Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Microsoft’s Ascension, Facebook’s Metamorphosis
Episode Date: October 29, 2021Microsoft becomes the world’s most valuable company. Amazon and Apple deal with supply chain issues. Alphabet rises on (what else?) strong ad sales. Visa gets a visit from the U.S. Department of Jus...tice. Facebook changes its name to Meta. Atlassian hits a new all-time high. Ron Gross and Jason Moser analyze those stories, discuss the latest earnings from Starbucks, McDonald’s, Shopify, Twilio, and share two stocks on their radar: Asana and Teladoc Health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Chris Hill. 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,
senior analysts Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen.
Hey, how are you doing, Chris?
We got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We've got some amazing suggestions for one
restaurant chain. And as always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar, but we begin
with earnings from Behemoth Tech. On Friday, Microsoft went past Apple as the most valuable
company in the world. Shares hit a new all-time high after revenue growth in Microsoft's first
quarter was the fastest since 2018. Ron, growth at this size is impressive, to say the least.
Chris, I'm going to start the show right from the top by declaring a firing on all cylinders
situation here, right here, right now. You heard it here first. Really strong results. I love
this report. Better than expected sales and earnings. A company of this size, as you said,
market cap $2.5 trillion, by the way, putting up really solid numbers. Revenue, 22% increase.
Intelligent cloud sales up 31%. That's server products and cloud services revenue increasing
35%, and that was driven by a 50% increase in Azure. That is really the growth story here.
That's what you should focus on as a Microsoft shareholder. Microsoft, now the No. 2 cloud
company with 20% market share, behind Amazon with a 32% share. The other two segments,
productivity and business processes, which is the office commercial products and LinkedIn,
that segment was up 22%. LinkedIn revenue up 42%. Who knew? That's not too bad.
And the final segment, which was the worst name of a segment I can think of,
more personal computing up 12%. That's the Windows division. That's Xbox. That's Surface.
Surface revenue, a weak spot, decreased 17%. But you go down the income statement, 70% gross
margins, 45% operating margins. You've got adjusted net income up 24%. They've returned
almost $11 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the quarter.
They've got $130 billion of cash on the balance sheet. The stock is up 47% this year,
trading at 35 times, but still looks good to me here.
Something we've been talking about for a while and we will continue to talk about on
this episode, and probably for the rest of the year, is global supply chain and all of the
problems there. You look at the business of Microsoft, Ron, they seem far more insulated
from those challenges than others. Ron Grossman. Very interesting you
mentioned that. I went through the transcript and did a search on the phrase supply chain,
because I wasn't hearing that much about it in their report. I wanted to get a gauge of how
they're talking about it on the conference call. They did talk about it and it did impact the
business, but not nearly as much as we're hearing from some of the other tech companies. You're
correct, very interesting, not as big an impact as, for example, a company like Apple.
Amazon's third quarter profits came in much lower than expected,
revenue missed as well, and guidance for the fourth quarter was conservative,
as CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to take on several billion dollars of additional costs
due to supply chain, increased shipping costs, etc. And yet, Jason,
shares of Amazon basically flat this week. Jason Moser. Yeah. We talk a lot about
Amazon, how with every quarter, it's just the same old thing, nothing really changes,
it's just nothing to see here. I think we've actually got a quarter this quarter where
it's a little bit of a different beast. There is something to see here, actually. The numbers
were fine. I think they were well within management's guidance that they set last
quarter. I think that's what investors should continue to focus on as opposed to the headline,
misses and beats. But the fascinating thing to me, they're guiding for 8% sales growth at the
midpoint here for the holiday quarter, which is really pretty impressive when you think about it,
and not in a good way. For context, last year in the holiday quarter, they grew revenue 44%.
4%. Yeah, this is a bit of a different situation here this time around. I think a lot of this
goes to what you offered there in the setup, the cost of labor, labor-related productivity
losses, cost inflation, supply chain concerns. They quantified that as to have added approximately
$2 billion in operating costs for the third quarter. Now, for the holiday quarter, this
guidance range, they're anticipating these costs are going to come up into the range
of $4 billion. We're certainly going to see these cost pressures continue. That's a near-term
problem. That's not something I think investors should be concerned with longer-term. I think
even more interestingly, though, Amazon Web Services, AWS, we talk about it every quarter
as being just a tremendous part of the business. It was clearly the star of this quarter for
Amazon, with revenue up 39% of the segment, operating income up 38% of the segment. Here's
where it gets really fascinating. Amazon Web Services represented 14.5% of total revenue
for the business over the quarter, but basically all of the companies recorded operating income.
So, you can see, I mean, this is just a crucial part to the business. It's not to say that
the retail side of the business is dead by any means, but it just goes to show, I think,
the strength of Amazon in having this robust U.S. retail e-commerce business, this robust
international business that they continue to build out. But really, this just tremendous
driver in AWS that will continue, I think, to drive this business for some time to come.
You mentioned the guidance for the holiday quarter. One thing we do not know about Andy Jassy
is what is his track record on guidance. And the reason we don't know that is because he's only
been CEO for about an hour and a half. But it is going to be interesting to see three months from
now, if they have a blowout holiday quarter, there are some who are going to say, he was sandbagging.
Well, I mean, that's fine. I think I'd rather see them under-promise and over-deliver. And
Amazon traditionally has given a very wide range of guidance, not only for revenue,
but typically it seems even wider on the operating income side. So yeah,
that'll be something to keep an eye on. We'll certainly cover it next go-around.
Apple sold $83 billion worth of stuff in the fourth quarter,
but that was somehow lower than expected. CEO Tim Cook said the company expects global supply
chain constraints to cost them $6 billion. Shares of Apple down a bit on Friday after
the earnings report. Ron, I get the slight drop in the stock, but the year-over-year numbers are
still impressive. Very impressive. As long-term Apple shareholders, this doesn't concern me too
much. Now, listen, $6 billion, $6 billion, and it's probably going to continue into the current
quarter. So we don't want to sweep it under the rug completely, but it's something that is to a
certain extent out of their control. It's not a permanent impact on the business. And even in the
face of this global supply chain problem, they're still putting up, as you said, really impressive
results. Revenue is up 29% for a company of this size. That's pretty strong. As you said, that $6
billion negative impact on revenue, industry-wide silicon shortages and COVID-related manufacturing
disruptions, the main culprits there. We're seeing that really across the board. It's not
exclusive to Apple. But listen to some of these metrics. iPhone sales up 47%, iPad 21%,
wearables up 11%. Now, the services business, Apple becoming more and more a services business
as time goes on, 26% increase there. Now, it accounts for about 22% of sales. I like that
number very much. Mac brought up the rear at only 1.2% growth, but I don't think much was
really expected there. Their business model continues to be very profitable with growth
margins of 42%. EPS, earnings per share, up 70%. They had $20 billion of net income for the quarter,
$95 billion in profits for the year. This is an unbelievably profitable company.
They returned $24 billion to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, ended the quarter with $191 billion in cash.
Comments about the current quarter, the all-important holiday season, not great.
Expects an even greater impact from supply constraints during the current quarter.
Apple still anticipates, though, that it will set a revenue record during this quarter.
So I think we're going to still see some of these companies, especially Apple, working through these supply chain issues.
but long-term, I think this looks like a really great report and the company is doing quite well.
You talked about going through the Microsoft call looking for mentions of supply chain.
Did you do the same for Apple's call looking for mentions of Ted Lasso?
I did actually. No, but Ted Lasso, if you haven't watched it, please do. It's a wonderful
show. Listen, you get a $2.4 trillion company, and it's the home of Ted Lasso, and you're only
paying 27 times earnings. I think Apple looks good right here. If it gets weaker, I think it's
a good entry point. On last week's show, we talked about the prospect of Facebook changing its name.
This week, it went from prospect to reality. We're going to get meta after the break,
so stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross.
YouTube's revenue was light, so was Google Clouds, but third quarter profits and revenue
for parent company Alphabet still came in higher than expected. Shares of Alphabet up 7% this week,
Jason, which that's a lot when you're a company of Alphabet size.
Yeah. If you're an Alphabet shareholder, which I am, then you've got to be feeling really
good about how this year has gone so far, stock up around 70%. And I think it's because of results
like this, they are really leaning into that AI narrative, it seems like. CEO Sundar Pichai
referenced his vision from several years back of making Alphabet an AI-first company. And I think
that could be very powerful as we continue to see the coming together of user experience and
software and hardware. But I mean, at the end of the day, this is still an advertising play at its
core. That's a bad thing because they continue to do it very well. The numbers, very impressive,
revenue up 39% ex-currency to just over $65 billion. Cost of revenues, relatively in line,
up 31%. That was primarily driven by growth in traffic acquisition costs, which is something
they always have to deal with. That was up around 41%. But bottom line, operating income of $21
billion was up 88% operating margin, 32%. You can see this is a tremendously profitable
business for a number of reasons. I think a lot of that has to do with, you mentioned
it earlier, YouTube is just a tremendous driver, but it has other drivers as well in Cloud,
and obviously its core search continues to perform very well.
Visa's fourth quarter profits came in higher than expected, but guidance for 2022
a bit low. And then you throw in the fact that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the
company for potential antitrust concerns, and you get shares of Visa down 8% this week, Ron.
Yeah, I think it's the antitrust investigation that really has investors spooked more so than
the earnings report, which was relatively solid. Justice Department watching Visa financial
incentives offered to Square, Stripe, and PayPal. The probing of Visa's deals prevented those
payment firms from using other card networks or money movement technologies. That could be rather
severe if they end up being in violation of any antitrust statutes. So for sure, keep an eye on
that. If we turn to the fourth quarter, we see recovery in travel, improving global economy,
driving volume, revenue up 29%, total payment volume up 17%, number of transactions processed
up 21%. Cross-border volumes, which has been really the story here with Visa and MasterCard,
up 38%, but still well below pre-pandemic levels. Keep an eye on that number as a gauge of how
our global economy is recovering. Management said, our business has been on a recovery track
for the past three to four quarters. However, we are not back to normal yet globally.
But you saw adjusted earnings per share up 44%, really, really solid. First quarter net revenue
growth forecast to be in the high teens. They're repurchasing lots of stock, $3.1 billion for the
quarter, $87 billion for the full year. So I think the report looks solid. Let's keep an eye on
cross-border volumes and antitrust investigation. So I don't want to dismiss what's happening with
the DOJ, but isn't a likely scenario here that the outcome is Visa ends up paying a fine of some sort?
Yeah, I would be surprised if it went as far as a breakup of the company or something so severe
that would impact shareholders. But a fine, it could be significant. They might have to change
the way they're operating, which could change their relationships with certain companies,
which could impact the business model. If I was a Visa shareholder, which I may be,
I'm not sure, to be honest with you. I wouldn't be too worried.
Facebook's third quarter profits came in higher than expected. Guidance for the fourth quarter
was a bit low. And all of that takes a backseat to the announcement on Thursday from CEO Mark
Zuckerberg. The new name for the parent company will be Meta. Starting on December 1st,
the ticker symbol will change from FB to MVRS. Jason, a lot of people poking fun at the name,
and we may do that as well. I will just point out, however, that when Google changed its name
to Alphabet, when Philip Morris changed its name to Altria, you could have done worse than to buy
shares of those companies at that time. Oh, I mean, absolutely. I think
clearly we can have fun with this, but I mean, to your point, rebrands, of course, can work
when done for the right reasons. I think this is a unique one. It seems to me that Zuckerberg
wants to run away from the Facebook brand. Frankly, I think that's probably the right
thing at this point. It seems rather toxic. One thing I noticed, and I really was just
thinking this more, this was only half tongue-in-cheek here, really, but he said that
this is no longer a Facebook-first company. This is meta-first company. By saying that,
you are implying that Facebook now comes second. To me, that could be a big problem, because it
sounds like from that, Facebook will just get worse. I don't know that that really is going to
solve a lot of their problems here in the near term. I hope they don't take their eye off the
ball. It seems like they're really going to have to continue focusing on the actual social network
side of the business. But by the same token, hey, listen, the metaverse is coming, whether you like
it or not. So I certainly appreciate that they're trying to be forward thinking and be a big player
in that developing space. That's a question I have. The metaverse is cool. It's like the future,
right? It's so many movies' vision of the future. But how long does it take the actual metaverse
concept to really take hold where you're having virtual conferences or you're going to a concert
with a friend virtually? Are we five, 10, are we 20 years away? Is Metaverse aspirational right now,
or are they actually putting dollars behind this? Well, there are plenty of companies that are
putting dollars behind it, not just Facebook. You look at companies like Unity Software,
Roblox, Matterport, all these different types of companies that are building tools and interfaces.
I think there are a lot of challenges that come with it. One of those challenges is certainly
going to be the consumer interface side of it, because the simplest explanation I've heard of
the metaverse to date, it's the 3D internet. Clearly, it'll be participatory. It's not going
to be something that you have to be a part of. But to me, it strikes me as something that's more
like fully self-driving cars. It's probably way further out in a meaningful fashion than most
people would like to believe. But tech moves pretty fast. So, yeah, obviously, a lot of people
that are really bought into the concept, it could materialize sooner than that. But I would guess
probably more 10-20 years when it's playing a more meaningful role in our lives and society.
Shares of Coca-Cola up this week and close to a new high after third quarter profits and
revenue came in higher than expected. The company also raised guidance for the full fiscal year.
Restaurants and events reopening, definitely helping Big Red there, Ron.
For sure. We're seeing public venues, theaters, stadiums, restaurants open up,
very important for their business. You saw a rebound in revenue, which was up 16%,
global unit case volume up 6%. That reflects an 8% growth in the sale of concentrate and a 6%
growth from price and sales mix. As Warren Buffett says, and one of the reasons I think he likes Coke
after all these years, is they do have some pricing power and the ability to raise prices
if they need to. Sparkling soft drinks up 6%, trademark Coca-Cola up 5%, nutrition juice and
dairy up 12%, and hydration sports and coffee up 6%. 11% increase in adjusted operating income,
not too bad. This is not a technology company, they're not going to go crazy here,
and adjusted earnings of 18%. They're going to rely on more marketing expenditures to boost demand
as well as higher prices to get around any potential aftershocks related to the pandemic.
we'll see if higher prices offset the marketing expenditures and what impact that has on margins.
But overall, I think this is a very solid report. After the break, we've got food and more
beverage earnings, along with an international stock hitting a new all-time high. Stay right
here. This is Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross.
Shares of Starbucks down 7% on Friday. Fourth quarter revenue got hit by lower sales in
China and earnings guidance for 2022 was lower than what Wall Street wanted to see, in part
because CEO Kevin Johnson said the company plans to raise wages twice next year. Jason,
We've seen this in Starbucks past, or you look back over the last 20 years, this is
one of those times when Starbucks is investing, and that costs money.
Yeah. I think this is just the market showing its impatience. Management is guiding
for around 12.5% revenue growth for the coming fiscal year, which is really strong. Now,
that's offset, as you noted, from some costs that the business is going to have to realize
here through wage increases. They're going to see some margin pressure here in the near
term that impacts profitability. But ultimately, I think that's the right thing. They're creating
a place where employees want to go, in this environment particularly. Hiring is tough.
We're going to see, I think, some operating leverage further out. They'll keep buying
back shares and paying that dividend. Coffee, Chris, as you know, it's as reliable as the
sun coming up. When you look at the actual numbers for the business, I think it was a
very encouraging quarter. Sales were up 31% to a record $8.1 billion. Global comps up
17%. That was driven by a 15% increase in transactions and a 2% increase in the average
ticket. North American comps up 22% versus international, just 3%. Clearly, pressures
in China. I think they noted that the two-year comps in China were negative 10%, negative
7% for the quarter. Issues there, but they continue to grow the store base there, which
I think is really interesting. They opened 225 net new stores for the quarter in China.
In context, they opened 538 total net new stores globally for the quarter. China is
still a big avenue of growth. You're going to see some lumpiness there, I think, particularly
as restrictions come and go. But I do feel like this dip is a nice opportunity for those
like me who would like to own these shares for the next decade and potentially beyond.
I was going to say, this is not quite the dip that we saw in early 2020 when it
fell about 35% off of its high, but it's down nearly 20% off its high for this year. If this
dips below $100, you really need to think about it. I couldn't agree more. I jumped in at that
time where you're talking about 2020 when we saw the stock hit around $50. It just seemed too good
to be true and it didn't last very long. The business has just continued to perform very
well since then. All things being equal here, I think this represents another opportunity for
folks to add to a winner. Higher prices on the menu
helped McDonald's third quarter profits come in higher than expected. They raised revenue guidance
and shares of McDonald's are a Big Mac away from an all-time high, Ron.
Another example of a company that has pricing power, as you mentioned.
and that's necessary because those increased prices help to cover rising commodity labor costs.
McDonald's struggled to keep restaurants open at full capacity amid the labor shortage and
COVID-19. They had to push back some new restaurant openings into early 2022,
in part because of global supply chain problems, making it difficult to get kitchen and technology
equipment. Seating areas remain closed in about 20% of McDonald's locations, that's about 3,000
restaurants. They've got some headwinds that they needed to overcome and they did a nice job
as a result of, as we said, pricing increases of about 6%. Their crispy chicken sandwich,
which I have not had yet, helped and celebrity-themed meals continues to get it done
for them. All jumbled in to make a pretty nice revenue increase of 14% with U.S. same-store sales
growth of almost 10%. Global comparable sales up almost 13%. That's a nice report. Strong net
income growth, adjusted earnings per share up 24%. Forecast current quarter U.S. comparable
sales to post low double-digit growth on a two-year basis from two years ago.
Relatively new loyalty program in the U.S. now has over 21 million members. I like that. I think
that's pretty impressive. They're increasing delivery capacity. They're making sure technology
and digital channels, whether it's the app, kiosks and restaurants or delivery, are a big part of
their strategy going forward. And I think it's paying off nicely. Stock's not expensive at around
24 times, pays a 2.3% yield. So I think McDonald's looks pretty good here.
I want to go back to something you said, because I think it's important to point out that when we
talk about companies that have pricing power, a lot of times it's businesses that have higher-end
goods or more expensive things. But the fact that people don't think of McDonald's as an expensive
place and on a dollar basis, it's probably not, but that doesn't diminish from the fact that
this company has pricing power. Yes, but they do need to be careful
because part of McDonald's appeal is a value proposition. You have to balance
hurting that value prop with somewhat higher prices.
Shopify's third quarter revenue rose 46%, and that was still lower than Wall Street was
expecting. It was Shopify's first revenue miss in five years, but shares still up a little bit
this week, Jason. Yeah. I mean, I think we can certainly understand it has been a challenging
environment for retailers and retail concepts the world over, and I don't think Shopify is
immune to that. But I think if we look back over time here, I think Amazon, and at least partly,
I'll throw Costco in there, too. So, there you go, Mac. You're welcome. I think these are two
great examples of businesses that really helped set a standard a while back for the value in being
extremely customer-centric and sacrificing those near-term gains in order to ensure longer-term
sustainability and success. So, Shopify, I think, has certainly taken a few pages from that playbook,
and it is clearly working to my mind. Total revenue for the quarter up 46% from a year ago,
as you said, that broke down. Subscription solutions revenue grew 37%. We love to see
those subscription businesses and that was primarily due to more merchants joining the
platform. Merchant solutions revenue up 51% and that was driven primarily by the growth
of gross merchandise volume. Speaking of that, the gross merchandise volume for the quarter
was $41.8 billion. That was up 35% from a year ago. And if you look at the benefit that they
are realizing in their payments platform, I mean, Chris, you know I love a good payment story,
and Shopify's got that angle too. The gross payments volume grew to $20.5 billion. That
accounted for 49% of total gross merchandise volume processed in the quarter. So clearly,
Shopify Pay is working. They're building out all sorts of different tools for their merchants that
joining the platform, and I suspect we'll continue to see this business perform very well for many
years to come. Well, and going back to your comparison to Amazon, like Amazon stock,
Shopify stock is never going to look cheap, is it? It just seems like one of those, like you just,
you can't be looking at Shopify waiting for it to get cut in half, because even if it got cut in
half, it still probably wouldn't look that cheap. I'm glad you put it that way. I don't know that
could ever look at this stock as cheap. I don't think anybody would look at Amazon stock as
conventionally cheap. I think Shopify falls into the same category. When you look at the share
that Amazon possesses today in the U.S. e-commerce market, it's somewhere 39%, 40%. Shopify down
there, I think somewhere in the 6% or 7% range or something like that. It's a very material
difference. It really speaks to not only how big of a lead Amazon has, that's one thing,
but also it speaks to how much opportunity is out there for businesses like Shopify to capture,
how far they've come in such a short period of time has something to do with the stock's
performance. The stock's performance is based on the fact that the business has been performing so
well, and all signs point toward that continuing. If you're a shareholder today, you got to feel
really good about it. But yeah, I think you put it very, very eloquently there. It's just a stock
that never will look cheap. Atlassian started its fiscal year with a bang. First quarter revenue for
the collaborative software company rose 34%. Shares of Atlassian hitting a new all-time high
on Friday, Ron. Stock up 90% year-to-date. It's really been on a run. Big revenue beat here.
continuing to benefit from the accelerated digital transformation we've all seen since
the COVID pandemic took hold. Revenue from cloud products was up more than 50% year over year.
That drove revenue growth of 34%. Subscription revenue growth of 57%.
Now, this is kind of important to the thesis. This continues the company's transition
from its on-premise install base offering to a cloud-based platform. It's been moving to the
cloud, and it's been moving there very successfully. Adjusted operating margins, 27% for the quarter
versus 23% last year. Net income of $118 million versus $77 million last year. So profitable,
but not extremely profitable quite yet, still spending quite a bit of money to grow the business.
$1.6 billion in cash at the end of the quarter, so they've got a balance sheet there.
The end of the quarter with a total customer account of 216,500 customers, added about
11,700 new customers during the quarter. CFO will be retiring from his role in June of
2022, having been there for about four years. I'm not too concerned about that. Guidance
looks solid, $630-ish million for the second quarter with adjusted gross margin guidance
of 85%. Atlassian continues to put up the numbers. The stock is by no means cheap, but the company
continues to execute very, very well. Another one of those businesses where people probably
are more familiar with the products, things like Trello and Jira and that sort of thing,
than they are the parent company name. Absolutely. Confluence may be a lesser
known product of theirs, but I think Trello is probably the most well-known. I agree. And they
compete with folks like Twilio, ServiceNow, and many others, but it's a pretty big marketplace.
There's room for more than one player here. Speaking of Twilio, shares down 20% this week.
Third quarter results for the cloud communications as a service company came in higher than expected,
but guidance was weak. Chief Operating Officer George Hu is leaving after nearly
five years in that role. Jason, 20% is a lot. When you look at Twilio, do you think that's
an overreaction? It's difficult to quantify overreaction with
a business like this. This is a very good business. It is in a little bit of a rut.
I think it's probably a victim of that pull forward as everything pivoted to digital so
quickly here over the past couple of years. When you're growing this quickly, you're chalking
up these 60%, 65% annualized revenue numbers. When you're growing that fast and you're still
not profitable. There's no cash flow to speak of. Evaluation is just going to be one of
those big risks that's really difficult to quantify, and that really feels like what's
going on here. If I was a shareholder, I don't know that I would really be too discouraged.
If you remember what Twilio does, they provide cloud-enabled communication services. They
allow companies to reach customers across all common communication channels like SMS,
voice, video, e-mail, chat, WhatsApp. When you look at the numbers, the quarter was very
It was revenue of $740 million. It was up 65% from a year ago. Dollar-based net expansion
rate 131%. In line with their goals, it was down a little bit from a year ago, but over
250,000 active customer accounts now versus 208,000 a year ago. Those metrics are all
headed in the right direction. It's very encouraging. Guidance, as you mentioned, was a little bit
light, it still represents 40% growth for the quarter. Let's take these things with
a grain of salt. Maybe the headline, I think the COO, George Hu, leaving, as you mentioned,
there's probably a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction that he was there for five years
and was considered a very valuable part of the team. But they still feel very confident
that they can grow organically at 30% annualized over the next three years. That's the fuel
that's going to get them to those profitability and cash flow numbers. But if we see signs
that that revenue growth is not materializing, then the market will revalue the stock again.
But given their position in the market, given the sticky nature of the business, the switching
costs that grow over time, I'm betting on this company, not against them.
With this drop this week, the stock is flat over the past 12 months. Does this
look like an entry point for people or are there enough question marks that you would
wait a little bit? To me personally, this looks
like a very good time to consider. Most of that has to do with the track record that
the company has developed over time. But you've got tremendous founder leadership. Again,
you've got a tremendous product, you've got switching costs, you've got good tech. There's
just a lot of positives here. I think the good far outweighs the bad here. These sell-offs
typically can represent pretty good buying opportunities for folks willing to take that
longer view. We asked for your help and you responded.
New names for the Buffalo Wild Wings robot coming up after the break, so 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 with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Our email address is radioatfool.com. Last week on
the show, we told you about Buffalo Wild Wings testing a new robot cook that they are expecting
to roll out in one of their restaurants in 2022. Really, the only thing we didn't like about this
new robot, was the name that the company gave it, which is Wingy. And so, we asked the dozens
of listeners for suggestions, and oh, did they respond. From Viju, instead of Wingy, I suggest
Da Wingster. From Ryan, if it were up to me, I'd call the robot Hot Sauce Willie. And for what it's
worth, Hot Sauce Willie definitely wears a cowboy hat in the kitchen, at least in my mind. That's
great. From Laura, my suggestion would be Mr. Frick of Chick. I'm not sure if this is good or
bad, but it made me laugh out loud when I was trying to come up with names. From Joshua, I
suggest naming the robot cook Winger. I would create an ad campaign on the robot and feature
a song by the band Winger with members of Winger eating chicken wings. Kip Winger, lead singer.
And finally, from Derek, who writes, I love how you played the song Mighty Wings from the movie
Top Gun during your Buffalo Wild Wings segment. Am I one of the few that got that reference or did
most people get it? I'm going to go out on a limb right now and say that most people did not get
that. Shout out to our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd, for a brilliant, yet another brilliant song
choice. Derek goes on to say, here are a few name suggestions. Wingman, winger, right wing or left
wing, depending on the state. And finally, Francois. So, thank you to everyone who wrote
in. Thank you for all those great suggestions. Before we get to radar stocks, Jason, did you
have a name you wanted to throw out there for the consideration of the company?
I really like that right wing, left wing. That makes me think of the Twix commercials,
right Twix, left Twix. Yeah, I mean, I started kicking this around. I mean, I listened to the
show last week. I was out of town and I was enjoying Marie and Emily's ideas there. And I
feel like you go a few different ways with this. I mean, I have like a regal offering. You could
really give him some sort of royalty there. Sir Wingthorpe Friesalot III. You can even say it
with an English accent. Or, hey, listen, I mean, it's a robot, right? What about a Star Wars theme?
R2-Wing 2. I mean, there are just a few different ways you could go with it. Let's get creative.
Wingy ain't cutting it. Remember a year ago, there was that burger flipping robot called Flippy?
I think that was a big floppy. I don't think that caught on, but maybe Buffalo Wild will do a little
bit better. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Damn, boy, it'll hit you with a question. Ron,
you're up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm looking at Asana, A-S-A-N. It's a
recent pick from my friends over on the Rule Breakers team. They're a competitor to Atlassian
that we spoke about earlier. They create software tools that help teams collaborate on work
projects, large customers rapidly increasing their spending, high switching costs, as Jason mentioned
when talking about Twilio. Founders, a lot of skin in the game, which is good and bad. It's
a controlled company. Dustin Moskovitz controls more than 60% of the voting rates and owns 35%
of shares outstanding. Not making money yet. I need to dig in a little bit deeper here to see
when perhaps that path to profitability will be realized. Shares are up more than 300% this year,
so probably not cheap. Dan, question about Asana?
You know, it's getting cold outside, Chris. The weather is changing, and nothing is better than
a warm blanket, like a boring stock pick from Ron Gross. What an incredible snooze fest.
Come on, tech, 300%. Is there a question in there?
Can't win. Jason, what are you looking at? Well, Dan, it wouldn't be Motley Fool money
if I didn't bring up Teladoc Health, ticker TDOC. While we didn't get to the earnings report of the
show, I saved it for radar stocks. They reported another strong quarter. Metrics of the matter
continue to head in the right direction, and management's focus on a comprehensive offering
is paying off. They noted that 70% of bookings this year were multi-product sales, as compared
to about 50% last year. Organic revenue growth of 32%, adjusted EBITDA up 71%. Utilization just
continues to impress and go straight up at utilization of 23.7% in the third quarter.
That was up 210 basis points sequentially. I think the biggest question mark is going to
revolve around the Livongo deal for the next several quarters. Not that it's a bad addition,
but man, oh man, did they pay a lot for it. Question about Teladoc?
More comfort food on Motley Fool Money this week. Jason's back talking about Teladoc again.
What do you know? Better than wings and mac and cheese.
What do you want to add to your watch list, Dan?
You know what?
I've heard about Teladoc too much.
I'm going with Asana because it might be a boring tech company,
but it's up 300%, and those are numbers I like.
Sweet.
Jason Moser, Ron Gross, guys, thanks for being here.
Thanks, Chris.
We're out of time.
Thanks, everyone, for listening.
We'll see you next week.
We'll see you next week.
