In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser and host Mary Long discuss:
- Why not all airlines are facing the same headwinds.
- GM's quarterly net loss.
- The just-announced partnership between X and Visa.
Then, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp and Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, talk about how homeowners can better understand their insurance policies and how to prepare for a potential loss.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner's guide to investing in stocks. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Jan. 28, 2025
Mary Long: Prepare for landing. It might be a little bumpy. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. I'm Mary Long, joined today by Captain Jason Moser, Jamo. Thanks for being here with us today.
Jason Moser: Captain, I like that. I've never been referred to as a captain before. Maybe that'll catch on.
Mary Long: Captain of stock picking, there we go. Got some good ideas. He knows some of his stuff. We got earnings from an airline and a car maker today, plus a little development over at X just in case anybody thought for a brief moment that things were getting a little too dull over there on the social media platform. We'll kick things off with JetBlue. That stock is down over 25% this morning last I checked. Revenue and earnings per share did beat Wall Street expectations, but it's the bumpy forecast for the quarter ahead in particular that have investors running. JetBlue is not exactly a stranger to bumpy rides and cloudy forecasts. Stocks down over 70% over the past five years. To turn the company around Jamo, management has rolled out what they've called the JetForward strategy. The idea here per company materials is to, "Be loved and be profitable." We'll hit that profitability point first. What is the JetBlue JetForward plan to return to profitability?
Jason Moser: [laughs] Yes. The company would have you believe that it is on track and is helping to guide or drive positive adjusted operating margin for 2025. Now, I think that remains to be seen, but I think you said a lot of important things there in regard to what they're trying to do. The strategy behind JetForward. They have addressed some challenges that they've been trying to deal with over the last several years. They're talking about grounded aircraft due to the Pratt and Whitney engine issues. There are airline traffic controllers. The understaffing of ATC is having a big impact on them. Wasted resources and initiatives like the Northeastern Alliance with American Airlines and a spirit merger, both of which were shot down by the courts, even to the point where value carrier revenue has not kept up with inflation. They're dealing with a lot of issues, and some of these things are more in their control than others. But ultimately, that's what this JetForward plan is meant to address.
Mary Long: You've got JetBlue that's facing these headwinds, but competitors don't necessarily seem to be facing the same ones. Delta and United both reported earlier this month, they increased their first-quarter revenue guidance. The Delta CEO predicted that 2025 would be the best financial year in the airline's history. Why do you get such different stories from companies that, yes, have their differences, but they are commoditized a little bit? Why are we seeing such a divergence here?
Jason Moser: Yeah, they're similar but different. When you look at companies like Delta or American Airlines or United, those are airlines. Airlines, it's a business where scale really does matter. The bigger that you are the larger your network, the more airports that you serve, the more countries you serve, it gives you more flexibility. You can attract a wider variety of consumers. When it comes to JetBlue, JetBlue is primarily a value-focused provider. They're just a little bit more limited in that regard. When you look at the guidance for the coming year, they're talking about some really difficult numbers for the immediate future. I understand the market's pessimism. You get available seat miles are going to be down 2-5%. Revenue per available seat mile will be anywhere from down 0.5% to up 3.5% and then cost per available seat mile is going to be up 8-10%. Now, this is a $2.5 billion company, something like that. When you compare that to its larger competitors, given the fact that those larger competitors have such a much broader potential consumer base, it becomes very apparent the challenges that JetBlue is dealing with. Not to say they can't overcome them, but certainly, it shows the advantage that scale offers in this industry.
Mary Long: That beloved piece of the JetForward strategy is an interesting one to me. I'll put my biases up front. I'm a Southwest girlie. I love Southwest [laughs] and that beloved idea strikes me as being really similar to the original Southwest ethos, honestly. Focus on customer delight, bring humanity back to air travel. Give people two free bags, that kind of thing. There are so many things within the airline, the air travel experience that are outside of an airline's control. What does it take for an airline to genuinely become beloved by its customers?
Jason Moser: I think you said a lot of it right there. It really is just taking something that used to be a pretty fun experience and now has become more of not the most enjoyable experience in the world. Traveling via air, and you got to go to the airport, get on the plane. At least, the airport is going to be where the airport is and so it's nice to know if you're going to step on the plane, that you're stepping into an environment where people are just going to be generally nice and friendly and they're going to treat you well. Certainly, that's not all on the staff, you're dealing with a plane full of passengers as well. Humanity bears a little responsibility here. [laughs] But generally, going back to that high touch as much as you can, customer service, free bags, anything that you can do really to make the customer feel like they're valued. That will go a very long way in bringing people back to your brand.
Mary Long: The airline business is a tricky one. It's not the hottest place for investors to be. If JetBlue can succeed on that beloved piece, are there actual opportunities for good returns here?
Jason Moser: I think there could be. I view investing in airlines to be more worth than it's worth personally. It's because I take a longer view. I look at like five years, 10 years. You hang onto these airlines for really long periods of time. It doesn't really always work out very well. You look over the last 10 years, the S&P has outperformed JetBlue, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. It's not even close. I like airlines to value investments. You want to get them when they're down, but then be ready to cut the cord when the time comes.
Mary Long: With that, we'll move on to carmaker General Motors. They also reported earnings this morning, again, beating analyst expectations, but still having a downday in spite of that quarterly revenue just shy of $48 billion. That's up about 11% from last year. Yet, the company posted a quarterly net loss of nearly $3 billion on that revenue. Management attributed that to non-cash restructuring charges and impairment of interest, "Certain China joint ventures," plus [laughs] half a billion in charges tied to the earlier decision to stop funding Cruz, the robotaxi business. We'll talk about Cruz in a moment. First up, what is the deal with "Certain China ventures?"
Jason Moser: GM has a presence in China via joint venture partners. As you noted, they've recorded a $4.1 billion special charge on that business. Half of that is related to an impairment to the business and the other half essentially was connected to restructuring actions that they've taken so far on China. Now, China's an important part of GM's business, but I wouldn't call it crucial. I think it's a nice growth avenue, but they are witnessing some challenges in China right now. The write-down was due to restructuring in heavy competition. If you look at the numbers, GM has been losing share in China over the last several years. It's gone from 11.2% in 2021 to 8.4% as reported in 2023. My suspicion is when their annual report comes out regarding 2024, we'll see that number down even further hence these restructuring efforts and write-offs. But the good news for investors at least is that the restructuring efforts are in their final stages and that they are seeking to be profitable in China next year. It is a near-term challenge, but it seems like it's one they're working to overcome.
Mary Long: The other smaller piece of that net loss is attributed to this cruise write-off. If not robotaxis, if GM is getting out of the robotaxi business, what, Jamo, is the next great big growth engine for the car business?
Jason Moser: The big growth engine, I think in the near term, at least, the writing off or exiting of the cruise business can help the cause. They expect to see a run rate savings of around $1 billion on an annualized basis just by getting out of that business, ending the robotaxi development. Now, I think it's important for investors to note that this doesn't mean that they're getting out of AVs, they're just getting out of the robotaxi business. I think there are a couple of things that could help spur growth. They could return to growth in China, for example. It's not something that's going to make some world of difference, but it absolutely could be a good growth engine for them. I think even with no robotaxi, they will continue to invest in the AV opportunity on the consumer side. They built out a lot of that technology over the last several years and will continue to do so as they pursue those L4 and L5 autonomous driving levels. They'll examine partnership opportunities as they arise. They could potentially acquire some tech, but I certainly wouldn't look at getting out of the robotaxi business, they're just not going to be dealing with AVs at all because that's not the case.
Mary Long: One other thing that I want to hit with GM in the company's press release, they noted the 2025 guidance assumes a stable policy environment. That's noteworthy to me because there are a couple proposed policies floating out there that could theoretically impact GM's operating environment, one being tariffs on materials like aluminum that could increase the cost to build and make their vehicles. Two, taking away the EV tax credit could disrupt their EV business. This idea of assuming a stable policy environment, is that projecting confidence and more PR posturing, or how do you think these policies could realistically affect GM and other carmakers?
Jason Moser: I think GM is preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. If you look through their annual report, they noted commodity costs to reflecting greater variability and they expect that to remain elevated due to macroeconomic conditions and continuing government policies. Now, that can obviously change. But it's also something worth noting with GM. They have some big suppliers. Combined purchases from their two largest suppliers are 11-12% on an annual basis. That can be great in good times and you can cut some deals with those suppliers because you're such a big customer. But when things start getting tight, it can get a lot more troublesome as your supply chain starts to dwindle, so to speak. I think that's something to keep an eye on. I think in regard to EV tax credits, that's absolutely something to consider. It was neat to see EV and iPad sales at 20% of all auto sales in the US in 2024 that favored hybrid vehicles, including the plug-in models.
But still, we saw very strong performance from EVs as well. I think the big question in regard to EVs it's going to continue to be the supply chain for EV-critical minerals. That's another thing GM called out. there is just increasing scrutiny of sustainability and human rights implications. That could play a role in some increases in those vehicles in the coming years.
Mary Long: One other story to hit before we go, X announced this morning that it's teaming up with Visa to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment services. This will work similarly to Venmo or Zelle where users can move funds from a bank account to a digital wallet and then use that wallet to pay their friends, pay their peers. Thing is, Jamo, we've already got Zelle, we've already got Venmo. [laughs] Are people actually going to use the X money account to move money? Why would somebody jump from Venmo to X to do the same thing?
Jason Moser: I'm not saying it can't work. I don't have any interest in using it to move or hold money personally, but the one thing I will say, I think that Musk has done with X since he took it over. He's created a bit of a bigger creator economy on X, where people can actually go in there and make money. You see a lot of people out there publicizing the money that they're making on a monthly basis. Who knows if that's true or not, but we like to believe it is. Regardless, it does seem like it's a little bit friendlier to creators than it used to be. For those folks, they might find it to be a convenient and helpful solution. But back to your point, I think the overwhelming masses are going to take a big pass on this one because there's so many great and reliable options already out there today.
Mary Long: Is there a downside to this move to X, to Visa, or to both if this flops, and it flops publicly?
Jason Moser: Well, for Visa, they just pushed through $15.7 trillion in total volume in 2024. This isn't even a rounding error for the company. It's much less. There's not really any downside for Visa. They're seen as, maybe trying something new and perhaps they find a new innovation there. X is they're trying to figure out how to stoke some growth there. If this proves to not work out, that's going to be one less avenue of growth that they can pursue in the coming years. Given the state of the business today, Musk has got to take everything he can get with this one.
Mary Long: Jason Moser, always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.
Jason Moser: Thank you.
Mary Long: Increasing instances of floods and fires, make having the right home insurance all the more important. Up next, Robert Brokamp talks with Amy Bach, an Insurance Consumer Advocate and Executive Director of United Policyholders. To discuss how homeowners can better understand their policies and how to best prepare yourself to be made whole in case disaster does strike.[MUSIC]
Robert Brokamp: Now over the past year, we've seen all these heartbreaking stories of widespread damage and destruction from wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, really all manners of Mayhem. I'm sure many people are wondering if something happened to me, would my home be insured? The answer lies somewhere in the policy documents. As they dig through their documents, what should people be looking for?
Amy Bach: You want to focus on what we call the big ticket item, which is, of course, your dwelling, if it's a home insurance policy. Secondary is your contents, your personal property, and then third is your temporary living expenses. You want to look at how much do you have? Are there extensions that you've bought or could have bought that you now should buy, that would give you a little bit more coverage? Then how long would your temporary rent coverage last, if God forbid, you could not live in your home? Would it be a year? Would it be two years? What would it be and what's the dollar amount available there? For a renter, it's B and C without the A, meaning for a renter, it's how much money would I get for my possessions. What specific possessions are excluded?
For example, if you like many people, are working out of your home and you have equipment from your employer or you have equipment that you only use for business. You want to double-check whether your renter's insurance policy would cover that equipment because it's used for business. A lot of renters' policies will have limits or exclusions for business property. They also might have exclusions or limits for specific things like art, silver, collections, guns, for example. Those things you as a renter would want to make sure that if you have those things, you want to check your policy and see if you're covered for those things. Those are the main ones. Again, for a renter, you also want to see if you had to move out of your rental, how long would you be able to collect benefits to cover the cost of wherever it is you have to move?
Robert Brokamp: When you're looking at your policy, are you looking for specific things that could happen or are you looking more for things that are excluded? Because I just mentioned a bunch of ways, things that could damage your home or your apartment, fire, theft, water damage, all that type of stuff. Do you want that list of everything specifically mentioned, or are policies more likely to say, everything's covered except these things?
Amy Bach: Look, reality check here. I think everybody knows this. Insurance companies sell insurance as if it were this warm and fuzzy blanket. But what it really is, it's a contract written by their lawyers and rewritten. Every time they lose a court case or they win, they go in they fine-tune the language. For the average consumer to really understand their policy is very tough and that's why we recommend United Policyholders suggests that at least once a year, you have a conversation with your insurance company or their representative, agent, or broker. Ask them point blank and have a notebook ready and be writing down notes of what they say, and keep track of the date and who you talk to and keep those notes in a safe place. Ask them what are the things that are not covered. What are the things that are limited? Are there risks that are outright excluded?
For example, you live in Florida, chances are you might know this already, but a lot of home insurance policies now have exclusions for winds above a certain speed. You do absolutely need to ask those questions. Do I have coverage for a hurricane if you live in an area where there's hurricanes? Do I have coverage for an earthquake if you live in an area where there have been earthquakes? Chances are increasingly the answer is going to be no, and you're going to have to buy some extra coverage if you want protection. Flood damage hasn't been covered in a home policy since the '60s but a lot of people still are surprised to find out that you're not covered under a home policy for flood damage where the water comes up from the ground. Where if there's a hurricane and there's heavy rain, what we call wind-driven rain, and it gets into your house through an opening, say it rips off a shingle or a tree branch breaks a window and the water gets in and you have water in your house. Some of it could have come from the wind-driven rain, some of it could have come from flooding from the ground. Maybe a storm surge pushed the water and you got your house is full of water. If it came from two things, you can try to get coverage for the wind-driven rain, but you're not going to get coverage for that flood damage unless you have flood insurance.
The bottom line is that insurance companies have been all over climate change for almost two decades now. They did not say it was a hoax. They have been steadily moving to protect their profitability, and the way they've been doing that is by increasing the things they don't cover. It's by increasing deductibles, which leaves the household carrying a bigger share of the cost of repairing the damage. They put all fine print in the legalese that makes it very hard for a regular person to figure it out on their own. That's why we really recommend, that annual conversation with somebody associated with your insurance company during which you get the straight scoop. Like, what am I looking at here? What's going to be on me? What's going to be on you, and what can I do to fill any gaps that I might have?
Robert Brokamp: I've been a homeowner for more than 20 years, but then on Christmas Eve, I woke up and our water heater had burst and flooded our basement. For the first time ever, I'm making a homeowner's insurance claim, and I would say, "So far, the insurance company has been pretty good." But as I'm digging through my basement, I'm finding all these things that are pretty valuable, like my old football card collection and collectibles and antiques and things like that. How do you document what you own so that if your home were destroyed that you could prove to the insurance company that you owned it?
Amy Bach: The easiest way is if you have a phone that has a camera, you put it on the video setting and you make a little video, and you narrate as you go, and you go into every room and you open every drawer, and you either just show it or you talk through it. Here's my bedroom set that I bought from Macy's 10 years ago. If you don't remember when you got it, that's not important. What's important is you photo document and you create this inventory. If you don't have a phone with a camera, you can take a notebook and you can create an inventory. You can go to uphelp.org, our website and you can find we have sample documents, and you can see you can download a spreadsheet that some poor disaster victim spent a year creating, [laughs] that jogs your memory of every possible thing that you might have. But the easiest, fastest thing is just to create that cellphone video and then send that recording up to the cloud or to somebody you trust and say, "Please, if I ever, God forbid need this, hold onto it for me or just know where you can find it." That will really get you a good part of the way there if you, God forbid, ever do, need it.
Robert Brokamp: Are there things that insurance companies expect you to do before a loss or maybe something you should do that will either result in a lower premium or even just mitigate the risk that something will happen to you, for example, some fire departments will come out and take a look at your home and give you an assessment on that?
Amy Bach: In recent years, insurance companies have been paying a lot more attention to the age and the condition of properties that they've been insuring. They're doing this largely because they have tools now that they didn't used to have like drone images of people's roofs, and risk models that are extracting data from publicly available, records on when's the last time somebody pulled a permit. They look at something called your CLUE report, where they see what claims you might have filed in the past. They have what I call TMI now, too much information, and that's causing them to both reject some customers that they used to take in the past and drop some existing customers. But it's also causing them to charge people more. Really the only strategy other than being a good consumer shop and compare whatever options you have is to take steps to reduce the chances of there being damaged to your home. For example, installing a moisture sensor is something that a lot of insurers are asking their customers to do to detect a leak before it gets really serious.
Having smoke detectors in your house is something that a lot of insurers will ask. Do you have that, and that's important? Trying to keep your home in as good shape as you can, maintaining and if you know you have a leak, deal with it because what we're seeing is insurance companies being very tough on water damage claims if it's been a slow leak that you didn't deal with. Like if you should have known or you knew about it and you didn't do anything about it, they may reject your claim on that basis. They may say, "We don't pay for continued and repeated seepage and leakage." Again, not just scarier listeners, but this is just a heads up that times have changed in terms of insurance, and they are definitely using new tech tools to sift the better risks and risks that they think might result in a claim.
Customers whose properties are in good shape versus customers whose properties may not be in as good shape. Even though it's so challenging for households today and a lot of households just to keep food on the table, let alone pay your insurance, taking steps to make it less likely that heavy rains or high winds or even a wildfire would take out your home or just damage your home, is going to both help save your home, but it's also going to save you money on your insurance because across the country, we are seeing a lot of pressure on insurance companies to give what are called mitigation discounts.
There's a lot of pressure from my organization, from insurance regulators across the country, from elected officials, on insurers to say, "Hey, you're raising prices like crazy here." We hear you that with climate change, you got to charge more, but you got to give people an appropriate break on their premium if they have mitigated if they have done risk reduction. It's only fair. If you're charging somebody the same premium who put on a new roof or as you're charging to somebody with an old roof, you're overcharging that person with a new roof. You've got to reward your people. You've got to reward your customers who are taking the initiative to fortify their homes and it's working. Some we're seeing lots of programs in the hurricane-prone states where you can get a fortified home discount. Now in California, you can get a wildfire-prepared home discount. That's the one thing. You can't really force an insurance company to take you or keep you as a customer if they don't want you. That's not really a thing yet in this country. It might change, but it's not a thing.
We have the Affordable Care Act for health insurance. That makes insurance companies take some customers they would have otherwise said, "No, we don't want this person because for sure they're going to file a claim and cost us money." We don't have that yet with property insurance. We may have to get that. We're not there yet. For now, homeowners really do need to do their best to avoid being in a situation where they're going to have to file a claim, and/or if your home does get damaged, if it's something small, you definitely want to consider paying it out of pocket rather than filing a claim because these days insurers you can't hide your history from your insurance company because there's just a lot of ways for them to know whether your home has been damaged in the past, and that can really be a strike against you.
Mary Long: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow, Fools.
