We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP825: Meta, Adobe, Booking Holdings w/ Stig Brodersen, Tobias Carlisle & Hari Ramachandra

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

In today’s episode, Stig Brodersen is joined by Tobias Carlisle and Hari Ramachandra for a new round of stock pitches. Hari makes the case for Meta as a leading AI-powered advertising platform. Tobi...as breaks down Booking Holdings and whether its travel moat can withstand the rise of AI assistants. Stig analyzes Adobe, exploring the durability of its creative software ecosystem amid rapid technological change. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: (00:00:00) Intro(00:02:31) Why Hari is bullish on Meta (Ticker: META), highlighting its advertising dominance, network effects, and long-term monetization potential.(00:03:38) The bear case for Meta, including massive AI infrastructure spending, uncertain returns on capital, and execution risk around AI monetization.(00:14:27) Why Tobias is bullish on Booking Holdings (Ticker: BKNG), emphasizing its capital-light business model and robust travel ecosystem.(00:18:46) The bear case for Booking Holdings, including AI-driven loss of customer mindshare, and potential pressure on its role in the travel booking value chain.(00:27:43) Why Stig is bullish on Adobe, focusing on its switching costs and subscription-based revenue model (Ticker: NASDAQ: ADBE).(00:37:21) The bear case for Adobe, including AI-generated content and the increasing competition from tools like Canva and LLMs. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Stig Brodersen’s Portfolio and Track Record.  Our valuation model of Adobe. Our valuation model of Meta. Our valuation model of Booking Holding.com. Check out the Mastermind Discussion Q1, 2026 | Video. Check out the Mastermind Discussion Q4, 2025 | Video. Check out the Mastermind Discussion Q3, 2025 | Video. Check out the Mastermind Discussion Q2, 2025 | Video. Check out the Mastermind Discussion Q1, 2025 | Video. Tobias Carlisle's podcast, The Acquirers Podcast. Tobias' ETF, ⁠ZIG⁠. Tobias' ETF, ⁠Deep⁠. Tweet to ⁠Tobias Carlisle⁠. Hari's ⁠Blog⁠. Tweet to ⁠Hari⁠. Related ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mentioned in the podcast. Ad-free episodes on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Investor’s Podcast Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Plus500 Netsuite Vanta Shopify References to any third-party products, services, or advertisers do not constitute endorsements, and The Investor’s Podcast Network is not responsible for any claims made by them Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. In today's episode, I'm joined by my friends and fellow value investors Tobias Kyle Lyle and Hira Matantra for another round of, dare I say, unloved stock pitches. We kick things off with Harry's pitch of Meta. The business is firing on own cylinders, yet the market has been selling off the stock, and we discuss whether investors should be worried about rising capital expenditures and whether meta's competitive advances lies in its AI models, or in its unmatched distribution and data.
Starting point is 00:00:30 Now, Tobias walks us through booking holdings, one of the world's leading travel platforms. We debate whether AI systems could eventually replace travel aggregators altogether, or if booking's relationships, networking effects, and position in the travel ecosystem, makes it mode more durable than investors currently believe. And finally, I pits the most unloved stock of them all, Adobe. The stock is trading near multi-year lows as the magwares about, yes, you guessed it, the threat of AI. And the recent departure of the CEO and CFO has not made the narrative more compelling.
Starting point is 00:01:06 So we discussed switching costs and whether Adobe's biggest challenge is technological disruption or something completely different in a rapid changing environment. As always, there's plenty to disagree with, plenty to think about, and a few investing lessons along the way. So without further ado, let's jump right in. Since 2014, with more than 200 million downloads, we have interviewed the world's best investors, studied deeply the principles of value investing and uncovered many compelling investment opportunities. We focus on understanding businesses and intrinsic value, investing accordingly,
Starting point is 00:01:44 and sharing everything we learn with you. This show is not investment advice. It's intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own, and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your host, Stig Brodison Welcome to the Investors podcast. I'm your host, Stake Broderson, and today, as always, throughout these mastermind discussions,
Starting point is 00:02:19 I'm here with Harry and Toby. Jans, how are you today? I'm well, Stig, good to see, good to see, Harry. Hey, Stig and Toby. Hello from India. Good to see you both. Take it away. Awesome.
Starting point is 00:02:32 My pick for this time is meta. When I was looking at the recent shuffle in the market, I see many names falling down and meta was one of them. Its share price from its peak has fallen down by 20%. And when I looked at the company, the business is pretty strong. They're one of the two best advertising machines ever built. In fact, they are on track to beat Google in terms of ad revenues. They're forecasted ad revenue for 2026 is $243 billion, which will be $3 billion more than Google's. And their operating margin is very healthy at 41%. With a 46 billion free cash flow in 2025, a 30% net margin.
Starting point is 00:03:26 Their revenue has been growing pretty healthyly for last five years with a 18.5% C.S.G. revenue growth. So what's the problem? And the problem is something that is not new to matter. They are very bold and very swift in making serious bets. And they put serious dollars behind those bets. Metaverse was one of them, which market got spooked. When they didn't see much returns and they saw it as a money pit,
Starting point is 00:04:03 VR labs was another one, the reality labs. And this time, what has booked market is their investments of their projected CAPEX, especially of $135 billion into building their data centers and infrastructure for their AI. Their big bet that they're making their first LLM LAM was not a big success. But recently their super intelligence group came up. with their latest model, which has performed really well compared to other foundational models out in the market, which gives me confidence that, one, they have the ability to come up with a good
Starting point is 00:04:48 model. Two, as we are seeing that models are pretty much getting commoditized, that means the incremental difference between models is kind of getting saturated, distribution, becomes more advantageous. It's the distribution that matters. Whether it is Grog with XAI, Gemini of Google, meta has a solid distribution. The second thing with Google and meta is they have a lot of use for AI to make their products better, their ad targeting better. So they don't have to look for subscription model immediately. They can actually improve their profitability. their revenue streams for their existing products with AI, but they're also trying to diversify into subscription.
Starting point is 00:05:42 They are also looking into cloud business, but I'm not going to be accounting for those because those are still kind of things on the drawing board. So my base case is that their network effects, their mode that comes out of it, the ability to use AI as an engine for their ad business, their pricing power, and then the discipline they have exhibited wherein Zuck said in 2023, it's a year of efficiency, even in 2026 they have reduced their workforce, so they're kind of not going off-hinch in terms
Starting point is 00:06:21 of spending. So I'm hoping that that will continue. So my base case is based on these they're able to recover their FCF margin and also the growth stabilizes without any re-rating of the price to earnings, I see a 46% upside from here. If they really hit the ball out of the park with their AI monetization, then it can be much more. So that's kind of my case for meta. And I look forward to your feedback, Toby Lstick. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:06:57 Good one, Harry. I like meta. I think it's a good pick. I agree with everything that you've said. I think it's an absolutely world-class business. One of the very unusual one that still found a lead where Zuck is really fully engaged and he's young and he's done a really good job.
Starting point is 00:07:16 So it might be one of the best managers in the business at the moment. Absolutely gushes free cash flow and just grows ridiculously fast. You've got that optionality that. they figure out AI. It doesn't seem like they're a loser in that race. They're competitive at least, even if they're not at the forefront, because as you say, the models seem to be commoditized over time. And so you don't necessarily need to have the best model. You just need to have a model that's competitive with the other ones. I think for meta, the big issue is, I think it's the same one for all of them that they've all got this massive capex to chase this opportunity. It's hard to say,
Starting point is 00:07:57 with looking back on this in five years time, we'll be like, oh, it was silly. Of course, these guys were all going to figure out how to monetize this thing and that was going to be. Or they all sort of tried to spend all the money at the same time. And they all caused each other to overspend. And the underlying kind of trajectory of the growth of these businesses was going to be sustained anyway. And so they've just had this period where they've really overspent on CAPEX. and it's not clear how they're going to generate the revenue out of that CAPEX over and above what they're already doing. And I think that's what the market sees. I think that's why it's probably reasonable value on what it's already done.
Starting point is 00:08:40 But there's some discount for the uncertainty of their ability to execute on AI. It's a hard question to answer. I think that it's such a high quality business that really the, your risk is not that you're down 50% on a position like this. I think the risk is just that for a period of time, and I don't know how long this is, but could be five years, they just under earn on what they've invested and the multiples come down as a result and they just have like a, I don't know how long, but a period of time while they work through the sort of CAPEX spending and start earning enough on that investment. And at the same time, the problem with the spend on this stuff is that the chip's age faster than infrastructure has in the past. It's not like a railway or fibroptic cable, which sits
Starting point is 00:09:27 in the ground for a really long period of time and you just wait for demand to catch up. I think the chips age a little bit faster than that. Yeah, you're right, actually. Need some fate. Inzuk. So, Hari, again, I really appreciate it. It's such an interesting time that we're in. And I have to talk a bit about AI. I can't help myself. Let me ask you a question. And the reason, I probably want to preference this by saying that, you know, we created a model here on TAPE of META and we came up with a valuation of 775. At the time, recording is trading as 600 and change.
Starting point is 00:10:07 But of course, whenever you do that, you have different scenarios and you assign different probabilities and then you look back and you're like, oh, like to a Tobis point, this happened. It wasn't that obvious that would happen. And I don't know. Like right now I'm talking about the future. I don't think anything is obvious in terms of what's going to have. with AI. And so it's only really, whenever we see the result, we think it's obvious, but then you, again, you sign the probabilities to what you think is going to happen. But one of the things
Starting point is 00:10:32 that I can't help but think about for many of the stocks in my own portfolio is what happens if computing becomes free or, you know, essentially free? And I know it sounds a bit odd, sort of like to have the framework. It's a bit like you had a lot of, for a lot of companies, you know, you had this thesis for the longest time. What happens if we figured out how to make abundant energy, for example, and then all energy is free. Then we have clean drinking water for the entire world because being so much energy, but now it's free. So it might sound very theoretical. At the same time, you also see what's going on right now. And you know, you see how much cheaper everything becomes in terms of, for example, inference. But then at the same time, you also need that much more.
Starting point is 00:11:15 And so you have these two things that are trying to counterweight each other. But anyways, I wanted to ask, this is going to be a very long question, as you can tell. Like, what happens if computing, I'm definitely going to use the wrong word here. I hope, you know, you see what I go with this. Computing, AI, whatever you call, whatever you need to do, if that becomes free or cheap. And so let me talk a bit more about the framework here because meta has so much data that, you know, what happens if they can utilize all that data and collect all of that data and it's essentially free for them to compute.
Starting point is 00:11:51 And then you can basically go to meta and say, here's $100,000 for my campaign. This is my objective. Figure it out. And then meta is going to figure it out because computing is free. Or is that not the way to think about it at all because meta doesn't have that type of advantage if computer becomes free
Starting point is 00:12:11 because then everyone can collect the same amount of data because everything is possible. And that's going to be a framework. I know it sounds like a bit of an odd question, I think we can sort of like break it down from there. So let me throw it back over to you, Hari. Yeah, actually great question and stick. And that's kind of the million dollar question now.
Starting point is 00:12:27 All of these guys are facing. If you look at AI in general, I think it is constrained by power. It is constrained by real estate or space because you've got to build a data center somewhere. And it is constrained by chips or the GPUs currently. Of course, now there are competition from Google. and Amazon and others with TPUs and there are specialized chips for inference versus training coming in and then the models are also being optimized.
Starting point is 00:12:59 So the arc is towards that. So right now we are heavily constrained by chips today. But as you mentioned, the arc is towards a place where we might no longer be constrained by that by a factor of one competition catching up. So supply coming into the market. Two, the model themselves becoming more efficient. And there is a lot of papers now being published on that area.
Starting point is 00:13:27 And I'm following that where so far it was all about features in the model, if you will. Now it's all about how to optimize the model for energy, for cost. In fact, Google Flash, Gemini Flash, recently in their Google I.O, They talked about how if you use Flash, you will save billions of dollars because it's much more efficient. So that conversations have already started. So I think with that arc continuing, Facebook has the advantage that it has the walled garden. Not everybody has access to what the data Facebook has. And it can leverage that data, whether it is for better ad targeting or for suggesting products to its customers.
Starting point is 00:14:13 or even coming up with new features and product and subscription model for its customers based on the treasure draw of data they have. So that can prove to be an advantage for Facebook because their cost of delivering AI goes down as chips gets commoditized or model becomes more efficient. Now they have the advantage of data. Thank you so much. Toby, you are up with your pick. mine is also a AI impacted name. I like booking. Booking.com. If you're in the States, you'll have seen the ads, rate ads. Booking.com really sticks in the mind. It's a big company. It's much bigger than I usually pitch, and it's more expensive than I usually pitch. But I think
Starting point is 00:15:04 it's interesting because it is so dominant and I think it's one of the unusual chances that you get to buy one of these companies cheaply. Just so for folks you don't know, booking is a business that allows you to book travel. They have booking.com price line, which has been a great business forever. A go to, I don't know it particularly well, but kayak is also a name that folks will recognize an open table. Over time, there's secular growth in travel as people become more wealthy. They tend to travel more. And they're able to control all the experience, they're able to upsell and control various parts of the experience. They have a business model that doesn't.
Starting point is 00:15:46 So through 2020, some of the other sites in an effort to compete with booking, they buy rooms up front. They got caught when the rooms weren't taken. Booking.com doesn't do that. They don't buy their rooms up front. So they're very capital-light. They don't own the underlying assets. They just hook people up.
Starting point is 00:16:03 The big risk to booking is that folks need to the business. they can somehow they will figure out how to get AI to control. You'll just type into your AI that you want to book a trip somewhere and the AI will do all of that for you without you having to interact with any of these sites and it will either do it directly and therefore cut out booking.com. So booking.com, their thesis though, is that that doesn't happen. So they're not disintermediated because there is a large database of. of all these sites and there are relationships that needs to be maintained. It's not a simple matter of just calling them and paying them. They have these specialized relationships and so in order for
Starting point is 00:16:48 Chad GPT or Claude or one of the other LLMs to access these travel agents, I'll need to go through booking.com in order to do it. I don't know what the likelihood of that actually happening is, but that's their thesis. They think that they won't be disintermediated, that they continue to be part of that acquisition, that purchase journey. The rest of the business is, it's very well managed. Capital allocation is excellent. As a result, it tends to be a very high return on invested capital. It's grown very steadily for years and years and has all of the things that make it a great business, very asset light, great sort of network. Once people get used to the site, there's I switching costs, lots of free cash flow. So the competitive
Starting point is 00:17:34 advantages, I think, are durable. The risks to booking are travel is still sort of somewhat cyclical with if the economy goes through a weaker period, then folks just tend to travel less. And because of the way that booking is priced, really is priced, assuming some future growth or assuming that it continues to grow into the future, somewhat like it has in the past, if that sort of revenue growth slows down, that's the sort of return we would likely expect. I think the most likely outcome is that travel just sort of generally grows as it has historically. You know, I like companies that buyback stock at opportune times and I think that they're doing a good job buying back here. The bull case is that AI helps them and they become this sort of
Starting point is 00:18:27 channel for all of these other LLMs and they just continue to grow. They interconnect with them ease seamlessly. You don't even know that it happens. And so they do a lot better than they have historically. You know, you can handicap the bull and the bear and maybe they cancel out. And so the base case is the most likely, which is just that they keep on sort of muddling along. I think that booking is a reasonable risk-adjusted bet at these levels because it's a little bit depressed with the fear around LLMs, but there's a reasonable chance that they are beneficiaries of that. Very interesting pick, Toby.
Starting point is 00:19:06 And I think there are so many, suddenly the market has become interesting now with the AI scare. One question I have is, I agree with you, the relationships booking has, the channels they have maintained is definitely a mode for them. Even if I'm going through, say, a chat GPD or Anthropic Cloud client, and booking becomes like a headless and provides an API, it might go in background. But I'm still querying booking through chat GPD or LLM, so booking can be a plug-in to chat GPD. So that's kind of the case where it's still there. It's not disrupted.
Starting point is 00:19:47 However, in the longer term, so in the short term it's not a problem, but in the longer term, they're gradually losing the mind share. And they're also losing the real estate in the sense that right now folks land on booking website and they can cross-sell to them, you can promote, you can show advertisements. and then people discover things as they are on the site. So those are some of the opportunities they might lose in the long term if they just become a plug-in for cloud or open-A. It's certainly sold off over the last sort of six months after being a pretty consistent compounder for a very long period of time. I do think that the valuation got a little bit ahead of itself,
Starting point is 00:20:40 but I think the valuation has, it is at a reasonable discount now, or if it loses that mine share, then that's the bare case, that's the risk. So I think it's a great question. I don't have a great answer, but I think that that is really the reason why it trades where it does. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Curious about online trading, but haven't taken the first step yet. You're not alone. And plus 500 futures is a great place to start.
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Starting point is 00:24:40 And I can't really figure out now that it's been selling off, like if now of the time, because I do feel like there is a reason why it's selling off. And I know this is very anecdotal, but please take it for what it is. But, you know, I just came back from a wonderful trip to Paris with my wife. And I've seen how we increasingly have starting to use LLMs. And like this one probably because it was a reason. last week was the one where we've used it the most. And it's so incredibly helpful in so many ways. You talked before about all the things that were working behind the scenes that's super, super
Starting point is 00:25:15 important and that just needs to be done. And so I'm sort of like using that as a microcosm for, it's probably just me who are ignorant traveler. I don't know why it's so difficult that you can't make it through an LLM. Like, why can't I tell an LLM book me a hotel in Paris throughout about this criteria and then I probably need to give a final sign off and then I don't need booking.com at all. I think Hari is absolutely right that there are some wonderful things that's something like booking.com can do. For example, you know, you can explore, you can do that different ways. But I guess I'm not sure if you need an intermediary like booking.com if you're already doing it through an LLM that knows you better and would give you, like one of the challenges
Starting point is 00:25:58 I have at booking.com and I've used it multiple times is that I kind of feel that there are too many options. It's almost like going on Netflix sometimes. And so I'm like if my LLM of choice is really knows me better than anyone, I would probably like to put in different criteria or perhaps I don't even want to put
Starting point is 00:26:17 in different criteria because it already knows me. And then these are the three, five choices and then I'm going to click that one. And so I also think it goes to Haris point about like, are they going to lose Monsia? Perhaps. I can probably see a case where LLMs, because they're
Starting point is 00:26:33 so expensive to run. They would need like the booking.coms. They're advertising dollar. You know, I think it's well known by now that booking.com is one of the biggest spenders on Google. And I can see you're sort of like why you want to build your big, your business model around that, because travel is such an obvious thing to use LMS for. And so that's a way to monetize it. Right now, then you just raise money without making any money. So perhaps they're saying, no, we're just basically cutting out the middleman. We don't care about advertising. We're just providing the best possible service. And again, this might be my own travel habits. I would love if I could go to chat DBT or Gemini or whatnot and not go through booking.com. That brings me absolutely no
Starting point is 00:27:12 pleasure, but perhaps I'm just a very anxious traveler. So anyways, those were a few thoughts. Let me say back over to you, Toby. I think those are good thoughts. And I think that that is the real risk. We're in this transitional period where we don't really know how everybody's going to interact with all of these businesses. And because booking.com is an aggregator, it's entirely possible. It is disintermediated by the LOMs. The only thing I would say is that that has always been the risk,
Starting point is 00:27:41 but the boogeyman for most of booking.com's history was Google, that Google was going to do exactly that, that you could just search. And Google has tried to do that. You can search flights and so on Google and book all the way through with the carrier. and that's disintimated booking.com. But booking.com has
Starting point is 00:28:01 continued to be has continued to grow and the lion's share that despite the fact that Google has been out there. But again, as Harry mentioned, does that impact their mind share and their ability to charge? I think that's a good question but I still think that you get, this is not
Starting point is 00:28:17 priced for perfection. I think that you're getting a little bit of a discount and I guess the question is whether the discount is enough for that risk but I think that there is, if you assume that things sort of go back to normal, it doesn't continue to earn what it has in the past, but maybe it sort of muddles along a little bit below that. I don't think you're going to too many problems here at the current valuation.
Starting point is 00:28:40 So, you know, a way of thinking of this is if booking.com disappear tomorrow, who would notice it first would it be travelers or other hotels? And there's a bit of a probably a bit of rhetorical question. But I see why booking.com has us a sort of. strong footholds, especially here in Europe. We don't have as many brandy chains as you do in the States, for example. So there are a lot of independent hotels, they don't have a lot of rooms, and they're very much dependent on the booking.coms of the world. One of the things that we talk about here before we hit record, because I'm also going to talk about a company where the
Starting point is 00:29:15 management is saying AI is going to be a tailwind, not a headwind. But I dare everyone to see if they can find a CEO of a public company who was not saying that AI is definitely not going to disrupt but it's going to be a tailwind. Anyways, one of the ways that I like to think about this is, can it replace the entire value chain? And that was also why I was getting at here with Hart before, where I was saying, okay, when, if when, and how would it look like if I went to MENA and said,
Starting point is 00:29:43 here's $100,000, run my campaign, this is what I want to achieve, and then they will figure out the rest and create the ad and kind of, like, whatever. I probably would like some kind of control, but even so, I want to see more money. coming in and get a report on that, the money I'm putting out. And the more automated can be, the better. Of course, it's going to take a long time before AI can, like, change the sink in my house. But how long is it going to take before I can do something that's completely digital? And so one of the things that I was quite impressed by and have been, because I've been
Starting point is 00:30:17 using LLLMs here for, well, I'm going to say for the longest time, but haven't existed for the longest time, but just something like, you see what kind of task it can do whenever you're traveling and how helpful it is in terms of planning, whatever. I don't know. Whenever I look at what booking.com is doing, I wonder if it can do the entire value chain and how long it's going to take. And I'm not, again, I kind of sound overly barriers. I've been looking at this wonderful company for the longest time. I think it's a very, very strong company, so please don't get it wrong. I think it might be a helpful framework in terms of seeing when is this going to be disrupted and how is it going to be disrupted? Because if it can only take a small part of the valent chain and then do it much, much better,
Starting point is 00:30:59 then it could be a tailwind. So anyways, just a few thoughts that came off way too much barriers than I wanted it to sound like. I think they're off about 30% from their high on a sort of DCF basis. I think you can get to about $220. I think it's worth about, it's trading at about 167 today. So the question is, is that enough of a discount for those risks? And that 220 is based on sort of historical growth rates. They've brought back a significant amount of stock over the last 12 months as they've traded down. I think it's a, it might be one of the bellwether sort of stocks that we watch and tells us how the LLMs are impacting other businesses. It's an interesting time in the markets, fellas.
Starting point is 00:31:46 It definitely is. All right. So thank you so much. Toby, now it's time for you to bash my pick. My pick is Adobe. And if anyone is unfamiliar with Adobe, it's a software company. They're known for Photoshop in particular. But now, you know, they have a ton of different apps you typically use if you're a designer,
Starting point is 00:32:07 a creative person. They also have something called digital experience. That's more about analytics. But my pick is Adobe. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. market cap roughly $100 billion, and it has been growing double digits for the longest time. And it's not only trading at a 52-week low or near that, but near a seven-year low. And of course, I should have said that it traded at 224, not too long ago.
Starting point is 00:32:36 At the time of recording, it's 270, so it had a small bump. But the market, like all software or SaaS companies these days, is just unloved. Because at first glance, there is a lot to love. 96% of the $23 billion in revenue comes from subscription revenue. That is exactly what you want to see. Diversified base of more than 41 million paying users. And, I mean, if I had pitted this just a few years ago before the era of the LMs, We'll be all over it.
Starting point is 00:33:10 But of course, you could also see that in evaluation because everyone was at some point in time trying to make their software business into software as a service with a subscription. And Adobe has really been one of the companies that men do that successfully. Back in the day, you would not use it in the cloud. You would use it. You would get a CD and then you would install it. And then some of the younger listeners are probably saying, hey, dude, grandpa, what? What's a CD?
Starting point is 00:33:41 To which I'm going to say it's a more modern version of a flubby disk. And so, of course, that's my way of saying that I'm super old. But it's also my way of saying that Adobe IPO in 1986. And it's really been the industry standard more or less ever since. You know, many people don't think about a PDF whenever they use that today. That's a standard, you're owned by Adobe. And there is something to be said about whenever you, for example, whenever I'm, If I'm calling a car, like, or I would visit Toby, I would be Ubering, you know, that's a, that's a
Starting point is 00:34:14 verb. And if I'm going to edit a photo, I am not editing a photo. I am Photoshopping. And, you know, Adobe saw that a long time ago. Actually, they didn't come up with Photoshop themselves. They acquired the rights to market it from the Null brothers. But it's a long time ago. And today, you know, everyone associate very much Photoshop with Adobe.
Starting point is 00:34:38 loans 1990. Let's just continue to take a trip down memory lane. It was four years before Netscape, from your listeners who remember that company. All right, so let's talk a bit about the competitive advantage. The most important mode, I would say, is switching costs. And I was hitting at before, you can think of Adobe as having two segments.
Starting point is 00:35:01 They have digital media into 76% of their business, and that's where you have the creative cloud, you have the Documents Cloud where that resides, and then you have digital experiences. That's the enterprise software business that help companies manage marketing, customer data, e-commerce, digital content, and so on. And we all creature of a habit, and as uninspiring as it sounds, inertia is just very good whenever you're thinking about in terms of a business model. And you also have to consider that people follow incentives.
Starting point is 00:35:35 And of course, in this day and age with AI, it seems like it should be a tellwind. Shareholders, management, they want the employees of whatever kind of company to embrace AI. For example, to become more productive or to save on costs, guess what? Most employees do not have the same incentive. They think, and perhaps rightly so, that any efficiency gains doesn't really benefit their paycheck. And worst case, they can lose their own or the co-workers' jobs. And so management and shareholders are just way more excited about embracing AI to cut costs with very often mean salaries.
Starting point is 00:36:17 And I would also say that it sounds good on paper, right? But let's look at it from the other side, even if we are looking away from the financial incentives and job risk and so on and so forth, there is a professional pride. in knowing how to use Adobe. If you're a designer and you're taught in those tools, you used it for decades, it's really difficult to embrace a new technology where there is a level playing field for, I wouldn't say everyone, but more or less everyone. And certainly someone who's intro level who might be making a third of what you're making.
Starting point is 00:36:51 Like, you don't really have that incentive to start playing that game. And I'm going to talk a bit more about incentives here. But I think anyone who's been running a business would tell you that whenever you roll out a new initiative, everyone would consciously or subconsciously be thinking what's in for me. And one of the things I often think about whenever I would make an investment is how does this align with human nature? You know, in this day and age, you know, we see disruption from everywhere, but it's very difficult to disrupt human nature. And so one of the things that I wanted to highlight is like for 99% of people, it have an easier time spending other people's money than their own. It sounds so passive, aggressive whenever I'm saying this.
Starting point is 00:37:39 But like, I think a lot of the AI fears are probably overblown in the sense of how rapid things are going to change. And I'm not questioning at all that AI is going to change a bunch of different things. But I think we sometimes underestimate how much. of these changes that need to be almost brute force and how difficult it is to brute force something in an organization. And it is very difficult to get people to understand something whenever your livelihood is depending on not understanding it.
Starting point is 00:38:08 And of course, even that there's a limit to. If you don't understand the car and you swore by faster horses, you would eventually have to wake up to the reality. And so I'm not saying that if AI isn't 10 times better, and despite the switching cost, then we would eventually have, you know, to use something else than, say, Adobe's products. And of course, whenever you ask the CEO about that, he's saying, oh, no, no, no, no, AI is not going to disrupt us. It's going to be a tailwind. We're going to be so much better because of AI. So I think that's pretty weak signal. Any CEO that's worth his salt would probably say
Starting point is 00:38:48 that today. But I would also be the first to say that a company like the Investors Podcast Network, We are so dependent on Adobe. And we're 20 people in the team. 15 of them are using Adobe. Some of them are just using one app, but most are using the entire suite. And the overall cost is significantly less than 1% of our total cost. So as much as it sounds great, let's use something that's cheaper. And it's sort of like a different discussion if it's better.
Starting point is 00:39:20 But let's say that this is going to be a lot cheaper. You know, even me as one of the owners of the company, as much as I would like to save on cost, it's just not really a cost saver. And whenever you run a company, and of course it depends on the company, but it's not always the creative people that are paid the most. They are typically one team inside an electric organization. It's the same with TIP. Then you have the salaries to the people.
Starting point is 00:39:48 That's the biggest cost. And then the second biggest cost is typically the equipment. And then a very small part of the cost is the software. So you're looking at something that's very small. So whenever you're doing that, I would say that Adobe is an incredible cheap product for the value that it provides. And I think it's very important that you also, whenever you hear people talking about the cost of Adobe, you would have a lot of people who are saying it's ridiculously expensive.
Starting point is 00:40:16 You know, the freelancer who has a side hustle that makes $800 a month. Like, no, like for them to buy the Adobe Suite that's like $70 bucks a month, it's a significant cost. But for a multimillion dollar company, and I'm not necessarily talking about the Coca-Cola's of the world, but if your turnover is like $5 million and you're spending, I don't know, $3,000 on Adobe Suite, it's not, that's not where you want to skimp on your cost, especially not if your entire team are trained on using the software. And so I would say that the switching cost is a lot higher than probably what it seems.
Starting point is 00:40:57 And I also couldn't help myself but to do a bit of scuttlebot research and speak to our team members about it. And you could of course also say they would have all the incentives in the world to tell me that they would never go off Adobe. But I was speaking with our VP from our YouTube team and she completely paused whenever I asked. her. What kind of tool would you use if you didn't use Adobe? She had a really, really hard time coming up with using something that she could use. And of course, you can then use, you know, there are a lot of alternatives. I'm not saying that there aren't alternatives, but right now they just don't have the same functionality. So anyways, I've been rambling here for quite a bit. I wanted to talk a bit more about some of the risks. I wanted to talk about the evaluation,
Starting point is 00:41:37 but I want to throw it back over here first. Adobe's interesting because it's similar to booking in the sense that, again, it's AI that is the risk to it. Maybe it never gets easy to edit it. Maybe that's where Adobe really shunt. You can do all of the idea creation and really simple stuff in chat GPT or whatever LLN you use. But I think the valuation is very compelling. Stieg, like, it's again, there is a big discount in the stock. They're doing a lot of buybacks.
Starting point is 00:42:05 If it is sort of temporary or they can adapt or be beneficiaries, then you can getting a good price, you're getting a good handicap price to take it on here. I think Adobe's very interesting. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Spending my days digging through the financials of the world's best businesses and one thing becomes obvious fast. The companies that win are the ones that can actually see what's happening inside their own operation. And these days, they say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall two days behind. The competition is only moving faster, but fortunately, there's NetSuite Next. You've probably already know NetSuite, the AI-powered business management suite that securely
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Starting point is 00:45:57 All right, back to the show. Yeah, Toby, thank you so much for your feedback. Of course, I'm biased as I'm saying this. But I'll probably make the argument that to your point about Canada, which is the most obvious competitor, I think the lower end of the market is the one that's most ripe for disruption. And I was speaking with a team member about this. I was the first to say, well, disruption from AI. She said that it's really the creative control that's where Adobe shines.
Starting point is 00:46:31 And she was saying the same thing as you. It can generate things, but as a creative person, you need to tweak things all the time. And that's very difficult to do, at least right now, with AI. And so I asked her, and she was saying, oh, she was using AI within the Adobe Suite all the time. And it can do a part of the process. It can't do all of it. Or perhaps it can. They just don't want you to know.
Starting point is 00:46:56 So she was saying, one of the great things is that AI is very good at figuring out, like, how to clean up this background. You can press a button and then it works. Like, you're prompting it, but it works really well with that. But there are so many of the other components where it doesn't do that. So anyways, I found that to be quite compelling. You know, I think especially whenever you look at a stock chart and sort of like to your point, you see how much it's been selling off. And it just, it looks really appealing.
Starting point is 00:47:23 They're buying back a lot of shares. I also think they're issuing too many shares. But I always say that whenever I pay to stock. That is to some extent the new standard. I think that it is, it's very tricky to think about the valuation. You know, I can probably, I feel pretty confident that I can underwrite something like 350, 400. And so whenever I was looking into Adobe here and I was thinking, well, perhaps, you know,
Starting point is 00:47:51 the right time to buy this would be around 200. And again, trading at 224, just a blink of an eye ago and here the past few days, he just took a big bump. But anyways, I think one of the challenges that I now see is, well, there are quite a few, I should probably say. One of them is the top of the funnel. It goes to what you were saying before, Toby, about Canva. I know Canada has been there for quite some time, so take for what it is.
Starting point is 00:48:17 But a lot of people get into the Adobe ecosystem very early, whether you are a creative person or not, but especially if you're a creative person and then you continue on that path, you can get it very, very cheaply. And of course, you can say that a subscription for a student is, you know, it's all incremental value. It's part of the power of the SaaS business model. But it's also a way for you to get into the ecosystem. So whenever you do work in a corporation, whether you're paying for yourself or the company is, like, what do you want to use? Well, you're going to use Adobe. But I can see why there might be an issue with the top of the funnel where a lot of people are going to say, no, no, I'm not going to go into Adobe in the first place. They have their own
Starting point is 00:48:58 top of the funnel product, Adobe Express. But with the LMs, like you have, some people might never make it to the bottom of a funnel where they really make their money. And so I can't help but make the comparison to the Berkshire Hallaway annual shareholders meeting. And you might say, wow, that's a big of a jump here from Adobe. But, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about now is been what's going to happen with the value investing community without Buffett. I was speaking with a mutual friend of ours, Chris Brumson here the other day, and about it.
Starting point is 00:49:31 And like, the first thing he said probably because I would tickle it myself, like, extremely important, he was, hey, I'll continue to go. Of course I'm going to continue. I have all more friends are there. It's Omaha. You have to go. And that makes a lot of sense. And so, like, in a similar way, like, if you are a creative person, you work at a Hollywood
Starting point is 00:49:46 studio, it has to look really really good. Yes, you are on the enterprise, you know, license through Adobe. You're not going to change that. And you've done that the past 30 years. and you're going to do that the next 20 years. Like, of course you're going to do that. But what about the top of the funnel? Like, what about, you know, the 26-year-old NBA
Starting point is 00:50:04 who just doesn't know anyone, but he just wants to go to Omaha and check out the free events. And the reason what they really draw is that you just want to see Buffett. That's a big part of the value prop. And now Buffett is no longer there. They're just all these private clubs there where people know each other and they've been going for 30 years and why would he go? And I'm not saying it's the most perfect comparison, but whenever I speak to people who have been using Adobe for a number of years, it's the gold standard.
Starting point is 00:50:35 That's what they've been taught. That's what everyone used. And if you know your craft, you know the Adobe suite. And so the tools makes a lot of sense. And also, they're bundled, right? So you might be using this app, but then you need something else. You didn't know that you need it. But, oh, Adobe has that.
Starting point is 00:50:52 And of course, everything works together. just like Microsoft's office. But what if you don't go there in the first place? I guess that's my biggest concern. And you might say, well, you know, that doesn't show up in the numbers. Does it really matter? Well, it matters for the terminal value. Like what kind of multiple are you actually at?
Starting point is 00:51:10 And I think before the time of the ELMS, you could underwrite a much, much higher multiple. Like I was mentioning before with Adobe, 96% is a subscription revenue. and it's such a sticky product. And so why wouldn't you assign a really, really high multiple? But that's also assuming you still have top of the funnel. What if you don't have that anymore? So whenever I say, oh, it's probably worth 400 bucks, perhaps more, but perhaps not. So I have a bit of a hard time with the evaluation.
Starting point is 00:51:42 So anyways, I want to throw back over here to the group and open up for any thoughts. It's really, it's an unknowable problem. It's the same problem that we all really have. It's funny that the AI question has become so urgent all of a sudden that it really has impacted so many of these very historically very dominant businesses. As you say, Photoshop is the verb and it's been around forever. But the content generation, and this is not the editing, the content generation is getting so good on the LMs that it really is starting. you can see how it could impact these guys down the road. But I still think they're always going to have that, I mean, I don't know, always, I guess
Starting point is 00:52:28 there's a long, but that precision editing of those documents is in order to get that precision editing of the LLMs, you're probably going to need a suite of tools that look something like Adobe anyway. It's a very difficult question to answer. But again, I think you're getting a pretty good discount for such a for the cash flows that it does generate, and it does take longer than everybody thinks for these things to really impact.
Starting point is 00:52:56 We may be early adopters, and it may take a lot longer for the bulk of the industry to catch on until they've got, you know, it's not uncommon in deep value type scenarios to have a very long tail where the market thinks that the revenue growth of the earnings fall off sort of almost immediately. But in actuality, they're very sticky,
Starting point is 00:53:19 it takes years and years and that's that slow decline. It's still a valuable company in slow decline. And if it's in that cash cow decline stage of its life cycle, then they're doing the right things. They're buying back stock. It's a great pick, and it's one that I've been sort of watching for a long time, but it is a very interesting time to be investing in the markets. That's so true, Toby. And we talked here before about resulting and, you know, coming up with explanations for why things happened. And it's a lot more difficult to predict what is actually going to happen. And so whenever I look at a company like Adobe, there's just, I think to some extent
Starting point is 00:54:01 it also depends on the bit of the state of mind you're in. Like sometimes I'm thinking content is abundant. There's just so much content out there, so much slop. Adobe is needed in a world that's still shifting from physical to digital. And whenever that shift is happening, you need one of a. Adobe's product to make that happen. And also in the world of a Dunton content, you need the highest quality to separate yourself. It's not a question of making more content. We can all make more content, but it has to be really, really good. And so then you can sort of like talk yourself into
Starting point is 00:54:34 saying, you know, the canvas of the world are going to be disrupted. But the high end, really where the money is, they're not going to be disrupted anytime soon because it has to be just right. So it's kind of interesting if you look at the customer groups that Adobe has. And they're not breaking out the market for these customer group, but you can probably, you know, fill in the blanks. They have the 22,000 large enterprise customers. And then they have, you know, you can think about them as, you know, government bodies, Hollywood studios, universities, whatnot. And then they have 4 to 1 million paid creative cloud subscribers, such as, you know, individuals, freelancers, students, small businesses. And then they have 850 million monthly active free users.
Starting point is 00:55:18 And that also includes free acrobat reader users. So it's a very wide, my funnel, and they don't pay any money out of that. So you can see where they make the money. I wouldn't be surprised if we would be talking about this, you know, five, ten years from now and say, oh, you know, there were so much pushback from against AI because people want the human element. And of course, XYC happened. Or it might be the other way around it's like, oh, people just want, you know, want efficiency. And one of the biases that I experiences is that the experts, the creative people are the best people and the worst people to talk to about Adobe.
Starting point is 00:55:58 They're the best people because they have the most knowledge for all these reasons. That's why they're experts. But they're also saying people want that human connection. They don't want something that's created by AI. The people who think like that, Bon Latz might also be more artistic-minded, whereas some people might be saying, I don't really care if this has been created by AI as part of the process.
Starting point is 00:56:20 If I can get it 30% cheaper, then that's fine. Like imagine that you're standing there at the pump and you're like, I know AI doesn't generate gasoline so to take it for what it is. But if you're like, hey, I can get this for four bucks, I can get this for five bucks. You're like, I just need to drive. And so like depending on sort of like where you are
Starting point is 00:56:38 what the product is. I think that is true, like when it comes to, say, art, yes, it has to be created by a human, in the sport, yes, you need to see the athletes. But then there are a ton of other products where that Adobe is probably also touching where you're like, I don't know if people care if AI has been a big part of the process of creating this digital product or not. So anyways, I'll make sure to link to a model of the evaluation here of Adobe. I'm going to do the same thing with booking.com and in meta, and then people can play around with their own assumptions. But Toby, I know that you also wanted to chat a bit about Bellarm Branks from last time that you pitched. Yeah, so Bellring Brands has collapsed. The stock price has collapsed
Starting point is 00:57:26 since I pitched it. I think, I can't remember exactly. I think it was at about $27, and it's currently trading a little bit north of $8, which is a very significant breakdown in the stock price, so I thought I should address it. It's basically continued in this drawdown that began 12 months ago, and it's had this very significant drawdown from the peak, and I think that it is undervalued. It's worth noting that Bellring Brands does carry a reasonable chunk of debt, which, when they were a much bigger market capitalization, it's funny because it really doesn't impact the size of the business hasn't changed. The business has grown slightly over the last 12 months. It's grown less than the market had hoped, which is one of the reasons why the stock
Starting point is 00:58:10 is down so much. But they make these protein, ready to drink protein drinks. They are attractive to people who are on the go, but the criticism of them has been that they have some seed oils in them. They have some soy and folks don't like that if they, so that that has created a problem for them. The market still seems to be consuming and they have grown a little bit, but their growth has slowed materially, which is one of the reasons that the stocks down. You guys know I'm a deep value guy, so I like big discounts. And I don't mind when a business is struggling a little bit if you can get enough of a discount in the price to sort of handicap that slow down. So just to give you some numbers, it still grew year over year, something like 6% year of year, but it has historically
Starting point is 00:58:57 growing quite a lot faster than that. So that's the markets now where previously it might have been sort of something that had a reasonable chance of growing quite materially. It was being valued on that basis. The question is now, so that it can keep ahead of its inputs on a forward earnings basis, it's a little bit over five times. What has been a pretty good business, although the business does seem to be deteriorating a little bit on the basis of the last print. I think the great risk for it is that it is close to being commoditized product in a very competitive category and there's more competition coming in all the time. You have to weigh that against the fact that there is this general move towards health
Starting point is 00:59:39 consciousness as part of that people are consuming more protein. I thought that perhaps it was the GLP ones. So the AI of the health industry is the GLP one that's making everybody leaner. I still think as part of that process, people need to eat more protein. The GOP one sort of stopped you from eating, but once you reach your goal way to maintain a healthy body composition, you still need to consume protein. So they do make protein. The question is, for folks who are particularly health conscious who don't like the seed oils, then these sort of seem to contain them. And that seems to be a turn off for many people.
Starting point is 01:00:19 They do continue to make aggressive buybacks. So that says to me that they think that they're undervalue. And I tend to think they're under value too. I've run a valuation using various different scenarios and it gets you anywhere from $20 at the low end to $70 at the high end. And I realize that that's a very wide margin, but I think there is some reasonable uncertainty in that
Starting point is 01:00:39 just for context with the stock at $8, it's like half of the low end. And so I still think it's pretty good value here. And I'm going to continue to hold it. The bare thesis is real. but the discount here is so material that I think it's worth holding to see what the next few quarterly reports look like. Very, very appealing.
Starting point is 01:01:02 I have to say, like, with all the red flags and yes, there's always some hair on it, that's why that's the value. Even the last time I was like, wow, that looks interesting. And now, I don't know, I probably got angered to the old price, but it's a very interesting pieces. So please continue to provide us with updates, Toby. there has been this sort of general swoon and small and mid-cap stocks. Everything that's impacted by AI or GLP1 is really can't find a friend in this market.
Starting point is 01:01:33 And so I do think that I've seen that generally across a lot of the names that I track, that the businesses, if anything, the businesses are inflicting up and starting to do a lot better. But it's coincided with this recent rally with the AI stocks. And I think the evaluations are now looking. they're really at a decision point where either the market completely runs away from smaller micro or smaller micro catches up soon because I think the Ford returns to me look very compelling they look about as good as they have looked since I've been running the funds. And I think that when a lot of the market moves towards one narrative, which is the AI narrative
Starting point is 01:02:12 and to some lesser extent specifically for this stock, the GLP1 narrative, that it does seem to pull money away from the part of the market that hasn't done anything and it creates this little air pocket which seems to have happened for these stocks. But as I say, that that does seem to me to have created pretty, for prospects for reasonable forward returns, pretty good forward returns at the same time as these stocks seem to be inflecting up because they have all suffered from an extended period of a pretty weak consumer. This consumer has really been struggling from what I can and with this Iran conflict and higher energy prices, high gas prices, that seems to be really putting the bite on people. I think that the time to put these positions on is at the point
Starting point is 01:02:57 of maximum pessimism. And we're certainly pessimistic. I hope that it's maximum pessimism. I love it. Famous last words. I love it, Toby. All right, Harry and Toby, thank you so much. It's always great to chat with you. Let me throw it over to you guys, What can people learn more about you? Hey, Toby and Stig, always a pleasure to join the mastermind. You can find me on X or Twitter. My handle is Harry Rama. I hang out there and I look forward to all your comments, feedback and conversations.
Starting point is 01:03:32 And I'm at Greenbacked on Twitter, G-R-E and B-A-C-K-D. I manage acquires funds, which has the ZIG, ETF, which is mid-and-large-cap deep value, and the deep EBTF, which is small and micro-dict value, the spreads between deep value and the market are extreme at the moment and largely driven, I think, by the LOM risks, but a lot of the stocks that are in those are going to be beneficiaries, like until the LLMs figure out how to mine and pull energy out of the ground that we're going to be, we're going to need real businesses. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time, Jans. privilege as always. Thanks, Stig. Thanks, Harry. Always great. Thank you. Thank you, Toby. Stig.
Starting point is 01:04:20 Good seeing you both. Thanks for listening to TIP. Follow the Investors podcast on your favorite podcast app and visit the Investorspodcast.com for show notes and educational resources. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not provide financial, investment, tax or legal advice. The content is impersonal and does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs. Investing involves risk, possible loss of principle and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Listeners should do their own research and consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Nothing on this show is a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security
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