Motley Fool Money - AI, Superman, and Solar’s Kryptonite

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Oh yes, we’re talking all kinds of stocks! (00:21) Jason Hall and Matt Frankel discuss: - AI stocks in the data center space (including CoreWeave) - Winners and losers in energy and solar from ...the Big Beautiful Bill. - With Superman coming out, we rank the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Disney, and Netflix (19:11) Dave Schaeffer, founder and CEO of Cogent Communications, talks with Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo about how Cogent’s deals with customers like Netflix and Meta Platforms work and what keeps him up at night. (32:39) Jason and Matt talk about Prime Day and other made up holidays and give us the stocks on their radar. Stocks discussed: CRWV, DLR, EQIX, AMZN, MSFT, BEP, BEPC, NVDA, CRM, CSIQ, RUN, FSLR, ENPH, TSLA, GEV, J, CEG, FLNC, WBD, CMCSA, DIS, NFLX, SOFI, CHD Host: Anand Chokkavelu Guests: Jason Hall, Matt Frankel, Asit Sharma, Sanmeet Deo, Dave Schaeffer Engineer: Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh, yes, we're talking all kinds of stocks. This week's Motley Fool Money radio show starts now. We need money. That's why they call it money. The best thing. Cool global headquarters. This is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Full Money radio show. I'm on in Chaka-Baloo. Joining me are two of my favorite fools, Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. Today we'll talk about stock market winners and losers from the Big Beautiful Bill. will pit Superman versus the Hulk, and we'll, of course, debate stocks on our radar.
Starting point is 00:00:57 But first, we'll discuss whether there's an AI opportunity in investing in data centers. Upstart data center company Corweave again made news this week, this time for announcing the purchase of Core Scientific for $9 billion. This allows it to add infrastructure to consolidate vertically as it seeks to gain market share among AI and high-performance computing customers. The CoreWeave is just the tip of the data center iceberg. Matt, what categories of data center opportunities are out there? Yes, so first you have hyperscalers.
Starting point is 00:01:30 These are companies like AWS, Microsoft Azure. There are companies that operate the large-scale data centers. They offer computing and storage infrastructures to customers. As on-un put it, there's CoreWeave, which is one of the least understood recent IPOs than I know. So they ran out GPU data center infrastructures to customers. It's not always practical for companies to invest in all of Nvidia's latest chips on their own, for example. So that's really what they do.
Starting point is 00:01:59 There's the REITs, Digital Realty and Equinix are the two big ones. They own the data centers. Corweave is actually a big digital realty tenant. And then there's power generation. I know Jason's going to talk about this a little bit later in the show, but data centers consume a lot of power, and it's growing at an exponential pace. These chips that Invidia produces, they are power drains. Nuclear especially could be a big part of the solution, but solar and other renewables are also in there. Yeah, we're definitely in the land grab phase
Starting point is 00:02:32 of the infrastructure buildout for accelerated computing. And I think accelerated computing is maybe a better description than just AI. We talk about the cloud writ large. And as we see more of the companies involved start to monetize things like AI agents at scale, I think that's where these investments are going to pay off. Big question. Do any of these categories interest you all for investing? Yeah, well, I mean, I'm well known as being the real estate guy at the Motley Fool. And so it shouldn't be a big surprise. But digital realty is my second largest and my second longest running reit investment in my portfolio. I'm an Amazon shareholder. And I know that's not their only business, but AWS is the primary reason I own it. I don't own CoreWeave yet, and I think
Starting point is 00:03:16 the stock is a little bit pricey to say the least. But the more I read about it, the more I'm intrigued by the company. As I mentioned, they're a big tenant of digital realty, so I have some exposure already. Yeah, the things about CoreWeave that concern me is yet the stock is definitely expensive, but if the opportunity is even close to as large as we think, it could still work out, but they're going to need a lot of money to pay for what they're trying to do. And depending on how much of that is from raising debt versus secondary offerings of shares, there's still a lot of questions there. But Anand, you've given me a chance to talk about Brookfield here. How do I not take that opportunity? But I do think that there's a couple of Brookfield entities that are positioned really well here.
Starting point is 00:03:58 And I'm going to talk about the providing the energy part of it. Brookfield Renewable is really in the driver seat here as a global provider of renewable energy on multi-decade contracts. It is not just accelerating computing. It's the energy transition writ large. We've already seen it strike big deals with Microsoft and others to provide renewable power on those multi-decade contracts. The dividend is really attractive, too. So BEP, that's the partnership. The yields over 5%. The corporate shares, BEPC. The yields about four and a half percent. And since mid-2020, that's when Brookfield Renewable rolled the corporation part out and kind of restructured its dividend. The payouts have been increased almost 30%.
Starting point is 00:04:45 So there's a lot to like here. Beyond the yield, I think it's primed to be a total return dynamo over the next decade. If you don't want to own a company that's in the energy part, you want to own the infrastructure. Just take a look at sister company, Brookfield Infrastructure. The tickers there are BIP and BIPC. Of course, these aren't the only AI stocks out there. Hi, Invidia. Do any other areas of AI kind of interest to you guys? I love that. You can't talk about AI and data centers without talking about the chip makers.
Starting point is 00:05:14 Nvidia is, it just hit $4 trillion today as the day we're recording this. And Nvidia is an amazing business, and it has more room to grow than people think. Just in the data center accelerator space, which is why they're getting so much attention for good reason, the market size is expected to roughly double over the next five years. And that's not even to mention the opportunities they have in chips for autonomous vehicles, chips for gaming and more. But I prefer AMD, which is often referred to as Nvidia Jr., but I don't think it should be.
Starting point is 00:05:46 It's an incredibly well-run company that's been a mistake to bet against in the past. And as Intel found out the hard way, just having a dominant market share in an area of chip making is not always enough. An area of the market that I think could do really well, some of the legacy enterprise software giants, I think there may be underpresenting. appreciated winners from AI. And I'll use Salesforce, ticker CRM, as an example. It's really starting to get traction with things like its data cloud and with AI agents. It's starting to sell. We're seeing really rapid uptake of those things and monetization. And it has a benefit, an advantage over a
Starting point is 00:06:22 lot of these AI startups that are just kind of pure AI businesses. It's already a trusted, integrated partner with hundreds of thousands of enterprises. It knows their business. It knows their challenges, regulations, opportunities, and that credibility, I think, is an edge that we don't give enough credit to. We shouldn't underestimate switching costs, I guess, is what I'm really getting at. And you look at Salesforce trades for about 21 times free cash flow and less than seven times sales. That's a really good opportunity. And I think it equates to double-digit returns if it can just grow revenue around 8 to 12 percent a year over the long term, which I think he can. We started to talk a bit about energy and the need for it with all this AI. Let's talk about
Starting point is 00:07:06 the energy industry implications of the big, beautiful bill, which was signed into law last week. Jason, can you give us the summary of the energy portions? Yeah, summarizing anything's hard for me, but I'll try. I think the short version is the incentives for renewables. They're getting gutted, really. There's a 30% investment tax credit or ITC for short. The residential solar and battery systems, portion of that had been in place to run through 2032 before gradually declining for a few years after that. That now expires. The systems have to be commissioned, fully installed and commissioned by the end of this year. The commercial ITC for solar and wind projects was kind of on a similar track, but now it expires at the end of 2027, but those projects must begin construction by July 4th of
Starting point is 00:07:58 26 to qualify for that 30% tax credit. It also terminates the tax credit for new and used EVs, $7,500 for a new EV and up to $4,000 for a used EV. The purchase has to happen before September 30th of this year, so a couple of months. Lastly, it ends the U.S. regulatory credits around vehicle emissions that automakers buy, largely from Tesla. This is a significant and profitable revenue stream for EV makers that essentially is going away. Jason, when you say renewables are being gutted, you're essentially referring to solar and wind, if I'm not mistaken. It's not gutting nuclear, anything for nuclear power, correct? Yeah, that's correct. These things you get are kind of the pure renewables as we think of
Starting point is 00:08:48 them. Let's put a fine point on this with specifics. Who are the relative winners and losers, Jason? This could be an hour long show, but I'll try to summarize it here. Thinking about the the companies that are most directly affected. I think Canadian solar, which is a large manufacturer of solar panels and energy storage, and they really largely target the utility market, but also residential is definitely a loser here. In the near-term Sun Run, its business model is tied to these tax credits as an installer. And to some degree, first solar is also going to be affected. I think there's really any winners out of this when it comes to solar. But I think in-phase
Starting point is 00:09:25 is probably still in a better position than the market may believe. and maybe first solar as well. It's been through these battles before, and it's been a winner over the long term. If you look at wind, GE Vernova, has been on a huge run. I love that business, but I don't love the stock right now.
Starting point is 00:09:43 Tesla, I think, is maybe one of the bigger losers that investors haven't really considered. Last fiscal year, it earned $2.76 billion in revenue from regulatory credits, and that's largely pure profit. And then there's also the loss of those EVs, tax credits for buyers. That might be offset from some incentives for U.S. made autos that are part of the bill now. They were part of the law, but I think this puts Tesla in a tougher spot.
Starting point is 00:10:11 The tailwinds are not favorable for fossil fuels before this. This doesn't really change any of that. There's opportunities there, but not because of the law. So the reason I asked about nuclear a minute ago is because that's really what I see as the big winner here. I think I like some of the nuclear-focused utility providers. Constellation Energy is one that comes to mind. One of their stated goals is to have the largest carbon-free nuclear power fleet in the U.S. by 2040. Jacob's Solutions, they provide consulting and design services to the industry. Take her symbol is J, so it's really easy to remember. And they recently had some really big nuclear contract wins. And I'm going to push back on Jason's Tesla as a big loser. One, they make their American-made
Starting point is 00:10:52 cars. They qualify for that new auto loan interest deduction, so that could help offset what they're losing from the EB tax credits. And they have a big energy storage business, and AI has not only giant power demands, but very variable power demands. And it's going to create a lot of need for large-scale energy storage, and Tesla does that.
Starting point is 00:11:13 So I think they're worth watching. Yeah, that's the one part of Tesla's business that's done extraordinarily well over the past few years as the EV business is weakened. Is that the battery business? Now, quickly, the big question is, solar is still investable, Jason? Yeah, I think so.
Starting point is 00:11:29 We have a very U.S.-centric view, obviously, and the U.S. is a massive, important market for solar, but you look around the world and the regulatory environment is still largely favorable. And I think if you're willing to write out plenty of volatility, that global opportunity is still really good. Businesses like In-Phase, businesses like First Solar that have been through these battles before, and even a Canadian solar where it has a ton of projects that it's been funding to build on its books that the math just got kind of changed for them in some big ways.
Starting point is 00:12:00 The valuation is so cheap that I think that there's some opportunity there. Taking a step back, the reason you have incentives for solar energy, for EVs, for all this, is because without them, they're not price competitive with the existing technologies. The gap has narrowed significantly, especially in solar over the past, say, 10 years, as to like the efficiency of the products themselves and just how much they cost. Eventually, solar is going to be able to stand on its own without incentives. But like Jason said, you have to be able to ride out some volatility because that could be five years, that could be 10 years, that could be 20 years. So eventually it won't matter.
Starting point is 00:12:36 After the break, we'll move from solar to something else that gets its power from the yellow sun. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. In a world full of noise, long-term thinking stands out. On the Capital Ideas podcast, Capital Group leaders explore the decisions that matter most in investing, leadership, and life. It's a rare look inside a firm that's been helping people pursue their financial goals for more than 90 years. Listen to the Capital Ideas podcast from Capital Group, published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Back to Motley Full Money. I'm on in Choccovalu here with Jason Hall and Matt
Starting point is 00:13:24 Frankl. One of our brothers' discoveries much-anticipated latest reboot of Superman hits theaters on Friday, hoping the Justice League can one day catch Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe and hot on the heels of last week's Jurassic World Rebirth from Comcast. In honor of summer movies, we're going to rank those three companies based on the value of their intellectual property. We'll throw in Netflix for good measure. Its headline this week was stating that half of its global audience now watches anime. Chalk of Blue household certainly does with One Piece. My kids have gotten me into it. For those unfamiliar, they have more episodes than The Simpsons. Matt, once again, your four choices are Warner Brothers Discovery, that includes the DC Universe,
Starting point is 00:14:11 Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, The Matrix, Looney Tunes, all our favorite HBO shows. You got Comcasts with Shrek, Minions, Kung Fu Panda. You got Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Mickey Mouse. And finally, you got Netflix with things like Stranger Things, Bridgeton, Squid Game, newer Adam Sandler movies, and tons of niche content. Mentioned anime, you could argue whether that's niche content or not at this point. Whose intellectual property do you most value, Matt? See, I said Disney. All four of these have excellent intellectual property.
Starting point is 00:14:48 I'll give you a kind of more elaborate description there. So in my household, you mentioned your household, how you have all these streaming things. We have a streaming service from all four of these. We have the Peacock Service, which is a Comcast product. We have HBO Max, which is a Warner Brothers Discovery product. We have Disney Plus, and we have Netflix. Disney Plus also has Hulu attached to it. And I asked myself, which is the least dispensable?
Starting point is 00:15:14 I could cancel all the other ones before I'd be allowed to cancel Disney Plus by the other members of my household. Their film franchises are beyond compare. They have a much longer history of building intellectual property than all these, especially in terms of valuables. Mickey Mouse is so old, it's not even intellectual property anymore. It's over 100 years old. So I think it's actually in the public domain now. So I have to say Disney, although it's a lot closer than I would have thought a few years ago. Yeah, if you had have asked me a few years ago, I absolutely would have said Disney.
Starting point is 00:15:45 But I'm going to give the advantage to Netflix here. So let me contextualize that. I think the total value of Disney's IP is probably higher. but Netflix's ability to monetize it more effectively all over the world, I think is even better than Disney's. I don't think any of these businesses in their studios have done a better job of making content that's relevant in more markets around the world than Netflix does. And let's be honest, I was able to watch Happy Gilmore with my eight-year-old son this weekend, and I watched that on Netflix. That's, I mean, that's bridging generations right there. things. One, Chalk Blue household is very excited for Happy Gilmore, too. Even my wife is in on it. Two,
Starting point is 00:16:31 the Steamboat Willie era Mickey Mouse is free to the world. The other ones aren't. And I'm glad I'm not the only one with way too many streaming services, Matt. Let's talk about last place. Who are you cutting first, Matt? Well, all those streaming services are still less than I was paying for DirecTV a few years ago. So I think I'm doing all right. So, for me, the last place, it was between Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery, both of which have amazing intellectual property, just to show you what a tight race this is. I mean, Comcast has Universal. I was just in Orlando, and the Universal theme parks are massive down there.
Starting point is 00:17:11 But I have to put Comcast in the last place. Just because Warner Bros., I think the HBO Max acquisition was such a big advantage for them. They have some of the most valuable television assets of all time. You know, more people watch The Sopranos now than they did when it was originally on TV. It's a very, very valuable, valuable asset, Game of Thrones. All these HBO shows that are among the highest rated shows of all time are part of their library, in addition to their film studio and all the other assets that we can't name because it's not that long of a show.
Starting point is 00:17:49 So, I'd have to give Comcast last place, although, like I said, there's a good argument to be made for most of these to be in the top one or two. Yeah, I think that's fair. But I agree with Math that Comcast is the number four here. But I don't think that's a flaw. It's just the nature of its business. About two-thirds of its business comes from its cable subscriptions and high-speed internet. So it's built differently than these other companies.
Starting point is 00:18:16 So I think it's fine that it's a little bit smaller. I will say, just to defend Comcast a little, I was thinking about my parents live in Florida and it's high time we bring my two boys to Disney World or something like that. Honestly, the Universal theme park, the new one with Nintendo, you know, Mario and the Harry Potter realm, it's close. We might prefer that one, but just to give a little love to Comcast and Universal. Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. We'll see you a little bit later in the show, but up next, we'll talk to the founder of one of the top five networks in the world. So stick around.
Starting point is 00:18:58 This is Motley Fool Money. The old adage goes, it isn't what you say, it's how you say it, because to truly make an impact, you need to set an example and take the lead. You have to adapt to whatever comes your way. When you're that driven, you drive an equally determined vehicle, the Range Rover Sport. The Range Rover Sport blends power, poise, and performance. Its design is distinctly British and free from unnecessary details, allowing its raw agility to shine through. It combines a dynamic sporting personality with elegance to deliver a truly instinctive drive. Inside, you'll find true modern luxury with the latest innovations in comfort.
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Starting point is 00:20:47 Believe it or not, Cogent's the seventh successful company Dave Schaefer has founded. Schaefer joined full analysts, Ossa Chama, and Samedaio, to discuss how it's deal with customers like Netflix and meta platforms work and what keeps him up at night. Well, hello, fools. I am Asa Sharma, and I'm joined by fellow analyst Sanmideo today, and our guest is Dave Schaefer. Dave is CEO of Cogent Communications. He's also the founder of this company, founded in 1999. Dave has grown cogent communications into a global tier one internet service provider. It's ranked as one of the top five net. networks in the world. Dave is also a serial entrepreneur. He's founded six successful businesses prior
Starting point is 00:21:33 to Cogent. And foolishly, he's also one of the longest serving founder CEOs in the public markets. We're delighted to have him with us today. Dave Schaefer, welcome. Hey, well, thanks for that great introduction. So to get started, let's jump in. Dave, for our members who might be unfamiliar with the ISP or internet service provider industry, can you just explain what Cogent does and how it makes funny. Yeah, sure. So Cogent provides internet access to customers and to other service providers. I think virtually everyone uses the internet, but rarely understands how it operates.
Starting point is 00:22:16 Cogent has a network of approximately 99,000 route miles of inner city fiber that circumnavigates the globe and serves six continents. We then have an additional 34,000 route miles of fiber in 292 markets in 57 countries around the world. That network is solely built for the purpose of delivering internet connectivity. So when a customer buys internet access, What they are really buying are interfaced, routed, bit miles connected to other networks. If you try to sell a customer that they would have no idea what you're talking about, the average bit on the public internet travels about 2,800 miles. It goes through 8.5 unique routers and 2.4 networks between origin and destiades.
Starting point is 00:23:24 nation, Cogent carries approximately 25% of the world's internet traffic on its network and has more other networks connected directly to it than any other network. Yours is a primary network. Oftentimes we hear of sort of middlemen carriers in between ourselves, sending that bit. Let's say I'm chatting with Sanmete over Slack, sending him some bits as we have been exchanging through the day and him receiving that. But you are, I think, we can think of cogent as being sort of the primary fiber that is the backbone of this information communication network. Is that correct? That is correct. So we operate two very different customer segments, roughly 95% of our traffic, but only 37% percent. But only 37%
Starting point is 00:24:23 percent of our revenue comes from selling to other service providers. So we provide internet connectivity to 8,200 access networks around the world and about 7,000 content generating businesses. So whether it be Bell Canada, British Telecom, China Telecom, Comcast, or Cox, they could be customers of Cogent on the access side where they aggregate literally billions of end users. And then on the other side, we sell connectivity to large content-generating companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and META, where they use us as their internet provider. The second portion of Cogent's business is selling directly to end users. That represents about 63% of our revenues, but only approximately 5% of our total traffic.
Starting point is 00:25:34 Cogent is an ISP, primarily in North America where we connect to a billion square feet of office space, where we sell directly to end users. And then globally, we sell to multinational companies, oftentimes using last mile connections from third parties. You know, I always like to understand, you know, how exactly the companies I'm looking at make money. So, for example, for Netflix or meta, or you pick a content provider, whoever might be, when they work with you, explain that to me how they buy, do they buy bandwidth in a package? Do they have a contract? How does that work when they look to you to say, hey, we want to buy some bandwidth? Yeah. So typically, we will provide them connections in multiple markets around the world.
Starting point is 00:26:31 They will then have a minimum commitment level, and then above that, they pay on a metered basis. So the way in which we bill is megabits per second at peak load over the course of the month. We bill it the 95th percentile, which means if you have a very spiky event that lasts less than 18 hours in a month, you don't pay for that incremental bandwidth, but everything below that. that peak utilization, you pay a bill on a per megabit basis. That is the way in which any service provider, whether it be an access network like Telecom South Africa or a cable company like Rogers and Canada would buy from us. But for our corporate customers, the billing model, model is very different. For corporate customers, they typically buy an end-ly user locations,
Starting point is 00:27:48 not in data centers, and they are paying us a flat monthly fee for a fixed connection that is unmetered. So think of it as an all-you-can-eat model. Yeah, so there is a monthly kind of recurring revenue that you get, it's just that with your network or your content customers, it could vary based on their usage. They could dial it up, dial it down, based on kind of like next month, Netflix is dropping a big, or this week actually, like they're dropping squid games. So they can anticipate they're going to need a lot of bandwidth versus maybe next month their content slate is a little lower. So they won't use up as much versus the corporate customers are, you know, paying kind of more of a role.
Starting point is 00:28:35 recurring, not based on volume. Is that accurate? That is correct. And virtually all of our revenue is predictable, even for those variable usage customers. There is oftentimes a very consistent pattern to their usage, and their bills do not vary by more than a couple percent month over month. Dave, let's go on to looking at a review of a recent performance. 2024 was a great year for Cogent. You crossed a billion dollars in annual revenue. Can you just walk us through the highlights of your key business segments, wholesale enterprise, net-centric? What drove the performance? And also, did anything about the year surprise you as you went through it? Yes, so two things. First of all, our internet-based business represents
Starting point is 00:29:29 88% of our revenues across all three segments. We do derive about 12% of revenues from selling some adjacent services, those being co-location in our data center footprint, optical transport or wavelength services, and the leasing out of IPV4 addresses. We did generate about a billion dollars in revenue in 24, and 24 was a year of significant transition for Cogent. Cogent had organically grown between 2005 and 2025 and 2020, as a public company with no M&A at a compounded growth rate of 10.2% per year average over that period.
Starting point is 00:30:37 We also were able to experience significant margin expansion during that period, where our EBITDA margins expanded at roughly 220 basis points per year, over that same 15-year measurement period. When COVID hit, our corporate segment slowed materially because people were not going to offices, and as a result, Cochin's total growth rate had decreased to about 5%, and our rate of margin expansion slowed to about 100 basis points. In May of 23, we acquired the former Sprint Long Distance Network, is Sprint Global Markets Group business from T-Mobile. That business was actually in decline and burning cash. In 2024, we significantly reduced that cash burn, and we were able to begin to repurpose
Starting point is 00:31:56 some of the fallow sprint assets. In order to facilitate this transaction, T-Mobile paid us in cash over a 54-month period, beginning in May of 23, $700 million. So in 2024, a significant milestone for Codent was our ability to take out much of that burn from that business and to actually accelerate the decline in that acquired business. as many of the products that were being sold for gross margin negative services. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Mali Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy yourself stocks based solely on what you hear.
Starting point is 00:32:55 All personal finance content follows Molley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Up next, we've got stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. These days, I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well-made and versatile, it's just not worth it.
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Starting point is 00:35:30 If not, what's competing with it, Jason? I think it's not even something from nothing. I think they stole this idea. Christmas in July has been around literally since the 1900. So I think they're getting maybe a little bit too much credit for just being a really big retailer, smart enough to say, hey, we're doing a sale when there was nothing else going on. And people were like, oh, it's a big sale. And, well, people kept coming. So it just gets bigger every single year.
Starting point is 00:35:58 Yeah. I mean, before e-commerce, Jason's right. Remember the Sunday paper that had all the little, the flyers from all the stores? You'd have their semi-annual sales. The President's Day weekend sales were the ones I remember that were the biggest deals ever that really were just meant to invigorate sales in a historically slow time a year. But really, I mean, it was This concept has been applied over and over. I mean, think of how many tourist destinations create random festivals in like the worst months to go, like weather-wise. And I mean, I used to live in Key West Florida, and the biggest party of the year is called Fantasy Fest.
Starting point is 00:36:32 And it was created to invigorate tourism during a slow, during hurricane season. And I mean, it's a concept that's worked over and over, and this is a big one. Dan. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in here and mention Father's Day and Mother's Day. I'm surprised that you guys didn't mention those. I mean, we're all fathers here on the podcast, so I know that we enjoy Father's Day. But like, come on, they're nothing. They were just created to sell stuff.
Starting point is 00:37:00 You're not going to mention Valentine's Day, Mr. Grinch? I mean, Valentine's Day has a somewhat historical significance with, you know, all the St. Valentine's stuff. I didn't want to go too far into it in my grumbiness on it. But I guess we can throw that one on the fire. Speaking of, Singles Day in China, Alibaba kind of took that. It was invented in the 90s, I think, more less commercey, but then it became more commercey. Two other things, right? Sears catalog. Let's not forget. A lot of times Sears really is the Amazon before Amazon, you know. We forget about it because we see it at its late phases. It wasn't the first catalog. Tiffany, Montgomery Ward, they beat it to the punch. but when it was going, it was called the Consumer Bible.
Starting point is 00:37:50 And then on a smaller scale, I'll give one more. Just shout out to Spotify Rapped. They do a wonderful job kind of inventing a thing to get us more engaged. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, who we heard from just recently, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. We're more likely, historically, an amusing comment. Jason, you're up first.
Starting point is 00:38:14 What are you looking at this week? How about Church and Dwight, ticker C.H.D. I don't know if we give some of these legacy consumer brands companies enough talk. All right. So what's Church and Dwight? You've probably heard of Arminhammer baking soda, but they also own a lot of other retail brands. You might be familiar with origel. If you've ever had a sore tooth or you have a baby, you know, that kind of thing comes up. They own Trojan, which is another brand that people might be familiar with. But here's my personal. I'm right now, I have a cold. I'm living in fun. functioning off of Zycam, that's a Church and Dwight product that's really getting me through.
Starting point is 00:38:52 And over the long term, it's been a great investment. Over the past 10 years, the stock's returned about 10 and a half percent in total returns. That's underperforming the market, but it's better than the market's long-term average. So I think there might be something there. Dan, a question about Church and Dwight? Not really a question, Anand, but more of a comment. Jason, you forgot to mention OxyClean in the Church and Dwight product catalog here as a parent of a three-year-old and a nine-month-old. Laundry is a very important thing in our house, and I don't think we could survive without that oxy-clean. I will raise your three-year-old and nine-month-old with an eight-and-a-half-year-old who plays soccer.
Starting point is 00:39:29 My house runs on that stuff. I'm with you there. Matt, what's on your radar? Well, now what's on my radar is the oxy-clean that I have in the closet right there. But as far as the stock, I'd have to say so-fi, ticker symbol, S-O-S-O-E. OFI. Fantastic momentum. They've done a great job of creating capital white revenue streams in recent years. The growth is actually accelerating.
Starting point is 00:39:49 They recently announced they're bringing crypto back to their platform now that their banks are allowed to do so. That's going to be a big driver. Not only crypto, they're going a step further. They're going to start bringing blockchain facilitated money transfers across border for free. They have lots of big plans. They recently started doing private equity investing for everybody. So, guys like you and me can invest in companies like SpaceX and Open AI that are pre-IPO
Starting point is 00:40:15 through SOFi's platform through venture funds. There's a lot going on in this business. It's still a relatively small bank, and they aim to be a top 10 bank within the next decade. Dan, a question about SOFI? Well, absolute F to your name. SoFi, just terrible. I feel like smart people like them could have come up with something better. But private equity investing is very interesting, Matt.
Starting point is 00:40:39 a little scared to me without the reporting regulations that public companies have to do. Yeah, I do think it was a natural thing, though, now that all these companies are waiting longer than ever to go public. I mean, so far as a, or SpaceX is a, you know, a massive business. Open AI has a, you know, $100 billion plus valuation. There's a lot to like there and a lot of potential. Dan, which company are you putting on your watch list, OxyClean or private equity stuff? I'm going to go with. Church and Dwight for some of that beautiful oxyclean. That's all for this week. See you next time.

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