Micron's Mad Earnings Report; Michael Saylor's "Dumb" Strategy; An Intriguing IPO $MU $MSTR

Summary

Chit Chat Stocks — Episode Summary

Episode: Micron’s Mad Earnings Report; Michael Saylor’s "Dumb" Strategy; An Intriguing IPO | $MU $MSTR
Date: June 26, 2026
Hosts: Ryan Henderson & Brett Schafer

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Episode Overview

In this Investing Power Hour, Ryan and Brett dissect the latest earnings from Micron, discuss the sustainability of the memory chip boom, debate the cyclical risks in semis, dig into OpenAI’s custom chip ambitions, and analyze Meta’s new product launches. They also cover the upcoming Lime IPO, the spectacular crash of MicroStrategy, and field listener questions on pizza chains, reporting requirements, and industry research techniques. The episode is candid, skeptical, and peppered with good-humored rants and memorable quotes.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Micron’s Blockbuster Earnings

[01:21–10:23]

• Performance:

  • Exceeded analyst expectations, posting $41B revenue vs $35B expected.
  • Massive year-over-year growth (last year $9B).
  • Beat expectations by $6B—“almost as much as the entire company generated this time last year.” (Ryan, 01:39)

• Cyclicality Concern:

  • Management emphasizes ongoing supply shortages, complex expansions, labor shortages, and regulatory hurdles.
  • Key Quote (Micron CEO):

    “Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand.”
    (Ryan reading, 03:35)

• Skepticism:

  • Brett and Ryan note these cycles are unpredictable; past bottlenecks (like shipping logistics during COVID) were resolved quicker than feared:

    “It’s always easy to say this time is different.” (Ryan, 07:11)

• Investment Dilemma:

  • Both hosts admit avoiding the sector due to unpredictability, despite recent returns:

    “Yeah, it just goes in the too hard pile for me.” (Ryan, 10:14)

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2. OpenAI’s Jalapeno Chip & the AI Supply Chain

[10:23–14:34]

• Custom Chips:

  • OpenAI is developing “Jalapeno,” a custom AI chip in collaboration with Broadcom and Solistica, aiming for an industry-leading dev cycle and performance per watt.
  • Key Press Release Quote:

    “Jalapeno was co-developed from the initial design to manufacturing tape out in just nine months... fastest ASIC development cycle ever achieved in high performance advanced semiconductors.”
    (Brett reading, ~12:10)

• Investor Preferences:

  • Tyler (listener) question: Why do investors prefer supply chain firms (ASML, TSMC) over AI hyperscalers (Meta, Microsoft)?
  • Hosts argue:
    • Supply chain vendors benefit regardless of winner/loser in AI war.
    • Hyperscalers face immediate costs and uncertain return on AI spend.
    • Short-termism and capital allocation risks plague hyperscalers:

      “Anything that is extremely reliant on chip prices or the depreciation schedules of chips... I am straying away from my portfolio.” (Ryan, 13:23)

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3. Abundant Opportunities Beyond Semiconductors & AI

[14:34–17:48]

• Price Declines:

  • Many high-quality businesses are down 40-50% YTD; Ryan comments on the unusual number of discounted quality stocks.
  • Example: Airbnb—still solid, though not in a big drawdown.

• Strategic Choices:

  • Hosts advocate for focusing on companies outside the crowded, cyclical semi space:

    “You don’t need to be invested in the semiconductor space.” (Ryan, 16:09)

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4. Meta: Prediction Markets, Ray-Bans & Celebrity Appearances

[20:09–33:01]

• Celebrity Visits:

  • Kyle Kuzma’s talk at Meta on the “future of AI”—seen as a sign of Meta’s PR focus over technical substance.
  • Quote:

    “Meta deserves a below market multiple. It really does because... they are the experts. They don’t need insight from Kyle Kuzma.” (Ryan, 21:31)

• Prediction Market App:

  • Meta plans a standalone app (with no real-money betting initially).
  • Hosts doubt mainstream success and question ethics of making gambling easier inside trading platforms (Robinhood example):

    “It just doesn’t make any sense. Save, invest, and piss away. That could be your [Robinhood’s] mantra.” (Ryan, 25:02)

• Meta Glasses (“creeper glasses”):

  • Mixed reviews: Designed for mass market with IG influencer tie-ins, but strong privacy and social backlash expected.
  • Quote:

    “I want these to fail. I really want them to fail.” (Ryan, 30:34) “If you want to feel good about Meta’s capital allocation, check out Snap. Makes Zuckerberg look like Buffett.” (Ryan, 32:43)

• Meta Stock:

  • Brett ends his “psychological short,” acknowledges Meta's business performance but would prefer spin-off of high-ROI family apps from hardware ventures.

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5. Lime (Neutron Holdings) IPO: Scooters, Capex & Durability

[33:01–38:16]

• IPO Details:

  • Valuing at $1.66B, 3.8M MAUs, positive FCF recent years, ~20% YoY growth.
  • Uber partnership drives 15% of demand.

• Skepticism:

  • Concerns on maintenance capex, abuse of scooters, legal liability, and long-term durability.
  • Brett jokes about a “diabolical short” by destroying scooters.

• Unit Economics:

  • Maintenance and depreciation are big cost lines, but recent positive cash flow suggests some improvement.

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6. MicroStrategy Meltdown & Bitcoin’s Domino Risks

[38:16–46:08]

• Performance:

  • MSTR down 80%+ from 2025 highs; S&P up 24% YTD.
  • Paper losses on Bitcoin holdings exceed $10.6B; MSTR owns 5% of all bitcoin.
  • Forced selling would “completely overwhelm available buy orders... causing a severe price cascade” (Ryan quoting, 40:50)

• Skepticism & Critique:

  • Saylor’s leveraged approach called “a dumb strategy—no pun intended.”
  • Quote:

    “If the price of bitcoin does continue to go down, strategy’s going to have to sell… it’s a serious domino effect.” (Ryan, 45:02)

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7. Listener Q&A: Pizza Wars, Reporting Frequency, Industry Research

[46:08–55:18]

• Pizza Hut Sale:

  • Seen as confirmation of Domino’s long-term lead. Delivery apps (Uber Eats, DoorDash) are now the main competitor.
  • No major impact for Domino’s; food delivery is just less pizza-centric now.

• Quarterly Reporting Threat:

  • Motley Fool campaign to retain quarterly 10Qs; hosts strongly in favor.
  • Quote:

    “If I owned the whole business, I would want an update weekly. Quarterly would almost feel too long...” (Ryan, 50:12)

  • Less frequent reporting seen as a regulatory win for large institutions, a blow for small investors.

• Industry Research Process:

  • Hosts favor starting with company-by-company deep dives, focusing on market share trends, margins, and qualitative factors before broad industry analysis.
  • Quote:

    “The best companies are the ones taking market share… Peter Lynch always said I want market share takers.” (Brett, 55:13)

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8. Company Quick Hits & Bubble Watch

[55:18–61:18]

• Wise Earnings:

  • 21% customer growth, PE of 22, growing deposits/usage, host views as an “emerging moat.”

• Allbirds Becomes "Smartbirds":

  • AI-pivot rebrand mocked:

    “Allbirds is now Smartbirds and its AI-focused CEO says: ‘People won’t even remember the shoes.’” (Brett, 59:04) “If they didn’t rebrand, people still wouldn’t remember the shoes in 10 years.” (Ryan, 60:34)

• Microsoft Xbox Spin-off Rumor:

  • Hosts skeptical on standalone business, more cyclical than assumed.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cyclicality:

  “It just goes in the too hard pile for me.” (Ryan, 10:14)

• On OpenAI Custom Chips:

  “Why wouldn’t you just want to own TSMC, ASML… instead of trying to bet on who wins this Cloud War?” (Brett, 12:43)

• On Meta PR:

  “Meta deserves a below market multiple… they don’t need insight from Kyle Kuzma.” (Ryan, 21:31)

• On Gambling in Apps:

  “Save, invest, and piss away. That could be your mantra.” (Ryan on Robinhood, 25:02)

• On Meta Glasses:

  “I want these to fail. I really want them to fail.” (Ryan, 30:34)

• On MicroStrategy:

  “It’s a dumb strategy. No pun intended.” (Ryan, 45:02)

• On Reporting Frequency:

  “If I owned the whole business, how often would I want updates? I would want an update weekly.” (Ryan, 50:12)

• On Industry Research:

  “The best companies are the ones taking market share… Peter Lynch always said I want market share takers.” (Brett, 55:13)

• On "Smartbirds" Rebranding:

  “If they didn’t rebrand, people still wouldn’t remember the shoes in 10 years.” (Ryan, 60:34)

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Timestamps at a Glance

| Segment | Timestamps | |------------------------------------------|--------------------| | Micron Earnings, Cyclicality | 01:21–10:23 | | OpenAI’s Chip, AI Supply Chain | 10:23–14:34 | | Opportunities Beyond Semis | 14:34–17:48 | | Meta: Products, PR, Glasses | 20:09–33:01 | | Lime IPO & Scooter Economics | 33:01–38:16 | | MicroStrategy & Bitcoin Risks | 38:16–46:08 | | Listener Q&A: Pizza, Reporting, Research | 46:08–55:18 | | Quick Hits: Wise, Bubble Watch, Xbox | 55:18–61:18 |

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• Candid, skeptical, contrarian: Hosts aren’t afraid of contrarian takes or admitting uncertainty (“too hard pile”).
• Practical focus: Emphasis on finding quality investment opportunities outside the current tech hype.
• Witty and critical: Entertaining jabs at AI pivots (“Smartbirds”), overhyped gadgets, and reckless capital allocation.
• Attuned to investor needs: Strong advocacy for transparency, regular reporting, and skepticism of trends driven by hype, not fundamentals.

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For New Listeners

This episode offers a great window into how seasoned investors break down big headlines, challenge narratives, and avoid hype traps—delivering nuanced, real-time analysis that’s as insightful as it is entertaining.

Transcript

[A]

For the past three years, IBKR individual clients averaged 24.3% annually, beating the S&P 500's 23.1%. Lower costs and 170 plus global markets matter Interactive Brokers member SIPC visit ibkr.com performance welcome to Chit Chat Stocks, the podcast that helps you find your next great investment. I'm one of your hosts, Ryan Henderson, and I am joined as always by the one and only Rhett Schaefer. Today we've got our weekly Investing Power Hour episode. We do these live on Thursdays at 5pm Eastern Time, and we talk all things financial markets on these episodes. So news, headlines, earnings, we've got plenty. We've got a new IPO coming out. We've got custom chips from one of the world's leading AI labs, Micron Earnings. Wild times in Memory chip world. And we've got a massive drawdown in none other than MicroStrategy and plenty more to get to. But before we do that, please, if you enjoy the show, give us a review. If you're one of those people that listens all the time, please, please, please do give us a review. Shouldn't take too long and it really helps the show grow. But without further ado, let's get to the episode. Brett, where do we want to start?

[B]

I think we should start with Micron. Ryan, the stock is going crazy. I already have the title loaded up in my mind. Micron Madness. Something like that. Yeah, go through the numbers while I sent out the link to the substack chat to get some more people in here.

[A]

Yeah, Micron Madness. Great headline. They exceeded analyst estimates by a pretty substantial margin. So I wish I could share my screen here, but I'm going to focus on the audio for a second. Analysts were expecting $35 billion in revenue. Keep in mind this is a company that this time last year was doing. They generated 9 billion in revenue. Analysts were expecting 35 billion. This quarter, they reported 41 billion. They beat revenue expectations by $6 billion, which is pretty astounding. They were, to put it in context, they beat revenue expectations by 6 billion, which is almost as much as the entire company generated this time last year. Naturally, this translated to much better than expected earnings as well. So plenty of operating leverage there. And there was one quote that really stood out. And obviously the management teams for Micron and any of the memory chip companies are acutely aware of the narrative out there for memory chips, that it's cyclical and that this is just a temporary blip. So here was the Quote, Yeah, Brett's sharing the screen. They've beat revenue expectations handily and they have done so now for I think 12 quarters in a row, it looks like.

[B]

Big question is those estimate lines though, that aren't real, is that going to be the case? Are they going to be that? Are they going to miss that? I feel like it's a coin flip. Maybe a third chance, they go right in line there. A third chance, the AI boom just continues and they have this pricing power. And a third chance, it totally collapses. Whoever wants to invest in that, I'd say good luck.

[A]

Here's the quote I will read though, Brett and I think it's interesting to say the least. So CEO of Micron said. With respect to supply, our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve. Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand. Memory industry supply growth is dependent on significant greenfield fab expansions. These greenfield projects are complex and time consuming. The pace is constrained by several factors including long lead times for fab construction across the world, shortage of workers with critical trade skills, complex regulations including permitting, and the need for enhanced energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, memory process technology, which is among the most advanced to develop in manufacturing and manufacture in semiconductors, is getting more complex with every new node. If you're an investor, that is music to your ears. But I think there's an important line to pull out here. Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand. Basically they are saying they do expect supply to increase. Maybe not this year, but next year. But there they expect demand to increase even more. I think the concern or the skeptic would be saying that the it's when the demand line starts to come down. That or demand maybe isn't doesn't grow exponentially for as long as people think it will that we start to see the supply glut potentially take over. But I do think, I mean this raises some points, which is a lot of people, obviously ourselves included, just say it's memory chips, it's cyclical. Supply will meet demand. Every company is going to expand capacity. Microns expanding capacity. It's just a matter of time. But I think it will take time. Honestly, it's going to take time to build these manufacturing facilities and for one year or two years they will have outrageous cash flow.

[B]

The big question is when? Now. For anyone that was not around a few years ago, at least pay attention to economic stuff. I have a chart here. The containerized freight index. I believe this is a good proxy for the cost to ship goods around the world. In the pandemic, it collapsed and you can see. Remember when all of the ports had a supply restriction? Do you remember when there was 60, not LNG tankers? I'm thinking of energy, but the, the shipping container giant ships, I don't know what they're called. They were outside of the Long beach terminal, Seattle, New York, where have you.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I remember.

[B]

Okay. And remember at the time everyone said we don't know if this will get fixed and then it got fixed next year. Yeah, it's not, it's pretty similar, I'd say.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's always, it's always easy to say this time is different.

[B]

Well, the experts are, they just, they know the industry so well, they're like, oh, we got to solve all these issues. Well, they're really. All the people in the industry are pretty damn smart. And I think it almost always happens like this. It just depends if it's this year, next year, or three years from now. Who knows how big the cycle will be.

[A]

Yeah, I think the optimist would say that construction to increase supply will take longer than a year or two and during that time demand will still increase. But again that's. Yeah, I, I think it's a matter of when, not if.

[B]

So and the thing about that chart, which again, that happened basically a year after which the container ship thing, for anyone that's just listening, the price to ship something in a standardized freight container went from five, I believe it's in US dollars, say a $5,000 index to a thousand. Once the supply glut happened, this will eventually happen to memory chips. We are already probably seeing things that are going to restrict demand. The Nintendo raised their prices, the other video game players are going to raise their prices. But importantly, Apple just raised the price on their, I believe, iPads and computers and that's going to flow through and decrease demand for them. Again, supply is going to eventually meet demand and it's going to normalize when it happens. We don't know. I think maybe we can talk about OpenAI here as another relation to this because they're talking about again, memory, I think is a little different than what OpenAI is building. But it feels like a lot of companies, wherever you are on the supply chain, Earth, trying to bring Chips to market.

[A]

Yes. Here's my thing is like what, what do you do? How do you invest in, in a cyclical.

[B]

In a memory chip company before the cycle starts or. Right. You got to have that knowledge and say that there's going to be a memory chip bottleneck. I'm not smart enough to do that.

[A]

I know. It just feels like I just have to say no and I've missed out on returns because of it. But when things are going poorly, it looks outrageously expensive.

[B]

Right.

[A]

When the cycle's at a trough, earnings are decimated and it looks like it trades at 100 times PE or whatever like that. Right now it looks like it trades at whatever 10 times forward earnings and all of a sudden it looks more attractive, but it might be 10 times 2027 earnings and 50 times 2030 earnings.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it just goes in the too hard pile for me. Do we want to talk about this open AI announcement?

[B]

Yeah. And I think it relates to this question we have from Tyler that says why do you guys think investors love the end of the AI supply chain memory, asml, tsmc, but hate the companies which deliver AI hyperscalers and Meta despite those businesses being high returns on invested capital follow up, if hyperscalers get bad returns, they will stop buying chips. So isn't this ultimately the same investing question yet one group is up 100% while the hyperscalers are down 30%. I think maybe this relates to everything because there's uncertainty about where the data center demand is going to go to. You have SpaceX about to pour a ton of money into this, but OpenAI just announced not it's not in manufacturing yet, but a new custom chip. They're calling it Jalapeno. Jalapeno, Want to say that correctly? That's pretty good day for a chip. Honestly, I like it. This has been flying under the radar this week for whatever reason. Here's a quote from the press release. OpenAI designed the chip from scratch around its deep understanding of LLM fundamentals formed by its roadmap of models, kernel serving systems and product needs of partners Broadcom and Solistica helping industrialize the platform through chip implementation board board rack system integration, high performance networking and scalable production systems, blah blah blah blah blah. Apparently it's coming out in the next year or so and it will have a better performance per watt compared to existing use cases. Quote Jalapeno was co developed from the initial design to manufacturing tape out in just nine months and the custom AI accelerator program represents what we believe to be the fastest ASIC development cycle ever achieved in high performance advanced semiconductors. I think investors maybe are nervous about this custom chip war versus Nvidia. And I look at it and again, there's the cyclicality with this company as well. But why wouldn't you just want to own tsmc, asml, maybe some other semiconductor equipment providers instead of trying to bet on who wins this Cloud War? AI, Neo Cloud War, the vertical integration play from OpenAI and Anthropic. That's tough. And yeah, OpenAI said they're going to be pouring these into data centers with Microsoft, but what about that Stargate project? What about what SpaceX is planning to do? Not, not in orbit, but on Earth. Yeah, I think I understand that point there. But I agree again a little bit with Tyler that if the hyperscaler stopped buying, the demand has probably fallen off a cliff. But honestly, if the hyperscalers stopped buying, then hyperscalers might be a. The stock might be a buy. Right, because they're done with the bad ROIC investments. Well, I mean,

[A]

first of all, we don't really know if they're bad ROIC investments today. Like for the.

[B]

Okay, let me. Potentially bad roic, right.

[A]

The stock could go up, honestly, if they stopped buying purely because cash flow will go up. But I think to Tyler's question, why do people prefer the TSMCs, the ASMLs of the world? It's because they are not the ones bearing the cost necessarily, they are the ones benefiting today. So you look at the hyperscalers and obviously they're delivering more cloud services, et cetera, and they're selling some chips. But largely the increase in memory chips or the increase in price of memory chips, GPUs, all that has hurt cash flow, probably all else equal for the hyperscaler. So I just think it's probably short termism, maybe a bit. I don't want to touch anything involved in the chips. Anything that is extremely, extremely reliant on chip prices or the depreciable or the depreciation schedules of chips. I am straying away from my portfolio.

[B]

And if you have a time horizon longer than the next quarter, if you're not chasing like the index over the next quarter, I just think right now there are so many opportunities. If you have a three to five year time horizon and you're not worried about AI, and I don't care if AI boom is going to create this whole utopia world, that would be fantastic. But the SAP goes crazy because of it. I'm just looking for solid returns in my own portfolio. And I feel like there's just a plethora of opportunities out there.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, if you look at, we recorded an episode this morning and it will be out next week of basically a whole bunch of stocks down more than 50%. I don't know if I've ever felt like there are this many high quality businesses trading at least down 50% or down 40% in tandem. Like usually you'll get one or two that were considered market darlings that drop for whatever reason. It's almost difficult because you have a lot of companies that were perceived as high quality all dropping at the same time. And I honestly can't make my mind up. You have to decide on all these or maybe you just take a basket approach. But I came away from our conversation this morning. Brett, I would be comfortable owning any of the stocks we talked about on that episode, which is maybe not any,

[B]

but maybe not any.

[A]

Most of them. There's like 20 stocks in the S&P 500 down more than 40% year to date that are up until this year considered high quality businesses. It just, yeah, I, I think there's a lot of options elsewhere. You don't need to be invested in the semiconductor space.

[B]

Yeah. And I have a update for the newsletter coming out on Airbnb tomorrow, which if you're listening to this on your podcast player, will be today. And it's a tough choice where I think that now that's not one in a large drawdown, but I think there's, you can get pretty good D, you know, pretty decent forward returns owning that thing, owning that stock. But you have to weigh that versus the existing holdings in your portfolio or other stocks on your watch list. And I feel like it's just a really great problem to have deciding to be in two different stocks. You feel I can deliver those 15% IRRs. Now maybe we're just naive and the AI wall is going to kill everything, but when you look at something like a Copart, why is that? Is that down? I don't get it. There could be. There could be.

[A]

I will disrupt junkyards. I will have so many junkyards.

[B]

Maybe self, maybe that's actually self driving risk, now that I think about it. But we've, I've been told that we don't understand Copart's business model. I don't. I just know it's considered high quality and I haven't looked at it and it's down a lot. But yeah, that's an example. And there's I think plenty. Dozens and dozens of others for whatever people are comfortable with. Should we talk meta related to the hyperscalers and go to something else before we do?

[A]

You mentioned Airbnb there, and I don't know if we ever talked about it, but what did you think of Brian Chesky launching a new AI venture?

[B]

I did look into this as a part of the update. It's not as bad as the headlines seem because he is just putting his stamp on it to kind of get funding. It's more of like he's just going to be on the board. So it's not as bad as people think. I maybe like that to be within Airbnb, but I understand if it's going to be a separate kind of design, Internet design interface, AI lab. Maybe you would have that as another company. Airbnb would use its products, but there's a slight concern that he would chase something else. I gave it maybe a yellow flag, but the headline suggested worse than what was under the hood. You research your investments, you analyze markets, you manage risk. But did you research your broker? For the past three years, IBKR individual clients averaged an annual return of 24.3% compared to 23.1% on the S&P 500. IBKR's lower trading cost, competitive rates, efficient execution and access to more than 170 global markets helped investors keep more of what they earn and put more capital to work over time. The broker you choose matters. Interactive Brokers member SIPC if you care about performance, find out why the best informed investors choose interactive [e-mail] performance.

[A]

Yeah, just. I don't know, Bean. When you're in founder mode, so to speak, I don't want you in board member mode.

[B]

He's on the OpenAI board. People give you a boards.

[A]

I know, but is Zuck. Is Zuck on any boards?

[B]

I have no idea. The. The Zuck Chan Initiative. He's definitely on that board.

[A]

That's a distraction, I guess. It just feels. I don't know, it feels like Airbnb has an incredible opportunity right in front of it, and it just feels like a distraction. Like if.

[B]

If it's just using your name to get funding for someone else to do this. I. I don't hate it. But yeah, I get that slight concern. We'll see what happens. It could be something that he chases, or it could be a nothing burger.

[A]

Let's talk meta first.

[B]

I will say I said this in the subsec chat before recording. I'm closing out my psychological short. It's up 31 from highs. Thank you for your attention to this matter. And I think the stock is definitely back to a reasonable price. Did I make any money on that? No. But the hate you get for being bearish on Meta at any point is strong. I don't know why it turns into a cold stock, but I just wanted to toot my own horn there first thing before we get to the products. Kyle Kuzma was speaking to Meta. Did you see this? Yeah. Now, he seems like a smart guy, but this is a basketball player speaking to who I assume are some of the smartest AI scientists in the world. Quote, had an amazing time at Meta speaking about the future of AI, what I look for in companies leadership and how to best serve this new modern world for good through philanthropy. Thank you, Meta. I would like to meet Kyle Kuzma, but is that kind of just show where Meta's at and kind of an all show mentality versus OpenAI anthropic stealing all of the best scientists from these businesses?

[A]

I will say there were no pictures of the crowd there, so it's very possible all the seats were empty. Like from the pictures I saw was only of Kyle Kuzma.

[B]

That's possible.

[A]

Maybe there's people at and I will also if you're only taking pictures of the speaker, typically it's because the crowd is not large. If there was a crowd. Meta deserves a below market multiple. It really does because you don't know, you don't need. You are. They are the experts. Like they don't need the insight from.

[B]

From Kyle Kuzma. Look, it's. He's. We're novices like him. I'm not saying that this. He does seem like he likes this stuff a lot. But if I was a famous person, I wouldn't want to speak at men. I'd say, hey, I'd like to meet you. Come by for a lunch or something and meet one of the exact executives.

[A]

I would meet some people. I would feel like such an imposter speaking about AI to a bunch of AI folks at Meta. It would now I get that like for him, people maybe just want to meet him and he was probably thrown into this and asked to do it would be my guess. I don't think he was like begging Meta to let him talk about AI

[B]

but they're not doing this at Anthropic. That's all I know. Well, I hope not, I hope not, I hope not. All right, well, here's what the actual products were released this week or reported on Meta plans to release its own prediction markets app first. It's going to be no money until they get approvals from regulators. But what do you think one of the first standalone apps they're going to do in a long time? I don't necessarily count threads because it just connects directly to Instagram and it's just force feeding that on users. But that has been semi successful. Can prediction markets work for Meta if they use their AI to. I don't even know. I'm talking hocus pocus now. Like feed, feed the live odds to people. I. I don't know. What are your thoughts?

[A]

Yeah, I think it can work. Honestly, it. There's probably some form of a social component to prediction markets would be my guess that could be looped in and you know, they've done this before with standalone apps that have gained traction and maybe they rework it and integrate it in a way. I mean Instagram was originally a standalone app.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I guess it is a standalone app but they test stuff they, they built. Now they acquired Instagram but they, they put teams on this. I don't see any harm for them going after this.

[B]

You're lukewarm. Lukewarm on it could work.

[A]

Yeah. It put. It put a team of 50 people on this. Why not?

[B]

Sure, yeah. It seems interesting. I think more of these, like the Robinhoods, ibkrs, all these companies are going to do fine with this stuff. That's where I feel like the money is going to get made because if you're trading, you already have the bank account, you have everything connected. I don't like calshare Polymarket because they have one. It's hard to deposit, at least when I checked. And then you have these insanely high fees.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I didn't. Maybe Meta makes it easy too, but

[A]

I didn't put all the pieces together until recently. I was watching a game with a friend and he's like, I've got money on this.

[B]

And I'm like, oh, these things might need to be regulated away. It's pretty bad.

[A]

Yeah. I was like, how do you have money on it? He said, oh, I just. In my Robinhood account. And I hit the realization that that is the biggest. They shouldn't have done that, honestly. Like, I know Robin Hood is already like ethics kind of went out the window a while ago with them. But it to me this is egregious. Like you went from. It's a totally different ethos. Like save money, invest money here. Like save, invest and piss away. Like that could be Your mantra. It just doesn't make any sense.

[B]

It's like options trades. A lot of people look just like, what are they? The just buying call options or what have you. A lot of people lose money. The stats are undeniable.

[A]

Let me, let me pull this up real quick. I remember looking at the average account value of a Robinhood account compared to Schwab and let's see if I can.

[B]

It's not great. It's not great. Did you make this as a custom one? Yeah, with our friends at Fiscal AI. Let me just say, while he put it up, I could read our advertisement for our friends at Fiskel AI, Ryan's employer and our longtime sponsor that a lot of people have used the link to sign up for. It's fiskel AI chitchat. Get 15% off any paid plan. You can use all of the KPIs and many, many other tools for just the standard data. Or you can make custom KPIs like Ryan is building right now. This is one that Ryan likes to tweet out through the fiscal AI account. Have you gotten 100,000 followers on there yet on Twitter? Do you get a bonus for that? That should be in your contract.

[A]

I don't know about a bonus, but

[B]

it'll help at the end of the year.

[A]

Yeah, it helps the business, right? Okay. Speaking of Fiscal AI pulled it up actually. Let me just share my screen. This is the average account value at Robinhood vs. Schwab. On the top here you can see Schwab average account value is $309,000.

[B]

I think IBKR is like 500k too, something like that. But either way, yeah, Robinhood compared to everyone else.

[A]

Yeah, Robinhood average account value is $12,000.

[B]

12,000. And with this launch of prediction markets, it could get lower.

[A]

Yeah, honestly, they might be hurting themselves here. They collect all the fee revenue but take all their clients money away.

[B]

Too much fee revenue and your whole business goes away. Yeah, we got other topics, but we don't need to do stated prediction markets. It's yucky. I think it's at risk of being regulated away. All right, here's the other product that is a little more relevant to Meta's business in the near term because it kind of combines the video content of Instagram, the Reels juggernaut, all that good stuff. I've seen a lot of investors hyped up about these new Meta glasses that are launched and were, I think designed and sponsored by Kylie Jenner, the number one, I think, Instagram model in the world, the combo of glasses. Plus Instagram could drive maybe a good content flywheel in the real world. I'll say. I hate these Again, we've talked about this before. I think there's going to be a societal backlash from this. I've seen those, those videos of what like a Cali, I don't know, like grungy looking guy with a flannel jacket try to just forcefully take him off this person's head that was videotaping him. I don't. That's. I think a lot of people don't want to be unwillingly filmed in public and maybe people don't have a backbone, but I think that is just a huge barrier to this business, regardless of if everyone's happy about it. It's a nice vertical integration. But I'm not trying to get pranked in public by random people with meta ray bans. Is that, is that logical?

[A]

I. I do think it's a bit

[B]

of a

[A]

privacy concern for a lot of people. Look customer, fit wise. I don't think people are going like, these are the creeper glasses. No one I don't think they will land with.

[B]

Well now they look like the glasses that women wear now.

[A]

Do you remember a long, a while ago Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan podcast and, and Joe Rogan asked him this exact same question. Like, what's to stop people from just like creepily video recording people? And Zuckerberg was like, well, there'll be, there'll be a light when you record is like, what if people just put tape over it? It's like they hadn't thought that through. It's like, these are creepy.

[B]

Oh, they've thought this through. They just go, what are people gonna put up with so we can make money? Yeah, it. I don't know if this even drives the flywheel for Instagram reels because I've watched other people's feeds. Quite a bit of it is fake AI stuff. So like that's probably the true growth avenue. Our wall lead future.

[A]

I also just don't think people want stuff on their face.

[B]

Like, but it has to look good. That's why they're getting these beautiful women to, to wear them. It's classic.

[A]

You know, the contact industry exists and is successful for a reason is because people want less stuff on their face.

[B]

That's fair. But they're like sunglasses. Try, try to play devil's advocate. I can understand them.

[A]

I want these to fail. I really want them to fail. It doesn't.

[B]

Well, I think the fact that they have to spend A bunch of money and get a bunch of attractive Instagram people to wear them. Shows that you need a bunch of, you know, Pavlov dogging to. To people to get them to wear. Right. No one wants to wear these until there's like a social thing to do it.

[A]

Yeah, I guess.

[B]

But does it make matter a buy? That's a Molly fool article right there.

[A]

It's so meta it. I almost want to like, you know how you hate watch certain games? Like you hate watch certain teams? Ryan.

[B]

What the Dr. Congo.

[A]

No, I almost want to hate invest in meta. Like own it just a because it's cheap. But like every time it upsets me or they do something that I think is dumb, just be like, well, you know what if the stock goes up? There's my emotional hedge.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. If we could just get the pure Play Instagram and I guess Facebook and WhatsApp, please. That's printing money. It's going to continue to print money.

[A]

Divest family of apps. That would be your activist campaign.

[B]

Yeah. I don't know if they could raise money for. It's a little bit messy. A lot of it connects together. But the wearables, it's. It's still money pit because, okay, you have to look at it like this. They spend what, a hundred billion dollars on, what is it, reality labs doing interesting things. But to get an ROI, people are going, well, they're gonna sell 10 million of these Kylie Jenner glasses probably at a loss. Like, they're gonna sell them at a loss. It's.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think any of this will stick. Like, they have to have a huge hit here with the glasses. And frankly, I just don't think they will. The.

[B]

We have a comment that says Ryan would prefer the Snap glasses, which I showed last week. Those are lovely. Those are even worse.

[A]

If you want to feel good about Meta's capital allocation, check out Snap. Relatively speaking, they look like. Makes Zuckerberg look like Buffett. Okay, let's. I talking Meta too long frustrates me. So let's shift gears.

[B]

Unless you're positive. Positive Lime ipo. Interesting business.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Yeah, I see a microstrategy here. We don't want to get too pessimistic when everyone's stocks are going down. Lime filed their S1, I think. Yeah, yeah, I read this. Skim the S1. I can't read all 100 pages before the power hour, but here's the numbers. And again, this is Lime. The scooters that you may have seen around cities. Some people hate These, I understand why some people go crazy fragging them, but they're seeking a valuation of just $1.66 billion. So right away that kind of goes. All right, nothing crazy. The company is actually called Neutron holdings, which of course it is, but just for anyone reading about it, that's what the company might be listed at. They operate in 230 cities and they've had 19 million total unique riders. They have 3.8 million monthly active users that have steadily grown. Their Uber partnership, which also has an investment in the company, drives 15% of demand. $345 million in gross profit, slight net loss in 2025. Positive free cash for the last two years. They're growing at a decent rate. I think it's like 20% year over year, regardless of price. Any interest in this business model? Because I think there's some potential. I like using the term that I coined, emerging boat characteristics. If you can get scale in a city. What are your thoughts, Ryan?

[A]

Yeah, at six times, five times gross profit, probably not, I don't think. But I do think, as much as I hate how some people ride these things, I do think there's validity to this business model. It is. It's a fine in between if you don't want to Uber and you don't

[B]

have a car and you have a car in a city that's not super walkable or has transport if it's too

[A]

far to walk, you know, maybe the scooter makes sense. I see these all over Austin, honestly. And that's, you know, there's times when it's a good fit. So I'm, I'm not against the business model. I wonder how much maintenance Capex is required.

[B]

Yeah, I was thinking a diabolical short could be is you just pay a bunch of homeless people to throw them into bodies of water and then you short the stock.

[A]

Yeah, that, that's. These things are thrown around like they are treated very poorly by customers. So I just wonder.

[B]

Well, they've been around for a decade and they're generating positive free cash flow now. So I would think they've proven that a bit. But it's part of the business model.

[A]

But let's say. Okay, so do you have the numbers? I'm curious how much they spend in Capex. My guess is that they have to spend a lot of money to.

[B]

Let's use our good old friends, the search function. Neutron Holdings. What do you call capital purchases of property and equipment? Right. Oh, whoops, I'm misspelling purchases of property and Equipment. Let's see. Investing activities.

[A]

You find it.

[B]

I will. Look, you got to keep talking.

[A]

It's okay. We have some questions about microstrategy strategy now. Talk about that in a second. Someone says with the amount of injuries those scooters have caused, they better have a great legal team. Yeah, that's probably. I bet. Honestly, that's a. That's a real cost for them.

[B]

Okay, I have netcash used in investing activities. I can't find the actual statement right now, but 2025, 111 million on 345 million in gross profit. Revenue is like 800 something million, so it's not terrible.

[A]

What's their cost of sales paying people to bring these things back to their chargers?

[B]

Yeah, well, cost of revenue. Boom. Wow. Speak of the devil. I was right. Scrolling on it. Cost of revenue is depreciation. Okay. They just said it grew because it grew because they're. It said cost of revenue grew because revenue grew, so. All right, well, we don't need to dive into everything left.

[A]

Let's. Yeah, I'll be interested to see what that comes out as. Wasn't there one of these that spacked? That wasn't there like a. Was it all bird or something?

[B]

I thought bird was a stack. It went to zero. Yeah, I like that they have the relationship with Uber. Uber probably professionalized them. Get the DARA stamp. It's nice. And this business model, like I. I think these have value. There should be regulations. There should be speed regulations probably. You should be able to ticket people if they're going crazy in the middle of roads. But it's like a car, right? It's safer than a car.

[A]

Yeah. Speaking of mobility, I had a run in with a self driving Tesla the other day.

[B]

A good run in or a bad run in?

[A]

It just parked itself in the middle of like an intersection basically. Like it didn't know where it was.

[B]

So bad running.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it didn't hit anybody, but.

[B]

So we're not going across the US anytime soon.

[A]

It's just like. Yeah, it made it halfway through the inter intersection, stopped and then just backed out of it.

[B]

Anecdotal evidence for Waymo then that it's still ahead. Still out of the back.

[A]

Yeah. Long ways away. It's kind of. It's feels like this is like the testing ground. Austin seems like the epicenter for testing every self driving car. But let's talk MicroStrategy. Well, formerly MicroStrategy Strategy is down more than 80% from its 2025 highs. It's down, I think 78% this year versus the S&P 500, which is up 24%. It is down. Well, might have changed now, but it was down 20% today. Maybe you can check me there, Brett, but I believe it is.

[B]

That might have been yesterday, but we're down 10%. The stock price is $85. It changes really rapidly. Let's look at where Bitcoin's trading. I haven't thought about that in a long time. Wow. Fifth below 60. Yeah, tough times, tough times.

[A]

Bitcoin is down 40% over the last year, which, seen as strategy, is lever bitcoin play. No surprise that strategy is down more than 80%. They now have $10.6 billion in paper losses on their recent bitcoin purchases. Despite saying that they are never sell, they have started to sell some Bitcoin to cover their preferred dividend. It is estimated that around 15% of Bitcoin in circulation is forever lost. So MicroStrategy, or Strategy, owns just under a million Bitcoin, which accounts for nearly 5% of all Bitcoin out there. And only a small chunk of that bitcoin actually trades hands regularly. So they are a sizable piece of the bitcoin pie.

[B]

Isn't the amount of Bitcoin that's going to get lost increase, Isn't that going to increase steadily?

[A]

Well, I don't see how it could go down. So it seems like the only option is for it to get lost. Yeah.

[B]

What a currency. Beautiful.

[A]

Here's a quote from a medium post that I found informative. So it says, while Bitcoin has high daily trading volume, a massive portion of that volume consists of high frequency trading bots and derivatives, rather than raw spot market depth. If MicroStrategy attempted to liquidate even 10% of its stash, roughly 84,000 Bitcoin worth over more than $5 billion, as that writing it would complete, it would completely overwhelm the available buy orders on order books, causing a severe price cascade. A sharp drop caused by MicroStrategy sales would trigger automatic liquidations of leveraged long positions on crypto exchanges. This creates a domo domino effect. Forced liquidations caused more selling, pushing the price lower, which triggers even more liquidations.

[B]

Don't be too excited.

[A]

I know that sounds like a bit of a doomsday scenario.

[B]

That sounds very nice to me. If we could just take out Bitcoin and MicroStrategy and Michael Saylor at the same time. Gosh.

[A]

Well, they're all tied at the. All tied at the hip now. Okay. Before we take victory laps because this has happened before, it's dropped 50% and whenever the price of bitcoin drops sharply it seems to attract more interest. So it's, I think this gradual just decline over the last six months is what's partly caused it to keep going is people have just gotten bored of it. Capital has probably flown elsewhere to memory. Chip stocks, AI companies, all that stuff. I do think there were a lot of reputable investors that capitulated on this purely for optics. They didn't want to be for just bitcoin in general. Yeah, they, yeah, that's fair. Didn't want to be the, didn't want to receive the criticism of being anti bitcoin and just flipped on it. And so it, I don't know. Yeah, I for one I agree with you there.

[B]

Then there's also the people that were highlighted in that famous Wall street journal piece about MicroStrategy, those investors.

[A]

But those weren't repeatable to begin with. The difference for me is that's what I'm saying.

[B]

That's the MicroStrategy shareholders level lower.

[A]

Yeah. It's strange that Saylor walked into a gold mine with this and credit to him. He made a whole bunch of money initially. He had no reason that he needed to push the risk this far out. Like he could have just had a business with a ton of bitcoin and a ton of capital gains on it and he doubled down on leverage and he's going to have, and he has the preferred dividend, he's going to get

[B]

liquidated if he didn't go into something rational. You just go in, you just keep going until you blow up. It's like the roulette table, options trading, right? All that stuff. You, you need like someone to pull back. Like I know someone that in the bought SpaceX after the IPO went up 30, I go, you should probably dump it. And then they, the money starts talking in your head. They go, no, there's still time for you to get in a week later, like egg on the face. If you're looking from an objective third party perspective without your money at play, you're can go, look, you're acting a little crazy, but when you got the money rolling, you're thinking, you got the dollar signs in your eyes. It's very hard to act rationally. I think that's what happened here. We have a comment here that says, do you guys think MicroStrategy fully collapses into bankruptcy and becomes a for seller of Bitcoin and potentially finally collapses crypto as Ryan mentioned, a man can dream, right? That would be hilarious. But it's a possibility. I don't know if it's going to happen. Maybe if Bitcoin goes up even further from here. We also have a comment that says having a preferred dividend for a company that is levered to a non cash producing asset is wild. That sums it up perfectly.

[A]

Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense from a capital allocation perspective. It's a dumb strategy. No pun intended. If they, you know, if the price of bitcoin does continue to go down, yeah the strategy is going to have to sell and it like that quote I mentioned, it's going to create even more pricing pressure which it's a serious domino effect. So yeah, my guess would be if they go bankrupt there will be a massive crypto collapse. I don't think I'm very. I don't think I'm going out on a ledge saying that. It seems pretty likely. So the and I don't think there's probably any whole lot of bitcoin holders that listen to this podcast regularly anyways. But that's true. It still is a waste of energy. Like there's no need to produce any value to society. There's nothing there.

[B]

Yeah, it's like the excess gold mining

[A]

other than facilitate facilitating crime.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. There's another Wall street one about Iran doing that. All right, should we get a couple listener questions? A lot of substack chat people put in an effort for that so we would like to reciprocate and answer them on the show. First one not sure if this is in your sphere but Pizza Hut being sold to yum by yum. Does this mean that Domino's may have won the pizza war say first yes. And they have won it for the last decade or so and they've kind of just kept increasing their lead or the Uber eats and the door dashes of the world making takeouts so much easier that Friday night pizza and movie is morphing into Thai and binge watch. That's an interesting thesis how Uber eats and doordash can make pizza a little bit be a headwind to any pizza chains. I kind of like it. I I don't think it indicates that like Domino's has officially won. I think they officially won a long time ago but I don't like restaurants in general the GLP1 and customer wallets risk with just the prices in the United States. I can't touch it. I made that mistake an expensive one with Portillo's and I don't plan on making it again.

[A]

Yeah, I'm looking at the Pizza Hut numbers here. Revenue has been flat for five years. Operating income is down 2% over the last five years. I don't think this affects Domino's too much. It's still going to operate. I think it's being half acquired by a private equity group, half acquired by Yum Brands China. So Yum Brands China is absorbing the Pizza Hut China business. It. I do think I remember Jason Moser having this take like six or seven years ago, and he said the. The food delivery providers, DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats, that kind of stuff is going to present competition for the pizza companies. That used to be like the. He was right here in the space. It is funny the way people look at DoorDash and they get absolutely outraged that people pay for food delivery. But pizza delivery, they never had an issue.

[B]

Yeah, everyone. Everyone does that. It always makes, again, value investors. I think that's just our circle. They don't like it. They don't like the splurging on anything. It's got to make sense mathematically. But pizza is definitely a little bit cheaper. All right. We don't have too much time. Maybe the next one, which I added in because I want to talk about this campaign that the Motley fool is doing. How bad of an idea is it to reduce reporting requirements for publicly traded companies from every quarter to every six months? I admit if this happens, I may just stop owning individual stocks and index. I don't know. That might be extreme to just index there because of that. Because you're owning these. If there's like fraud risk or what have you, you're exposed to that. Either way. I want to talk about this campaign that David Garner has spearheaded at the Motley fool to basically. And I'll put a link in the live chat and also maybe I'll put it in the show notes as well. It's essentially a whole campaign to just have as many investors as possible tell the SEC that they need to keep quarterly 10Qs. That's it. Because individuals like ourselves and the Motley fool spirits that of individual investors. They want more information for the individual person listeners or show readers of the Motley fool as opposed to not. And that just gives advantages to the big guys.

[A]

Yeah, it does. 100%. If you don't have the thousand dollars a month to spend on alt data or if you're one of the quads or whatever that puts a satellite up and tracks, you know, foot traffic for certain Places all of a sudden the time between reporting gives an even bigger advantage to the massive asset managers as opposed to the little guy. Obviously we're a little biased because I like to be able to talk about earnings every quarter. But the other part that I was thinking about here is, okay, remitly is 20% of my portfolio. Let's imagine just for fun, it was 50% of my portfolio and I owned the whole thing. Like I, if I own the whole business, how much would I. Brett, you're typing in. It's too loud. Sorry, sorry. The. If I own the whole business, how often would I want updates on it? If it were 50% of my portfolio, how often would I want to know what's going on? If I owned it outright, like if it was my business, I would want an update weekly. I would want to know what's going on as often as possible. Quarterly would almost feel too long, which I think that sort of an ownership attitude is what I think is kind of the right thing to bring to stocks. Even though you're obviously, you don't own the whole thing, but having that attitude makes you act like a rational owner, in my opinion. So I would hate it if I owned an entire business and I got a press release once every six months about how it's doing. That would be, that'd be terrible.

[B]

I agree. Yeah, we have a question here. What if you got more information less frequently and companies didn't have to focus on such a short time frame? They're going to focus on shorter long term if they want to release press releases if they want. Like that's not stopping them right now. I think for investors, if you don't get information from a company every forever long, there's these narratives that can build up. You can have all these things taking hold. For example, like, oh, this company is an AI loser over a three month period and then boom, they just report earnings if it was over. Like the less information is worse. More information, the better at a reasonable time spent for these companies, it's, it's a tough balance.

[A]

Conceptually it makes sense to say, well, if they don't have to spend time reporting to their owners or their investors what the results were, it allows them to focus on the business more. But the UK tried this. A lot of company countries in the EU have tried this. There is zero proof, zero evidence that it results in more investment in the business. Yeah, there's not, doesn't really. I hate, I'm sorry, I hate European reporting. It, it bothers me. It's, it's a nightmare. The trading updates versus the like just have a standardized quarterly report.

[B]

They can't even get working websites to to be honest.

[A]

So has it like the United States has been a pioneer for capital markets and they've. They've been at the forefront of a lot of technological investment and they have not been the. They have not lacked innovation because they have to file a 10Q every three. Three months.

[B]

No. And if that's too much go private. Sorry. Go private.

[A]

This, this, this does get me worked up that but yes I please. If you're an investor you want sign the.

[B]

Sign the thing. Sign the thing. Yeah. The Motley Fool's promoting on their homepage too. So if you can't find in our show notes go on there. All right. One more maybe we can talk some other notes we have. We had yeah wise earnings I guess maybe Ryan we can talk about that too And I had a funny bubble watch that will be very short. Here's one that I think is interesting we talk about for a couple minutes. You might have talked about this in the past but I'd love to hear your process on researching an industry. When you're looking at some company in a particular business model how do you think about competitors and unit economics take payments where there's a million companies. How do you try to find the real strength and compare different focuses. We got to look at a growth rates margins that can tell you a lot right off the bat. Like the best companies are the ones taking market share. So if you look at that that can tell you a lot of things. Peter lynch always said I want market share takers that shows that they're a better business. And then you have to just look at I think qualitative stuff like why does this business model succeed for example and Amazon why did they dominate E commerce is because of the vertical integration and fast delivery with wide selection look at payments while like Adyen is the best in class execution that people have failed to replicate. You kind of got to look at it that way now it takes a look at the rest of the industry but one add in's a market share taker. Adding's a faster grower. They have better margins. And then qualitatively you look at that business model and I think it's better you can't. Every industry I can't get that simple on and maybe they put those in the two hard piles but for the ones that you look at that's where I'm trying to find some sort of angle of differentiation.

[A]

Yeah. Payments specifically Is kind of a tough one just because there's so many sub industries within payments. But for me I'd love to say I have like a standard approach for diving into a new industry but unless I find like a really good write up that breaks down the industry overall, I typically kind of go at it with a one company approach. Like one company at a time. Get to know the business who's their biggest competitor. Okay. Get to know that business. Just kind of go competitor after competitor. My general principle or my general rule that I try to follow is at least take a look or study whatever that requires on your end. Whether it's reading transcripts, reading reports, anything like that. Each the company you're looking at biggest competitor. Because usually you know in a duopoly oligopoly you can get a pretty good sense of how the industry is growing, who the important players are, how they differentiate based on product by just a few company specific deep dives. Is there. I mean I can't think of other than great sub stacks that maybe break down an industry. I can't think of any real standard way that I would go top down.

[B]

I usually google the absolute basics from an AI deep research report. But yeah, reading some of the company 10Ks can help. And it's just over time you kind of develop any sort of knowledge on an industry. We have a comment here from Tyler saying Prague holdings has been on a run. Yeah, we kind of disregarded that. A nice run there. So yeah, shout out to those returns on that one. What about Ryan? Do you want to look at Wise Live? Yeah, supposed to give out a trading. I'm speaking of European companies with nonsense standards. They are transitioning I believe to the United States. Right, let's get them out of that.

[A]

Speaking of this is one of the, this is one of the things I like the most about fiscal AI. I went to the Wise investor relations page. It takes me so long to find their latest report. It said look at our latest trading update. It was from 2025 so. And that was right on the main, main screen of their investor relations page. They reported today pulling this up on fiscal right now.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's the one I just clicked on. Is from. Yeah, a year ago. Wow.

[A]

Yeah, these IR pages are horrendous. Anyway, here's. Let's go through some of the headlines. Their business highlights. They increased their competitive advantage through infrastructure with two new direct connections to domestic payment systems in Brazil or Japan helping drive down costs, increase speeds. Okay, yeah, you know good bunch of partnerships there. 21% increase in active customers in 2026 driving a 31% increase in cross border volume. More customers continue to use Wise for their daily financial needs. Customers are now holding $39 billion through their accounts with WISE and last year spent 44 billion on their WISE cards. Both those numbers are growing more than 30% year over year. Income before taxes $660 million on revenue of 2.5 billion for the full year. Everything looks good. Honestly, it seems like progress. There wasn't any standout financials that I've saw or I've seen so far.

[B]

PE is 22. What do you think? Still. Still buying. Still buying every. Every holding you deposit, holding, holding, opportunity,

[A]

cost right now I just think there's other stuff that I like more but yeah, I wouldn't fault anyone for buying. I think I've said this before but this to me is kind of up there in terms of the emerging moats. Feels like they continue to drive down cross border fees and they are increasing the functionality or the value they provide to customers in their app. With the card and the save, I mean you really can do. You can save money, you can spend money, you can send money. It really is a convenient app for anyone that does a lot of work across borders. Whether you're traveling and you want to spend. Whether you work with anyone across borders.

[B]

The stock's pretty much in a five year drawdown. So I think there's some frustration out there but they continue to compound and stocks getting a little bit cheaper. Before we get out of here, I want one fun bubble watch of the week. I hope you didn't click on this so I can just read what they said. Allbirds is now smartbirds and its AI focused CEO says quote, people won't even remember the shoes. Well, I think they're not going to remember the shoes in 10 years because those had fallen out of style. But another weekly update on some of the AI nonsense you were saying in San Francisco.

[A]

Yeah, if they didn't rebrand, people still wouldn't remember the shoes in 10 years. It's. Oh my gosh.

[B]

That's funny stuff, dude.

[A]

This is so. It's just throwing any reputation out the window for the company and my. Maybe I should. This should be my hate portfolio. The. You know the. I was talking about it earlier in the show. Companies you hate invest in. Maybe this will be it. It could get meme stocked. This could work. I hope not, but it could.

[B]

Yeah. Let's see. Did they redo their ticker? Where are we trading at?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Smart bird. $4. It. It means. Well, it went down before they rebranded to 250, then it mean to 15, and now we're back to 4, so not much. Not much there.

[A]

Did you know shares of remitly are up 66% this year?

[B]

I'm well aware. Yeah.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Yeah, it's been a good recovery this year.

[A]

Yeah, I did not realize that until I checked today. I also saw a headline. This is slightly old news that Microsoft is considering spinning off Xbox.

[B]

Yeah, that would be, I guess, kind of meaningless for Microsoft because it's such a big business, but I'd be curious to see the financials and what it's like as a publicly traded business. I think it's probably a much worse business than Nintendo, but I'd like my theory confirmed.

[A]

Yeah, I. I would guess it's probably more cyclical than people think. Like you kind of think. The Xbox ecosystem is all digital now for the most part, but I bet there's still a lot of revenue tied to that hardware cycle there. I probably would not have much of an interest. I mean, Activision would get lumped in there and acquisition may. Activision Blizzard may have been one of the worst acquisitions of all time.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

It's got to be up there.

[B]

I agree, but. I agree.

[A]

All right. I think we're running up on time. Thank you to everyone for tuning in. Thank you for all the comments in the chat. We want to remind listeners that Brett and I are not financial advisors. Anything we say or discuss here on Chit Chat stocks is not formal advice or recommendation. We may buy, sell, or hold any of the securities discussed in this podcast. Thank you all again for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Sam.