Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Golden Arches Still Gleam

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Is chicken the new beef? McDonald’s is innovating to please global palates. (00:21) Jason Moser and Deidre Woollard discuss: - The changing behavior of global eaters. - How McDonald’s uses data t...o drive menu changes. - Snap’s proclamation that social media is dead. (16:53) Ricky Mulvey talks to Patrick Badolato, an Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business about what lurks in company footnotes. Companies discussed: UBER, AAPL, MCD, SBUX, CMG, DPZ, SNAP Get your Monarch Money extended 30-day free trial: www.monarchmoney.com/fool Host: Deidre Woollard Guests: Patrick Badolato, Jason Moser, Ricky Mulvey Producers: Ricky Mulvey, Mary Long Engineers: Tim Sparks, Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You gotta try breakfast at A&W. You gotta try breakfast at A&W. And what better way than with a delicious Pret Organic Coffee? Starting at just $1 all day, every day, now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. Golden arches haven't lost their shine. Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Deidre Willard here with Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser. Jason,
Starting point is 00:00:55 how's your Monday going so far? Hey, so far so good. It's nice weather out there. How about you, Deidre? I'm loving our weather, but I'm thinking about our people in California who are having a bit of a tough weather time. Yeah. Cancel the final round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am out there in California. In Monterey, when the weather's that bad, you know you need to take note. Yeah, absolutely. Let's get into what's happening with the markets. Last week, big week, We had Meta, we had Amazon, we had Apple, you know, and mostly a pretty great week. This week, we've got probably more earnings, but a wide variety of large companies,
Starting point is 00:01:36 and maybe not your ones that are at the top of market moving, but really important to cover. One of them, McDonald's. You got to talk about McDonald's, right? Absolutely. Yeah, of course. And if you look at the headlines, you know, I always hate looking at the headlines versus looking at the actual earnings. If you look at the headlines, it's going to be companies missing revenue targets. But I look at it, companies still able to deliver comparable sales that increase every quarter at about a little over 4% in sales growth in the U.S. in this quarter.
Starting point is 00:02:06 Don't you think that sometimes McDonald's deserves a little more respect than it sometimes gets? I absolutely do. And one of the reasons why I feel that way, Deidre, is because in my early days here, when I first got here at The Fool, McDonald's was the company I looked at and didn't give it that credit that it deserved. I thought, you know what, that's yesterday's news. People don't want McDonald's now. They're going to Starbucks and they're going to Chipotle. No, McDonald's absolutely deserves a ton of credit. I'm not a big McDonald's guy myself these days, but it's impossible to ignore the success that this company has had over
Starting point is 00:02:41 the course of its existence. It's easy, I think, to view it as perhaps an older or more a challenged brand here, domestically particularly. But I think when you look at the numbers, they say otherwise. This is a company that still has a ton of brand equity globally. Having had the experience of traveling and living overseas for several years, I definitely saw that. I've seen that. You brought up the comps numbers. I think it's absolutely worth mentioning. U.S. comps this quarter were up 4.3%. International operated markets up 4.4%. Their developmental markets, they saw underperformance there. Now, a lot of that, they said, reflected the impact of the war going on in the Middle East right now.
Starting point is 00:03:28 That's very understandable. And there's some sort of second-order impacts that come from that as well. You have to give them a little bit of a pass on that. That's just something that's completely out of their control, kind of like the weather, so to speak. But when you look at shareholders who've held onto these shares, over the last decade, this stock has returned 300%. Well, well ahead of the market's performance there. You attribute it to that brand equity, I think, but also, it's a franchise model that's tremendous. They've got 40,000-plus restaurants, 95% of those are franchised.
Starting point is 00:04:01 So, yeah, that doesn't gin up a ton on the top line compared to something like a company-owned operation like Chipotle, for example. But what it enables them to do is really bring some impressive profitability down to the bottom line. You put that all together, it's not a surprise to me to see McDonald's perform so well. But yeah, it's one of those companies I think that a lot of people will look at it and just keep on walking. I think it's true. And, you know, uh, you mentioned the, the franchises, you know, this is also, uh, I love to mention that it's always that it's a stealth real estate company,
Starting point is 00:04:37 you know, I mean, they, they own, they own all of that land and that, and that's very valuable and, and a good, a good part of their, a good part of the company. But I wanted to talk a little bit about what you said there about the U S and, you know, I feel like there is that perception that people don't go to McDonald's, but then you look at their loyalty program, you've got 150 million members that have been active in the last 90 days. So that's, that's huge. 20 billion in sales in 2023. And I like the way that they're, they're, they're pivoting things. They're constantly tweaking things. So we think of them as, you know, burgers, the Big Mac they're making like the double Big Mac now, but chicken is as big as a sales driver for them. And they're seeing that
Starting point is 00:05:18 globally and they're trying to figure out like, okay, more of the world is interested in eating a chicken sandwich versus a burger. So, how do we make a better chicken sandwich? And now they're taking on coffee. It started with, it's just a cheaper way to get coffee, and the more you get it with your breakfast, that's great. But they're tweaking this, too, in interesting ways. I don't know. I like the way they use data a lot. I do, too. And in this age of AI, we talk a lot about AI and all of the potential that it offers. Really, the lifeblood of AI, ultimately, it's data. We've seen these companies from Chipotle to Starbucks and everywhere in between utilizing these loyalty programs
Starting point is 00:06:02 to really take advantage of getting as much customer data as they possibly can. What that ultimately does, it enables these companies to keep their customers within that universe and then cater offerings specifically to those individual customers. I think we've seen the investments in technology really pay off as well. It makes me think of companies like Domino's and Papa John's. I mean, no, maybe those aren't the pizza concepts that many might have at the top of their list, given some of the local choices that exist where they may live. But the bottom line is, they're very convenient, they're wonderful options.
Starting point is 00:06:41 And, I have to tell you, the investments in technology, they make it so easy to order. They have loyalty programs that keep you coming back for more. McDonald's absolutely taking advantage of that same dynamic. To your point on the chicken, I think that's important. In this age, we're really seeing Chick-fil-A take off, and I think a lot of companies are trying to figure out ways to compete with a Chick-fil-A. Chicken, absolutely, a ton of growth there. I was reading through the call. The investments and the time McDonald's has put into this McCrispy chicken sandwich, it's really resulted in some serious drives
Starting point is 00:07:20 to the business. They're talking about this is scaled to a $1 billion brand across 30 markets worldwide. But now, they also mentioned the chicken category represents $25 billion in annual system-wide sales, which essentially puts it on par with beef, their beef offerings. They're sitting there also making these investments and making their burgers better as well at the same time. It does feel like, while there's a ton of brand equity and a lot that they could probably just hit cruise control and just keep on moving forward, they don't seem to want to rest on their laurels. It's refreshing to see a concept like McDonald's really trying to up its game and compete with a lot of these fast, fast, casual competitors out there today.
Starting point is 00:08:08 Well, and they've had some some swings that have missed in the past. You know, we talked a little bit about Starbucks. You know, McDonald's has this new concept, the the Cosmix. It's this sort of like cold coffee drinks. And it's it's you know, they've just tested it out. It's I think in about 10 locations and it's doing, you know, traffic's been pretty strong so far. And then, you know, I was listening to the Starbucks call last week and they were talking
Starting point is 00:08:29 about the need to try to get people there in the afternoons. So it seems like this afternoon thing is interesting. But I'm wondering, I mean, McDonald's has the room to play with things like this, but what do you think about that concept? Would you be driving through the Cosmics to get yourself an afternoon drink? I mean, if I was going by one, probably. I don't know that I'd go out of my way. But, I mean, it also could be if I was going by one and I went by there once,
Starting point is 00:08:55 maybe I would find it compelling and want to go out of my way. for future trips. I think it's important to note this Cosmix offering, they identified this $100 billion category, they quote, across their top six markets that really focus on these beverages. It's not just beverages. If you look at the Cosmix menu, it is more than just beverages. Honestly, I could see those McPops doing pretty well. If you haven't seen them, check that menu. The McPops look pretty good. But I absolutely love that they're trying this. Again, I think in many cases, it's a matter of convenience. If they present a good offering, and it's convenient, then people are going to give it a shot.
Starting point is 00:09:39 If we look back through the history of something like a Starbucks, for example, that's a company that has started to recognize the benefits of convenience in incorporating more things like drive-thrus into their restaurants. McDonald's, I think, has always been really known for low prices, convenience. This is something where they really specialize. And now, they're starting to make that progress or that leap up into bringing a little bit more quality to their offering. Again, I think the menu with Cosmix, it's compelling, it's different. It's not just McDonald's. I think that will lead a lot of people to give it a shot. Then, it's a matter of whether they find it compelling enough to keep going back.
Starting point is 00:10:21 Well, and I think there's a whole new category emerging that I'm like Starbucks is trying to get people there for the like the drink and the snack. And we've seen, you know, other other companies are starting to make these sort of like lighter offerings that that you come in for the drink and the snack option, especially in the afternoons. You know, it's it sort of reminds me a little bit of when they were trying to make I think it was Taco Bell to try to make like fourth meal. I feel like they're trying to make another another meal in here. But it's the fourth or fifth meal, but it's at a different time of day. I think this is probably the time of day that more people can relate to, because I think the fourth meal was probably geared towards people who had been out really late at night, had the munchies maybe on the way home.
Starting point is 00:11:01 This seems like it's geared towards a little bit of a different audience, and probably a bigger audience, for that matter. Yeah. Thinking about Starbucks and McDonald's, the role of China is huge. Both of them are thinking about China. Late last year, McDonald's increased their minority stake in China to 48%. They opened 1,000 new restaurants, actually a little bit over that, last year in China, all-time high. It's still a pretty small percent of the business. But how are you thinking about companies that have this large consumer exposure in China right now? Because we've got geopolitical
Starting point is 00:11:36 concerns there, as well as some consumer weakness. Yeah, I think in the grand scheme of things, I view it ultimately as a positive. I've said it before, when it comes to investing in China, I know what I don't know. Investing in pure play China just doesn't work for me. I've watched it play out over the last 15 years in how so much of this hype ends up sputtering out. With exceptions, of course, but for the most part, it's just been a very difficult market to fully understand and, I think, really, honestly, have faith in. But I view these multinationals, Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple, Coca-Cola, you name it, These are great ways to get satisfactory exposure to China without actually having to worry
Starting point is 00:12:20 so much about the minutiae, not having to worry so much about what's going on over there. When you look at the state of the Chinese consumer today, I know things aren't all that great right now. I think there's reason to be hopeful, though, that the Chinese consumer will start seeing better days sooner rather than later. There's a lot of pessimism out there. challenges from the COVID policies, ongoing property crisis, that was a real one-two punch, high rates of youth unemployment, poor economic forecast, you get the collapse of Evergrande, all of these things put together, there's just a ton of pessimism out there in regard to the Chinese consumer today. And I think that's precisely when investors need to start looking,
Starting point is 00:13:01 right? Because we know that things eventually will improve. Perhaps we're getting a little bit closer. For me, the ideal way to participate in an economy like that is going to be through the multinationals like your McDonald's and Starbucks of the world. Yeah. And with McDonald's, you get a nice little dividend along the way. That's a very good point. Well, I want to pivot and talk about something else that kind of is on my mind this morning. Did you watch the Grammys? I must admit I did not. No.
Starting point is 00:13:27 Well, there was this commercial that caught my attention sort of outside of the other controversies that may have caught my attention. And it was this Snap commercial taking aim at TikTok and Instagram reels and basically kind of saying, you know, social media, social media is bad. Snapchat is good. It's this fun, happy place. We've got these like, oh, look, I'm a I'm a broccoli face, you know. So, you know, so it's interesting. They had this big ad spend last night. They've got this new campaign. And then this morning they cut about 10 percent of their global workforce. They're reporting tomorrow. And but I'm thinking about where they're taking their strategy. There was this leaked email last year that said, that Evan Spiegel sent out the
Starting point is 00:14:09 CEO, social media is dead, long live Snapchat. So, you talked about Meta on Friday on the show. Certainly, Meta's going nowhere from what I can see and from the earnings last week. But is there a case for the idea that social isn't quite as social anymore? I think there is, to an extent. I think social is going to be with us in one form or another going forward, at least I would have to imagine for the rest of my life. I think it's ultimately just a matter of what people are looking to get out of it. I do understand if folks are pulling back on the reins a little bit and maybe not being
Starting point is 00:14:49 quite as social or sharing quite as much. We've seen that stuff can certainly be used against you. It is absolutely impossible for me to buy into the notion that Meta is on the wane. The portfolio of app strategy for them has really paid off. We just saw that in spades here in the most recent quarter. Snap, I think, is in a little bit of a bind, because they still really are just Snapchat. That up-and-coming generation likely isn't looking at it with the same rose-colored glasses that the previous one did.
Starting point is 00:15:19 When you look at the numbers, revenue growth has hit a wall. Again, like you said, Meta's report tells us there's still plenty of growth out there to be had. I was interested to look at Snap and compare it to Twitter at a certain point of time to get an idea of where these two businesses were. You look at Twitter, which was acquired in the back half of 2022. But if you look at Twitter's revenue in 2022, they generated a little bit better than $5 billion in revenue. Snap still hasn't even gotten there. That's Twitter, a company that I think many would argue, myself included, left a ton of money on the table for just a number of various self-inflicted reasons.
Starting point is 00:16:03 There are some lessons learned from Twitter. To me, Snap rhymes. When you look at the overall opportunity out there, Amazon ad revenue is up 27% per the quarter. That advertising revenue is definitely out there. Companies like Snap, I think, are having a little bit of a more difficult time realizing it these days, because social is such a difficult space when you're competing against meta. But I think the question really for Snap investors at this point is, what are you ultimately expecting from this company? Do you think it's going to grow, or is this something else? Do you feel like it's going to be acquired?
Starting point is 00:16:39 because I think the growth question is a very fair one, particularly given what we've just seen play out here in the early parts of earnings season. Well, thanks for breaking down with me today, Jason. Thank you. You just found out that your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic, just ask Rippling AI.
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Starting point is 00:17:48 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. Last year, Uber changed the way it counts revenue. And the difference may have an impact as the company reports this week. Ricky Mulvey caught up with Patrick Badalata, an associate professor of instruction at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, to discover what investors can find out beyond the headlines and in the footnotes. We talk a lot about headlines coming out of earnings, the big reporting numbers.
Starting point is 00:18:32 But right now, you want to focus on the footnotes. these are at the bottom of the page. As we go through earnings season, why are the footnotes even worth an investor's time to check out? Sure, Ricky. I love that question. Let me step back real quickly. I'm going to refer to the footnotes as all of the broad, qualitative, sometimes quantitative information that's in addition to the financial statements. Not what's on the financial statements, not the main core financial metrics. But I think they're massively informative because they give additional insight and flavor and sometimes really critical details about updates and changes that we're going to be more informed walking into earnings season or
Starting point is 00:19:13 really any other assessment of a company if we've spent a little bit of time. My class, I use the phrase, read good, but spend the time to avail yourself to the footnotes, the other information outside of the financial statements, because it's packed full of useful tidbits of information. Sometimes they can be hard to parse through if you're not an accounting professor. Sometimes, though, there's some gold in there. We were trading emails before this, and you said there was a classic example from Apple. Yeah. Your first point I want to address, and I want to give the Apple example, but that's
Starting point is 00:19:47 the big challenge, which is 10K is, what, 120 pages long, and S1, pre-IPO filing, something the same. Most of it, so much of it is, too much of it, if I can give my opinion, is boilerplate, where you're reading stuff and you're, I'm not really changing anything. The challenge is though, like the nuggets and the insights are there. They're just not easy to find. And yeah, I'm an accounting professor. I like reading these things and I'll put my time into reading the whole thing, but it's what I try to convey in a class. And I want to use the Apple example is what I teach even at the intro financial accounting level is the footnotes are there. And at times you want
Starting point is 00:20:19 to, you know, grab them to think about it. So the classic one I've done over time, and this is not, specifically recent news. But Apple's got a great footnote on its accounts receivable. And it has nothing to do with what's reported on the balance sheet. It's just there's a footnote that talks about it. I think it's page 40 of their 2022 10K. And they give a comment to the fact that what they're doing is they're requiring all smaller-scale retailers to go out and get third-party insurance so that Apple will sell to them on account. But the reality is that the retailer has to go and get backing so that if the small third-party retailer is not able to pay Apple, Apple is still going to collect, effectively, insurance proceeds. They're going to
Starting point is 00:21:03 get their cash either way. The footnote shows us that Apple has virtually no risk of collections with its accounts receivable reported on the balance sheet. Not on the balance sheet. There's nothing about that there. Read the footnote, and you realize maybe that's something you would expect for a behemoth like Apple. But really, no risk of collection, given the way they structure their deals with any smaller retailer. Is that something that's rare among companies? I could imagine a lot of companies, they want to get the cash that they're entitled to on that account. But I don't know of any other companies that do that. Yeah, great question. I wish I had a better answer, and I don't. How many use it, how many
Starting point is 00:21:40 don't? And I worry that the classic answer is just like, well, Apple can do what it wants because it's in such a position of strength. But I'll give a personal finance example of this that I usually try to talk about in class, which is, this is very similar to what we may face when we're getting a mortgage with PMI or private mortgage insurance. The bank's going to require us, we put less than 20% down, to go pay for PMI insurance or private mortgage insurance. And if that's so that the bank still collects its mortgage payments effectively, if we were to fall or miss a payment or something like that, it's crazy to think about it. But it's similar. It's You have one very powerful player, the bank giving us a mortgage, and one far less powerful
Starting point is 00:22:19 entity, us, the homeowner. And the argument is, you're going to basically make the smaller player pay the insurance to protect the larger player. That's what Apple... Apple's doing a version of that with its accounts receivable, insuring it collects. When you're one of the biggest companies on the planet, it's easy to know that other companies need you more than perhaps you need it. Uber is reporting tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:22:42 This is a more recent example. Last year, the company changed how it treats discounts and promotions. We were talking about it. I think you said this was an important change. What happened? What did they do? I think for this one, it's worth stepping back again and talking about the way they laid things out with their initial IPO filed in 2019. There's a lot of layers to this and there was a lot of conversations, but I want to just get to the point, which is, they did not call. So, if you've taken Uber, you've got Uber Eats delivered, or you've taken a ride to go somewhere with an Uber, I certainly have done that. But we are not Uber's customer in their IPO. We were not their customer. We were called riders or end users.
Starting point is 00:23:25 Their customer, consistent with their IPO document, was the driver. The driver driving the car, providing transportation. And that may seem weird, but that's sort of the genesis of this whole idea. In their IPO, they had a bunch of promotions and discounts that were issued to the rider or the end user. And they were actually booking that as both revenue and then offsetting it with sales and marketing expense. I think it was, I mean, rounds to $3 billion in 2017 and 2018 combined in the two years preceding their IPO. But $3 billion. And I'm not, this is legal. There's a way that this works out. It's because the riders, uh, we're not their customers, but, but to simplify it, maybe oversimplify it's similar to saying that, you
Starting point is 00:24:14 know, they were effectively buying their own services and that's what it works out to. So if they gave a rider a $20 coupon, that $20 coupon was counting as revenue. It was removed via sales and marketing expense. So no effect on like operating income, but still an opportunity to increase revenue to boost the revenue growth in the early stages of the company. So now the revenue is not comparable, and maybe you'll even see a slight revenue decline as they make this change. Why do you think Uber's making it? Yeah, so let's just be specific about the change too, but then I definitely want to offer some lens into what we can think about before the 2023 earnings come out. What they changed in the second quarter of 2023, and I actually think
Starting point is 00:24:57 based on the numbers, it was like towards the end of the second quarter, but I don't know the exact date. But the change in the second quarter of 2023 is in many of their major markets, it looks like it's roughly two-thirds using the third quarter numbers. But they now are classifying the rider, effectively, as a customer. And as they're classifying the rider as a customer now, that actually means that they're not, if they give promotions and discounts, which they're continuing to do. It's not a removal of promotions and discounts, but now they're not counting the promotions and discounts as revenue, and they're also not offsetting it as a sales and marketing expense. Ricky, you already alluded to this, and I just want to flesh it out a bit more.
Starting point is 00:25:38 The challenge here is this change occurred mid-year, roughly. So, it's going to be hard to compare anything coming out tomorrow with 2023's numbers with anything that happened in 2022 or any prior years. And even within 2023, because the change didn't happen at the beginning, it might be kind of hard to think about quarter-to-quarter comparisons or year-over-year comparisons. In this case, to reiterate your point, revenue will actually be smaller because they're not including, and I think in quarter three, it was $521 million. So, that just one quarter, $521 million that would have been in revenue is not there and also is going to be removed from sales and marketing expense. So, the year-over-year revenue growth, all else held
Starting point is 00:26:23 equal, is going to be lower. It's just going to be harder to achieve any kind of growth because stuff that was classified in revenue is no longer classified that way. And maybe there's a tie to the story where Kashra Shahi comes in as the CEO of Uber, wanting a leaner, more focused company, and maybe take away some of that noise. in the S1. I know we've made fun of it on the show in the years past. The total addressable market was 4 billion people, or basically everybody in the 63 countries that it operated in at the time. I mean, do you think that with this move in the footnotes, the way that Uber's changing the way it counts revenue, is that part of the story here with the company as it is today?
Starting point is 00:27:06 Love that question. And I want to elaborate on it, but I think there's one more level, and i hate to be nitpicky about this to go for it you're the professor that uh sales and marketing expense is also going to go down and so i just caution i'm not it's not a criticism of uber in any way but just preparing us for what we're going to see is that year over year sales and marketing expense should also decrease you know using the third quarter number alone by that 521 million it'll be more than that because we don't have the fourth quarter information yet but the sales and marketing expense will decrease as a dollar amount and also will decrease as a percent of revenue. So I mentioned that we're going to see like margin improvement where one
Starting point is 00:27:43 expense decreases as a percent of revenue. And it's not good nor bad. It's just a result of this reporting change. So worth being informed when we walk in there, because what we, you know, we don't want to be saying is, wow, look at this great efficiency improvement with sales and marketing. They must be getting better at promotions and discounts or marketing. And I'm not in any way saying they're getting worse, but no, the data just mathematically will lead to sales and marketing expense decreasing as a percent of revenue. So that's like efficiency that's worth understanding the reporting behind. But, but Ricky, I love your other question. I want to kind of flesh it out a bit more as well. Yeah. I'm a, I was pretty critical kind of looking
Starting point is 00:28:17 at Uber in the pre IPO stage and we've done a bunch of classes and, you know, kind of offering that there's a lot of questions and confusion and seem like distractions and, you know, then COVID hits and just upends everything, which, you know, is tough for so many different companies. But I think the Uber that emerged is a really fascinating business model. And I think they've kind of figured out what they are. And the phrase I use when I talk about them in class is, this is not a replacement for individual car ownership. This is not a target market of 4 billion people. But what they are is a platform of convenience. A company that can offer us rides when we need rides, can offer us goods. And I applaud the fact that Uber Eats has become so
Starting point is 00:28:59 inclusive of not just, you know, fast food restaurant meals, but you can get delivery groceries and florists and like all these other things, which I think makes it more convenient for the customer, but also a better, you know, driving opportunity, better utilization, uh, for the driver. So I think that like focus on the core and they're getting away from the autonomous and the replacement for individual car ownership is a, is a massive, uh, you know, step in the direction, still questions, still stuff to figure out. But that core competency, the platform of convenience is something that we like convenience. We like stuff. We like getting places and getting things delivered to us. And that may be a successful move in many
Starting point is 00:29:40 ways for them. It seems like it is. If you're not going to, maybe you're checking out the footnotes in a report. I think one piece of research you shared with me that is worth investors' attention, though, that they can track for the companies that they own and follow is the risk factors in an annual report. There are some researchers that found that how companies' management changes the risk factors and changing their wording can often predict maybe future trouble for the company. And that section is worth a little bit more attention. Yeah, I agree.
Starting point is 00:30:12 And I say that my thoughts on reading the literature and everything, it seems like reading the footnotes is still not that commonplace. Full of information, but I love teaching it because, hey, that's your possible chance for differentiation. The change in the language, what's there. And I agree, sometimes the risk can be informative. I love the way they were looking at it in that study. But I'll offer a few other areas I think are worth checking out. And we gave the specific discounts and promotions and sales marketing with Uber. But some other ones I strongly recommend is, first and foremost, actually, I want to rank this, the segments. Look at the segments of the business. Segments move in
Starting point is 00:30:45 different directions. This is true for Uber. Their freight segment during 2023 has been going down, year-over-year decline in revenue growth, where deliveries and mobility, those are growing at different rates. Companies have segments. They don't just do one thing. Read as much as you can off the income statement or the financial statements to find out about segments. Another one, MD&A, management discussion and analysis. They don't always give you everything you need, but often there's that movement. Hey, here's factors that contributed to a trend, factors that offset, granular data that gives us a little bit more about, okay, let me know a bit about the story behind it. Revenue recognition, which I would argue is
Starting point is 00:31:21 massively important for Uber and its S1, of realizing, wait, who's their customer? How do you do this? And then if you have companies with revenue recognized over time or have some discretion on, are they the agent in the transaction? Are they sort of the main provider? Like there's more there as well. Risks, looking at debt footnotes can be certainly informative in cases like Silicon Valley Bank and others. Taxes in certain cases. So yeah, really try to figure out what's valuable for the company and then use the footnotes as like, you know, hopefully you're thirsty for, I want to get more information. I want to get granular data on what's there. Patrick Badalotto is a professor of accounting and finance at the McComb School
Starting point is 00:31:59 of Business at the University of Texas. Thank you so much for your time and your insight. Thank you, Ricky. I really appreciate it. 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. I'm Deidre Willard. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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