd create a land grab that would be difficult to
monitor. And they'd put themselves in a really bad social position because of who they said no to.
And so it's the same reason we don't have Shark Tank for charities, right? Because you can't say
no to anybody without looking like a really bad guy or girl. And so that's not necessarily a total
response, but I'll tell you why I think them having that money right now is necessary for them.
And that's AI. AI is hard. And the companies that you mentioned are the only company or
part of a select few companies that are really good at AI. And AI is not only hard,
but it's really expensive. And we don't know necessarily all the directions it's going to
take us. And so for companies who are starting to dominate in AI, I think it's important for
them to have that backlog of cash and resources. And I think it's also important for national
security that they do, because as a country, we're doing a piss poor job of investing in future
technologies. If you look at Russia and China, they're the first to tell you that whoever
dominates AI dominates the globe. Yet as a country, we're just minimally investing in AI.
We're not investing in robotics and, you know, we're third, falling to fourth place in robotics.
And if we have any interest in competing with the Chinese and kicking their ass in manufacturing or other endeavors, including national defense, again, we're going to have to become the best at AI.
And right now we're behind Japan, Germany and China. We're fourth.
And then there's precision medicine that I think companies will start taking more, do more investments in there as well.
So long roundabout answer, I think because AI is so hard and so expensive, I think I'd rather see that money as a good American in their hands, even though the entrepreneur in me says, boy, how much fun would that be to be a young startup entrepreneur and have all that funding available?
Now, that said, since we as a sovereign nation don't do a good job of investing in those high-end technologies, and in fact, we've become a nation of AI haves and AI have-nots, and that's not a good place for us competitively domestically, I wouldn't be opposed if we did that on a sovereign basis and really took the SBA to another level and invested in startups that way.
Shifting gears a little bit, but kind of related, as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks,
we know that you are paying your hourly workers through the entire suspended season,
like you mentioned. If you owned a team and you couldn't afford to pay your workers through the
season, what's an excellent alternative route? You know, so, you know, the hourly employees
that work for the arena that I own half of, right, there's just no events. And so while we
paid them for all the Mavericks events that would have occurred, there's other things like concerts
that's not really our business that we haven't been able to pay them for. So what we've done
is connected with a company called Shift Smart, shiftsmart.com. And they have a program that we
donated money to called Get Shift Done, S-H-I-F-T, done. I don't remember if it's a com or org.
But what they've done is found nonprofits that need people to do work because fewer people have
the ability to go out and work at nonprofits. And we donated money and they created shifts.
So you download this app and it says, okay, we have X number of hours and X number of shifts
available at this nonprofit. It pays X number of dollars. And we've tried to hook up those
employees who otherwise would have worked hours at the arena into working for nonprofits where
donations like ours actually foot the bill. And that program also has been used to do call center
applications and things that have had to just pop up very quickly during the pandemic. And they've
been great at turning it around and creating jobs for those people. And that's what I'd recommend
doing, that those people who are, you know, and I'd never be the one to spend someone else's money.
So those CEOs or entrepreneurs, owners who don't feel that, you know, either they don't want to,
or they're not able to continue to pay their employees during the pandemic while they're not
open or not able to operate profitably, working with programs like ShiftSmart, I think is a great
way to do it. So when I look at the businesses that are struggling right now, one way to view
them is they require that employees go to a physical place and that customers go to a physical
place to transact. So restaurants, concert venues, hotels, these are actually kind of the table
stakes of the NBA. Yep. So I'm wondering, projecting forward five years, to the extent
that anyone could even know what's going to happen five months from now, but projecting forward five
years, do you think attendance will be replaced by digital subscriptions, online tools, viewing
from home will become a much more significant source of revenue for the NBA than it is now?
Is it possible that the digital experience will become more than half of the revenues?
You know, it's a great question, because it's certainly something we've had to address. It's part of the evolution of this country, right? We went from agrarian to industrial to hybrid, digital and physical. And now we're seeing the minimization of physical wherever we possibly can and with the reduced number of touch points. So obviously, we've had to ask ourselves that question.
So the first response is it depends on a vaccine, right?
So if we get a vaccine, whenever that is, and actually I'm very confident that we will,
I can't give you a date, but I think it's going to be sooner.
I, you know, I'm just a science geek, like a lot of people, and I'm reading all these
things about, you know, I think Ray Kurzweil wrote an article saying that the consortium
of companies working on the, on the vaccine is using AI to create these, these metaphysical
I don't know, bodies, right, where they can test all the different potential aspects of a vaccine.
And so, you know, that and if that's real and I have no reason to believe it's not, then I think we'll get one sooner.
So there's one bucket. If we do get the vaccine, then things can be a smarter normal, meaning we'll reduce touch points.
We'll use voice activation. We'll have flow of people.
You know, we'll have AR driven apps that guide people with warnings on don't go here, don't go there.
So, you know, we reduce our touch points.
If there's not a vaccine, then it depends on testing and the accuracy of testing and the speed of testing.
So right now it may be the Gardner family, if there's six of you wants to come to a Mavs game,
we can sit you together and we'll make an effort as a sales organization to go out there and sell to families or quote unquote quarantine groups.
So it may be, you know, your grandparents moved in and your aunts and your uncles and your cousins all moved in.
And we can sell you as a group to come to a Mavs game and then social distance with spacing around there.
And then we can start to expand those quarantine groups, the easier testing becomes.
So if testing really, and let's just say for the sake of example, it's 95% accurate that you just spit in the tube and five minutes later, you've got a yes or a no.
well that's no different than walking through a metal detector in a lot of respects or going
through tsa and so we'll be able to accommodate there if it just goes all goes to hell and just
there's no way then we'll do some of the things we're already starting to do already you know
streaming has changed a lot in 25 years bandwidth is is dramatically more available so we can
bandwidth has become fungible in a lot of respects so we're going to be able to deliver
those games in a variety of different ways, suited, if not tailored to the individual and
how they want to receive them. And so we may have one version for betters. We may have another for
old school fans who like, you know, the traditional broadcast. We may have another who prefer a Twitch
broadcaster type approach or a YouTube broadcaster type approach, you know, a TikTok approach where
everybody dances the whole way through. Who knows? But we have that opportunity to, whether
subscriptions or advertisers supported. It won't matter. We'll be able to take that fungible
bandwidth and customize it. How do you think of a billionaire's responsibility in an American life?
So do you have the same responsibility, maybe more, maybe less than the average citizen to
invest in making the world better? You know, I never want to speak for somebody else. Here's
what I know. You know, in my position, the marginal value of another dollar is close to zero. It's not
going to change my life, not even a little bit. And so that gives me an opportunity to do things
that I probably wouldn't have done 20 years ago, things that are important to me now that weren't
important to me 10 years ago. And just, you know, between age and my financial circumstances,
it's more rewarding for me to try to help and contribute. But that's a combination of things.
It's not just, you know, being a billionaire. On the flip side, I met a couple guys, not many,
believe it or not, but a couple of guys and their men that are billionaires that just want that next
dollar no matter what. It's a race. It's like watching billions and it's ax capital. Those
people are their own worst enemies. But generally, I think we have a responsibility to pay more in
taxes, contribute more, particularly when things are difficult. And so again, I think generally,
yes, we have that obligation to do more, contribute more, pay more, but everybody's
going to be different. Everybody's circumstances are different. I listened to your interview on
how I built this and you mentioned the book that you kept on your desk about wanting to retire by
35. Yeah, it's back there somewhere. Yeah. I'm just curious to hear, you know, what is your
driving force behind that? If it's not another dollar, what is really making you so motivated
now? A couple of things. One, I love to compete. Business is the ultimate sport. And while,
you know, when I was in my twenties, you know, time, you know, there's so many uncertainties,
so many things that I never knew whether or not I'd ever be able to experience and so I wanted
to retire at age 35 because I wanted all my time to myself to be able to try everything and anything
and I got pretty good at it and you know going forward it's just it's just different now you
know it's just I just have a completely different perspective and what drives me is just competing
you know I still have those competitive juices and yeah I want I want to make money but I just
don't necessarily need to hoard it like I would have in the past. I can put it through my
foundation. I can donate it. I can invest in people. And that's what I do a lot of.
Let's go closing lightning round now. And once again, just rapid fire answer in a one sentence
explanation as to why. So let's start with Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk.
Elon.
And why?
Oh, I just, you know, Jack is great. He's a great entrepreneur and he's done some great things, but
Elon has changed the world.
YouTube or Spotify?
um youtube and just because just more variety spotify you know fills a need but youtube has
just got more going on what's your favorite shark tank pitch in history and why oh my god
i like the scams believe it or not um like we had these balance bracelets where they said you know
by wearing this bracelet your balance improves and your core improves just by wearing it and i
just tore them apart. I remember that. And there's been other times when we've had supplement
companies making these claims and I just tear them apart. And they know I live for those moments
because I don't want everybody and their brother to think this is a good thing and they should buy
it because Shark Tank's the world's ultimate commercial. People just, because the product's
on there, a lot of people want to buy it. And so I really feel that obligation.
Okay. And maybe one more. The year is 2024 and you have to pick one,
the Mavs win it all or Mark Cuban is elected president.
Mavs win it all. That's a great question. That's the best framing of that question ever, ever.
Up next, get ready to take some notes. We've got a couple of stock ideas for your watch list.
Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
As always, people on the program may have 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 Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Guys, before we bring in our man Dan Boyd for Radar Stocks,
I want to talk about Hertz for a minute because shares of Hertz Global, the rental car company
that recently filed for bankruptcy, they were up more than 50% Friday morning. Ron, what is going
on here? Craziness, Chris, simply craziness. They have asked a bankruptcy judge to allow them to
sell $1 billion worth of common stock. Now, what you need to understand is that in a bankruptcy
proceeding, specifically Chapter 11, which is reorganization, not liquidation, common shareholders
typically get wiped out most of the time. I'm unhappy to say it's happened to me. I've written
the company all the way down to nothing in the hopes that I would get something in the
reorg and it just typically does not happen. So, if you're one of these either institutional
or retail investors that wants to get in on this offering and help out Hertz raise a billion
dollars, you run the very real risk of getting wiped out if their reorganization doesn't work.
That is a very speculative position to be undertaking. Honestly, it's almost too speculative
to make any sense. From the company's perspective, it's theoretically cheaper to raise equity
capital than it would be to raise typical debtor-in-possession financing, which can
be quite expensive, money that allows you to bridge the gap between now and when you
actually reorg. But I would just caution investors, very, very speculative, I wouldn't touch this.
It's still a rental car company, right? It's still the same business. They haven't come
out with like, oh, and by the way, we're launching a cloud software division as well?
And they have a new cryptocurrency they'd like to sell you as well.
Oh, video streaming, I think, was what I saw on the last call.
All right, let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a
question. Jason Moser, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?
Sure. Taking a look at Fastly, ticker FSLY. They play in the edge cloud market, and ultimately,
this brings the cloud data and processing architecture actually closer to us physically,
you know, what they call it, on the edge of the cloud. But the idea is to be able to deliver
content and data more quickly. And this really does play into the 5G movement, as quicker and
more robust delivery will most certainly need to use edge cloud computing power. And so,
Allied Market Research estimates the edge computing market will grow to about $16.5
billion in 2025. Fastly, certainly one of the companies playing in that sandbox. The stock
has had a great year, up 120% plus so far this year. Strong insider ownership with founder
Artur Bergman owning around 10% of the shares and other insiders owning more. A very healthy
balance sheet. Still a fairly new company, having just IPO'd a year ago. So, of course,
it's not profitable, still lacking all that stuff like cash flow that we look for. But I really do
like what I'm seeing with this one. And with the new 5G service, Chris, we've just launched,
this is definitely one on my watch list. Dan, question about Fastly?
Certainly, Chris. So when I think of the edge of a cloud, I think of the silver lining. So Jason,
would you say that this company has a silver lining in the future?
I absolutely would say that, Dan. I think that edge cloud computing is probably still a little
bit unfamiliar to a lot of folks, but as we get to understand it better, this will be one of the
companies that people remember. Ron Gross, what are you looking at this week?
Dan, this is just a radar stock, not a recommendation, so don't beat me up here
with the hard question. It's a recent David Gardner recommendation, actually, Globus Medical,
G-M-E-D, a medical device company focused on musculoskeletal disorders. Easy for me to say.
They make the Excelsis GPS robotic system for spinal surgery, which they acquired in 2014.
minimally invasive surgeries are increasing. Increased usage of this system will increase
their implantable device sales. Core business, 190 products, is actually very profitable.
So, don't think biotech-y, kind of unprofitable, not sure where this is going there. I have a
profitable business, but there is a fair amount of competition, including J&J, who is going to
probably get into this business. Dan, question about Globus Medical?
Absolutely, Chris.
So, Ron, I don't know much about Globus Medical,
but I do know something about the Globo Gym Purple Cobras from the movie Dodgeball.
And I just wanted to say, is that a good movie?
You like that one?
They don't get much better.
That is a classic movie.
For those who have not seen it, please, please check it out.
That's a bold move, Godden.
Dan, what do you want to add to your watch list?
I'm going to add Fastly to the watch list this time, Chris,
because Jason didn't put a caveat at the front of the radar stock.
Sorry for being transparent.
All right, we're out of time, guys.
Thanks for being here.
We'll see you next week.
