Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Roblox’s Debut and the Future of Gene Editing
Episode Date: March 12, 2021Ulta Beauty’s CEO steps down. Docusign and JD.com decline on earnings. Bumble bounces higher. Poshmark misses the mark. Roblox has a big debut. And Dick’s Sporting Goods and Funko deliver on earni...ngs. Motley Fool analysts Emily Flippen and Jason Moser discuss those stories, take stock of the sports betting market, and share two stocks on their radar: DexCom and Coupang. Plus, bestselling author Walter Isaacson talks about his new book, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.
People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,
and two out of three women rocked the Rachel.
While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get
when WestJet welcomes you on board.
Here's to WestJetting since 96.
Travel back in time with us, and actually travel with us, at westjet.com slash 30 years.
everybody needs money that's why they call it money
from fool global headquarters this is motley fool money it's the motley fool money radio show i'm
joining me this week senior analyst emily flippen and jason moser good to see you both
Good to be here. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street, bestselling author,
Walter Isaacson is our guest. As always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar,
but we begin with some big shoes to fill. Ulta Beauty's fourth quarter earnings report took a
backseat to the news that CEO Mary Dillon is stepping down in June. She will transition
to Executive Chair of Ulta's board and stay there for a year. Company President Dave Kimball will
take over as CEO. Chairs of Ulta were down 8% on Friday, Emily, because Mary Dillon has been
the CEO since 2013. She has done a great job leading this business and the new guy has a
tough act to follow. That's an understatement, Chris.
What's really interesting is back in December, Ulta actually reorganized its leadership team.
They brought in four new leaders for things like international operations and merchandising,
all while keeping the now CEO, Dave Kimball, in his role as president. This transformation,
I guess, was precursored by a transformation in the leadership team back in December,
but it certainly still took me as a shareholder and the market by surprise because of what an
excellent job Mary Dillon has done. Now, she will be staying on for the next year,
helping the transition, helping the new CEO, Dave Kimball, take over his role. But he certainly is
going to have a challenging 2021, because when you look at Ulta's quarter, just their earnings
this quarter, their same-store sales fell nearly 5%, revenue fell just nominally year-over-year,
they stopped their expansion into Canada, all of these negative effects coming out of the COVID
pandemic. So they still have a lot of initiatives that they need to prove out over the next year,
over the next few years to say, hey, you know, Mary Dillon, she did some great things for the
company over the past eight years, but here comes Dave and Dave can still deliver that same return
for shareholders. You know, I think about all the success that business has had, Jason, and this is
something you and I have talked about before. The building up of the Ulta Beauty and Salon
loyalty program, the tens of millions of people that got into that, you know, it's one of those
things that shouldn't be overlooked in terms of Mary Dillon's legacy as a leader?
No, not at all. I think you're absolutely right. I think the loyalty program plus the progress
they've made on the mobile front, I think has been phenomenal. I think they really embraced
the changes in technology, not only the move to mobile. I mean, clearly mobile is a thing,
right? It's not a fad. And they saw that early on and made the investments, I think the appropriate
investments for a business like that to bring in technology like augmented reality, allowing folks
to be able to try on different products without necessarily having to even be in the stores.
I think you put it all together, it really is just a phenomenal job that Ms. Dillon has done.
I think she will be sorely missed as the CEO. However, it's nice to know that she will be
holding that executive chairman role still. Real quick, Emily, before we move on,
you look at the performance of the stock up, I think, in the neighborhood of 250%
during her leadership. The stock falling on Friday, do you look at Ulta Beauty as a strong
enough underlying business that this represents a great buying opportunity? Like, hey, the stock
is almost 10% cheaper, or is this a little bit of a wait and see? I tend to lean on the cheaper
side, but I will say that hesitantly, because some of the numbers that we've seen for Ulta need to
move in the right direction to really make this a good buying opportunity. In particular,
the focus that the business has put on their loyalty sales. Loyalty members actually fell
10 percent year-over-year, which is exactly the opposite of what Mary Dillon was trying to do,
which was transform this company into something that had a character, had a loyalty program,
and had lots of people shopping online through these augmented reality initiatives. Two-thirds
of their users, of Ulta buyers, are still in-store shoppers only. Those numbers, the loyalty numbers
and the online shopper numbers, need to continue to climb to justify buying today.
Shares of DocuSign falling 7% on Friday, despite the fact that fourth quarter sales came in higher
than expected, capping a year in which overall revenue came in at $1.5 billion. Jason, DocuSign
up 200% over the past year. It's not a cheap stock, but when you look at billings, when
you look at the way they're adding customers, it seems like the business is growing in the
ways that you would want. Oh, yes. It's growing in the ways
that we would want, Chris. As a shareholder myself, I am very happy with this quarter.
I think if you're looking for a stock to buy and hang on to for years to come, I think
it's one that should be at the top of your list. At the end of this year, this is going
to be a $2 billion revenue business. To your point, no, not a cheap stock. But hey, listen,
that puts these shares at a refreshing 20X forward sales. In a world where 40X sales now
seems to be the norm, DocuSign maybe looks like a deal. But I think the metrics that matter really
do tell the tale for this company. Revenue growth, 57%. Billings growth of 46%. They brought in more
than 70,000 new customers for the quarter, now have just under 900,000 customers worldwide,
and saw their strongest expansion in upsell rates yet, actually driving their dollar net retention
rate to 123% highest it's ever been. So, this is a business right now, today, it's generating
positive operating cash flow, even after you back out the stock-based compensation. Gap profitability
is still a ways away. But at this point, I'd argue they don't have to worry about that,
given the numbers they continue to lob up. They grew enterprise and commercial customers by $50,000
for the year. International revenue grew 83%. It's now 21% of total revenue. And so,
they have a pretty cut-and-dry strategy. It really all just centers around this idea of
being the go-to platform for the agreement process, pre- and post-signature. And it seems
to be working. They're building out some pretty strong technology that is resonating with
customers. There's an interesting data point on the call. I think this is really a testament
to the decisions that they're making and the strategies that they're employing. They added
nearly the same number of customers this past year, approximately 303,000, as they actually
had in total at the time the company went public in 2018. Clearly, it's a business that's
benefited from the tailwinds of the pandemic. I would argue that pandemic, notwithstanding,
this is a business that's still doing all of the right things, maybe that hastened the
growth a little bit. But I think the guidance for the coming year is strong. They took a
little bit of a target-like tone there in a conservative nature, noting that the ongoing
impacts from coming out of the pandemic make operating expenses a little bit difficult
to fully forecast. But all things considered, this is a business that just continues to
do all the right things, it seems. Fourth quarter revenue for JD.com
Dotcom rose 31%. Profits were also higher than expected, but shares of the Chinese e-commerce
company falling more than 5% over the past week, Emily. It seemed like it was a nice cap to a
strong fiscal year, though. Extremely strong year for JD. If anything, the fall today is just a
contraction in valuation because of what a great 2020 it was for JD. And when you look forward to
what 2021 could be for this business, even thinking about 2022. It's important to differentiate JD
versus its other competitors in China, in particular, Alibaba and Penduoduo. Part of
the reason why JD is going to have a tough time living up to their comps in 2020 is because
virtually every other e-commerce platform in China had to suspend their delivery services
during the lockdown. This is where the difference in business model comes into play. Because JD
owned their own logistics network, they owned the warehouses, they owned the distribution,
they were able to stay in business, while Alibaba's Tmall, Taobao, and Pendoduo struggled.
So, a lot of customers actually transformed to becoming JD customers, paying that little bit
premium to get the white glove service that JD offers, just so they could get food and other
items delivered to their house during the pandemic. It'll be really interesting to see how many of
these customers JD is able to retain heading into 2021 versus how many churn back to the
cheaper platforms. Bumble's first earnings report as a public company was a hit. Shares of the
online dating company up more than 10% this week. Bumble is a growth company, Jason, and revenue
grew more than 30%. Yeah. Hey, listen, I'm clearly not the target demo here, but a women-first
dating app, as founder Whitney Wolfhard describes it. I mean, I think there's a possibility that
my daughters will be using these platforms at some point or another. So, I appreciate
her perspective. And I'm rooting for this company, to be honest with you.
To the numbers, 31% revenue growth, that was, I think, impressive. Most of that growth came
from the Bumble app, the Badoo app, which is the more international focus. A little bit slower
growth there, and about 10.5% of overall growth there. But fourth quarter total paying users
grew 32% to 2.7 million users. Total ARPU of $20.02 versus just under $20. It grew 4%
sequentially, 3% year over year. The company's calling for $164 million at the midpoint for
the current quarter here. That represents 38% growth from a year ago. I was a little
surprised at the optimistic reception given that call for full-year revenue of $720 million. That's
around 24% growth. It's not a company that maybe it's growing like a number of those other tech
heavy SaaS business models that we've become so familiar with over the past year. But again,
I kind of go back to DocuSign and talking about seeing stocks at a bit more of a refreshing
valuation. That pegs this stock at around 11 times forward sales, which I think is actually
pretty reasonable, given that it seems like it's really just getting started. They've introduced
the new Bumble Premium subscription, introducing ancillary services and Bumble BFF for platonic
relationships, Bumble Biz, which is for professional relationships. I'd be interested
to see where they take that. This is the type of company I would much rather give a few quarters
to see how they live their life as a publicly traded company. But it seems like that first
reported quarter was a good one. Coming up, we've got more earnings
and a hot IPO, so don't go anywhere. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Emily Flippen and Jason Moser.
Unlike Bumble, Poshmark's first earnings report as a public company was not a hit on Wall Street.
Revenue looked good, but the online seller of secondhand clothes issued soft guidance
for the current quarter and shares of Poshmark down nearly 20% on Friday, Emily.
Emily Flippen There's a lot of inherent skepticism about
the concept of Poshmark, which is a community, again, mostly aimed at female users for people
looking to resell their clothes.
But if you look at just the numbers that management provided in this quarter, there are actually
a lot of good things.
We can start with gross merchandise volume, GMV.
was up 28% to just under $400 million for the quarter. Pretty strong growth coming out of a
year that was really light for the apparel industry overall. They posted adjusted EBITDA
of over $4 million, so increasingly becoming more profitable, at least on an adjusted basis.
But more importantly, they kept nearly an 18% take rate on all the orders placed on their platform.
that is top tier for online sellers and even more impressive when you consider the huge backlog of
deliveries and the issues that we saw delivering for the holidays over the past season. Where the
issues came in, as you mentioned, was actually guidance. The company is guiding for 32% to 36%
revenue growth over the next quarter, which was below expectations. Perhaps more importantly,
they only provided guidance for that first quarter, not throughout 2021, which also could
have worried some investors. I'll provide the caveat that this is the first quarter Poshmark
has had as a public company. We don't know anything about management. Are they sandbagging?
We don't have those expectations already set. We'll have to see if this is a struggling retailer
in terms of growing revenue in 2021 or a management team that just likes to beat expectations.
Roblox went public on Wednesday at $45 a share. For those unfamiliar,
Roblox is an online game platform for children that is wildly popular. Shares of Roblox quickly
shot up to more than $75. Jason, we've seen some frothy IPOs over the past year. Does this
seem crazy or given the market as a whole, does this seem reasonable to you?
Well, it feels like we've got a little bit of a theme going on here
in regard to valuation. We've talked about it with a few of these other stories. I think with
Roblox, very big debut, trading at around 40X sales. Now, that seems like the norm for a lot
of these companies that are just coming to the public markets. We still don't know enough about
it. But what we do know, it is obviously a very popular platform in the gaming world for children.
My kids, I guess, are a little bit older, they don't use it. I've never used it, so I'm not very
familiar with it. But in studying the business and understanding how it works, it's for creators as
well as players. It reminded me, they have an American Express-like closed-loop thing going
on here in allowing folks to both create and play games. It gives them a lot of control over that
data. I think that really offers the potential for some very compelling network effects
over time. Gaming obviously is a massive market opportunity. While this is something that's still
relatively new to the market, I do understand the enthusiasm there. It's a direct listing,
of course, so no new shares were actually created, and then the IPO didn't raise any capital. It just
gave folks the opportunity to invest in the business. They report having just under 33
million daily active users at the end of 2020. That was up 85% from a year ago. I think it'll be
noteworthy to see how that active user growth continues on through 2021 and beyond. But to
to that user growth, revenue followed in line. Revenue growth of 82% was just under $1 billion
for the year. Again, a lot to learn about the business. I do understand the enthusiasm behind
it though. Shares of Dick's Sporting Goods
up a bit this week. Fourth quarter profits and revenue came in higher than expected.
Emily, this is another company with some tough comps coming up in 2021, but over the past year,
this is a stock up 175%. The tough comps is the perfect
description of what 2021 is going to be for Dick's Sporting Goods. This quarter, they had a 66%
increase in earnings per share with a record-setting 10% increase in same-store sales growth,
but next quarter is when COVID kicks in. If you actually rewind to the fourth quarter of 2020,
so last year or 2019, I should say, it was a completely different picture. They had guided
for flat to 2% same-store sales growth in 2020, so that will be a critical number to watch.
Funko is one of the leading creators of licensed pop culture products,
and shares of Funko rose 25% this week after a strong fourth quarter report.
Jason, people aren't just watching The Mandalorian, they're also buying Mandalorian Funko Pops.
Jason Moser. Many may call this a toy company, but really, they call themselves a pop culture
consumer products company. While that may seem on the surface like semantics, I think it's really
not. Looking at the numbers, fourth quarter sales in the US, they had a great holiday season. Sales
were up 18% to $171 million. That offset weakness internationally. When you look at what this
company sells, to that pop culture nature, it really does feel like a lot of what they're
selling is straight out of a Simpsons episode. You're talking about things like Snapsies and
Funko Vinyl Soda, and Pop Albums, and Stitch Shop, and board games. But they're best known,
I think, for their figures, specifically bobbleheads. To that point, non-figure products
represented almost 23% of the company's sales. They're trying to go beyond being just the
bobblehead company, so to speak. It seems like it's working. They are building out a direct-to-consumer
business. Those sales grew 80% to over $50 million, representing about 8% of the business
now versus about 4% a year ago. Just an interesting note there, they made in the call that there's
a New York toy fair that's held annually. Because of obvious reasons, they hosted their
first-ever virtual Funko Fair, where they partnered with licensors and retailers to
Gage. That event led to nearly 1.5 million units being pre-sold to fans through their
retail partners. Many of those products still don't ship. They're not even going to be released
for six to nine months. They're six to nine months away from even being released. You
can see, they obviously have a pretty popular line of products there that consumers can't
get enough of. For the year, they're calling for sales growth of 25% to 30%. You understand
the market's reception to the earnings release this week.
Up next, bestselling author Walter Isaacson with a look at gene editing
and the future of the human race. Yes, really. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.
It wasn't my intention to mislead you. It never should have been this way. What can I say?
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Walter Isaacson is an award-winning writer
and bestselling author who's definitely a fan of innovation. Start with the fact that he's
written biographies on Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. So, it kind of makes sense that
his latest book would explore one of the most interesting parts of science and the Nobel Prize
winner at its forefront. The book is The Codebreaker, Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing,
and the Future of the Human Race. Earlier this week, Isaacson talked with my colleague,
Corinne Cardina, about gene editing, starting with how CRISPR technology works.
CRISPR is a pretty simple system. Bacteria have been using it for more than a billion years.
It's how they fight off viruses, which is, of course, a useful talent to have as we face all
these pandemics. And what CRISPR is, is a system in bacteria that can remember the genetic code
of viruses that attack them. And then they see that genetic code again, they take a scissors,
an enzyme, a scissors that will cut up that invading genetic code. And what Jennifer Doudna
and her team did is said, oh, we can turn that into a scissors that will cut our own DNA at
some place we've chosen. Like if we want to get rid of a bad gene, like the mutation that causes
sickle cell anemia, or if we want to create healthier children. We can use this system
to just take a target that we want to cut in our DNA and to use a guide that will take an enzyme
scissors there and cut it there. So within the gene editing space, there is a major difference
between what is called somatic gene editing and germline gene editing. So I'll give you
kind of my understanding, and you can check me on this. With somatic gene editing, you're altering
the genes within a particular person. So there's either the ex vivo method, removing their cells,
engineering them in a lab, putting them back in the body, or the in vivo method in which you
inject gene editing molecules into the body. So somatic means it means body. It changes the
person's genes and how their body creates certain proteins, but it does not impact how they pass
on those original genes to their offspring. So that brings us to germline editing, also called
inheritable edits, in which the edits to the gene can be passed on to the offspring. So you say that
germline editing holds more promise, but more peril. Can you explain some of the big ethical
questions that scientists are grappling with about germline editing and why it's such a big jump
from somatic gene editing, which has largely already become accepted. You mentioned sickle
cell anemia, plenty of trials going on with the somatic side. Yes, we've already cured sickle cell
anemia this past year in a patient named Victoria Gray in Mississippi using somatic editing, meaning
her stem cells were taken out of her body, edited, returned to her body. We've also used CRISPR in a
far more controversial way. Just two years ago, a Chinese scientist who had been to Jennifer
Doudna's seminars used CRISPR to edit the embryos where it became two twin girls in China. And they
had been edited so that they didn't have a receptor that allows them to get the virus that
causes AIDS. And by doing it in an early stage embryo, in theory, it means you're not just
editing those twin girls, you're editing all their descendants, you're editing the human race.
So the moral question becomes, should we hack our own evolution? It's like Prometheus snatching fire
from the gods. We now have the power to design our children and all of our descendants not to
have certain traits or maybe to enhance certain traits like height or hair color or IQ, whatever
you may do in the future. That becomes ethically questionable to some people. Certainly, we want
to do it in order to fight off dreaded diseases like Huntington's or cystic fibrosis or sickle
sell, but should the rich be allowed to buy better jeans for their kids to make them taller
and make them smarter or give them greater muscle mass? Not something we could do right now,
but in the next few decades, that'll be possible. We want to edit out some of the diversity of our
species. Behind me is my balcony overlooking the French Quarter in New Orleans. I look at
the passing parade of all sorts of types of people that add to the richness of our society.
If we start editing our children, are we going to lose some of our diversity? Are we going to
lose this notion that we're all created equal? So these are the things that Jennifer Doudna,
actually, she makes this discovery. She has a nightmare that somebody wants to learn about it.
When she goes into the room to meet the person in her nightmare, it's Adolf Hitler. So the book
not only talks about the science of this, but it talks about how Jennifer Doudna went on a journey,
I mean, went on a mission to enlist scientists around the world to say,
what rules are we going to have in place for using this new technology?
That's kind of where the role of public policy comes into the book. You discuss the very valid
concerns about genetically encoding inequality. Of course, right now we have lots of financial
inequality in the world, but if parents are able to go to the, quote, genetic supermarket,
it's not going to be free. You discuss references to Brave New World, 1984. How do you see the role
of public policy in gene editing, and maybe how does Jennifer see it as well? I think initially,
Jennifer Dowd and myself flinched at the notion of creating genetically modified children. It's
like we all flinch maybe the first time, we talk about GMOs in our food. But like GMOs in our food,
we have to figure out, well, when can it be good and when can it be bad? And at a certain point,
I began to think, and so did Jennifer Dowden, that there are certain times where it would be
immoral not to use this technology to alleviate suffering, to try to stop brutal diseases like
Huntington's disease. But the way we're going to have to figure it out is not just delegated to
the politicians or delegated to the scientists. I think we all have to be involved in thinking this
new technology through. And by we, I mean you and me, Corinne, and you and me, all the listeners of
this show are going to have to say, we should be discussing this as a society. It's the largest
moral issue we're going to face. And in order to discuss it, it helps to know a little bit about it.
And so by telling the story of Jennifer Doudna, I hope I make it very easy to understand
what the possibilities are. And that way, all of us can engage in this discussion,
whether it's at the dinner table or in our political lives with what are we going to do
with this newfound fire that we've snatched from the gods. And it's not just scientists in labs
necessarily who are doing and experimenting with gene editing. So I want to talk a little bit about
what you call the rebels or the troublemakers. You quote Steve Jobs's famous Apple ad from 97
that celebrated the rebels and troublemakers who pushed the human race forward. We talked a little
bit about the Chinese scientist who kind of created CRISPR babies without getting approval
from the greater scientific community. He actually got in trouble. He served time in prison. He's not
allowed to do science in China anymore. Can you tell us about some of the troublemakers that you
discuss in the book that have kind of forced us into a new era of gene editing? Well, the most
prominent was the scientist in China named He Zhuangqi, who decided in sort of a rogue experiment
to just make the first designer babies. People say, well, it's science fiction, it can't happen.
Well, it's already happened. So he pushed it forward. And I think he did it in a very
irresponsible way, which is why he's under house arrest in China, because it wasn't medically
necessary. You can prevent AIDS in other ways. And it was done in a sloppy fashion. But the
question becomes, what happens when it can be done in a safe way? And what happens when it is
medically necessary? It's not that hard to do. In the book, I describe going to Jennifer Dowden's
lab in Berkeley. And within two days, with just two graduate students helping me, I was able to
edit human genes. Now, don't worry. We took them after I'd edited the cells and we mixed it with
chlorine and killed them and flushed them down a drain. I didn't unleash them on the world.
But it's going to be something that in the next couple of decades will become easy enough for any
graduate student to do. And eventually, people will be able to do it like they create webcasts
their own house. So we have to learn what the rules should be. So I want to talk a little bit
about entrepreneurship. So Jennifer occupies a really interesting, a huge spectrum from basic
science researcher and really just curiosity driven, digging into things because she's curious
all the way to being a founder of multiple companies. So the race to develop CRISPR technology
led to three companies formed by the cast of characters that you chronicled. There's
Intelia, Editas Medicine, and CRISPR Therapeutics. Of course, there are more gene editing companies
now, but these are the three that we've kind of familiarized ourselves with the founders
of by the end of your book. So at The Motley Fool, we're investors. Many of our audience
members may have heard of some of these companies and some may have invested in one or all three.
What would you say generally to anyone thinking about putting their money behind companies
focused on gene editing applications? Well, first of all, it's both useful but also joyful
to actually understand what these technologies do. And that's what my book is about, which is,
all right, what is CRISPR therapeutics? How does that work? Now, that's a good company to invest
in. It was just very successful in helping cure sickle cell anemia and a blood disease over in
Europe. Likewise, things like Mammoth Biosciences, which was founded by Jennifer Doudna and her
graduate students, and its rival group, Sherlock Biosciences, which was founded by the MIT Harvard
people like Fong Zhang and his graduate students, those have done things like use CRISPR and RNA
to detect viruses. Well, that's become very useful these days. So, I think that it's always a problem
when you invest based on whims and hunches. It's useful to understand the product. It's useful
to understand what do these companies do. And that's why I spend a lot of time in my book
showing how they form these companies, and then looking at how everything from coronavirus to
cancer to sickle cell are being affected by the technologies these scientists first discovered
and then decided to commercialize when they form companies.
The book is The Codebreaker, Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.
It was released this week as the number one bestseller on Amazon.
Up next, Emily Flippen and Jason Moser return with a couple of stocks on their radar.
Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Chris Hill. 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 Emily Flippen. Our email address
is radioatfool.com. Got an email from Steven Lee in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He writes, I'm
always looking for opportunities for long-term buy-and-hold stocks. An idea I've been looking
at for about a year now has been in the area of sports betting. Fewer than half of the
states in America have actually legalized it, so it looks like a growth opportunity.
I recently bought a basket of Penn National, DraftKings, and MGM, as these companies already
have a strong stake in the sports betting market. I'd love to hear your thoughts on
the industry's future, as well as if you think a basket similar to this is a good long-term
buy-and-hold. Jason, I'll just start with you. I love the fact that right out of the gate,
Steven has the right mindset in terms of looking for long-term buy-and-hold stocks.
Yeah, totally agree. I absolutely do believe this is a terrific long-term opportunity.
I'm a proponent of legalizing sports betting. I enjoy laying down a little cash here and there
myself. And yeah, I mean, a lot of states haven't even really brought it into the fold yet, but
that is just a matter of time, I think. And so, when it comes to finding the companies that will
prosper from this opportunity, I think you have to look to, clearly, the bigger companies,
companies like Penn that have forged partnerships with media companies like Barstool Sports,
for example. I mean, they're going to be able to utilize a lot of data that they get from their
users. Size really does matter, I think, in this industry. Because sports betting is a tough
business, but the companies that do it well, I think, stand to benefit. And yeah, I don't think
you can put that toothpaste back in the tube. I think we're only going to see more and more
states legalize it. And I like the basket approach. Emily, what do you think?
I think this listener should definitely give themselves a pat on the back
for approaching a really volatile industry the correct way. While it is a growth industry,
when you think about the opportunity for sports betting, it also has a lot of risk. Trying to
pick a single winner in a space whose regulations haven't even fully developed is a recipe for
disaster. I agree with the idea of buying a basket, spreading your bets across, but in this
case, I would just recommend this listener and everybody listening to think about what's driving
the growth in the businesses that you're adding to your basket. It can be easy to over-involve
yourself with casino companies, for instance, when you're trying to get exposure to sports
betting. So don't forget about businesses like FuboTV, which offers a platform, or Gann Limited,
which offers the back-end technology for sports betting. There's lots of ways to play the space.
Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd,
is going to hit you with a question. Jason Moser, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?
Yeah. Taking a look at a company called Dexcom, ticker is DXCM. This is a medical device company
that focuses on the design, development, and commercialization of continuous glucose
monitoring. It's called CGM. Those are systems for folks with diabetes. And if you look at some
of the data, it's kind of astounding. I mean, the International Diabetes Federation estimates that
in 2019, 463 million adults around the world had diabetes. You look at the CDC data, estimates were
that in 2018, you had about 34 million people with diabetes, of which 26.9 million people,
that was actually diagnosed. Dexcom is focused on building medical devices for these folks to
be able to monitor their diabetes. Tech and connectivity investments are bringing remote
patient monitoring to reality. This is really an internet of medical things play. Partnerships
with platforms like Livongo to bring data to that ecosystem, ergo Teladoc Health's ecosystem,
because Teladoc Health acquired Livongo, I think just really opened up a world of opportunities
for a company like Dexcom. To that point, they've grown revenue at a 37% annualized rate over the
last five years. A lot to like about this one, I'm enjoying digging into it. Dan, question about
Dexcom? Chris, less of a question, more of a comment. I can't even remember the last time
we did a Motley Fool money without a medical stock on stocks on our radar. I like that comment. I
think that's an astute observation. I would just reply with the idea that it is a massive,
massive market opportunity where technology is just really making things more possible today
we ever would have imagined. Emily Flippen, what are you
looking at this week? I'm looking at a business
called Coupang. The ticker is C-P-N-G. It's often called the Amazon of Korea. They went public on
March 11th, so brand new company. It's a really interesting play on e-commerce in Korea. Amazing
huge addressable market, over $530 billion in addressable market expected by 2024, of which
which Coupang is the largest at 20% market share? Dan, question about Coupang?
Yeah, I generally don't really like IPOs, to be honest. It's not something that I invest in too
much. Emily, is there something about this IPO that's got you extra excited?
Absolutely not. I love the business, but I agree with you about IPOs,
which is why this is a radar stock and not a recommendation.
Two very different businesses, Dan. You got one you want to add to your watch list?
Yeah, Chris, like I said, I'm not into IPOs, so I'm going Dexcom.
I know. I like that your
disdain for IPOs overcomes your disdain for the number of times we get medical companies.
It's not disdain for medical companies, it's just that you hear about them
week in and week out, on this show at least. Jason Moser, Emily Flippen,
Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, Chris.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Fool Money. The show is mixed
by Dan Boyd, our producer is Mac Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
