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- [00:05]
Travis Hoium
Oil continues to climb, but is there any relief in sight? Motley Fool Money starts now.
- [00:26]
Dan Kaplinger
Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money
- [00:32]
Unidentified Vocal Interjections
are free.
- [00:33]
Dan Kaplinger
But you can give them to the From Fool Global headquarters.
- [00:39]
Lou Whiteman
This is Motley Fool Money.
- [00:40]
Travis Hoium
Welcome to MLY Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoyam, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Dan Kaplinger. And, guys, we're going to get to space. Space is going to be a big topic here today, but we do want to start with the oil markets. This is kind of the thing that everybody in the market is thinking about, if not talking about. And Dan, I wanted to get your thoughts on what's going on, because oil is not your typical market. It's a physical product. It's traded years out in the futures contracts. And we have this straight A Hormuz. It is more or less closed. 20% of the oil in the world goes through that straight. What are we seeing in oil markets? Because it seems like prices are up. We're at about $110 per barrel for both West Texas Intermediate and also Brent crude right now. But it seems like people in the oil industry continue to be worried that things are going to get much worse, but they're not yet. So what's the real story here?
- [01:34]
Dan Kaplinger
Well, it's interesting because there are so many different perspectives to look at this from. From the perspective of the American consumer, things look pretty bad. I mean, gas prices where I live were around $2.80 a gallon in December. They're up about a dollar per gallon, up around 380. I think that regardless of what the actual level is, that dollar increase is pretty consistent across the country. And it's interesting because a lot of folks have suggested that the US Is insulated from the impact of this because we don't necessarily depend directly on Persian Gulf oil. But when you look at some of the other countries that do depend more on Persian Gulf oil, they have not even seen the percentage price increases we have. Korea was up about 15%. Japan's up in the 15 to 20% area. We're up closer to 30 to 35%. So it's kind of interesting how the macroeconomics are playing out here. The other thing, and this threatens to get a little bit wonky about futures markets and things like that.
- [02:43]
Travis Hoium
But no, let's get wonky. This, this is what I want to explain because it's, this is you could spend your whole life just studying what the futures markets are. There an entire class that I took in grad school doing the formulas of how you price things like oil, and it's fascinating. It's a big reason that things are not higher than they currently are.
- [03:02]
Dan Kaplinger
Yeah. So oil futures are in an unusual situation right now. Just for those who aren't familiar with this, you can buy oil at a specific price at a specific point in time in the future, and the prices will be different depending on when you want it. If you want it at a high demand time, the price is going to be higher. If you want it at a lower demand time, the price is going to be lower. Right now we have this huge disparity. Front month, the current month, if you want oil right now, $110 a barrel. If you are willing to wait until the end of 2026, much lower, $40 a barrel lower still, $70. Oil futures, a year and a half out, they're only up $10 a barrel. Prices of the front month are up like $50 a barrel. So what this is telling folks, this is a situation, it's called backwardation in the futures markets. And what this is telling people is that at least the financial folks trading these futures don't think that oil supply is going to be a problem for very long. They think that something's going to happen, supply is going to get restored and prices are going to go back at least pretty close to where they were before all of this started. Which is a little bit surprising because we've got some folks saying things like, well, the infrastructure's all mess stop and it's going to take a long time for everything to get back to normal. And so there's kind of a disconnect between what these futures markets are saying and what you're hearing a lot of experts talking about as far as, like, the physical production and movement of oil across the global market.
- [04:38]
Lou Whiteman
I mean, just to underline that the oil futures market does a lot of things. It reflects a lot of things. It reflects investor psychology, it affects some form of speculation. But it also, immediate financial hedging is a big mover of markets here. It does not reflect the underlying physical supply or demand for oil at any given time. So it's a tough thing to do right now to kind of look at it. I think we need to focus on supply and what is actually in the refineries and not on the price. But that's a lot harder to look at. So that's why we look at price.
- [05:16]
Travis Hoium
Well, that seems to be the other piece is the difference between. We talked, I think, last week about crack spreads, which is the difference between the price of the refined products of gasoline and the price of oil itself. And that seems to be one of the challenges today is hey, you know, we can provide you gasoline, but we don't necessarily know, depending on where you are in the world, if we're going to have oil to actually refine in the future. And so there is this kind of delay too. The other thing is, you know, the straight of Hormuzzi, it's a couple of days to get to India, it's two weeks to get to the US So there is this time lag difference too, Dan, that just seems to be kind of complicating things. But you're right. The, the, the market is typically smarter than any individual person and the market is telling us that this is not going to be a big deal. So is it something we should just kind of look past in these, these kind of wonky pieces in the oil market are just going to kind of kind of figure themselves out.
- [06:15]
Dan Kaplinger
And I think it's too early to conclude that because you often will see these markets see major disruptions, they'll see major moves in one direction or another. They're very responsive to current events. You'll see five, ten dollar a barrel moves in a single day based on, okay, there was an attack, there was damage to a major facility, or there was progress in negotiations, there was some sort of deal starting to get European countries involved with that. And oil's fungible. It kind of doesn't matter. Iran could say we're never going to send oil to the US again. But if it just continues to provide, if it opens markets back up, if it starts selling oil to European countries, to Asia Pacific countries back at their normal regular volumes, then the global markets are fine. It's just a matter of allocating what's in the global market between the US and other providers. So that I think to me it's too early to conclude that the futures market is right and all of the technical experts are wrong. Because like Lou said, there's some financial wrangling going on with the futures markets. It doesn't always reflect what's actually happening in the physical world. What's happening at the individual oil well level, at the pipeline level, at the tanker level. You got to look at all of that.
- [07:36]
Travis Hoium
Lou. The other piece that I'm ultimately more concerned about then specifically what's going to happen with oil is what happens to the economy. And one of the data points that we got before we started recording is that the jobs market's actually doing pretty well. Jobs were up, unemployment was down slightly. I think everything was better than expected in that report by and large. So it doesn't seem like this incremental step up in prices. And this is only we're only a month or so into this, so maybe we wouldn't see some of that data yet. But is an economic impact something that we should at least be thinking about investors as investors? Because the market is, you know, at or near correction territory with the nasdaq. So the market's starting to pull back a little bit. If oil stays elevated and this backwardation that you know, Dan is talking about doesn't stick and we start to go to 140, $150 a barrel, it seems like that would impact the economy, but that's not actually what we're seeing.
- [08:33]
Lou Whiteman
Yeah. So let's take a step back because I think it helps answer this question about this whole because we talk about a lot that the US is a net exporter and what Dan's talking about. How insulated are we? We are a net exporter, but that can kind of be deceiving because that is refined products too. We export a lot of petroleum. We still import crude. So we are actually still very dependent on the world for crude. We're not energy independent. Fortunately, less than 10% of that comes through the Gulf. So we again, the Saudi oil doesn't really mean what's going to straight in our news isn't too important for us. That's a global story. But we still do need this idea that, well, since we have energy, we can just stop exports and shut it down and let the rest of the world have a problem that really doesn't work. So where does this leave us with the economy? Should we be watching it? Yes, absolutely. Does it lead to a recession? I mean, I hate to answer this way, but the answer is maybe it's definitely a headwind. We definitely have headwinds already. Seems like the US consumer is doing okay in aggregate. We've talked about that. Like the consumer. That's a tough thing to read. Jobs number is strong. If I had to guess, I do think there's enough headwinds that we will end up in at least a mild recession in 2026 as all of this ripples in as remember, we still have the tariffs rippling in. There's just so much going on. I don't know if I'm worried about a terrible recession and I don't, you know, it's a given. It's never a given. Yeah, I'm worried.
- [10:08]
Dan Kaplinger
If nothing else, it's funny though, because we've been saying this for so long, we have so many of these factors that have been like, oh, well, the consumer's got to give up now. Consumer sentiment is terrible right now. Nobody's certain about what's going on, and yet the economy just keeps plugging along. And so I agree with you 100%, Lou. But I have agreed in the past with that sentiment and that sentiment has just been 100% wrong. Right. You know, in the past, in the recent past.
- [10:39]
Travis Hoium
Yeah. This is why I think, you know, as foolish investors, we talk about the long term. What, what sort of investments are going to do well over the next five, 10, 20 years because it's so hard to predict what's going to happen over the next six months, particularly with the economy. The other thing to throw into this is the dollar is getting stronger. So, so, you know, I don't know how that will complicate things from an economic perspective, but lots to think about as, as you know, this conflict continues and oil prices are going to be something we're probably going to be talking about for quite a while here on the show. When we come back, we're going to talk about the space economy, potential 2 trillion dollar IPO. You're listening to Motley Fool.
- [11:15]
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- [12:31]
Travis Hoium
Fly me to the moon Let
- [12:34]
Unidentified Vocal Interjections
me play among the stars.
- [12:38]
Travis Hoium
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Space is hot and so is SpaceX. They have apparently officially filed for a confidential public listing. It doesn't really sound like it's that confidential if everybody knows that it happens. But they're looking at Potentially, Lou, a $2 trillion valuation. That's a huge number. Can you help me make sense of this?
- [13:01]
Lou Whiteman
Well, see, I can't because the part that's confidential is all of the numbers, which is what we'd like to talk about. But look, let's talk about what's going on here because there's a lot of market dynamics going on here. Nothing illegal, nothing unfounded, but this is just how it works. SpaceX, as we all know, has a huge number of shares outstanding, all of its investors, employees, all of that, but they don't sell all of those shares in an IPO. They don't need to come up with 2 trillion. And I think that's so important because we're talking about, oh, can the market support a 2 trillion doll trillion dollar IPO? They only need to come up with 80 billion or whatever. They end up pricing just that small sliver they're going to sell. Given how hot space is and given investor interest in Elon Musk, I don't think it's a surprise that they can raise 80 or 100 billion. And that's a lot more reasonable sounding than the 2 trillion number. There's a lot of other levers here. I know Dan loves to talk about the index, so we can get into that. But look, this is a very, very big company with a very large share count. There's all they need to do is sell this small amount and gosh, there's interest. So Yeah, I mean, 2 trillion, 3 trillion, who knows what they can get to if they, if they squeeze enough, eventually.
- [14:14]
Travis Hoium
That matters though, doesn't it? Because eventually the lockup period, you talked about all the investors, those investors, this is what you would call an exit. And that means that they get to take their money out. And even if there's a three month or a six month lockup period, you would think that eventually the number of shares being sold in the public market, the float is going to increase pretty dramatically.
- [14:35]
Lou Whiteman
Absolutely. The better question is can they sustain that valuation? Not the valuation they can get on the first day, can they? Look, I feel like we're redebating Tesla. As people have been saying for years, we can't sustain that. I think I'd probably take the under on whether or not, it's still over 2 trillion. If, you know, if it goes out of 2 trillion in six months. But I don't think it's going to fall dramatically. I think there is a lot of excitement, a lot of interest here. There is definitely market support for this ipo. It's big numbers, it matters and stuff. But we're almost talking semantics, whether or not on what level can IT support there is interest here. And that's what you need to do an ipo.
- [15:19]
Dan Kaplinger
Travis, I want to point out one thing about the exit that you talked about. It's true that the most obvious exit is just selling the shares outright. But recently we've had more and more investor, more and more employees, high level employees with big stock holdings. They never sell shares. Instead they'll go to a broker, they'll make an arrangement. They will pledge shares as collateral. They will have a loan facility that lets them draw money out of it. The shares never get sold. It is at that point in everyone's best interest, the shareholder, the bank, the lending bank, to keep the share price as high as possible. And so those shares never actually trade hands. Elon Musk has done that to great success over the course of his career. I suspect that his best employees have seen that and are willing to emulate it. And so I will be curious to what extent the investors that have gotten in on SpaceX pre IPO decide to fully exit versus using one of these alternative strategies.
- [16:21]
Travis Hoium
The other thing a lot of these investors can do is just distribute the shares so that they can take their management fees for being a hedge fund or whatever sort of fund you're investing with. Lou, I wanted to ask you about the space economy because this is ultimately what we're buying if we're going to be buying the SpaceX IPO. And just so people are aware, I believe the date now is they're looking at June as a potential IPO date. So sometime between now and June, we will get the full S1. That's where you get the information about the financials, how many shares are going to be sold, all of that. Those kind of details will, I'm sure, cover those on the show when they come out. But what is interesting about the space economy, because that's really what we're buying, and I'm still a little bit confused of exactly what that's going to look like five or ten years from now.
- [17:09]
Lou Whiteman
Travis Space is the final frontier. It's a chance to boldly. Oh, sorry, no. Okay. There are estimates all over the place here. The most Famous one is Morgan Stanley saying it true. Billion in space revenue by 2040, that's like the North Star. SpaceX, we don't know exactly, but it's maybe 16 billion today. So they're not going to have half of that trillion even if it comes. But there is at least a there there for growth. How's it going to grow? I mean, in theory there are a lot of things you can do in space. I'm going to take the under on the databases in space, at least for the foreseeable future. A lot of the exotic things, but there are a lot of ways that companies can benefit from the data you can get from space, the incremental positives. The government militaries are increasingly interested there. There's a lot of revenue potential there. Just like every other market excitement, there are winners and losers here. Not everyone is going to make it. Valuations are all over the place, but they're mostly high. It's the Wild west, it's early days, just like all of these markets go. But there is a real path towards revenue growth on the global government and commercial side. And that is what SpaceX as a leader here, and give them credit, they are a leader here. That's what they're leaning into with the ipl.
- [18:30]
Travis Hoium
Dan, the other piece of this is you have a social media and AI business attached to SpaceX that seems like it's like the new version of a conglomerate.
- [18:40]
Dan Kaplinger
Yeah, and kind of the negative version of the conglomerate. I mean, space stocks are hot, but boy, social media is kind of taking it on the chin lately. And so putting X Twitter in with SpaceX seems like the negative side of putting things together in a conglomerate. At the same time, you also have xai, which I think that there's probably some investors who would have preferred that the AI side be a pure play and be divorced from the space stuff because they share Lou's confusion about, okay, well, what is the space economy? What is SpaceX really focused on if you mix those two in? Well, it's kind of like, well, AI is not just a space data center play. AI is much more more than that. And so the combination here, I'm not sure what Musk gets out of it. It seems to complicate things. But like Lou said, we have to wait for the paperwork before we actually know what this thing is going to look like for investors.
- [19:36]
Lou Whiteman
I'll just say I'm kind of pro, just one ticker to invest in Elon Musk's vision. If anything, that's an argument just merge with Tesla too, but I kid we're not going to do that. Elon Musk doesn't need my advice.
- [19:49]
Travis Hoium
Not yet.
- [19:50]
Lou Whiteman
Yeah, every banker is already on this deal. But Elon, I might say we talked at the beginning. They're only selling a small number of shares to get a massive valuation. That's impressive on paper given the XAI need. Maybe though, get a lower valuation somewhere shares and actually fill the cash coffers. I don't know. Just an idea. I know it wouldn't be as cool as 2 trillion, but maybe they're making the wrong move here.
- [20:14]
Travis Hoium
Travis when we come back, we're going to talk about the stocks we like in the market right now. You're listening to Motley Fool. Money.
- [20:24]
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- [21:45]
Travis Hoium
Welcome back to Motley fool money. In this segment, we like to have a little bit of fun. And so I thought today we could all draft a little mini portfolio. So we got a lot of concerns. What's going on with with the market dropping a little bit in 2026, we talked about oil and the economy. There's always opportunities in the market. So where are we seeing those opportunities? We're going to each pick five stocks. I'm even going to play along this week. Lou, you are up first. Who's the first stock you're putting in your little five stock portfolio?
- [22:13]
Lou Whiteman
I'm going to play the hits here. I'm going to play my hits and I'm going to start out with one of my oldest investments and I think it's just a great opportunity today. TransDigm ticker TDG. This aerospace parts manufacturer that somehow over time has managed 45% plus gross margins and continuously. They do it in a neat way. This is a stock. This is only up 2,360% in the last two decades, Travis. So not bad.
- [22:40]
Travis Hoium
That's not bad.
- [22:41]
Lou Whiteman
Not bad. They are right now trading near a 52 week low. They are not exposed to the right part of the cycle right now which has been holding them back. But this has always been a private equity firm masked as an operating company. They're very good at deal making. They have $10 billion in M& a firepower at the disposal. Now it's a reasonable valuation. I hold this company as long as I can and now looks like a good time to add Dan.
- [23:09]
Dan Kaplinger
First up for me, Booking Holdings Ticker bkng. This is the online travel agency that has the namesake booking. It has Priceline, it's got Kayak, it's got a whole bunch of different properties underlying there. And it has been sort of under attack lately because people are worried that artificial intelligence is going to get good enough that you're just going to ask your favorite chatbot to set you up with a trip with the hotel and the airfare and you know, rental car, whatever else you need and it's going to take care of everything for you. That they say is going to hurt booking. But I'm skeptical. I think that AI users are going to end up appreciating the customized AIs that these legacy companies have put together. Booking working hard to make sure that its AI capabilities are up to snuff. And I think that with proprietary data they will be able to do a better job than all purpose models will be able to do. Booking also about to do a stock split. Its shares have been over $4,000 a share and that's going to change. I think that, you know, stock splits don't add any value but they do attract investor attention and that is why I am suggesting that as the first stock I'm talking about today, the forward
- [24:29]
Travis Hoium
price earnings multiple for booking is 15. That's I don't remember ever seeing it that low. I haven't looked at them in a
- [24:35]
Dan Kaplinger
while but I like the growth has slowed. But not to the extent that you would expect a sub 20 forward PDE for sure.
- [24:44]
Travis Hoium
Yeah. I'm going to kind of stick with the theme of AI is not going to disrupt the way that people actually use technology. Alphabet look, this is an AI play in a lot of different ways. It's also a play on when my wife uses AI, she's just using the Google search bar. That's the way that most people are going to use artificial intelligence in the future. I don't think that we're going to be wearing some sort of, you know, AI pin or anything like that. It's going to look a lot like it looked in the past. Guess what? The winners are going to keep winning. Alphabet is going to be the biggest of those. The capex numbers are insane right now and I think they will eventually come down. But guess what? If they come down, you get more cash flow from Alphabet. So I love where they're sitting. YouTube is undervalued. I think Waymo is probably hiding a ton of value in there. So this is the easy button in AI Alphabet. My first pick. Lou, you're up.
- [25:42]
Lou Whiteman
All right. So I'm contractually obligated to have at least one Brad Jacobs company, right? Because I got to do my stick. The one I chose is qxo, the newest one. Jacobs, for those who don't know yet, is a serial entrepreneur behind United rentals, United Waste XPO, two of the three biggest winners in the Fortune 500 over the last decade. QXO is a roll up of building product distributions. They just did their second acquisition, Kodiak and distributor of construction supplies Lumber Windows. If I'm honest, it's fairly valued for what it is today. It's a $13 billion or so company but they are hoping to or their plan is to get to 50 billion in sales in a year. That's to come. Tons of risk. Very much an M and A story but no one is better at M and A. I like this as a growth story.
- [26:31]
Dan Kaplinger
Dan up number two for me. Moderna Ticker M, R N A. Everybody wrote this stock off. This is one stock. This is like the one time that I have been successful in averaging down. I was a big loser on a small portion that I bought above 200 a share it ended up getting down below or almost to $20 a share at one point. Obviously the company famous for its COVID 19 vaccine. But I saw the COVID 19 vaccine not as a long term producer in itself but as a proof of concept for the MRNA technology which the company would then apply to Other diseases, other treatments. I think that that plan is kind of on track really, and investors are starting to see it. That stock price has gone up from 20 to. It was recently up to about 50 or so. I think there's more upside ahead. And the stock and the company have been kind of unexpectedly resilient in the face of a hostile environment from the federal government at this point. For the core Covid stuff just kind of proves that. I think the company is making big strides towards diversifying its portfolio and kind of proving the value of its technology in being able to treat a wider variety of diseases and health conditions.
- [27:54]
Travis Hoium
Yeah. While the stock is still in a 90% drawdown from its peak during COVID but it has almost doubled in just the past, I guess, four months or so. So, yeah, wild run here for over the last few years for Moderna, I am going to go with another easy button stock that is Uber. Look, self driving vehicles, particularly Tesla, were supposed to destroy businesses like Uber. I think we're seeing now with all of the announcements that they have, all the companies that are putting fully autonomous vehicles, a lot of them still have safety drivers. We're starting to get to the point where they're pulling those safety drivers. Uber is going to be the app that we interact with. Whether you're looking for a ride, whether you're looking for some food or even to order physical products. You know, I think you can buy a TV from Best Buy and get Uber to deliver it to your house. This is just one of those businesses I think is going to be much bigger a decade from now than it is today. So that's why it's number two on my list. Lou, you are up next.
- [28:55]
Lou Whiteman
All right, next up, I'm going to go with Nelnet, a silly little company with a weird name, but they are all over the place. And student loans, servicing payments, school software. They have a venture capital arm including Huddle, which is very, very popular among high school athletes. Expanding its banking and financial services. This company has quietly beat the S&P 500 over the last five years and even longer. I think that they are just now hitting its stride, gaining momentum. I really, really like this company. I wish they'd rename it so maybe investors would get more interested. But really, really solid under the radar over performer.
- [29:33]
Travis Hoium
Dan, what do you got?
- [29:35]
Dan Kaplinger
I'm taking a page from Ray Dalio's playbook over at Bridgewater Associates and trying to incorporate some inflation commodity exposure. My Pick here, Freeport McMoRan ticker FCX, major copper and gold producer, Big copper producer. It has had its share of operational challenges. Its biggest copper mine in Indonesia has faced some operational issues. But we all know what the gold market has done over the past year or so. It has been an effective diversifier for portfolios. That's the whole Dalio approach is basically put yourself in a situation where you can benefit from growth, but you're not overexposed to recessionary conditions. You can benefit from stable pricing, but you are able to fend off inflation. I think that Freeport McMoRan gives you that commodity exposure in the form of a stock so you don't have to deal with all those futures markets that we were talking about earlier in the show. And it gives you an ability to kind of counts a little bit as an allocation to gold, which a lot of people have been wondering, okay, well how do you do that? Is that something that you should do? And the price has already gone up so much. I think it's a good balance with Freeport McMoRan because their big thing is more copper than it is gold. But you still get the gold exposure as kind of a icing on the cake.
- [30:58]
Travis Hoium
I'm going to go with another unloved company in the market. I like the contrarian plays. Disney. Disney gets a lot of flack right now, but shares are trading for 14 times earnings basically on a forward and trailing basis. I was talking with a friend last night about who was just at Disney World about the run that they've been on. You know we talk about not having original, original IP in the last 13 years. We have Frozen, Moana, Encanto, Zootopia. Is there actually a, is there a better 13 year run for Disney? I, I don't know. You could maybe say, you know, the, the 90s, the 94 year run or so that they had in the 90s. But for original IP, this is actually kind of a boon for Disney and they don't get credit for that. They're investing 6, 60 billion dollars in the parks. The parks alone are generating 10 billion dollars a year in operating income. And guess what, they're all under construction. So they're going to be bigger, they're going to be getting more people in, they're going to be charging more money in the future. I think this is, we're going to look back at this as one of those opportunities with Disney. Just one of those companies that if you think about things are going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence. One thing that isn't is those real world experiences like going to Disney World. So Disney add it to Your watch list. Let's rapid fire here. We got two left for each of us in a couple of minutes. So Lou, why don't you drop two on this.
- [32:20]
Lou Whiteman
So this is my, I'm just sticking with my weird name portfolio here, I guess. But two more real quick. Truist Financial tfc. I mean regional banks are out of favor. They might remain out of favor for a while, but you get Truist Financial, a good company in the Southeast and Mid Atlantic, a decently run bank trading below book value and with almost a 5% dividend yield. These are the times to ride through the headwinds and find good banks. Last one we talked about, space economy. I have to have my rocket ship. Rocket lab is my pick for this. Space economy. I like it better than SpaceX, even if they're both public. 38 billion today. I can't justify it. Today they do what they hope to do. 38 billion is going to look cheap. So high risk, high reward.
- [33:06]
Dan Kaplinger
Travis, my last two. I'm going with one. Microsoft. It's in the same category as you put Alphabet in kind of the beaten down mag 7. Unappreciated company. I had good experience with Alphabet when Alphabet was out of favor. Alphabet's now in favor and Microsoft has moved out. People are concerned, I think concerned about OpenAI status in AI adoption, concerned about Microsoft's ability to get its users to use its Copilot AI program. But I believe Satya Nadella has been, you know, has established himself as being able to recognize these cross currents and navigate them and find a way through. So I think that if you're looking at a Mag 7 stock, Microsoft's the one I'm looking at. And then Berkshire Hathaway ticker brk, it's the biggest holding in my portfolio. It kind of never goes out of season. It has some energy exposure, which I like. And we have recently gotten word that there is sort of a Greg Abel put in the form of stock repurchases. The company said it started making stock repurchases earlier this quarter for the first time in quite a while. And so that kind of reassured shareholders that the transition away from Warren Buffett as CEO may not have the price disruption in the stock that people were worried about.
- [34:27]
Travis Hoium
I'm going to throw it into it a couple of companies that I don't think are going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence in the way that a lot of investors currently do into it. We're going to have to do our taxes somewhere. Accounting has got to happen somewhere. I don't think we're just going to throw it into a chatbot. They're trading for 16 times forward earnings. Nobody likes paying that bill to into it when you got to do your taxes. But in the next couple of weeks, a lot of us are going to going to be paying them a little bit of money to to help file their taxes. The other one is workday. Guess What? All these AI companies use Workday so why not own Workday 12 times forward earnings. I just think another one disruption probably not on their horizon possible but but definitely like the pricing there. When we come back, we're gonna get to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley W.
- [35:17]
Unidentified Vocal Interjections
And Blue. People shuffling our feet, people sleeping in their shoes. There's a warning sign on the road ahead. There's a lot of people saying we be better off and don't feel like Satan. But I am the lamb. So I try to forget any way I can.
- [35:43]
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- [36:11]
Travis Hoium
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are a sponsored concert and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. All right, I wanted to touch on brands a little bit here before we get to radar stocks. And the news this week was that Nike had a pretty weak earnings report. Their sales are down on a constant currency basis. Dan, are we at the point where these brands, Nike has been an outlier? You think about the rise and fall of Reebok, Fubu, Jerbo. If you go back to my youth, was this just inevitable that Nike would hit this wall eventually? And this is just what happens to brands.
- [37:00]
Dan Kaplinger
It often happens. I don't think it's inevitable. You can find some outliers out there. I mean, chocolate bars are boring. So Hershey and Nestle went Bey. They brought in KitKat. They got 8,000 different KitKat flavors. And now people care about it again. You know, when you and I When I was kids, when Lou and I were kids, you know, you got the LEGO sets that you had to, like, build it yourself. You had to come up with what you were doing.
- [37:22]
Travis Hoium
Oh, we had the bucket. Yep.
- [37:23]
Dan Kaplinger
Now it's like you buy the F1 car set, you charge 900 bucks for it. There's like sophisticated instructions and stuff. So, you know, some, some brands survive, but a lot aren't able to make that disruptive move.
- [37:36]
Unidentified Vocal Interjections
Move.
- [37:37]
Lou Whiteman
I mean, look, Nike is what it is. I don't find it an attractive investment, but this is still a massive company that is profitable and is kind of growing. At least we're getting the benefit of the doubt. I think this is one of these cases, and I see it so much, I'll even be controversial and throw out Starbucks and Lululemon as investors. There's a difference between the company is fine and I want to invest in it. And I think Nike's just at the point that, yeah, there are better investments out there, at least to my eye.
- [38:08]
Travis Hoium
Yeah, we'll likely see their shoes for a long time to come. Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a great stock. All right, we like to end the show with stocks on our radar. We'll bring in Dan Boyd from behind the glass. Dan Kaplinger, you're up first. What's on your radar this week?
- [38:22]
Dan Kaplinger
All right, Dan, the stock I'm bringing to you today, York Space Systems Ticker yss. It just went through its IPO in January. This is a company, it's a pure play in this new space economy. And what it's trying to be, it's trying to be sort of the cost conscious provider of a lot of these services, satellite launches and things like that. They are using modular manufacturing to try to keep costs down. This is something that the Department of War has really liked to see, and it is gaining acceptance in the US Government and with other providers as well. The stock did lose half its value after its ipo, but it has started to bounce back. It's regained almost all of that. Artemis 2's launch, they had a big day the day after that. I do think the SpaceX IPO is going to initially pull away capital from investors who are interested in these space stocks. But if it is helpful for space overall, York should benefit from it at some point eventually.
- [39:25]
Travis Hoium
Dan, what do you think about York Space Systems?
- [39:28]
Dan Boyd
I mean, it sounds like Mr. Kavindler is telling us to get in on the ground floor here for York Space Systems, but such a recent ipo, I'm
- [39:38]
Dan Kaplinger
a little Bit wary.
- [39:39]
Travis Hoium
Lou, what's on your radar this week?
- [39:41]
Lou Whiteman
So, Dan, JMO couldn't make it. So I feel it's my responsibility to talk about McCormick Ticker MKC. All right. It was a big week for our favorite spice maker. They delivered a top and bottom line. Quarterly beat also announced a massive merger. McCormick Cormic is going to combine with the food assets of Unilever in a deal valued at more than $40 billion. And, Dan, finally someone has the courage to combine Frank's Red Hot with mayonnaise. We've all wanted it, right? Yeah, I don't know. But look, the market didn't react well to this deal. It's huge. And failed combinations like Kraft Heinz spring to mind. And I'll concede McCormick management has a full plate here. You see what I did? JMO would like that. But I think scale matters in this business, and I think McCormick is better managed than Kraft. Hein. At least intrigued here, kind of watching this. Lot of risk, but a lot of potential rewards here as they kind of fill up the shopping cart.
- [40:36]
Travis Hoium
Dan, we didn't make any spice must flow puns during the oil segment, but what do you think about the spice flowing with McCormick?
- [40:44]
Dan Boyd
You know, mixing hot sauce and mayonnaise there?
- [40:47]
Travis Hoium
Lou, did I lose you there?
- [40:49]
Lou Whiteman
Did I lose you?
- [40:49]
Dan Boyd
No, no. It's a restaurant staple for decades at this point. Any, like, tangy spicy sauce that you're going to find next to your chicky tendies at the restaurant is probably just a mayonnaise and hot sauce mixture. And McCormick's got them both. The big ones, Cholula and Frank's Red Hot, which is saying something about their catalog.
- [41:09]
Travis Hoium
All right, Dan, which one is going on your watch list?
- [41:11]
Dan Boyd
I like it spicy today, Mr. Travis. I'm gonna go. McCormick.
- [41:15]
Lou Whiteman
There you go.
- [41:16]
Travis Hoium
Sorry, Dan. Next time. There's a lot of space. Space stocks today, so if you are interested in space, hopefully we gave you some. Some good ideas to research.
- [41:25]
Lou Whiteman
Dan, pro tip, you might have done better with the York Peppermint Patty.
- [41:29]
Dan Kaplinger
I know. That's what I was thinking.
- [41:31]
Dan Boyd
Now we're talking.
- [41:32]
Travis Hoium
All right. Thanks to Lou and Dan and Dan Boyd behind the glass, I'm Travis William. We'll see you here next.