The Transcript: Recent Episodes
Scott Krisiloff and Erick Mokaya
Welcome to The Transcript Podcast where we highlight and discuss key thoughts, ideas, and themes we picked from our reading of transcripts from earnings calls.
In this episode, we contrast corporate optimism against a backdrop of enduring inflation, address the financial pressures facing low-income consumers and the distress signals from rising subprime delinquencies, and examine the unexpected challenges in the mass-market adoption of EVs.
The episode is based on this week’s newsletter that is available on Substack.
Positive Outlook
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:10 Prevailing Optimism
00:01:50 Low-Income Consumer Strains
00:03:54 EV Market Dynamics
00:04:56 Automaker Bets and Brand Loyalty
00:07:01 Hybrids Gaining Ground
00:07:54 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we contrast corporate optimism against a backdrop of enduring inflation, address the financial pressures facing low-income consumers and the distress signals from rising subprime delinquencies, and examine the unexpected challenges in the mass-market adoption of EVs.
**00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:10 Prevailing Optimism
00:01:50 Low-Income Consumer Strains
00:03:54 EV Market Dynamics
00:04:56 Automaker Bets and Brand Loyalt
00:07:01 Hybrids Gaining Ground
00:07:54 Conclusion**
In this episode, we discuss the Federal Reserve's future rate cuts, the surprising job market data, a soft European economy, and tech giants' AI-driven performance
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Decoding the Fed's Signals
00:03:18 Soft Signals from Europe's Economy
00:04:21 Natural Gas Inventory Surprises
00:05:06 Tech Earnings and AI
00:07:58 Meta's Dividend Debut
00:09:16 Chips and Games: Industry Trends
00:10:51 Conclusion
In this episode, we explore the potential soft landing, consumer spending resilience, Tesla's AI ambitions in the EV market, Boeing's challenges, and the big week ahead in big tech earnings.
In this episode, we examine the state of the consumer and analyze macro takeaways from earnings calls ahead of the Fed meeting this week.
In this episode, we discuss the key takeaways from the first 3 weeks of earnings season. The key trend is the softening trends in the economy, the state of the EV market and the stabilization in cloud.
In this episode, we discuss the takeaways from Jackson Hole, reflections on the state of the consumer from retailers, and the blowout quarter that Nvidia just hard.
In this episode we discuss signs of stability in the economy, reflections on the long-term implications of higher rates, and the impact of Taylor Swift on the economy.
In this episode, we discuss key gleanings from the earnings season including takeaways on bank earnings, inflation, and AI.
This week, we discuss the slight softening trends from the big retailers that reported last week. We also discuss Tesla and AI and the Fed talk about more potential rate hikes.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 Softening Trends
00:01:50 Inflation Still High
00:04:00 Tesla and AI
00:07:33 The State of the Supply Chains
00:08:30 Nuggets of Wisdom
00:09:12 Conclusion
In this episode, we discuss the key points from the Fed press conference last week, the incoming data on the state of the economy, and the banking crisis.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 Pausing Soon?
00:01:08 Hot or Cold?
00:03:31 Troubled Regional Banks
00:05:57 What's Different This Time?
00:07:42 CRE Exposure
00:10:12 ChatGPT Crushing Business Models
00:11:22 The Oracle of Omaha
00:12:32 Conclusion
In this episode, we discuss softening trends picked from Q1 earnings calls, the impact of First Republic Bank’s demise, and double-digit revenue growth for consumer packaged goods companies.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available onSubstack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:08 Softening Trends
00:01:23 The Impact of the End of First Republic
00:04:46 What will the Fed Do?
00:06:55 Price-Driven Growth
00:08:38 Takeaways from Tech Earnings
00:11:15 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the key takeaways from US bank's Q1 2023 earnings and more.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 Slowly Declining
00:02:18 What Will the Fed Do?
00:03:18 Banks are Stable For Now
00:04:42 Credit Metrics Look Good
00:06:23 On Semis and Pool Demand
00:08:20 Freight Recession
00:09:10 Tesla Slashing Prices
00:11:06 Big Week Ahead
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode marking the start of the new earnings season, we discuss how banks and the Fed are responding to the recent baking crisis, the state of the consumer Buffett's take on AI.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 Banking Stress Calms Down
00:01:56 How Will the Fed React?
00:05:23 Is The Banking Crisis Over?
00:07:03 The Car Market
00:08:40 Buffett and AI
00:10:57 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss our key takeaways from the Q4 2022 earnings calls.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 The Banking Crisis
00:02:55 Consumers Are Still Spending
00:04:22 The Era of AI
00:08:40 Earnings Season Begins Soon
00:10:11 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we examine the developments in the banking world in the last week or so and the implications these have on financial markets and on the Fed rate hike.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
The Transcript
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
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Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:51 The Role of Small Banks
00:05:00 What will the Fed do?
00:06:35 Deglobalization Continues
00:07:09 The Consumer Keeps Spending
00:08:19 Leading and Lagging Indicators
00:09:44 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the rapid fall of SVB, the subsequent failure of two other banks, and the possibility of contagion.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 The Rapid Fall of SVB
00:02:14 The 3 Banks That Failed
00:05:12 Contagion Effects?
00:09:15 Goliath is Winning
00:12:2 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the positive consumer sentiment, stickiness in service inflation, and ChatGPT attracting criticism.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
This week, a transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:13 Consumer is Still Partying
00:01:31 Service Inflation Still Sticky
00:02:45 No Hurricane Yet
00:03:22 UID 2.0
00:05:44 ChatGPT Attracting Criticism
00:08:15 Back to Office at Amazon
00:09:27 Conclusion
Introduction
[00:00:00] Scott: Welcome everyone to a new episode of The Transcript podcast. You've got me, Scott Krisiloff, I'm editor of The Transcript, along with Erick Mokaya, our lead author. We sent out a new issue of the newsletter yesterday, which is President's Day, a holiday, but we still had it out there.
Consumer is Still Partying
And what we found last week was that similar to what we've been seeing, the consumer is resilient and really just positive sentiment generally from CEOs, especially some of the banks who were speaking. Brian Moynihan said that, of middle market clients, they were saying that overall they thought things would be much worse now than they are, but when they look around, they're feeling fine. So that was the title of our newsletter this week, Feeling Fine. Erick, any thoughts?
"On the credit card side, we're up at almost 20% in the month year-on-year...So the consumer side, people are out there still spending, and you can see that in your day-to-day life. Try getting a restaurant reservation in most cities these days, right? It's really hard if you want to do something last minute. And so I think we're seeing people out there." - Wells Fargo CFO Michael Santomassimo
[00:00:44] Mokaya: I smiled when I saw the title Feeling Fine. I think it really represents what we've been capturing in earnings calls. We didn't do a podcast last week and the title was Let's Dance, so it's Let's Dance and Feeling Fine. So it's good times for the consumer generally. There's not a lot that has changed ever since banks reported last month. So I think it was banks having conferences last week. More CEOs, including a Goldman Sachs CEO, are saying okay, the consumer is still strong. So the argument is about whether we are having a soft landing or no landing at all. So I think that's the main argument. But generally, the consumer is feeling okay. But I think the key picking this week is that try to get a restaurant reservation or hotel room, both of those are unavailable right now. People are still maybe enjoying the experiences of post-pandemic pleasure having been holed in during the pandemic.
Service Inflation Still Sticky
And if you combine that with what the Fed chair said a couple of weeks ago about service inflation being sticky, I think it looks like this is not going down, or at least we may need to readjust or be a bit more comfortable with a bit higher inflation going forward. Now, what's your take on all that?
[00:01:47] Scott: Yeah, I think it's interesting. Last week we got CPI and PI data which was a little bit hotter than expected, especially on the core side. There still seems to be like 4% plus inflation underlying core inflation that's in the economy, and that's obviously running a full, that's double what the Fed would want at 2%. And so we got actually some pretty negative inflation data points last week, but still the tone of this newsletter this week was very positive. And even with respect to inflation, I think Goldman Sachs's CEO was talking about how investors feel like we've conquered inflation at this point and they're looking past inflation. And I don't know if this is a circumstance where people feel like we've gotten farther ahead of inflation than we really have, and the Fed is going to come in and continue to pump the brakes on the economy, or if we really are headed for this soft landing or no landing situation that people seem to be expecting now. That's the outstanding question.
No Hurricane Yet
[00:02:45] Mokaya: I think going back six or seven months ago when the JP Morgan CEO talked about there being a hurricane on the horizon, my conclusion now is that given how the sentiment has changed, especially the bank CEOs, it could be that they were expecting something much worse and now whatever is happening is actually a bit benign. If you look beyond just the macro section, the financials, and capital markets activities are starting to pick up, meaning that people are becoming a bit more confident. Or at least that the range of expectations is narrowing to such an extent that they're more confident about the future, so they're able to put out a bit more capital to work in the markets. Anything else you may have picked?
UID 2.0
[00:03:22] Scott: Yeah, I think going into the more company-specific areas in the consumer section, we had a few different quotes from Trade Desk, and there was one that really stuck out to me, which was them talking about the uptake of UID 2 being much faster than expected and having 75% market share, which UID 2 is something honestly I need to understand a little bit better the mechanics and who benefits. But my understanding is that for social media companies like Snap and Meta, the lack of being able to target consumers after Apple made its privacy moves has been a major headwind for their ability to grow advertising revenues. And the Trade Desk was saying that with UID 2, this problem of cookies and user identification has now been solved, which seems like it could be a big positive catalyst for those social media companies. Do you have any additional insights in the UID 2, or what's going on there?
[00:04:17] Mokaya: So I think last time I checked, which was a while back, I need to update my knowledge on it. Think of this as having two parties involved so one is a consumer and then there's a publisher who wants to serve them ads. They have this thing in common. They both want relevant ads, for the consumer because they bought them to get things that they really want to buy and then they are able to maybe get them at a discount or something. And to the publisher, they want to put out relevant ads so they can be able to increase the ROI. So the solution that you UID 2 provides is to be able to do both of these things without compromising on privacy. So UID 2 is more of an open-source solution to this problem. So what happens is the consumer shares an email or phone number that is hashed out and encrypted and then shared with both of them. And then the consumer can be able to change some of the details that they want to attach to them. And the publisher is able to get some of these details and be able to deliver relevant ads and increase this ROI at the end of the day. So the uptake has been a bit surprising even the CEO of Trade Desk said that around 15% of the third-party data ecosystem was already on UID 2. And then they expect that to increase to around 75% by the first half of this year, meaning that this solution seems to be very relevant to the ecosystem and as such the uptake is surprisingly good. And I think that then becomes a huge catalyst for growth for companies that are involved in this area, like the Trade Desk themselves. Maybe I can read a bit more and next time we can have a proper, deeper conversation.
Source: Rise Interactive
ChatGPT Attracting Criticism
So beyond that though, I wanted to also touch on a few takeaways maybe from the tech section. It's about chatGPT. It's been the front and center of activities in the past two weeks. And last week we didn't have the podcast, but I think Let’s Dance was all about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling Google to come dance a little bit in the world of search engine. It feels like we're in the new face of search wars and all that and browser wars are once again reactivated. And there was a bit of a reference to Netscape. I don’t know, what's your takeaway from that in terms of the relationship between those two and Netscape and AI and chatGPT and all that?
"I think the marketing moment offered by ChatGPT is incredible. We’ve seen these moments before: a company called Netscape brought the web browser to everybody’s attention. I mean Netscape was not an eventual winner but the internet certainly was. I think what ChatGPT has done [is] helped make AI real to lots of people who kind of were aware of it but didn’t maybe quite see what the power of AI would be. So full credit to what they did there." - IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
[00:06:19] Scott: Yeah, I think it was interesting. You're really seeing, this was IBM CEO speaking and you're seeing competitors to open AI really coalesce around the idea that chatGPT is inaccurate or presents inaccuracies, and that's becoming a brand identity that competition is pushing onto chatGPT, I think. And so it's interesting that's a vector of attack that they're coming at. And you saw IBM's CEO pushing that as well. Also, he was saying that basically the Netscape OpenAI chatGPT comparison was obviously meant to show that hey, yeah, somebody launched this game-changing technology 30 years ago now, and it didn't end up winning the day, somebody else won the web browser wars. So it was to remind people that there's still a big industrial competition that's coming in this, and just because chat GPT launched to the war doesn't mean that they're going to end up winning. I think it's particularly interesting that IBM's CEO is talking about this because of IBM's complete irrelevance to this conversation so far. Obviously, they made a big first-mover push with Watson, but that has not materialized into much economic value. I would put more stock into this I think if it were Google CEO or somebody from the Amazon team talking about this, but IBM is irrelevant it seems.
"The use cases we work on are not consumer, so consumer is a lot easier to explain: they type in something and, some number of times out of 10, you get an interesting, intriguing, and in the right ballpark answer. What nobody can quite say is how likely is it to get a completely incorrect answer, as at least one of the two demonstrations has shown. If you’re using it for consumer search, fine. If I’m using it to answer a question on somebody’s financial transaction, that’s actually quite a problem. Or, if it’s being used to answer somebody’s question on what healthcare treatment they might seek. So, for enterprise use cases, I still think that there is a massive opportunity that is outside the pure consumer space." - IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
[00:07:38] Mokaya: One of the questions fronted to him was why IBM did not launch ChatGPT and the reasons he gave, I don't know what’s your take from them. One was that they focused on very black box kind of experiences they didn't want where the user interacts with the AI like now on ChatGPT and quickly gets the answers themselves. And then the second reason he gave was that they focused on very niche areas like health, where they didn't have the expertise and that's why they failed in that. He himself acknowledges that what ChatGPT has done is to actually bring to the forefront the conversations around AI and its usability among people. You can feel like across the landscape ChatGPT is causing such a massive reawakening among companies.
Back to Office at Amazon
Anything else that you took away? Perhaps one of the most surprising was Amazon calling people back to their offices and the impact that would have maybe on office leasing and commercial real estate. Any takeaway from that?
"Ultimately, they’ve led us to conclude that we should go back to being in the office together the majority of the time (at least three days per week)...Of course, as there were before the pandemic, there will still be certain roles (e.g. some of our salespeople, customer support, etc.) and exceptions to these expectations, but that will be a small minority. We plan to implement this change effective May 1." - Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
[00:08:27] Scott: Yeah, I definitely see more in-person work happening these days. It feels like the pandemic is very much in the rearview mirror now, and people are going back into offices. Really just feeling the need for social connection, I think in work. And I think even though we're still very productive in a remote work environment there's more gravity pulling people back into offices. So I don't know, I still don't know whether it balances out in a hybrid situation or not. But there is definitely more momentum for its office.
[00:08:58] Mokaya: Yeah. Six or so months ago, it's very few companies that dare say what Amazon is saying right now, but I think like with the post-pandemic life happening, layoffs happening, I think companies are taking advantage of this to really restructure a lot of the things that they wanted to do, really thinking keenly how to right-size their workforce and how to make workforces more efficient and one of the things is definitely bringing people back into the office. And a key reason they give is culture. It's really difficult to embed culture in new recruits if they're working from home.
Conclusion
So we've covered a lot in the newsletter, so I guess that would be a good point to end this conversation.
[00:09:31] Scott: I think that's a good place to stop.
[00:09:33] Mokaya: Maybe I would close with the quote from Charlie Munger who said “Go all in on good bets”. I think our good bet is The Transcript and we really love it. Thank you for joining us this week. Bye from us.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the resiliency of consumer spending, the sticky services inflation, and the era of AI.
In this episode, we discuss how companies are preparing for a mild recession, the developing decade of AI, and the status of the reopening of China.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available onSubstack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 A Mild Recession Ahead
00:02:12 Will the Fed Slow Down?
00:04:36 Pace of Decline in VC Investments Slows Down
00:05:32 The Decade of AI
00:09:38 Nearshoring and the Reopening of China
00:10:58 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In the first episode of the new year, we discuss what has changed since the holidays and preview the Q4 2022 earnings season.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
New Year, Same Story
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers only after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
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Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:08 A Cooling Down
00:01:55 Inflation Cooling in Europe
00:03:03 Inflation in Services
00:05:52 A Hunkering for Fries
00:06:49 The AI revolution
00:09:19 Weakening Data Center Demand
00:11:15 Earnings Season Preview
00:12:40 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we review the year 2022 through quotes from earnings calls and also track the incredible growth we have had at The Transcript.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
2022: Year in Review
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers only after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
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Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 A Year of Worries
00:01:51 The Fed Behind the Curve
00:04:51 Inflation Peaked
00:06:41 The End of an Era
00:08:22 Looking into 2023
00:10:04 Incredible Growth at The Transcript
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the signs of slow down in spending, the darkening outlook for companies, and the impact ChatGPT is having.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available onSubstack.
No Question About It
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers only after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:08 There is a Slowdown
00:02:28 Companies Prepping for a Hurricane
00:04:26 The 2% Trend
00:06:11 IT BudgetsUnder Pressure
00:08:04 The ChatGPT Moment
00:11:07 Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we host Sean Stannard-Stockton, the president and chief investment officer of Ensemble Capital Management, and a regular reader of our newsletter. We discuss his takeaways from the latest Q3 22 earnings from companies in their portfolio including Mastercard, Starbucks, Ferrari, Home Depot, and Netflix.
The episode is based on yesterday's newsletter which is available on Substack.
A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available for all subscribers after the show notes below. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:33 Why Sean enjoys the Transcript and Earnings Calls
00:05:37 Focusing on the Long Term While Engaging with Earnings
00:08:03 Macro Perspectives
00:12:58 The Ensemble Approach to Investing
00:14:32 Ferrari and Luxury
00:22:02 Mastercard and Payments
00:31:11 Netflix and Streaming
00:41:00 Home Deport and The State of Retailers
00:46:54 Concluding Thoughts
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we host Sean Stannard-Stockton who is the president and chief investment officer of Ensemble Capital Management and is a regular reader of our newsletter. We discuss his takeaways from the latest Q3 22 earnings from companies in their portfolio including Mastercard, Starbucks, Ferrari, Home Depot, and Netflix.
In this episode, we discuss the signals from freight companies on weakening demand, the FTX saga, and the Meta U-Turn
In this episode, we discuss the musings from the Fed meeting last week, the challenged ad markets, and the state of energy markets in Europe
In this episode, we are joined by Brad Freeman, author of the newsletter Stock Market Nerd, to discuss key takeaways from tech earnings.
In this special episode (Episode 80), we host former hedge fund manager Marc Rubinstein to discuss the key takeaways from Banks' Q3 22 earnings calls. Marc is the author of Net Interest and writes for Bloomberg Opinion. He covers financial sector themes.
We are also joined by Brian Gilmartin, CFA from Trinity Asset Management who writes the blog Fundamentalis.
In this episode, we discuss the deteriorating corporate confidence, the impact of the strong dollar on US earnings, and explore whether air travel has experienced a permanent structural change. We also preview tech earnings that flood in this week.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:08 Declining Corporate Confidence
00:02:03 The Strong Dollar
00:04:16 Declining Ad Spend
00:05:06 Tech Earnings Week
00:06:52 The Fed Feeling the Pressure?
00:08:27 Opportunities in Europe
00:10:07 Permanent Structural Change in Travel?
In this special episode, we are joined by Jesse Felder to discuss the macro takeaways from our recent newsletters including the Fed's fight with inflation, the heightened recession risks, the distress in financial markets, and the early innings of a commodity super-cycle.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:15] The Fed’s Hard Time with Inflation
[00:02:46] Inflation Is a Choice
[00:06:54] Recession Risks
[00:10:36] When will Real Rates be Positive?
[00:12:47] Declining Consumer Deposits
[00:15:50] The Energy Crisis & The Commodity Super Cycle
[00:22:54] Conclusion
In this episode, we discuss the signs that consumer spending may be softening, the hope that inflation may start to slow soon, and the signs of heavy stress in the financial system. We also preview the Q3 earnings season as banks kick off the season this Friday.
In this episode, we dissect the key takeaways from Jerome Powell's press conference last week, tackle the prevailing inflationary psychology, and check out a few developments in Electric Vehicles vs ICEs.
In this episode, we discuss the state of the consumer and consumer spending, the decline in FedEx volumes and what it means for the recession outlook, and why the big 3 in cloud will be hard to compete with.
In this episode, we discuss the focus of the Fed on fighting inflation until the job is done, the trends in e-commerce and how companies are trying to find the optimal WFH/WFO mix.
Welcome to Episode 73 of The Transcript Podcast where we discuss the key themes and takeaways from the Q2 2022 earnings calls.
This is a special episode of a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Wednesday, 31st August 2022 with our guests Sam Ro of Tker.co and Alex Morris of The Science of Hitting
Show Notes
00:00:00: Introduction
00:05:21: The Fed and Inflation
00:11:15: Trading Down of High-income Consumers
00:15:44: Retailers and Their Excess Inventory
00:20:31: Takeaways from Tech Earnings
00:23:00: Trends in CAPEX
00:29:56: The State of Streaming
00:34:58: EPS Trends
00:40:48: Closing thoughts
In this episode, we discuss takeaways from Jackson Hole, the shifting spending patterns of high-income consumers, and the post-pandemic blues of some covid winners.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:07 No Resting Until the Job is Done
00:02:44 Emerging Markets Feeling the Heat
00:03:29 Trading Down from High Income Consumers
00:06:30 Post-Pandemic Blues
00:09:14 Strong Year for Farmers
00:10:12 Takeaways from Sam Walton’s Made in America
00:11:19 Invitation to Twitter Spaces Tomorrow
In this episode, we discuss key takeaways from the retailers' Q2 results, the implications of falling used car prices and how streaming companies are eyeing a piece of the live sports market.
In this week's episode, we discuss key takeaways from the Fed press conference, how companies are preparing for a recession and the big tech earnings.
In this week's episode, we cover that CEOs not seeing a downturn as imminent from their data, the challenging ad environment for Snapchat, earnings not as bad as expected for Netflix, and look at the week ahead in tech earnings.
In the special episode, we host former hedge fund manager Marc Rubinstein to discuss the key takeaways from Banks' Q2 22 earnings calls. Marc is the author of Net Interest and writes for Bloomberg Opinion. He covers financial sector themes.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:30 What Happens During Earnings Season?
00:04:25 The US Banking Industry
00:07:16 Key Takeaways from Banks this Earnings Season
00:16:22 Rising Rates and The Banking Industry
00:18:44 Banking Sector Outlook for Q3 22
00:21:13 How to Analyze Banks
00: 26:32 Fun Takes: Mike Mayo Vs Jamie Dimon
00:30:12 Conclusion
Summary: This week's episode is all about key takeaways from banks' Q2 earnings, the state of the semiconductor industry, and Elon Musk vs Twitter
In this episode, we are joined by special guest Sam Ro to discuss key takeaways from our newsletter this week and to preview Q2 earnings season that starts this week,
In this episode, we discuss the fed call, whether demand is really softening and Facebook taking on Tiktok.
Show Notes
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Demand Softening?
00:02:27 The Fed Call
00:04:30 Brakes on the Housing Market
00:06:20 A Lot of Talk about Oil
00:08:11 Facebook Takes on Tiktok
00:12:37 Conclusion
In this episode, we discuss takeaways from the Fed press conference last week, the slight uptick in delinquency rates, and the emerging opportunities in restructurings.
In this episode, we cover the strong inflation numbers, the fear that the strong consumer balance sheets might not hold for long, and the impact of declining valuations on employee motivations and retention.
In this week's episode, we discuss the recession fears amidst the strong consumer spending, the signs of moderation on housing, and our tweet that got a response from Mark Cuban.
Welcome to Episode 60 of The Transcript Podcast where we discuss the key themes and takeaways from the Q1 2022 earnings calls.
This is a special episode of a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Wednesday, 18th May with our guests:
- Sam Ro of Tker.co
- Alex Morris of The Science of Hitting
- Mostly Borrowed Ideas of MBI Deep Dives
Show Notes00:00:00 Introduction
00:07:18 Macro Perspective from the Earnings
00:17:27 Historical Context for the Current Market State
00:32:32 The intersection of Tech & Consumer
00:36:48 Valuations
00:41:12 Q2 Outlook & Closing Thoughts
In this episode, we cover the state of private markets and the tough times that retailers are having.
In this episode, we discuss the end of an era in markets as valuations decline steeply, the latest and planned fed hikes, and the situation in China as regards covid.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:08] The End of an Era
[00:04:15] The Fed willing to Take More Pain
[00:07:27] Covid in China
[00:09:34] TakeAways from Tech
[00:11:20] Moderating Housing Situation
[00:12:13] Conclusion
In this episode, we cover big tech earnings, observations on inflation peaking and the uptick in travel.
Show Notes:
00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:10: Inflation is peaking
00:01:13: Travel is Bouncing Back
00:03:46: Consumer Responses to Price Increases
00:04:46: Facebook Facing HeadWinds
00:07:13: Google Doing Well
00:10:29: Buffett’s Musings
In this episode, the Fed's tightening trajectory amidst talk of a recession, the slowdown in venture capital investments, IPOs, and later-stage private investments in Q1, and Netflix's move to offer ad-based tiers.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:00 The Fed’s stance still incredibly dovish
00:03:39 VC investment, IPO, later stage investments slowed down
00:05:35 VC investment, IPO, later stage investments slowed down
00:10:27 Housing market at inflection point
00:12:11 Twitter goes private
Listen now | Putting Netflix's Q1 2022 subscriber loss in context
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss if the fed is out of touch in terms of inflation, AVOD vs SVOD in streaming, and reflections from Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt.
In this episode, we cover the rise in interest rates by the Fed, China's rising covid cases, and airlines projecting strong revenues on the back of strong travel demand.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:10 The Fed raised interest rates by 0.25%
00:03:33 Rising covid cases in China
00:04:28 Bank of Japan will not be raining interest rates
00:06:17 Travel demand surged after Omicron
00:09:17 ‘Skip intro’ on Netflix is a people’s favorite
In this episode, we discuss the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on inflation which has shifted from transitory to structural and the hints of a potential recession.
In this episode, we discuss the global worries on energy and food supplies that surround Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We also cover subscription fatigue alongside Disney’s planned launch of an ad-supported subscription.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:11 Supply chain effects from Russia-Ukraine war
00:03:55 Soaring energy prices and search for alternatives
00:05:25 Food crisis looming
00:07:53 Global financial companies have joined the santions
00:08:19 Fed’s reaction adds a layer of uncertainty
00:10:16 Headwinds for streaming services
Welcome to Episode 51 of The Transcript Podcast.
This is a special episode of a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Thursday, 24th February with Sam Ro as our special guest.
In this episode, we discuss the key themes that we took note of in Q4 2021 earnings calls.
In this episode, we cover subscription fatigue, companies becoming aggressive in increasing prices, and rising geopolitical risks.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:27 More price increases might be on the way
00:02:36 All eyes on the Ukraine-Russia tension
00:08:05 Growing subscription fatigue
00:10:50 High demand for coal in China
In this episode, we discuss margin compression, rising geopolitical tensions, Dinsey turning 100, and Cloudflare earnings.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:09 Strong economy still, despite volatile capital markets
00:01:46 Life is slowly getting back to normal
00:02:29 Margin compression expected in the first half of the year
00:04:26 Eyes on Ukraine
00:06:12 Disney: a century in the making
00:08:19 Some companies are hard hit by supply chain dynamics
In this episode, we discuss the challenges Meta/Facebook is facing from Tiktok, the commodity prices that seem to be peaking, and the promising energy sector.
In the episode this week, we discuss our notes from the Fed meeting this week, tech earnings, and Blackstone's observations on private markets.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:11 Rate hike pushed to March
00:04:55 Inflation is a worry around the world
00:07:34 A lot of investment going into real estate
00:09:30 Big tech thriving despite supply chain issues
00:11:04 Staffing issues are starting to get better
In this episode, we discuss the inevitable rate hikes ahead, investor worries about the impact of inflation and hikes, and Netflix's growth challenge
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:10 Rate hikes are on the way
00:02:36 Companies are a little worried about inflation
00:05:36 Netflix growth has slowed down
00:08:33 VC activity has slowed down
In the first episode of the year, we cover the omicron impact on the economy, on supply chains, and on staffing.
In this episode, we review the key themes we saw in 2021.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:35 Vaccination paved way for economies to reopen
00:01:42 The Fed was behind the curve inflation
00:02:55 Tapering has began
00:04:33 There is slight easing of the supply chains
00:05:00 2021 was the year of the consumer
00:06:51 Meme stocks and speculative mania
00:07:35 It’s been a great year at The Transcript too
In this week's episode, we discuss bank CEOs' thoughts on inflation, the 2022 economic outlook, and the Fed's actions.
In this episode, we cover the changing Fed tune, that supply chains may be easing slightly and the headwinds consumers face going into 2022.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:08 The Fed has changed their tone on inflation
00:00:43 Low-income families have cut down on shopping
00:01:37 Omicron variant and its effect on the economy still unknown
00:04:01 High infection rate in Europe might impact intenational travel recovery
00:06:12 Retailers had strong comps in Q3
00:06:38 Some green shoots for the supply chains
Welcome to Episode 41 of The Transcript Podcast. This is a special episode of a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Friday, 19th November with two special guests, Sam Ro and Alex Morris. In this episode, we discuss the key themes that we took note of in Q3 2021.
In this episode, we cover Unified ID 2.0, the challenging labor market, and AMC becoming a crypto company.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:11 Stong global economy despite supply chain issues and inflation
00:00:45 Lots of job offers, very few takers
00:05:15 Crypto is growing at the same rate internet did
00:07:19 Very rapid adoption of web 3.0
00:09:39 Shift from cookies to UID 2.0
Listen now | Episode 40
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the Fed's tapering and desire to raise rates soon, the signs of normalization from various consumer trends, and fusion energy as a way to power our future energy needs.
In this episode, we discuss that some companies aren't experiencing any labor issues, Facebook's change to being called Meta and the potential in the metaverse, and the long-term impact of the iOS changes.
In this episode, we discuss the worst of the semi-conductor industry being behind us, the impact of iOS changes on the ad industry and companies like Snap, and the key milestone that Tesla hit.
This episode is based on our newsletter which you can find here
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:32 Companies posting record Q3 performance
00:02:02 iOS changes are upending digital advertising
00:07:02 The worst of the semiconductor shortage is behind us
00:08:08 Strong resurgence in offshore rigging
00:09:45 Strong CapEx cycle
00:10:26 Tesla hits a million cars annual delivery rate
Episode Summary: In this episode, we discuss the strong start to the Q3 earnings season last week as the big banks reported.
The episode is based on yesterdays’ newsletter which is available here. A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available, for subscribers only, on our website.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:17 Strong GDP growth despite inflation
00:01:54 Supply chain issues have dwarfed demand recovery
00:03:25 Inflation hitting small businesses disproportionately
00:07:34 Surge in energy prices
00:08:19 Tightness in the labor market persists
00:10:03 Squid Game global euphoria
00:12:59 Banks loosening credit in commercial real estate
Welcome to Episode 34 of The Transcript Podcast where we discuss the implications of the tight supply chains on holiday shopping, the ratcheting inflation worries, and what companies are thinking about working from home.
Welcome to Episode 34 of The Transcript Podcast where we discuss the Fed's intention to taper, retailers restricting purchases of certain items, and some nuggets of wisdom from our readings.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:13 The Delta effect was shortlived
00:00:32 The Fed will taper at the next meeting
00:03:11 Inflation likely to stretch into 2022
00:04:45 Tight debt markets for commercial real estate
00:06:43 Potential headwinds in the movie and theatre industry
00:10:18 Some nuggets of wisdom from Henry Ford
Welcome to Episode 33 of The Transcript Podcast where we discuss the strong September data, the slowdown in China, and the balancing out in the housing markets.
In this episode, we discuss the downshift in economic data in August, the still tight supply chains, and Amazon's battle with Visa on credit cards surcharges.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 There’s a downshift in the economy
00:04:54 Supply chain bottlenecks might persist into the holiday season
00:06:38 Ford is pumped up for the EV revolution
00:08:05 Off-the-shelf solutions making cybercrime less sophisticated
00:09:18 Amazon surcharges on credit card purchases
In this episode of The Transcript Podcast, we discuss the worsening supply chain situation, the regulatory actions in China, and the persistent labor issues that may be resolved soon.Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:12 Labor issues easing with the end of unemployment benefits
00:01:37 Cost inflation higher than companies expected
00:02:20 Some tapering likely this year
00:03:06 Chinese governments restricts kids’ time online
00:05:39 Still no signs of supply chains improving
00:07:55 Travel is slowing down
00:09:25 Cybersecurity spending likely to go up
Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Transcript Podcast, we discuss the dampening effects of the Delta variant, the strong start to back-to-school, and the metaverse/omniverse that is getting companies excited.
The episode is based on yesterdays’ newsletter which is available on Substack. A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available, for subscribers only, after the show notes below.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Marginal dampening from the Delta variant
00:01:34 Covid vaccine booster shots needed
00:03:48 No one wants lockdowns again
00:05:18 People are looking forward to back-to-school.
00:06:36 Regulations in China and the effect on tech companies
00:08:31 The metaverse/omniverse
00:09:48 The metaverse could become larger than current economy
Episode Transcript:
Introduction
[00:00:00] Scott: Welcome everyone to a new episode of The Transcript podcast. You've got me Scott Krisiloff, I'm editor of The Transcript along with Erick Mokaya our lead author. We sent out a new issue of The Transcript newsletter yesterday and had a lot of good stuff in there.
Marginal dampening from the Delta variant
The key thing that we were focused on last week was the extent to which the Delta variant is impacting the economy in the US. What we saw is that there was some impact, although pretty marginal at this point. There were companies talking about a little bit of dampening was what one restaurant company [said]. Disney talked about seeing some group and convention cancellations. So a little bit of impact, but overall, the retailers who reported especially reported strong consumer spending and still plenty of foot traffic into stores and a really strong start to the back of the school season in general. The economy is still, very strong, despite some marginal dampening from the Delta variant. Mokaya, you have anything to add to that?
"With the Delta virus we're seeing a little bit of dampening. It's hard to tell whether that's the Delta virus or just seasonality. We suspect it's a little bit of both." - Ark Restaurants (ARKR) CEO Michael Weinstein
[00:01:01] Mokaya: I think it's the same thing that I noticed across the retail space. It's a little bit of marginal impact as you'd call it, but then mostly the consumer is resilient. The theme you keep seeing is of course, the disruptions in supply chains that are continuing into this second half of the year. Something else that struck me a lot also was the fact that a company like Tyson Foods is saying that labor is their number one challenge currently. They're really looking out for the easing of that kind of labor shortages as they head into September.
Covid vaccine booster shots needed
Some statistics that came out this past few weeks is that the vaccine that we've been having, its effect moderates with time, six months or so, so you need a third booster. It’s always interesting to see BioNTech and also Dr. Fauci come out and say that the third dose may be needed. I don't know how soon that will be available in the US but in Sweden there's a consideration of maybe early next year for the third dose for that matter. But overall most of the companies that we saw the data and statistics for August, they are saying that the impact is not much to write home about there.
“We believe that the best approach at the moment to deal with the situation is to continue with a booster dose with the existing wild-type strain, which creates antibody responses which are about fivefold higher than the antibody titers -- neutralizing antibody titers after the second shot” - - BioNTech (BNTX) CFO Sierk Poetting
[00:02:13] Scott: I think expanding on the Delta variant stuff, anecdotally, what I'm noticing is that anything that is a personal decision, people are still pretty much making the same decision as they would have otherwise. There's some concern in the back of your head about whether you're traveling as much or going out to restaurants as much, but for the most part, I see restaurants packed and people living their lives. But when there's institutional decisions, it's much easier for the institutions to decide to be much more conservative. I'm hearing people like on the work from home basis, I spoke to somebody last week who was at a big Fortune 100 company, the company, told them they won't go back to the offices until August of 2022. Full year from now that they're already saying they're not going back. Everybody who is planning to go back to offices after Labor Day, I haven't heard anybody who's being forced to go back in the offices personally that I'm talking to. That's the divide on the Delta variant, in the US right now.
[00:03:13] Mokaya: Something I picked up from the Deloitte US which may explain a little bit of when it comes to individual positions, people are more making their decision of, okay, it's here with us, we’ve got to learn to live with it. What he says there is that there is a realization that as the Delta variant surges along, COVID will probably be with us for a little while longer. That may be pushing people to make that decision of say, let's go out to just live life and try to be as normal as possible even though we know the Delta variant is there as long as you're vaccinated and all. Don't you think so?
“There’s a tension between the desire of some leaders to bring back a preponderance of in-person work and a yearning of many in the labor force to preserve the level of flexibility. This is not an all-or-nothing, though" - Deloitte U.S. CEO Joe Ucuzoglu
No one wants lockdowns again
[00:03:48] Scott: Yeah, I think so. I don't think anybody wants to go back to lockdowns again in the United States. There's no will towards that, especially when it looks like 90% of the hospitalizations are happening among people who are unvaccinated. So really the perpetual spread of this here in the US is on the shoulders of people predominantly who have not been vaccinated. If you haven't been vaccinated, go get vaccinated. There's billions of doses that have now been administered so concerns about health effects we would have seen these already pop up in my opinion.
[00:04:26] Mokaya: I would agree on that because this past week Australia went into a lockdown and the kind of reactions that they've seen there, people are noticing that lockdowns may not be the best way to live. You've got to learn to live with the virus, take precautions of course, but at the same time, life doesn't need to stop at the end of the day. That's what I'm learning. As you go forward, maybe also stretching out to what the Deloitte US CEO said, is about companies are still trying to figure out this work from home and work from office kind of mix. What's the best mix. Some companies have already made that decision, like okay, until the next year. Even those who are very keen on having people back by September are delaying those decisions a little bit, especially with the surge of the Delta variant.
People are looking forward to back-to-school.
Something else you said before which we picked up was about the back to school. Lots of the retailers are commenting on this. I picked a lot of quotes about that. The way it's developing so far, it's hitting past 2019 numbers, which tells you that people are really, really looking forward to students or kids being back in school. It will be very interesting seeing how this plays out in September-October, even as the cases rise and what people do with that. Don't you think so?
“we're off to a really strong back-to-school start" - Target (TGT) CEO Brian Cornell
"…it does feel like kids are physically going to be back to school...So, the consumers’ pattern, I would put it more close to 2019, Jonathan, than 2020, mostly because of the impact of environmental things, the pandemic across our store fleet, etcetera." - Foot Locker (FL) CEO Dick Johnson
"And then relative to back-to-school holiday, back half of the year, I'd say right now, we are happy with how back-to-school is playing out.” - Kohl's (KSS) CEO Michelle Gass
[00:05:48] Scott: Yeah, I think so. And we've been talking about this for several weeks now about looking forward to the end of summer here in the United States and people getting back into more of a normalized cadence of their life after we had this summer euphoria post-COVID vaccination.
We really are getting into that. The back to school sales suggest that people are really excited to get back to a more normal phase of life. And again, that's the question. I think there's two motivations to the work-from-home thing. There's one, the institutions being more conservative, but then also I think people don't really want to go back into the office five days a week. From that standpoint, the adults at least don't want to come back into the office. I think a lot of people want their kids back in school though.
Regulations in China and the effect on tech companies
[00:06:36] Mokaya: Something else that you were discussing before the podcast was about regulation in China. It's been impacting the valuations on tech companies. They’ve taken a huge hit this past week. A company like Alibaba is actually 50% down from its October highs last year. It's the new development in China where there's some regulations coming into force. Some are being fined a lot. I don't know if you've been following that. I saw that companies which are listed in the US but are Chinese-based have had to comment about this, especially because analysts are asking them these tough questions. They're very conservative in their approach. They're more in line with whatever it is that the Chinese government wants to do. That was pretty interesting to see. I didn't see anyone who's coming out to very strongly against [them]. Most of them just respond in a very “subservient” manner. We will do whatever it is the government wants to do. It will be interesting to see what that turns out to be there. But most Chinese-based tech companies are actually trading at multi-year lows in terms of valuations. So could be places to pick up a few if you can handle the government risk there, could be a place to go and pick a few interesting companies to follow. Any thoughts on that?
[00:07:56] Scott: Yeah, it seems like a good value catalyst to have this going on. It was interesting, the quote you pulled out from Tencent, them talking about the internet regulation in China just being an extension of what's going on around the rest of the world. A lot of governments around the world are talking about how to regulate the internet. We have these very large internet companies that have not really had any regulation tied to them that are impacting public discourse and government and things like that. Regulation is something that's happening all over the world.
The metaverse/omniverse is coming
It also dovetails nicely into another theme that was in this week's newsletter about the multi-verse and the omniverse, whatever people are calling it now which is potentially the next phase of internet engagement. We had a bunch of quotes in there and I also saw last week a really interesting segment on CBS Morning News with Mark Zuckerberg which was him doing a VR interview with one of the hosts of CBS This Morning. The reason I thought it was really interesting is because that's a very mainstream, non-business looking forum when you're going there. The omniverse seems to be coming and it could be very wild.
[00:09:12] Mokaya: It is. The excitement you see in a lot of companies, Facebook is leading because I think when you read Roblox and all these kinds of companies, they've been doing this for a little while. One of the companies said they've been doing this for 15 years, but then Facebook comes and says, okay, we are taking that and actually bringing it to your home, bringing it to CBS This Morning. Taking it mainstream, that’s what Facebook did to the metaverse this past quarter. Now companies are being forced to also clarify ‘where are you in terms of also helping build these metaverse’?
The metaverse world might become larger than our current economy
One of the companies that is also way ahead in that area is Nvidia. One thing that I've learned from this is that this is not going to be one company leading the omniverse. There needs to be strategic partnerships between various companies. If you're looking for a catalyst there, you need to look for a couple of companies which are major players in that area, and some of them are Nvidia, Roblox, and Tencent and also Unity Software. This is a theme that has come to the forefront it could be time to actually really take a deep dive into that area and actually figure out a little bit more about what's happening as an investor. The Nvidia CEO is very convinced that the metaverse world is going to be way larger than our current economy and it's really hard to doubt what they're saying.
"I'm fairly sure that at this point, that Omniverse or the metaverse is going to be a new economy that is larger than our current economy." - NVIDIA (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang
[00:10:36] Scott: Yeah. I mean, can you imagine the speculative activity that would go on in the metaverse right now in this economic era. People will be buying land in the metaverse…
[00:10:46] Mokaya: NFTs also…
[00:10:48] Scott: Yeah. It’s an extention of all of that.
[00:10:51] Mokaya: It's a natural extension of the crypto craze, which you saw in one of the quotes this past quarter, Robinhood had 62% of crypto volume just based on Dogecoin. Imagine Dogecoin in the metaverse now.
[00:11:05] Scott: Yeah, absolutely. Fundamentally, is there going to be scarcity to any of this? That’s the question and if there's scarcity, there's so much money flying around the world right now that prices go up. Dogecoin doesn't even have scarcity though. Right?
[00:11:23] Mokaya: I have no idea what it is. It's an interesting time to be at, there’s metaverse, Dogecoin, cryptocurrencies and all these which are supposed to power the next world. Very interesting to see how this physical and the virtual merge as we go forward.
Anything else that you may have picked up?
[00:11:47] Scott: don't think so. I think that was a good rundown.
[00:11:49] Mokaya: So maybe something I then added later was a book I've been reading called Oversubscribed and it really fits in well now with what we're building at The Transcript. It talks about defining your markets and knowing what people really care about. For us, we care about earnings calls and our readers care about that. It dovetails perfectly with what we are building at The Transcript. It's a book that I would really recommend anyone to read. I had two quotes there. One of them says that your market is made up of the people who really care about what you do. That's the kind of readers and listeners we have at the end of the day. It's a really good book. I hope if you have time to have a look at it to pick more points and share them with our readers as we go along. We can stop there for this week. Thank you so much for joining us and hope to see you again next week. From us here at The Transcript we say bye.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, we discuss the dampening effects of the Delta variant, the strong start to back-to-school, and the metaverse/omniverse that is getting companies excited.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Marginal dampening from the Delta variant
00:01:34 Covid vaccine booster shots needed
00:03:48 No one wants lockdowns again
00:05:18 People are looking forward to back-to-school.
00:06:36 Regulations in China and the effect on tech companies
00:08:31 The metaverse/omniverse is coming
00:09:48 The metaverse could become larger than current economy
Welcome to Episode 29 of The Transcript Podcast. This is a special episode as it is a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Friday, 13th August with two special guests Sam Ro and Alex Morris.
Look out for more such episodes where we bring in special guests to help us explore specific themes.
The Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify among other platforms and channels.
Episode Summary:
In this episode, we discuss the key themes that we took note of in Q2 2021. The episode is brought to you in partnership with Quartr and Koyfin.
The episode accompanies yesterdays’ newsletter which is available on Substack. A transcript of this podcast, with relevant images and quotes, is available, for subscribers only, after the show notes below.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:54 Q2 in review
00:07:35 Inflation and increased consumer uptake of prices
00:11:13 Excess savings and higher consumer spending
00:16:19 Tight supply chains to continue into next year
00:18:00 COVID, the Delta variant, and vaccinations
00:21:35 Digitization and the unfolding future
00:27:09 Key surprises from Q2 results
00:34:15 Q3 outlook
00:37:25 Why we read earnings transcripts
00:41:49 Closing remarks
Episode Transcript:
Introduction
[00:00:00] Mokaya: Welcome to this Q2 earnings review. My name is Erick Mokaya. I'm based in Sweden and then we have speakers here today. I'll ask Scott to introduce himself and what he's been up to in The Transcript for these many years.
[00:00:13] Scott: Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us on this Twitter Spaces. I founded The Transcript before it was Avondale earnings call notes probably about seven, eight years ago now. And Erick Mokaya and I have been working on this together for about 75% of that time. And we rebranded as The Transcript. I've been distributing it, and I think a lot of you probably read it. So thank you to everyone who reads it and listened to our podcast and everything. I'm excited to be doing this today.
[00:00:42] Sam: Hi, I'm Sam Ro. I'm the writer of the Axios markets newsletter. And like Eric and Scott, I listen to a lot of these earnings calls. So there'll be lots of fun stuff to talk about.
Q2 in Review
[00:00:54] Mokaya: All right. So maybe Scott you can give us a bit of a rundown of just the quick things that you picked up in the Q2 earnings calls.
[00:01:00] Scott: Yeah, I think as probably a lot of listeners or readers know, we break down each week on The Transcript in sections. So we have a macro section that leads it off and then we've got a bunch of industry sections below. So I think that may be the best way to go through this too, is start off with the macro and the big trends of the second quarter which we saw throughout earnings calls.
Erick and I on our podcast have been talking about this as earnings as an economic euphoria that we've had for the last quarter. Ever since people have been getting vaccinated and moving back out into the world and enjoying travel and restaurants and friends and family there's been a huge amount of economic activity. And a lot of people have pent-up savings from stimulus and things like that. And that pent-up demand getting unleashed on the supply chain, causing shortages in the supply chain and inflationary pressures. That's been the story of the last quarter.
"Ever since people have been getting vaccinated and moving back out into the world and enjoying travel and restaurants and friends and family there's been a huge amount of economic activity. And a lot of people have pent-up savings from stimulus and things like that. And that pent-up demand getting unleashed on the supply chain, causing shortages in the supply chain and inflationary pressures. That's been the story of the last quarter" - Scott Krisiloff
[00:01:54] Sam: Yeah. I think something that's been really interesting is, like you said, lots and lots of mentions about inflation, cost inflation, rising wage costs. And then at the other side of this, you have all these companies that are reporting record profit margins. You know, I think some of the analysis will tell you, well, they're actually, there is a little bit of a lag between these companies complaining about rising costs and so maybe the profit margin pressure starts to show up in Q3 or Q4. But clearly based off of the earnings surprises relative to analysts’ expectations I think to some degree, people were surprised by how little these rising costs actually ended up affecting these companies. And I think something a little bit kind of interesting more recently, and maybe this is going to be coming up in your next newsletter make sure you guys subscribe to The Transcript, that's really good. But something that we've been looking at paying really close attention to especially in the last week is, anything companies have been saying about how the spike in COVID infections is affecting business in any kind of way. And I don't know what you guys have been reading, but based off of the handful of earnings transcripts and earnings calls that I've been paying attention to this week, for the most part, businesses seem to not be that affected. Like a lot of what you're hearing about late July and even like the last couple of weeks is consumers are still out there shopping. They're still going to retail stores. I don't know if you guys saw this the other day. The Bumble CEO came on and said activity is actually increasing on their dating app. There were a couple of other earnings calls this week.
Yeah. There were two companies, Aramark and Cisco. You guys will recognize these as the brands that are on the side of trucks and stuff that supply food to college cafeterias and ballpark stadiums and stuff. They were talking about the last couple of weeks. There's no slow down in activity when it comes to entertainment venues and sporting arenas or universities. Everyone seems to still be on track to either reopen or stay open. For the most part, everyone seems to be operating business as usual, even with the spike in the Delta variant infections.
"we are seeing some customers differ their reopening dates by 30 to 60 days and we're seeing that in the B&I sector. But I think people are still taking a wait and see attitude based on the timing of the Delta variant and what impact it might have on their businesses" - Aramark CEO John Zillmer
[00:04:31] Alex: I'll hop in real quick. My name's Alex Morris, I run the TSOH Investment Research Service on Substack. You can find it on my Twitter page. I'd say, yeah, my takeaways so far have really been along those same lines, you know, for me this quarter really started out with some of the banks. And something that stood out from Bank of America and Wells, they effectively said that their credit card and debit card spend among their customers, meaning tens of millions of people was up more than 20% comp to the first half of ‘19 against obviously, you know, a normal period.So that was a number that, that stood out to me really early. And we've seen a bunch of retail results that kind of paint the same picture. You know, DG, Walmart companies that sell a lot of basics, a lot of food, things that people have to buy all the time to your stacks in the mid-teens, which is, I mean, just a crazy number. Five below home Depot, kind of less essential stuff, but even better comps on two-year stacks. So that's, that's been really interesting and I would say Comcast theme park commentary and Disney theme park commentary was kind of along the same lines. The other key thing that's standing out to me is this idea of digitization and the world kind of changing and it's accelerated as a result of COVID. And I think Satya Nadella, Microsoft, has his comment that digital adoption curves aren't slowing down. In fact, they're accelerating. I mean, I think you see it in the results when you look at a company like Microsoft, a company like Amazon, Facebook, Google, et cetera. So it's really interesting.
"In a secular basis...I always go back to that number, which is 5% of the world GDP is tech spend, it’s projected to double. I think that doubling will happen in a more accelerated pace. And we feel well-positioned because of the innovation across the stack. Because if you think about it, what’s going to happen is every business, whether you’re a retailer or a manufacturer, in the service sector, public sector or private sector, digital adoption is the way you’re going to be both, resilient as well as transform the core business processes" - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
[00:06:03] Mokaya: Something I can add to Sam, I think the same thing that we saw in some of the companies, especially in The Transcripts that we had last week, we also noticed that consumer spending is actually still holding up. I think they gave us some statistics for July and June and with post Q2, it seems like especially things to do with travel, they are kind of holding up steadily. But then moving on, I think the worry is mostly about schools reopen this month and next month. So as unemployment benefits come to an end, I think they're watching very closely how things develop, and especially the data comes in going into August and September. So I think that's a key thing to watch out for as we go into the next quarter.
[00:06:48] Scott: Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with everything that everybody's saying. One of the key things that Mokaya just hit on that we've been thinking about is how things change after labor day. And we've had this interesting confluence of events here in the US economy, especially where everybody basically got vaccinated in the spring. And so you had this surge and ability to go places, not only the weather getting nicer and people, you know, partaking in more social activities during the summer than they do in other parts of the year anyways. It'll be interesting to see as we get past labor day kids potentially going back to school if people basically take an opportunity to take a breather from the type of activity they've been they've been partaking in.
Inflation and increased consumer uptake of prices
But at the same time, there's a lot of money in the system. Asset prices are up, people's wages are up and people are feeling more flush. Until you have feelings of inflation to the extent that they actually impact people's feeling of their purchasing power, I would expect consumption to continue.
[00:07:56] Mokaya: Yeah. On the aspect of inflation, something else that we saw, and I think we've been talking about this a lot with Scott, is that several companies are saying that inflation is actually higher. I think they’re experiencing more price increases and a lot of them actually planning to increase prices, even up to January next year. There is a bit of a disconnect between what the companies say they're seeing and then also when you read about the Fed and then I'm sure Sam Ro writes a lot about this, so maybe he can comment a bit more about it.
"We’re seeing what seems like inflation across the board. Four months ago, no one was talking inflation when we had our call. Now everybody is talking about it. And you are hearing even the retailer is talking about taking price. If we continue to be an inflationary environment in 2022, there’s probably more price increases" - B&G Foods CEO Casey Keller
[00:08:24] Sam: Yeah. So we know, we know about cost inflation, and we know a lot of them are saying that they're raising prices. But the other thing that a lot of these executives are really proud to talk about on their calls is that their customers are taking the prices. There's a high uptake of these prices. It'll be interesting to see exactly how this shows up and things like the aggregate inflation data. It's going to be interesting to see how this stuff translates into the aggregate data. I wasn't really keeping that much track of like what the different industries were, who were talking about increasing prices, but you know, the other day you see this big jump and the producer price index wall that that's like very disconnected from what the consumer price index looks like. I dunno, do you guys think this is a function of like manufacturers and companies who are actually absorbing costs instead of passing it onto like the consumer or, you know, what, what do you think is going on there?
“I would lastly just say, the pricing that we’ve taken this year, roughly around 6% or so I think in the U.S., that is about in line, maybe a little bit ahead of where the overall inflation is when you add in the labor inflation with food inflation” - McDonald’s Corporation CEO Chris Kempczinski
[00:09:30] Scott: Yeah, Sam actually, as you were talking, the quote that stood out in my mind that I read last quarter was from McDonald's where they were talking about taking price on their food items by 6%. But they were only seeing cost inflation themselves of like 2%. So their margins were expanding to a point. And I thought when I read that, I thought of it as McDonald's having so much pricing power against their suppliers, that they were able to hold back and push inflation back onto their suppliers. And so I think it's natural. We're reading all of these large multi-billion dollar companies talking about inflation. They're going to have the most pricing power over like small and medium business suppliers or fragmented consumers. I think in the story of earnings calls, you're just not hearing about the people who are really eating inflation at the end of the day. And I think we did have a really good quote on that in one of the transcripts too, about who ends up eating the inflation. I can't remember which company that was from. Maybe Eric you remember.
"We know what happens in an inflationary environment that way, somebody pays for it. It’s usually the consumer, which means, right, that price increases get passed along all the way to the end to the consumer until the consumer says ouch, I am not going to buy anymore" - United Parcel Service CEO Carol Tomé
[00:10:32] Mokaya: I don't remember specifically, but what I’ve seen in earnings calls are mostly maybe CEO saying that the consumer is okay to take some of the price increases because they understand the situation that is arising in terms of the supply chains be very tight and that they have to kind of pass on these costs to them. So that surprised me because I mean, you don't get to hear directly from the consumer, but at least the CEO is saying the consumer is taking it well, and they're okay with the price increases so far, and they’re understanding of the lags in the supply chains. And they're okay with receiving products a bit later than they expected. So I think that was surprising to me. I don't know what Alex has to say about that.
Excess savings and higher consumer spending
[00:11:13] Alex: No, I think the willingness and propensity to spend apparently is there, I mean, I'm thinking of Disney's call yesterday. Last quarter they said that per cap spending at the domestic parks was up double digits from the 2019 comp. This quarter, their wording suggested the per cap for even stronger. So the people who show up to the parks are just spending significantly more money than the people who were there in that same position two years ago. And, you know, it just aligns with everything I've seen in terms of retail data. It just seems that for whatever reason, people have a lot of money to spend right now, I don't totally understand all that stuff. I don't track it all very closely, but it's definitely happening.
[00:11:59] Sam: That's actually something we've been following for a little bit. So, you have this concept of excess savings, right? So, a couple of different economists will track this kind of differently, but it's this idea it's, it's basically based off of this principle of the degree to which income was outpacing spending. And the more income outpaces spending or the more spending pulls back more so than income, that gap represents the personal saving rate or the household saving rate, whatever you want to call it. And so, that amount of saving was something that was actually increasing very significantly during the pandemic. And you know, it makes sense if you think about it, right. If you're on lockdown, you have limited options to spend. You're certainly not going to Disney World in April 2020 or May 2020, right? So, a lot of this money, and let's also not forget about stimulus checks and unemployment benefits and all these other forms of income through transfer payments and stuff.
But the bottom line being that since March of 2020 consumers have accumulated something in the order of $2.4 trillion in excess savings. So what does this mean? Well, it means that consumers just have a lot more flexibility to spend, and just from a straight psychological standpoint, if you had to cancel your Disney World plans last year, and you didn't take a vacation, when you do go this year, you'll probably spend a shitload more. Instead of bringing sandwiches and eating in the parking lot, you might actually go inside and order from the Disney restaurant and eat the $25 cheeseburger or whatever it is. But yeah, consumers, I mean, listen, this is not universal. Like there are a lot of people who are out of work and suffering and struggling, but at the aggregate level it looks like, it seems to be the case that people just have a little bit more money than they did before the pandemic.
[00:14:07] Alex: I just think it's the sustainability of a lot of these numbers that's just really surprising to me. And just to pick a specific example, Dollar General reported 16% comps last year for the fiscal year. They just reported Q1 a couple of months ago, but their guide for fiscal 21, which still has eight, nine months to go, their guide is basically a low single-digit decline. So on a 2-year stack basis, it just seems like this is pretty sustainable. And again, think about the type of businesses, think about the type of customers that they see every day. It's just really surprising. But apparently, it's gonna happen.
[00:14:46] Scott: The numbers certainly do seem unbelievable in magnitude for a lot of, not just the retail comps, but like house prices running at a 25% increase year over year. Are people's incomes going up by this much? Like, are people really making that much more money or it's the segment of society that owns asset prices clearly that there's a lot more purchasing power?
[00:15:13] Sam: I think it's a little bit of both, right? I mean, cause here's the other thing that, and I'm sure we're going to speak a lot more about this, but don't forget that there are shortages for everything out there. Shortages for houses, shortages for cars, shortages for literally everything. So what we're looking at is probably distortions based on the fact that demand is just far outpacing supply. So there's plenty of people who are certainly getting priced out of the market and they complain about it on stuff like the University of Michigan sentiment survey, where the historic numbers of people who are outraged by how expensive stuff like cars and houses have gotten. But on the other side of the data, we're also seeing prices go up because there's still a healthy amount of demand. So I think some of this, a lot of these prices is a reflection of the imbalance in supply and demand. But that said, yeah, it does seem to be the case that people collectively have a little bit more money.
Source: Axios
Tight supply chains to continue into next year
[00:16:19] Scott: Sam brought up a good segue into the supply chains and things that we're seeing there. And, you know, that's something we've documented throughout the quarter, too. I think for at least the last month and a half, Eric and I have been looking for signs that the supply chain is healing and I still don't have good consensus from any of the earnings calls that I'm reading that there's green shoots. So it seems like the consensus is more that the supply chain is going to be tight through the end of the year, into next year, not only in semiconductors but all the other things that we're watching right now. I'm curious if you guys are seeing the same thing.
[00:16:56] Mokaya: I agree on that. It's especially expected auto companies to have.. they had guided that Q2 would be the trough, but what we have seen in most of the calls is that Q3 may actually be tougher in terms of they're not getting what they want to produce the products that they need to. So I think we haven't seen any companies and maybe one or two here and there that say maybe it's easing up, but generally the consensus is that going into Q3 and Q4, the demand will still greatly outpace the supply.
"As for semiconductors, the situation does remain fluid, and the supply chain continues to be impacted by events like what is happening right now with the COVID spike in Malaysia." - General Motors CEO Mary Barra
“we expect our capacity will remain tight throughout this year and extend at least into 2022 ”- Taiwan Semiconductor CEO C. C. Wei
[00:17:24] Sam: Yeah. Two reports that are worth following the ISM surveys and then the market PMI surveys where they actually have that sub-index of supplier delivery times. And that's sort of a pretty good proxy for.. like a one-measure proxy for supply chain issues. And the amount of time it's taking to get raw materials and goods to stores and manufacturers and all this stuff at least through July has continued to increase.
COVID, the Delta variant, and vaccination
One of the calls this week actually that I thought was really interesting was Callaway golf. I actually don't remember if that's actually the name of the company, but whoever does Callaway golf, they had an interesting call because they were being asked specifically about if they are being affected at all regarding the Delta variant and the spike in COVID cases in recent weeks. And you know, I think that call probably best captures the state of the world right now because the CEO comes out and says they are seeing no change in demand for their golf clubs and golf balls and all that stuff that they saw. And they also said that foot traffic to the retail outlets that sell their equipment has seen no noticeable negative change. If anything the demand is increasing despite the spike in COVID cases. But one thing that he did mention, and I think this was in the press release too, was that they see an increase in issues in their supply chains because of the Delta variant because they do supply out of places like Southeast Asia where the spike in cases is affecting things like manufacturing.So I forgot exactly what they said. I think it was like 20 million in lost revenue opportunity in the second half of the year because of supply chain issues that are occurring overseas. So I think that's sort of where you make that connection between how the Delta variant is going to, I mean, I'm assuming most of this audience is like a US-based US-company type of audience, but in areas where consumer demand and stuff like that is holding up, where you are going to see that disruption is when people go to shop and the shelves are empty because of supply chain issues in regions where the Delta variant is actually disrupting the manufacturing process.
[00:20:10] Mokaya: I should say I'm based in Sweden. And then what you see is a bit of.. kind of a disconnect between the US and these international companies. You find that vaccination rates in Europe have been lagging a lot to the US for a while. So I think by the time the US was opening up in the summer, you know, it was a bit behind. There's a difference between the international trajectory of the virus and the trajectory of the opening everywhere as compared to the US so I think the US is way ahead in terms of that. So I’d expect as maybe more cases get to come up in certain regions of Asia, then that actually would cause a little bit of worry to US companies that have exposure to those parts of the world. Generally in Sweden, it didn't close down. So I think the economy still has been open as it was before the pandemic kind of. So there's nothing much that you could not here.
[00:20:59] Alex: Yeah. I haven't heard too many specific examples, but along that line of thinking, Spotify is a company that I follow closely. They talked about some impact in the quarter from countries like India and research in COVID cases. And I think Disney as well, you know, domestic parks have been something of a bright spot, at least as they start to return to something that resembles normalcy, but internationally, my sense, at least from really what they haven't said more than anything else is that the line to recovery there is much less clear and much less advanced than what it looks like in The States.
Digitization and the unfolding future
[00:21:35] Scott: Alex, you mentioned that trend towards digitization when you were first starting off. Curious to get more of your thoughts on that.
[00:21:42] Mokaya: And the metaverse.
[00:21:45] Alex: Well, I'm about as far from an expert as you can be on the metaverse. As a Facebook shareholder, I just find it really interesting how aggressively the company's investing behind this vision of where they think the world's going, and by aggressively, I mean, it sounds like they're probably spending a couple of billion dollars a year run rate at this point in time when something admittedly that's obviously at least a few years away from realizing that vision.
Another good example is probably Disney where they have a movie coming out here and in early September where they kind of have to set dates to release things obviously quite a bit before they actually do release them. And I think some of the commentary on the call suggested that they're kind of skeptical that it's going to do well. And I think that reticence to go back into the theaters even as vaccination rates and things like that are picking up, I think it probably reflects some of that development. It's this idea that the world is changing and in some way, consumer preferences are also changing as well. And some of that is not pandemic-related. It's probably going to be a permanent change. So I think you see that a lot of other areas obviously as well, like food delivery and things along those lines. So I think it's interesting to see how we might live quite a different world on the other side even if the vaccines and such address the issue.
[00:23:08] Scott: Yeah. It's interesting. A lot of you may know I'm an economic historian on top of this earnings call stuff that I've done. So, this period there's a lot of resonance to me in the period that was the post-World War II period where there was a reorientation of the economy, or there was all of this industrial capacity that was created in World War II from investment by the US government, obviously in producing tanks and planes and things like that to go fight the war. But then you came out on the other side and society had completely changed in terms of its industrial capacity.And all of that went into consumer goods. And the similar analogy here is that in this pandemic, all of us had to spend even more time on the internet. The digitization trend was accelerated. And on the other side, we're probably going to keep working from home, keep ordering our food online to your point, Alex. And the world has kind of fundamentally changed here potentially.
[00:24:04] Sam: I mean it's interesting that the thing about movie theaters…I was talking to an economist a couple of weeks ago about jobs and how the jobs landscape is changing. She's not convinced that we're going to get back to pre-pandemic employment levels any time soon because of exactly what you're saying. That we've undergone a major economic transformation. I mean you just look at some…You take a step back and look at some of the data and some of the economic numbers and, I mean, considering the fact that we're back to a pre-pandemic run rate for GDP yet employment is still 6 million workers below where they were in February of 2020. So where the economy is producing at a rate it was, but with 6 million fewer workers. This same economist was telling me that during this period, because they couldn't go to the movie theater and because they had all these, a lot of these places were just allowing people to screen these things when they came out, she doesn't have to put her two kids into the car, they don't have to get dressed, they don't have to like tie in traffic. They don't have to find parking. They're not buying the $18 popcorn. And of course, they're not buying five movie tickets that's going to cost like $80. It's you stay at home, you microwave the $3 popcorn, you're in your pajamas, you have you can probably invest...Most people can probably, well, not most people, I don't know what the number is, but many people increasing numbers of people can buy gigantic TVs with great sound systems and you just turn the curtains down and suddenly you have a theater experience or something that's marginally less than your theater experience, but at a fraction of the cost. So this is not health, safety concerns, but maybe the pandemic has sort of fast-forwarded some of these behavioral changes that were probably inevitable.
[00:26:19] Alex: Yeah, I think along those lines too, this is more of a long-term trend, but I think not to mention Disney endlessly, but the way they talked about their parks business on this call was a clear indication of how they see their ability to use technology and data to make the experience at the parks better, but also to use it to segment the experience based on how much people are willing to pay if we're being honest. And I think you'll see that trend become more common as data truly becomes something that companies can use in an effective way. Another prominent example is Vail, the skiing and snowboarding mountain operators. They think about it very similarly. And I think that's a trend that as we continue down this path of digitization and everybody having phones in their pocket, you're going to see more and more of that unfold.
Key surprises from Q2 results
[00:27:09] Mokaya: Other than what you've covered so far, are there any other, like thoughts maybe you've had or key things that may have surprised you from the Q2 results and maybe I'll start with Sam.
[00:27:17] Sam: I think one of the most surprising things continues to be the expansion of profit margins. I think from the perspective of all the cost-cutting that happened last year and being able to pass on higher costs through price increases and stuff like that, I think everyone sort of expects that to a certain degree, but to have so many companies beat expectations by such a wide margin. And I understand that that's also a function of the analyst's ability to forecast this stuff. But the degree to which these companies were able to beat expectations while stock, while the market, while the stock market was at an all-time high, right? This was one of those conversations that everyone was having, going into earnings season, that all those expectations were already priced then. Cause we were at a record high before the earnings season even started. It blew away all those expectations on everyone's raising guidance for forward earnings now. So I think from that perspective, the stock market and the companies underlying the market have done a pretty incredible job of beating everybody's elevated expectations.
[00:28:31] Alex: I would tag onto those same comments, but I narrow it down to a single group, which I would just say as big tech, or FAANG. I think about Microsoft they reported Q4 FY21. Their FY21 revenues were up 18%. It was their best result in more than a decade. You know, as I tweeted the other day, Facebook's revenues in 21 will probably be about $60 billion higher than they were three years ago. But I think the incremental revenues in three years for this business are higher than Unilever's annual revenues, their total revenues. Amazon during the pandemic added more than a hundred billion dollars of incremental revenues in a year. And my sense from the Google results I haven't dug in, but my sense was that on a two-year stack basis where you try to X out the impact of COVID and get a clean comp, Facebook was up 70% year over year. And my sense from what others were saying was that Google was even stronger. So it's just amazing how big and dominant these businesses already were. And I know that the FAANG name has been going around for a long time, but the sustainability of these massively out-sized results is… it's kind of mind-blowing.
[00:29:40] Scott: Yeah. It is always surprising how money can seem to come out of areas that you don't expect to happen. Like the numbers don't always end up adding up with respect to like that TAM. I think again, going back to that post-World War II environment, something that always stuck out to me is that American GDP was like $100 billion dollars a year before World War II, shot up to $300 billion a year, all based on spending and borrowing from the US government over that time. And so the analysts at the time would say, okay, now that we're done with World War II, there's not going to be borrowing. GDP is obviously going to go back down to $100 billion dollars a year and just like through a confluence of inflation and also that greater, real industrial capacity, nominal GDP…I don't think, I mean, it felt like 10% or something like that, but we were well at like this new level. And that was just an example that always stood out to me of, you can do all the numbers as they are today, but then somehow new numbers come in, new spending comes in and I think that's the same dynamic that's going on here. When we're looking at 20% comps, 25% comps for companies just the old numbers don't really are not sensible anymore. They don't make any sense.
[00:30:57] Mokaya: Yeah. So if I were to add something, maybe that surprised me myself, it's something in the industrial section from the auto company. So, I think, something that Elon Musk said that electric vehicles especially are at an inflection point and that it has become consensus now that electric vehicles are the only way forward. You see these in a lot of the earnings calls, like the companies themselves shifting a lot to EV. And if they're not there, they are on their way there. When something becomes that consensus it's sometimes it's a little, it's a point at which you need to ask yourself a question, whether it's really true, that that's the way it's going to be. But then again, you see a lot of comments from companies. They also say that there's a lot of runway to go before all autos shift towards being EV-based and until then, oil is still going to be the main source of energy. Scott. You picked up on that yourself.
[00:31:52] Scott: Yeah, that, and actually one of my favorite catalysts of the quarter that I saw was in the Google quarter talking about commercializing the Waymo business in Phoenix, which I haven't really seen anywhere else, anybody talking about that, but that seems like a really big deal to me. Which is crazy. This is a huge catalyst. This is self-driving cars being commercialized.
“Waymo continues to build and commercialize the Waymo driver and grow the team. People love the fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix. Since first launching its services to the public in October 2020, Waymo safely served tens of thousands of rights without a human driver in the vehicle, and we look forward to many more” - Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
[00:32:15] Sam: I saw a TikTok from the Olympics showing people in a car, I guess they pulled over to help someone who needed medical attention, and then the self-driving car actually left without them. But I can't confirm if it was true and listen, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but I think a lot of us would love to see a lot more tests before jumping in. But yeah, it's definitely made a lot of progress. Everything you see in terms of self-driving cars and AI and all the machine learning technology and all that stuff behind it has made tremendous amounts of progress. There's no question about that.
[00:33:01] Scott: On the automobile and the AI conversation, the electric vehicle comments to me this quarter felt like in 2010, the way we used to talk about digital distribution of movies, that it was like in five years, it'll be here and everybody will be doing yet. And lo and behold, I mean it's 10 years later, but we have a full digital distribution of movies that we didn't have when we were mailing away for DVDs. And it feels like 10 years from now, we'll look forward and look back and all of us will be driving electric vehicles. No more gasoline, really on the road to speak of.
"It also seems that public sentiment towards EVs is at an inflection point.And at this point, I think almost everyone agrees that electric vehicles are the only way forward" - Tesla CEO Elon Musk
[00:33:38] Alex: An interesting one from Disney today, as a lot of these companies are getting into new businesses, just a general comment, you know, speaking about their D to C opportunity, they essentially said we don't really know what the seasonality is like in this business. So as for guiding quarters, maybe that's not a great idea until we get our arms around it. It's just, for me, it was just a funny comment in terms of, we all obviously live quarter to quarter because that's just how time goes. But as you're, as you're focused on the long term, you're going to see a lot of bumps along the way as we move into what feels like a new world as you move into new business models. And you know, I just think it's interesting.
Source: Disney
Q3 outlook
[00:34:15] Mokaya: I guess then that's in terms of thoughts for Q2. So what are you paying attention to as you move into Q3 then?
[00:34:22] Sam: For anyone who followed the consumer sentiment report this morning, a historic drop in consumer sentiment based off of responses to this University of Michigan sentiment survey. Obviously, this is soft data. People say whatever they want and they'll go do the exact opposite in real life. But to what degree is our concerns about COVID and economic prospects and future inflation and all this stuff actually affecting consumer behavior? You know, this might not even be a thing that we need to wait for Q3 earnings season. We have retailers who are going to start announcing earnings in the next couple of weeks. But the degree to which concerns about things like inflation and the Delta variant is actually translating into a slowdown in economic activity.
[00:35:21] Scott: Yeah. I think to echo Sam, watching really closely for the impact of the Delta variant going forward here and that'll start to show in the next couple of weeks probably. And then also comps getting tougher in the back half of the year. And the back to school period at the end of summer, people going back to a more normal, normalized life, potentially.
[00:35:45] Alex: Yeah. I would say pretty similar as well. I'm curious to see if..where I live, we were back to masks mandated everywhere, and it's not an if you're vaccinated or not kind of thing, it's just everybody to wear masks. And we'll see what the response is by people. If this becomes it's a very serious issue or an even more serious issue than it already is, I’m curious to see how people's ability to spend can manage to stay near the levels that it's at currently. I guess we'll see with retailers in this coming quarter, Q2, you know, the quarter that they're about to report, I would assume it's doing pretty good based on the stuff we've already seen. I'd be curious if we see any changes in terms of guidance, how they look to the back half of the year.
[00:36:30] Mokaya: I think we’ll also be paying attention to supply chains. I think Scott and I are very keen and reading, especially industrials, and trying to look for any signs that there will be changes in the supply chains maybe a balancing out of demand and supply. So I think that's the one thing that we’ll be paying very keen attention to. Something else, of course, a key statistic that’s noted from Q2 from Bank of America was that 65% of the money that was flowing to client accounts from the unemployment benefits were actually being saved and only 30% was being spent. So, that’s a substantial amount, so you'd want to see also how those trends are going going into Q3 and maybe some States in the US also stopped the unemployment benefits and how that impacts spending. So I think apart from the Delta variant, we also want to keep track of the booster vaccines that have also been approved this week, how that's going to impact.
Why we read earnings transcripts?
Before we close up one thing I wanted to ask all of us since you spend a lot of time on earnings transcripts, maybe why you read earnings' calls transcripts and why you spend a lot of time with them, and what you’ve gained from them.
[00:37:38] Sam: Yeah. I probably was reading a lot more transcripts before I started subscribing to your newsletter, which by the way is great. So everyone should make sure it's subscribed to The Transcript and I'm not collecting any fees or anything from that. It's just great. So if you haven't make sure you sign up for that. But yeah, what I like is, you know, sure it's all being taped and they have their handlers all around them, but this is one where executives will go off-script. And you know, it's not like..no one wants to like see people stumble over their words and accidentally say something that's inaccurate or whatever, but you get a lot of information and a lot of color that you do not get in a press release or a 10K or something that is..that has to go through legal compliance departments and stuff like that. You know, getting color on stuff like what happened in the first three weeks of Q3, This is stuff that you don't get any kind of response or companies don't often actively give that kind of color in an AK or an earnings release. So yeah, it's hearing executives answer questions that they would have rather avoided, I think, is really the big benefit of going through these transcripts and listen to these earnings.
“So yeah, it's hearing executives answer questions that they would have rather avoided, I think, is really the big benefit of going through these transcripts and listen to these earnings” - Sam Ro
[00:39:04] Alex: Yeah, for me it's, you know, everything I do in terms of being an investor is trying to find companies and management teams that I want to partner with for the long term. So a huge part of conference calls for me is getting a better feel for the people that I'm entrusted with my capital. Particularly when things are not going well. And obviously, anybody will make mistakes, but I want a clear sense that they're focused on the things I care about, which is the long-term economics competitive position of the business. And I also want to be sure that when those tough times come along, they're being honest with me and transparent with me on the things that I need to know. So that's the primary reason that I listen to conference calls.
"So a huge part of conference calls for me is getting a better feel for the people that I'm entrusted with my capital particularly when things are not going well"- Alex Morris
[00:39:47] Scott: Yeah. I echo everything that Sam and Alex just said in terms of the breadth of information you can get from earnings calls. And also the depth of being able to really get to know the way that management teams are thinking about their companies, especially when you follow them over the length of time that we've been doing. You know, there's some, some CEOs that we've been listening to for a decade already talk about the way that they're thinking about their companies and you get to watch their strategies evolve and the way that they react and their track record, and really get a sense for their track record. I think one thing to add as well is that there's elements of investing that are really about information arbitrage. And I think the interesting thing about conference calls is that every company is trying to tell their story, but not everybody is listening to the full story. And so when you really dig into the conference calls, there's lots of times that there's information in there that the market is not fully appreciating. And there are catalysts to be found that we publish in our newsletter all the time. The Waymo commercialization in Phoenix is a great one. That is a major economic dislocation potentially that it doesn't sound like many people are paying attention to. So those are the reasons that I listen to conference calls. Mokaya, what about you?
"...the interesting thing about conference calls is that every company is trying to tell their story, but not everybody is listening to the full story. And so when you really dig into the conference calls, there's lots of times that there's information in there that the market is not fully appreciating. And there are catalysts to be found that we publish in our newsletter all the time" - Scott Krisiloff
[00:41:05] Mokaya: I think there's a lot of wealth of information. I read it mostly because it gives me a better glimpse of how the economy's doing. Because sometimes, as Sam said, you'd make them the CEOs and the management teams go off script a little bit and they tell you, look, this is what is really happening on the ground. Or sometimes, maybe the question was very irritating and they use practical examples from the field to actually show you what exactly is happening. So I like those kinds of earnings calls where the management has a grip on what's happening and they are actually hands-on and they can give you some statistics and stories and show the impact of the products or the customers and how they're feeling. Maybe they talked to people on the ground and that's something that they can’t really hide.
"I like those kinds of earnings calls where the management has a grip on what's happening and they are actually hands-on and they can give you some statistics and stories and show the impact of the products or the customers and how they're feeling” - Erick Mokaya
Closing remarks
As we close, I wanted to say that the Spaces today we brought in partnership with Koyfin. Koyfin also helps us also to get access to some of the transcripts. We still get good data from them. Also, we partnered with Quartr. It's an app that you can find on Android and iOS where you can also listen to earnings calls. They’ve really revolutionized that. So I think that's been good partners that we’ve had on The Transcript and also along the way. So I would say closing words then maybe we can start with Alex and then Sam, and then Scott, and then you can finally wind up. You can also tell people where they can find you.
[00:42:32] Alex: Yeah, I think as you've heard here the first half of the year or the first half of 2021 is generally done, very strong, both relative to the first half of 2020, obviously, but for most companies that I look at, also relative to the first half of 2019. So it's nice to be in an economic environment that feels a lot different than where we were at 18 months ago. And hopefully, companies continue to do things to keep moving forward and investing for the future. So you can find me on Twitter, as, you know, if you go to my homepage, I guess you'd call it, you can find my Substack. You can sign up for. There's a free version where you'll see previews of the things that I write or a paid version if you want complete access to everything that I do. So I appreciate you guys having me on and hope to do it again in the future.
[00:43:18] Sam: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's..it seems like there's a lot of things to be optimistic about. Of course, there's a lot of things to be uncertain about, but, you know, uncertainty is just the name of the game when it comes to investing in stocks and all that kind of stuff. There will always be a number one topic of uncertainty and in future Twitter Spaces, we'll be probably talking about something else at some point or another. But yeah, it's really encouraging to see not just revenue and earnings for these big companies coming back, but seeing stuff like GDP and household spending and a lot of these other metrics return to pre-pandemic levels, and this is all occurring as there are still 10 million job openings out there. And supplier times are suggesting that there are still supply constraints, which means that there's still a lot of demand in the pipeline. Again, there's still $2 trillion in excess savings for consumers. So there's a lot of things that still need to get processed through the economy and all the companies that are involved in it. So lots of interesting things watch as the economy continues to unfold. But yeah, follow me at @SamRo. On my profile page, you can also see links to how to sign up for the Axios markets newsletter. And you can also click on any of those links and you'll also find my email address. Don't hesitate to email me any questions or anything, or if you want to follow up on something or if you need me to look into something and write about it in future newsletters.
[00:45:00] Scott: Yeah, I think echoing things that have already been said, this has really been a great time for society. I think for people to be vaccinated and have this release of energy from a pretty dim period during the depths of the pandemic. And so we're not totally out of the woods yet. Obviously, Sam mentioned there's still a lot of unemployed and we have the Delta variant and stuff, but I think hopefully this has been a really positive summer for everybody. And, you know, times like this happen infrequently and in society’s life or a person's life span. So I hope everybody was able to enjoy it. Beyond that, just want to say thank you, especially to Alex and Sam for joining us today. Really nice to have you guys here. And hopefully, people will sign up to your guys' newsletters as well. And then Koyfin and Quartr who were also our sponsors today. Thank you. And thank you to everybody who tuned in.
[00:45:50] Mokaya: Thank you so much for joining us today. I'll do this again every quarter or every so often. And so keep an eye on our timelines and also subscribe to our newsletter thetranscript.substack.com. And also listen to our podcasts. And you can also get our email there. You can just drop us an email. Thank you Quartr for helping us and also Koyfin. Thank you and see you next time.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thetranscript.substack.com/subscribe
Welcome to Episode 29 of The Transcript Podcast. This is a special episode as it is a recording of a Twitter Spaces conversation we held on Friday, 13th August with two special guests.
In this episode, we discuss the key themes that we took note of in Q2 2021. The episode is brought to you in partnership with Quartr and Koyfin.
In this episode, we discuss we discuss how the delta variant is dampening the summer euphoria, what companies are seeing in June/July data, and our Q2 review on Twitter Spaces this Friday.
The episode is based on yesterdays’ newsletter which is available on Substack.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Delta variant slowing summer euphoria
00:01:17 June-July data from companies is positive
00:02:26 Push back on return to office
00:02:51 Seasonality and inflation may cause headwinds
00:03:51 The underlying economy is strong and robust
00:05:00 Tough comps
In this episode, we cover the robust earnings we are seeing from companies, perspectives on inflation especially labor-related inflation, and developments in the auto industry.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:57 Robust earnings are beating expectations
00:01:52 Labor market still tight but improving
00:02:36 Inflation is being borne by consumers
00:04:06 Delta variant spreads but life goes on
00:06:04 Public sentiment towards EVs at inflection point
00:06:44 Driverless cars are here and scaling
00:08:05 The metaverse enters mainstream conversation
00:10:19 Short videos are the in thing
In this episode, we discuss the challenges companies are having in hiring, the worries around the Delta variant and the inflection in business travel
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:13 Delta variant threat to the unvaccinated
00:01:41 It's a workers’ market
00:04:30 Supply chains constraints still driving inflation
00:05:37 Emerging market vaccine manufacturing ramping up
00:06:44 Changing dynamics of M&A markets
00:07:18 Unicorns are their own asset class
00:07:58 Business travel is bouncing back
In this episode, we discuss how the largest US banks are doing, continued discussions around inflation, and the Delta variant that is beginning to get the attention of the C-suite.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:40 Strong economy but supply chain bottlenecks persist
00:01:21 The Fed and Treasury insist the inflation is transitory
00:03:22 Delta variant might slow down the party
00:05:17 Banks are doing very well
00:06:33 Bank CEOs really want people back in the office
In this episode, we preview the earnings season that unofficially kicks off this week and look back at some of the key themes we have been observing so far.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:15 Back to school anticipation
00:04:38 Earnings season coming up
00:05:39 All eyes on the supply chain
00:07:39 Strong quarters for banks expected
In this episode, we discuss the tight supply chains, global progress in vaccinations and reopenings, and the state of the housing market. The episode is based on yesterdays’ newsletter which is available on Substack.
Show Notes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:19 Supply chains are consistently inconsistent
00:01:57 Inflection point for lumber and used cars
00:02:01 Green shoots expected in supply chain in coming weeks
00:02:55 Global volume trade back to pre-pandemic levels
00:05:04 90-day lag between the US and the rest of the world
00:05:35 Cruiseships are back in operation
00:05:49 Housing industry bullish on longer-term prospects
00:08:34 Substack makes you smart
In this episode, we discuss the Fed's perspectives on inflation and interest rates vis-à-vis those of banks and other companies, the easing supply chain issues, and a bit about the metaverse.
This episode is based on yesterday's transcript which can be found here.
Show Notes:
00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:13: Fed acknowledges strong economy
00:01:09: Monetary policy remains accomodative
00:03:28: Labor market is tight
00:05:00: Bank CEOs want people back in offices
00:05:48: Employees expect more flexibility
00:07:03: Theme parks demand is up
00:08:40: Supply chains are recovering
00:09:46: What is the metaverse?
In this episode, we discuss whether inflation is transitory or not, trends in business travel and the housing market, and concerns about the resiliency of supply chains.
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:30 - Inflation is rising on all sides
00:04:05 - Europe is open for business
00:06:19 - Housing sales are cooling off
00:08:19 - Supply chains model is changing
In this episode, we cover the projected 7% growth in the US economy, recovery in business travel, and the increasing gasoline consumption.The episode is based on yesterdays’ newsletter which is available on Substack.
In this episode, we cover the booming US economy that is fueled by pent-up demand from reopening, the stickiness of the higher wages companies are seeing, and some thoughts on Cloudflare and cybersecurity.
In this episode, we cover the booming economy, the increased rates of ransomware attacks, and observations on travel in the US and in Europe.
In this episode, we cover the Transcript's move to our new home on substack, the palpable excitement about reopening, and Coinbase's moat
Show notes:
[00:15]: The Transcript is now on Substack!
[02:26]: Games and group gatherings are back
[03:13]: Gasoline demand is back
[04:32]: Travel and work are evolving
[05:36]: Malls are reopening
[07:41]: Coinbase, an unappreciated moat
[09:39]: Small businesses are upping advertising
[11:43]: Much room for growth in the Cybersecurity market
In this episode, we cover the strong reopening with sold-out concerts and huge pent up demand for travel and entertainment, the heightened talk about inflation in earnings calls and The Transcript's move to Substack
In this episode of The Transcript Podcast, we cover continuing strength in the US economy, the high pent up demand for things like entertainment, and how companies are coping with chip shortages.
Show Notes:
00:00 - Introduction
00:10 - Continuing strength in the US economy
00:49 - Inflationary and labor pressures
03:52 - Credit quality is high among consumers
05:25 - Big Tech still growing at startup pace
08:21 - Semiconductor shortage persists
10:12 - Nuggets from the Berkshire Annual Meeting
In this episode, we cover the increasing discussions around inflation in earnings calls, interesting quotes from Netflix Q1 earnings call, and how companies are responding to shortages in the semiconductor industry.
Show Notes:
00:00 - Introduction
00:14 - The US is "Very, Very Strong"
01:30 - Many companies are discussing inflation
06:01 - Netflix still worth betting on
07:56 - Semiconductor demand and new dynamics
11:48 - Bubble-like behaviour in real estate 12:16 - Emerging markets are struggling
In this episode, we cover banks' earnings for Q1 2021, institutional investors' concerns on inflationary pressures, and the high expectations for robust growth in the second half of 2021 and 2022 as cities come back to life.
The podcast is based on this week's newsletter which is available here.
In this episode of The Transcript Podcast, we cover the opening euphoria in the US, the persistent shortages in the semiconductor industry, and our expectations for the earnings season ahead.
In this week's episode, we cover how accelerated vaccination rate is driving up confidence among executives, the continued supply chain challenges causing inflation pressures and NFTs.
This podcast is based on this week's newsletter which can be read here. The Transcript for this podcast can be found here. Show Notes:
00:00 - Introduction
00:25 - Life's normalizing in the US
01:45 - US is re-opening ahead of the rest of the world
03:29 - Supply chains are still tight
04:56 - What is the nature of work post-pandemic?
06:43 - Inventory in housing is low
08:00 - Are NFT's a sign of broader inflation?
09:14 - Intel is coming back
11:25 - The shift in workforce to millenials and Gen Z
In this episode, we cover the positive developments in travel and bookings, institutional investor's concerns about inflation, and quantum computing featuring Honeywell.
The podcast is based on this week's newsletter which you can find here.The Transcript for this podcast is available on our website.
Show Notes:
00:00 - Introduction
00:15 - Are we heading into roaring 20s?
05:13 - There will be additional work-from-home post-pandemic than before
07:26 - There may be room for more new entrants in the EV and autonomous vehicles market
09:52 - AMC and GameStop report for the first time after the Reddit rally
11:52 - Pfizer will produce 3 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine in the next one and a half years
In this episode, we cover the retailers posting very strong comps, the pain companies are facing with tight supply chains and congested ports, and the end of the era of the internal combustion engine. You can read this week's newsletter here.
Show Notes
00:00 - Introduction
00:15 - The world is starting to normalize
01:19 - Retailers are posting very strong comps
02:40 - Some companies are raising the minimum wage
03:19 - Many people might still work from home post-COVID
04:39 - ARM architecture is changing the role of x86
05:29 - EVs and the end of the internal combustion engine
07:54 - Supply chain is still tight in many industries
In this episode, we cover the latest from the travel and leisure industry, the economics of the food delivery market, and musings from the latest Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report. You can read this week’s newsletter here and get the full transcript of the podcast on our website.
Show Notes
00:00 - Introduction
00:33 - High pent-up demand for travel vs limited supply
02:42 - People are enjoying living and working nomadically
04:17 - Views on office space demand post-pandemic
04:37 - Domino’s pizza delivery vs aggregator services
08:31 - Supply chain bottlenecks may be starting to ease
09:55 - Nuggets from Buffett and Munger
In this episode, we cover the rising optimism that the second half of 2021 will be better, the high e-commerce ambitions of Walmart, and the new form of internet identification that is UID 2.0. You can read this week's newsletter here.
Show Notes
00:00 - Introduction
00:20 - An accelerated return to normalization
01:01 - Business travel likely to normalize in 2022
02:33 - Prices in oil and gas could go up
04:51 - Software is the new language of business
05:45 - Cyberattacks are getting more sophisticated
06:27 - UID 2.0
07:49 - Walmart’s ambitious e-commerce plan
12:12 - Farewell to Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson
In this episode, we cover the semiconductor supply issues that automakers are facing , why policymakers don't seem bothered by rising inflation expectations and the reshuffling in the housing market.
Show Notes
00:00 - Introduction
00:26 - Animal spirits in the capital markets
00:53 - The impact of semiconductor shortages on automakers
03:03 - Battery shortages for EVs in the future
03:59 - Policymakers not talking about inflation
06:44 - A lot of money available for SPACs and real estate
07:20 - ‘The great reshuffling’ in housing demand
09:43 - There is a backlog in swimming pool demand
11:57 - The power of innovation
In this episode, we cover the supply chain constraints that many manufacturers are facing, the explosive growth in gaming, and the worries surrounding the impact of Apple's iOS 14 IDFA privacy changes.
Show Notes:
00:00 – Introduction
00:40 – Industrial companies are reporting supply chain constraints
02:48 – Extraordinary demand in gaming
04:57 – More companies are moving towards renewable energy sources
08:12 – Amazon hired 500,000 employees during the pandemic
09:08 – Ad-dependent companies are worried about the effect of IDFA
In this episode, we cover the market madness that prevailed in the past week, the pockets of inflationary pressures brought about by bottlenecks in the supply chain, and the record earnings from big tech that flew under the radar
In this episode, we cover the new US administration's intentions on stimulus and taxes, trends in telehealth, the proliferation of SPACs, and heightened margin trading by retail traders.
Show Notes
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:23 - New president, more stimulus
00:00:50 - Signs of inflation?
00:02:56 - New covid-19 variants and vaccine development
00:07:53 - Trading levels are increasing despite bubble concerns
00:10:33 - Risks in SPACs
00:12:36 - Telehealth has decelerated a bit
00:14:07 - Potential cryptocurrency regulation coming in the US
Welcome to Episode 2 of The Transcript Podcast. In this episode, we cover the roll out of vaccinations, the release of reserves by banks, and the heightened awareness by management teams on cybersecurity. This podcast highlights and discusses key thoughts, ideas, and themes we picked from our reading of transcripts from earnings calls.
Welcome to The Transcript Podcast where we highlight and discuss key thoughts, ideas, and themes we picked from our reading of transcripts from earnings calls. In this episode, we introduce this new project, explore key quotes from 2020, and examine what we are looking forward to in the upcoming earnings season.