Anthropic's Crazy Revenue Growth; Berkshire (And Others) Insider Buying; A New Fast Growing Small Cap Stock; Wix's Aggressive Moves

Summary

Podcast Summary: Chit Chat Stocks

Episode: Anthropic's Crazy Revenue Growth; Berkshire (And Others) Insider Buying; A New Fast Growing Small Cap Stock; Wix's Aggressive Moves
Hosts: Ryan Henderson & Brett Schaefer
Release Date: March 6, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Ryan and Brett dive into some of the most exciting developments in tech, finance, and the investing world of early 2026. The spotlight is on Anthropic’s jaw-dropping revenue explosion, this cycle’s most notable insider buys (including Berkshire Hathaway, Shift4, Mercado Libre, and The Trade Desk), a detailed intro to small-cap grower Genius Sports, and a deep-dive into Wix’s bold buyback moves and fresh AI strategies. The conversation is candid, analytical, sometimes skeptical, and full of actionable insights for retail investors.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Anthropic's Explosive Revenue Growth

• [01:19–06:42]
• Headline: Anthropic’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) has rocketed from $10B at end of 2025 to $19B by March 2026, effectively doubling in two months.
  • Brett (02:09): “...they just started generating revenue like three years ago, something like that.”
  • Ryan (01:53): “I don't know if I've ever seen a company grow this fast. I mean that eclipses OpenAI, right?”
• Context: OpenAI reportedly secured new funding as well, keeping the AI funding “music” alive as both firms aim for anticipated IPOs later in 2026.
  • Brett (02:32): “If this keeps up, I mean, they could be one of the biggest businesses in the world by the end this year. I want to know when the growth is finally going to stop...”
• Skepticism: Both wonder about the sustainability/quality of the revenue and underlying unit economics.
  • Brett (04:36): “If you opened a Chipotle and sold burritos for $1, you get a lot of demand... but are they, you know, what are the unit economics looking like today?”
• Enterprise Takeover: Claude (Anthropic’s AI) is seeing strong enterprise traction.
  • Ryan (05:53): “I know it feels like every enterprise is using Claude. Maybe I'm overstating that...”

2. Insider Buying: Signal or Noise?

• [07:17–23:35]

• Current Window: Insider trading windows are open, and several notable buys have occurred.

• Examples Discussed:

  • SoFi (Anthony Noto, CEO): $1M buy. Brett: “Noise, noise.” (07:54)
  • Shift4 (Jared Isaacman, Founder): $14M buy. Brett: “Could be interesting, could be a good signal.” (08:43)
  • Mercado Libre (Marcelo Melamud, CAO): $100K buy. Ryan: “Encouraging role... could be larger % of their wealth.”
  • Berkshire (Greg Abel, CEO): $14.8M buy, as previously committed.
  • KKR (Co-CEOs & Director): $4.4M and $2M simultaneous buys—Ryan is skeptical of the coordination. (14:15)
  • Trade Desk (Jeff Green, CEO): $148M buy—deemed a strong statement, but possible founder “blindness.” (15:59)

• Quote—On Signal vs. Noise:

  • Brett (09:52): “I think insider buying is interesting because it can be somewhat of a signal, depending on the situation…”

• Critical Take on Buybacks vs. Insider Buys:

  • Brett (21:46): “When insider buys, it's not increasing intrinsic value... Is the company lining up the buyback? That is a much bigger signal for me, 100%.”

3. Earnings & Company Spotlights

• [23:35–31:26]

a) Real Brokerage (REAX)

 - **Cloud-based residential real estate brokerage growing agent count, revenue (up 44%), and gross profit (up 30%).**
 - **Model:** Cloud platform, white-label, better revshare than traditional brokerages.
 - **Challenges:** Gross profit lags revenue growth as agents hit revshare caps.
 - **Unit economics:** “As long as they can keep growing sales, gross profit and agents... I really see nothing to dislike on the quarter.” — Brett (24:51)

b) Small Cap of the Week – Genius Sports (GENI)

 - **[32:01–40:52]**
 - **Business:** Sports data platform, exclusive (or near-exclusive) data collection deals with NFL, EPL, NCAA, etc.
 - **How it works:** Aggregates rich sports data (player tracking/analytics) via cameras, GPS, manual stat gathering. Sells data feeds to sportsbooks, media, and leagues.
 - **Metrics:** 35% CAGR since 2020, $670M LTM revenue, $65M FCF, $1.25B EV.
 - **Risks:** Renewal of key sports league agreements, low gross margin (~23%), concentrated sports betting exposure.
 - **Quote (39:47):** “My suspicion is that... sports betting market's going to be much larger... and you’re going to need this data more and more.” — Ryan

4. Wix: Buyback Bonanza & AI Ambitions

• [40:52–54:18]
• ARR Growth: 14%; strong performance by Base44 acquisition—$100M in ARR in <1 year.
• AI Moves: Pioneers in “vibe coding” (no-code/AI-assisted web and app building). Partnerships with OpenAI (for Wix), Anthropic (for Base44).
• Buyback Program: $2B authorized repurchase (almost 40% of market cap), aiming to complete within 2026.
• Controversy: Private discounted placement ($250M + warrants) to Durable Capital Partners; management’s alignment and “sketchiness” called out.
  • Brett (45:22): “Yeah, but that's dumb. I'm serious. I think they're, they must be friends... It is unfair... It's like a 5% discount. So is it the end of the world? No, but like philosophically it feels a bit yucky.”
• Premium Subscription Declines: Shedding low quality customers—hosts argue that ARPU/cohort revenue is the more important metric.
• AI Integration: Deepening with ChatGPT and Gemini. “If you go on ChatGPT and say, yeah, I want to build a website. They're going to say WIX is your first option. That's quite nice.” — Brett (50:23)
• Ownership: Management heavily incentivized (lots of shares/stock options).
  • “My only gripe is that it feels like management just kind of cares too much about the stock price.” — Ryan (52:25)

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Additional Q&A and Notable Insights

Michael Burry Buys Adobe? [54:18–57:09]

• Skepticism: Both hosts are critical of Burry’s thesis (“buy Midjourney”), see little impact from his buying.
• Ryan: “I think being the agnostic player [in AI] makes the most sense actually.”

Have Software Stocks Bottomed? [57:09–59:38]

• Perspective: It’s unclear, both hope for more buying opportunities. The “wall of worry” persists—AI threats remain an overhang.

E-Commerce: Coupang, Mercado Libre, Sea Limited [61:07–62:09]

• Ranking: Both pick Coupang 1, Mercado Libre 2, Sea Limited 3.
• Rationale: Familiarity with Coupang, Mercado Libre’s “temporary blip,” more uncertainty around Sea’s region.

Bubble Watch: Chamath’s SPACs and Ragebait [63:37–65:58]

• Quote of the Day: Chamath, when confronted about failed SPACs: “Then you generated capital losses. Did you use those yet?”
• Hosts’ Take: “He knows that's a dumb thing to say, but he knows it'll get engagement.” — Ryan (65:08)

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Notable Quotes

• On Anthropic’s Growth:
  “I don't know if I've ever seen a company grow this fast. I mean that eclipses OpenAI, right?” — Ryan (01:53)

• On Insider Buys vs. Buybacks:
  “When insider buys, it's not increasing intrinsic value... What's more important to me is if...the company lining up the buyback. That is a much bigger signal for me, 100%.” — Brett (21:46)

• On WIX Management Private Placement:
  “Philosophically it feels a bit yucky...I think they're, they must be friends.” — Brett (45:22)

• On Vibe Coding in AI:
  “People know the stereotype of the real estate agent. They want to be almost that very salesy, you know, like almost an influencer... And you don't want to be Coldwell Banker. You want to own your own brand as the white label here.” — Brett (30:54)

• On Misleading “Mission-led” Founders:
  “It's hard to draw the line between like every founder is like a mission led founder or they at least advertise themselves as that. But...it's always hard to tell. Like everyone says they're a mission led founder. How do you know whether it's true or not?” — Ryan (20:48)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Anthropic Revenue Breakout: 01:19–06:42
• Insider Buying Rundown: 07:17–23:35
• Real Brokerage Earnings Deep-Dive: 23:35–31:26
• Small Cap of the Week (Genius Sports): 32:01–40:52
• WIX Earnings + Buyback & AI Moves: 40:52–54:18
• Listener Q&A (Burry, Software, E-Commerce, Bubble Watch): 54:18–65:58

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is fast-paced, skeptical yet optimistic, and full of real-time analysis. Ryan and Brett don’t shy away from calling out questionable management behavior (especially at WIX), discussing the nuances of drawdowns/buybacks versus insider buying, or poking fun at industry personalities (Chamath, Burry). Investors eager for actionable ideas will find honest debate, granular company breakdowns, and current stock market context—plus a few moments of levity along the way.

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Transcript

[Ryan Henderson]

This episode is presented by Interactive brokers. Will the U.S. consumer Confidence Index be above 101 in March 2026? Turn your view into a trade with IBKR forecast trader and earn a dollar per contract. If you're [e-mail] forecast, last trading day is March 22nd. More on this later in the episode. Welcome to Chit Chat Stocks, the podcast that helps you discover your next great investment. I'm one of your hosts, Ryan Henderson, and I am joined as always by the one and only Brett Schaefer. This week we've got our 201st investing power hour. We do these live every Thursday at 5pm Eastern Time on YouTube. So if you ever want to ask any questions, head on over to YouTube, look up chit Chat Stocks and you can ask us live. You can also ask us in our substack chat throughout the week, whatever you want to do. But on these shows we talk all things financial markets, news, anything relevant, earnings from the week. We'll have our bubble talk or our bubble watch. We have our small cap of the week. People have asked me to bring that back. We've got a good company or an exciting company, I should say for this week. We also have WIX earnings and some drama around a buyback potentially, as well as some significant insider buying, which I'll get into in a bit. But Brett, where do we want to kick things off?

[Brett Schaefer]

Why don't we talk about Anthropic's revenue? Ryan, did you see this chart?

[Ryan Henderson]

Well, when you put it in our show notes. Yes.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah. Well, you didn't see it before that. It was quite astounding. And I mean you can read up the numbers here. I'm putting up the thumbnail on YouTube but they are adding, I mean they 10x the revenue to $10 billion. Over $10 billion in ARR. And they're at the same pace now.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I'm pulling it up. For anyone watching, this is outrageous. I. I don't know if I've ever seen a company grow this fast. I mean that, that eclipses OpenAI, right?

[Brett Schaefer]

Not sure. But did you also see that OpenAI got its funding? It's going to last for another. Well, we'll see how long this funding lasts. But I think they got their a hundred billion dollars. It's been reported for a long time. They finally got it together. Anthropic got its together and I guess that means the music is still playing, the funding can go, we can keep investing and I think that will fully bridge the gap to the IPOs, not just for those two, but as well as SpaceX as they are a little bit different. Obviously not full, you know, just an AI lab. But I think that will bridge the gap for these massive IPOs that are supposed to be coming later this year.

[Ryan Henderson]

The show goes on, Brett. The show goes on.

[Brett Schaefer]

I mean, Ryan, you're. I should mention your, your AC is a little loud. I know this is a live show. I don't know if it's possible to turn that off. I can maybe go into a topic first while you do that or once we get a break, but I'm hearing that on my end. But what were you about to say?

[Ryan Henderson]

I mean, these businesses are astounding and I'll see if I can fix the audio in a bit. I don't know if I've ever seen a business go from what looks like. Am I reading this right? Basically $3 billion to 19 billion over a year in revenue.

[Brett Schaefer]

Pretty much. Pretty much. And the. I think what's most impressive is given the momentum they've been seeing to start 2026 anthropic, specifically gaining market share on OpenAI in both consumer and enterprise is they went from what, let's get the exact dates, they were at $14 billion. They're at 10. Let's just do end of 2025, $10 billion end of 2025. As of March 2026, their revenue grew arrangement which, you know, we'll see if that recurs in succeeding years because a lot of the, you know, it's a lot of experimental revenue for a lot of these companies at the moment. But their pace of revenue, their ARR is at $19 billion in two months, so pretty much doubled in two months. And if this keeps up, I mean, they could be one of the biggest businesses in the world by the end this year. And I want to know when the growth is finally going to stop because it seems like anthropic. Well, not necessarily the tortoise in the race Anthropic or excuse me, OpenAI was definitely the hair. And when you see anthropic come, come back here and take. I don't think they have the majority market share now, but their revenue growth has just been so impressive. I want to see what the income statement looks like once we hit the S1 because as I've said before, if you opened a Chipotle and you sold dollar and he sold burritos for $1, you get a lot of demand. So yeah, they have impressive technology, but are they, you know, what are the unit economics looking like today? And I know they can spin things on what the economics look like but let's see the full numbers first.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. The only thing I'd caution here is that these businesses are not intended a VC backed business that is growing at the rate they have. The venture capital firms typically encourage them to spend as much as they can because they're generating good returns on their investment. So I would be shocked if they dropped an S1 and you saw like 50% operating margins.

[Brett Schaefer]

Well, they're not going to have that but maybe let's look at what the gross margins are.

[Ryan Henderson]

True.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Ryan Henderson]

I am curious a business that's very compute intensive, what how much that really hurts them on the revenue side. I know it feels like every enterprise is using Claude. Maybe I'm overstating that but I would be curious around some stats on like what percentage of Fortune 500 businesses have and you know, Claude seats.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it's gotta be a lot given that revenue. But I thought that was a fun way to kick me. I was absolutely astounded to see that revenue chart. And the fact is they just started g generating revenue like three years ago, something like that.

[Ryan Henderson]

I just recently started using like AI agent for sheets like or Excel. I use Google sheets. These things are, I mean they're helpful.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, they are definitely helpful. Oh yeah. 100%. 100%. All right, what else do we want to talk about this week? We have some earnings from companies we follow Wix Real Brokerage, Nelnet 3 that I follow closely. We have questions around Coupang, Mercado Libre, Sea Ltd. The Amazon clones. We have questions on from the substack chat Geopolitical risks thoughts on Burry buying Adobe nubank software stocks bottoming. I don't want to jinx it but maybe it has anything interest you Ryan? As the second topic here let's do

[Ryan Henderson]

insider buying because there was a series of. I think it's like the window is open basically for them to buy I think. I'm not sure what the windows are but you know there's certain timing where they can't be purchasing shares in the open market. But there were some notable insider buys this week that are probably worth calling out. So I'm going to rip through some of these. Stop me if you want Brett but let's see which of these is signal and which of these is just noise. So Anthony Noto SoFi CEO bought $1 million worth of SoFi shares.

[Brett Schaefer]

Noise, Noise. Okay.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. I mean it's not some of these. Maybe I should have gone back and Got more context around, like, what's his, what's their transaction history prior? Because sometimes it feels like, like, oh, it's only $1 million. But if they've made, you know, recurring purchases over the years in small gulps, that's maybe more signal than noise. The second one here, Jared Isaacman, founder and former CEO of Shift4. He's the director of NASA now, so I don't think he's allowed to be the CEO of Shift4 anymore. He bought $14 million worth of Shift4 stock. Not a small amount, I don't think. I don't know.

[Brett Schaefer]

His shares have absolutely puked too. Yeah, I'm not sure why I don't follow them closely enough. But people say it's cheap. Could be interesting, could be a good signal.

[Ryan Henderson]

Here's an interesting one. Marcelo Melamud. I might be saying that wrong. The chief accounting officer for Mercado Libre bought $100,000 worth of stock. Now, I kind of don't know what to think here because $100,000 is like whatever. Obviously this isn't, it's not massive size relative to Mercado Libre's market cap. But, but the chief accounting officer is encouraging. It's an encouraging role as opposed to, you know, maybe a cto, someone product related. And also, you know, it could be a larger percentage of their wealth, you know, compared to like a CEO, for example. Any thoughts on that one?

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, Mercado Libre looks interesting here.

[Ryan Henderson]

I know it's like any, any stocks I'm interested in.

[Brett Schaefer]

I'm.

[Ryan Henderson]

When the insider. I see an insider buy, I'm like, yeah, they're, they got the right idea.

[Brett Schaefer]

I think insider buying is interesting because it can be somewhat of a single, depending on the situation. For example, you're about to say the Greg Abel one here, that's not really too meaningful. The Isaacman one I think can be meaningful. But if you look at someone like Jeff Green, that came out today at the trade desk, founder and CEO who bought a hundred million dollars, that is a signal. But if you look at the business and you like, oh, well, I think the business is structurally challenged. But the insiders are buying shares. Like, that doesn't mean you should necessarily buy if the thesis on the business has totally changed.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. Let me rip through a few more of these and then we can talk more at length about insider buying in general. You mentioned it. Greg Abel, the now current Berkshire, I believe his title, CEO, but he bought $14.8 million worth of stock. He said he would do this. He said, basically, I'm Pretty sure, like all of his cash pay, he said he would just buy Berkshire stock in the open market with.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yes.

[Ryan Henderson]

So not a whole lot to see there other than phenomenal alignment, I guess. But I will say Berkshire is getting kind of interesting.

[Brett Schaefer]

How so?

[Ryan Henderson]

I remember someone breaking down the valuation in terms of cash on the balance sheet, equity investment mark to market. If you strip those out, you're buying the operating businesses. I can't remember exactly what he said, but a brief, pretty attractive earnings multiple on those operating businesses, the stock is down, what is it, 10%? Maybe I'm overstating it here, but I remember seeing, basically stripping out cash and equity investments. You've got a decent operating earnings multiple here. And I do think all these predictions about distributing the cash in some way or another, I think is going to come to fruition. I could see a world where they just dividended out or at least a good chunk of it, which would be, I think, nice for shareholders.

[Brett Schaefer]

Well, they started repurchasing stock again, so maybe that's the way they're going to do it. Who knows though? And they're going to pile up even more cash on the balance sheet every year. Unless there's some insurance anomaly that happens every once in a while. I just have no interest in Berkshire. It's been boring for a long time. It's so funny, if you want to

[Ryan Henderson]

go to the meeting, you got to

[Brett Schaefer]

buy a ticket, you got to buy a share.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. Actually, I don't remember if you actually have to.

[Brett Schaefer]

No. Only you have like three guest passes, I think, per person, if you remember this.

[Ryan Henderson]

That's right, yeah.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Ryan Henderson]

All right, well maybe we can talk Berkshire potentially another time at the meeting.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah. It's just. Yeah, they're buying back, so maybe they think it's cheap. But sure, it's going to do fine from here. Is it going to be a miracle results? No, that's just not how it's built.

[Ryan Henderson]

No. And I should say if, if there were, if markets hadn't puked, or when I say markets were almost at all time highs, if my portfolio hadn't puked over the last month or so, I'd probably be more encouraged to deploy some into Berkshire. But if it is cheap, it seems to be coinciding with a lot of other stocks that I also think are cheap at the same time.

[Brett Schaefer]

So.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, it's a little mature to be. It's hard to get that excited about, honestly.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah. Like if there, if there's much better options on your watch list or in your portfolio. Yeah. For Example Nelnet smaller Berkshire growing quicker, longer, longer opportunity to grow. I do not understand why you would buy Berkshire over that.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Okay, last three here. James Shelton, director of Duolingo, bought $500,000 worth of stock. Now this one was kind of interesting. KKR, both co CEOs, honestly I didn't know they had co CEOs, bought about $4.4 million worth of stock same time. And a director, Mary Dillon, who I recognize the name, can't remember why she bought $2 million worth of stock. My opinion is when you have to sync, when you have to sync it up and have both co CEOs buy at the same time, a it feels a little like planned, like, okay, we're going to show, here's a show of strength that both our CEOs are buying and they're buying the exact same amount. And also like you couldn't, I don't know, you couldn't go out and do it on your own. You had to do the same amount. It just feels all a little more signal than noise. But side note, KKR and a lot of these private equity businesses in general or big asset managers are in major drawdowns. KKR is down 43%.

[Brett Schaefer]

There's a lot of people that say the private credit blowup could happen. I have no idea if the blow up or if there's terrible loans or what have you within these markets is going to happen or if it happens, how severe it will be. But it's just not something I want to play in where there's a chance. A lot of these companies, a lot of these funds just do extremely poorly. Is the juice worth the squeeze? I'm not sure.

[Ryan Henderson]

Okay, last one here, you already mentioned it. Jeff Green, the Trade Desk CEO, bought $148 million worth of shares, which is significant. It's significant for him, it's significant for the company. So just to double check prices here, the Trade desk had a market cap prior to this of I think just over $10 billion. Yeah, just over $10 billion. So basically took out, bought 1% of the company in one go of it. On the one hand, I think this is quite a sign of confidence. But on the flip side, there's a part of me that thinks Sometimes founders and CEOs are almost too close to the business to maybe recognize if there is something structurally wrong. Obviously they have more information than we do, but like if they are getting disrupted, it's sometimes hard as a founder of the business to admit it will

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[Brett Schaefer]

Sure. I mean you've never met an executive team that's not bullish on their own company. If they weren't, why would they be out the company? It's an extreme rarity with trade Desk specifically. Yeah, I think they're structurally challenged in the ad market. I think it's a very tough space to play and I think Amazon's taking a lot of share from them. Sure. Does Jeff Green have skin in the game? But I honestly think skin in the game is overrated. I think someone on a mission is much more important. For example interactive brokers. I mean pedafi Pedro Fee is getting older, but the team that's there is still on the mission that he started. Airbnb on a mission. Adien on a mission. Mercado Libre on a mission. I can go down and down remitly even though Oppenheimer stepping back on a mission. It doesn't matter exactly what they own of the company, but they're in it. That's a cringy term. But they want to win.

[Ryan Henderson]

You didn't want to say in it to win it?

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, I did not want to say that. That's what popped into my mind. But I think listeners understand. It doesn't matter that they're buying the dip with you. Clearly they're bullish. They're running the company. They would have to be optimistic. You're never going to not find an optimistic CEO running a company. But it's much more important in my view. If someone's focused on like oh, we're going to win this market and do well by shareholders, like you can just see that and it like for example, it wouldn't matter to me how much of IBKR Peter Fee owned like it's 10, 20, 50%. I think it's even higher than 50%, honestly. But it's his rhetoric, his actions, the culture he set up that's much more important to me. Costco, another example. That's how the culture gets spread from the founder down to the new executives that join the company. How much insider buying are they doing? I don't know. But I trust that business much more than I hope that trade does. Yeah, it's premium valuation. It has been for a long time. What are your thoughts on that idea?

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I agree. Although I'm not averse to the founder that is motivated by money if they are in it for the long run. If you get a set like if they know that the long run motivation by money is their shares being worth more.

[Brett Schaefer]

Sure.

[Ryan Henderson]

And sometimes it's kind of hard to draw the line between like everyone, every founder is like a mission led founder or they at least advertise themselves as that. But there really are and you can really see it with companies that drive down price, like customer price. It's rare that you'd ever do that if you weren't focused on the long run, especially if you're already gaining market share. So marketplaces are kind of a good example where it's sort of easy to do that. I mean you saw that with Bezos, like wanted to drive selection and price. More selection, faster volume, faster shipping times, lower price. That, I mean that was, that to me was sort of a mission led founder. Costco is probably another good example of that. But I think it's always hard, it's hard to tell. Like everyone says they're a mission led founder. How do you know whether it's true or not?

[Brett Schaefer]

Actions, execution, at the end of the day, are they good? Is the business high quality? And I think what's more important for me, because when insider buys, it's not increasing intrinsic value at all. What's more important to me is if when you're thinking about catching a falling knife and the stock might go down 30% more from there, is the company lining up the buyback. That is a much bigger signal for me, 100%.

[Ryan Henderson]

And actually it's funny how much people champion insider buys when you should be championing buybacks because like you said, it doesn't improve the intrinsic value. And if anything it's. You could make the case, like Mark Leonard, that you're actually taking advantage of misinformed shareholders. Like Mark Leonard has famously said, like we're not going to buy back stock because we're. Well in this case I'm going against my example, but basically we're not going to just be driven by the price of our stock. We don't really care.

[Brett Schaefer]

I just disagree. He's an extremely smart man. I just disagree with him. People need to take accountability for their own lives. I don't really understand that philosophy whatsoever.

[Ryan Henderson]

There is a part of me that when someone makes an insider buy, it feels like they're more focused on their own portfolio and own personal wealth than purely driving long term shareholder value. Obviously it's their own money versus the company's excess capital. But when someone says put your money where your mouth is, I'd rather them do that through a buyback than a personal financial decision.

[Brett Schaefer]

Right. Cause that can help my stake or whoever's stake. All right, what of the earnings? Do you want to talk about the real brokerage? Many, many people are asking about the real brokerage company I own. Ryan, I do not believe owns it, but it's one that I did a still free research report. I believe it's going to be on Emerging Moats, the website if you want to read that. We also did a podcast on them. It is a cloud based brokerage for the residential real estate market. They are gaining a lot of share. They're trying to get convince agents to go over to their platform. They just reported this week revenue is up 44%. Gross profit was up 30% year over year. Now gross profit is growing slower than revenue because more agents are hitting their revenue ceiling on the revenue share part. So once they hit that ceiling of how much they need to give back to the real brokerage every year, then they're gonna earn more revenue for the real brokerage but they're not gonna give much at all except for like payment processing fees. I think they're changing that model slightly for their power users because they don't want to just say hey look, you hit 12, $15,000 in commissions to us. Well then after that it's just all free. I think that they would understand that. But if we go back to the earnings, they had a slight net loss on a GAAP basis, but a lot of free cash flow because they do share based revenue sharing. People understand that with their agent partners think about them as like contractors for them. These are real estate agents or real estate agent teams that are using the real brokerages technology and then at the same time they are buying back stock to offset this sbc. I think they just consistently return cash to shareholders through buybacks. Especially if they're using stock to incentivize These agents, it's not the end of the world. I would just not just be consistent with it, which I think they are. There's been slow progress on their new initiatives expanding into things like mortgaging, like the loan officers, essentially title insurance and the Real Wallet. Real Wallet seems to be doing all right, but they're still investing behind them. It's pretty early and they're still optimistic on getting more and more agents to try this. When I look at them, they keep adding more agents. They toss up press releases all the time about new agent teams joining their platform. And as long as they can keep growing sales, gross profit I guess too and agents and then show decent unit economics, I really see nothing to dislike on the quarter. And the question remains is they. Is this a catalyst stock for when the housing market, if the housing market finally unlocks in the United States. Do you remember 2022 when the beel said ah, 2023 the housing market all along. Date the rate, date the rate, marry the home. Date the rate. It's 2026 and mortgage rates are not back to 3%. Yeah.

[Ryan Henderson]

Date the rate, marry the home. Honestly, it's a good sales slogan. Remind me a bit of how the real brokerage model works. So these agents are basically independent businesses or contractors and they use real brokerage's

[Brett Schaefer]

like platform brokerage, cloud cloud brokerage. Yeah. So same as a Coldwell banker, Windermere ReMax. I think some of the larger ones out there, 21st century the compass is another cloud based brokerage that is acquiring a lot of these companies which is throwing a curveball into the industry. But I think the real brokerage will do fine. Despite that those are traditional ones where it's a similar model where you do revenue sharing with the brokerage that processes the transaction similar to you know a stock broker, how that would be. But with the real brokerage it's all cloud based. They are a white label solution for these real estate teams. They do all a lot of the backend work for them. They want to increase the backend work they do over time including helping with my financing, working capital, you know, title insurance, stuff like that. They just want to make the home buying process extremely easy and they're convincing people to join them because they seem to have a better technology solution. You don't want to get the, you know, I go into more depth in the research report but the Coldwell bankers of the world will give a good picture like oh, you need to join us, we're a name brand but you have the overhead costs similar to a legacy bank versus an online only solution. You have them tied to this brand where you can't make your own brand in real estate with yourself or your team. You have to be under Coldwell Banker or Windermere, what have you, and you almost get stuck to them. And then real brokerage gives better revenue share because they have much lower overhead cost and they've been aggressing in marketing and revenue sharing at the start. But if they can land these customers, which are the agents, get them to be successful with them and lower churn, which they are lowering Churn, I think they can be successful over time.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I could see how that would work and I could see agents being attracted to this model. I don't really understand the appeal of, hey, we're Coldwell Banker. We're a brand name. We're a household name. No pun.

[Brett Schaefer]

Buyers. Buyers like it, sellers like it trusted.

[Ryan Henderson]

I don't get that.

[Brett Schaefer]

You're probably, you're younger, not buying.

[Ryan Henderson]

I mean, I'm in the, I'm in that process now and it's like, I'm kind of like, I feel like a lot of the discovery process now for home buying is done from the buyer. Like maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not thinking about it correctly, but I think a lot of people do Zillow surfing and they just find whatever agent is the one they know or even I

[Brett Schaefer]

don't think that's 100%. I understand, I understand what you're getting at and I think that's happening over time. But there's still, you know, there's still $2 trillion of deposits at bank of America earning nothing. There's friction out there and people have existing relationships. If you bought or sold a home with a specific person before friends and family, you understand that. But the most important thing is convincing an existing agent who is paying more to Coldwell Banker that's maybe successful, been around for five or ten years and. And the real brokerage sends him an email called outreach and says, hey, look, tell us what you're given to the Coldwell Banker and we'll tell you what you can do on your own. We'll super.

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[Brett Schaefer]

Charge your own brand People know the stereotype of the real estate agent. They want to be almost that very salesy, you know, like almost an influencer. Right? That's part of the ideal. And you don't want to be Coldwell Banker. You want to own your own brand as the white label here. And I think that's why they're gaining market share and will continue even though there's direct competition. They just seem to be the one that's executing the quickest full disclosure. I do own shares. Very small position, but it's one where I think high risk, high upside.

[Ryan Henderson]

All right, should we talk WIX earnings or do we want to do small cap of the week?

[Brett Schaefer]

Let's. I'll take a break and you can do small cap of the week and then we'll talk WIX earnings, which maybe as a teaser, a lot of good. I mean the stock's doing great, but some very they never make it easy on trusting them, which we'll get into. But let's talk your small cap of the week. There was some recommendations in the substack chat. We'll get to those in future weeks. We have 52 in a year, so don't worry about that. Genius Sports, I don't think I've ever heard of this company, Ryan, so take the listeners through it.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, so Genius Sports is basically a data provider for the sports industry. So think S and P capital IQ for sports. Or honestly even it's probably even a little closer to like a fiscal AI for sports. There's actually some very similar dynamics here.

[Brett Schaefer]

All right, listeners drink. Ryan mentioned fiscal AI. If you have a beverage in hand now, now is the time.

[Ryan Henderson]

The so basically in terms of how they aggregate the data and okay, having now having been a part of a data business for a while, there's basically a few things that I think you have to figure out is a how do they get the data? B is that sustainable and differentiated? Like do other people have the same data kind of thing and then who are they selling it to? So in the case of aggregation, they are they basically have a bunch of cameras throughout stadiums as well as some like algorithms that they've developed for like tracking player movement. They also have manual statisticians that they send to record data to a bunch of games. And then they have integrations with those GPS tracking tools that are usually worn by players. I think a lot of people see them if they watch soccer. They, the soccer players have these kind of like bib looking things that there

[Brett Schaefer]

are, there are other sports that have these. Ryan, I know you only watch soccer, but the other sports, the other sports have them as well. The, like the, the helmets, you know, there's a lot of that in American football as well.

[Ryan Henderson]

Is that where they track it in the NFL is the helmet?

[Brett Schaefer]

Ooh, that's a good question. I think they have a lot of data points. Ever seen those ads powered by aws? Trillions of data points every ad break. I think it's something along those lines. I'm sure genius is, is, is in that as well.

[Ryan Henderson]

So basically they get exclusive licenses, not technically exclusive, but sort of exclusive licenses from the leagues to be the data collectors. And so a couple big leagues that they have licenses with are the NFL, the English Premier League for soccer or football, however you want to say it, depending on where you are in the world, and the ncaa. And so, and I'll talk about those deals in a second. But then once they collect that data, I assume it's done through some sort of data feed. They customers buy that data stream from them. The customers include sports books or big ones, so draftkings, that kind of thing, media businesses as well. So espn, cbs, those kind of companies, and then even the sports leagues themselves actually will buy the data from the data collectors. So this has been a pretty lucrative place to be, especially with the growth of sports betting. Revenue for them has gone. It's basically increased at a 35% annual rate since 2020. So over the last five years, really strong growth. And one of the biggest risks that people talk about is whether or not the leagues will renew those exclusive rights for data collection. Or even when those renewals do come up, how much more expensive are they? Because it's kind of a bidding war typically for I think the big data collectors are genius and sport radar, I think is what it's called, or sports radar and submit a formal bid. You'll talk about why you deserve it, what you're willing to pay, that kind of thing. The NFL really drives a lot of volume for them. And you can actually see this in some of the quarterly numbers. There's Some seasonality there. In the case of the NFL specifically, Genius issued them shares in the form of warrants as a part of their bid, which I think was probably worthwhile in terms of how much they've benefited from it on a revenue side. And it probably gives some good alignment there. And it's less likely. I mean now, now the NFL has a financial incentive in Genius sports. So I think when that renewal comes up, which I think is in 2030, they I imagine are more likely to stick with their data collector or even accept a lower bid from them because they've got that financial incentive. As for the valuation market cap of one and a half billion, 250 million or so in net cash. So 1.2, $1.25 billion enterprise value. They've earned 670 million roughly in revenue over the last 12 months. And then they saw a big jump in one time equity awards this year. A lot of that was some of these warrants, I think warrant conversions from the NFL. But also there was apparently executive equity awards as well. They said one time I kind of shrugged my shoulders at that. I didn't, this is my small cap of the week, so I didn't dig deep enough into that.

[Brett Schaefer]

But that makes your eyes, your eyes squint whenever you're. Oh, it's one time. I go to awards. Okay.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, the free cash flow is legit. Well aside from the stock based compensation, but nevertheless they are generating cash every year. $65 million in free cash flow, $136 million in adjusted EBITDA. Take that with a grain of salt. So it's about 18 times free cash flow, 9 times adjusted EBITDA. I'm pretty interested, honestly in this business. I need to get a better sense of where margins are going. But directionally I think this data is going to be more and more in demand over time and they're going to keep improving the data that they can offer to sportsbooks and media companies. And I would think the NFL's pretty incentivized to renew with Genius. So I don't know. I'm interested. Any thoughts?

[Brett Schaefer]

It's interesting for sure. It reminds me of one of the acquisitions that Gambling.com Group acquired. It's one of their fastest growing businesses as well. I'd like to know how they relate. Maybe Genius Sports sells to them. It's definitely something that I'm very interested in. Seems like similar to electronic guards. Sorry, I got something in my eye. For anyone watching similar to electronic guards with Madden, when you locked in that contract, you're going to be the one that does it and no one's going to want to go to someone else because are they going to offer a much better product as long as you're not like totally botching the situation. One thing I was looking at while you were talking on fiscal AI, that's a good time to mention as usual, we're getting past that holiday season and this is when people are looking to maybe purchase things, new software, new software programs to help their investing and personal finances. And that would be baudricmen Fiscal AI, Ryan's employer, our longtime partner. If you use our link, you get 15% off any paid plan and you have all these KPIs that I was looking at while Ryan was talking. But the one that stood out to me that I'd want to look at is gross margin. It's only 23%. Want to know why that is, Whether that can expand a lot at a greater scale or if it's going to be something where you look at this revenue multiple and I'm seeing about just under one, just under two times revenue. Well at first I was like, oh wow, that could be extremely cheap, especially because the stock has totally puked in the last just start 2026 and well, it's at 1.8 times sales. But gross margins are quite low. Maybe it's not as cheap as we think. That's something I would also want to investigate.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, it's a good point around gross margins. I hadn't looked at it. My assumption is that they're paying a lot of money to the leagues and that's baked into their cost of sales. I mean it's heavily. I'm looking at the segment split right now, common size this real quick. 70% of their revenue comes from sports betting. So I think you have to have some view probably on what you think the sports betting market's going to look like over the next five years because that's probably going to drive the bulk of their growth. My suspicion is that it's going to be much larger and I would bet that like the poly markets couches of the world, anyone that's like betting market on sports is probably needs this data as well. So whether it's directly sports betting or circumventing it and still sports betting, I think you're going to need this data more and more.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean that growth is undeniable. And again use Our link fiscal AI chitchat link is in the show notes. Get 15% off any paid plan. All right, Ryan the main event, the Stock that's up 30% in the last two days. Let's have some interesting financial engineering and some wild announcements that I'm still digesting. It's WIX earnings. They posted ARR growth, annual recurring revenue 14% pretty solid. Their base 44 acquisition is already at $100 million in ARR from a standing start when they acquired them less than 12 months ago, so growing very, very quickly. Now it's not, there's no Anthropic, but they're using Anthropic and OpenAI and stuff like that. Well actually WIX itself is a partnership with OpenAI. Base44, more application based, has a partnership with Anthropic. So basically what base 44 is, you can build applications without coding mobile applications, stuff like that. And it's catching on like wildfire. They have a hundred million dollars in ARR. Seems like they've had a strong launch of WIX Harmony, which is wix's brand Vibe coded like new age. You know, for anyone that says Wix is an AI loser, I would like to refer them that in 2016 they launched basically Vibe coding websites. So they've been in this for 10 years now, but this is the revamped version powered by modern tools and they said that it's been a strong start to that, but we'll see. Obviously what's most interesting is the financial engineering they're trying to do with this cheaper share price. They said, you know, they, they authorized a $2 billion share repurchase plan. They haven't been able to start that because of the blackout period, but they basically said now they're planning to repurchase, purchase all of that this year if they can, which is insane, versus their market cap of like after the jump $5 billion, we goes half the market cap. However, there's also a little bit of a catch. As always with them, it just seem a bit, I don't know, a little bit immoral to outside shareholders, small time shareholders like myself, I don't think that's unfair to say. Yeah, you get a little concerned about that type of stuff. They sold $250 million in stock at a discount to outside fund Durable Capital Partners. These friends, I'm not sure. And they also gave them warrants. It feels to me like insider's getting a better deal and they don't need the funds. So you could have said, hey Durable, if you want a larger investment in our company, just buy it on the open market. Maybe they would argue that if Durable wanted to invest more this on the open market, that would crowd up the buyback. Sure. But the argument, it seems a little flimsy to me. Any of the arguments I've heard that it's fine, it's definitely a yellow flag for me. But if I look at the net buyback, it's still gonna be quite large. And they are doing a tender offer to all shareholders which is essentially, they have this range, I think it's $84 to $92 a share. An existing shareholder can go to them and say, I want to sell to you at whatever price. They're gonna figure out the exact price and they're gonna do a mass buyback depending on the band there. So we'll see what happens. But all in all, I mean, it's coming. That's just Durable revenue growth trades at sub 10x free cash flow and they're maybe going to take up half of their stock, half of their shares outstanding.

[Ryan Henderson]

It's frustrating because honestly, WIX has a management team that rubs me the wrong way. Like this Durable Capital Partners private placement thing feels wrong. Like on the one hand, and people are. Maybe the WIX proponent or the management team would say, you know, we, we want the cash. We want, you know, shareholders that we know are going to stick around. We're.

[Brett Schaefer]

They do have a one year lockup. It's fine, sure.

[Ryan Henderson]

But if you are sitting there with a whole bunch of cash on your balance sheet and claiming we're gonna buy back $2 billion in stock, do you really need the cash?

[Brett Schaefer]

No, they just wanna give Durable Capital Partners a stake in the business.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, but that's dumb. I'm serious.

[Brett Schaefer]

Like, I think they're, they must be friends. Yeah. It is unfair. It's not a giant. It's like a 5% discount. So is it the end of the world? No, but like philosophically it feels a bit yucky. We have a. I would be curious

[Ryan Henderson]

what kind of relationship or Avishai Abrahami has with.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. All right, we have Andrew Marshall in the chat from Mindset Cap Capital Mindset or Mindset Capital. One of those. Been on the show before him and his team. Capital mindset, great YouTube channel and investment experience.

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[Brett Schaefer]

See full [e-mail] community such as ourselves he said if you want the WIX theme without the uneasy feeling, GoDaddy is also doing a massive buyback with and a similar play we are long GoDaddy it could be another small cap of the week to look at. I haven't looked at GoDaddy in a long time. I mean I looked at them three or four years ago. If it's similar, I mean if it's sub 10x free cash flow and they're buying back a boatload of stock, that's quite interesting because again is AI going to disrupt companies like VeriSign and GoDaddy? I'm not sure. And we have another comment here that says I hate the sketchiness probably regarding wix, but I do love the willingness to actually start buying back shares like crazy. That's exactly where I sit. I go there's a lot to like here but why do you have to make me feel uneasy as someone who potentially going to be a shareholder for you over a 10 year period?

[Ryan Henderson]

You have to. Yeah I think with WIX you have to separate your emotions from this investment. You can make money because of the buyback but date it, don't marry it just to steal the the opposite. Yeah a philosophy there. Let me share a chart the shout out to Fiscal AI here and get your thoughts segments KPIs total number of

[Brett Schaefer]

premium subscriptions yeah yeah yeah I've seen this been floating around. It's not a giant concern. They have purposefully gone and kind of shedded Explain what the for the listeners. Explain what?

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, for people that are listening can't see the chart. Basically premium subscriptions ever since 2012 have grown consistently. There were at 470,000 subscriptions in 2012, 2023 they got to 6.3 million. Then over the last two years they've now seen two consecutive years of declines in premium subscriptions.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah it's something that again, in a vacuum, you go, oh, well, you want more subscribers. But I think that the KPI, they're not, they don't care about anymore because they one they said they've shed, what was it shed? Just like bad customers, customers that weren't that profitable, customers that didn't give them much revenue. And what makes me believe them is if you look at their quarterly cohorts, they have a very nice chart that they give on every quarterly earnings presentation, something like that you can find on their website of how their revenue is progressing. And they're getting back. You know, Covid, they had a little bump because they, they had some very nice cohorts in 2020, 2021. But their cohorts from a revenue perspective are getting back to that level and are making progress. And the trajectory looks quite nice. If, if you just let, for example, let's say you have a really small website, you're paying that much money, wix maybe historically could go, oh, if you're about to leave, why don't we give you a really big discount to stay? Because our unit, anonymous, you're so strong, they decided not to do that. They're targeting partner revenue. I mean, we saw that with wix when we had our own website for the investment fund, they would do the same thing. It's part of their marketing plan. They're targeting more again small business customers, the partners revenue, which is essentially design teams that use wix's tools. And now they're going more into adding on these vibe coding stuff for Both applications through base44 and website development with WIX Harmony, which they said that will get fully deployed across all of the WIX product portfolio in due course. You know, they have a partnership now with OpenAI so you can start Vibe coding your wix website through ChatGPT, which I think is very, very smart because if you go to ChatGPT or Gemini. I actually tested this when I wrote my research report on wix and I said, hey, I'm looking to build a website. I'm a restaurant in this area. I need menu and whatever, some different connections, like, hey, I want to have my menu online. I want to connect to the delivery platforms, I want stuff, you know, some basics and WIX populated as number one for a small business. They also said, you know, you might want to have some different point of sale solutions if you're more complicated. But that, you know, was nice. And then the fact that you have this partnership with ChatGPT where if you go on ChatGPT and say, yeah, I want to build a website. They're going to say WIX is your first option. That's quite nice. And you can start it directly from ChatGPT. I mean there's a billion users now. I think that's quite nice. Let's see. We have a question. What is vibe coding? That's, it's no coding coding. It's essentially using LLM prompts or using your ChatGPT, your Claude, your Gemini to build applications without actually coding in the terminal. I don't know.

[Ryan Henderson]

I don't know if that question was ingest or not because it's become sort of like a meme.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I think, I think, look, we, I can't forget if I this, I gave this stat out last week, but only zero point like 3% of the global population pays for an AI premium subscription. So the amount of people that are vibe coding things and know what it is, I think is lower than we think.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I think the Twitter echo chamber might make it feel like the whole world is following it when maybe, I

[Brett Schaefer]

mean you work for a vibe coding company, right? Almost. Somewhat, Somewhat adjacent.

[Ryan Henderson]

Adjacent Vibe coding. But yeah, I think WIX is in, I think WIX is in a good spot. And maybe it's just the volatility of the stock. My only gripe is that it feels like management just kind of cares too much about the stock price.

[Brett Schaefer]

Like, yeah, so they got a lot of owner, they got a lot of employees that have huge ownership stakes here. And if, if you go, God, I think our stock's just so much more valuable. You're in almost a five year drawdown from $300 to blow 100. At some point I would go, let's just lever up. We, we know what our, our AR looks like, our free cash flow looks like from our core business. Let's just lever up and start buying back this thing. Everyone's going to be a little more happy.

[Ryan Henderson]

I think, I think it. You very diplomatically described their stock based compensation policies. They have a lot of employees that are tied to the business and ownership.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, they might have underwater, they could have underwater options. Who knows? Um, it's, it's interesting. It's one where I believe, I don't know, pounding the table never, I guess works. Usually stuff that I have high conviction in is actually the stuff that performs worse for me. But I'll say I think WIX got thrown out with the bathwater. With the software drawdown. People are like, why does WIX need to exist? And they've Been investing in this direction, the Vibe coding direction for a decade. So they've been fully prepared for this. And I think given the fact that there's more apps being built, there's more websites being built, you've seen that there's third party data around that. Well, if they're the leader in the space, they've been investing in AI Vibe coding websites for a decade and there's more websites now being built. There's better tools for them to utilize. Isn't this incredibly bullish for them? I don't know. You tell me.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I think they're in a good spot. Let's take some of these listener questions here cause we've got a few to potentially get through. First one Thoughts on Michael Burry buying Adobe Brett, any strong takes here?

[Brett Schaefer]

Did he buy Adobe? Cause in the substack chat that said question mark, he's been tweeting about it. We are going to decide this throughout the year, but I might be on team Cancel the Burry subscription. Cassandra unchained thumbs down for the renewal process. Ryan, because he tweeted that they should acquire Mid Journey and any other tool like that. I was just thinking, are you serious? For what they're going to get him for $3 billion? It's just a huge waste of capital.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. So okay, Michael Burry is not going to care because I don't think he listens to this podcast.

[Brett Schaefer]

But he's got a lot more money than us. How about ARR?

[Ryan Henderson]

He is very bright, but I think he gets in his own way a lot. And you are right, I think the substack has been a little underwhelming.

[Brett Schaefer]

I was hoping we can have like a spectrum, you know, like the fear and greed antidecks. Are we canceling by December 2026 or are we keeping. You know, you could turn things around. But right now we have two votes

[Ryan Henderson]

for cancel Individual stock analysis. I love, I love what he does, but a lot of them have just been like market overvaluation, think pieces or very granular things about companies accounting that might not matter that much. I don't know how people found out that he bought Adobe. I don't know if he said that or something, but I don't think it was a part of his 13F and he didn't publish it in the substack unless I'm mistaken, unless there was something in the chat. But I don't understand why they would buy Mid Journey. I've used Midjourney. It's a helpful tool. But Adobe has integrations with all the text, image and text to video generation models. So I think being the agnostic player makes the most sense actually. So you don't have to like you can kind of meet the customer where they are in terms of what tools they use. Like if, if a customer really loves Nano Banana or whatever. I can't say that company without laughing a little bit. That product, I should say, or whatever the image or video generation model is like, let them use it. Let it be a part of their Adobe workflow. Let them iterate and edit that file on Adobe right there in the ecosystem. That makes more sense to me than them paying up for mid journey.

[Brett Schaefer]

So Figma canva are more, much more important.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah.

[Brett Schaefer]

And stuff like that.

[Ryan Henderson]

I mean what, what do I think of Burry buying Adobe?

[Brett Schaefer]

It.

[Ryan Henderson]

It doesn't mean much to me honestly.

[Brett Schaefer]

You're still a shareholder. Ryan, you still a shareholder? He's come back a little bit. Has. This leads to another question. Has the stock, has the software? We're totally jinxing it. But have software stocks bottomed?

[Ryan Henderson]

I kind of hope not because I didn't really buy as much as I was hoping to. I was hoping it would kind of sit at those multiples for a while.

[Brett Schaefer]

You want three months of, you know, getting your paychecks, putting that money in the account? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Henderson]

I want my cost basis to come down on some of these and other businesses too. I mean Adyen, I don't know if they've traded back up with the software companies, but they're back closer to 900

[Brett Schaefer]

now, so it's gone down a little bit, which is nice.

[Ryan Henderson]

I'd like to buy more shares in a lot of these businesses. So I kind of hope it has not bottomed. Might be greedy thinking on my part, but it's possible. It really is possible and I think you're right. Like it has to climb the wall of worry because there's not going to be a single quarter that it's like, well that's it. AI didn't take over. Like these software stocks are fine. Like there's going to be something to point out with every company for, you know, the foreseeable future where AI could be disruptive.

[Brett Schaefer]

I feel like it's almost like Amazon back in the day when they would announce a new target. Well that's pun intended. A new area they were getting into and then the entire sector would sell off the acquire. Whole foods, every groceries sells off the acquire. They're trying to get into Amazon Fresh, you know, sprouts, farmers market. There's A whole bear case for three, three years on that and you gotta climb the wall worry. But eventually that Amazon shine of oh, we're entering this market, everything sells off 20%. It stops because a company be good at some things, but they're not gonna be even Anthropic, that's the fastest growing company in history is not gonna be good at everything. I doubt they're gonna have the ch like you just have a culture of you know what you're good at. It starts with the executive team like that. It feels similar where Anthropic announces something. We're getting into financial analyst and people are like, oh, I just vibe coded a Bloomberg competitor, you know, we'll see.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, it was like when Claude had the like we're launching Claude for Excel and Microsoft sold off a little bit. It's like this is then Excel helping Excel. Like more people will build on Excel.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, that's true, that's true.

[Ryan Henderson]

Anyway, we don't have to do the full softwaremageddon discussion all over again. It would be funny. It would be funny if Jack Dorsey firing half of his staff for AI was Mark the bottom.

[Brett Schaefer]

Hey, you know I saw some tweets. These could be people just trying to get attention. There's a lot of stuff on Twitter that is I know is fake. And then I worry about what stuff I don't know is fake these days. It's not as much fun to spend time on there anymore. But there's someone that said basically they were big head from Silicon Valley and they're like I gotta acquired by block. And I basically just chilled on the roof in San Francisco for three years. Like he didn't do much.

[Ryan Henderson]

It was. So I was reading some of Jack Dorsey's replies and like yes, he's. Someone was like you just over hired. He's like, yeah, you're right. We had to deal with the integration of an acquisition at the time. And he's like, we had to. You paid $42 billion for Afterpay and talked about synergies.

[Brett Schaefer]

You.

[Ryan Henderson]

What do you mean? You were shocked by the integration costs

[Brett Schaefer]

also when the integration costs. You know, it's tough but integration mergers usually mean layoffs. And that's how it goes. It's unfortunate that's how it goes. Cause you have two. You have duplicated tasks. All right, other questions before we get out of here. People said, which one do you like best? 3e commerce stocks, Amazon clones that are in drawdowns Coupang, Mercado Libre or C limited Ryan Rank them right now. Gun to your head.

[Ryan Henderson]

Coupong number one, Mercado Libre number two. SE limited number three. I like Mercado Marado Libre is probably close to coupang there potentially, but I just knew no coupang a little better. And I think they're also in more of a sort of temporary blip given some of the data correction stuff.

[Brett Schaefer]

So gross profit multiple is much lower too. Yeah.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. I see a world in which this generates pretty good return over the next. Over the short term as well as the long term.

[Brett Schaefer]

I'm putting C Limited 3 as well. I'm going to do the exact same order out of both Mercado Libre and coupang here, but C Limited. I just don't understand it as well. It's. It's a region of the world. I have less confidence in. In understanding the dynamics. Do I understand South Korea fully? No, but I think it's a little easier to grasp than the craziness of 10 different countries in Southeast Asia. And the same with Latin America. I think I understand that much, much more.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. All right. Any of these other ones you want to talk about, thoughts on?

[Brett Schaefer]

Someone said, did you see that they got Inter Miami as a sponsor, which is as a Brazil, Argentina rivalry. That's quite the treasonous ask, wouldn't you say? My. The biggest competitor, Mercado, the national champion of Brazil. New new bank, national champion of Argentina, Mercado Libre. Two competitors, direct competitors now. And Brazil gets. The new bank, gets the hero of Argentina.

[Ryan Henderson]

I. Yeah, that.

[Brett Schaefer]

That.

[Ryan Henderson]

That is interesting. I didn't really think about it that way. The. There is obviously a lot of, like, inner Miami. The soccer team has kind of become synonymous with Argentina now because not only Messi, but they've bought a lot of Argentine players.

[Brett Schaefer]

So it could be smart. Double play. New bank enters Argentina and the United States.

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah. The other part is there's just a lot of Latin Americans in Miami, so.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yep.

[Ryan Henderson]

Whether it's Mexicans, Argentines, Brazilians, Colombians, I'm sure Nubank operates, I believe, in Colombia as well. Right.

[Brett Schaefer]

That's the three countries. Yep. Brazil, Colombia, Mexico. But they haven't entered Argentina. Marcobago's kind of got that unlock.

[Ryan Henderson]

All right. Any other.

[Brett Schaefer]

Let's do bubble watch. This is something you probably saw. Ryan, have you thought of our good friend from what's the podcast, the all in podcast? Chamath.

[Ryan Henderson]

I did see this.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah. So someone said. And they may have been joking, but some said there's a big Twitter response. How about all the scams through your spacs? You never came clean about it. Millions of customers lost money. Chamath replies, bs. Some other guy named the dude from whatever that movie is. Not bs. I invested in all of them. Your pitches were compelling and I lost tons. You made tons. Why? And then Chamath says, and I'm thinking this could be another meme that we could use throughout. Throughout the years. Ryan, then you generated capital losses. Did you use those yet? Have you thanked Chamath Ryan for generating capital losses for you? This is what I tell my friends who invested alongside me in Portillos. Stock's down 50%. What happened? Use the tax write off.

[Ryan Henderson]

You're welcome. Harvesting. You're welcome.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, look at that tax.

[Ryan Henderson]

Okay, honestly, I'm a little disappointed that we're talking about this because I am convinced there's no one better on the Internet at rage bait than Chamath. He knows that's a dumb thing to say, but he knows it'll get engagement. The only thing is disengagement. In this case, it surely is not helping him in any future endeavor.

[Brett Schaefer]

Yeah, let's see. Has the all in podcast produced an episode in a long time? I think they haven't. I'm checking on this. After a certain now damn they. They started doing them again. Nevermind, never mind. There was a certain list. There's a certain person on a certain list. We don't need to get into it. I was curious if they started there. Yeah, we'll leave it there. But I agree with you Chamath. Unfortunately, yes, I fall for the bait because it is hilarious. Yeah, I mean he's got charisma. Have you generated. It's kind of like who's the older 2020 legend? Peruse Exena. Do you like accounting or do you like making money?

[Ryan Henderson]

Yeah, I think we'll leave it there. Yes, this was a bad look for Chamath, but an attention getter nonetheless. I think that's going to do it. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Thank you for all the questions in the chat. We want to remind listeners that Brett and I are not financial advisors. Anything we say or discuss here on Chitchat Stocks is not formal advice or recommendation. Thank you again to everyone for listening and we will see you all next time.

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