A (3:00)

Rachel, is this kind of the trend that we're going to is you get into these ecosystems even with something like Spotify? I have a family of five, my kids both have accounts on Spotify. Sure, I can switch, but there is switching costs that are involved too. And so for investors, the good news here is these go from, you know, money losing companies. They were growing quickly. Spotify was growing quickly for a decade, but it was losing money. Now we're going to, hey, they're printing cash flow. And that ultimately is what you want to do as a business.

C (3:30)

These results also underline the fact that customers are willing to pay marginally more, right? Not maybe $25 more, but they're willing to pay marginally more for the quality content they're used to. And I think it also really suggests that music streaming has transitioned from maybe what was once seen as more of a luxury to really an essential utility for a lot of consumers. And I think this was really apparent in Spotify's results. You know, there's really been this shift of focus from just pure subscriber growth to really intelligent monetization strategies and profitability. I mean, you look at their Q4 results, right? So gross margin reached a record 33.1%. That was above analyst estimates. Operating income rose 47% year over year. Premium Scribers grew 10% year over year, and you had about 3 billion in free cash flow for the entire 12 month period. And we're also, I think, seeing a bit of a shift where companies like Spotify are really prioritizing average revenue per user over raw user acquisition. Now, Spotify has raised their prices in the US twice in the last 18 months. And the CFO has noted that pricing is actually expected to outpace content costs in 2026. And I think it shows that users seem to be willing to absorb higher costs to keep their curated libraries, whether it's music, podcasts or otherwise. This is a trend we're seeing in the space, right? I mean, platforms are increasingly consolidating their services. They're moving towards more cable like bundles, so to speak. It's funny to say that to sustain their margins, I think that this is going to have to be a very careful approach though. I mean, Spotify seems to be executing it quite well. If they and others do too many of these price increases though, you could have some subscription fatigue among the more budget conscious users. But for now, this is a strategy that seems to be working and I think that that is really apparent in Spotify's financial results. This is a much better and stronger company than it was five years ago, Lou.

A (5:23)

As we sort of think about what is going to be disrupted by AI and what isn't are these subscription businesses that do have the ability to raise the prices, even if it's a dollar a month. So Spotify, Netflix, Disney would fall into that. Is that going to be kind of a safe haven for investors? Because yeah, AI can do a lot of stuff, but it's not just going to make a playlist for you. So, you know, maybe Spotify is safer, maybe Netflix is safer than we thought it was a couple of years ago. So yeah, the multiples are still high, but where else are you going to be?

B (5:56)

I think AI can make a pretty good playlist for you and I think they're doing that already.

A (5:59)

They maybe don't have the rights to the music is the problem.

B (6:02)

That's what I was going to say. These are mostly pass through businesses where, you know, a lot of the creation is out of their controls. They are just a conduit for, in this case, music. So I do think that that holds up better. They're using AI. I don't know. I'm actually not a Spotify customer, but I can tell you that my music service uses AI to suggest things all the time for me.

A (6:25)

Yeah, yep, Spotify does that too.

B (6:27)

I mean, I do think the other side of that too is that arguably the creators deserve more here. So one day there could be a day of reckoning in terms of profitability. But that's something we'll handle down the line.

A (6:38)

We will see what happens with all these subscription services. But I think the trend towards higher prices is something we're probably going to have to get used to. When we come back, we're going to talk about the latest retail sales data. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

D (6:53)

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A (7:58)

Welcome back to Motley Fool. MONEY Retail sales data came out this week and we heard about what happened during the holidays. Sales were up 2.4% from a year ago, Rachel, but that was a little bit below Analyst estimates of 2.7%. And Lou's K shaped economy appears to be here with layoffs in tech driven by artificial intelligence. Are we at risk of this retail sales decline continuing or what do you see here?

C (8:24)

I think in the short term that's very much a distinct possibility and there's a few reasons for that. But a lot of it also comes down to the disparity in spending power that we're seeing among consumers. So you've got as of late 2025, right, the top 20% of earners, and this includes households that earn over 150,000 a year. The top 20% of earners accounted for about 60% of all personal outlays. You know, a lot of that spending is tied to gains in equity markets. There's AI related investment gains there. And we're seeing this group as well kind of shifting their focus towards higher end services, experiential luxury. But then you've got households earning under $75,000 a year. That is a cohort of consumers that are seeing more meager growth in spending. A lot of that spending is tied exclusively to essentials. This is also a cohort that's strugg much more with issues like persistent inflation record household debt. And as you mentioned, AI has been responsible for a growing number of layoffs. There were about 55,000 layoffs or more in 2025 related to AI changes and efficiencies. And we've seen that Trend Continue into 2026. Think companies like Oracle, Amazon, Meta intel, the list goes on. You've got the combination of a softening labor market, not all of it is AI related, to be clear. And you've got the impact of tariffs. That's increased a lot of economic uncertainty. We're seeing businesses that are adapting in some ways. They're trying to target either extreme luxury or deep discount retailers. Some retailers are having more success than others. Some of those more mid tier retailers like Target continue to struggle. While Walmart, which drives a lot of its revenue and growth from essential purchases like groceries, seems to be doing much better. I think in the long run, I think the economy is going to come back stronger than ever. I think consumer spending power is going to improve. But I don't think that we can ignore these short term indicators and what they mean for consumers and for a range of businesses.

B (10:16)

It just seems to me that like for every negative there's a positive. So I don't know how much we can read into any of them. Are we at risk? Yes, but I don't think we should take that as a prediction. We should just take it as, you know, we're kind of always at risk. We like to think about this as binary, that either the consumer is good or the consumer is not good. Really what this is is just the critical mass of every consumer out there. If enough individuals feel confident enough that they can spend, then spending is fine and economy is fine. If not, we're in trouble. And it's always just some mix, whether it's 70, 30, 51, 49. It feels like that critical mass has shrunk. But that doesn't mean it continues to shrink or that we're in trouble. We just had a surprisingly strong jobs number. There's some asterisks there and I don't know if it's as good as we hoped, but jobs are okay. Michigan's consumer sentiment is at a six month high. I don't want to read into that as like gung ho either, but there is a glass half full for every glass half empty right now. And I don't think as investors we should get too caught up on anything or predict anything yet.

A (11:27)

All of the disruption that was supposed to come from AI for the labor market anyways doesn't appear to be here yet. So we will see if that continues throughout 2026.

B (11:37)

If there's one thing to watch, and after all I said don't watch any of it. But if there's one thing, I do think pricing stability and that comes through with inflation numbers, we haven't had wild surprises. We're seeing inflation do exactly what economists thought it would. It's still up. It's not making life easy again. This is the shrinking critical mass. But if we can get some sort of pricing stability, I don't know why we can't just go on like this sort of indefinitely.

A (12:04)

When we come back, we're going to talk about one of the shocking earnings reports, or at least reactions from the market. That's with Unity software. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

D (12:15)

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A (13:20)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Let's talk about earnings in Unity. And this is the AI disruption that. I don't know if it's here or we see it coming, but Rachel, Unity actually reported pretty good numbers. I think they beat on both the top and bottom line. They had a little bit of weak guidance, but you missed that guidance. Right now the stock's down 30% as we're recording just a wild reaction from the market from a high level. What did you see?

C (13:46)

Very, very strong response from the market. I think a lot of this is being driven by the board guidance they gave, which investors saw broadly as disappointing. And I think there's still intensifying fears of AI driven disruption. So their forecast for Q1 revenue, between 480 million and 490 million. That was a bit below Wall Street's consensus estimate of about 494 million. They also fell a bit short of Wall Street's expectations for their Q1 adjusted EBTA forecast and a Lot of this suggests that they're seeing a slower ramp up for Vector. Vector is Unity's AI powered advertising tool. They're looking at flat growth for their Unity 6 subscriptions in Q1. So all of these are reasons why investors seem to be responding the way they are. The other kind of big thing that's happened recently, and this was where we saw the stock plummet in late January was after Alphabet's Google unveiled Project Genie. It's basically this generative AI prototype that can create interactive world models. And so this sparked some fears that Unity could be rendered obsolete. Unity's still unprofitable, but their revenue is growing. They're in a good position cash wise. I do think the price reaction is a bit of a knee jerk response to AI uncertainty. I'll note AI world models are likely to expand, at least in my view. Unity's addressable market rather than replace it. Especially because you're at a place where professional game development really remains highly complex. They really need that platform that Unity has to monetize and advertise their games. So I think it's important to look beyond the market response into the actual numbers.

B (15:14)

Sometimes it's just wrong place, wrong time. I don't know if unity is 30% in trouble. It looks like the market is reacting. But what we do know is this is the wrong time to provide weak guidance. Quarter was great, but forecasting lower revenue and ebitda. At a time when there is hyper concern about these businesses, the market is seeing what it wants to see. All we know for sure is that the current business results are okay, if not better than okay. I thought it was a decent quarter to extrapolate more than that. I mean, I think we supposed to look to the future. So we do need to be aware of these threats. But in the near term, yes, there's a lot of assumptions being made and all we really know is is that this business is chugging on and has threats and opportunities just like most stocks that you consider.

A (16:06)

It does seem that the market is leaning towards that risk versus the opportunity side. And we've had a lot of stocks that were high growth stocks that were just soared in 2025. Now we're going the opposite direction in a very violent way. So we'll see if that continues throughout 2026. 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 sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes for Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren, Dan Boyd and Christy Waterworth. Behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoyam. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow.