Motley Fool Money - Microsoft’s Ascension, Facebook’s Metamorphosis
Episode Date: October 29, 2021Microsoft becomes the world’s most valuable company. Amazon and Apple deal with supply chain issues. Alphabet rises on (what else?) strong ad sales. Visa gets a visit from the U.S. Department of Jus...tice. Facebook changes its name to Meta. Atlassian hits a new all-time high. Ron Gross and Jason Moser analyze those stories, discuss the latest earnings from Starbucks, McDonald’s, Shopify, Twilio, and share two stocks on their radar: Asana and Teladoc Health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.
From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.
It's the Motley Full Money Radio show. I'm Chris Hill, joining me this week's senior analyst Jason Moser and Ron Gross.
Good to see you, as always, gentlemen.
Hey, you're doing, Chris.
We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We've got some amazing suggestions for one restaurant chain.
And as always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar.
But we begin with earnings from behemoth tech.
On Friday, Microsoft went past Apple as the most valuable company in the world.
Shares had a new all-time high after revenue growth in Microsoft's first quarter was the fastest since 2018.
Ron, growth at this size is impressive, to say the least.
Chris, I'm going to start the show right from the top by declaring a firing on all cylinders situation here, right now.
You heard it here first.
Really strong results. I love this report. Better than expected sales and earnings. A company
of this size, as you said, market cap 2.5 trillion, by the way, putting up really solid numbers.
Revenue, 22% increase. Intelligent cloud sales up 31%. That's server products and cloud services
revenue increasing 35% and that was driven by a 50% increase in Azure. That is really the growth
story here. That's what you should focus on as a Microsoft shareholder. Microsoft now the number
cloud company with 20% market share behind Amazon with a 32% share. The other two segments,
productivity and business processes, which is the Office commercial products and LinkedIn.
That segment was up 22%. LinkedIn revenue up 42%. Who knew? That's not too bad.
And the final segment, which is the worst name of a segment I can think of,
more personal computing up 12%. That's the Windows division. That's Xbox. That's a
surface, surface revenue, a weak spot, decreased 17%.
But you go down the income statement, 70% gross margins, 45% operating margins.
You've got adjusted net income up 24%.
They've returned almost $11 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends
in the quarter.
They've got $130 billion of cash on the balance sheet.
The stock's up 47% this year, trading it 35 times, but still looks good to me here.
Something we've been talking about for a while, and we will continue to talk about.
on this episode and probably for the rest of the year is global supply chain and all of the
problems there. You look at the business of Microsoft Ron, they seem far more insulated
from those challenges than others. Very interesting. You mentioned that. I went through the
transcript and did a search on the phrase supply chain because I wasn't hearing that much about
it in their report. And I wanted to get a gauge of how they're talking about it on the conference
call. And they did talk about it. And it did impact the business, but not in
nearly as much as we're hearing from some of the other tech companies. So, you're correct.
Very interesting, not as big an impact as, for example, a company like Apple.
Amazon's third quarter profits came in much lower than expected. Revenue missed as well.
And guidance for the fourth quarter was conservative. As CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to
take on several billion dollars of additional costs due to supply chain, increased shipping costs,
etc. And yet, Jason, shares of Amazon basically flat this week.
Yeah, we, I mean, we talk a lot about Amazon. How with every quarter, it's just kind of the same old
thing. Nothing really changes. It's just nothing to see here. And I think we've actually got
a quarter of this quarter where it's a little bit of a different beast. There is something
to see here, actually. The numbers were fine. I think they were well within management's guidance
that they set last quarter. I think that's what investors should continue to focus on, as opposed
of the headline misses and beats. But the fascinating thing to me, they're guiding for 8% sales
growth at the midpoint here for the holiday quarter, which is really pretty impressive
when you think about it, and not in the good way. For context, last year in the holiday quarter,
they grew revenue 44%. So, yeah, this is a bit of a different situation here this time around.
And I think a lot of this goes to what you offer there in the setup.
The cost of labor, labor-related productivity losses, cost inflation, supply chain concerns.
They quantified that as to have added approximately $2 billion in operating costs for the quarter, for the third quarter.
Now, for the holiday quarter, this guidance range, they're anticipating these costs are going to come up into the range of $4 billion.
So we're certainly going to see these cost pressures continue.
And that's a near-term problem. I mean, that's not something I think investors should be concerned
with longer term. I think even more interestingly, though, Amazon Web Services, AWS, we talk about
it every quarter as being just a tremendous part of the business. It was clearly the star of
this quarter for Amazon, with revenue up 39% of the segment, operating income up 38% of the
segment. And here it's where it gets really fascinating. Amazon Web Services represented 14.5% of
total revenue for the business over the quarter, but basically all of the company's
recorded operating income. So you can see, I mean, this is just a crucial part to the business.
It's not to say that the retail side of the business is dead by any means, but it just goes
to show, I think, the strength of Amazon and having this robust U.S. retail e-commerce business,
this robust international business that they continue to build out. But really, this, this just
tremendous driver at AWS that will continue, I think, to drive this business for some time to come.
You mentioned the guidance for the holiday quarter.
One thing we do not know about Andy Jassy is what is his track record on guidance.
And the reason we don't know that is because he's only been CEO for about an hour and a half.
But it is going to be interesting to see three months from now.
If they have a blowout holiday quarter, there are some who are going to say, he was sandbagging.
Well, and I mean, that's fine.
I think I'd rather see them under promise and over-deliver.
And Amazon traditionally has given a very wide range of guidance.
not only for revenue, but typically it seems even wider on the operating income side.
So yeah, that'll be something to keep an eye on.
We'll certainly cover it next go-round.
Apple sold $83 billion worth of stuff in the fourth quarter, but that was somehow lower
than expected.
CEO Tim Cook said the company expects global supply chain constraints to cost them $6 billion.
Shares of Apple down a bit on Friday after the earnings report.
Ron, I get the slight drop in the stock, but the year-over-year numbers are still in
Very impressive. As long-term Apple shareholders, this doesn't concern me too much.
Now, listen, $6 billion, $6 billion, and it's probably going to continue into the current
quarter. So we don't want to sweep it under the rug completely, but it's something that
is, to a certain extent, out of their control. It's not a permanent impact on the business.
And even in the face of this global supply chain problem, they're still putting up, as you
said, really impressive results. Revenue is up 29 percent for a company of this size.
That's pretty strong. As you said, that $6 billion negative impact on revenue, industry-wide
silicon shortages and COVID-related manufacturing disruptions, the main culprits there. We're
seeing that really across the board. It's not exclusive to Apple. But listen to some of
these metrics. iPhone sales up 47 percent. iPad, 21 percent, wearables up 11 percent. Now, the
services business, Apple becoming more and more services business as time goes on, 26 percent
increase there. Now accounts for about 22% of sales. I like that number very much. Mac brought up
the rear at only 1.2% growth, but I don't think much was really expected there. Their business
model continues to be very profitable with growth margins of 42%. EPS, earnings per share,
up 70%. They had $20 billion of net income for the quarter, $95 billion in profits for the year.
This is an unbelievably profitable company.
They returned 24 billion to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, ended the quarter with
$191 billion in cash.
Comments about the current quarter, the all-important holiday season, not great, expects
an even greater impact from supply constraints during the current quarter.
Apple still anticipates, though, that it will set a revenue record during this quarter.
So I think we're going to still see some of these companies, especially Apple, working through,
the supply chain issues, but long term, I think this looks like a really great report and
the company is doing quite well.
You talked about going through the Microsoft call looking for mentions of supply chain.
Did you do the same for Apple's call looking for mentions of Ted Lassow?
It's fun. I did actually. No, but did the Ted Lassow, if you haven't watched it,
please do. It's a wonderful show. Listen, you get a 2.4 trillion.
billion-dollar company and it's the home of Ted Lassow and you're only paying 27 times earnings.
I think Apple looks good right here. If it gets weaker, I think it's a good entry point.
On last week's show, we talked about the prospect of Facebook changing its name.
This week, it went from prospect to reality. We're going to get meta after the break, so stay right here.
You're listening to Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here with
Jason Moser and Ron Gross. YouTube's revenue was light. So was Google Clouds. But third quarter
profits and revenue for parent company. Alphabet still came in higher than expected. Shares
of Alphabet up 7% this week, Jason, which that's a lot when you're a company of Alphabet
size. If you're an Alphabet shareholder, which I am, then you've got to be feeling
really good about how this year has gone so far. Stock up around 70%. And I think it's because
of results like this, they are really leaning into that AI narrative, it seems like CEO, Sundarper
referenced his vision from several years back of making Alphabet an AI-first company.
And I think that could be very powerful as we continue to see the coming together of user
experience and software and hardware.
But, I mean, at the end of the day, this is still an advertising plate.
It's core.
Not that that's a bad thing because they continue to do it very well.
The numbers, very impressive.
Revenue up 39% X currency to just over $65 billion.
Cost of revenues, relatively in line, up 31.
That was primarily driven by growth in traffic acquisition costs, which is something they always
have to deal with. That was up around 41%. But bottom line, operating income of $21 billion was up
88% operating margin 32%. So you can see this is a tremendously profitable business for a number
of reasons. And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, you mentioned it earlier.
I mean, YouTube is just a tremendous driver, but it has other drivers as well in cloud
and obviously its core search continues to perform very well.
Visa's fourth quarter profits came in higher than expected, but guidance for 2022 was a bit low.
And then you throw in the fact that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the company for
potential antitrust concerns, and you get shares of Visa down 8% this week, Ron.
Yeah, I think it's the antitrust investigation that really has investors spooked more so than the earnings report,
which was relatively solid.
Justice Department watching Visa financial incentives offered to Square, Stripe, and PayPal.
The probing of Visa's deals prevented those payment firms from using other card networks or money movement technologies.
That could be rather severe if they end up being in violation of any antitrust statutes.
So for sure, keep an eye on that.
If we turn to the fourth quarter, we see recovery and travel, improving global economy, driving volume,
revenue up 29%, total payment volume, up 17%, number of transactions processed, up 21%,
cross-border volumes, which has been really kind of the story here with Visa MasterCard, up 38%, but still
well below pre-pandemic level. So keep an eye on that number as a gauge of how our global economy
is recovering. Management said our business has been on a recovery track for the past three to four
quarters. However, we are not back to normal yet globally. But you saw adjusted earnings for share up 44%
really, really solid. First quarter, net revenue growth forecast to be in the high teens. They're
repurchasing lots of stock, $3.1 billion for the quarter, $87 billion for the full year. So I think
the report looks solid. Let's keep an eye on cross-border volumes and antitrust investigation.
So, I don't want to dismiss what's happening with the DOJ, but isn't a likely scenario here
that the outcome is Visa ends up paying a fine of some sort?
Yeah, I would be surprised if it went as far as like a breakup of the company or something
so severe that would impact shareholders.
But a fine, you know, it could be significant.
They might have to change the way they're operating, which could change their relationships
with certain companies, which could impact the business model.
If I was a visa shareholder, which I may be, I'm not sure, to be honest with you, I wouldn't
be too worried.
Facebook's third quarter profits came in higher than expected.
Guidance for the fourth quarter was a bit low.
And all of that takes a backseat to the announcement on Thursday from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The new name for the parent company will be meta.
Starting on December 1st, the ticker symbol will change from FB to MVRS.
Jason, a lot of people poking fun at the name, and we may do that as well.
I will just point out, however, that when Google changed its name to Alphabet, when
Philip Morris changed its name to Altria, you could have done worse than to buy shares
of those companies at that time.
Oh, I mean, absolutely.
I think it's clearly we can have fun with this, but to your point, rebrands of course can
work when done for the right reasons. I mean, I think this is a unique one. It seems to me that
Zuckerberg wants to run away from the Facebook brand. And frankly, I think that's probably
the right thing at this point. It seems rather toxic. One thing I noticed, and I really was
just thinking this more, more, this was only half tongue in cheek here, really, but he said that
this is no longer a Facebook first company. This is meta-first company. And so by saying that,
you are implying that Facebook now comes second. And to me, that could be a big problem, because
it sounds like from that Facebook will just get worse. And I don't know that that really is going
to solve a lot of their problems here in the near term. So I hope they don't take their eye
off the ball. It seems like they're really going to have to continue focusing on the actual
social network side of the business. But by the same token, hey, listen, the metaverse is coming,
whether you like it or not. So I certainly appreciate that they're trying to be forward-thinking
and be a big player in that developing space.
That's a question I have.
The Metaverse is cool.
It's like the future, right?
It's so many movies' vision of the future.
But how long does it take the actual Metaverse concept to really take hold
where you're having virtual conferences or you're going to a concert with a friend virtually?
Are we 5, 10, are we 20 years away?
And is Metaverse aspirational right now?
Are they actually putting dollars behind this?
Well, there are plenty of companies that are putting dollars behind it, not just Facebook.
I mean, you look at companies like Unity Software, Roblox, Matterport.
I mean, all these different types of companies that are building tools and interfaces.
I think there are a lot of challenges that come with it.
One of those challenges is certainly going to be the consumer interface side of it,
because the simplest explanation I've heard of the Metaverse to date is just it's the 3D Internet.
Clearly, it'll be participatory, right?
It's not going to be something that you have to be a point.
heart of. But to me, it strikes me as something that's more like fully self-driving cars.
It's probably way further out in a meaningful fashion than most people would like to believe,
but tech moves pretty fast. So, yeah, obviously, a lot of people that are really bought into
the concept, it could materialize sooner than that, but I would guess probably more 10 to 20
years when it's playing a more meaningful role in our lives in society.
Shares of Coca-Cola up this week and close to a new high after third quarter profits and revenue came in higher than expected.
Company also raised guidance for the full fiscal year.
Restaurants and events reopening, definitely helping Big Red there, Ron.
For sure.
We're seeing public venues, theaters, stadiums, restaurants open up very important for their business.
You saw a rebound in revenue, which was up 16 percent, global unit case volume, up 6 percent.
that reflects an 8% growth in the sale of concentrate and a 6% growth from price and sales mix.
So as Warren Buffett says, and one of the reasons I think he likes Coke after all these years,
is they do have some pricing power and the ability to raise prices if they need to.
Sparkling soft drinks up 6%.
Trademark Coca-Cola up 5%.
Nutrition, juice, and dairy up 12%.
And hydration, sports, and coffee up 6%.
11% increase in adjusted operating income, not too bad.
This is not a technology company. They're not going to go crazy here and adjust their earnings of 18%.
They're going to rely on more marketing expenditures to boost demand, as well as higher prices
to get around any potential aftershocks related to the pandemic. We'll see if the prices,
higher prices offset the marketing expenditures and what impact that has on margins. But overall,
I think this is a very solid report. After the break, we've got food and more beverage earnings,
along with an international stock hitting a new all-time high. Stay right here.
This is Motley Full Money.
I'm into a club down in Lodzsoho where you drink champagne and it tastes like Coca-Cola, COLA.
Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross.
Shares of Starbucks down 7% on Friday.
Fourth quarter revenue got hit by lower sales in China, and earnings guidance for 2022 was lower than what Wall Street wanted to see.
in part because CEO Kevin Johnson said the company plans to raise wages twice next year.
Jason, we've seen this in Starbucks past, or you look back over the last 20 years.
This is one of those times when Starbucks is investing, and that costs money.
Yep. Yeah, I think this is just the market showing its impatience.
Management is guiding for around 12.5% revenue growth for the coming fiscal year, which is really strong.
Now, that's offset, as you noted, from some.
some costs that the business is going to have to realize here through wage increases.
So they're going to see some margin pressure here in the near term that impacts profitability.
But ultimately, I think that's the right thing.
I mean, they're creating a place where employees want to go.
I mean, right?
In this environment particularly, hiring is tough.
And so we're going to see, I think, some operating leverage further out.
They'll keep buying back shares and paying that dividend and coffee.
Chris, you know it's as reliable as the sun coming up.
So when you look at the actual numbers for the business, you know, it's as well, you know, it's as
the business, I think it was a very encouraging quarter. Sales were up 31 percent to a record
8.1 billion dollars. Global comps up 17 percent that was driven by a 15 percent increase
in transactions and a 2 percent increase in the average ticket. North American comps up 22 percent
versus international, just 3 percent. Clearly, pressures in China. I think they noted that the
two-year comps in China were negative 10 percent, negative 7 percent for the quarter. So issues there,
But they continue to grow the store base there, which I think is really interesting.
They open 225 net news stores for the quarter in China.
In context, I mean, they open 538 total net news stores globally for the quarter.
So China is still a big avenue of growth.
You're going to see some lumpiness there, I think, particularly as restrictions kind of come and go.
But I do feel like this dip is a nice opportunity for those like me who would like to own these shares for the next decade
and potentially beyond.
I was going to say, this is not quite the dip that we saw in early 2020 when it fell
about 35 percent off of its high, but it's down nearly 20 percent off its high for this
year.
If this dips below $100, yeah, you really need to think about it.
I couldn't agree more.
I jumped in at that time where you were talking about 2020, when we saw the stock hit
around $50, it just seemed too good to be true, and it didn't last very long.
The business has just continued to perform very well since.
then. So all things being equal here, I think this represents another opportunity for folks
to add to a winner. Higher prices on the menu helped McDonald's third quarter profits
come in higher than expected. They raised revenue guidance, and shares of McDonald's are a big
Mac away from an all-time high, Ron. Another example of a company that has pricing power,
as you mentioned. And that's necessary because those increased prices help to cover rising
commodity labor costs. McDonald's
struggle to keep restaurants open at full capacity amid the labor shortage and COVID-19.
They had to push back some new restaurant openings into early 2022, in part because of global
supply chain problems, making it difficult to get kitchen and technology equipment.
Seating areas remain closed in about 20 percent of McDonald's locations.
That's about 3,000 restaurants.
They've got some headwinds that they needed to kind of overcome.
And they did a nice job as a result of, as we said, pricing increases of about 6 percent.
Their crispy chicken sandwich, which I have not had yet, helped, and celebrity-themed meals
continues to get it done for them.
All kind of jumbled in to make a pretty nice revenue increase of 14 percent with the U.S.
same store sales growth of almost 10 percent.
Global comparable sales up almost 13 percent.
So that's a nice report.
Strong net income growth, adjusted earnings per share up 24 percent.
forecast current quarter U.S. comparable sales to post low double-digit growth on a two-year
basis from two years ago. Relatively new loyalty program in the U.S., now has over 21 million
members. I like that. I think that's pretty impressive. They're increasing delivery capacity.
They're making sure technology and digital channels, whether it's the app, kiosk and restaurants
or delivery, are a big part of their strategy going forward. And I think it's paying off nicely.
not expensive at around 24 times, pays a 2.3 percent yield. So I think McDonald's looks
pretty good here.
I want to go back to something you said, because I think it's important to point out
that when we talk about companies that have pricing power, a lot of times it's businesses
that have higher-end goods or more expensive things. But the fact that, you know, people
don't think of McDonald's as an expensive place. And, you know, on a dollar basis, it's
probably not. But that doesn't diminish from the market.
the fact that this company has pricing power.
Yes, but they do need to be careful because part of McDonald's appeal is a value proposition,
right?
So you have to balance hurting that value prop with somewhat higher prices.
Shopify's third quarter revenue rose 46 percent, and that was still lower than Wall Street
was expecting.
It was Shopify's first revenue miss in five years, but shares still up a little bit this week, Jason.
Yeah, I mean, I think we can certainly understand it has been a, a, you know, a, you know,
challenging environment for retailers and retail concepts the world over. And I don't think Shopify
is immune to that. But I think if we look back over time here, I think Amazon, and at least
partly, I'll throw Costco in there too. So there you go, Mac. You're welcome. I think these are
two great examples of businesses that really help set a standard a while back for the value in being
extremely customer-centric and sacrificing those near-term gains in order to ensure longer-term
sustainability and success. So Shopify, I think, has certainly taken a few pages from that
playbook, and it is clearly working to my mind. Total revenue for the quarter up 46% from a year ago,
as you said, that broke down subscription solutions revenue grew 37%. We'd love to see those
subscription businesses, and that was primarily due to more merchants joining the platform.
Merchant solutions revenue up 51%, and that was driven primarily by the growth of gross
merchandise volume. Speaking of that,
the gross merchandise volume for the quarter was $41.8 billion. That was up 35 percent from a year ago.
If you look at the benefit that they are realizing in their payments platform, I mean, Chris,
you know I love a good payment story. Shopify's got that angle too. The gross payments volume grew
to $20.5 billion. That accounted for 49 percent of total gross merchandise volume process in the quarter.
So clearly Shopify pay is working. They're building out all sorts of different tools for their, for their
They're merchants that are joining the platform, and I suspect we'll continue to see this
business perform very well for many years to come.
Well, and going back to your comparison to Amazon, like Amazon stock, Shopify stock
is never going to look cheap, is it?
It just seems like one of those that, like you just, you can't be looking at Shopify waiting
for it to get cut in half, because even if it got cut in half, it still probably wouldn't
look that cheap.
I'm glad you put it that way.
I don't know that we could ever look at this.
I don't think we could ever look at this stock as cheap.
I don't think anybody would look at Amazon stock as conventionally cheap.
And I think Shopify falls into the same category.
And when you look at the share that Amazon possesses today in the U.S. e-commerce market,
I mean, it's somewhere 39, 40 percent.
I mean, Shopify down there, I think somewhere in like the six or seven percent range or
something like that.
I mean, it's a very material difference.
And it really speaks to not only how big of a lead Amazon has,
That's one thing, but also it speaks to how much opportunity is out there for businesses
like Shopify to capture. How far they've come in such a short period of time has something
to do with the stock's performance, right? I mean, the stock's performance is based on the fact
that the business has been performing so well in all signs point toward that continuing.
So if you're a shareholder today, you've got to feel really good about it. But yeah, I think
you put it very, very eloquently there. It's just a stock that never will look cheap.
Atlassian started its fiscal year with a bang.
First quarter revenue for the collaborative software company rose 34%.
Shares of Atlassian hitting a new all-time high on Friday, Ron.
Stock up 90% year to date.
It's really been on a run.
Big revenue beat here.
Continuing to benefit from the accelerated digital transformation we've all seen since the COVID
pandemic took hold.
Revenue from cloud products was up more than 50% year over.
year that drove revenue growth of 34%. Subscription revenue growth of 57%. Now, this is kind of
important to the thesis. This continues the company's transition from its on-premise install-based
offering to a cloud-based platform. It's been moving to the cloud, and it's been moving there very
successfully. Adjusted operating margins, 27% for the quarter versus 23% last year. Net income of
$118 million versus $77 million last year. So, profit.
but not extremely profitable quite yet, still spending quite a bit of money to grow the
business. $1.6 billion in cash at the end of the quarter, so they've got a balance sheet there.
The end of the quarter with a total customer account of 216,500 customers, added about 11,700
new customers during the quarter. CFO will be retiring from his role in June of 2022,
having been there for about four years. I'm not too concerned about that. Guidance looks solid.
630-ish million dollars for the second quarter with adjusted gross margin guidance of 85%.
Elassian continues to put up the numbers.
The stock is by no means cheap, but the company continues to execute very, very well.
Another one of those businesses where people probably are more familiar with the products,
things like Trello and Jira and that sort of thing, than they are the parent company name.
Absolutely.
Confluence, maybe a lesser known product of theirs, but I think Trello is probably the most well-known.
I agree. And they compete with folks like Twilio, Service Now, and many others. But it's a pretty
big marketplace. It's room for more than one player here.
Speaking of Twilio, shares down 20 percent this week. Third quarter results for the Cloud
Communications as a service company came in higher than expected. But guidance was weak.
And Chief Operating Officer George Hu is leaving after nearly five years in that role.
Jason, 20 percent is a lot. When you look at Twilio, do you think that's an overreaction?
It's difficult to quantify overreaction with a business like this.
So this is a very good business.
It is any little bit of a rut.
I think it's probably a victim of that pull forward as everything pivoted to digital
so quickly here over the past couple of years.
And when you're growing this quickly, I mean, you're chalking up these 60, 65% annualized
revenue numbers.
I mean, when you're growing that fast and you're still not profitable, there's no cash flow
to speak of, valuation is just going to be one of those big,
risks that's really difficult to quantify. And that really feels like what's going on here.
I don't know that I would let, if I was a shareholder, I don't know that I would really
be too discouraged. If you remember what Twilio does, they provide cloud-enabled communication
services. They allow companies to reach customers across all common communication channels,
like SMS and voice, video, email, chat, WhatsApp. So when you look at the numbers,
the quarter was very good. It was revenue of $740 million. It was up 65% from a year ago.
Dollar base net expansion rate, 131 percent, in line with their goals.
I mean, it was down a little bit from a year ago, but over 250,000 active customer accounts
now versus 208,000 a year ago.
So those metrics are all headed in the right direction, very encouraging.
Guidance, as you mentioned, was a little bit light.
It still represents 40 percent growth for the quarter.
So let's take these things with a grain of salt.
Maybe the headline, I think the CEO, George Hu, who, who, who is, who, it's, you know,
leaving, as you mentioned, there's probably a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction in that.
He was there for five years. It was considered a very valuable part of the team.
But they still feel very confident that they can grow organically at 30% annualized
over the next three years. So that's the fuel that's going to get them to those profitability
and cash flow numbers. But if we see signs that that revenue growth is not materializing,
then the market will revalue the stock again. But given their position in the market,
given the sticky nature of the business, the switching costs that grow over time.
I'm betting on this company, not against them.
With this drop this week, the stock is flat over the past 12 months.
Does this look like an entry point for people?
Or are there enough question marks that you would wait a little bit?
To me, personally, this looks like a very good time to consider.
And most of that has to do with the track record that the company has developed over time.
But you've got tremendous founder leadership.
Again, you've got a tremendous product.
You've got switching costs.
You've got good tech.
I mean, there's just a lot of positives here.
I think the good far outweighs the bad here.
And these selloffs typically can represent pretty good buying opportunities for folks willing to take that longer view.
We asked for your help, and you responded.
New names for the Buffalo Wild Wings robot coming up after the break.
So stay right here.
You're listening to Motley Full Money.
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the
Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against.
So, don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money.
Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross.
Our email address is Radio at Fool.com.
Last week on the show, we told you about Buffalo Wild Wings testing a new robot cook that they
are expecting to roll out in one of their restaurants in 2022.
And really the only thing we didn't like about this new robot was a new robot.
the name that the company gave it, which is Wingy. And so we asked the dozens of listeners
for suggestions and, oh, did they respond? From V-Jew, instead of Winging, I suggest DeWingster.
From Ryan, if it were up to me, I'd call the robot Hot Sauce Willie. And for what it's
worth, Hot Sauce Willie definitely wears a cowboy hat in the kitchen, at least in my mind.
That's great. From Laura. My suggestion would be Mr. Frick of Chick. I'm not sure if this is good
bad, but it made me laugh out loud when I was trying to come up with names.
From Joshua, I suggest naming the robot cook, Winger. I would create an ad campaign on the robot
and feature a song by the band Winger. With members of Winger eating chicken wings.
Kip Winger, lead singer. And finally, from Derek, who writes, I love how you played the song
Mighty Wings from the movie Top Gun during your Buffalo Wild Wing segment. Am I one of the few that
got that reference? Or did most people get it? I'm going to go out on a limb right now and say
that most people did not get that. Shout out to our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd,
for a brilliant, yet another brilliant song choice. Derek goes on to say, here are a few
names suggestions. Wingman, winger, right wing or left wing, depending on the state. And finally,
Francois. François. So thank you to everyone who wrote in. Thank you for all those great
suggestions. Before we get to rate our stocks, Jason, did you do you?
Do you have a name you wanted to throw out there for the consideration of the company?
I really like that right wing, left wing.
It makes me think of the Twix commercials, right, right, twigs, left twigs.
Yeah, I mean, I started kicking this around.
I mean, I listened to the show last week.
I was out of town and I was enjoying Marie and Emily's ideas there.
And I feel like you go a few different ways with this.
I mean, I have like a regal offering.
You could really give him some sort of royalty there, Sir Wingthorpe fries a lot, the third.
You can even say it with an English accent.
Or hey, listen, I mean, it's a robot, right?
What about a Star Wars theme?
R2, Wing, 2.
I mean, there are just a few different ways you could go with it.
Let's get creative.
Winging ain't cutting it.
Remember a year ago there was that burger flipping robot called Flippy?
I think that was a big floppy.
I don't think that cut on.
But maybe Buffalo Wild, they'll do a little bit better.
Let's get to the stocks on our radar.
Damn boy, it'll hit you with a question.
Ron, you're up first.
What are you looking at this week?
I'm looking at Asana ASA and it's a recent pick for my friends.
over on the Rule Breakers team. They're a competitor to Atlassian that we spoke about earlier.
They create software tools that help teams collaborate on work projects, large customers
rapidly increasing their spending, high switching costs, as Jason mentioned when talking about
Twilio. Founders, a lot of skin in the game, which is good and bad. It's a controlled company.
Dustin Moscovitz controls more than 60% of the voting rights and owns 35% of shares outstanding.
Not making money yet. I need to dig in a little bit deeper here to see when, perhaps,
Perhaps that path to profitability will be realized. Shares are up more than 300% this year,
so probably not cheap.
Dan, question about Asana?
You know, it's getting cold outside, Chris. The weather is changing. And nothing is better
than like a warm blanket, like a boring stock pick from Ron Gross. What an incredible
snooze fest.
Come on.
Three hundred percent.
Is there a question in there? Can't win.
Jason, what do you look at that?
look at that. Well, Dan, it wouldn't be Motley full money if I didn't bring up Teledoc Health,
ticker TDOC. And while we didn't get to the earnings report in the show, I saved it for radar
stocks. They reported another strong quarter. Metrics that matter continue ahead in the right
direction, and management's focus on a comprehensive offering is paying off. They noted that 70% of
bookings this year were multi-product sales as compared to about 50% last year. Organic revenue
growth of 32%. Adjusted EBITDA up 71%. Utilization. Just continue. Just continue.
to impress and go straight up at utilization of 23.7 percent in the third quarter. That was
up 210 basis points sequentially. I think the biggest question mark is going to revolve
around the Lavango deal for the next several quarters. Not that it's a bad addition, but man,
oh man, did they pay a lot for it?
Question about Teledoc.
More comfort food on Motley Fool Money this week. Jason's back talking about Teledoc
Doc again. What do you know? Better than wings and mac and cheese. What do you want
to add to your watch list, Dad?
You know what? I've heard about Teledoc too much. I'm going with Asana because it might be a boring tech company, but it's up 300%. And those are numbers I like.
Sweet. Jason Mazur, Ron Gross, guys. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for us. We're out of time. Thanks, everyone for listening. We'll see you next week.
