Transcript
Ann Barry (0:00)
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John Curto (0:29)
Shares in Joby Aviation are taking off. We survey the air taxi makers flight path to FAA approval and a hotly anticipated customer launch. So is it farewell to coffee and a donut. We break down the battle for your morning buzz with earnings from Krispy Kreme and Celsius. And it's all becoming clear why the secure identity platform ticker. You saw a nearly 40% pop in how it's coming for the healthcare market next. For Thursday, February 26th, it's Brew Markets Daily and I'm Ann.
Ann Barry (0:57)
Foreign.
John Curto (1:05)
Details to come. But first, CEO of the Week is one of my favorite segments here on the show and never more so than when we have the CEO actually join us in studio for a chat. Well, back in November, we welcomed Karen Seidman Becker, CEO of Clear, to break down her growth plan for the secure identity services provider. And she said it would be by expanding its hallmark eye scanning entry points into more more airports and sports venues. You may have gone through Clear lines at stadiums and arenas and by rolling out its biometric access technology to a new end market, and that's consumer medical records. Well, to set the stage for the current moment, it's worth taking a brief look back at history. Seidman Becker bought the company out of bankruptcy in 2010. And while Not Clear's original founder, she certainly fundamentally refounded it. Let's hear her describe why. My grandparents were immigrants. My parents worked for the government. I'd been on Wall street for 15 years. It was extraordinary. I watched people build incredible businesses, products that became platforms. Apple, Amazon, Priceline, all of them. And so I don't know, I guess I don't have a fear of failure. And I ended up in bankruptcy court. Well, offices and walked out for six million dollars and a million dollars of legal fees with a company called Clear and the desire to build a secure identity platform. Well, roll forward 16 years and clear just reported blockbuster Q4 and full year earnings for 2025. Just a look at the numbers. Revenue for the year jumped nearly 17% to $901 million. With total booking growth accelerating in the fourth quarter to over 25% and adjusted EBITDA, that's a measure of profit, hit 262 million. That's a whopping 480 basis points of year over year margin expansion to 29%. And then free cash. FL year it reached over $340 million with an impressive 38 conversion of revenue. I'm getting technical here because these are the metrics we look at and the free cash flow is expected to grow at least another 28 for this year. So good is that cash generation that the company announced a 20 increase in its quarterly cash dividend plus an additional special cash dividend of $0.20 per share. And there's even more. The board also authorized 125 million dollar increase to its share repurch, doubling what was left of the planned buyback activity. So here's why this caught my eye. It's not just because it was a very good performance. With her Wall street background, CEO sideman Becker basically comes from a cash is queen mentality. We talked about it in our conversation and it's one that resonates with me. And when a company has been through the trauma of bankruptcy, trust me, liquidity is always top of mind afterwards. So Clear's focus on cash generation interestingly reflects very much its history and the specific training of its leadership, especially for a tech business. And they're not always so cash focused. And then from an operating perspective, this is exciting. There have been lots of updates that we've been looking out for. Our eyes have been peeled and Clear in this earnings report basically said it's been delivering on it. It expanded its e gates to 37 airports as of today and on track for network wide rollout in 2026. There's been a mobile app refresh aiming to help users plan when to walk to boarding and an extended partnership with American Express and its affluent cardholders. It's a very desirable demographic. Overall. Clear has grown to 38 million members, up over 31% year over year. And it's generating exactly the kind of revenue that the markets like. That's recurring subscription revenue with high gross margins. Clear has also been busy with its move into healthcare that had been previewed with us in November. And at the end of 2025 the company announced a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That's the CMS and it's the single largest payer for healthcare services in the United States. Now the deal is for Medicare.gov to integrate the Clear1 Secure Identity Platform into the Medicare portal's account creation and account recovery processes and for access to healthcare information. And in yesterday's earnings call, I went through the transcript. Seiden and Becker pointed to the partnership's focus on fraud prevention, something, by the way, that the White House has emphasized is a priority when it comes to federal spending. And you may remember that President Trump announced in his recent State of the Union address his, quote, war on fraud, to be led by VP JD Vance. We're back to the private sector. And this week Clear announced a new partnership with Mount Sinai, which is a massive healthcare provider system here in New York. And the deal is to provide employees and patients with digital channels such as check in kiosks and handhold tablets to access systems both for patient check in and also for ongoing care and medical record access. So CEO Karen Simon Becker has been busy since we spoke to her in November. The share Price soared nearly 40% yesterday, up overall 34% year to date, up more than 110% over the past year. We're going to keep on watching. Coming up, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Us with more syllables, we look at Joby Aviation's position in the emerging air taxi space, plus ebay's newest bid on fashion. But first, a word from our sponsor, Charles Schwab. Trading at Schwab is powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. 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