Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Google’s Pivot, Tesla’s Record, Netflix’s New High
Episode Date: October 22, 2021Google lowers service fees in its app store. Snap plummets on 3rd-quarter results and a warning. Tesla reports record profits. Netflix hits a new all-time high. Chipotle serves up strong sales. And Bu...ffalo Wild Wings tests a robot cook. Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher analyze those stories and weigh in on the latest from Boston Beer, Crocs, Facebook, JD.com, PayPal, Pinterest, Tencent, and Zillow Group. Plus, they offer up some reading recommendations for investors and share two stocks on their radar: Doximity and Rent the Runway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life?
You know, the same way you can skip an ad?
I get it.
I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove.
I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned.
And today I'm still figuring it out.
Somehow things usually get worse before they get better.
Apparently, that's how I roll.
So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride.
Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.
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
joining me this week senior analyst maria gallagher and emily flippen good to see you both
Nice to see you too. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We've got some
reading recommendations for investors. And as always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar,
but we begin with the business of apps. On Thursday, Google said it's lowering service
fees in its Google Play app store from 30% to 15% starting on day one. Under the current model,
developers pay a 30% cut on subscriptions to Google for the first year before the commission
drops to 15%. The ripple effect of this news sent shares of Bumble, Duolingo, Match Group and others
up as much as 10% and higher. So Emily, you tell me, is the future significantly brighter for the
Bumbles and the Match Groups of the world? Using the word significant is perhaps an
overstatement, but it certainly is brighter for the app developers existing in the Google Play
universe. Certainly, when you compare that to Google's universe right now, Google is in the
unfortunate position of having to negotiate this from the bottom, which is to say they're not in
a particularly strong position of power because they've been the subject of antitrust concerns
in the past. When you see them making these moves, some investors will like it too, sticking a
Band-Aid over a really bad and complicated situation. Is the move necessary? Yes, they're
they're doing what they do best, which is following in Apple's footsteps. Apple recently
took their commissions down. Google is doing the same. But again, this is not going to decrease
the concern that legislators have over the power of big tech. And we're actually seeing additional
news out today that Google's stuck now in another fight with Roku, the app developer who streams
directly to people's services. Google's YouTube wanted preferential treatment, that's what the
reports say, on the Roku app. And legislators are debating what this means. Google's saying
it's not true. But one way or another, legislators are finding their way into this conversation.
So it's a great thing for the smaller players in this space, because legislators tend to not
want to support anti-competitive behavior. But when you are a behemoth, when you are the Googles,
when you are the Apples of the world, moves like this are only concerning.
Maria, what do you think? I agree with everything that Emily pointed out. And I think that
It is interesting to see what that impact is going to be for these smaller companies.
So I know Duolingo specifically has called out that it's important for them to retain
members for over a year because then that helps their profitability.
So I do think that this impact for these smaller companies with that profitability could be
pretty big in the next couple of years to see how they get people on the platform and
keep people on the platform and how that could impact profitability is something that I think
is pretty interesting.
Shares of Snap fell more than 20% on Friday after third quarter revenue came in lower than
expected. The company also lowered guidance for the fourth quarter and warned of slowing growth
due to recent changes in Apple's iOS privacy rules. There's a lot to cover there, Maria.
Where do you want to start? It's a couple of different things.
You see this concern over the new initiatives with Apple. They have this thing called ATT,
which is App Tracking Transparency. You're probably familiar with it in your phone. It asks
see if you want to opt in for tracking. And so this is going to make it significantly harder
for advertisers to track their effectiveness of their digital ads. So this has really wide
implications for lots of advertising businesses. This is not a snap alone problem. So I don't think
that it's going to be a problem without a solution, right? This is not, they're not the only ones
affected. So Apple has already rolled out something called SK ad network, which is allowing app based
advertisers to continue to measure their advertising in iOS. It's not quite as good
as it was a couple of months ago, but it is a start of a solution. So I don't think that this
is going to be a problem with no solution. So I think that that's going to be interesting to watch
to see how innovations happen to make it more able to track their users from those advertisers.
But I will say that the quarter was still solid. Their revenue was up 57%. Their average revenue
per user was up 28% to $3.49, which is pretty high. Their daily active users were up 23% to
305 million. That's just, it's a lot of people, over 75% of the 13 to 34 year olds in the US,
UK, Australia, France, and the Netherlands use Snapchat. And they just rolled out a bunch of
new features. One that I want to call out that I think is important. I don't know about anybody
else, but I only use Facebook now to check whose birthday it is, but there's a new Snapchat app
called Birthday Mini that you're allowed to see your friend's birthdays and send personalized
greetings. It was used by over 10 million users in the first 21 days. So I do think that they're
continuing to innovate. They still have retained a lot more customers and a lot more users than I
think anyone ever thought that they would be able to. And I think that this problem with Apple is
not going to affect them alone. So I do think that there will be some innovative solutions that we'll
see in the next couple of quarters and years. So do you think the stock being down close to
25% represents a potential buying opportunity for people? I think if you believe in the future
of the app and you believe all, if your thesis hasn't really changed, yeah, I think it does,
because I do think that it will have implications. I'm not saying that it's not a big deal at all.
It does have implications for them, but I just think that because it's going to be a wide-reaching
problem throughout the industry and throughout those businesses, I think that there is going
to be a solution. It might take a while and it might be a little bit different than advertisers
are used to, but I do think that there will be one that is found. On Wednesday, Tesla reported
record revenue and profits for the third quarter. And on Friday, shares of Tesla hit a new all-time
high. Always a lot to look at with Tesla, Emily, but the gross margins in their automotive business
are certainly moving in the right direction. That was the most incredible thing to come out
of Tesla's quarters, looking at their gross margin. I think some investors had expectations
that were pretty lofty heading into this quarter in terms of beating in terms of revenue and
earnings, both of which they did just nominally, but they did beat expectations. I think what
investors are really responding to today is the fact that their gross margin ticked above 25%,
which is pretty incredible, especially when you not only compare it to existing car manufacturers,
but also just the environment we're operating in today. Think about all the headwinds that Tesla
is facing, a global semiconductor chip shortage, an integral piece of part into Tesla's equipment.
We're talking about labor shortages, increases in costs. This would be a forgivable quarter to
miss on the bottom line if you were Tesla. It'd be a forgivable quarter to have lower gross margins,
but margins still improved because Tesla is gaining scale and cost improvements in other
areas. The only downside, to the extent that you can call it a downside, is that they reiterated
their prior guidance for 50% average annual growth and deliveries. I think a lot of investors maybe
wanted to see that get raised after such an amazing quarter, but I am certainly not picking
apart what is otherwise a really impressive earnings report.
Shares of Netflix hit a new all-time high this week as third quarter profits came in higher than
Wall Street was expecting. Maria, we always look to subscriber growth with Netflix, and that was
a solid beat as well this quarter. Yeah, they added about 4.4 million new ads. They have a
total of 214 million paid memberships. Their largest contributor was Asia Pacific with about
2.2 million new ads, which is about half of their total. And so with this amount of members that we
see, we're really going to see, it's a pretty penetrated market, right? People who are going
to subscribe have probably already subscribed. So now this shift is going to be, instead of just
getting new subscribers, it's going to get subscribers to pay more. There's going to have
to be an increased price, maybe new tiers, things like that. But a couple of things that bode well
on that front is first, we're seeing this really exciting kind of cross-cultural excitement for
content. That's something that's going to be interesting to watch moving forward. So the best
example of this is Squid Game. It's a story that started in Korea. It's the biggest TV show on
Netflix ever. About over 142 million members have watched it within a month. It's been ranked as the
number one program in 94 countries, including the U.S. And so this is really exciting for
implications about content and the global appeal of their content. Additionally, it garnered the
most Emmys ever for any single network or series in television with 44. So we have things like The
Crown and Queen's Gambit winning a lot. And then something else that I think is pretty interesting
is they're acquiring Roald Dahl Story Company. And so you can see that they're trying to also
get into that competition with Disney Plus for kids viewership nostalgia. So I think that's
to be interesting to watch. It's still getting out really good new content, getting people excited,
trying to keep those members as opposed to keep getting new members. Even though I would like to
formally complain that Glee is leaving Netflix on November 30th, I'm pretty upset about it.
But other than that, things are looking okay for them. Let's go back to the U.S. and Canada,
because even though the subscriber number was strong, there were people pointing out this week,
in the U.S. and Canada, they only added about 70,000 subscribers. You don't think that's a
concern? Well, I think, like I said, if you own a Netflix subscription, if you were going to,
you probably already do. So that growth is going to probably continue to come from Asia and Europe
in terms of new ads. And it's just kind of continuing to monetize the users that already
exist in the U.S. and in Canada and continuing to get them to be excited and have Netflix be,
this is the streaming platform we want to make sure we pay for every month, even if we pay a
little bit more or depending on what they might come up with a new tiered system or something
like that. But yeah, I wouldn't be overly concerned. It's just about retaining those
members now. I think at some point you always get to a point where you say we're pretty penetrated
in this market and we have to now shift levers of how we're going to increase the revenue from
that market. Coming up after the break, we've got the business of burritos, beer and comfortable
shoes. You're in the right place. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Chris Hill here with Emily Flippen and Maria Gallagher. Shares of Chipotle falling
a bit on Friday despite the fact that third quarter profits came in higher than expected.
Revenue rose 22 percent and same-store sales were up 15 percent. Emily, I know it's been
a great run for the stock, but aren't these the type of numbers that Chipotle shareholders
want to see? We should all be giving a round of applause
to Brian Niccol for this quarter. Maybe expectations were just a little too heightened headed
into this report, but same-store sales growth of 15% in this quarter coming off the back
of a really impressive 2020 is extremely notable. More importantly, there's a 155% increase
in earnings year-over-year. They beat expectations at over $7 per share versus the $6.32 expected.
a wonderful quarter from Chipotle. But really, I want to focus on Nickel here because when he came
in and took over as CEO of Chipotle, there were two things that he was focused on. The first one
was digital orders, and we're seeing that explode growth over the last couple of years. They were
up nearly 9% year-over-year, but that's after nearly tripling in 2020. They're also building
out a ton of Chipotle lanes that's drive for Chipotle, not to mention the fact that they're
they're doing limited-time offers like the smoked brisket, and that's really driving engagement.
I'm enthusiastic for the prospects of this business. Third quarter profits and revenue
for Crocs came in higher than expected. The company also raised full-year guidance.
Shares of Crocs up more than 10% this week, Maria. I would say that Crocs just continues
to astound me. Like you said, revenue was up 73%. I'm sorry if you hear sirens. They're so loud
next to my window. It's the downside of living in New York. The revenue was up 73%. Like you said,
their digital sales were up nearly 70%. They have guidance for revenue growth between 62% to 65%
this year, expecting 2022 to have about 20% revenue growth. And I think it's really interesting.
Crocs is really sure what their future looks like. They are really transparent about it. They
think their future growth is going to come from a digital-first approach for digital sales to be
about 50% of revenues by 2026. They're planning to quadruple the growth of sales of sandals by
2026. And they're planning explosive growth in Asia. So they're trying to leverage celebrities,
influencers, digital growth, since China is the second largest footwear market in the world. So
they're hoping that that represents about 24% of total revenues by 2026. So the brand's making a
strong comeback. They have these exciting partnerships. They're leading sustainability
initiatives. They're planning to have a 100% vegan brand by the end of this year. So I think
that they're just firing on all cylinders and they're very clear and precise in their goals.
and so I continue to be really impressed by them. I know that the challenges in global supply chain
are going to be a refrain we hear constantly throughout this earnings season, but it seems
like in the case of Crocs, they're able to handle it a little bit better than the average company,
or am I wrong? They also were talking about that as well. They had to have a closure in some of
their Vietnamese factories, and they were talking about the supply chain disruption, but I think
that they have such a clear vision. And because they have a more limited inventory, they have
a couple of shoes. They do them really well. I think that they have a really good plan for how
they create them and how they roll them out. So I think that they're planning for this supply
chain disruptions, and they have a really good plan in place to keep delivering to people their
Crocs when needed. As the Christmas season comes, if anyone wants to buy people Crocs,
I think you'll be able to. On Friday, shares of Boston Beer were as flat as a day-old IPA.
The parent company of Sam Adams reported a loss in the third quarter.
And despite their best efforts, Emily, the growth in their truly hard seltzer brand just is not there.
It's been a terrible, no good, very bad year for Boston Beer.
And management really threw up their hands last quarter and said, hey, look, we overestimated the size of the hard seltzer market and how much it was going to grow.
And those woes just continued in this quarter.
they had over $1 million in direct costs associated with the slowdown in hard seltzer.
The majority of this is obsolete inventory that had to be destroyed. These losses resulted in
a new loss of nearly $60 million in the quarter after a profit last year, and a decrease of over
$11 per share in earnings in comparison to last year. But even if you back out that over $100
million in seltzer costs, earnings still would have decreased over 50% compared to last year,
simply because of the slowdown in hard seltzer. But I will say, not all metrics were bad and
management reiterated that they think hard seltzer could increase from around 11% to 15% to 20% of
total beer dollars over the next few years. Household penetration, purchase frequency,
and buy rates were all up over the quarter, even though they were down in comparison to
expectations. I think Boston Beer, again, this is like a dark cloud that investors should be
able to see through. They've gained a ton of percentage points in market share against White
claw. Truly, Seltzer was responsible for over half of all Seltzer growth so far in 2021.
Even though the market is smaller, I think management is performing well.
Part of what we've seen from Boston Beer over the past decade is very strategic,
smaller acquisitions. Five years from now, keep in mind, Boston Beer as a company is about a
$6 billion market cap. Five years from now, will this still be a standalone company? Because I
could see them continuing the acquisition route. I could also see someone coming in and acquiring
Boston Beer whole cloth. I'd be surprised if Boston Beer was acquired. I think if they were
going to accept an acquisition, they would have done so a number of years ago. Right now, I think
they're focused on building up partnerships and brands, like with Pepsi and the Hard Mountain Dew.
Will that be the next hard seltzer? Probably not, but I like to see that level of innovation.
Buffalo Wild Wings had a long run as a public company before being taken private in 2018,
but that does not mean the company isn't still innovating. Buffalo Wild Wings is testing a robot
that cooks wings, nicknamed Wingy, and we'll come back to that. The robot is going to be installed
at a ghost kitchen before making its debut into an actual Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in 2022.
Maria, I'm less afraid of the rise of the machines if it means robot cooks.
I'm excited about robot cooks. Also, I would say I'm impressed, seeing as
when Wingy was working, it increased food production speeds by 10% to 20%.
I'm just saying, if the robot cooks are here, they're more efficient and they're doing a good
job and I'm excited for them. We're going to do something about
the nickname Wingy though, aren't we, Emily? By we, I mean absolutely everybody. We can do better
than that, can't we? For a business that goes by B-dubs,
you'd think they would be able to come up with something other than
Wingy, but I guess the bar has been low here for a while. I'm all in, why not Wingy?
Drop us an e-mail, radio at fool.com. Help us help Buffalo Wild Wings get a new nickname
for this robot. Should PayPal buy Pinterest? How should investors think about Facebook's
impending name change? We're going to answer those questions and a lot more after the break,
so stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
There's a raging fire in my heart tonight
Growing higher and higher in my soul
There's a raging fire in the sky tonight
I wanna ride on the silver dove
Far into the night
Till I make you take me
Chris Hill. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill
here with Maria Gallagher and Emily Flippen. As I said before the break, our email address
is radioatfool.com. Time to hit the mailbag. From Rachel in Pittsburgh, what do you think
about Facebook changing its name? Maria, this comes from a report this week in The Verge
that apparently next Thursday at Facebook's AR VR event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going
to announce a new name for the company. What do you think? Mark keeps saying that Facebook's now
going to be a metaverse company. It's not just a social media company in the next five years. They
have hired about 10,000 new hires in the EU to be working on this, kind of reorienting the entire
brand around this idea of the metaverse. I mean, I think it's a pretty transparent effort to try and
distract people from the problems that have been raised about the way that they treat their
younger audience. For people who don't remember, 22 million teens log into Instagram each day.
32% of teen girls said that when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram makes them feel
worse. There are more statistics like that. And so there's been a lot of comparisons for
Philip Morris changing their name to Altria, just trying to say, if you completely ignore
everything else, we're just going to change our name, but not change anything else about ourselves.
So, it hasn't really impressed many people from the articles I've been reading so far.
We don't know what the new name will be, but it seems that most people see that this is
a pretty clear, transparent way to just try and distract people.
Although, Emily, I will point out, whatever one thinks about tobacco, if you bought shares
of that company when they changed their name to Altria and held to today, you've done pretty
well.
I'm weirdly bullish on the idea of Facebook changing its name.
I would like to tell Mr. Zuckerberg, if you're listening, I have some ideas for you. Have you
thought about Metabook, Faceverse, or I remember Radio Shack tried to rebrand itself a number of
years ago to The Shack. While that wasn't successful, maybe it'll work out for The Book
or The Face. So many great ideas out there. I also like that you called him Mr. Zuckerberg
and I called him Mark. From Drew in Virginia, PayPal is apparently about to buy Pinterest
for $45 billion. I own shares of both companies. Should I be excited, terrified, or something else
altogether? Emily, you also own shares of both companies. How are you feeling about this potential
deal? I do. And you know what? I have a different emotion for you, Drew. Maybe the emotion you
should be feeling, as I was, is disappointed. I'll tell you what, I love PayPal as a business,
but it's gotten to the point where it is so large, it is acquiring for growth. And that's worked out
well for them in the past. I think about Honey as a really interesting $4 billion cash acquisition
that PayPal made last year that actually exposed it to more digital transactions.
And I can see a world where they actually integrate that well with Pinterest, which has
been trying to expand its e-commerce capabilities. Now, there's differences in whether or not a cash
deal or a stock deal actually results in shareholder returns. But what makes me kind
disappointed is as a Pinterest shareholder, my bullish argument for Pinterest has always been
around monetization potential, not necessarily user growth. Just because user growth has tailored off
this year, I think the stock has sold off really aggressively. I'd argue too aggressively. In fact,
I'm really excited about the future of Pinterest. If I was Pinterest management, I tell you what,
I would be telling PayPal to get lost. But the fact that Pinterest management is sitting down
and thinking about this acquisition and thinking to themselves, hmm, yes, $45 billion, maybe we'll
do that. I'm just disappointed because in my mind, I think Pinterest is worth much more.
But I'll tell you what, if management doesn't agree with me, then maybe my thesis is wrong.
Maria, you also own shares of both. How do you want this story to end?
I also own shares of both. I'm going to echo what Emily is saying. I can see the argument.
I don't really like the argument. I think that both of them standalone are as much better,
especially Pinterest. I think that they've just, as Emily said, you know, they've just gotten to
the point where they've really acquired such a strong user base and they're working so hard to
integrate shopping into their pins, integrate all of these different options. And I think it would
just be a shame to leave before you can see how they monetize well. From Marcus in California,
on last week's show, Maria's radar stock was Zillow Group. How does she feel about them
stopping their home buying service. This comes from the news on Monday when the company said
they were, and I'm quoting here, beyond operational capacity in our Zillow offers business.
They hit the pause button through the end of the year, Maria. The stock dropped 10% on Monday. It
has since bounced back from then. What do you think? I think that with this type of scaling,
I actually think it's important to pause. I don't like pausing because they've done too much. I
I think I like a thoughtful pause, but I do think it's such a thin margin business in such a hot
sector. You really want them to effectively scale. So when you have the chance that they buy too many
houses at above market offerings, and then the market cools down, then they have all this
inventory of houses that they paid too much for. So you want them to become, because that's such
a low margin business and they are going to make their profit from these kind of ancillary
businesses. I think it's smart to figure out what's the best way to make offers. How fast can
they flip them. I'm buying still about only 1% of the entire market. So it's such a small part.
It's not going anywhere. And I want them to scale well and generate profit from those ancillary
services. So I hope that they're taking time. I hope they're assessing the overall market,
where they fit in, how to reasonably scale. I hope they're taking some time to think
and then coming back with a really smart and good strategy to scale effectively.
With that in mind, are you surprised that halfway through the month of October,
they said, we're pausing this for what amounts to two-and-a-half months? I'm not surprised that they
hit the pause button. I'm surprised that they essentially boxed themselves in to say, we're
going to start this back up the first week of January 2022 because I know the stock has rebounded
from what happened on Monday. But Maria, there's only one of two scenarios here. One is they
actually started up in January again. And the other is they don't. And if they don't, that's
got to mean another hit to the stock. Yeah, I don't love such a strong end date. I do think
that there's a chance that January comes and they say, we're going to take some more time.
Um, and I do think that that would, would hit the stock, but, uh, I think it'd be better to do that
and then have long-term returns from taking more time than to say, we're just going to go back in
full, full scheme ahead. Even if they just maybe in January start by saying, we're going to build
back up to the scale. We're not going to start at a hundred miles per hour. We're going to start at
a more reasonable rate and then kind of concentrate in different areas. And this is what we've decided.
So I think they're giving themselves a good amount of time. Um, and so hopefully they'll start at a
more reasonable pace starting 2022. From Cam in London, what happens when a stock is delisted?
I have about 5% of my portfolio in JD.com and Tencent. Whilst I like the companies and would
probably continue to hold them for five to 10 years, it occurs to me that if I cannot sell them
because they are not listed on an exchange, it doesn't really matter how much they go up.
I'm not losing sleep over it, but I'm wondering if I have misanalyzed the risk of these two
companies." Emily, we've talked about Tencent and JD.com in the past. It seems like there
are a couple of parts to Cam's question here, but let's get to the first part. What happens
when a stock is delisted? That's a great question. The answer
is we don't really know yet because a situation like this hasn't quite presented itself. In
the past, when the stocks have been delisted, there's been a few options. Either they're
moved from one of the major U.S. exchanges into the pink sheets or the OTC exchanges
in the United States, or they're given cash values by the companies. The companies essentially
buy out their own shares. But this is a totally different situation. In fact, the SEC right
now is currently evaluating ways to implement this delisting bill. They have about three
years. If a new bill passes through the House of Representatives, that may be squeezed down
to two years, but they're trying to figure out what exactly this looks like. We don't
have all the details until the SEC releases them, but we can speculate a little bit about
what our options are. I myself am a shareholder in a number of Chinese companies that threatened
to be delisted as part of this move. One of the first things that you can do, which is
what you're doing right now, is actually nothing. We don't quite know what the implementation
will look like. For that reason, it's entirely possible that some agreement is worked out
between Chinese and American regulatory authorities around what type of oversight is acceptable
to both protect American investors while also providing a little bit of security for the
financials of Chinese companies that don't want to just hand that over to a foreign government.
There have been agreements worked out in the past. In 2013, there was an agreement in place,
so this isn't completely unprecedented. In that case, you can think to yourself, well,
I'll keep an eye on the situation. If things continue to go south, maybe I make a move,
for the time being, oh, hold on, I like these businesses. And I like the fact that you say,
oh, I'm okay holding them for the next five or 10 years. But because you also have a long time
horizon, one of the things that we see more and more investors doing is actually choosing to buy
these shares on foreign exchanges. So, both JD and Tencent, as well as the majority of other
major Chinese companies, are actually dual listed on the U.S. stock exchanges, as well as the Hong
Kong stock exchange. And while their prices may seem different at face value, the value of the
businesses themselves should move in tandem. So you could sell your shares on one exchange and
then go to a foreign exchange and buy the same shares there and then hold them for the long-term.
So lots of options. I will say it's hard to tell what the future is, but in terms of the businesses
themselves, I think you're pretty well protected in the types of businesses that you're invested
in. JD and Tencent, which we talk a lot about, are pretty robust, well-respected Chinese investments.
Well, and also, Emily, we talk from time to time about allocation, and it seems like,
at least in this portion of Cam's portfolio, keeping something like this to 5%,
one way to think about allocation is if my thesis on this part of my portfolio goes to zero,
how threatened am I? And if it's 5%, I mean, that would be not great, but it wouldn't be awful,
because it seems like he's doing a good job with spreading out the risk.
That's exactly right. Keeping it within your risk tolerance is critical. I will say, Cam,
you have a great mentality. You're not losing sleep over it. It's a small portion of your
portfolio and you're just wondering. I think that's a great mentality to have about our
investments and I wish we could all be quite as calm as you. From Matt in New York,
he writes, long-time listener here. My girlfriend has recently become interested in investing. I've
I've turned her on to your show and she wants to do a deep dive into some introductory literature.
Can you recommend any investing one-on-one books or resources online? Oh, Matt, you came to the
right place. Maria, what can you recommend? I have a good amount of recommendations. So the
first in terms of books, in terms of just understanding the dynamics of looking at a
company, you have a series called The Little Book. So you have The Little Book That Beats
the market, the little book of valuation. And then there's one up on Wall Street, which is a
classic. And those are just kind of understanding the dynamics of the stock market, how to look at
a company. And then I think what's also really important is understanding the market as a whole
and then how it interacts with other markets. So understanding kind of that bigger picture.
So there's a book called Americana, the 400 year history of American capitalism that I would really
recommend, as well as Too Big to Fail to really understand the dynamics within the industry and
how interconnected a lot of these industries are. And then I also have some YouTube resources,
which Oswalt's Motorin has good valuation videos. They're slightly more advanced,
but they're really excellent. And then MoneyWeek has really good simple videos. And then
Investopedia will be your best friend. Investopedia for all of those terms that you don't know,
put them in with Investopedia and you'll get really good explanations. And sometimes those
have videos as well. So that's kind of my long-winded itemized list of recommendations
to get started. I'll just add, if you're a subscriber to HBO Max, a few years back,
they did a very good film adaptation of Too Big to Fail. I'm not knocking reading. I'm just saying
you can bang out the movie version in a couple hours. Emily, what can you recommend?
Well, I love the idea of watching a movie instead of reading. You know me too well, Chris.
I think Rhea has some great resources there. I think it comes down to what you're trying to
achieve. I think to become a good analyst, first you have to understand the businesses and then
you have to understand valuation. So the first part I think is critical, which is just understanding
how to look at a business. And I think the best way to do that is honestly just to read through
annual reports, read through a company's 10K. They're publicly available on the SEC's website.
And you can go through, read through the business, Google terms you don't know as you come across
them, but get an understanding for what the business does and learn to analyze the structure
of a business before you get into complicated stuff like valuation. Then once you understand
a business, understand what you're looking for, I love Maria's reference to Oswalt the
Motor. He has this entire valuation class. He's an NYU professor, has his entire master's course
on valuation for free on YouTube. Work your way through it. It's lengthy, but it's also extremely
valuable as an introductory course. I'll just add one more. This one does
have a movie adaptation, which I believe won an Academy Award. But The Big Short remains for me
one of the best books I've ever read about investing. I wouldn't put it in the category
of investing 101, but Michael Lewis might be the best nonfiction writer in America. And that book,
like most books, it's better than the movie adaptation. Adam McKay did an amazing job with
the movie. I love the movie. But the book version of The Big Short is just so brilliant. One of
those things that I find myself rereading every couple of years. Yeah, it's pretty brilliant.
We're going to get to radar stocks after the break, so stick around.
You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
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 stocks
based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with
Maria Gallagher and Emily Flippen. It's time to get to the stocks on our radar. Our man
behind the glass, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. Emily Flippen, you're
up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm really excited for my radar stock
this week. It's Doximity. The ticker is DOCS. A lot of people will refer to it as the LinkedIn
for doctors. Essentially what they do is they operate a social media platform that's exclusive
to medical professionals in the United States. But I really think that actually misses the
bigger picture here. What Doximity is, is really catering to pharmaceutical businesses
and acting as almost a platform to replace pharmaceutical sales reps. When pharmaceutical
businesses need to reach doctors to market or advertise their new drugs for certain patients,
Doximity is an amazing platform to do that. When you look at the return on investment that these
pharmaceutical businesses and some hospitals get when using the Doximity platform, it's much higher
than traditional means. Now, there are some obviously concerns with this business model,
regulations are very hefty in the healthcare space. But I think that Doximity and its founder
CEO, who's still heavily invested in the company, is setting the company apart.
Dan, question about Doximity? Absolutely, Chris. Emily, do doctors have time for this?
Every time I go to the doctor, it's the same thing. I get in the examination room,
I say, here's my problem. And in five seconds, the doctor is out the door in a cloud of dust.
I feel like LinkedIn, while useful, is great for us professionals who have time on our hands,
but doctors, they always seem so busy. You are entirely accurate, actually, Dan. In fact,
doctors necessarily aren't the biggest fan of Doximity. They have to use it for professional
reasons. A lot of times it's required when you graduate and go through classes in medical school.
They use it for telemedicine, for hiring. It's almost like a necessary evil. So you won't see
the engagement levels that you'll get with professionals on LinkedIn, but you'll still
see doctors heavily using it.
Maria Gallagher, what are you looking at this week?
So, my writer's stock is not technically public yet.
It's called Rent the Runway.
It just filed its S-1.
The ticker will be rent when it becomes public, but it's referred to itself as the closet
in the cloud, so you can rent designer clothing.
They have an average subscriber who wears clothing more than 20 times what she pays
for a subscription on an annual basis.
They have 18,000 styles, 750 designer brands, and it will be the first ever IPO with a female
CEO, CFO, and COO.
So I think it has a lot of really interesting implications for the way that people want
to buy versus renting clothing, and I'm excited to see more about it.
Dan, question about Rent the Runway?
Yeah, so is this something that everybody can use?
I've only really heard of, uh, uh, clothing for, for, for women being, uh, featured on rent the
runway, but could I get like a really snazzy suit out of it? Honestly, they do only talk about women
on rent the runway, but I bet that you could, I bet if you looked hard enough, you would find a
good one. Um, I was saying earlier, I'm now at the age where a lot of people I know are getting
married. So I'm getting more and more interested in renting dresses for, to be a guest at weddings.
that makes a lot of sense because i mean that stuff's expensive and a lot of times you're only
going to wear it once or twice right yeah you can't have multiple instagram pictures of you
at different weddings in the same dress that's a real no-no absolutely not i know our radio
listeners can't see my face but just know that it's etched with disgust at that thought
dan linkedin for doctors or the closet in the cloud what do you feel like adding to your watch
list this week? You know, I'm actually going to go with, uh, with rent, which isn't even listed
yet. Uh, because Emily explained that the doctors don't actually like using Doximity that much.
Nobody likes to be advertised to Emily, Maria Gallagher. Thanks so much for being here.
That's going to do it for this week's Motley Fool money. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd.
Our producer is Matt career. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
We'll be right back.
