Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Motley Fool Money: 03.23.2012

Episode Date: March 23, 2012

Apple announces a dividend. McDonald's CEO retires. Amazon bets big on robots.  And Kraft picks a name for its global snacks business.  Our analysts discuss those stories and share three stocks on their radar.  Plus,  Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy discusses her new book, The Richer Sex:  How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Hill. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill. Joining me in studio this week, Motley Fool hidden gems, Andy Cross, Motley Fool income investor, James Early, and for Million Dollar Portfolio, Ron Gross. Gentlemen, good to see you. Good to see you, Chris. How are you doing, Chris? McDonald's is getting a new CEO, Kraft Foods is getting a new name, and Amazon is getting

us one step closer to robots taking over the world. All that plus, as always, we've got a few stocks on our radar, but we are going to begin this week with Apple. The week started with Apple announcing it will begin paying a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share, as well as a plan to spend $10 billion on share buybacks. The week ended with focus on the new iPad, including the fact that sales have reached $3 million, and some reports that the new iPad runs hotter than previous versions of the device. Ron, there's a lot there. Let's start with the dividend and the share buybacks. What's your thought on those? Well, I'm no James Early, but I like a dividend as much as the next guy. None of us are.

1.7%, 1.8% yield. Pretty good. Not as good as Microsoft. Better than IBM. Looks good to me there. Not a big fan of the buyback, using it to offset dilution from options. Don't love that. Would have maybe liked to see a one-time dividend, put some money in all our pockets in one big chunk. But overall, it's nice to see them loosening up the purse strings a bit. Andy, what do you think? I kind of was looking for a one-time dividend, a little higher payment right now, right out the gate, give it back to shareholders right away. Like Ron said, I like the dividend too,

but I'm not buying Apple for the dividend. James, does the dividend get you interested? The dividend is a little stingy, given all the cash they have. And the dilution offsetting with the buyback is essentially a value-neutral transaction. It's just like a stock split almost. There's no reason to be excited about that. But let's put this into perspective. This is a big symbolic thing for Apple. Steve Jobs almost ran out of cash at Next and in the early days of Apple. So, he just didn't want to pay anything. So, the fact that they're doing this even at 1.8% is still something. We've talked about share buybacks, and it seems like a lot of companies just don't really get that right. Who does? What are some

companies that actually nail that pretty well? First, Chris, let me just emphasize the negative that almost all companies don't get that right. When they have the most cash, that's when they tend to buy back the most. And some McKinsey study just came out validating this. There have been many other studies attesting to the same thing. Buybacks are a terrible thing, usually, but Chipotle has done a great buyback. Berkshire has had good luck with buybacks. McDonald's, actually. ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble are some of the ones that I would flag as having had better than average buybacks in the last so many years. But it's important to note that Apple is not doing it because they think their stock is

necessarily undervalued. It's for the stated purpose as well. Which is a useless stated purpose. The only real reason is because you think your stock is undervalued. Let's focus on the iPad for a moment. Andy, story in the Washington Post late in the week about the cost, the real cost of the iPad, not just for the device, but the cost of the 4G network and how there are people who end up, you know, streaming a lot of video. They end up paying much more. You know, the joke that was made in the post that, you know, the 4G could result in your iPad actually costing 4G. Those Post people.

They love the wordplay over at the Washington Post. Who does that hurt more in the long run? Does it hurt device makers like Apple, or is it the mobile carriers like AT&T and Verizon that ultimately are going to feel the pushback from consumers? Well, I mean, it's hard to say that right now it's hurting Apple. I mean, it seems like nothing is hurting Apple, essentially. I mean, they could sell 12 million iPads this quarter.

I mean, they're selling 750,000 a day now. So, the iPad, this new iPad has been a huge success, a great launch for them. Now, it is high def. It is made for really streaming video and games and, you know, mobile. It's a mobile device that's meant to be a consumer of video technology. That's very data heavy. So, we're starting to see some of those costs show up on the bills of consumers. I actually think it's actually pretty good news for Verizon and AT&T and for those mobile carriers who are actually going out of their way to try to educate iPad users to use Wi-Fi and not burn up so much of the mobile bandwidth.

They do have some bandwidth constraints. They have a lot of bandwidth out there. As long as they can get the bandwidth, that's very good news for the likes of AT&T and Verizon who are going to be able to charge higher and higher rates for their consumers. Right. Yeah, I think the cellular companies, you know, the ATTs and the Verizons of the world, they're using pricing to constrain the amount of data that's going over the network. They've done away with the unlimited data plans because it was just creating too much traffic, couldn't handle it. So now, let's say Verizon, $20 for a gig of data, a gigabyte of data, you can use that up pretty quick. And then that's where, as you said, the pricing really starts to kick in.

It becomes very expensive. And they'll up these prices if they need to to keep the data usage down so traffic can continue to flow. I mean, Cisco said, I think this week or last week, that they're expecting data usage to go up 18-fold over the next five years. I mean, that's an annual growth rate of like 80%. That's what's most interesting to me, is that the story is just getting started. This is nothing. Granted, most of the time you're on your iPad, you're probably in a Wi-Fi area. It's not a big deal.

But if I'm trying to watch a video on how to do CPR to save somebody, and I can't because some guy's watching monkeys play badminton or something on his iPhone, I mean, that's frustrating to me. So it's just going to get worse. As much as I'd love to talk about monkeys playing badminton and video thereof, let's close out on the stock. Apple, Ron, this is a stock that you've looked at very closely. A lot of things going on this week. Has anything happened this week to change your thinking on the stock? Yeah, we own it in a million-dollar portfolio. We came to it late in the game in the high

$400 range, but we're still up a nice 40% on it. We're re-evaluating the model based on the acceptance of the new iPad and how fast it is selling. We, prior to that, had a $625 valuation estimate on the stock, but we think maybe that's a little light, so we're going back to the drawing board. McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner is stepping down in June. He will be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Don Thompson. Skinner has been the CEO since late 2004, and James, the stock's done quite well with him at the top. This is a stock you've recommended. What do you think?

It's true. The obvious headline, Chris, is he's got tough buns to fill. I mean, this has been a company, the CEO has added so much value. I couldn't resist that. Despite the rough economy, despite competition from fast casual restaurants, Jim Skinner has delivered, according to the Wall Street Journal, 106 months of continuous same-store sales growth, which is really fantastic. The dividend is up 153% in the past five years. So this guy, Don Thompson, great guy, is coming in with shares basically near at an all-time high. But I think the exciting thing is apparently he did play a big role in McDonald's plan to win, which is their kind of cheesy name. But their strategy about 10 years ago, just kind of get back into gear with this

dollar menu, with pretty ample restaurants, focusing on gourmet coffee. And this guy was apparently sort of an under-the-table, behind-the-scenes architect of this that we just didn't know about. So that bodes well. The big criticism about him is that he does not have international experience. And that's the growth story for McDonald's, international. So that remains to be seen and just as a nod to Jim Skinner I mean I think you really can't do much better as a CEO I mean he really deserves some praise for most CEOs are not like that these days I mean the purse the purse store sales for McDonald's is just it's double their competitors actually adding value to the

guy yeah I mean he's just been yeah and he's taking it what from 1.4 million to 2.4 million yeah so like he's he it's really just been one of the best CEOs and then the McDonald's has been the best performer than Dow Jones since he came on board as CEO. So, one of the stories from earlier in the week in the fast casual restaurant space is the fact that Wendy's has overtaken Burger King as the number two burger chain. What is the better bet for investors? Because on the one hand, McDonald's is the clear leader in this category. On the other hand, as you pointed out, James, they've just had this great run under Skinner. Wendy's is a distant second, but it seems like there's a lot more

potential upside for them. What do you think? I have not valued Wendy's, Chris. I'm going to say from a dividends perspective, certainly I like McDonald's. It's a safer bet. It's just a more stable platform. And remember, this is a very competitive industry, too. So Wendy's is number two. They probably do have more upside. So if you're a more risk-comfortable investor, maybe that's your play, but not for me. Ron? I always think of Burger King as being like a McDonald's substitute. It's very, very similar, whereas I feel Wendy's has a little bit more differentiation It's a league of its own, you're saying. Yeah, so I like Mondays better in that regard.

We're talking about the food, though. We're talking about the stock. Oh, sorry. That's because you're so hungry. Yeah, I'm a little hungry. Amazon is buying Kiva Systems, a company that makes bright orange robots that move around warehouses filling orders. Ron, as scary as that sounds to me- I hear cynicism in your voice.

Well, I mean, this is- They're cool looking. These robots are cool looking. They are cool looking, and yet this is Amazon's second biggest acquisition ever. They spent $775 million. Is this a good deal? Should shareholders like me be happy about this? So it's interesting. So warehouses and e-commerce fulfillment is actually Amazon's biggest expense, about 9.5% of sales, $4.6 billion in 2011. So anything they can do to bring that down is a big deal. And let's not forget, at least as of now, Amazon is basically a discount retailer,

very, very thin margins. So if you can cut expenses and bring more profits down to the bottom line, that's a good thing. This will streamline the warehouses pretty significantly. And in that sense, it is a good deal. $775 million, I haven't valued it, but let's assume that that's a reasonable price. So I like it. I think they're also going to continue to service other retailers as well. So they will have some revenue coming in, in addition to helping them increase of productivity. So, is the upside for Amazon stock, is it coming more from this kind of move where they're increasing operational efficiencies and getting a better handle on their shipping costs? Or is it in gadgets like the Kindle Fire tablet?

Well, you really have to attack both. You have to have the most efficient cost structure you possibly can. And you obviously have to grow the top line. And Amazon looks to be engaged in both. Yeah, the operational efficiency tends to be a late-in-the-game thing when you're trying to squeeze the last few drops out of the lemon, which maybe they are at now. I hope not. But I think this is also something to prevent a competitor. You notice they bought this. They didn't license it, which they presumably could have. Walmart apparently passed on an option to buy Kiva, but I think they're trying to make sure that they own this so nobody else gets it.

I'll toss in, while it is a big expense, it's also a huge advantage for Amazon. One reason why they've been so successful is their distribution network. So the fact that they're focusing so much on, as James said, to really dominate that space, and while they may try to wring out the last bit of efficiencies, I also think it can be a very nice competitive advantage for them to continue to develop this technology and also be able to sell it to other clients. It's almost like they're kind of bringing this in as an incubating system project. And, I mean, Kiva, before the buyout, they wanted to scale this to a billion in sales.

They're at about $100 million right now. So, while it's an expensive price to pay about seven times sales, I mean, Amazon right now is selling for less than two times sales. Just from a metric perspective, it looks expensive. I think the advantages of having this in-house and being able to kind of leverage off Amazon's experience for other clients could be a nice little advantage. Sticking with shipping, Andy, earlier in the week we saw UPS spending $6.8 billion to buy TNT Express. Do you think that's a good deal? I think it is. I think it broadens UPS's reach, and that whole business is based on scale, very much like distribution network and advantages that Amazon has here in the U.S.

I mean, UPS is a huge global player, so this really expands their network, builds out their nodes, allows them to just dominate a space where they've had so much success in there. And, you know, they're going head to head against FedEx and other competitors. Now they're going against one less, especially in Europe. Coming up, Kraft Foods unveils a new name that has a lot of people scratching their heads. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in the studio with Andy Cross, James Early, and Ron Gross. Guys, a bunch of companies reporting earnings this week. Tiffany's, fourth quarter sales up 8%. Andy's sales for the full year up 18%. Are you buying a lot of diamonds or something? No, maybe Ron is, but... My bet's on Ron. Ron does not.

It was a good year for Tiffany's first three quarters. The fourth quarter was a little rough. Their margins across the board fell, and their sales fell as well. Now, they had guided twice, they had guided to lower numbers. So, the stock is down 20% over the last three months. So, it's really had a very rough patch. Then they guided for a little healthier year, and the stock bounced up when they announced the earnings. So, it's one of the premier retailers. Sales per square foot is right up there with the highest retailers out there. So, Apple and Lululemon right up there north of $2,000 per square foot. So, it's a great retailer.

The challenge is, are their clients buying all the goods they used to buy at least for last year? They're going to open a bunch of more stores. So, things continue to be pretty good, but I don't know if I'm buying the stock right here. Nike's third quarter profits up 7%. James Early, what do you think? Chris, shares are down a little bit, actually, because even though the profits themselves are up, Nike's margins are down because of input costs. So that seems like a bad headline, but you've got to step back. If you look at a chart on Yahoo Finance or Google Finance, you'll see Nike is still essentially at an all-time high.

So this is a company that is really firing on all cylinders, I'll say, to use a Ron Gross-ism. That trademark. So this is not really the bad news that it seems. Retail company Lululemon's fourth quarter earnings up 34%. Ron, shares hit an all-time high this week. Boy, are they getting it done. Sales up 50%. As you said, earnings up 34%.

Same store sales, up 26%. Really? That is an unbelievable figure. That's a huge number. Stock just keeps going higher. They're guiding for 30% increase in revenue for this year. Everything's really going well. And finally, Kraft Foods is proposing to change the name of its global snacks business

when it splits into two companies later this year. Guys, the new name is Mondelez. No, really, what is it? It's Mondelez. craft executives say that monday comes from the latin word for world deliz and i'm quoting here a fanciful expression of delicious

which is our producer matt career said anytime you have to use the word fanciful it's not really a cat food named fanciful feast it's almost impure sounding too i mean ron what do you think this seems like a miss i'm no marketing guy clearly

but yeah it feels like a miss to me it just makes no sense i have to read this uh anecdote from the wall street journal uh earlier this week uh in the journal they write in the late 1990s reebok came up with a women's running shoe dubbed incubus apparently no one had checked the dictionary to find out that an incubus is a mythical spirit that descends upon women in their sleep to have sex with them i'm horrified and the company is horrified a reebok spokeswoman said after a television news program aired a story on the goof the company ended up recalling the shoe. So, you know,

Mondelez... Compared to that. It's no incubus. I mean, it's a little bit tamer than incubus. If you invite someone into your house for a little Mondelez, it doesn't sound good. This is a crowdsourced name, isn't it? They invited like a thousand people to submit their names and some committee combined the two together. It's the kind of thing, crowdsourcing works

for some things, but not this. You need some guy in a basement thinking of something. To give them a little bit of a pass here, the cookies won't actually have the name. It won't be like Mondelez Oreos. It's just going to be Oreos. So it's not going to be that big a deal, but I still don't see the point in doing it. All right. Ron Gross, Andy Cross, James Shirley. Guys, we will see you later in the show. Hey, if you're looking for more stock analysis

and commentary on the latest business news throughout the week, check out our daily podcast, Market Foolery. It's on iTunes and online at marketfoolery.com. I got an email from Bruce Snyder in Troy, Michigan. He writes, I download Market Foolery every day and listen to it on my iPhone during my drive home. I save Motley Fool money for my weekend runs. Both are great, so keep up the good work. During my run last weekend, I encountered large packs of those little black bugs that swarm around your head. I couldn't believe this was happening in March in a suburb of Detroit, and I can't imagine the bugs we will encounter this summer. My thinking is that any company that serves the bug deterrent industry, like Off, will have a bonanza this year.

Any thoughts? Steve Broido, what do you think? I mean, OFF is a product of the Johnson & Johnson company, so I don't know how much it's going to move that stock. But do you have like a go-to bug repellent that you use? The thing I love about the repellent industry, if I may call it that, is the number of new products that come out. There's the sprays, and then there's the candles, and then there's all kinds of... Oh, yeah, the candles. They also have all kinds of... You can wear wristbands now that are supposed to... They You have fabrics that deter bugs. Wristbands?

How is that helping? I'm not exactly sure, but I should probably buy one. Do you go the candle route, like outside? We have outdoors. The citronella stuff seems to work okay, but bugs are definitely a problem. All right. Drop us an email, radioatfool.com. Coming up, Washington Post writer Liza Mundy talks about the richer sex.

Don't go away. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. We're in the money. We're in the money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. In 1970, the percentage of U.S. women who earned more than their husbands was in the low single digits. And today, it's nearly 40%. Here to explain what it all means is Liza Mundy.

She's an award-winning reporter with The Washington Post and author of the new book, The Richer Sex, how the new majority of female breadwinners is transforming sex, love, and family. Liza, thanks for being here. Thank you. It's great to be here. What got you interested in this topic that made you want to write this book? Well, I've been writing about gender and family and culture most of my career. And seven or eight years ago, you just started hearing more and more about the fact that women are outnumbering men on college and university campuses.

And I have a vivid memory of being in the minority on my college campus in the 1980s and really started wondering what that was like for young women, just socially, romantically. But also, it's becoming clear that we're seeing the economic payoff to that. And there was a report two years ago by a company called Reach Advisors that found that in most American cities now, and not just big cities, single women under 30 are out-earning their male peers. And that is a really unprecedented situation for women to find themselves, you know, in terms of their life, in terms of dating, in terms of envisioning how their lives unfold. And then when I started looking into the government figures, it is the case that almost 40% of working wives out-earn their husbands. And when you ask people to sort of come up with a figure, what they think it might be, it's never that high. And it has been a steady rise.

It's been rising for 20 years. There was an acceleration in about 2000, 2001, well before the recession. So the recession did accelerate it a little bit, but it did not initiate it. And so if we just continue at this pace, if you just plotted it out on a graph, the rise since 1987, come about 2030, the line would cross 50, and you'd have more than 50% of working wives out-earning their partners. And what's the primary force behind that rise? Is it the difference in college education, or is it something else? It's a convergence of trends. Okay, so women have been increasing their college attendance and also graduate school and professional schools at exactly the same time that the economy has been changing. And we know, I mean, again, the recession really illuminated this, but we know that for quite some time we've been moving from a manufacturing and industrial economy into what they call a knowledge economy. Fields like health care are expanding, and that's traditionally a woman's field.

And it's becoming more important than ever to have a college education. Economists talk about the fact that our economy is hollowing out. So we're losing these middle sector jobs, these relatively high-paying jobs that used to be available to high school graduates, and specifically to male high school graduates. It's, you know, jobs in factories and manufacturing are going away, and the jobs are moving either to the lower end of the sector or the higher end of the sector. And economists who plotted this out have shown that women are moving out of the middle sector into the higher sector thanks to their education, and that men are sort of equally moving.

Some are moving into the high end, but they're also trickling down into the low end. So, you know, it's not just women in white-collar workplaces. It's nurses and teachers and social workers. It's women who are getting associate degrees, are outdoing men in terms of education. So we have women making these gains academically. We have a changing economy. And, you know, there is still a gender wage gap. Women still make less on the dollar than men, but it's closing. And so, you know, we are seeing the benefits of 20 or 30 years of trying to erode discrimination in the workplace. Opportunities are improving. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way to women, but they are.

And so even with a gender wage gap, what is striking is that this many women are out earning their husbands. You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with Liza Mundy, author of the new book, The Richer Sex, How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family. Let's focus on the family for a second here. You talked to more women who were worried that their husbands were going to feel emasculated than the number of men who actually did feel emasculated. What does that tell you? Yeah. Women kept saying, oh, gosh, I hope he doesn't feel emasculated. I mean, they felt like their situation was working well, but they had these vague worries about their husband. And really, I mean, you know, of course, that can be true. But more and more, I think men feel that it is a good thing to have a productive, working, high-earning wife.

And we study show that young men, when they identify traits that are desirable in a mate, domestic skills has plummeted as something that men are looking for in a woman. And financial prospects has risen remarkably. And there's also been a study by the Hamilton Project showing that marriage rates have risen for the highest earning women. So, you know, for so long women were told if you get too educated, if you're too professionally successful, you're going to be lonely and single for the rest of your life. And there are suggestions that that's not true, that men, you know, do see this as a plus and as an opportunity for them to have more flexibility in their own lives and be able to make choices besides taking a job that they don't necessarily want just to provide a family. But women aren't always secure in this. They haven't always gotten the message. So I would sometimes talk to wives who did worry that their husbands felt emasculated.

I would talk to single women who would go to great pains to hide how much they made or to hide their professional accomplishments, sometimes lie about what they did. You know, a physician I interviewed in Pittsburgh who would tell men when she met them, oh, I work at the hospital taking care of patients, to sort of encourage the notion that she's a nurse. So women still think that they have to portray themselves, in order to seem feminine, that they have to portray themselves as somehow lesser. And I don't think that's true.

But another reason sometimes that wives worry that their husbands feel emasculated is because women are actually kind of hanging on to their earnings and they're retaining control over their money in a way that men have not done. Traditionally, studies show that if a man is a breadwinner in the family, then decisions about purchases and finances are made pretty much 50-50. But when women are the primary earners, they hang on to their power over their money, and they are more likely to make the purchasing and finance decisions. And I think this is because traditionally when women have earned,

we thought of this as like our discretionary income, our pin money, our shoe money, whatever, for our wants and our needs, and we have to start thinking of ourselves as providers. And so women would say, I worry he feels emasculated because he has to ask me for money. And I would think, well, why is he asking you for money? I mean, why don't you all have a joint account and two ATM cards? I mean, that really seemed like a no-brainer. And the really successful couples I interviewed who were making this work were couples where they regarded themselves as a team.

If she got a raise, it meant the family had gotten a raise. And the wives, you know, did hand their paychecks over. And often the men would be the CFOs of the household, and they would do the budgeting, and they would make the financial decisions. And it really is important to share that and for women not to try to retain so much control. I'm going to play amateur psychologist, which is always dangerous, but I'm going to do it anyway. When I hear about more women worrying about feeling like their husbands are going to feel emasculated, and the men, on average, are basically, no, I'm good with this situation. On some level, do you think some of those women are losing respect for their husbands

or are secretly wishing that, you know what, that they actually would do more around the house or contribute more to the financial bottom line of the house? Sometimes, yeah. I mean, sometimes that's true. I did interview women who felt like they had entered into their marriage expecting equality, right? Because that's what as women, professional women, we've been led to think that that's the holy grail. is complete equality and parity. So I'm going to work as hard as he does. He's going to earn as much as I do.

We're going to both do the exact same number of housework hours at home, and that's the way we're going to live. And so when one spouse does end up pulling ahead and when it's the woman, she can sometimes feel disappointed or feel that this wasn't the bargain that I signed up for. And I talked to women actually who were surprised that they came to feel that way. And I also talked to women who had maybe husbands who had been the stay-at-home dad while the kids were growing up, and then when the kids went to college and they were empty nesters, the women really expected their husbands

to start doing something productive again, either go back to school, obviously not that parenting isn't productive, but they wanted them to sort of get out of the house and either start earning again or go back to school. And I think that husbands have at least traditionally been more tolerant if a woman has chosen to be a stay-at-home mom that she can kind of stay that way even once they are empty nesters. But also I think that as women appreciate this new supportiveness and willing to compromise, and as bosses and managers see that women have supportive spouses who will move for them, which is something that husbands traditionally have not been so willing to do for wives, I think it's going to help women in the workplace. It's going to help them break through the glass ceiling.

Because if you want to be a really top executive and have a family, I think your spouse is going to have to dial it down. And that's true for men and women. And a lot of women CEOs, you'll notice, do have husbands who are the stay-at-home spouse if they have children. What has been the reaction that you've gotten to your book? Have you gotten any pushback? I don't want to generalize, but I'm going to. I could see older generations looking at a book like this and just sort of, you know, maybe rolling their eyes or having some sort of negative reaction. Well, sure. And there are all sorts of arguments you can make.

I mean, some people will argue, I'm sure, and have argued that, you know, we're never going to get to this female breadwinning world. It may be because women don't want it because they don't want to get boxed in as a primary earner. So, you know, that would be one argument. And then there would be other people who would say, well, yeah, this could happen, but it's not going to be good. How could it be a good thing for both sexes? You know, women are just going to be bossy and dominant. And that's kind of a paranoid vision that you actually see playing out in this current TV season, where they've kind of seized upon this notion of the decline of men and, you know,

portrayed men having to dress up in drag in order to even get jobs and work for these bossy women bosses. So, you know, the idea that it's not going to be a good thing or that it's a bad thing because men are falling out of the workforce and, you know, that we're seeing the decline of men and that this vision is too optimistic. But I would argue to that, and I think people don't really think this through. During the recession, 75% of the jobs that were lost were lost by men. And that's, of course, a terrible thing. But because of the changing economy, those jobs were going to be lost. Those men were going to lose those jobs. Women didn't push them out of those jobs. Women didn't bring about the decline of men. Instead, because they were working and willing to work, they kept households afloat. And studies have shown, you know, that men realize this.

If they have a working wife or a working girlfriend and she's been able to tide them over during these tough times, I would say that women have ameliorated the decline of men if it's happening. I mean, they've slowed the decline, and I think they prevented the recession from being worse than it was for households. And I've interviewed a lot of these women who took jobs or they ramped up their work in order to get their households through. You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with Liza Mundy, author of the new book, The Richer Sex, How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family. Liza, before we wrap up with a round of buy, sell, or hold, I do have to ask this question. and it came up in the office today, because you go back 20, 30 years, it even happens today,

if the man is the primary breadwinner and the wife is staying home with the kids and he's coming home from work and wants to surprise her with something nice, maybe he'll pick her up some flowers. What is the female equivalent of that? Like if the guy's at home with the kids and the woman's the primary breadwinner and she wants to do something nice for him, she's not buying him flowers. She's just not. What is she? No, I think she's going to get him a really nice blowtorch that he can use in the kitchen for the creme brulee that he has prepared for dessert. Because we know that men are cooking much more than they used to, and men tend to be sometimes kind of showy cooks and ambitious meals, and they like to have a lot of kitchen tools. So I think she's going to stop off at Williams-Sonoma and get him a new addition to his kitchen repertoire.

See, I was just thinking she'd pick him up a six-pack, but that's just me. Yeah, that's her. All right. We'll end with a round of buy, sell, or hold. This is popular with some couples. Buy, sell, or hold joint bank accounts for spouses. Would I both contribute to the bank account and share it? Yes. Totally buy. Yeah, buy. Is that how you and your husband operate as well? Yes. Yes. It's very important, I think, to share the resource and go as a team. I'm married, so this next one has no bearing on me, but buy, sell, or hold single women picking up the check on a date.

Oh, buy, buy, it's crazy not to. Damn, I got married too soon. And finally, buy, sell, or hold the future of marriage. Yeah, okay, buy. You sure about that? Yeah, yeah, hold a little bit. I mean, we're never going to see the marriage rates that we had in the 1960s, I think. But, okay, bye.

I'm going to bye. The book is The Richer Sex, How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family. Fascinating stuff. Liza Mundy, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Coming up, we'll dip into the Fool mailbag and give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is 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. I'm Chris Hill, and back in the studio with me, Andy Cross, James Early, and Ron Gross. Guys, before we get to the stocks on our radar, we will dip into the Fool mailbag. You can always email us, radio at fool.com. Email from Tony Bambara. He writes, guys, I've been considering starting a portfolio, and I'd like to add a tech company, specifically a video game studio. The company I've had my eyes on is Activision Blizzard,

ticker symbol ATVI. What I think makes the company strong are the very successful franchises, including Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, etc. But my concern is that the stock never seems to break $14 a share, even though the last Call of Duty game grossed $400 million on launch day. What is your assessment of this stock, and do you have a perspective on the video game industry as a whole? Ron, what do you think? Yeah, well, we own Activision, and he's right, they do have a wonderful game franchises. Guitar Hero's not so great anymore, but they're still pretty strong. He's also right that the stock tends to not move, but we believe that eventually stocks realize their appropriate value.

I mean, it's a great company, $2.9 billion in cash, no debt. It's got this great subscription model now that the video game industry in general is moving towards. Pays a small dividend, buys back stock. We think it's worth $17 per share. share, so right here at around $12 and change, pretty good buy. Alright, let's go to the stocks on our radar. We'll bring in our man Steve Broido with a question for each one of you, but Ron, you're up first. Alright, I'm going back to one of my favorite companies, which will not be a surprise

to anyone here, Costco. C-O-S-T is the symbol. And the reason I'm doing it now is because I significantly raised my valuation estimate just last week to $100 per share. So the company is doing all the things it always has done. It's a great cash generating model. Management was great. Unfortunately, Jim Senegal, my hero, has recently retired, but the company's in good shape. Still Senegal. Still the chairman. Yeah, and the company's in good shape with the new CEO. And we just updated our

model and we really like what we're seeing. So at $90 a share, I'm not sure I'm jumping in, but if we get a pullback, I would go in big. Steve? My question for you, Ron. Costco, I don't go there anymore because it's just too crowded and it's a total nightmare trying to get in and out of that place. How does Costco solve that problem? interesting. I, in general, have the same feeling, but in reality, it never worked out for me that way. Walking in gives me anxiety, but they're so efficient in how they get you

out, I always end up saying, you know, that was pretty good. That was a really good experience. So, I would encourage you to try it again, because I think they do a nice job. Andy Cross, stock on your radar? I'm going with Decker's Outdoors, symbol D-E-C-K, the maker of Uggs and Teva sandals and Sanuk sandals. Stock's been just decimated over the past three months, down 20%, which normally I see as a big warning sign, but Decker's has been on my watch list for a while. I mean, they're just one of the premier sellers of these kind of high-end shoes that just seem to be in demand. Earnings are still growing. Sales are still growing. It's a big international

play, and yet there's some input costs and some margin pressures that's been sending the stock down. And there's a lot of short sellers against it who just don't see the growth story long term. So I think at the pullback here, it's worth really looking through and trying to figure out, is the story still alive on the growth side? Steve? What's a successful shoe company you can think of? All I can think of is Nike. Are there any other companies that they can model themselves after? Well, see, that's the thing. It's not really a shoe company. It's really a branded lifestyle company. You go to California, you still have a lot of people using these products and reordering them again and again. That's the nice thing about this is a high-repeat

customer business, so I like it. James Early, stock in your radar? Chris, I'm going with Pepsi, which I believe was an Andy Cross recommendation in Income Investor years ago. I like it. 3.1% yield, around 12% upside by my model. Pepsi has not done terribly, but has not really kept up with the market in recent years, but I feel it is undervalued because of that. Steve? You don't drink Pepsi, so how can I? I would never drink Pepsi. That was just my question. So much sugar. Okay, that's my answer. We'll end there. James Hurley, Andy Cross, Ron Gross. Guys, thanks for being here.

Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Thanks to our guest this week, Liza Mundy of The Washington Post. For commentary throughout the week, check out our daily podcast, MarketFoolery, on iTunes and online at marketfoolery.com. That's it for this edition of Motley Fool Money. Our engineer is Steve Roido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We will see you next week.