Alphabet (GOOG +2.80%) (GOOGL +3.41%) rises on (what else?) strong ad sales. Visa (V 1.17%) gets a visit from the U.S. Department of Justice. Facebook (FB +1.24%) changes its name to Meta. Atlassian (TEAM +1.64%) hits a new all-time high.
Ron Gross and Jason Moser analyze those stories; discuss the latest earnings from Starbucks (SBUX +0.94%), McDonald's (MCD 1.12%), Shopify (SHOP 0.08%), and Twilio (TWLO +3.72%); and share two stocks on their radar: Asana (ASAN 0.94%) and Teladoc Health (TDOC 3.12%).
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Oct. 29, 2021.
Chris Hill: From Motley Fool Money radio show, I'm Chris Hill, joining me this week, senior analyst Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen.
Jason Moser: Hey.
Ron Gross: Hey, Chris.
Hill: We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We've got some amazing suggestions for one restaurant chain. As always, we've got a couple of stocks on our radar, but we begin with earnings from behemoths of tech. On Friday, Microsoft (MSFT 0.24%) went past Apple (AAPL +0.72%) as the most valuable company in the world. Shares at a new all-time high after revenue growth in Microsoft's first quarter was the fastest since 2018. Ron, growth at this size is impressive, to say the least.
Gross: Chris, I'm going to start the show right from the top by declaring a "firing on all cylinders" situation. Right here, right now, you heard it here first, really strong results. I love this report, better-than-expected sales and earnings. A company of this size, as you said, market cap 2.5 trillion, by the way. Putting up really solid numbers revenue 22% increase, intelligent cloud sales up 31%. That server products and cloud services revenue increasing 35%, and that was driven by a 50% increase in Azure. That is really the growth story here. That's what you should focus on as a Microsoft shareholder. Microsoft now the No. 2 cloud company with 20% market share behind Amazon (AMZN +1.10%) with a 32% share. The other two segments, productivity and business processes, which is the Office commercial products and LinkedIn, that segment was up 22%. LinkedIn revenue up 42%, who knew? That's not too bad. The final segment, which has the worst name of a segment I can think of, more personal computing up 12%, that's the Windows division, that's Xbox, that's Surface. Surface revenue, a weak spot decreased 17%. But you go down the income statement, 70% gross margins, 45% operating margins. You've got adjusted net income up 24%. They've returned almost $11 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the quarter. They've got $130 billion of cash on the balance sheet. The stock's up 47% this year, trading at 35 times, but still looks good to me here.
Hill: Something we've been talking about for a while and we will continue to talk about on this episode, and probably for the rest of the year is global supply chain and all of the problems there. You look at the business of Microsoft, Ron, they seem far more insulated from those challenges than others.
Gross: Very interesting. You mentioned that. I went through the transcript and due to the search on the phrase supply chain because I wasn't hearing that much about it in their report and I wanted to get a gauge of how they're talking about it on the conference call. They did talk about it and it did impact the business, but not nearly as much as we're hearing from some of the other tech companies. You're correct. Very interesting. Not as big an impact as, for example, a company like Apple.
Hill: Amazon's third-quarter profits came in much lower than expected. Revenue missed as well, and guidance for the fourth quarter was conservative as CEO Andy Jassy said, Amazon expects to take on several billion dollars of additional costs due to supply chain, increased shipping costs, etc. Jason, shares of Amazon basically flat this week.
Moser: Yeah. We talk a lot about Amazon. How with every quarter it's just the same old thing. Nothing really changes. There's just nothing to see here. I think we've actually got a quarter, this quarter where it's a little bit of a different beast. There is something to see here actually. The numbers were fine. I think they were well within management's guidance that they set last quarter, and I think that's what investors should continue to focus on as opposed to the headline misses a beat. But the fascinating thing to me, they're guiding for 8% sales growth at the midpoint here for the holiday quarter, which is really pretty impressive when you think about it and not in a good way. [laughs] For context, last year in the holiday quarter, they grew revenue 44%. Yes, this is a bit of a different situation here this time around. I think a lot of this goes to what you offer there in the setup: the cost of labor, labor-related productivity losses, cost inflation, supply chain concerns, maybe quantify that as to have added approximately $2 billion in operating costs for the third quarter. Now for the holiday quarter, this guidance range, they're anticipating these costs are going to come up to the end of the range of $4 billion.
We're certainly going to see these cost pressures continue and that's a near-term problem, that's not something I think investors should be concerned with longer-term. I think even more interestingly the Amazon Web Services, AWS, we talked about it every quarter, was being just a tremendous part of the business. It was clearly the star of this quarter for Amazon with revenue up 39% of the segment, operating income up 38% of the segment. Here's where it gets really fascinating. Amazon Web Services represented 14.5% of total revenue for the business over the quarter, but basically all of the company's recorded operating income. This is just a crucial part of the business. It's not to say that the retail side of the business is dead by any means. But it just goes to show I think the strength of Amazon and having this robust U.S. retail e-commerce business, this robust international business that they continue to build up. But really this just tremendous driver at AWS that will continue, I think to drive this business for some time to come.
Hill: You mentioned the guidance for the holiday quarter. One thing we do not know about Andy Jassy is what is his track record on guidance? The reason we don't know that is because he's only been CEO for about an hour and a half. But it is going to be interesting to see three months from now if they have a blowout holiday quarter, there are some who are going to say he was sandbagging.
Moser: That's fine. I think I'd rather see them underpromise and overdeliver. Amazon traditionally has given a very wide range of guidance, not only for revenue, but typically it seems even wider on the operating income side. Yeah, that'll be something to keep an eye on. Most certainly cover it next go-round.
Hill: Apple sold $83 billion worth of stuff in the fourth quarter, but that was somehow lower than expected. CEO Tim Cook said the company expects global supply chain constraints to cost them $6 billion. Shares of Apple down a bit on Friday after the earnings report, Ron, I get the slight drop in the stock, but the year-over-year numbers are still impressive.
Gross: Very impressive as a long-term Apple's shareholder, this doesn't concern me too much now. Listen, six billion and it's probably going to continue into the current quarter. We don't want to sweep it under the rug completely, but it's something that is to a certain extent out of their control. It's not a permanent impact on the business. Even in the face of this global supply chain problem, they're still putting up, as you said, really impressive results. Revenues up 29% for a company of this size, that's pretty strong. As you said, that's $6 billion negative impact on revenue, industrywide silicon shortages, and COVID-related manufacturing disruptions, the main culprits there, we're seeing that really across the board. It's not exclusive to Apple. But listen to some of these metrics, iPhone sales up 47%, iPad 21%, wearables up 11%. At the services business, Apple becoming more and more services business as time goes on, 26% increase there now accounts for about 22% of sales. I like that number very much. Mac brought up the rear at only 1.2% growth, but I don't think much was really expected there. Their business model continues to be very profitable with gross margins of 42%. EPS, earnings per share up 70%. The $20 billion of net income recorded $95 billion in profits for the year. This is an unbelievably profitable company. They returned 24 billion to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, ended the quarter with 191 billion dollars in cash. Comments about the current quarter, the all-important holiday season, not great expects an even greater impact from supply constraints during the current quarter. Apple still anticipates though that it will set a revenue record during this quarter. I think we're going to still see some of these companies, especially Apple, working through the supply chain issues but long term, I think this looks like a really great report and the company is doing quite well.
Hill: You talked about going through the Microsoft call, looking for mentions some supply chain, did you do the same for Apple's call looking for mentions of Ted Lasso?
Gross: [laughs] I did actually. Ted Lasso, if you haven't watched it, please do. It's a wonderful show. Listen, you get a $2.4 trillion company and it's the home of Ted Lasso and you're only paying 27 times earnings, I think Apple looks good right here. If it gets weaker, I think it's a good entry point.
Hill: On last week's show, we talked about the prospect of Facebook changing its name. This week, it went from prospect to reality. We're going to get Meta after the break. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. YouTube's revenue was light, so was Google Cloud. But third-quarter profits and revenue for parent company Alphabet still came in higher than expected. Shares of Alphabet up 7% this week, Jason, which that's a lot when you're a company of Alphabet's size.
Moser: Yeah. I mean, if you are an Alphabet shareholder, which I am, then you've got to be feeling really good about how this year has gone so far, stock up around 70%. I think it's because results like this, they are really leaning into that AI narrative. It seems like CEO Sundar Pichai referenced his vision from several years back of making Alphabet an AI-first company. I think that could be very powerful as we continue to see the coming together of user experience and software and hardware. But I mean, at the end of the day, this is still an advertising play at its core. Not that that's a bad thing because they continue to do it very well. The numbers, very impressive, revenue up 39% ex-currency to just over $65 billion, cost of revenues relatively in line up 31%. That was primarily driven by growth in traffic acquisition costs, which is something they always have to deal with. That was up around 41%. But bottom line, operating income of $21 billion was up 88%, operating margin 32%. You can see this is a tremendously profitable business for a number of reasons. I think a lot of that has to do with, you mentioned it earlier, I mean, YouTube is just a tremendous driver, but it has other drivers as well in cloud and obviously, its core search continues to perform very well.
Hill: Visa's fourth-quarter profits came in higher than expected, but guidance for 2022 was a bit low. You throw in the fact that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the company for potential antitrust concerns and you get shares of Visa down 8% this week, Ron.
Gross: I think it's the antitrust investigation that really has investors spooked more so than the earnings report, which was relatively solid. Justice Department watching Visa financial incentives offered to Square (SQ 1.13%), Stripe, and PayPal (PYPL 1.37%), the probing of Visa's deals prevented those payment firms from using other card networks or money movement technologies. That could be rather severe if they end up being in violation of any antitrust statutes. For sure, keep an eye on that. If we turn to the fourth quarter, we see recovery and travel improving, global economy driving volume revenue up 29%. Total payment volume up 17%, number of transactions processed up 21%. Cross-border volumes, which has been really the story here with Visa, Mastercard (MA 1.55%) up 38%, but still well below pre-pandemic levels. Keep an eye on that number as a gauge of how our global economy is recovering. Management said, "Our business has been on a recovery track for the past three to four quarters. However, we're not back to normal yet globally." But you saw adjusted earnings per share up 44%. Really solid. First-quarter net revenue growth forecast to be in the high teens, they're repurchasing lots of stock, $3.1 billion for the quarter, $87 billion for the full year. I think the report looks solid. Let's keep an eye on cross-border volumes and antitrust investigation.
Hill: I don't want to dismiss what's happening with the DOJ, but isn't a likely scenario here that the outcome is Visa ends up paying a fine of some sort?
Gross: Yeah. I would be surprised if it went as far as a breakup of the company or something so severe that would impact shareholders. But, fine it could be significant. They might have to change the way they are operating, which could change their relationships with certain companies, which could impact the business model. If I was a Visa shareholder, which I may be, I'm not sure, to be honest with you I wouldn't be too worried.
Hill: Facebook's third-quarter profits came in higher than expected. Guidance for the fourth quarter was a bit low. All of that takes a back seat to the announcement on Thursday from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The new name for the parent company will be Meta. Starting on Dec. 1, the ticker symbol will change from FB to MVRS. Jason, a lot of people poking fun at the name. We may do that as well. I will just point out, however, that when Google changed its name to Alphabet, when Philip Morris changed its name to Altria, you could have done worse than to buy shares of those companies at that time.
Moser: I mean, absolutely. I think clearly we can have fun with this, but I mean, to your point, rebrands, of course can work when done for the right reasons. I think this is a unique one. It seems to me that Zuckerberg wants to run away from the Facebook brand and frankly, I think that's probably the right thing at this point. It seems rather toxic. One thing I noticed in it, and I really was just thinking this more. This is only half tongue-in-cheek here, really, but he said that this is no longer a Facebook-first company. This is Meta-first company. By saying that you are implying that Facebook now comes second. To me, that could be a big problem because it sounds like from that, Facebook will just get worse, and I don't know that that really is going to solve a lot of their problems here in the near term. I hope they don't take their eye off the ball. It seems like they're really going to have to continue focusing on the actual social network side of the business. But by the same token, hey, listen, the metaverse is coming, whether you like it or not. I certainly appreciate that they are trying to be forward-thinking and be a big player in that developing space.
Gross: That's a question I have. The metaverse is cool. It's the future. It's many movies' vision of the future, but how long does it take the actual metaverse concept to really take hold where you're having virtual conferences or you're going to a concert with a friend virtually, are we 5,10, are we 20 years away and this metaverse aspirational right now, or are they actually putting dollars behind this?
Moser: Well, there are plenty of companies that are putting dollars behind it, not just Facebook. I mean, you look at companies like Unity Software (U +0.16%), Roblox (RBLX +1.89%), Matterport (MTTR +0.00%). I mean all these different types of companies that are building tools and interfaces, I think there are a lot of challenges that come with it. One of those challenges is certainly going to be consumer interface side of it, because the simplest explanation I've heard of the metaverse to date is it's the 3D internet. Clearly it'll be participatory. It's not going to be something that you have to be a part of. But to me, it strikes me as something that's more like fully self-driving cars. It's probably way further out in a meaningful fashion than most people would like to believe. But tech moves pretty fast. Obviously, a lot of people are really bought into the concept, it could materialize sooner than that, but I would guess probably more 10 to 20 years when it's playing a more meaningful role in our lives and society.
Hill: Shares of Coca-Cola (KO +0.16%) up this week and close to a new high after third-quarter profits and revenue came in higher than expected. Company also raised guidance for the full fiscal year. Restaurants and events reopening, definitely helping Big Red there, Ron.
Gross: For sure. We're seeing public venues, theaters, stadiums, restaurants open up, very important for their business. You saw a rebound in revenue which was up 16%. Global unit case volume up 6%. That reflects an 8% growth in the sale of concentrate and a 6% growth from price and sales mix. As Warren Buffett says, and one of the reasons I think he likes Coke after all these years, is they do have some pricing power and the ability to raise prices if they need to. Sparkling soft drinks up 6%, trademark Coca-Cola up 5%, nutrition, juice and dairy up 12%, and hydration, sports and coffee up 6%. Eleven percent increase in adjusted operating income, not too bad. This is not a technology company, they are not going to go crazy here and adjusted earnings of 18%. They're going to rely on more marketing expenditures to boost demand, as well as higher prices to get around any potential aftershocks related to the pandemic. We'll see if higher prices offset the marketing expenditures and what impact that has on margins. But overall, I think this is a very solid report.
Hill: After the break, we've got food and more beverage earnings along with an international stock hitting a new all-time high. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Shares of Starbucks was down 7% on Friday, fourth-quarter revenue got hit by lower sales in China, and earnings guidance for 2022 was lower than what Wall Street wanted to see, in part because CEO Kevin Johnson said the company plans to raise wages twice next year. Jason, we've seen this in Starbucks' past, or you look back over the last 20 years, this is one of those times when Starbucks is investing, and that costs money.
Moser: Yeah. I think this is just the market showing its impatience. Management is guiding for around 12.5% of revenue growth for the coming fiscal year, which is really strong now that's offset, as you noted, from some costs that the business is going to have to realize here through wage increases. So they are going to see some margin pressure here in the near term that impacts profitability. But ultimately, I think that's the right thing. I mean, they're creating a place where the employees want to go, in this environment particularly. Hiring is tough, and so we're going to see, I think, some operating leverage further out. They'll keep buying back shares and paying that dividend and coffee, Chris, you know it's reliable as the sun coming up. When you look at the actual numbers for the business, I think it was very encouraging, quarter sales were up 31% to a record, $8.1 billion. Global comps up 17%, that was driven by 15% increase in transactions, and a 2% increase in the average ticket. North American comps up 22% versus international, just 3%. Clearly pressures in China, I think they noted that the two-year comps in China were negative 10%, negative 7% for the quarter. Issues there, but they continue to grow the store base there, which I think is really interesting. They opened 225 net new stores for the quarter in China. In context, they opened 538 total net new stores globally for the quarter. China is still a big avenue of growth. You're going to see some lumpiness there, I think, particularly as restrictions come and go. But I do feel like this dip is a nice opportunity for those like me who would like to own these shares for the next decade and potentially beyond.
Hill: I was going to say, this is not quite the dip that we saw in early 2020 when it fell about 35% of its high, but it's down nearly 20% off its high for this year. If this dips below $100, you really need to think about it.
Moser: I couldn't agree more. I jumped in at that time where you're talking about 2020, when we saw the stock in around $50, it just seemed too good to be true, and it didn't last very long. The business has just continued to perform very well since then. All things being equal here, I think this represents another opportunity for folks to add to a winner.
Hill: Higher prices on the menu helped McDonald's third-quarter profits come in higher than expected. They raised revenue guidance and shares of McDonald's are a Big Mac away from an all-time high, Ron.
Gross: Another example of a company that has pricing power, as you mentioned, and that's necessary because those increased prices helped to cover rising commodity and labor costs. McDonald's struggled to keep restaurants open at full capacity and middle labor shortage, and COVID-19, they had the pushback, some new restaurant openings into early 2022, in part because of global supply chain problems, making it difficult to get kitchen and technology equipment. Seating areas remain closed in about 20% of McDonald's locations, at about 3,000 restaurants. They've got some headwinds that they needed to overcome, and they did a nice job as a result of, as we said, pricing increases of about 6%. Their crispy chicken sandwich, which I have not had yet, [laughs] helped, and celebrity-themed meals continues to get it done for them, all jumbled in to make a pretty nice revenue increase of 14% with U.S. same-store sales growth of almost 10%. Global comparable sales up almost 13%. That's a nice report. A strong net income growth adjusted earnings-per-share up 24%, forecast current quarter U.S. comparable sales supposed to low double-digit growth on a two-year basis from two years ago, relatively new loyalty program in the U.S. now has over 21 million members. I like that. I think that's pretty impressive. They are increasing delivery capacity there, making sure technology and digital channels, whether it's the app, kiosks, and restaurants, or delivery, are a big part of their strategy going forward, and I think it's paying off nicely. Stocks not expensive at around 24 times, pays a 2.3% yield. I think McDonald's looks pretty good here.
Hill: I want to go back to something you said, because I think it's important to point out that when we talk about companies that have pricing power, a lot of times, it's businesses that have higher-end goods or more expensive things. But the fact that people don't think of McDonald's as an expensive place, and on a dollar basis, it's probably not, but that doesn't diminish from the fact that this company has pricing power.
Gross: Yes, but they do need to be careful because part of McDonald's appeal is a value proposition, so you have to balance hurting that value prop, with somewhat higher prices.
Hill: Shopify's third-quarter revenue rose 46% and that was still lower than Wall Street was expecting. It was Shopify's first or revenue miss in five years, but shares still up a little bit this week, Jason.
Moser: Yeah, I think we can certainly understand it has been a challenging environment for retailers and retail concepts, the world over, and I don't think Shopify is immune to that. But I think if we look back over time here, I think Amazon, and I'll at least partly, I'll throw Costco (COST +0.01%) in there, too. There you go, Mac, you're welcome. I think these are two great examples of businesses that really helped set a standard a while back for the value, in being extremely customer-centric and sacrificing those near-term gains in order to ensure longer-term sustainability and success. Shopify, I think, is certainly taken a few pages from that playbook and it is clearly working to my mind. Total revenue for the quarter, up 46% from a year ago, as you said, that broke down subscription solutions revenue grew 37%. We'd love to see those subscription businesses and that was primarily due to more merchants joining the platform. Merchant solutions revenue up 51%, and that was driven primarily by the growth of gross merchandise volume. Speaking of that, the gross merchandise volume for the quarter was $41.8 billion. That was up 35% from a year ago. If you look at the benefit that they are realizing in their payments platform, I mean, Chris, you know I love a good payment store, and Shopify has got that angle, too. The gross payments volume grew to $20.5 billion. That accounted for 49% of total gross merchandise volume process in the quarter. Clearly Shopify Pay's working. They are building out all different tools for their merchants that are joining the platform, and I suspect we'll continue to see this business perform very well for many years to come.
Hill: Going back to your comparison to Amazon, like Amazon stock, Shopify stock is never going to look cheap, is it? It just seems like, you can't be looking at Shopify waiting for it to get cut in half because even if it got cut in half, it still probably wouldn't look that cheap.
Moser: I'm glad you put it that way. I don't think we get ever look at this stock as cheap. I don't make anybody would look at Amazon stock as conventionally cheap, and I think Shopify falls into the same category. When you look at the share that Amazon possesses today in the U.S. e-commerce market, it's somewhere 39, 40%. I mean, Shopify down there, I think somewhere in the 6 or 7% range or something like that. I mean, it's a very material difference, and it really speaks to not only how big of a lead Amazon has, that's one thing, but also it speaks to how much opportunity is out there for businesses like Shopify to capture. How far they've come in such a short period of time has something to do with the stock's performance. I mean, the stock's performance is based on the fact that the business has been performing so well, and all signs point toward that continuing. If you're a shareholder today, you got to feel really good about it, but I think you've put it very eloquently there. It's just a stock that never will look cheap.
Hill: Atlassian started its fiscal year with a bang. First-quarter revenue for the collaborative software company rose 34%. Shares of Atlassian hitting a new all-time high on Friday, Ron.
Gross: Stock up 19% here today. It's really been on a run, big revenue beat here, continuing to benefit from the accelerated digital transformation we've all seen since the COVID pandemic took hold, revenue from cloud products was up more than 50% year over year. That drove revenue growth of 34%, subscription revenue growth of 57%. Now, this is an important to the thesis. This continues the company's transition from it's on-premise install base offering to a cloud-based platform. It's been moving to the cloud, and it's been moving there very successfully. Adjusted operating margins, 27% for the quarter versus 23% last year. Net income of 118 million versus 77 million last year. So profitable, but not extremely profitable quite yet, still spending quite a bit of money to grow the business. $1.6 billion in cash at the end of the quarter, so they've got a balance sheet there. The end of the quarter with a total customer count of 216,500 customers added about 11,700 new customers during the quarter. CFO will be retiring from his role in June of 2022, having been there for about four years. I'm not too concerned about that. Guidance looks solid, $630-ish million for the second quarter with adjusted gross margin guidance of 85%. Atlassian continues to put up the numbers. The stock is by no means cheap, but the company continues to execute very well.
Hill: Another one of those businesses where people probably are more familiar with the products, things like Trello and Jira and that sort of thing, than they are the parent company name.
Gross: Absolutely. Confluence maybe a lesser-known product of theirs, but I think Trello is probably the most well known. I agree, and they compete with folks like Twilio, ServiceNow (NOW 0.53%), and many others. But it's a pretty big marketplace, has room for more than one player here.
Chris Hill: Speaking of Twilio, shares down 20% this week, third-quarter results for the cloud communications-as-a-service company came in higher than expected, but guidance was weak, and Chief Operating Officer George Hu is leaving after nearly five years in that role. Jason, 20% is a lot. When you look at Twilio, do you think that's an overreaction?
Moser: It's difficult to quantify overreaction with a business like this. This is a very good business. It is in a little bit of a rut. I think it's probably a victim of that pull forward as everything pivoted to digital so quickly here over the past couple of years and when you are growing this quickly, you're chalking up these 60, 65% annualized revenue numbers. When you're growing that fast and you're still not profitable, there's no cash flow to speak of, valuation is just going to be one of those big risks that's really difficult to quantify and that really feels like what's going on here. If I was a shareholder, I don't know that I'd really be too discouraged. If you remember what Twilio does, they provide cloud-enabled communication services. They allow companies to reach customers across all common communication channels like SMS and voice, video, email, chat, WhatsApp. When you look at the numbers, the quarter was very good. It was revenue of $740 million. It was up 65% from a year ago, dollar-based net expansion rate, 131%, in line with their goals. It was down a little bit from a year ago, but over 250,000 active customer accounts now versus 208,000 a year ago, so those metrics are all headed in the right direction. It's very encouraging. Guidance, as you mentioned, was a little bit light. It still represents 40% growth for the quarter, so let's take these things with a grain of salt. [laughs] Maybe the headline, I think the COO, George Hu leaving as you mentioned and there's probably a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction that he was there for five years and was considered a very valuable part of the team, but they still feel very confident that they can grow organically at 30% annualized over the next three years. So that's the fuel that's going to get them to those profitability and cash flow numbers. But if we see signs that that revenue growth is not materializing, then the market will revalue the stock again. But given their position in the market, given the sticky nature of the business, the switching costs that grow over time, I'm betting on this company, not against them.
Hill: With this drop this week, the stock is flat over the past 12 months. Does this look like an entry point for people or are there enough question marks that you would wait a little bit?
Moser: To me, personally, this looks like a very good time to consider and most of that has to do with the track record that the company has developed over time. But you've got tremendous founder leadership. Again, you've got a tremendous product, you've got switching costs, you got good tech. There's just a lot of positives there. I think the good far outweighs the bad here and these sell-offs typically can represent pretty good buying opportunities for folks willing to take that longer view.
Hill: We asked for your help and you responded. New names for the Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD +0.00%) robot coming up after the break, so stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Our email address is [email protected]. Last week on the show, we told you about Buffalo Wild Wings testing a new robot cook that they are expecting to roll out in one of their restaurants in 2022 and really, the only thing we didn't like about [laughs] this new robot was the name that the company gave it, which is Wingy. We asked the dozens of listeners for suggestions and oh, did they respond. From Viju, instead of Wingy, I suggest Da Wingster. From Ryan, if it were up to me, I'd call the robot Hot Sauce Willy and for what [laughs] it's worth, Hot Sauce Willy definitely wears a cowboy hat in the kitchen, at least in my mind.
Moser: That's great.
Hill: From Laura, my suggestion would be Mr. Frick of Chick. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but it made me laugh out loud when I was trying to come up with names. From Joshua, I suggest naming the robot, Cook Winger. I would create an ad campaign on the robot and feature a song by the band Winger.
Gross: I love it.
Hill: With members of Winger eating chicken wings.
Gross: Cape Winger, lead singer.
Hill: Finally from Derek, who writes, I love how you played the song "Mighty Wings" from the movie Top Gun during your Buffalo Wild Wing segment. Am I one of the few that got that reference or did most people get it? I'm going to go out of limb right now and say that most people did not get that. Shoutout to our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd, for yet another brilliant song choice. Derek goes onto say, here are a few name suggestions, Wingman, Winger, right wing or left wing depending on the state, and finally, Francoise.
Moser: Francoise.
Gross: That's great.
Hill: Everyone who wrote in, thank you for all those great suggestions. Before we get to radar stocks, Jason, did you have a name you wanted to throw out there for the consideration of the company?
Moser: I really like that right wing, left wing. That makes me think of the Twix commercials, right Twix, left Twix. Yeah, I started kicking this around. I listened to the show last week. I was out of town and I was enjoying Marie and Emily's ideas there and I feel like you go a few different ways with this. I have a regal offering. You could really give them some royalty there, Sir Wingthorp Fries-a-lot III.
Hill: Wow.
Moser: You can even say it with an English accent. Or hey, listen, it's a robot, right? What about a Star Wars theme? R2 Wing-2. There are just a few different ways you could go with it. Let's get creative. Wingy isn't cutting it.
Gross: Remember a year ago there was that burger flipping robot called Flippy. I think that was a big floppy and [laughs] I don't think that caught on. But maybe Buffalo Wild will do a little bit better.
Hill: Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Dan Boyd will hit you with a question. Ron, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?
Gross: I'm looking at the Asana, A-S-A-N-A. It's a recent pick from my friends over on the Rule Breakers team. They are a competitor to Atlassian that we spoke about earlier. They create software tools that help teams collaborate on work projects. Large customers rapidly increasing their spending, high switching costs, as Jason mentioned when talking about Twilio, founder has lot of skin in the game which is good and bad. It's a controlled company. Dustin Moskovitz controls more than 60% of the voting rights and owns 35% of shares outstanding, not making money yet. I need to dig in a little bit deeper here to see when perhaps that path to profitability will be realized. Shares are up more than 300% this year, so probably not cheap.
Hill: Dan, question about Asana?
Boyd: It's getting cold outside, Chris. The weather is changing and nothing is better than a warm blanket like a boring stock pick from Ron Gross. [laughs] What an incredible snooze fest.
Gross: Come on, man. Tech, 300%, is there a question in there?
Hill: Can't win. Jason, what are you looking at?
Moser: Well, Dan, it wouldn't be Motley Fool Money if I didn't bring up Teladoc Health, ticker, TDOC, and while we didn't get to the earnings report in the show, I saved it for radar stocks. They reported another strong quarter. Metrics that matter continue to head in the right direction and management's focus on a comprehensive offering is paying off. They noted that 70% of bookings this year were multiproduct sales as compared to about 50% last year. Organic revenue growth of 32%, adjusted EBITDA of 71%. Utilization just continues to impress and go straight up. At utilization of 23.7% in the third quarter, that was up 210 basis points sequentially. I think the biggest question mark is going to revolve around the Livongo deal for the next several quarters. Not that it's a bad addition, but man, oh, man, did they pay a lot for it.
Hill: Question about Teladoc?
Boyd: More comfort food on Motley Fool Money this week. Jason is back talking about Teladoc again. What do you know?
Moser: Better than wings and mac and cheese. [laughs]
Hill: What do you want to add to your watch list, Dan?
Boyd: You know what? I've heard about Teladoc too much. I'm going with Asana because it might be a boring tech company but it's up 300% and those are numbers I like.
Gross: Sweet.
Hill: Jason Moser, Ron Gross, guys, thanks for being here.
Moser: Thanks, guys.
Gross: Thank you.
Hill: We're out of time. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you next week.
