In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman and analyst Emily Flippen discuss:
- SpaceX and xAI's merger.
- Big tech earnings.
- Dumpster diving in SaaS.
- Google's Chrome update.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on Jan. 30, 2026.
Travis Hoium: Is Elon Musk going to make SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI a super-company? Motley Fool Money starts down.
Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global headquarters. This is Motley Fool Money.
Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium, joined by Lou Whiteman and Emily Flippen. Guys, there's a lot going on in the market. We're going to get to earnings and especially tech earnings, which really kicked off this week. But I want to start with the discussion around SpaceX and xAI potentially merging ahead of SpaceX's likely IPO in 2026. Lou, this is something that we've seen before Elon Musk merged SolarCity with Tesla. You could argue that that was probably not a great merger, although it did work out ultimately for shareholders in the long run, but the solar business didn't become what we thought it would be, this looks a little bit similar, but where does your head go when you see another one of these huge Elon musk companies potentially merging with each other?
Lou Whiteman: First of all, to be fair, if I squint, I can see the current energy business in Tesla, which is the only part that's really growing coming out of the SolarCity. I guess maybe we give them credit for that in hindsight. But I know what you mean. When I look at this, I look at it in the context of these reports that OpenAI and Anthropic are rushing to an IPO. There's a beauty pageant going on right now, Travis. Everybody, all of these huge capital intensive companies want to tap equity markets at the same time trillions of dollars. That's a lot of capacity. They're all trying to look as attractive as possible, relative to the competition. If you combine SpaceX with xAI and all the potential of AI, I think, arguably, that is something that will capture the imaginations and make it easier to sell. Backdrop here is that these more established tech giants, maybe we'll talk about them later, Alphabet, Amazon, they have revenue. Meta, they are fueling their AI spend with their revenue. We joked about this last fall, but for these guys that don't have that, the best time to have gone public was yesterday. It always has been. They need to do this as soon as possible to the extent that you can combine a whole bunch of things that have captured investor intention or captured the imagination and put them into one package. I think that helps sell the IPO, and I think that's what really is at the heart of this.
Travis Hoium: Emily, is there a story at least that all of these Elon Musk related companies talk to each other and work together, so they might as well just be one massive conglomerate?
Emily Flippen: Well, if you're Elon Musk, that's certainly the narrative you're trying to sell in. There really is a positive way to view the investments that Musk and team are making between these companies, which is that SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla, which by the way, just invested another two-ish billion dollar in xAI work together narratively to create some..
Travis Hoium: I'm sure that was an arm's length transactions here.
Emily Flippen: I'm sure it was arm's length. Of course, and they all between Musk. But no, there is some flywheel between the hardware, the distribution, the connectivity, the inference, whatever it may be between the businesses that feeds demand for one another. But I think more realistically, in my opinion, this is really just going back to what business is funding another. You could argue that it's a little bit of a money grab ahead of an IPO to justify its valuation. The more opaque a narrative is for, say, SpaceX. If there is a merger between xAI and SpaceX, going into SpaceX is IPO, the more optionality that's built into the business, the harder it is to value that company. Maybe the more likely it is that they are able to generate revenue but realistically speaking, I don't actually see any actual mergers happening here, because to your point, Travis, those typically get a lot of recourse from investors. Those typically need to be arm's length transactions. They have a lot of third parties that start to get involved. Whereas, what we're seeing right now is just an exchange of resources and capital between the businesses. That is a lot easier to do if you're somebody like Elon Musk, who has a financial interest in all these companies. It's a lot easier to just move money and resources around as they're doing right now, using Tesla almost as a cash cow to some extent, to help fund these other companies in the interim. That really delays the need for an IPO. While I agree with Lou's take that the IPO for whether it be OpenAI or SpaceX or others, maybe the best time to do it was yesterday because the market valuations right now obviously are still relatively strong. At the same time, they have a lot of access to capital. There's a lot of people, including Tesla shareholders, to some extent, that are willing to help fund operations in the interim. The cash crunch hasn't hit for these companies yet.
Lou Whiteman: A couple of points here. For one, I think if you're Elon and you would like them to be together, talk with the SolarCity, the best time to do that is pre-IPO. You can control it right now, so I think if there is hopes that they're altogether, you might as well do it ahead of things. Also, as far as what investors invest in, they have never invested in Tesla based on just the current car lineup. It has always been basically investment in Elon's ability to do great things. To some extent, it almost doesn't matter what the product is or what the collection of assets is, it is the idea that you give Elon the resources he will create value. At the end of the day, I'm talking against yourself, but maybe you don't need this shiny collection, but maybe putting them all together and just saying, Elon, here's a pile of money and a lot of resources. What can you do with it? I think that is what the market wants to buy, so give it to them.
Travis Hoium: Emily, one of the things that we're seeing in the backlog or the remaining performance obligations for a lot of these companies is that there's a ton of demand for AI resources. But at the same time, most of these private companies are not yet profitable, like xAI falls into that. They own X, which is the old Twitter. Are they at a point where they need to get to public markets? I guess the argument would be the same with SpaceX. They both need to get to public markets to be able to access that capital. My question for you is if you're an investor, are you interested in those IPOs, where the story is, hey, we're going to make something huge in the future, but we are burning a ton of money, and right now there's not really a sustainable business model, that just seems like there's so many of these companies that are going to go public and can they all survive? That's a huge question that we probably have to ask ourselves in 2026.
Emily Flippen: I actually really don't think so. I think it's actually funny to conceptually think about the idea that a company needs to go public in order to access capital. When you think about the size of SpaceX or xAI, these are huge companies, OpenAI, name it. These are private enterprises that have managed to fund themselves with private capital for a very long time, an unusually long time, especially given the size of their companies. Historically, we saw companies go public at much smaller valuations because they needed access to capital. Private markets have been willing to help fund these companies and billionaires to some extent. Even public companies, like I said, Tesla is a funding vehicle for Musk's other cash losing projects, given how much capital the business has access to. These are all ways that help keep private companies private. It's cachet that you get when you go public, and at some extent, I expect that the private market funding does run out, but that's why these companies are not running to the IPO market. That's why when talked about a SpaceX IPO, we heard about this in 2025. We're not talking about 2026 for a potential IPO, we're probably looking at 2027 at the earliest. It is not a desperate attempt. The private market funding year has not run out. If it does, I promise you these companies are going public tomorrow.
Travis Hoium: Lou, what does all this mean for Tesla? Because that is the publicly traded company today.
Lou Whiteman: Here is at least just a warning or something I think Tesla shareholders should consider. As I said before, a lot of the investment in Tesla is an investment in Elon. It's not so much an investment in, I want to be in an automaker. If there are two publicly traded stocks that are both, you can invest in Elon. One of them is a car and energy company, and one is a space and AI company. You can see the imagination pulling away from Tesla, or at the very least, all the stock price is is the number of buyers and the number of sellers. If there's more options, less demand for one stock, I think it could cause some issue to Tesla's valuation. I'm not going to short it based on this, as Emily said, we're so a long way away, but I am curious of a world where people have options if they want to bet on Elon. How much of that like 100% of that going to Tesla versus just some percentage of that, what that would do to Tesla's shares?
Travis Hoium: If nothing else, I would love to see what the financials look like for the SpaceX, xAI business because there's a lot going on under the hood there. Obviously, a lot of mine share, but are they burning a ton of cash? Where's the revenue coming from? Those are disclosure that I think would be at least very interesting for us to cover. When we come back, we are going to talk about tech earnings. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Earning season has begun, especially in Big Tech. Meta and Microsoft are two of the big companies that reported this week, and they're heading in opposite directions, Emily. I think this was fascinating. What did you take from Meta and Microsoft? Because investors liked what they saw from Meta, not so much from Microsoft.
Emily Flippen: In the case of the different reactions, I think that has to do with different levels of expectations for both of these companies heading into earnings. But to be honest, I really can't rationalize the market's reaction, especially to things like capex spend. I want to shape the market. If the market was a living entity and say, "What did you want? Did you want CapEx, or did you want no CapEx?" Because I promise you if Microsoft or any other tech giant had come out and said, "Hey, we're cutting expenditure" that would have sent the market into a panic, I said on the show before that. I think big tech earnings are much more of a leading indicator as to whether or not we're in "AI bubble" than Nvidia earnings, for instance, because they're the ones actually building out and buying the chips that are driving a lot of this demand. The fact that Microsoft is still planning on spending so heavily here is a conceptually good sign that the people at the top still see value in return on investment in their AI-related initiatives. That's what's been propping up the market. Conceptually, if you are Mr. Market, I'm shaking you metaphorically right now. What did you want? You wanted this. But I understand the market's reaction to Microsoft's in terms of the share price because longer term, the analysts that I talked to here at our company, they always have the question about when you spend this much money on CapEx and your software company, you stop looking like a software company. You start looking more like an industrial company.
Travis Hoium: They become utilities. It's fascinating, and we're cheering this.
Emily Flippen: You spend much money, then we're going to start valuing you respectively. You don't generate as much cash flow. The free cash flow there is going to be muted. The question then becomes how protracted is this CapEx cycle? It has to stop at some point. But I do feel it's a Catch-22, because the moment this spending stops, the market rally does, too.
Travis Hoium: Emily, do you think that the market is looking at Meta a little bit differently because there is a little bit more of a direct line, too? You're spending this money on AI, but we're seeing growth in engagement. You have growth in the amount that people are using these apps, but it's not only that, they're more engaged in ads, clicking on ads more, and you're getting more money out of each one of those ads. There's a direct tie to where the financial payoff is. We can fudge whether that is a good return on investment in a traditional sense or not, but you can see that tie there. Whereas, Microsoft, it's a little bit fuzzier.
Emily Flippen: You've hit the nail on the head there, I was just to say, virtually 100% of Meta's revenue comes from ads. When you talk about Meta investing in AI or CapEx or whatever it may be, the only thing they care about is driving engagement to keep ad dollars on their platform. They care about advertisers, they care about spending in order to get advertisers and spending on their platforms, they need your eyes on their platforms, as well. That is a comparative different I shouldn't say lower bar, I want to say lower. It's a different bar to hurdle, as opposed to Microsoft, which clearly has a lot more balls to juggle. A lot more optionality, I think, in their court, as well. They're a little less of a single trick pony here. But in the case of Meta, the best thing about this company is because they do such a great job maintaining engagement, we've seen Zuckerberg over the course of the past decade or so, spend billions and billions of dollars, in my opinion, really in effectively trying to make the metaverse a reality. The metaverse, I think is unadulterated failure as it exists today, and that hasn't stopped the full speed ahead train that is engagement on Meta's platform. Instagram has been incredible for them. The transition to reels and ad spending on that platform, absolutely incredible. Meta has a lot of room to run. They can just throw stuff at the spending and just see what sticks because they have this platform that Jill still generates such incredible levels of engagement.
Lou Whiteman: That's the thing. Meta has built the perfect cash-printing machine, and until that goes wrong, people are just going to just go with it. With Zuck, you know what you're getting. The nice thing about the Metaverse is Zuck told you he was there. I make a lot of money, and I'm going to make big bets with it. I think, to some extent, Zuck's shareholder base isn't scared of CapEx, they've proven that through the years. As far as what's going on here, Emily's Mr. Market. This used to be just adrenaline to almost a fear factor contestant, where there's a mix of adrenaline and fear, and they don't know what to think about AI. At one point, I think the reason Microsoft is down is that 45% of their remaining performance obligations on the commercial side is tied to OpenAI and we're getting nervous [OVERLAPPING]
Travis Hoium: I was a little bit surprised that wasn't higher, though, isn't it? That's what you want.
Emily Flippen: That was mind-blowing to me, 40%.
Lou Whiteman: We're scared of OpenAI, but yet, Amazon jumping in with OpenAI causes Amazon to go up. I think in general, we're at this point where we are still excited about the potential of AI, but we're getting nervous about all this spending. Collectively as a market, we are of many different minds. There's just this anxious fear, but I don't want to miss out. The FOMO hasn't gone away, but the realities of the challenges are creeping in. I think it's just chaos. Quarter to quarter, I just think it's getting harder and harder to read anything definitive out of this. It's just we don't know what we want from these companies right now, like Emily was saying.
Travis Hoium: Emily, I think you'll love this stat. I heard this morning that Meta is going to spend more on CapEx in 2026 than they have lost in the entire history of Reality Labs. Has Mark Zuckerberg earned the right to say, because one of the things in the conference call was, "You know what? Hey, this ROI from ads is going great, but we're going to build this other stuff that we're not going to tell you exactly what it is yet. You got to just trust me". When we're talking about $135 billion worth of CapEx spent, there is a lot of, hey, you got to just trust Zuckerberg because he supposedly knows what's going on.
Emily Flippen: I hate to come in hot with the opinions here, but it is genuinely how I feel. I think Meta has done well, not because of Zuckerberg and his capital allocation decisions or his innovation, but in spite of it. I think you probably could have taken anybody and put them at the helm of Meta over the course of the past 10 years or so, actually, I was to say, as long as they didn't anything too crazy, but Zuckerberg did do something a little crazy with the Metaverse, let's not forget the rebranding. I genuinely think the company was poised to succeed simply based off the platforms that they owned, and as long as they didn't mess up the flywheel machine that was Facebook and Instagram, they were going to be fine. I don't think I give Zuckerberg or his leadership team very much, if any, benefit of the doubt, when it comes to capital allocation spending, because I have seen effectively zero evidence to support the idea that they know how to spend capital effectively. I think the company may perform well, to be very clear, I think Meta shareholders should not be overly worried, but I don't think it's because leadership is so incredible or smart or knows how to spend money.
Lou Whiteman: It's possible that he will go down as the greatest one-hit wonder in the world. He don't have the idea to tease this metaphor. Zuckerberg came up with something crazy. [OVERLAPPING]
Travis Hoium: Well, maybe the greatest acquirer, too, because they acquared Instagram and they acquired WhatsApp. Those were really controversial deals at the time, and they've both been phenomenal successes.
Lou Whiteman: Right. But look, the other side, as far as the comparison, remember that free cash flow year over year is up 500-something percent over the last decade. There's arguably more money to spend. The comparisons to Meta. But look, if nothing else, again, this is what you get with Meta. We didn't have time to talk about it, but Apple. Great quarter, but it was just blur, they're doing the same thing. We don't know from here. The stock is basically flat afterwards. Compare that to Meta, if nothing else, again, I think shareholders know what they're getting into here with Meta. At least, look, we make a lot of money. We're going to make big bets. If you want to take this joy ride, come along. I think Zuck has the shareholder base that he needs, and it's an adventure.
Travis Hoium: We will see where this story leads us. I'm excited to see what artificial intelligence products they introduced in 2026, because they're spending a lot of money. They've acquired a lot of talent, a lot of people who have built a lot of really interesting things. There's hopefully something there, but we're not seeing under the hood quite yet. When we come back, we're going to go dumpster diving in SaaS stocks. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. One of the big trends in 2026 is that SaaS stocks and SaaS-related stocks have been absolutely taking it on the chin. We're going to do a little dumpster diving in the SaaS market, if you will. I want Lou and Emily to draft some SaaS stocks that they're interested in and give us an idea. All of these stocks that we're going to talk about here are down at least 30%. To just give you an idea of some of the names, The Trade Desk, Shift4, Netflix, Salesforce, Adobe. There's a lot of companies that are down really big over the last few months. Lou, what's on the top of your list? What would be your first pick if you're dumpster diving in SaaS stocks today?
Lou Whiteman: I got to say, I think the fear about software stocks is legitimate. I think there's something there, which makes me I don't like a lot of them on the list you gave me, but in the list you gave me, Netflix is on there, not a SaaS, but subscription. Netflix, I get why it's down. I think the company is telling you that this isn't the Netflix of old. I think this is a deal they have to do. I think it could be turbulent for the next few years, but I'm not going to bet against the best management team in the industry to get it right over time. As a long-term focused investor, I'll take Netflix at these valuations for the long haul, and I think it works out.
Travis Hoium: Do you think this is one of these opportunities we're going to look back on? I just looking at the drawdowns over the last 25 years or so, in 2004, 2005, down about 75% in 2012. Was that the Qwikster days? Stock was actually down over 80%. Are we going to look back at this time as, you know what? The market was overreacting, and this is when you want to be aggressive on a company like Netflix?
Lou Whiteman: Kind of. I think the difference is they are a more mature company now, so maybe we shouldn't expect it to do, like, the insane, fabulous appreciation that it did from there. But it's a new world for Netflix. I still think that they are a best of breed in their category, and that's what I'm looking for. Yeah, I think this is an opportunity. It might not be the same opportunity it was a decade ago.
Travis Hoium: Emily, what are you picking?
Emily Flippen: I think Netflix is a good draft. If I can't draft Netflix, there is one that I think is maybe overblown in terms of pessimism. That's actually The Trade Desk. That's probably raising a bit of eyebrows because The Trade Desk has had its fair share of headwinds. Their Kokai launch was a bit of a failure, you could argue.
Travis Hoium: Meta undid that. Am I remembering that correctly?
Emily Flippen: I was unclear to me exactly. I think they're going back to the drawing board is maybe how I would describe it. That's fair because they lost a lot of ground to competitors in the AI tech world, both in terms of walled garden, as well as other independent competitors that have been encroaching upon their territory. Then at the same time, it seems that CEO Jeff Green maybe not handling it. The same way I would handle it is how I would phrase that. Obviously, I'm not there behind the scenes, but The Trade Desk got a relatively recent CFO who, over the course of the past week, was actually terminated from the company. It's not exactly clear why there wasn't a lot of language provided. The CFO is going to be staying on the board, I believe through the remainder of his term. But it's possible that that has to do with disagreements in the management team. This is a company that is run effectively wholly by Jeff Green, who owns the majority of the voting stake in the business. But despite all these headwinds, here's what I'll say, a rising tide lifts all boats, and we're heading into 2026 or we're into 2026. This is a midterm year. Typically is pretty good for ad spending. The Trade Desk is one of many companies that is well-positioned to manage the AdTech markets. With the rising industry, even if they don't have their AdTech completely figured out this year, which I don't fully expect that they will, especially given their leadership turnover, I actually think The Trade Desk, with these lowered expectations, is maybe poised for our performance.
Travis Hoium: The Trade Desk's compound annual growth rate over the past decade is 39%, and the stock is down 78%. That just seems crazy. It seems like the market is pricing this as if there's major disruption. Is that the way that it seems like the market is thinking right now, Emily?
Emily Flippen: Certainly is. That's because the Trade Desk was effectively the only game in town for a long time. Then they realized that while they were talking down the presence of walled gardens and how great it was to be the independent partner for demand side platforms, and they realize, hey, actually, maybe there is competition out there, and they need to be better about their partnerships and showing how they have, I guess, in terms of the market share here, in comparison to the companies like Amazon, who is launching their own AdTech solution. Competition is substantially different today than it was, I would say a decade ago, but even just a year ago or two years ago.
Travis Hoium: Lou, what is the next stock on this list of dumpster diving SaaS stocks that you're interested in?
Lou Whiteman: Again, I'm looking long term here because I actually this company has earnings coming up, and I'm worried about this quarterly report, but Axon Enterprise is on this list. I still believe in the long-term story here. Look, it is really, really highly valued, and this is a market where I don't know if their core customer, the local governments really have the spending power to expand, so I do think that's weighing on near-term, but it's an incredibly well-run company with a great opportunity up ahead. I say, chaps, I may be able to get it cheaper in a few weeks, and I'm willing to accept the volatility. But thinking for the long term, I still think they're early in their growth path, so I'll lean into this one.
Travis Hoium: What are you worried about when you look at earnings? I mean, the stock is expensive. Enterprise value to sales is 19, but it has been significantly higher than that in the past. This is one that I've owned for, I think, over a decade at this point. You're right, it has just been compounding like crazy. But what are the reasons for concern at this point?
Lou Whiteman: Expectations are so high because for so long, they've done so good. It felt like they were unstoppable. Again, I think that it's more of a just the reality of their market is going to step in here. Look when you have highly valued stocks, if earnings aren't fantastic, there tends to be an oversized result. We saw that with their last quarter. Maybe that means expectations are tempered this quarter, but I almost feel like it's another quarter of just not fantastic, the narrative is going to be it's over, and we could see an oversized reaction. I hope not. I own it, too, but I'm both ready for that and still very, very interested in the long term. Two things can be true at once.
Travis Hoium: Emily, what do you have next?
Emily Flippen: The next one I'll draft is actually Toast. Similarly to what Lou was saying about Axon, it's entirely possible that I could get this stock cheaper in a couple of weeks. But the pessimism that I see around Toast has entirely to do with the macro environment they're operating in and very little to do with the business operations of the business itself, which is, in my opinion, rare when I think about these SaaS subscription stocks that are down pretty massively from their previous highs. A lot of them are facing severe operational issues, The Trade Desk, which weirdly my first draft pick because I was afraid Lou was going to snap it away from me is obviously facing operational issues. Toast is an incredible one because when I think about the business performance, I genuinely can't ask more from this management team, but there is genuine real fear and concern around consumer spending and restaurant spending in general. Which is totally fair. We could see a contraction and toast valuation, certainly over the next couple of I'd say, quarters or years, potentially, depending on what that looks like. But longer term, I think toast does something that is not replicated now by other software giants. They have a decent mode that they're building, and their software in comparison to their alternatives, from everything that I understand, is pretty far superior, and they're only expanding that as the days and quarters have passed. I really like this company.
Travis Hoium: Do you think Toast is the kind of company where you just want to own a niche, and that's the value? Because so many of these tech companies we're talking about, they can do anything. The Googles, the Microsofts of the world, they kind of spread themselves all over the place. Toast almost seems like its value, and this is where I think you're right. If you get a phenomenal valuation for the company, they're just going to own restaurants. Is that the right way to think about it? Like, nobody's gonna be able to come in and beat them at what they do best.
Emily Flippen: Conceptually, yes, the fear that lives in the back of my head with Toast is kind of what we saw happen with Square, renamed Block. And I feel like Dorsey maybe lost vision with that company because we could have argued the same thing with Square, which is, you know, we own the payment platform, the terminal. We're going to own all of these little avenues, and they just weren't really able to scale that as effectively as I think they maybe could have. Now, Toast, I see a little bit more promise in that management team and how they're already scaling their company. Lots of opportunities for international growth, too, which is barely tapped for them. I don't see them buying a bunch of cryptocurrency. Again, all moving in the right direction there for me. But in my mind, I worry about Toast conceptually because of where they sit in the value chain, because we've seen other companies unsuccessfully perform there. I worry also, of course, about take rates for fees. Payment processing in general is seeing a lot of pressure in terms of take rates. It's possible that part of the reason why Toast is seeing share price pressure is because there's an expectation that their take rates, despite adding all the stuff onto their platform is only going to fall.
Travis Hoium: Luis, have one more pick each. What do you got next?
Lou Whiteman: Sure. The first round picks are off the board. I have questions. I'm reaching anywhere I look here, but I'm going to go with Salesforce, and I get why it's down. Tons of competition. Revenue growth has cooled. But my base case on AI right now is that these huge model makers are going to have a hard time justifying the expense, but there are a lot of just small incremental progress that's going to be all over the place. Almost like the difference between typewriters and Microsoft Word. We're not really going to do a revolution, but everything's going to get a little easier. Companies like Salesforce are well-positioned to use AI for those little incremental things, and so I will lean in and hope for the best.
Travis Hoium: This is Salesforce being AI is a bit of a tailwind, but not enough to be a disruption.
Lou Whiteman: Yeah, I think it's just gonna be part of life.
Travis Hoium: All right. Emily, what do you got?
Emily Flippen: I actually wish I had more picks. Can I give some honorable mentions here?
Travis Hoium: Sure, sure, absolutely.
Emily Flippen: Two that I'm not running with, but I do really like Adobe and PayPal. Both of these companies, I think, have been fairly or unfairly hit by markets. PayPal has done incredible things with their branded checkout experience. The reason it's not making my list right now is obviously they're dependent upon consumer spending. In the near term, that could be a headwind. Adobe, I think a lot of the fears around AI are maybe overblown with this company. They still have the go-to software solution for creative professionals. I worry about seat pricing and pricing pressure in that regard, which is why it's not making my cut in this exact moment. But the stock that is making the cut, I will say, is ServiceNow. And the reason why ServiceNow is making my cut is because I cannot believe how much shares have compressed over the course of the past year, almost by 50%, almost in half. I had not realized until we started to prepare for this show how much the valuation for service now has come down, and I understand that we saw a lot of lofty valuations for especially big enterprise software and SAS companies, of which service now was included. It's not entirely unjustified, but when I look at their earnings, and I see how the business is performing. To me, a lot of the concern has much more to do with the macro environment, the AI environment, than it does to do with anything on the performance side for service now. In my opinion, the software is just like gravity for enterprises. They need it. They consolidate, they automate, and they will find ways to integrate AI. I do not think that AI alone is going to be a solution or a replacement for what ServiceNow does today. I think service now could be a particularly timely addition.
Travis Hoium: They're in a bit of hot water this week after one of their executives said, we lost $10 billion in market cap because of, I worry about an acquisition. Now you can give us that market cap back. When executives are looking at the stock price in the market cap, that much. Weirds me out just a little bit.
Emily Flippen: I completely agree. I think I saw that headline cross my table, and then I plugged my ears, and I went, la, la, la, la, because ideally, your management team is spending their time thinking about the business, not thinking about the share price.
Travis Hoium: Fair enough. When we come back, we are going to talk about stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
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Travis Hoium: As always, people on the program may have an interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards, and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Before we go, I do want to touch on what's going on with Google. And some of the advances that they announced this week they announced that they are going to be incorporating Gemini into Chrome. This is something that we could probably see coming a mile away. But it does seem like, Emily, Google is leaning into these incremental improvements from AI. I'm almost thinking of it like AI for normies. Like, I don't talk with my wife or friends about downloading this new app and look at this cool new browser that OpenAI made. But Google is incorporating Gemini in the product I already use, that I can actually see working.
Emily Flippen: That's exactly what Alphabet and Google need, though, is because they need people to continue the behavior that they've already had. We're all, for the most part, already engaged, already using Alphabet's products, so the idea about AI for normies is more about, Okay, continue with your habits. We're going to slowly encroach upon that so that you don't go elsewhere. You don't download that new app. But my big question mark alphabet is how much of this is just fighting for territory that they already have. I think to an extent, doing this is just doing table stakes. It's table stakes for them.
Travis Hoium: I don't think it expands the pie.
Emily Flippen: Not at all. For open A or perplexity, it would expand the Pi. A browser would expand the Pi. But for Alphabet, it's table stakes. They need to retain Chrome users. That is the search porter that drives their business, especially those logged-in searches. I mean, they need to retain those ad dollars. Everything they're doing here, in my opinion, is fighting for territory that they've already acquired and held onto for the better part of the past decade.
Travis Hoium: Look, I remember when all of these companies announced the browsers. I'm not going to give Google too much credit for fighting off the competition, keeping Crow, because I don't think I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who thought that this was a threat. But, you know, Google is, I guess, expanding the pie, but they're doing that as the big Pie continues to contract. This is more defensive, offensive than playing offense to me. The question for investors is whether, even if Google dominates the new world, the way they dominate the old world, will it be as profitable this time around? I don't think any of us know, but I think that is the question to ask.
Lou Whiteman: I can't believe that I am the AI bowl in this group because I collect Alphabet. I just think every time they come up with something new, I go, I can actually see that being really valuable.
Emily Flippen: Yeah, to be clear, I like their product a lot, but they need it. It's not extra. They need it.
Travis Hoium: Fair enough. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Emily, I'm going to have you go first. What are you looking at this week?
Emily Flippen: Yeah, the stock on my radar this week is a company called Mama's Creations. The ticker is M-A-M-A. I wish I could take credit for finding this one myself, but I was actually brought to my attention by analyst Sanmeet Deo here at the company. And their business that make and sell fresh food that's sold in the deli section of your local grocery store. They also have distribution shops like Costco, as well as some convenience stores like Sheetz. This is not frozen food, OK, Dan, not frozen food. Do you like meatballs? Do you like pasta? Do you potentially sushi? They're looking at acquisitions in the sushi space, penins. These are stuff when you walk into your grocery store, and they're already prepared, you grab on your way out. So obviously, they're benefiting from the tailwinds that are changing right now for consumer behavior, the trade-down effect from eating out or eating at fast casual to convenience or grocery store locations. Chiples talked about that in their earnings call. My main concern with this company is, of course, valuation, but also where they are in the value chain. Just earlier this month, we saw that Berkshire was selling off their Kraft Heinz, which has been a massive underperformer for their portfolio. Brands don't have as much pricing power with grocers and other distributors, since they need the placement, but I do like this company, and they are growing like gangbusters.
Travis Hoium: Dan, has Emily sold you on mass-produced sushi?
Dan Boyd: No, absolutely not. That does not sound like something I'm interested in. However, fast casual food is getting so expensive. Fast food is no longer really affordable. This kind of stuff definitely has a spot in the consumer landscape these days.
Emily Flippen: And don't knock grocery store Sushi till you try it, Dan, come on.
Dan Boyd: Believe me, I've had plenty of grocery store Sushi. It's just not my favorite thing. It's not what gets me up in the morning.
Travis Hoium: All right, Lou, what's on your radar this week?
Lou Whiteman: Emily's cheating. It's lunchtime, and now I'm hungry, so I'm not focused, but I'll do what I can. Dan, I'm looking at a freight broker, CH Robinson, Ticker, CHRW. Now, brokers arrange transportation kind of act as a middleman between shippers and the companies that want to move freight. With tariffs and all this, it's been a tough year for freight, but Robinson, in its most recent quarter, they grew operating income by 7%, even as revenue fell by 6.5%. How? Well, this is an AI success story. Adjusted operating margin improved by 490 basis points year over year, because Robinson is actually having success using AI to automate processes that have historically been done manually and taking out costs. I don't think they're done. We're talking about the potential of another 200 basis points of gains in 2026. Robinson is the biggest company in their field. They're using their scale to their advantage. They're gaining customers. You couple all of that work they're doing in-house with the inevitability of one day the shipping market's going to improve. And I think Robinson looks pretty intriguing right now.
Travis Hoium: Dan? What do you think about shippers?
Dan Boyd: You've talked about CH Robinson before, Lou. This is a boring company, and you know I love a boring company, especially when it involves logistics. I'm a fan.
Lou Whiteman: I'm channeling Ron Gross here now. I mean, Dan, how I know how I know what you. Old Economy Lou on the podcast today.
Travis Hoium: All right, Dan, what's going on your watch list? Mama's Creations or CH Robinson.
Dan Boyd: This is a tough one. I actually like both companies. So I'm gonna go with Mama's Creations because Emily rarely comes with anything I like, so wait.
Travis Hoium: I got to do some research on that one, too. Thanks for listening, everybody, for Lou Whiteman, Emily Flippen, and Dan Boyd behind the glass, and Travis Hoium. We'll see you here.
