Buy Hold Rant - Stocks and Investing

Ep 46: $MU $1,800 Target? $AAPL Price Increases, $RKLB to acquire $IRDM

Hamid Shojaee & Dustin Alper

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0:00 | 1:09:02

So much tech news this week! The guys tackle major questions like, can Micron Technology (MU) realistically reach a bold $1,800 valuation target? And what could the company's rising tensions with Apple mean for the future of memory pricing and supply chains? In this episode of Buy Hold Rant, Hamid Shojaee and Dustin Alper break down the biggest stories moving tech, AI, and public markets right now, including everything from semiconductors to major M&A speculation to the next wave of cloud computing disruption.

🔥 Topics covered:

💾 Micron’s continued growth: Could it reach $1,800?
🍎 Apple’s ($AAPL) pricing strategy and its growing friction with Micron
💘 Bumble ($BMBL) acquisition rumors and what a potential deal could signal for the dating app market
🚀 Rocket Lab’s ($RKLB) planned acquisition of satellite communication's company Iridium ($IRDM) and the strategic expansion behind it
🌍 Robinhood’s ($HOOD) anticlimactic “The World is Flat” event and the company's evolving vision for retail investing
☁️ Meta’s ($META) new “Meta Compute” initiative that could put it in direct competition with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure

What do you think was the biggest news of this last week? Let us know in the comments!

👍 Like, subscribe, and stay tuned for weekly breakdowns of markets, tech trends, and innovation.

NOTE: This content isn't investment advice. Always do your own research.

Don't forget to check out:

The Best (and Free) Earnings Calendar: https://earningshub.com/
Hamid's Savvy Trader Portfolio: https://savvytrader.com/Hamid/my-actual-portfolio
Dustin's Savvy Trader Portfolio: https://savvytrader.com/dustin/rvr

#micron #mu #micronstock #meta #metaai #datacenters #iridium #rocketlab #robinhood #robinhoodstock #apple #cloudcomputing #stockmarket #techstocks #investingpodcast #investing

Rapid-Fire News And Agenda

SPEAKER_01

Hey, hey, Dustin. Hello, hello. Good afternoon. We we, I mean, okay, this might be the most news we've had to cover in an episode. We have like a whole bunch of stuff. I might I might actually jump ahead and like uh talk about our agenda because we got the micron and apple feud, which is super fascinating. It's kind of it's kind of like a little bit of, you know, uh what this is about as like uh exciting as it gets in the tech world where you know you're having CEOs throwing jabs at one another. We have Meta getting into the data center business potentially. We have Bumble possibly looking to sell, Rocket Lab acquiring iridium. Um, and then we had the Robin Hood event that just happened, uh that just finished a little bit ago. Um besides that, do we have anything else?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, no, I there's more that we could have talked about. We could have talked about Rivian's uh released the timelines for when uh R2 deliveries are gonna happen, but you know, I I don't know if we're gonna have time to touch on that. There's just like every stock that I think we own, there's a big some kind of news.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's that is that is very true, very true. Um so where should we start? You wanna you wanna get us?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, let's start with micron because I know that's what the people want. Um let's do it. So

Micron Earnings And The $1,800 Math

SPEAKER_02

before we even jump into the Apple and Micron feud, you put out a tweet. Uh let me share my screen here. Micron stock to 1800. Is the now what AI did you use to make this graphic?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, this chat GPT. So the graph is all completely made up, by the way. But but um uh basically what I wanted to show is that in my view, uh you know, Micron is worth at least $1,800. This is like post-Micron earnings. After uh, of course, Micron's earnings happened when we were live uh last week. So we didn't get a chance to sort of uh analyze the details of their um report as well as their earnings call, all of that stuff actually I ended up doing later that day. Uh and that's when I put in this tweet where based on everything that Micron is saying, and and I'm gonna go recap the earnings because it's sort of like worthwhile recapping, and we can get rid of this um uh this screen. But uh based on everything that Micron is saying, it it is now clear to me that uh you know uh Micron has not fully ran its its course. So uh what are the things that they're saying? One that continue to say that uh they're supply constrained, and now they have visibility all the way to the end of 2027 um that uh they're sold out. So they don't expect supply uh constraints to sort of like be relieved until at least 2028. So management is saying this. I'm not saying this. This is not sort of like some pundits making making up stuff because everybody else is a spectator, but the management itself has visibility. Then they uh sort of iterated that and reiterated it multiple times that they now have a hundred billion dollars worth of guaranteed customer contracts with minimum pricing on uh on basically memory and storage products that their customers want uh with guaranteed minimum and maximum pricing. So that this sort of um uh protects them to make sure that they don't get uh the prices don't go down too far for them, and it also protects the uh customer that the prices don't go up too high for them. So uh they basically have a sort of a minimum and maximum price in these contracts and a hundred billion dollars worth of these contracts that they went from five billion dollars last quarter to a hundred billion dollars in basically three months, right? Of guaranteed minimum contracts that are going to be delivered on in the uh in the future. And for that $100 billion, they have cash deposits that are um that have to be forfeited if the customer doesn't come through. So this basically puts Micron's future revenues at a much higher probability of them happening based on what they project uh than they would otherwise, because they're basically going to these long-term contracts. The long-term contracts also protect them from downside pressure on uh on pricing. So if you know the argument of it being cyclical uh is true, well, at least for these contracts, $100 billion worth of contracts, the price is already set, and there's major deposits that the customers don't want to lose that uh that sort of guarantees uh these revenue uh uh the minimum amount of revenue for Micron. So taking all of this into consideration and the fact that they raised their guidance for next quarter to again an unprecedented growth rate of $50 billion up from $41 and $30 per share of profits, it just puts Micron at an incredible price point. Uh, where if you just annualize the $50 billion and $30 of profits, you're talking about $120 worth of EPS earnings per share that they're gonna have over the course of the next 12 months. That's assuming zero growth from here, meaning zero additional capex spending by the hyperscalers, zero additional sort of price increases by micron, just keeping everything as it is for next quarter, you're talking about $120 worth of profits. You take $120 worth of uh future profits, next 12 months, and multiply it by a very conservative forward PE of 15. This is extremely low relative to everyone else in the tech industry, and you come up with this sort of $1,800 number. That's how I came up with it. Um, and to me, it feels like okay, that's kind of like my new uh number over the course of the next three months until we find out what is next, right? Like um, and uh for the first time, analysts and I are starting to agree because now we're starting to see analysts' expectations raising their price targets to $2,000. We have multiple analysts that that have a $2,000 price target on Micron. We have multiple analysts that have $1,600 price targets on Micron. So for the first time, we're actually you know, you know, uh in about the same ballpark, me and the analysts. So that actually kind of scares me a little bit, to be honest with you. So because analysts are often looking in the rear view mirror, but um, but you know, sometimes uh sometimes we're aligned and oftentimes we're not.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, well, I think analysts are are are have this upward trajectory because the stock has been moving up, right? So like now they're going in that direction where when the stock was going down um or correcting, then they were they were uh projecting lower uh prices. My question for you in regards to how you're gonna manage your portfolio going forward, is this a new line in the sand where you're going to hold off selling more micron shares until it hits this $1,800 mark?

Portfolio Risk And When To Trim

SPEAKER_02

Or is this okay?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think so. And and the reason for that is just because it it would be somewhat irresponsible for me because of how large of a portion of my portfolio mycon already is. It's over 30% as of right now, even though Micron is down 10% today. Um but if we were to sort of like hit, I don't know, $1,400, $1,500, it'd be tough for me to not take some chips off the table just because of how big of a risk that would be on my portfolio. So at some point I'm gonna start trimming again. And that point will probably be before 1800. But like right now, I think that you know, I feel very good about my holding of my phone.

SPEAKER_02

So speaking

Apple Price Hikes And CXMT Rumors

SPEAKER_02

of potential risks, Apple uh announced that they are increasing the prices across a variety of their products. Here's a little chart showing uh the products that are getting a price increase. Notably, the iPhones are not getting an increase, at least for now. Um, somehow they increased the price of the Vision Pro, which boggles my mind. No one was buying it anyway.

SPEAKER_01

Um they're not gonna sell one per quarter instead of three.

SPEAKER_02

No, the the other interesting one to me is the MacBook Neo, which they just announced is getting a price increase. Um but uh speaking of potential uh uh uh issues that could arise for Micron, uh it's rumored that Apple is trying to work with CXMT, which is a blacklisted Chinese memory company. Is this a concern uh for you?

SPEAKER_01

So that's a great question. And and um some little bit of a background on this, because there's sort of like this feud where um Apple CEO Tim Cook is sort of uh accusing Micron of price gouging their customers and raising prices so much to where they can't hold the Ford anymore by uh maintaining the prices the same. And we kind of talked about this and what would Apple's strategy be. And uh they sort of can't take the hit if the increases are pretty substantial. Um, but if they increase the prices as they have, they are going to suffer from lower demand for their products. Now, one thing that is interesting that has happened is that they increased the prices of all of their Macs, essentially, and kept iPhone prices the same for now. And we'll see what happens when they release the new iPhones. But one of the reasons that they can do this on the Mac side is because Mac demand has started to skyrocket because of people running uh running local versions of uh of these AI systems. So uh you may have heard of a lot of people buying Mac Studios and Mac minis and uh even beefed up sort of uh uh MacBook Pros and so on. So these price increases might end up actually just working out in Apple's favor on the Mac side of things, just because it might keep demand the same, but then they they'll have the same or better margins. Overall revenue will actually go up from the Mac division. So uh it might work itself out. On the iPhone side, because it's very consumer driven and nobody has to get a new iPhone. Uh, it'll be interesting to see if how much of that uh hit they take on their own. Now, Apple requesting exclusion from this Chinese blacklisted memory maker to be able to sort of relieve the pricing on memory is not a bad thing for Micron. The reality is that there is way more demand for memory than there is supply worldwide. And these Chinese makers are making older versions of memory chips that can still be used in computers and laptops and iPads and so on. So relieving the pressure a little bit would actually be a good thing. Most of the huge demand is coming from AI and data center spend by the hyperscalers, and that demand is growing even faster every single year than uh there is capacity for. And even when new capacity comes online, there's a good chance the capacity will not be enough to relieve the demand, just because AI demand is growing so rapidly. Now, you know, what is kind of interesting is that we are uh becoming very headline driven, where every headline is people are reading extra into it. Oh, demand must be you know, you know, tapering off. But when you think about the demand for AI, just it for me, it's very easy to look at it from my own personal use of AI, my own company use of AI, and we're nowhere close to saturating that demand, in my opinion. And as AI is able to do more and more things, it's just going to drive up the demand significantly greater. So uh things that haven't even come online yet are uh you know uh basically uh autonomous driving, uh robots that can sort of uh be smart, that these are uh future hardware-based tasks. And then there's also all kinds of software-related stuff that we haven't done just because there's not enough compute capacity to do, uh, and we could sort of like throw a lot more compute capacity at all kinds of problems that currently we don't have the capacity to throw at. So, you know, I think uh going back to sort of Micron CEO's commentary that demand is going to way outpace supply at least into 2028 and possibly much further. Uh, and if you listen to people like Elon, they're projecting even further than that, then I think they're probably the ones that are correct, that the uh the demand is nowhere near uh uh at max and uh supply is not gonna catch up anytime soon. So all of that summarizing too, yes, I think it would be a good thing for Apple to get some relief from the Chinese memory manufacturers and not just Apple. We we need more memory chips. Uh, and I don't think that will be a bad thing for Micron. Uh I think basically what it's gonna do is gonna help stabilize pricing to some extent and it's going to uh allow us to meet the demand that we have in general for storage and memory. So that was a long-winded answer to say I don't see it as a bad thing, despite the fact that you know the market seems to see it as a bad thing, at least temporarily for my game.

SPEAKER_02

And one last point on this from a consumer perspective, you know, it's unfortunate that these price increases have to occur. But I will say no one's reporting this. There is a rebate program where you can buy one share of micron and you actually get more than the increase of the product. You just have to hold it for a couple months and you get all your money back. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01

That is not investment advice, just to be clear. That is just a joke. But yeah, yeah, instead of uh buying a MacBook by buy some uh micron stock and then buy a MacBook MacBook Pro instead later.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it pays for itself.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Uh that's fine. Okay. So so so uh so before we move on, I mean, I I don't know if you're ready to move on to a different subject, but before we move on, this basically this the whole sort of Apple and Chinese memory manufacturer thing, um, it does not make me any less bullish on Micron. It just uh it you know it's uh it's something that I think has to happen in order just for us to continue to grow uh and uh allow for AI to sort of expand further, uh, especially at the pace that it's expanding. And I think it's still good for Micron.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah. And to your point, the the these models are going to be constantly evolving where they are going to get more efficient, but they're also going to get uh more hungry and way smarter, right? Like they're gonna be able to do more um even if they're more efficient. So uh it's yeah, it's

Efficiency Gains That Boost Demand

SPEAKER_02

that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, memory is gonna be critical. Yeah, and uh and we explored that uh uh with respect to a bunch of different technologies, but as it becomes more and more efficient, um you know, and there's hundreds of examples of this over the past, you know, 200 years, not just this is not uh a phenomena that's happening just to memory, but as you make something more efficient, like for example, the Google algorithm that was like six times more efficient memory usage, for example, that that scared um people away from Micron back when Micron was a $400 stock. Um, basically, what these things mean is that uh the demand is going to outpace even the efficiency gains that you get from those types of things. And uh and paradoxically, that is something that has been known since the 1800s, that as you make things more efficient, the demand for them actually outpaces the efficiency gains. So um something to think about for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Hey,

Holding Through Weekends And Volatility

SPEAKER_00

can I chime in here?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, of course. Hey Adrian.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, hi. Uh, we just had a question that I think would be great to answer now.

SPEAKER_01

Go let's do it.

SPEAKER_00

Would holding micron over the long weekend be a good idea?

SPEAKER_01

Do you mean holding micron for three extra days while the markets are completely closed? So, so I I never personally view um holding a stock in uh I I don't own anything that I don't want to own for long periods of time. And my period is usually years, um uh or until things change. And things change because prices go up or down, um, things change because uh management provides more sort of clarity and visibility on uh on their financials, uh things change because competitors do something. Um, but you know, uh the weekend is always gonna happen. So you know, holding through a weekend is not a um uh a uh concern that I would ever have. So yeah, I'm I'm not uh I'm not going to make any actions because of the weekend.

SPEAKER_02

Adrian, let's do the other uh micron comments underneath that too.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. The comments or the question?

SPEAKER_02

The question and the comment.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Why do you think Micron is down 10% today?

SPEAKER_02

All right, I'll I'll let Dustin you answer this one. I mean,

Meta Data Centers And Headline Contradictions

SPEAKER_02

so you never really know why. I do think it's because of Meta, uh, which we will talk about and we can talk about it now. Um, Meta announced that they are going to start selling their AI capacity similar to what SpaceX did, uh, which I have to give Hamid his flowers. He completely called that one and was spot on. Um, but the market is reacting in this way, I believe, because they're concerned if this hyperscaler doesn't necessarily need all this capacity, then who's going to utilize it? Who's who's going to be the buyer? Um, so it's the market just kind of being a little uh screamish, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01

Uh so remember that yeah, I mean that's exactly correct. And remember the market is bipolar in the short term and uh overreacts to every bit of news because for because uh you know people don't have visibility into something, uh they they go with um projections of oh, this must mean uh this, or you know, you know, X must mean Y, and therefore uh they're gonna make a decision as if Y is a fact. Um and the reality is that that's a complete guess. And sometimes these guesses sort of like catch on as if like it's a statement of fact. Um, much like, for example, the um Google algorithm for six times more efficiency basically uh meant to a lot of people that oh, this must mean um there's gonna be one-sixth the memory demand that there would have been otherwise by AI users. Uh and uh as a result of that sort of um uh speculation catching hold, the market sort of punished Micron uh in in the short term. So these things happen. The market in the short term is uh uh is very um bipolar and is speculative. But in the long term, what's gonna matter is the reality of the situation. If Micron continues to have its revenues and uh profits, then these things will automatically fix themselves, right? Um and then tomorrow somebody else will have another speculation uh as to what's going on, and and then we'll see a different uh result. So these the this is just the sort of like market going up and down. I don't try to explain any of that stuff, by the way, on a day-to-day basis. Uh I'm looking at it from a long-term perspective. Uh, just a couple of days ago, if I'm not mistaken, Google actually had there was a headline that Google is turning down Meta, uh Meta's additional AI data center request, right? There was a headline that said that, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah. And so the fact that uh Meta is considering um selling its excess capacity is just another potential rumor that contradicts, by the way, the rumor that Google turned down Meta requesting additional AI capacity. So does Meta need more capacity and is trying to buy some from Google and Google turned them down, or do they have excess capacity and they're gonna provide it as a uh data center cloud offering? These things are actually contradictory um headlines. Both headlines have come out in the past couple of days. Which one do you go off of? Um, and the reality is to go off of neither one of them is the way we should be operating. But um, but in the event that Meta has excess capacity, that excess capacity is still going to be extremely valuable. And uh, and that was the tweet that I think Dustin, you were referring to a little a little bit earlier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And another contradiction to note is uh Nebius, which is a AI uh cloud provider. They're a competitor to Iron, which I'm invested in. They're down 17% today because they have a very large deal with Meta to provide capacity for. Them. So did Meta purchase uh or sign this contract thinking that they were going to utilize this capacity and now no longer need it and we'll try to get out of the contract? Um, or you know, do are we just not seeing the full picture? Um so I thought that would that move was also um interesting. But like as an iron uh shareholder, I mean, they were down 5% today. But to me, it seems like if these hyperscalers are getting into the AI cloud business with uh SpaceX included, maybe Iron is more of an acquisition target for them. Um I don't know how likely that is, but if they want to build out these data centers, they could just uh buy them uh instead of doing all the work. So just an interesting angle and uh definitely something to keep an eye on.

SPEAKER_01

We'll get a lot more clarity on all of that from Meta's uh earnings report, obviously, that's gonna happen uh in in what uh two and a half weeks, three weeks. Usually usually it happens by the 25th of the month. So, you know, I'm gonna be a wait and see um uh holder of meta. And and in my opinion, meta, even in the 600s, is very much undervalued. And if they have excess capacity, data center capacity, and they get into the data center rental business, um, leasing the data center space to Anthropic or OpenAI or whoever else that might need it, um I think that could be a very lucrative business for them, especially if the prices that SpaceX is getting on a per megawatt uh or per gigawatt of um uh data center capacity is uh is the going rate, then Meta is in an incredibly good shape because they're they're gonna bring online four gigawatts of capacity next year, one and a half gigawatts this year. Uh so if you just simply say that you know, if they were to release four gigawatts of capacity at similar rates to what SpaceX is doing, that is over $100 billion worth of revenue in a very, very conservative uh uh uh measure, financial measure of that. So um so they're in a fantastic position from my perspective. Okay, Adrian, there was that comment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I was just gonna um there's some this one's just today was a bloodbath.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so what I want to say about this is like for Microsoft specifically. And yes, today was a bloodbath, but it was a bloodbath to a thousand dollars a share, which we were just celebrating like a couple weeks ago. So you can sometimes take a step back and look at the bigger picture and like you know, be a little bit uh try to be as level-headed as possible, which I know is hard uh because we're dealing with real dollars here, but you know, it it crashed to a thousand dollars a share.

SPEAKER_01

1,030, yeah. And uh, you know, this is also why um I don't own a single stock, right? Like I don't own one stock, I own six, right? Uh Mike uh or uh Meta and Robinhood happen to have great days today. So uh they cushioned that uh micron fall for me. So uh that was definitely helpful.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, can I do one more?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, let's do one more and we should get to the next topic.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, hi guys. Micron earnings were record blowing. Why do you think Mr. Market didn't recognize that yet? We went through a similar process last earnings and it tripled since then. Mr.

SPEAKER_01

Market, don't learn your your guess is as good as mine, but like uh yeah, but Mr. Market has um uh has bipolar disorder and uh tends to react. I mean, this is not something new uh to anyone who has been in the market for some period of time. Um, in the short term, uh the market doesn't uh you know be behave sort of erratically. In the long term, it's always about the uh it usually comes down to revenues and profits and growth rates and that that's those fundamentals, which is why I sort of stay focused on that and let the market do what it does.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and Mr. Market has a lot of you know stocks to focus on, and things kind of fall through the cracks of you know being priced accordingly, which actually goes into our next topic, which is Bumble.

Bumble Buyout Talk And Product Doubts

SPEAKER_02

Um so I made a purchase last week in Bumble after some big news. So let me try to zoom in here a little bit. Uh I increased my Bumble position by roughly 12% at $2.86 a share. Um, and at the time Bumble was 5.5% of my portfolio. Now it's closer to 6% of my portfolio. Uh Bumble is up to $3.24 right now. Uh so the big news is there a rumor uh came out from I think Reuters that Bumble was looking to potentially be uh acquired. So this is just a rumor, it didn't come from Bumble themselves. Um but the stock it went up by 15% immediately and then went back down to the same price it was the day prior. So to me, it just seemed like a good opportunity where this is a stock I already like. It's a stock that I I actively own, obviously, where I just wanted to kind of round out my position and hit my target allocation. Um, because the risk reward seemed very strong, where if this is real, the stock's going to move up fairly substantially. And if this isn't real, the stock didn't jump like it I would have expected it to, where I don't think it would have too much of a downside. You never really know. Um but I the this was it's similar to when uh Rivium was like under $13 briefly. And I was like, this seems like a right before they released R2. And I was like, this seems like a great opportunity. It was the same feeling here.

SPEAKER_01

I had some shares, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Uh what what are your thoughts on this whole thing?

SPEAKER_01

So it it was a surprise that they might be looking for uh that they would have gone out looking for um an acquirer, uh, a potential acquirer. Or the the the Reuters uh article, uh if I'm not mistaken, is um is indicating that the board has hired a consultant to go look for potential acquirers of Bumble. So uh if that's the case, if that is in fact what has happened, uh there's definitely a reason to be both excited and concerned. The reason to be excited is because Bumble at even $3 and you know, even at $4 a share is pretty much undervalued. So I went through this sort of exercise of trying to determine what is the value of Bumble relative to sort of like uh uh match, for example, or grinder. Uh and uh grinder has a much higher price sales ratio than match does. So using match as a sort of like the low bar uh price to sales ratio, uh, the maximum that it would be worth to a match would be roughly $11 without them diluting their own um price sales ratio. Uh so going above $11 just seems incredibly unlikely. So there would be some discount from $11, even by an acquirer such as Match. Um I would suspect if Match was gonna be a potential acquirer. Now that discount would have to be uh enough for it to be an attractive deal, uh meaning, you know, maybe seven or eight dollars would be the sort of like top of the line of what they might be able to get. Uh, but it would certainly be above the current price of three, right? Or current as of that uh day that this was rumored to be happening. Um but the bad news, so that this so you know, like maybe somewhere between three and eight or four and eight is a possible potential acquiring uh price point uh by either MATCH or maybe some private equity firm or whatever. Um and these are all sort of my own personal speculations, by the way, not uh nothing is based on any kind of factual reality. Um but the bad news here is that if they were going out shopping it, uh if that part is true, then that means that what I was hoping would happen, which is that Whitney Wolfard, the founder and CEO, having come back in and having been working on a new product for the past year, uh, the the board may not be as confident anymore on their new product. Um and uh and if that's the case and a deal does not happen, then there is, I think, downside uh to um to Bumble's price point that could cause it to fall even below the three dollar mark. And um, and this is why I was, you know, in my sort of assessment of it, I was like, this is kind of good news, bad news that here's the good news that you know, if an acquisition happens, it'll be at some kind of premium. But the bad news is that if it doesn't happen, and the reason for them looking for an acquirer is because they're not as confident in their product and their product sort of falls flat, uh, then that would that that could mean that they continue to have declining revenues and with you know $450 million of debt, that's obviously never a good thing. So um, so you know, my approach has been let's wait and see. Um, they're gonna again have a quarterly and quarterly report that's gonna happen in the next month or so. Uh so I'm just gonna wait uh for that and um uh and make a decision after we hear more from uh Whitney, which I'm sure everyone everybody is gonna be asking about umbo uh potential acquisition from her. So um, and I'm still hopeful that they are gonna be coming out with uh with a better product line because in every interview that Whitney has given, there has been this sort of like commitment to solving this problem by her, and that she is living and breathing and bleeding a bumble uh in her life. So uh I am curious to see what they come up with. And um yeah, I'm holding, but I haven't added.

SPEAKER_02

I do think it's a the product piece is a real concern. I've been saying this every earnings call, they talk about how they're getting closer and closer to this product launch, but we have no details of what the product actually is uh or what it'll look like or how it'll operate. They just officially said in the last earnings call that they're gonna move away from the swipe, which you can kind of already deduce just by listening to the earlier calls. Um I I and I think the more likely reason is they're just trying to keep things under wraps, mainly to not let competitors know what they're doing. Um but another angle could be maybe they're just not a hundred percent confident in their direction. Obviously, I'm right as an investor, I'm hopeful that is not the case. Um in terms of some uh a potential buyer, I do think it's a very good time to buy Bumble in terms of the stock's really been beaten down and they're on the precipice of this product launch, assuming the product launch um is going to be strong.

SPEAKER_01

And if Absolutely, if if you're like MAC, uh if you if you're MAC, you could take out a competitor that has almost a billion dollars of revenue. So you add that, you know, 900 million dollars of revenue to your own revenue line, uh, you take out the risk of the competitor sort of all of a sudden coming out with a product that catches fire and like destroys your own revenue. So there's zero risk from that. So absolutely, there's good reason for a company like Match to come out and buy Bumble for a pretty substantial premium, and it would be smart of them to do that. So uh, you know, if I was to think about it fully, I would say your decision to um purchase more at the three sub-three dollar price when you purchased it was actually a sound decision. Yeah. Having done the the analysis after I saw your purchase, I was like, actually, that was the right move, probably to have, yeah, absolutely. But but then I was like, should I follow Dustin right after I said I'm not gonna do anything? And I was like, definitely never mind, Dustin bought on buying. Or or selling. I gotta do the opposite now. Yeah. Um, but but uh but honestly, I did consider buying after I saw yours because I was like, I did the analysis, and there's definitely gonna be more upside. Uh not definitely, never definite, but um more likely to be yeah, yeah, more likely to be more upside than downside. Um so but the fact that that gave me concern about their product, which is what I was really excited about, uh, is why I sort of held back. Um, but I think the right move was to have purchased. And and maybe even at this price point is not it's not that bad.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And I don't know why Bumble, if the rumors are true, I don't know why they're deciding to look for a acquirer right now. It does seem like a weird time. Um, because if I were them, I would release the product. Hopefully, the stock price has some recognition of that. And then if they wanted to sell, they could sell for an even higher price.

SPEAKER_01

Um but well, it's a double-edged sword, right? Because then if you wait until the results, then the results are known. And then match might be like, well, we got nothing to worry about. It didn't catch on, right? So then the premium that they might be willing to pay to take out a competitor that might have a product that kills them is is lower, right? So it it's uh it's always a give and take in these kind of scenarios.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Okay.

Rocket Lab Buys Iridium For Scale

SPEAKER_02

Uh speaking of acquisitions, absolutely Rocket Lab announced that they are acquiring Iridium. Uh this is currently this is a low broadband uh satellite system with the future of it being high broadband. Um this is an amazing acquisition. Like absolutely came out of nowhere. Absolutely out of nowhere. They have more revenue, Iridium has more revenue than Rocket Lab does, yeah. Which is kind of mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but because of the premium, and this is one of the cool things when your price that when your stock price gets ahead of its skis, as I've been saying, that Rocket Lab has, is that when you go out shopping using your stock as the sort of like purchasing power, um, you have you're you're diluting very little relative to your own revenue price ratios. So um let's take a step back and talk about Iridium for a second, because for those of us who are old enough to remember the 90s, uh Iridium was a Motorola project that uh uh the idea behind it was to do what Sterling is doing today. They were gonna put up uh a bunch of satellites and uh and provide high-speed uh or uh basically uh internet worldwide using these satellites as well as cell phone connectivity. And um, it turned out to be a lot more difficult and a lot more costly than they were expecting. And uh Motorola broke out the project uh into a standalone company. The company went through all kinds of uh financial problems over the past 20 years, and eventually they landed on these sort of niche products that um uh using their 60 or so satellites provides um uh low bandwidth services essentially to um uh worldwide, to you know, all kinds of different um uh use cases. So that is what Iridium does. They have roughly a $900 million, close to a billion dollar annual revenue run rate, uh, and they're profitable. Uh they pumped out over $100 million of uh profits in the previous 12 months, and uh they're expected to have even more profits going down uh in the future. So that is uh uh Iridium. Uh now, what Rocket Lab gets from this acquisition is that it gets all this incredible talent of people who know how to build communication satellites, have done so, and have are selling services profitably. They have 2 million paying customers, more than 2 million paying customers, and a profitable business that has almost a billion dollars of revenue, and they got to acquire it for uh a tiny fraction of uh of their market cap, essentially. And uh, they're using a combination of cash and stock to purchase iridium. So uh they're hardly getting diluted as part of this acquisition, um, especially for the amount of revenue that they bring in.

SPEAKER_02

They also are getting the spectrum uh license immensely important.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and uh the the uh spectrum is the radio frequencies which they can operate on and provide uh communication services to uh anywhere in the world. So um this also positions them extremely well to come up with a competitor to Starlink. And they have the talents to do that, they have the launch vehicles to do that, they have the satellite building uh technology and talent to be able to do that now. Uh this just sort of completes the picture in a fantastic way. I think I thought it was a phenomenal um came out of nowhere acquisition by um Peter Beck. I continue to be very impressed by him. This is why I, you know, like sometimes it's worthwhile holding on to stocks that um you feel might be overvalued, at least in the in the short term, when the company is executing brilliantly, when it's led by a founder or CEO that uh you have a lot of respect for. Um, so anyway, I love that. Uh I think Peter should come on our show and talk about it and uh talk about Rocket Lab. So here's an open invite to you, Peter, by the way.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and the spectrum that uh Iridium owns, it's important to note not all spectrum is created equal. So like uh radio waves, like the radio you listen to in your car, that's on like the the electromagnetic spectrum. You can't have um high uh broadband uh services on that spectrum. It's too, it's too uh low. The spectrum that Iridium has, even though their current system is low broadband, it can be it can work with high broadband um so in that that it's an update that they need to do, and it requires new hardware, but physically it's it's absolutely possible, and that's where they're going, and that they're gonna start to fast track that uh with Rocket Lab. Um, the other thing I wanted to note is I did some very rough back of the napkin math of let's say Rocket Lab keeps its uh price to sales ratio after this acquisition, taking into account dilution. And keep in mind this acquisition isn't happening until 2027. So we still have a ways away, and most likely the price to sales ratio is not going to be the same. But if if it stays around 100, uh the price to sales ratio stays around 100, the stock price will end up being around $250 as opposed to the I think around $100 it is today. Um I'm not saying it's gonna go there, it's just an interesting point of like we're really adding a ton of revenue um when once these companies merge.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And then to your point in regards to timing, I don't know if it was luck or if it was just great uh operational capacity, but the fact that they're doing this deal during the the SpaceX uh IPO and it just kind of raising the prices of all space stocks is fantastic. Um because you know, if they if they did this a few months ago, um it would be a very different deal. Still be a good deal, but very different.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. By the way, um I am surprised that uh um Elon didn't try to take out Iridium from the possibility of somebody like Rocket Lab acquiring them because it makes Rocket Lab that much of a uh bigger competitor, competitive threat, whereas the Rocket Lab right now is like this tiny little NAND uh relative to SpaceX. But but by this acquisition, it actually, you know, fast forward five years from now, they could actually have a very formidable competitor to um to Starlink. And uh and for the dilution potential, uh, when especially when you're talking about uh SpaceX being a two trillion dollar company, you would you're talking about basically a 2% dilution for SpaceX to have acquired uh Iridium at $8 billion, even if they had taken it out at 10 billion to make sure that Rocket Lab doesn't get it, uh it would have been worth it. So I'm surprised there wasn't any kind of a bidding war for uh Iridium. Um and I'm kind of in interested to know could it happen, you know, post deal announcement? Because this deal is not supposed to, yeah. I mean, because that's what happened with Warner Brothers, right? Yes. Um, but uh this deal is not closing until middle, it's not expected to. Close until middle of 2027. So is there a chance that Elon Musk steps in and says, uh-uh, not so fast? Uh we'll pay you 10 billion for idiom or uh whatever. That you know, that's still a possibility in my mind.

SPEAKER_02

So that's a great um yeah, it could be it could be SpaceX, it could be uh a different telecom provider, it could be ASTS. We cannot talk about ASTS. I just like poking you on it. It's the funniest thing. Um I was gonna say something else about this. Oh, the I'm I mean, part of the reason, just a hunch, that maybe uh Elon missed this is because Tesla is now a robotics company, SpaceX is now a AI company. Right. You know, this is this is secondary to to what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Cars all of a sudden became a secondary to Tesla, and all of a sudden space has become secondary to what SpaceX is doing. Sort of like a fascinating place for Tesla and SpaceX to be. Uh, and there might be missed opportunities here uh for both of those companies because of the new newfound focus in other areas, I guess. That's a very good point.

unknown

Yeah.

Robinhood Crypto Event Takeaways

SPEAKER_02

Um, okay, let's move on to Robin Hood. They had a big crypto event today, and then we'll we'll get to listener questions after this. Uh so they had their the world is flat uh event today. It was very uh theatrical as their events have been, which I will say I do like that they're going all out on these like live presentations, but they should have something of substance to present uh that you know it's wait, does that does that imply the data?

SPEAKER_01

Because I missed I missed today's uh uh presentation.

SPEAKER_02

I yeah, I was fairly underwhelmed with the presentation overall. Uh between it was um I'll I'll hit on the to me what the big three announcements were. So the first was uh agency trading for crypto. So they already announced agenc trading for stocks, but now you have access to do this um for cryptocurrencies.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And interestingly, they gave an example that was a stock example where that it was live on stage where they asked, um, create a watch list of uh Bitcoin mining stocks and then invest a thousand dollars in it. And of course, I paused the screen to actually see what stocks it pulled, and it pulled Iron, which was a Bitcoin mining company, but is very much moving away from that. Where if I was talking to a human, I don't think they would pull Iron into that list. And they also pulled uh Bitmine, which is a Ethereum treasury company. Uh so I it, at least in their little example, it happened to be an area that I knew. Um, it wasn't that accurate. Like I wouldn't want to be investing in those two companies if I asked to invest in a Bitcoin mining company. So that was a little underwhelming. Uh, not that anyone in the crowd was catching that. Uh they also announced Robinhood earn. So they have a stable coin, USDG. And if you uh hold this stable coin in your Robinhood account, you will earn a whopping 7% interest, uh, which is not anything new. This like Coinbase does this, a lot of um like crypto brokerages do this. Uh and the the interest comes the same way uh a bank works, where they're they're lending out that money to someone else, they're paying a higher interest than the 7%, and they're giving you uh a cut. Um their differentiator, and I'm not too familiar with this space, is that they partnered with two different insurance uh firms to handle, I guess if there anything were to go haywire, you would be covered. I mean, though, just in general, this has nothing to do with Robinhood. If I'm trying to hold cash and make interest on it, so like right now, I think you can get like three, four percent um in a high yield savings account. Like for me, the only insurance that matters is FDIC insurance.

SPEAKER_01

FDIC. Yeah, totally agree. I'm the same way. I'm way too conservative. Like, if you're giving me more than three and a half percent or whatever, there's risk involved.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So the like I guess it's great that this is an option because their competitors do it, and if there is an a level, a certain level of insurance, uh, that's also great. But to me, it's nothing that exciting, um, and not a product I'm necessarily interested in. Right. Uh, and then the the big one to me was they I don't even want to say announced, they they re-announced Robin Hood chain because they announced this a year ago. Um and I guess now it's it's more like tokenized stocks and selling.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. So that is the most exciting thing, I think. And it opens it up accessible to uh people in other countries, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so if you live if you don't live in the US, it's actually pretty hard to invest in US stocks. So this is a pretty solid workaround um for for people who who don't live in America. And then on top of that, there are benefits of it being on-chain. So it's fairly instant uh settlement, right? You don't have to wait a couple days for the cash to actually hit your account. Uh it's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Um, and you can send stocks to other people, just like how you could send a Bitcoin to someone or you know, any token to someone. Uh so for example, it's looking like I might lose this Robin Hood bet. Um, I'm gonna have to send you a share of Robinhood, and that's gonna require me to sell a share and then just send you the cash, and then you have to buy the share as opposed to just sending you the share directly, which this is.

SPEAKER_01

I only accept the share directly.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I want a paper printed share so I can frame it.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Um requested from your uh broker.

SPEAKER_02

So I I do think it's a big update, the but it was announced a year ago. So like it just was not that exciting of um an event. And I will say, going back to our bet, where for those of you who don't know, I think Robinhood is going to $60 a share before the end of the year. Hamid thinks that's not happening, and right now it's looking like it's not happening. But I will say we're in a very interesting time with Robin Hood, and obviously it's very hard to predict what the stock's gonna do in the short term. So this is really all just for fun. But between this event and July 4th, which is when the kids' accounts from the government are going to be uh launched, which is a partial Robin Hood product, I think there might be a buy the room or sell the news uh happening here. I I don't know. Um, but I think after this little window, there's a good chance Robin Hood potentially drops. And if it doesn't, then I think you're a shoe-in for winning this bet. If it does, then I'm still in the race, is how I'm seeing it.

SPEAKER_01

July 4th is this weekend. So um all right. Should we jump into QA or do we have anything else to come on?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, we I mean we we're already 52 minutes in, so let's do it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, ready? Let's do it. Um

Trimming Winners Without Market Timing

SPEAKER_00

we have a lot of questions, so we'll try and get through as many as we can. Um hey guys, what is your view on trimming a position that has run up and then buying back when pullback?

SPEAKER_01

Great if you could do it. Yeah. So so this seems like a timing related question. And it's like, can you time the uh the peaks and the valleys? If you can, uh that's pretty amazing. I have never been able to do it uh personally. So um I tend to trim when I think um it's the right time based on uh either the fundamentals changing for the stock, the risk profile for my portfolio changing, or uh the you know, something about the financials or future of the company uh changing. Um and uh you know, if there have been times where I have trimmed and bought back on pullbacks, but that has just been coincidental, just because the market has pulled back so much that I thought, okay, this is now super severely undervalued again. Uh that happened, for example, on uh Rocket Lab a couple of times, and um I had trimmed my position, company had continued to get a lot better. Uh, and then the stock for uh whatever reason had uh halved. But in this case, the halved was making it very undervalued, in my opinion. Um and something like that happened again for Rocket Lab because it hit 150 and almost halved. It was down like 40%, but I didn't feel like it was extremely undervalued. Now, had I known that they were about to buy iridium, that would have been a different story, but uh I didn't feel like it was undervalued and it, you know, I didn't add. Uh this is a timing-related question, and I generally avoid trying to time the market.

SPEAKER_02

If if I'm going to trim a position, it's going to be because I'm ready to let go of those shares and I don't plan on buying them back. But to your point, sometimes the market has a mind of its own, and you know, there's an opportunity, and you you end up buying back. Like I just did that with Meta, where I sold 50% of my position several years ago, and then the stock price actually went lower than what I sold it for, so then I bought back shares, but that was never my plan. Um, it's just the market conditions changed, and then um my strategy had to adjust. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I've done the same on Meta, by the way. Let's go to Meta.

SPEAKER_00

Bumble? Sure. Let's go back to Bumble. Justin and Hamid, if Bumble is sold and forces you to close the position, would you considering consider opening a new position instead?

SPEAKER_01

You mean in something, I I presume this means in something else, uh, a new position in a different stock, because if um if we were forced to close our position, you can't you, you know, that means we can't own Bumble anymore. So I'm gonna go with that assumption. And the reality is that I'm not look actively looking to add another stock. Uh, and just because one closes does not mean I'm gonna actively look for another one. But um, but sure, I mean, like I I have uh plenty of cash even now to where if something was to be extremely attractive that came on my radar, I would add another position even now. So I'm not necessarily against adding a position. It's just that um I'm not actively looking specifically to add a position. Um, because I'm not necessarily trying to maintain exactly six stocks. There have been times that I've had fewer and there have been times that I've had more. Yeah. I will Dustin up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'll I'll say if Bumble were to sell, I'd probably be uncomfortable with the amount of cash I would have on hand from that. So I'd probably do a mix of putting those the dollars back into other stocks I own and kind of like just kind of raising my ownership. Not necessarily in all the stocks, but stocks that maybe are are farther away from their target allocation. Um, and then the other part I'd keep in cash, but I wouldn't necessarily buy a new position um just because uh uh they sold.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, you ready to move on?

SPEAKER_01

That's good.

SPEAKER_00

This is for Dustin.

EOS Energy And Complexity Red Flags

SPEAKER_00

Hi, Dustin. Since you are invested in EOS energy, your current view on the stock price and company, is it a good price for accumulating based on the valuation? Thanks in advance for taking my questions.

SPEAKER_02

You're welcome. Um so uh in terms of price, let me pull up their chart here. So they're at five dollars and fifty-five cents, which is a very beautiful number outside of you know, it just being a lot of fives. Um, but you can see the price has taken a massive hit. My average uh cost per share is ten dollars and fifteen cents. And my last purchase was six dollars ninety-three cents. So, in terms of this being a attractive price for me, I would say absolutely I would much rather have my cost basis at $5.55. With that said, I am I the reason why my last purchase was, let's see, in February, is because I'm not as confident in EOS as I was initially. Um I I don't know if I'm just not getting something, but with leadership, uh, at least in the last earnings, they announced that they're uh doing this frontier USA uh company that's going to be uh customer of EOS. And like something to me is just not fully making sense. And again, this could be a me thing, but the business is just getting a little more complicated than I would like it to be because it should be straightforward. It's like silly simple uh zinc-based batteries that should be able to be used in large-scale infrastructure, and that should be it. Um and the whole reason why they did the zinc-based batteries, or not the whole reason, but a big reason why they did the zinc-based batteries is because they're so easy to manufacture. It's not like um solid state batteries, for example, which is you need a lot of uh capital to even figure out how to get that to work. Um, so the story to me is not as clear. I'm not as excited about EOS, and they are very much on the chopping block for me. With that said, if I was interested in EOS, I would definitely be buying at this price. But that is not the case right now.

SPEAKER_01

You know, something you said I just wanted to uh just reiterate, which is that when a business seems like overly complicated for me to understand, I basically avoid it. And it's like I don't need to make money on everything, it could double, quadruple from here, whatever. Like uh, and uh an example of that is Palantir, right? Palantir, uh, like I looked into that business so many times. And I think when I first looked into it, it was like $10 a share. Had I bought it, it you know, obviously it went all the way to over $200 a share, uh, it would have gone extremely well. But I've never felt like I missed out because it was a business I didn't understand. To this day, I don't understand what Palantir does. And uh and you know, I watched a 20-minute interview with its CEO today, and I was so confused. I'm like he's complaining about something and he's very angry about something. I just don't get it. Like um, but you know, other people understand it, or maybe they uh claimed to uh or jumped on the high bandwagon or whatever, and the stock went up to over $200 a share, and now it's at $120 a share. I mean, I I don't know what it should be worth, but um but the revenue and profit numbers on Pound Terror have been impressive, just to sort of give them that uh kudos. It's just that even uh despite the price having halved in the past uh less than a year, um the um uh the revenue and profits still don't support that price point, its current price point. So um, and the business is complicated to where I don't understand what they do. And you know, obviously they're in defense and you know, war business, so uh like combination of factors going against it for me. Yeah. And then with EOS, it's a little bit more wonky because I went into it totally understanding the business, and now it's kind of more battery, it just seems kind of simple enough to where you know we need more battery, obviously, for energy storage and um yeah, and it's slowly morphed into something that I'm not fully recognizing over a fairly short amount of time.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, we'll see.

SPEAKER_01

What else do we have, Adrian? Maybe we take one or two more.

SPEAKER_00

We're definitely gonna have to go over time a little bit just so we can pull a pull. Um, all right, let's go to Rivian. Regarding

Rivian Long-Term Thesis And Risks

SPEAKER_00

Rivian, is it too late to buy in considering the stock is up 20% in the last five days?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I mean, if you're measuring returns in days, then who knows, maybe. Uh but but but um but the reality is that uh I've been buying Rivian over the past couple of years in the same band of roughly, I want to say $10 or $12 to $20 per share. And um, and it hasn't, you know, you know, it's still under 20 bucks a share. I'm not buying Rivian because I think it's gonna go up 10%. I'm buying Rivian because I think it could go up 10 times in the next five to you know, five to 10 years. Um, that's sort of like my my time horizon on it, not uh not 20% in five days. But um, you know, and this is like sort of relates to the other timing question of like, does it make sense to sell now that it's gone up 20% in five days and try to buy it back at like 14 again when it goes back down? But I have no idea if it's gonna go back down or if it's gonna continue to go up. I mean, I don't try to time the stock market, it's it's uh never worked out well for me. So um I continue to stay long-term focused.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and this is another example of just zooming out to have some clarity. So here is roughly a I think two-year chart of Rivia. Um it this is not telling me anything in regards to it's a good time to buy or a bad time to buy. The stock has essentially been ranging between $20 and uh $10, you know, for the last couple of years. So it's it's just in its standard uh range. I don't think it's too late or too early for anything. Um, but that's just me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And and to be clear, Rivian can uh can you know is not out of its struggles. It's still not a profitable company. And when a company is not profitable, if it cannot access future cash, uh cash in the future, there's always the risk of bankruptcy. So that is always a possibility for any company that's not profitable that is going to run out of cash. It's unlikely, in my opinion, for Rivian, just because it's shown so much promise. The R2 is getting so much good uh rave reviews, and the demand for their vehicle seems to be there. Uh, and if it is a company that does make it to that profitability point, uh, you know, three, four years from now, uh, I can't imagine it uh being a sub-20 billion dollar company. It just doesn't make sense to me. It it what would make sense is for it to be maybe a $100 billion company at a minimum. Uh and uh and that's the sort of like mindset uh and uh uh frame of uh perspective that I have on Rivian. Let's take a look one more.

SPEAKER_00

Oh all right, one more? Yes. Um how do I choose? Let's do all right, let's go to Dustin.

Iron Outlook And Owning Overlapping Bets

SPEAKER_00

I'd like to hear your thoughts and analysis on Iron for the next year. I'm invested with them too.

SPEAKER_02

Um so I don't necessarily have thoughts over like where they're going to be over the next year outside of um what they've said. Um typically I I if I'm invested in a company, I default to trusting uh their leadership. So if we go here, so this is uh one of their slides from their last earnings where they're targeting 480 megawatts of uh storage or capacity uh for 2026, and then 1210 megawatts or 1.21 gigawatts or gigawatts, depending on how you pronounce it, for 2027, and then five gigawatts for 2028, and they've been slowly increasing those targets over time. Um it seems like they are going to have a very bright future under the assumption that they can deliver, uh, right, that they're currently building this out to nothing to guarantee. Uh, assuming dilution doesn't kill the shareholders because it's going, it's gonna require a lot of dilution to get to this point, uh, and assuming the market is there, which you know, on a day like today, the stock market doesn't believe that the uh market is there from uh the meta news earlier. Um, but I'm very optimistic on Iron. Um I really like how they're going about building out uh their capacity. I like the leadership. The one new knock I'll I'll give Iron based on today is I just don't like investing in companies that do the same thing. So if this is going to be a big business for Meta, uh there's a chance I maybe let go of Iron just because I already own Meta. But at the moment, I have no plans of of doing that. It's just something that's in the back of my head. Um, but I I really like Iron.

SPEAKER_00

Can we do one more? Can we do one more micro?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, we can we can do one more.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

Micron Cash Plans And Buybacks Window

SPEAKER_00

What do you think Microns should do with their massive cash? You think they buy back, especially now that it's cheap?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, but uh they can't do it until the first quarter of 2027, I believe, um, because of the CHIPS Act uh that requires them to not buy their own stock. Uh that this is uh they benefit from the CHIPS Act, uh, some government funding, and therefore they're not allowed to just use that money to go buy their own shares. Um, but I believe that expires at the end of this year, so they'll be able to do share buybacks uh next year. And you know, with that much cash pile that is going to be there by 2027, I suspect they're going to start buying um their own stock. Management on their earnings call did say that they are going to return 100% of their excess cash back to shareholders. And the way that you return cash back to shareholders is in the form of buybacks and dividends. So uh they've already got some dividends and they've increased them recently. Uh, so you know, expect that they'll increase them again and they'll probably do buybacks next year.

SPEAKER_02

In addition to that, I would love for them to do some strategic acquisitions similar to what we're seeing with Rocket Lab right now. Um, because that could pay dividends in another way. Absolutely.

Video On Podcasts And Closing]

SPEAKER_02

Okay. With that, this has been a great 46th episode. We pretty much hit on every stock. So uh hopefully everyone's happy. If you're not, feel free to leave a comment and let us know why.

SPEAKER_01

Uh and Justin, one quick uh bit of news is that we now have video on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify as of today. So um if you've been listening to us on Spotify uh andor Apple Podcasts, now you have uh access to our faces too, which that might scare you. Maybe it's better not to listen, not to watch the feature not about.

SPEAKER_03

Let's listen.

SPEAKER_01

This may have backfired. But uh, but anyway, if you do um listen or watch on Apple Podcasts or uh Spotify, uh leave us a review there as well. I think that uh that helps spread the show a little bit and that would be helpful for us. Thank you. Yeah, let us know what you think of the video.

SPEAKER_02

Is it is it good or is it scary?

SPEAKER_01

All right. Um thanks everyone. Appreciate you guys.