Motley Fool Money - Big Wins: Burrito, Music, Ride-Hailing

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

The industry defining companies continue to win in fast-casual, music streaming, and transportation. (00:21) Emily Flippen and Matt Argersinger discuss: - Chipotle’s status as big burrito, and how things look as the stock hits all-time highs. - Spotify and Uber’s impressive combo of growth and efficiency. - Earnings updates from Roblox, Simon Property Group, and Enphase. (19:11) Valentine’s day is coming up – to help our listeners in matter gift-giving and money in relationships, Deidre Woollard caught up with Scott Rick a marketing professor at The University of Michigan and the author of "Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships." (34:04) Emily and Matt break down two stocks on their radar: Starbucks and Snap. Stocks discussed: CMG, SPOT, UBER, RBLX, SPG, ENPH Host: Dylan Lewis Guests: Emily Flippen, Matt Argersinger, Deidre Woollard, Scott Rick Engineers: Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Burrito is coming. Will the good times keep rolling for Chipotle? Motley Fool Money starts now. That's why they call it money. The best thing. Cool global headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio show. I'm Dylan Lewis.

Joining me over the Airwaves, Motley Fool's senior analysts, Emily Flippin and Matt Argersinger. Fools, great to have you both here. Dylan. Good to be here. We've got updates on Big Burrito, big music, some tips on how to talk about money with your partner and radar stocks, as always.

But we are picking up With the earnings beat, it was a big week for big names. And Matt, we're going to start things off with Chipotle. Shares up after earnings. There was an extra serving of guac for investors. Strong beats on the top and bottom line with companies' results. Big burrito. I almost think they should call it like standard burrito, like standard oil back of the day. It just, yeah. This company is getting bigger and getting bigger in a very profitable way, Dylan. Look at 15% sales growth, 8.4% comps, which were

way ahead of expectations. That's very impressive. More impressive, though, actually, is that the sales Chipotle's making are increasingly more profitable for the company. If you look at the restaurant level margin, that was up 140 basis points year over year in the quarter. Chipotle's overall operating margin was also up 80 basis points year over year. A justice earnings for share up 25%. The company opened 120 restaurants in the quarter. That was a record, and it included 110 Chapot Lanes, which if you don't know, that's Chipotle's word for stores that have drive-thru. But they call them Chipotle lanes. And those have been very successful and very profitable with the company.

They only started in 2019. And these Chipolins have really contributed to the company's digital sales, which were up 36% in the quarter. Really impressive. And if you're a Chipotle shareholder, I'd say 2024 and beyond is looking pretty bright. On the conference crawl, CEO Brian Nicol, he kind of reiterated the five. key strategies he has for the business. One of those is accelerating store openings. So last year, 2003, they opened 271 restaurants. That was a record. This year, they're targeting between 285 and 315 openings, mostly in North America, and 80% of those stores will include a

Chipotle. And long term, the company believes they can get to 7,000 stores, which is more than double that they have today. And if each of those stores is more profitable as they continue to be, Chipoli is going to be a much more valuable company in the future. Big, bigger burrito. Chipotle has held up so much better than I ever expected it to over the last couple of years when so much of their sales growth was driven by things like price increases. I almost can't help but feel like, you know, Chipotle is the burrito version of Icarus, who is just flying a little too close to the sun. And at some point, consumers are, you know, going to step back and say, I can't afford this anymore. And to Topoli's credit,

that has not happened yet. And their ability to launch new products at upsell people, So you get the cheap chicken breto, if that's your thing, or you can pay for the Karnayasada, which is their special menu item at the moment. Their ability to upsell people who can't afford it is great. But I try to keep my expectations a little bit lower with Chipotle because things have been so hot for so long. And we've seen other food establishments really struggle over the course of the past couple of years. So I like this stock. It continues to be a Motley floor recommendation.

But I always, as an investor, just try to temper my near-term expectations. I think the burrito that flies too close to the sun might be a cassidia, if you really want to get into the tortured metaphor. I think that's where it starts to trend. One of the things that really jumped out to me just in an all-firing cylinders-type quartermat was you talked about the same store sales growth, 8%. It wasn't price hikes. 7% growth in foot traffic. It seems like everything seems to be working for this business. Is there anything that you're concerned about?

Well, I think, yes, I think Emily made a great point. I mean, restaurant concepts come and go. Chipoli has proven to be really just sustaining in its success. I would say one thing that stands out to me, if I could be armchair CEO for a day, they've done a lot of share repurchasing lately. Last year, they bought back about $600 million. They've got another $400 million. They've earmarked for buybacks. With stock an all-time high, you know, hey, those buybacks, which came at lower prices, they've worked out so far. But if you look at the share count for Chipoli, it's down less than 1% over the last five years. It's a lot of money invested. Shareholders really haven't gotten a huge benefit. And it's an expensive stock. Talk about flying close to the sun.

It's over 60 times earnings. Just for context, and I know this isn't apples to apples. But take Starbucks, which also happens to run a pretty successful restaurant concept with similar margins to Chipotle. It has 10 times the number of restaurants that Chipotle has. Yet its market cap is only 40% bigger than Chipolets. If I were CEO Brian Nicol, I'd stop the buybacks, and I'd consider paying a dividend. And you know that's coming from me, of course. It's not surprising. But if Chipotle pulled a Zuckerberg and just paid a 0.5% dividend, it would only cost them around $340 million a year. That's just over half of what they spent out buybacks last year. And the earnings per ratio would still be less than 25%. And I just think Jopoli is a mature,

established business. It's got great earnings visibility. Dividends also have a wonderful way of kind of exerting a little discipline on capital allocation over time. That would be my one message to CEO, Brian Nicol. Great job. Start paying a dividend. Dividends are the new growth, right? That's the story we're trying to sell in the market today. In my world, that's definitely true, though. One company that's probably not going to be issuing a dividend anytime soon, Spotify, we got results from the music streamer this week. And Emily, I think the story with this company for a while has been bit a little bit by the growth monster and some of the restructuring that's been going on

the market and adjusted expectations. But man, what a great past year for this company as you look at the financials and the stock performance. Yeah, I mean, dividends are the new growth? Please, growth is the new growth. And Spotify saw Chipotle's quarter and said, look, hold my burrito. Let me show you what I can do. It really was a one-two punch for Spotify, which is to say two things have always been holding hold over them, which is, can they be profitable, can they expand margins, or can they grow fast enough? And the market has always either punished them for one or the other, Your revenue growth wasn't fast enough. Your user growth wasn't fast enough.

Or if the user growth and revenue growth are there, well, your profitability is not fast enough. And if you're Dan Eck, the founder and CEO of Spotify, you're probably just scratching your head. Like, what do you want for me? Well, this is the quarter that investors wanted. They wanted to see on the growth side that double digit growth of both monthly active paying, monthly active users and paying subscribers, which both beat expectations growing double digits in the quarter. Revenue growth was up 20 percent, largely due to a massive turnaround and they're ad-based business, which is what investors wanted because the gross margins on their music streaming business while great are capped. Some are around 30 percent or so. So they need

those margins on the ad business to expand to drive profitability. And they actually saw ad revenue reach an all-time high in the quarter, which is up 12 percent quarter over quarter. That is not year over year. So great execution on both sides. They continue to see strong engagements from their customers. So Spotify wrapped for anybody who's a Spotify listener that had a 40 percent increase an engagement year of year. So a crazy amount of adoption there. Big picture, I still think that's going to be hard for Spotify to continue this all of execution. They've certainly been benefited by the recent turnaround in ad revenue. But if the economy stays strong, there's no reason to believe that Spotify won't either. Emily, you talked about the user engagement there. And one of the things

that Spotify did over the last year was unveil audiobook offerings as part of the member benefit, the subscriber benefit for the service. The company now claims the title of number two, two audiobook provider behind Amazon's Audible. Are you surprised with how quickly they've been able to rise in this space? Not at all. Not to mention that they're providing 15 free hours of listening or free theoretically to people who are already paying subscribers. So it's easy to understand how they got that adoption. But if I was Audible, I'd be shaking in my boots right now because Spotify was a decade late to the podcasting game after Apple. And they're the largest podcasting platform in the world. So in my opinion, there's no reason to believe they can't

repeat that magic with audiobooks. We'll stick with the consumer-facing names and wrap the earnings segment here with the discussion on Uber. Matt, this is not your older cousins Uber. The days of growth at all costs are gone. The company reported Q4 results and its first ever full-year profit. Yes. Just like meta, I think, early 2022, Amazon and a few others, Uber said, you know what, we're done with the growth at all costs. As you said, it's really all about efficiency and profitability. and, man, those efforts have really paid off. They paid off last year.

They paid off in the fourth quarter. Uber, I mean, Uber surpassed expectations on every front. If you look at revenue, mobility revenue, the core business, delivery revenue, earnings. Active platform customers grew 15% year-over-year. Trips were up 24%. Bookings were up 22%, up 29% in the core mobility segment, which is really impressive.

And you mentioned the profitability. Income for operations, $652 million. And for the first time on a full-year basis, Uber-generated positive operating again with $1.1.1 billion and positive gap earnings as well. So really awesome. I mean, the only real negative in the report that I saw was there was a 17% decline in the freight business, which is very small. It's a relatively new business for Uber. It's not costing the company very much right now, but you wonder if that segment is ever going to kind of get off the ground and how much it's going to cost to get there. Uber also has about $5.7 billion in net debt.

I was surprised to see that number as high as it is. Interest expense is, is eating into profits. If they get paid out debt down a little bit, or if interest rates come down, they'll actually be a lot more profitable. So, unfortunately, Uber generates a ton of free cash flow now. So they have room to pay that debt down if they want to. I want to take this to a similar spot that we just did with Chipotle. It's easy to look at a company at all-time highs and start to say, you know, are we getting a little close here? Is it getting a little rich? Uber is at an $140 billion valuation at this point. People who have bought in early are now seeing the results and seeing some gains. Matt, what do you make of the company at this point?

I think good companies, of course, are meant to make new all-time highs, right? And I think Uber's selling off a little bit this week because it's had such a big run into these earnings. But this is what you want to see. And I think this is a situation where the turnaround's real. And this company is very dominant in what it does. I wouldn't be surprised to see higher highs in the near future. All right. Coming up after the break, we're checking in on virtual gaming and what the retail mall situation looks like. Stay right here. This is Motleyful Money. Some of the best lessons don't come from a classroom.

They come from experience. On The Power of Advice, a new podcast series from Capital Group, you'll hear from CEOs, investors, and founders about how they built careers, took risks, and reinvented themselves. If you're starting your own journey, this is the kind of advice you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcast, published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined over the airwaves by Emily Flipin and Matt

Argersinger, we're going to keep the earnings focus going. A strong response in the real world to results from virtual world gaming company, Roblox. Emily, this is a business that has been bit a bit by the growth whims of the market and by some user trend issues. Is it back on track now? I think Roblox has been on track for a long time. And I feel like investors who thought that Roblox got off track were enthralled by its abnormal performance during the pandemic. and then thought that they could extrapolate that level of engagement and trend out for the foreseeable future, even when kids weren't sitting on their computers at home or Xbox is at home all day.

And obviously, that wasn't the case. But Roblox has been executing, in my opinion, in every way that they have been able to end their control since the pandemic ended. And you'd be shocked if you aren't somebody who follows this company to see just how well engagement and user growth has stayed up. In this past quarter, they saw 22% increase in their daily active users. That brings them to just under 70 million. That's an insane number of kids, but the audience has gotten increasingly older, but users who are actively playing on this platform every month. And a lot of that growth has come internationally.

Last quarter, most of that growth was driven by expansion in India and Japan. But even in North America, which is their highly monetizable user growth here in the United States and Canada, that was up 17% year for year. So there are still people who are flocking to this platform to engage and play games. And that has created a really profitable cycle for Roblox. They had a 25% increase in bookings in the quarter, 20% growth in operating cash flow, which is big for them because as part of their investor day last year, they said, we're going to focus on profitability, still drive that growth, but you're going to see more cash flow.

And that's exactly what investors got. You mentioned the user count there checking in at around 70 million at this point. We got some interesting total addressable market updates from management in some of the commentary. I want to gut check them with you. CEO said, we enter 2024 with even more conviction of being able to achieve our long-term goal of attracting 1 billion daily active users with optimism and civility. Emily, I feel like any time we get a total addressable market figure from management, we have to discount it a little bit. How much are you discounting that 1 billion?

Yeah, I'm discounting it pretty significantly, especially when it makes that 70 million feel so tiny. And if you're a management team, I understand you want to have a big vision for your company moving forward. But I do think that investors should never just take the word of management, but do their own research. That is part of the investing process. Now, to be clear, they don't need to have a billion users, and I don't think they're going to get two billion users, but they don't need to have that many users to be a good investment from this point forward. And I do think a lot of these hiding expectations actually come from the integration of things like AI onto their platform, which as an investor doing my own research, I feel a lot more conviction in because of the

immediate use cases that GPTs and other large language models provide for things like coding and development to help people get their games from idea in their head onto a platform where they can actually monetize it. And we're seeing real ways that's executing today, even without a billion active users. All right, from the worlds built by ones and zeros to the ones built by brick and mortar. Matt, when we were talking about Chipotle earlier, the story was foot traffic is back. This week, we got results from mall and outlet re-signment property group. How are things looking in that space?

Things are looking pretty good, but let me ask you, Dylan, when was the last time you were at a mall? You know, over the holidays, like for about 20 minutes, and I regretted the choice immediately. Emily, how about you? When's the last thing you're a mall? I go to the mall every single weekend. I'm awful. Really? I like to get my coffee and walk around and maybe shop a little bit, but mostly look at people. All right. Well, that's interesting. So I visit my mom up in Massachusetts pretty regularly, and don't ask me why, but she loves to go to the mall. So when I'm with her, we will go to the mall,

and I visited one back in November. And granted, it was during the holiday shopping period, but it was packed. In fact, a few of the stores felt like fire hazards, truly. truly. And yes, it was a Simon property mall. So Simon, and when I say Simon, I mean the company and its CEO, David Simon, have been desperately trying to tell us over the past few years that despite e-commerce, despite this global pandemic that we had, malls are in fact not dead. And Emily just confirmed that they are not dead because Emily's in her 20s and she's going to the mall every weekend. But you can see it in Simon's results. I mean, occupancy across Simon's portfolio, 95.8% at the end of 2023, up from 94.9%. Simon's,

His base minimum rent was $56.82.2 per square foot. That's up from a year ago. And then if you look at retail sales per square foot, these are Simon's tenants. The sales they're reporting, $743 per square foot for the full year, just slightly below where they were in 2022. So the consumer is holding up really well. And if you look at the company level earnings, funds from operations, which is kind of a re-metter for cash flow, up 8.5% to $3.69 in the quarter. And to top off guys, Simon raised its quarterly dividend by $0.95.5. That is the ninth time, the ninth time that Simon has raised its dividend since 2020, just four years ago. So really impressive all around. Somehow, this stock trades for 12 times FFO per share, pays a 5.5% dividend.

I don't think it stays that cheap for long, especially with Emily Flippin going to the mall every weekend. So check out Simon Property Group. Cheap stock. All right, we're going to wrap up our earnings takes by looking at Inphase Energy. Emily. a massive post-earnings move from the company. Immediately after the company posted earnings, shares were up 20%. What had the market so excited about the solar stock? Well, I don't know if it was the 70% decline sequentially in Europe or the 35% decline sequentially in the United States that had investors very excited. I'm saying this very tongue-in-cheek. Obviously, those are not strong numbers, but the commentary that management provided around

the demand structure for Enphase, which does create microinverters for things like, like solar panels, as well as batteries for solar storage. The commentary was to say that the market is going to stabilize. So now a lot of this demand is driven by external factors. So we're talking about government incentives, conflict globally, as well as things like interest rates, because a lot of people choose to finance their installation of solar projects. All of those things have these external factors that have pushed down demand and sell through for the company over the course of the past year.

But that management that things may be normalizing alongside that expectation that maybe interest rates come down a bit over the course of the next year, I think has the market a bit more excited after a year of pessimism. So maybe the outlook isn't quite as cloudy. Is that kind of the take? Yes. And a lot of their near-term outlook is because their partners or distribution partners are working through existing inventory levels. So they're not shipping through new products, but that doesn't mean the actual sell through on the other end is as bad as initially looks this quarter. So I do think that the expectation is for a little bit of normalization

heading into 2024. Emily, this is a name that I'm not super familiar with, and so it was getting up to speed before we headed into taping. You mentioned a whole host of different macro factors there. Is this one of those companies that investors just kind of have to understand there are some larger whims that are going to kind of sweep up the adoption and sell through on the product? Yeah, the biggest thing to understand for somebody who's not familiar with this space is that solar is by far the cheapest form of electricity, and energy is expensive, especially for areas like Europe, for instance, and only getting more expensive over time. So the long-term tailwinds should be there for the demand and installation of solar projects, even if the near-term is extremely

lumpy, as you mentioned, due to these external circumstances. So don't write off this business just based on those headline numbers. All right. Emily, Matt, we're going to see you guys a little bit later in the show. Up next, we've got tips for handling money issues, whether you're a tightwad or a spendthrift. Stay right here. You're listening to Motleyful Money. Just enough money to buy some quality food. Life was so smooth. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Dylan Lewis. Valentine's Day is coming up, and in fact, this is your PSA.

If you don't have anything planned yet for the person in your life, you still have time. Go get after it. To help our listeners in All Matters, gift-giving and money in relationships, my colleague, Deidre Willard, caught up with Scott Rick, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, and the author of Tightwads and Spendthrifts, navigating the money minefield in real relationships. They dug into the two major camps of savers and spenders,

how payment salience is making things a bit tougher for everyone, and Rex for great gifts. Well, this book was really fascinating to me. I think I learned a little bit about myself and in the process, but let's start with the basics. What is a tightwad, and how does it compare to someone who maybe is just a little frugal? Yeah.

So they will look quite similar on paper. often, a tight wad and a highly frugal person. But a tightwad is someone who often has money to spend, and they know there are things that would make them and the people around them happier. But the prospect of spending the money makes them very anxious. And they just can't make it happen. The thought of spending the money keeps them from buying a lot of the stuff that they realize would be in their best interest.

So this can be very frustrating, them and the people around them. It can lead to a lot of internal conflict. And so it's, again, it can look good on paper, but it's not always a pleasant internal situation. Whereas a highly frugal person, that's quite different. Frugal people are, they save a lot, they're happy, they believe in saving, they love reusing items until they're just completely worn out. They're not overburdened with a lot of desire for new material objects. So they're just kind of living very conservatively and loving it. And so frugal people tend to be quite happy, whereas tightwads, that's a little trickier. So it sounds like there's some anxiety about the spending that

that sort of defines what a tightwad is. Oh yes. Anxiety, distress, those are kind of the key feelings that keep them from spending what they think they should. Now, on the other side, the flip side, the spendthrift, you know, people think of this as maybe compulsive shopping, but this is not just someone who doesn't just spend, but it sounds like they almost don't think about money at all. So is it the opposite of the anxiousness about money? Yeah. Well, it's, you know, I think they realize they're not kind of doing what they should be doing if you ask them like, oh, here's like a fun new product. When do you think you'll get tired of this?

They're actually better at knowing when they're going to get tired of something than a tightwad is. They just care less about those future outcomes. They're very present oriented, living in the moment. So they're aware of implications and negative implications of their shopping today. They're just not so constrained by those thoughts, that awareness of what happens later. So they're living in the moment, you know, where a tightwide will, sometimes they don't shop for things that they know they need. Spenthrists will shop for not only what they need, but also what they might need someday.

Like, oh, I'm at the store. I'm buying clothes for work. Oh, there's a fun velvet jacket. That might be fun for a fancy party. I'm not invited to such a party, but what if I am someday? I'd rather be looking at it than looking for it is the spinthrift ideology. So in terms of how that works with like compulsive shopping or hoarding, it sounds like it's slightly different because it doesn't, they don't need to amass as much stuff. They just sort of don't think about it as much.

Yeah. So things like compulsive shopping, there's research showing that that is often related to depression and can be treated with. antidepressants and therapy. So there is kind of a more therapeutic approach to tamping down compulsive shopping. I think hoarding is in that ballpark. Whereas I don't think something like an antidepressant would have much of an effect on spendthrift. That's not, it doesn't seem to be what's driving them to spend so much. It's just someone cut the brakes on the car.

They just don't have the stop signal so good. So it sounds like the spendthrift is happier than the tightwatt overall? Well, they're both conflicted. That's kind of what they have in common, that they're both kind of torn. There are people in the middle of this distribution. We call them unconflicted consumers. And they kind of are in the Goldilocks zone and not too little, not too much, and they're kind of happy with what they spend.

But it's the two extremes, the tightwads and spendthriftrifts are both kind of, there's a lot of regret there. They're kicking themselves, but for very different reasons. We've got a quiz in the book. I don't want to go through the whole thing. But if you're trying to assess where you might fall on that spectrum, what are some quick questions you can ask yourself? Yeah.

Well, it's, you know, imagine you go to the mall and are you kicking yourself afterwards for either not buying something that you thought you should. That's a tight wide thought. Or are you like, well, I probably shouldn't. have bought that. That's the spendthrift. And so the scale has questions like that. Who do you relate to more? What perspective? And yeah, I see this in my own life. I'm a spendthrift. I'm married to a tight wide. And my wife used to come home from shopping, what she called shopping, but she would tell me about the things she wished she bought. And I was like, just, why didn't you buy the thing? My goodness,

you could use that. And those kind of regrets is what the scale tries to tap into. Well, and on either side, you've got these ways that you can sort of mitigate your own tendencies. One of the things you talk about in the book is the way that spending has shifted and just the way that it's frictionless. You talk about this thing that I thought was really interesting called Payment Salience, which is just this kind of this awareness of the fact that you're spending, even when you're just swiping a card or tapping something on your phone. So how can you reduce or increase this to kind of mitigate your natural? tendencies. Yeah. Well, certainly retailers are doing everything they can to reduce payment salience. And they're really good at this and they're artists like Amazon. It's amazing. So if you're a tight

wide, it's just kind of putting yourself in those places where you can distract yourself and not kind of pay too much attention to the money leaving your possession. The real challenges for the spend thrifts, they have to kind of, they're on their own to kind of ramp up payment salience. But it's doable. It's possible. Like when I was at, in grad school and I had no money, I had to turn myself into a temporary tightwad. So I would pay with cash whenever possible. I would make sure I felt pain at the ATM, reducing my account balance, and then pain at the store when paying with cash, just trying to put up these speed bumps, all this friction,

like paying attention to the money I was spending. And when I would spend with a card, I would get the receipt, take it home, and go into my Excel file and kind of keep track of each purchase. And that was painful to kind of, you know, look at all this money being spent. So I was just trying to ramp up how obvious it was, the money leaving my possession. So that's the challenge for spend thrift. You're kind of on your own. Retailers are not looking to help you. Yes. Definitely not. I think it's interesting that we all have these tendencies and then we sort of have to work against our own nature to get us more to the middle ground. Yes, exactly. But, you know, we can learn from people trying to influence us. And,

you know, I think there are things we can do to influence ourselves to reshape how we think about choices and what kind of reminders or speed bumps we put in our own environment. So we can kind of become like self-marketers, so to speak. Well, you mentioned that you're the spendthrift, you're married to the typewad. I think I might be the type wide married to this Ben Thrift. And you've done some research on whether or not these different types are likely to marry. So what did you discover? How does some of this play out? Yeah. Normally we marry ourselves. We like most things about ourselves

and we look for that in other people. But if there's something we don't like about ourselves, we're not necessarily looking for that in someone else. It can really shine a uncomfortable spotlight on the issue. So if I see someone who approaches money the same way I do, and I don't like how I approach money, it's like, is that what I look like? Is that what I act like? It can really be a real turnoff at first. So we find that indeed, Taiwan's Finthrifts are more likely to marry each other than they are to marry someone like themselves. And we think that's fun at first. But there are lots of things that are fun at first that are less fun in a marriage when the decisions are more. more important when there are higher stakes. And so it is kind of one of these so-called fatal attractions. So like if I'm a shy person, I might find someone really outgoing, fun and exciting at first.

But eventually, I do need my quiet time. And it might get old over time. And so this seems to be one of those patterns. So what happens if the two alike types marry each other? If a tight wad and a tight wad get together, is it just a big grim? And if a spendthrift and a spendthrift get together, do they just bankrupt themselves? Well, I would say that the two spendthrift pairing is the most dangerous, and it can be quite

financially explosive. But certainly if they have the money to spend, that could be quite a fun life. But that is a very precarious pairing. Now, two tightwads, yeah, if you're just looking to maximize the money in the home, you want to put as many tightwads in the home as possible for sure. they are usually living a pretty stable, comfortable life. It's not necessarily an exciting one or filled with much adventure or novelty or kind of fresh experience. They can work at that, but left to their own devices, it can be a little, you know, not for everyone, let's say, a little quiet.

So I do think a mismatch couple has the most potential for happiness. Because I think this balance can work, but it takes some effort. Sounds like it may also take some self-awareness, too. If you don't know which side you're on, then the other person's spending attitude can just seem wrong and stupid. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And so it's good to kind of do things like take this scale, the tight one spin-thrift scale. Or there are other questionnaires, things to kind of reflect on what you're up to. and try to think about what your partner, how they might respond, see if you can guess their responses.

But yeah, it's good to know where everyone's coming from. Like, I might get a gift from my spouse that seems really cheap and like, oh, my God, you don't love me, do you? But I need to keep in mind, like, oh, you really find it painful to spend money. Like, it's not your feelings about me. It's just your nature. It's in you. And it helps me kind of interpret how you spend.

and what you think about me. So it's good to keep in mind where everyone's coming from. Well, we're recording this near Valentine's Day, and this is one of those gifting landmines. This is like this is worse than Christmas, in my opinion. So you talked earlier about typewets and spent thrifts and kind of understanding each other's gifting language. So how do we get through this holiday

and give appropriate gifts without causing ourselves a little bit pain. Well, first of all, I suggest don't ask the other person what they want. Never works. Well, yeah, and it can hurt their feelings. You can ask in like the night before, like, you want something? Are we doing Valentine's this year? No, no. But really, the gift giving is a chance to show the person, oh, I see you, I know you, I understand you. And so, you know, giving a good gift, it takes time. You got to be curious about your partner and take time to learn about them and ask them kind of what are they excited about what are they worried about what are they you know hopes and dreams that kind of thing so there's that also i would say that a good gift requires

sacrifice i need to know that this wasn't super easy for you to find or think of or um obtain so i want to get the sense that you didn't just pick this up at cvs on your way home so a spendthrift if a spendthrift wants to sacrifice, it's not going to be through spending money because I know, if I'm married to a spendthrift, I know they find spending money, it's no big deal. Oh, they get me an iPad. It's nice, but they just got themselves the new iPhone. They do this kind of stuff all the time. It's water off their back. So they have to do something that takes time and effort. They got to plan a weekend. They got to track down a rare Taylor Swift album autograph or something that is hard to find. They got to put in the effort. A tightwad, it's a little different. If I know a tightwad doesn't like spending money

and they spend a bunch of money, that's a sacrifice. They've endured something painful. Now, it still has to be a thoughtful gift. But for them, spending money can be a real act of self-sacrifice. So yeah, I would just say keep in mind the gift will be interpreted based on what the recipient knows about you and how you approach money. So you have to kind of sacrifice. accordingly. Listeners, you can catch Scott Rick's thoughts on money and relationships on X. He is at Scott Ian Rick. And a special shout-out to the person in my life who makes me a little bit less of a tightwad,

Jess. Listeners, we hope everyone out there has someone that loves them and makes them revisit their own money habits. Coming up after the break, Matt Argersinger and Emily Flipner Return with a couple stocks on their radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about.

and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So no buyer's not anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined again by Emily Flippin and Matt Argersinger. Matt, Emily, we're going to talk radar stocks in a second, but this week's interview ahead of Valentine's Day was all about savers and spenders and the relationships with money within relationships. I'm going to force you both to put yourself into one bucket. Tightwad or spendthrift.

Emily, which one is it? This is so hard because I think the world is, of grays, but I guess if I have to choose, I would maybe put myself in the tight wad bucket. That's not because I don't like to spend. I think in my relationship, I'm actually the bigger spender of us, but it is because I keep a spreadsheet of all of our finances. I know where every penny is constantly. And if that's not the definition of an anxious attachment to money, I don't know what is. Matt, what about you? I also have spreadsheets, but I am very much a spendthrift, especially these days. Since I've had a son and I realized that

experiences are very important. So we just got back from a really, really expensive ski trip, but we loved every second of it. And so I really, when it comes to experiences, life events, things like that, I'm doling out the money as fast as I can. Tewaude in other places, but not when it comes to that. All right, let's get over to stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass is going to hit you with a question. Emily, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? Well, Snapchat is on my radar this week. Oh, snap. Yes. Now, look, we talk about a radar There's lots of reasons why a business could be on our radar. Sometimes we're buying it hand over fist, sometimes we're interested in a factor. At this case, Snapchat's on my

radar because it's down more than 30 percent after their fourth quarter results. And it's certainly worth talking about because that's a pretty massive reaction to what is otherwise a pretty decent quarter from Snapchat. They had strong user growth. They had decent cost of management executed on a lot of the vision that management had communicated earlier this year. But I think the reason why we're seeing this massive reaction is just because the ad business for so many other companies has been so strong. And to see that weakness coming out of Snapchat and especially attributing a lot of that to global conflict, while other businesses are just not saying the same thing, could highlight

just a systematic weakness that exists in Snapchat's platform, which I've always said, I think reduces their ability to monetize as effectively as other platforms, a little bit of the Twitter problem facing Snapchat. So it's on my radar for that reason alone. Dan, a question about a maybe bearish, maybe careful watchstock on Snap? Emily, can somebody please take this company private so we don't have to hear about how crappy it's doing ever again? I don't know.

That's Snapchat Plus subscription. There's something there. It doesn't sound like Dan's going to be signing up for that one. But we'll see. Maybe we can convince him. Matt, what's on your radar this week? Well, I think Dan likes coffee. I think he does.

And so Starbucks is on my rater, ticker S-B-U-X. Companies off to a bit of a slow start to its fiscal year. They kind of hit the low end of their comps and revenue growth in that first quarter. But I think there are three things happening that are pretty compelling. One, really focused on efficiency these days, and it's really paying off. 290 basis point improvement in operating margin in the quarter. Operating profits were up 25%. Second, this is still very much a global growth story.

China is still a big market for them. They're just getting started in India. I think there's a viable path for them to double their international stores within a decade. And then third, Starbucks bought back almost $1.4 billion with the stock in this quarter. That was more than they were purchased in all of fiscal 2023. So management thinks the stock is cheap. I think it's cheap as well. I don't think it stays below $100 for share for too long.

We just recommend the stock in our dividend investor service. I've got to give that a shout out. So Starbucks is one that I'm paying very close attention to. Dan, a question about Starbucks. So at risk of alienating all of the listeners, I haven't already alienated yet. Maddie, I actually preferred tea to coffee. Oh, my gosh. That's a shock to the, that's a shock to the dozens of listeners.

A shock. Yeah, but what a different company than Snap, huh? Starbucks, they seem to be doing really strong. It's something else. I mean, host Emeritus, Chris Hill, was always talking about how coffee isn't going anywhere, and it looks like that's the truth for Starbucks. Yeah, I think you're right. I think the addiction thesis is a strong thesis when it comes to people's daily habits and caffeine.

That's going to do it for this week's Motleyful Money Radio Show. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Dylan Lewis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.