Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - The Best Investment in 2025 (So Far...) Isn’t What You Think

Starting point is 00:00:00 Tyler Crowe. The best investment in 2025 so far, and a dive into upcoming IPOs. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Tyler Crowe, joined by longtime Fool contributors Matt Frankel and Jon Quast. Today, we're going to dig into some pre-IPO filings because it's going to be a busy week next week. And some of the companies are actually ones that we like. We're going to continue the discussion about Figma from yesterday's show after their post-earnings report drop that happened today. But before we get to all that, we're surprisingly close to the fourth quarter. I mean, Matt, you and I, we're sending kids to school. John, I don't know if you're sending your kids to schools yet, but that kind of gets you in

Starting point is 00:00:53 a little bit of, wow, the end of the year is coming up quick here. And so, we're going to do a way too early look back at the best investments in 2025 so far, because it's been a wild ride for the markets. I mean, the S&P 500 was down almost 14% at one point in April. I think it was Liberation Day tariffs and all that other stuff that really sent the market rocking. But as of this taping, It's up just under 10% year-to-date and is on pace for a better-than-average year for the S&P 500. Surprisingly, one of the best-performing assets this year isn't MAG-7 or anything like that. It's gold. And frankly, it's not even close. John, you kind of showed us some of the numbers before we got started here. It'll be a hard ask for the S&P 500 to catch up to gold.

Starting point is 00:01:42 Yeah. I mean, as you brought up, Tyler, the S&P 500 up about 10% year-to-date. That's a good year. Bitcoin, digital gold, so-called digital gold, up 21% year-to-date. But gold itself, up 36%. Who would have thought that? And on top of that, because of gold's appreciation, you have a stock like Newmont, ticker symbol NEM. It's more than doubled year-to-date. And in the S&P 500, only three of the constituents have doubled this year. That's Palantir, Seagate, and Newmont. That is as odd of a trio as I could possibly think of. Yeah, I mean, an AI government data intelligence company, a data storage kind of like memory

Starting point is 00:02:32 disk company, and then gold mining. Yeah, that's a fun trio they've got there. Now, when we talk about we've seen the rise in gold and the rise in Newmont stock, is this like some wild valuation we're talking about here where everyone's bidded up Newmont mining stock to the moon because everyone's scared of something? No, not really. I mean, Newmont's profits are pretty good this year. The cost to get the gold out of the ground is way less than what the gold is worth. So it's only trading at about eight times enterprise value to EBITDA. That's not that bad for a gold stock. When you think about it, its production is down a little bit,

Starting point is 00:03:11 but it's because it's selling off some non-core assets. It's focusing on its mines that it likes the best. You start thinking about, man, if it's just going to focus on these top-tier mines, maybe that gets a little bit more interest from institutional investors. Maybe this valuation goes up a little higher, it's not outrageous here. Volatility has always been gold and gold miners' best friends, probably right up along there with commissions for brokers as volatility's favorite fans. So, Matt, we can point to plenty of things that have caused market volatility. Some of it's just animal spirits. Well, some of them at the same time, we'll say, were actually more tangible things that may be moving the market in this way.

Starting point is 00:03:57 So, in your view, what are some of the tangible things that are actually driving this push towards gold? Yeah, you're absolutely right that volatile markets definitely favor gold and Bitcoin and other things that are seen as a store of value. I mean, you already mentioned the Liberation Day tariffs, but it wasn't just the Liberation Day tariffs. I feel like tariffs are kind of like a reality show this year. I mean, one day, a country's getting hit with a 50% tariff. The next day, it's 20%. The next day, it's 40%. The next day, tariffs are illegal. And on and on we go. So, it's still in flux. There's a lot of interest rate uncertainty. Will the Fed cut? Won't they? It looks like they will now. Falling interest rates not only can, or interest rate

Starting point is 00:04:35 uncertainty can not only lead to volatility, but falling interest rates can be favorable for gold as well. It just adds liquidity to the system. And we've seen so-so earnings from a lot of big companies that have been, I mean, look how volatile Nvidia was after its earnings. Some of their earnings were so-so, and they're really hard to predict from the MAG-7. So, it's been a lot of different factors. But the tariff drama, I think, has been the biggest contributor this year. So, up 36%, I think a lot of people might be getting a little bit of FOMO. Like, man, should I invest in gold? So, quick question, do either of you actually invest in gold? Matt, we'll start with you. Not really. I mean, I have a few gold

Starting point is 00:05:14 coins in my safe, but I look at it more as just something I own because I think it's fun as an investment. But I kind of wish I had had a big old gold bar at the beginning of this year. Yeah, I haven't invested in gold because I've been programmed to think that gold is something that protects my money, not something that grows my money. And for that reason, I have a lot of years of growth ahead of me, so I focus on the growth. And by extension, I haven't focused on gold stocks either, such as Newmont, but maybe I'm missing out. All right, let's get prediction time. It's September 2025. Let's fast forward to September 2026. What is performing better, the S&P 500 or the price of gold? It's really hard for me to bet against

Starting point is 00:05:58 American businesses, so I will take the S&P 500 for $1,000, Alex. I'd also say the S&P 500, but that's like asking me what tomorrow's pick three lottery numbers are going to be. If rates fall, inflation spikes, it could easily go the other way. We could easily see another 36% move in gold if that's the case. Coming up, we're going to get into something that hasn't quite performed as well as gold recently, and that's Figma and its most recent earnings. But we're going to do that after the break. On yesterday's show, our colleagues talked about the uptick in IPO activity and Figma's stock decline since its IPO. The company reported earnings after the market closed

Starting point is 00:07:08 yesterday and sent some investors, and I'm using air quotes, which obviously makes for a great audio format here. But it sent them to the exits, and the stock's down about 17% as of this taping, although I probably should check it before, because it could be changing as we speak. Now, I want to timestamp it because of the volatility of this stock. By the end of the day, this thing could end up, for all we know, considering the volatility of Figma's stock recently. But getting into the earnings specifically, John, was there anything in the earnings report that shouted run to merit such a sharp price change before the open? Well, let me say this. Run implies fear, and fear implies a mindset that is not conducive

Starting point is 00:07:52 to making good investment choices. I will say, it's not run, but there are some things here that are legitimate concerns, and that's what investors are reacting to. I think the story here is decelerating growth for Figma, plain and simple. When it went public, it was highlighting 46% revenue growth. Now, in this second quarter report that it just released, it only had 41% growth, which is still good, but down. And for the third quarter, it expects 33% growth. Now, this deceleration can also be seen in something called the net dollar retention rate. This is what customers spent this quarter versus the same quarter a year ago. It was 129% in the most recent quarter. That's good. But it's down from 132% when it went public. Customers are

Starting point is 00:08:39 spending more, yes, but that growth in their spending is slowing down. When you look at the valuation here, still trading at around 26X this year's expected revenue, and there are concerns with AI, is this going to eat into its business? Now you look at that decelerating growth rate, and investors are worried. John, I really hit the nail on the head there. First, let's be clear, a 41% revenue growth rate is an impressive number. It's not sustainable forever as a business scales. The same can be said for a 129% net dollar retention rate. That's rare. It's really hard to keep that number going, which we saw after the last wave of IPOs in 2020, 2021, as businesses scale. But a slowdown is a slowdown,

Starting point is 00:09:24 especially from a stock that roughly tripled right after its IPO. Figma was being priced for near-perfect performance. Soon after its IPO, it was trading for more than 50X sales. It's still priced for a lot of future growth. Even after that decline, John already mentioned, it trades for about 26X earnings. It's barely break-even on net income. There's a lot of future expectations still priced in at this level. I just want to mention that was 26X sales, not 26X earnings, just for everybody keeping score at home. I did a little back-of-the-napkin math before we went on the show. I wanted to share a fun little fact about the volatility of Figma's stock. At the IPO, it issued about 36 million shares available to the public,

Starting point is 00:10:09 and that's including institutional investors. There are 487 million shares outstanding in both of the share classes by the founders and all that stuff. Less than 8% of the shares outstanding were offered to investors at the IPO. Right now, there's about 14 million shares changing hands each day and another 19 million are pledged on option contracts. So, it means more than 90% of currently tradable shares are either traded every day or pledged to be traded at a future date. I mean, when you hear like 90% of the stock is traded basically every day, it kind of means like no wonder this thing has been volatile. It's almost like engineered to be that way. Now, this doesn't happen with every company. Not everyone IPOs the way that Figma IPOs.

Starting point is 00:10:57 With that in mind, sometimes you can have weirdness in IPOs. Matt, with the added weirdness of available shares, and you have lockup periods for insider investors around IPOs, do you personally invest in IPOs? My short answer is sometimes. I know that John and I both have a lot we wish we could forget about the SPAC boom in 2021. But we did make some bad investments. We made some good ones as well. I did buy SoFi shares before it even announced its merger with the SPAC. The first IPO I ever bought was Block, then it was called Square, for $9 a share. That worked out pretty well. But in general, I steer clear of IPOs unless I feel really strongly about the business one way or the other. Tyler, talk is cheap, but whiskey costs

Starting point is 00:11:45 money. There is a lot of talk when companies go public. I like to see companies that actually deliver on what they talk about, that's called a track record. And that takes a few quarters to establish. And so, I like to wait and see if this company is really going to do what it says it does. Depends on what kind of whiskey you're drinking and how much it costs. But it's funny, you guys both say that you're not the biggest fans of IPOs. But you know what? I'm going to make you pick a couple anyways. So, we have a big slate of them coming next week, and we're going to talk about them after the break. You gotta try breakfast at A&W

Starting point is 00:12:26 And what better way than with a delicious Pret Organic Coffee, starting at just $1 all day, every day, now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W At participating A&W locations in Ontario. Next week, there's about six companies in public, I don't mean nanocaps, likely pump-and-dump schemes from some questionable parts of the world, or some pre-SPAC blank-check tickers. I mean actual legitimate businesses that are going public.

Starting point is 00:13:00 Before the show, I asked John and Matt, both of you guys, to look at the companies going public and pick one that was most interesting to you. I want to know what you like about it, what turns you off, and what you want to know more about. Matt, let's start with you. Yeah, the one on my radar is Gemini. Officially, the company is called Gemini Space Station. Don't let the name fool you, this is a crypto exchange. Ticker symbol is going to be GEM. This is a crypto exchange

Starting point is 00:13:26 that the Winklevoss twins founded with their Facebook settlement money. They started buying Bitcoin in huge quantities when it was $10 and never looked back and are now worth about $12 billion. They've done pretty well out of that $65 million settlement. But what I like about it is The crypto market's still pretty massive. There's a lot of opportunity there. They have some innovative products, like they have a credit card that earns rewards in crypto. They have better capital allocation than I expected to see. Tyler will appreciate this. Normally, when you see a big net loss and a tiny adjusted loss, it means there's a lot of stock-based comp. Not the case here. Their stock-based comp is about $5 million last year for a company with

Starting point is 00:14:07 a roughly $2 billion valuation. I'm fine with that. And the regulatory environment's extremely crypto-friendly right now. What I don't like is that it's becoming a crowded space. Gemini, for example, is the No. 24 exchange by volume, and the business isn't yet profitable. I'd want to know more about their future growth strategies, and why do they need to go public? Like I mentioned, the Winklevoss twins are worth $12 billion. Why do they need to raise money on the public markets right now? Why do they feel now's the time? A few unanswered questions. And just for everyone scoring at home, Gemini is going to go public with a NASDAQ ticker. It's going to be G-E-M-I. John, I'm going to leave the last word to you, which means I get to go next.

Starting point is 00:14:50 And the one that popped off the page for me was a small coffee chain that's focused on small footprint stores, and it got its origins in Oregon. And it's kind of weird, I'm not talking about Dutch Bros. It's basically a carbon copy paste. It's BlackRock Coffee Roasters. Very, very similar. Apparently, the Pacific Northwest provides us with all of our grunge music and coffee companies. There's something there. It's going to go public with the ticker BRCB. Here's what I like about it. At going public, it has strong same-store sales growth, about 10%, a plan for, I would say, robust but not overly aggressive store count growth. Often times, companies like this go public and grow very, very fast, and it tends to not go well in that regard.

Starting point is 00:15:42 The founders are involved, but instead of being like CEOs, like you often see with founder-led businesses, they actually brought in Mark Davis, who was the former VP of operations at Panera Bread, and he's currently acting as the CEO. Founder-led businesses always sound great, but sometimes founders just aren't cut out to do it. Bringing in somebody who scaled up a business like Panera, I actually think could be a good idea. I think it's a very interesting take on the way of growing a business rather than being founder-led. The thing I don't like, its corporate structure is really messy, where economic interest and voting interest are carved up in weird ways between the pre-IPO investors, the founders, the publicly traded shares and

Starting point is 00:16:25 things like that. Maybe it's a nothing burger, but rarely do things that are like this end up being shareholder-friendly. They tend to not be, at least for minority shareholders. So I'd like to see some clarity on how that may change over time. And the thing that I'm definitely going to be watching, and it's very nuts and bolts, is it's on the path to profitability. It's not quite there yet? And can it get there and maintain strong per-store returns while in growth mode? Because I would really hate to see deteriorating sales growth from a company that is putting down new stores left and right. So, John, what did you have on deck? Yeah, Tyler, I like that idea of BlackRock Coffee. I'll be looking at that as well. But I'm bringing a different company to the table

Starting point is 00:17:11 right now, and that is Figure Technologies. It's proposed to trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol FIGR. This is a company that wants to reimagine lending by using the blockchain. When we talk about hidden gems, we are looking for bold technical exploration. This is a bold move for sure. Now, as far as the business goes, 99% of the loan originations on its platform right now are HELOCs, Home Equity Lines of Credit. That's interesting considering home equity in the USA is near record highs right now. And kind of its value proposition is its application to funding time. It's 76% lower compared to the traditional banking process. And its origination costs are 90% lower. So maybe this is something that can gain traction. What I like about Figure is that

Starting point is 00:18:05 its co-founder is Mike Cagney. He is the co-founder and former CEO of SoFi. When you talk about crypto, you want to know that there's an adult in the room. I think that Cagney is an adult in the room. We also look for companies that are led by true believers. I believe Cagney is that. This is also a profitable business. It's still quite small, but it has a 15% net profit margin. That's good. What I don't like is there is material weakness in its accounting. It discovered it as it was filing to go public. And so, given crypto's history, that's certainly something that is not desirable, that material weakness. They need to get that under control. But what I'm watching going forward is, is this a business that can grow and maintain its margins

Starting point is 00:18:49 at the same time? I don't know what the competitive moat is here against other banks, against other crypto startups. It is regulatory compliant, so maybe that is somewhat of an advantage. But if this is the future of lending, it seems reasonable to me that many companies would come in here and drive those origination costs even lower. So would that hurt figures, profits long-term? I'd like to see. There you have it. Crypto, coffee, and collateralized loans. Some interesting ideas. We'll see what happens with it. Matt, John, thanks for sharing your thoughts. And I'm going to hit the disclosure. We'll get out of here. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stock they talk about,

Starting point is 00:19:26 and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. Thanks, producer Dan Boyd. And for Matt, John, and I, thanks for listening, and we'll chat again soon.

Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - The Best Investment in 2025 (So Far...) Isn’t What You Think

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