Today we're sending 5 Stocks for America off to Sad Foolhalla, but 5 Stocks Pursued by a Bear has one more year to pull out a win. It's scorekeeping time, Fools!
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This video was recorded on June 14, 2023.
David Gardner: Thirty separate times about every 10 weeks on this podcast over six years, I picked five stocks. I chose a theme that made sense to me at the time, sometimes sublime, sometimes silly. Then I thought to myself, what are the five best recommendations that I can come up with for stocks that fit that theme. Aiming, of course, always to beat the market, the S&P 500. Otherwise, hey, why are we bothering? Then one year later we review the picks. Then another year passes the two-year review. Two years later, we never forget, we hope you wouldn't also, we score everything transparently and accountably because we're Fools, you should expect that of us. Then the three-year review, which is going to be the most telling. Why is that? Well, first, because three years have passed since I picked those five stocks, we really can be smarter about what has happened, and why and what we can learn. Well, that's the smarter part, but if I've done my job well, then we'll also be happier and richer too. Now that three-year review is also telling because most of the time we end the game right there. We're going to keep holding those stocks in real life. Mind you, and you should too if you own them. But if I kept reviewing all 30 of my samplers in years 4 and 5 and 6, well, we wouldn't have time to do much else on this podcast. Thirty separate times, I've picked five stocks, what I've also caught my five-stock samplers. We're going to review two of those samplers this week. Five stocks pursued by a bear, and five stocks for America. Review them we will with my guest stars Asit Sharma and Nick Sciple. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.
Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. I had such a wonderful time last week with Mohan Tavakoli. I hope you did too. That one was definitely worth airing out somewhat a little bit over an hour because we're thinking about the most important plate tectonic technology shift of our time, which is very clearly artificial intelligence. If you didn't already come in thinking that, I hope you listened and probably ended up concluding that by the end of our very entertaining 60 or so minutes together. I want to thank Mohan again. I'm going to have to have him back some time. I just really enjoy him as a person. He's such an energetic and thoughtful person. He's a genius in many regards. He really showed that off last week. I hope you enjoyed that. We had a lot of fun together. To educate, to amuse and to enrich, that is the phrase that we put up on the front page of our AOL site back when the Motley Fool was just an AOL site back in the day, Keyword Fool, to educate, to amuse, and to enrich. That's what this podcast tries to do every week. I hope you enjoyed last week. If you didn't get a chance to listen and learn, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to Unleashing AIs Power for Good with Mohan Tavakoli. Well, that was then and this is now it's a Review-a-Palooza episode. We've done many of these overtime and we'll continue to do them going forward. Two five-stock samplers are on display today, one of them three years old and one of them two years old. Now, I'm going to give us spoiler alert upfront. This is a sad episode. This is a sad week for me. In many ways, what a joyful week.
The stock market has really been rebounding throughout 2023. I'm looking outside and seeing a beautiful sunny day. The temperature 77 degrees, I'm not sure 77 and sunny. I'm not sure it gets much better than that on planet Earth or any other planet as I think about it. But despite the beauty and the good things going on around me and despite my hope, my optimism as I put forward five stocks for America, and five stocks pursued by a bear, respectively three and two years ago, neither one has come to good. We'll be reviewing that this week. Some of these stocks did go up, some did not, some went down dramatically. But in every case, we're going to review them because what we do on this podcast is we do a several things, but one thing we do to educate is we learn. It's going to be very informative for me, I hope for you too, as I welcome back analysts Asit Sharma and Nick Sciple and we review 10 really interesting and compelling stocks, many of which didn't just go sideways, they went down over the last two and three years. We're going to learn, and one of the things that I hope you've learned if you've listened to Rule Breaker Investing or followed us over time, is one of my cardinal lessons, and that is that losing is a part of winning. I'm very happy to say that the 35 stock samplers we've done over the years in this podcast, take it all in all, represent a substantial win both when they're periods the games ended as five stocks for America will end today after three years to the dot, but even after that, because I've always emphasized that each of these samplers is a game.
In real life, I don't think you should sell after three years. If you believe in the companies and like their future, you should keep holding not just for three years, but preferably three decades. That's what I've tried to do and that's what we've done at The Fool. I think we've really proven, for those who paid attention to the Motley Fool over the years, that you really do benefit from decades 2 and 3 far more than years 2 and 3 as you hold great companies. Part of what we learned is that losing is part of winning. On the way to riches and glory, you're going to have any number of losers. If you have any friends in your life who are venture capitalists, they can explain that even better to you. The life of a venture capitalist is watching many of your investments come to nothing at all in many cases. We don't do that very often in the public markets. That happens a lot though in the private sector, private markets. But the ones that win often wipe out all your losers, and that is such an important lesson.
That's not just true of venture capitalists, but also true of you and me. If we're following, I would say, Foolish investing or Rule Breaker Investing, if you're looking really to hold your stocks and stay in the market for life with the best companies of your time, but you're going to lose, and lose I did with both of these samplers that we'll be learning from this week. Well, the day was June 16th, 2021. I'm looking back at my calendar now and I see that it was just a day before I would head to the beach in North Carolina, and given the performance of five stocks pursued by a bear thus far, maybe I was already thinking too much about the beach. This is the final of the 35-stock samplers that I have picked thus far on this podcast. It was two years ago this week. I guess the bad news is bad news first, they're way behind the market. The good news is, they're doing better than they were a year ago and they still have another year to go. To help me analyze the movements of five stocks pursued by a bear, I'd like to welcome back the same gentleman who did the exact same work for us all on this podcast one-year ago this week, and that's Asit Sharma. Asit, welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing.
Asit Sharma: Great to be back with you, David.
David Gardner: It is a delight and I'm happy to say these five stocks are doing better than they were a year ago. It was pretty brutal in retrospect picking stocks in June of 2021. If you're of Rule Breaker vintage or even any leaning that direction Asit, it was a brutal following 12 months, and I'm sorry to say, we'll be giving the numbers a little bit later. I'm sorry to say, even these two years have been tough for this five-stock sampler. I'd like to point out the market, Asit and everyone listening, is up exactly 3.4% from this week last year as of live market trading on Tuesday afternoon, June 13th. So 3% or so these last two years for the S&P 500. For the Nasdaq, worse. Certainly, for some of these stocks, we're going to talk about Peloton shortly, ouch, a lot worse. But there's a little bit of silver lining here, Asit. Not that I'm going to ask you to be particularly optimistic, because looking at these numbers being realistic, these are bad numbers. But before we get into them, my icebreaker question for you and I'm going to be asking the same of Nick Sciple a little later. Asit as you may know, it's artificial intelligence month on this podcast. I'm going to ask you before we get started, what's a thought, an enticement or a prediction that you have about artificial intelligence.
Asit Sharma: David, my thought, because I'm very bad at predicting things. My thought is that artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, is worth investors' time to learn about, to spend some time getting into the weeds. I myself am a skeptic on hype cycles and I know we're seeing some of this in the markets, but I've been spending some time with large language models and trying to understand how they work. There's something very fascinating about them to me. I go back to a book that people have a certain age will remember. It's called Godel, Escher, Bach. It's by Douglas Hofstadter, who is a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. In this long book, which I'll confess, I haven't read all of it.
David Gardner: It's a long book. I've never cracked the cover, Asit, but I definitely can picture this big fat Tome with these Germans seeming words on the cover. I've always wondered over the years what is going on inside that book. What is going on inside that book, among other things?
Asit Sharma: Totally. You remember, it's a dark tome with an MC Escher visual on the cover. Inside is this very winding musing about the world and how this idea of Infinite loops comes into play, which is a way to look at intelligence. I think for those listening today, my advice is check it out maybe from the library, flip through it, there are very entertaining chapters. I don't know about a read from start to finish.
David Gardner: But those Escher drawings, those are like it'll show the staircase and you're walking down. But if you follow it with your eyes, you are like, wait, but then a double back on itself in it. I guess that's what you're saying. It's an infinite loop.
Asit Sharma: Perfect. Exactly. The same with Bach's music. He makes this same point about a piece called The Musical Offering. So many other examples in this book, it's just replete with such examples. One that stuck out to me though is something called a bond guard problem. This is just a diagram. You have a set of images on the left, and then you have a set of images on the right. Your job is to figure out what the commonality is on the left side and why that doesn't hold on the right side. A Russian mathematician came up with this and the 1960. We see a lot of these out in the world today in the form of analogy tests. It's very familiar to all of us. Exactly.
David Gardner: There's a little bit of Where's Waldo going on here.
Asit Sharma: Exactly. This is what I am really honing in on with artificial intelligence, the modern day large language models which focus on something called the attention model, introduced by some google scientists in 2017. Transformer model, if you will, is really good at relating one thing to another. Now, we extend the model, there's many pitfalls we all know about hallucinations, lack of accuracy, but large language models are just very strong in this relational intelligence that something is very similar to the way ultimately the human mind works. I'm saying here we shouldn't necessarily discount generative AI. It's got some fun things in it, the emergent properties that come out of it that we don't expect. We have to take a hard look at its limitations, but not be too coward about its potential, it's interesting.
David Gardner: Thank you for that. That is indeed a compelling thought about artificial intelligence. I'm going to actually continue that sub-theme through this podcast because it is artificial intelligence month. On this podcast now we are doing a traditional review-a-palooza looking at companies. But I thought it'd be fun Asit if for each of the companies we're about to talk about, you give us a thought going forward about how much artificial intelligence matters or not to this company and its shareholders. Will you play that game with me?
Asit Sharma: I'll try David.
David Gardner: Excellent, good. We're definitely going to be riffing because, how much artificial intelligence matters to Peloton or not? Well, that's an interesting question that I will shortly be asking you. Let's get started with these five stocks pursued by a bear. Now, the thing that unites these stocks, because I went back to check this. Two years ago, I decided that three traits are worthy of calling out for this five-stock sampler. Again, this was the summer of 2021, the market was already having a bad time of it. As many of us may remember, the second quarter of 2021 started to get ugly, and the first thing that united all five of these stocks back then, Asit and everybody else listening, is that they had all made substantial drops already. I called that out in the podcast. If anybody would like to go back and listen, you can hear the exact numbers. But each of these five had made a substantial drops. Second trait is each is out and out the leader within its industry. Now some of these are more niche industries, if you will, but I would still say most, if not all of these, remain the leaders within their industries.
The third and final trait is that, well, it's one of my long-term tropes, dark clouds I can see through. This is a mini-sermon I occasionally give on this podcast, but when I feel like the world thinks something and is doubting this company for that reason, it's like a dark cloud that cartoonishly, remember this from the cartoons you can see it over the head of, in this case, not a cartoon character, but the stock itself, a dark cloud just positioned right there, it's a sunny day otherwise raining really hard on this stock. If I feel like I can see through that, I think the market or the world has it wrong, then I feel especially confident, and often, even though we get it wrong a lot and I got it wrong with this five-stock sampler, often the greatest value is created when you find a dark cloud you can see through and you really did see through it.
The world thought Amazon was bankrupt, are never going to make any money, and it did make money, or the world thought that Blockbuster could never be damaged by Netflix's new subversive business model and yet it did. In fact Blockbusters isn't around anymore. The best stocks of our time in my experience are when there's a dark cloud, you can see through, you can see through it the world can't yet and you buy at that point. I was thinking Asit that I saw in these companies, dark clouds. Some of them I was more wrong than others about. But let's get into this a little bit.
Asit Sharma: Let's start with Peloton, which has been one of those companies that has a appreciably dark cloud hanging over it. Peloton, I think since we last spoke, David has made some progress. The new CEO, Barry McCarthy, who came in understands that this company will probably be better fit to survive if it focuses on its subscription revenue, rather than trying to be only a connected fitness company, which means an equal balance, say of hardware bikes sold and software subscriptions. I was looking at their three-quarters, this is ending March 31 of 2023, so trailing nine months, and from a cash flow perspective, they don't look terrible. When you look that nine-month period that ended in March 31 of 2022, Peloton had negative operating cash flow of $1.7 billion. This period they've lost about $332 million in operating cash flow. They've also controlled over those nine months their capital expenditure, which is only $64 million. The balance sheet looks fairly good to me. I think in some ways, at least a profit loss perspective, a balance sheet perspective, the clouds are lifting a bit for Peloton. Here's where I can't quite see through.
Peloton is reimagining itself as more of an app business. They've relaunched their Peloton app. Now there's a digital subscription service with three tiers. There's a free tier, there's something called the Peloton app one, so they are charging $13 per month. It starts to sound a little bit like the Netflix model, but for fitness. I think that this may have some traction, we can see that at least as far as operating profits are concerned, and maybe looking forward at gross profit margins, the more of this app business that they can generate, the better it will be for finally getting to that sustained positive cash flow state. Peloton is a company that has a story that could improve. My big question though is, will there be a market that's substantial enough for Peloton to reinvent itself, to reimagine itself as a subscription business for fitness? They have yet to prove that.
Now I want to say that the brand itself is still very strong. The third-party sales are pretty decent on amazon.com. Peloton places its bikes in high-end hotels, still very visible to the public. It does have the brand tie-in, which should potentially lead to some success on the subscription side. But I think this is one. If we're talking about a year from today, because we've got about one year left on this sampler. I'm not sure if this is the company that's going to drive the performance forward.
David Gardner: Well, it sure has driven it down and I'm glad you started with Peloton Asit because you remember the tradition for our Review-a-Paloozas is to lead with the loser. Wow, it has been an unmitigated disaster these last two years. The stock when I picked it two years ago this week was at $105 a share, today it's below 10. We're talking about a company that has lost more than 90% of its value. Now, it hasn't been a secret, I think a lot of people knew about the brand, it had hit popular culture in a way that few emergent younger companies like this would. It was greatly helped by the perception that we're all going to be endorsed for a prolonged period of time, we better stay connected and we better stay fit. Asit, while I myself have never bought a bike and haven't downloaded the app, I still have esteemed this company's purpose and its background.
I am also a Barry McCarthy fan, so when you say maybe the Netflix of fitness, that's not surprising, maybe coming from McCarthy. But with that said, and I hear you on the skepticism which I share anytime a stock that I picked loses 90%, I'm a real skeptic at that point. Rarely do I start digging my heels saying, no, no, no, I was right in the first place and we should be tripling down at this point. No, I rarely if ever add to my losers this one included. But Asit seeing it steeply drop from 120 or so, it cross below 20, somewhere around April of 2022, and then dropped below 10. It's almost near all-time lows here. It's been bouncing back and forth from 8-15 or so over the last year. It sounds like you're not particularly excited about buying the shares of this company right now?
Asit Sharma: I'm open-minded. You're correct to say that I'm not particularly excited, but something intrigues me. Barry McCarthy is, as you note, is a very capable CEO and he's got a great sense of what the company needs to do. He's taking it into direction that is the most promising. As you mentioned before, the balance sheet isn't terrible, there's some risk there. That the company has about one billion dollars worth of working capital that covers most of the long-term debt. I think there is still another $700 million after that on the books in the form of a term loan. But this is not necessarily a terminal situation. There is a life for Peloton beyond the end of this basket. I probably will still be watching and you never know, my opinion could change if conditions keep improving. If they answer my question, get traction in that subscription business, I might be interested.
David Gardner: Well, it is one of those companies that with a three billion dollar market cap, it's at 3.1 billion as we speak. I would say its brand if that were the numerator divided by its market cap as a denominator, one of the higher ratios out there in the public markets. I've often favor those companies for turnarounds. With that said, sticking with my rule breaker guns here, I tend not to add to my winners. If I'd never bought the stock, I might, if I like turnarounds and I like the brand or use the product, especially I might consider it here, but anyway, for the purposes of this five-stock sampler, good news, it's got a year left, bad news, man, does it have a lot of room to make up? If this five-stock sampler, when you and I celebrate, I was going to say it's demise, but maybe it could end well. A year from this, this week Asit, if it ends up being a winner, five stocks pursued by a bear, it's very unlikely to be the big loser that makes up ground. It's more likely to be one of the banner carriers, one of the winners that gets hot in my experience for three-year games like this one. Let's keep moving. Although I do have to quickly ask you, Asit, artificial intelligence, Peloton, what does it mean?
Asit Sharma: It means simply, you're on a bike today, but tomorrow you may be just sitting on a yoga mat with that subscription, and after you get up, you're having conversations with a GPT like wrapper about your spiritual progress. They'll work it in. Not high-end AI, almost garden variety in today's world, but they'll do it.
David Gardner: I like that answer. Well, let's go from the worst performer to the best performer. The best performer, respectable, we're going to need more out of The Trade Desk, so ticker symbol TTD. If five stocks pursued by a bear would graduate with an overall when two years ago this week, The Trade Desk was at $59 a share, today it's just over 77, which means the stock is up 31%. Again, the market up 3%, so plus 28 in the win column, since we have a minus 94 that we started with, you can see this is one of my poor samplers of all time. But Asit what's going right at the Trade Desk?
Asit Sharma: Well, David, The Trade Desk, has shown itself to be remarkably good at sticking to its strategic knitting. For a long time they've been proposing something called UID 2.0 as an alternative to cookies that are found in those walled gardens. If I'm speaking a lot of advertising jargon, I simply mean that The Trade Desk has a solution that will allow us to roam around the internet, not give up our privacy, and potentially offer advertisers a better yield, a better way to find us versus the cookies that we all tire of.
David Gardner: You know what I really tire of, Asit, is not the cookies themselves. It's that I have to answer on every single website that I go to. Ever since I think GDPR in Europe spawned this upon North, I feel like I've answered the question, do I want to? I almost always say accept, accept, accept, accept all. It's a nuisance.
Asit Sharma: They've beaten it out of me too, David. At the beginning, I used to work through the columns, reject the marketing, accept the stuff to optimize your website. I'll be helpful here. Now, let's just get it over with.
David Gardner: Accept all.
Asit Sharma: I give it up. Let me do what I want to do totally. This is where The Trade Desk, though, has really found very firm fitting. What they've done is to prove out the value proposition that CEO Jeff Green presented to the market a few years ago. He said that not only will this replace cookies, it'll be better for advertisers. Lo and behold, every quarter that we see, The Trade Desk is starting to prove out that, yeah, they show that they have partnerships with the likes of companies like Disney that are proving this efficacy of this tool that's really developed by a consortium, not just The Trade Desk. What I love about this is in a time where, myself included, would have thought that The Trade Desk would have a big earnings miss or a series of them as the economy just went into the slow molasses type growth, interest rates spike, inflations spiked, and advertisers pulled back their budgets. The Trade Desk still delivered year-over-year growth, quarter after quarter. I think 21% in its last quarter. That shows that this argument about efficacy is working. Advertisers are going to allocate money where they see the yields. A company that can vision out the future, stick with it, prove it out, and then really parlays those advantages. We'll talk about this in a second because it's related to your question that you're going to ask me. That's the company that could still perform for this basket.
David Gardner: Well, this is a company that is still relatively young in the public markets, coming public, I think in the last quarter of 2016. Still a spring chicken, although it's market cap, not that spring Chicony these days up their, Asit, at $37 billion. This is by no means some upstart, where you're wondering, are these guys for real. This is a really meaningful contributor to the world of e-commerce and advertising in particular, led by a visionary CEO. This overall, Asit, has been a wonderful stock. Many people listening to us right now, especially long time Motley Fool members really love The Trade Desk and saw it arc over $100 a share, which means it was like a 20 plus bagger over the five-years 2016-21. Over last year, after a substantial decline, I now see, and I'm not a technical chartist, this may sound slightly like that, I don't think this way, but it's bounced off of $40 a share four separate times, each time separated at least two months from the other time. Four times in the last year the stock has bounced off 40, it's back at 77 today. There's a little bit more about this stock. You know the question I'm going to ask you before we go onto the other three, Asit and that is, how do you see AI affecting The Trade Desk going forward?
Asit Sharma: Well, David, The Trade Desk, has been investing in AI for quite a while. They took their time. They didn't try to rush any announcements. Only in the last week we've seen that they're going to use something that's called distributed artificial intelligence within their systems. It's millions of pieces of data every minute from all the advertising impressions that are growing across their platform. The company is doing something that's a little more deep, a little more effective than the garden variety that we just talked about that we'll see the likes of Peloton doing. That is, they will be able to, with the latest extension of their AI platform, deliver more insights to their advertisers. Even wrap that up into a naturalistic conversation. Make it easier for advertisers to ask those insightful questions and get perhaps a natural language response. But what's going on underneath the hood is a lot of data crunching that the model they've been perfecting is now going to unleash. I think they're only going to get better at showing yield. There'll be using AI and generative AI in a more sophisticated way than some of the companies that you're going to ask me about.
David Gardner: [laughs] Well, let's take a quick look then in closing at the other three. We've covered the biggest loser, Peloton, we've covered the biggest winner, The Trade Desk. The other three alphabetically, Asit, are Axon Enterprise, Unity Software, and Zillow Group. Now, I'm going to punt Axon because it shows up a little bit later in the show as part of the second five-stock sampler we're reviewing this week. I will mention in passing that Axon is up 29% versus the market's three. That makes me like it more than the other two, and these are the ones I want to focus you on, especially pick your favourite among these two, but both of the other two, Unity Software and Zillow Group have a few similarities, both down, right, about 60% over the last two years. That's a horrific thing that they share.
Something neutral-to-slightly interesting that these two companies share, Asit, they both have single letter ticker symbols. Unity Software somehow just got you. Nobody else took U. United Airlines could have gotten U. But anyway, Zillow Group gets Z. There's less competition there, but we've got 2, 1 letter ticker symbol companies, both of which I liked a lot two years ago this week, both of which are down about 60% with the market up three. That means this sampler I'll be giving the numbers at the end is looking ugly right now. Unity Software and Zillow Group, which one interests you more?
Asit Sharma: David, I think Unity still interests me more. I'm hedging here because I'm trying to remember how I might have answered that question last time. I think Zillow might have more near-term opportunities just because they're returning to what should be their focus, which is just being a model for home sales rather than being an investor in homes. Perhaps that's the stock with more near-term potential or the business with more near-term potential. But I think Unity plays an interesting role in the gaming space. I think this wave of artificial intelligence is going to be very good to them. Now, Unity's not been the best capital allocator. They've made some questionable moves with acquisitions. That stock feels like it might be a little more bound, but looking ahead to the future, maybe the next 3-5 years. Here's where that AI comes into play. Unity is unique in that it has already this whole world-building system that's been in process for a while for gamers. With generative AI tools conceivably, and the company has been talking about this, you'll be able to reach a point, again, something that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, likes to talk about.
David Gardner: I knew you were headed on this one, the remarkable demonstration that he gave a few weeks ago.
Asit Sharma: Very much so, Unity is a company that can help bring the vision of asking for things to be created in the gaming world on the flight to the fore.
David Gardner: For those who may not recognize what we're referencing, Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, did a live demonstration on stage of interacting with a character in a video game. Now, those of us, like me who love video games and have done a lot of this over the years are used to all of that being pre-scripted. You're given a quick menu of a few things you might say to this non-player character in your game, and then that non-player character is going to say back what the storytellers and software devs have already programmed him or her to say back in this pre-programmed story, much like a novel has already been written before you read it. But now, as Jensen Huang demonstrated and as Unity Software well knows and you do to, Asit, now it's possible to have off the cuff improvisational conversations, where you say whatever you want to that character in the video game and using things like ChatGPT and large language generative models, hiding behind, you don't know what that character might say back to you. so it's a really interesting development.
Asit Sharma: Totally, and I think for me this captures future innovation potential and it's just fascinating to watch. So when you asked me to choose between these businesses, I think I'm leaning more to where my passions lie. But that can be a great business proposition for Unity and will actually prove out what its founders were trying to convince the public of when it went public a few years ago, they could still realize that vision. So I choose Unity, but not discount Zillow's potential here to have a quick bounce back as they returned to their roots.
David Gardner: A quick word, do you think AI matters to Zillow?
Asit Sharma: They say it does and they should, no one should be discounting that and everyone should be trying to demonstrate how AI can help one's business. I think Zillow has rolled out some ChatGPT-based conversational tools to help smooth out those customer interactions. I say that's great. Again, garden variety, but I like that they're not sticking to better understand.
David Gardner: Well, thank you so much Asit for your comments, your thoughts both in the recent past, again, just two years for these companies. Many of them we've held, especially some of our listeners for many years before that. But whenever I pick a five-stock sampler, I'm picking stocks that were active recommendations at that time, although with much lower cost basis. But anyway, without complaining, I'm here to say that these five stocks take it off as of live market trading this Tuesday afternoon, June 13th, down 30% as a group, the market up 3.3% as we're speaking. So bad news, I am behind 33 percentage points per stock with this five-stock sampler. Now, if there's, I don't know, is this fair silver lining, or is this just crying overspill book? I'm not sure but a year ago, Asit, when you and I reviewed these, the gap between the winners and losers was not minus 33 percentage-wise, it was minus 47. So we've actually made up a fair amount of headway a year ago, this basket of five stocks was down on average 58% each. So we are seeing some comeback whether there's enough fire in the belly here, Asit Sharma for these five stocks to get past the markets return a year from now, only time will tell. Do you have any future thoughts going forward, either about five stocks pursued by a bear or about artificial intelligence, or about what Asit Sharma is most excited about this summer?
Asit Sharma: I'd love to answer all those questions, David, but I'll stick to the one about this basket. I think a lot can happen in a year. This is something that continually surprises investors. I'm continually surprised by it. We get stuck in our own circuits, speaking of intelligence, artificial or no and sometimes we discount the possibility of things to change rapidly. So I never give up hope. I haven't with this basket, I like the trends. I like the momentum, like you say these stocks and want to make it, there is a fire burning this heart let's see if that fire can even get a little oxygen and burn a little bit brighter over the next 12 months.
David Gardner: Thank you very much. Well, three of these stocks are well down, two are up and beating the market. As I mentioned, if I had to handicap this, which I'm not because I'm not better and I'm certainly not the house, although I wish I were the house. But if I were having to handicap this, I would predict that either the Trade Desk or Axon, its gains would be what saves this group. More likely than I think some of the losers, all of a sudden becoming shining stars. But you know what? I vote for all five to double over the next year. I'm not predicting that. I wish I could. I just voting for that as the person who picked this five-stock sampler. Asit, I regret asking you to slog through a losing group of stocks with me. I'm sure it's much more fun to analyze a bunch of winners, but you've done Yeoman's work once again, thank you for joining me on Rule Breaker Investing.
Asit Sharma: There was great fun, David, thanks so much for having me.
David Gardner: Now onto well, the date was June 10th of 2020. So three years to the week really ended last Friday. Five Stocks for America performed as a five-stock sampler for this podcast. Now five stocks for America was inspired by me asking the rhetorical question I've asked over the years in this podcast, which is, well, we do this all the time for our organizations. What are our core values? What are our core values at The Motley Fool? What are your core values at your place of business? Or maybe some people do this for their family or maybe for their church. What is the purpose behind what we're doing, but what are our core values? Over the years, at least my own pet version of what America's core values are. I think it's a great question to ask about our country as well. I've gone with liberty, enterprise, justice, resilience, and kindness. Those are my five and anytime. If I get to meet you, dear listener and you want to have this conversation with me, I'd love to hear yours often there's some overlap. One person to the next, but then we each bring our own thought, our own angle to what in this case, our nation stands for what are the values that guide us liberty, enterprise, justice, resilience, and kindness. Nick Sciple, I tagged a stock to each of those five core values and that became this five-stock sampler, five stocks for America. Nick, welcome back.
Nick Sciple: Great to be here with you, David.
David Gardner: You and I were talking off the air before we started about, well, one part of America and that's, that's the south. Look, let's go there just for a little bit, Nick, where do you live today?
Nick Sciple: So I'm a proud resident of Nashville, Tennessee as of August 2022 move there, we had a baby on the way came this December. We've put down some routes and I started a family here, so I love it here. I told you before we hopped on, I think it's the capital all this out, the country music capital, I think the SEC championships should be here every year, sorry Atlanta. But I think national really city on the come up and a really exciting place to be.
David Gardner: It is a great place to be. I have family members who've lived there or gone through a son who went to Vanderbilt. I have becoming my own way in Nashville fan as the Washington DC guy, I had no regional affiliation. I did go to the IRS in North Carolina, which then I guess set me thinking much more about the south as part of my identity. I would say I'm a Southerner now given my past. But Nick, you and I were talking about this. Atlanta may have a little bit of a bone to pick with your notion that Nashville is the capital to South.
Nick Sciple: I think it may be Atlanta had a great run. But again, Nashville's were Taylor Swift calls home. I think Taylor slip the queen of entertainment. So I think where the queen lives is where the capital is and we've got Taylor.
David Gardner: Now I know you're a big sports fan and I know you are in Alabama, man, so but since Alabama plays in the SEC, any thoughts before we actually get started on the work this week of reviewing five stocks for America, any thoughts on this rumor that North Carolina might leave the ACC sooner or later and join the SEC thoughts.
Nick Sciple: I would love to see that. SEC basketball. Last year, one of the best conferences in the country I'd say could go head-to-head, probably with ACC if we bring North Carolina in. I think you've probably got the biggest basketball conference in the country go in and I don't know how would you feel to separate from Duke, would you be heartbroken about that?
David Gardner: I think it would be sad if and when the ACC breaks up, the almighty dollar seems to be driving so much of college sports today. In a lot of ways for good. A lot of these players, athletes over the course of time, didn't really earn much more than their college scholarship and well, I acknowledged that that's an incredible benefit and most people dream of having a full ride through college. Those who do so through sports and sometimes the arts arguably are creating value well beyond whatever a college scholarship would be worth these days, Nick. I would be sad to see that I think North Carolina Duke, if that were to happen, would certainly make a point of scheduling each other every year. I think that rivalry will exist for the rest of my lifetime and would be sad to see the ACC breakout. But there's a lot of talk these days about that, about super conferences and I would have loved it if my conference, Nick, the ACC were draining all the other conferences which it did for awhile, the big east, etc. But now, it seems like the SEC is king. Football more than anything, it seems like the biggest revenue sport.
Nick Sciple: Certainly media rights driving the day. I might extend outside of just college sports of money driving the day. If you see what's happened with the PGA in recent weeks. One thing I will say, I know you're a video game fan. One thing that does excite me about these changes in NIL regulations, name, image, and likeness regulations, and we're getting ready to get back the EA college football game. I grew up with that. That was the one game I bought every single year. The game of college football changing, but something that I think was near and dear to my heart, getting ready to return with some of these regulatory changes.
David Gardner: Yes. As a lifetime video gamer, I loved those games enough that I would type in the names of the athletes. They would just show the number like Number 33, wearing red or blue. But you could type in because it did look like that center who was wearing Number 33 for somebody school, but yeah, I appreciate that point. Well, in some ways, I'm just distracting you from a losing sampler that we're going to review. But in other ways, since we're talking about America with stocks, I feel like sports and some of the things we just covered capital this out, those all count for America. Let's get into five-stocks for America. Now Nick, you know the sub-theme, I think that's the right phrase. The sub-theme for this week's Pagos and this month on Rule Breaker Investing artificial intelligence. I asked this question of Asit, I should ask it of you, Nick, what's a thought enticement or prediction that you have about artificial intelligence?
Nick Sciple: Well, I guess the way I'm thinking about artificial intelligence, if you think about the Internet, it's an assemblage of all human knowledge thrown up on this unorganized web. You had Google that came out there and then Index that metaphorical library and now today with artificial intelligence to me, it seems like we have a really great librarian who will go out there and grab you all the things that you need to go find and explain it to you in a way that's accessible, which I think is very interesting and valuable, but also worth noting that this is finding knowledge that's already out there in the world. This isn't creating brand new knowledge anew. A lot of people talk about artificial intelligence is going to replace a lot of jobs out there. I think the need for human creativity and innovation will be just as strong today as it was in the past. Some of these tools will help augment that and the way that previous tools have done so.
That's an interesting high-level thought, one low-level thought, I was trained as a lawyer before I came to the Motley Fool. I know a fair few lawyers. I've talked to lawyers in the past, they talk about when email came out, when new technology comes out, expectations of those folks goes up because they have more tools available at them. I think for some of these folks in the knowledge industry, the quality of product they're able to deliver will go up, but the expectations of consumers will go up just as quickly such that I don't think there's going to be a ton of surplus on the producer side, much more on the side of the customers of some of these areas. Those are two separate thoughts.
David Gardner: Excellent. Thank you for both those thoughts, Nick and I appreciate the optimism there. It does remind me that there's always talk with new technology of jobs being destroyed and indeed every time jobs are in a sense destroyed, always a click-bait word really. Jobs, they evolve, they adapt and new ones pop up. We're at historically low levels of unemployment right now in our country and I think that says something important as well. Nick, well, Axon, Boston Beer, Etsy, Starbucks, and Take-Two Interactive. Five stocks for America there they are alphabetically. For each of these is I do with Asit. Let's briefly talk about whether AI matters for this company or not, whether it speaks to what's happened over these last few years. I of course like always to start with the worst performer of these five stocks. Nick Sciple, the worst performer for this five-stock sampler has been The Boston Beer Company ticker symbol, S-A-M, SAM, of course, for Sam Adams, their iconic brew, The Boston Beer Company, Nick, $533.87 a share three years ago this week down from 523 to 328. Down 37%. Here's the bad news. The market's up 34.8%.
This is all through last Friday. These are final numbers. Nick, the market, I don't want to say it's bad news. The market was up 35% the last three years, which is about its historical average over a three-year period. What happened to Boston Beer that it lost 37% instead of gaining 37%?
Nick Sciple: I think the story here with Boston Beer is increasing competitive intensity and maybe lowering consumer interest in some of their products. You mentioned this, the parent company of Sam Adams, brands like Dogfish Head brewing, a number of others, but the real driver of growth in recent years has been what they call their beyond beer category Hard Seltzer. They're the parent company of Truly, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard. If you think back to 2020, really seeing incredible growth in that Hard Seltzer category. Just to give you some numbers, Hard Seltzer products grew at 158% in the year 2020, 13% in 2021 and declined 15% in 2022. Part of that is this really excitement about Hard Seltzer has faded. Also, we've seen a new competitors come on the market in the form of ready-to-drink cocktails. Think about a vodka soda that you can get on the market. These other products have been malt-based beverages. You've seen last year for the full-year depletions, this is sell-through at retailers down 5%, shipments to retailers down 3.8%.
That's continued in the first quarter of this year, depletions down 6% and shipments down 7.6%. Their guidance for the full year reflects continued issues. So that the issue is it's a turnaround story. The seltzer part of the business really struggling and trying to get back to volume growth. On the positive side though, still generated $100 million in free cash flow last year. No debt on the balance sheet and management clearly optimistic about the business, bought back $23 million in stock in the first quarter. That's more in that one quarter than they bought back in the previous four years combined. Some questions operationally, but it's still producing cash and management buying back stock. I guess the question here is David, for a rule-breaker selection, the criteria is a top dog and first-mover in an important emerging industry. Clearly three-years ago, Hard Seltzer an emerging beverage category, today not emerging as much. If you look at the deliveries in the market, does that raise concerns for you as whether the stocks still checks that Rule Breaker box?
David Gardner: Well, first of all, really great perspective and thank you for bringing the numbers this week, Nick. Of course, I'm about to ask you where the AI has affected Boston Beer. But more importantly to your question, I think that the reason that I select stocks in the first place are rule-breaker reasons, top dog and first-mover in an important emerging industry, Nick, as you know, as many listeners will know, that is my number one criterion when I select a new stock. But really my dream, of course, is that that company over the course of time, it can't always be in an emerging industry if all of a sudden, the Internet as an emerging industry, e-commerce becomes a more mature thing, or artificial intelligence one day becoming a more mature thing. These things won't remain emerging at all points, but that's when we usually try to pick the stocks. We hope in time that stocks will go from rule breaker to rule maker.
Getting back to Boston Beer, Nick, I feel as if this is an interesting company because it's probably never going to be the rule maker. It's a small cap company still in a big cap industry and Budweiser and many other players, spirits, more broadly are much bigger even than Sam today. I feel as if it's gotten into a niche place and wallets it's natural for me to want to write Boston Beer Company off right now because it's declined over the last three years with the market up. It's one of those companies that keeps reinventing itself. Before there was Hard Seltzer, people were saying, hey, there's too many craft brews out there, they can't get shelf-space anymore. Then they reclaimed that an added Hard Seltzer. But as you pointed out, Nick, Hard Seltzer, not so cool here in 2023. I don't know Nick, were we drinking more alcohol back in 2020?
Nick Sciple: Well, I guess people were drinking more at that home channel as opposed to going out and about. [laughs] But to your point, you asked about how artificial intelligence might affect this business. Listen, cavemen were drinking alcohol. We're still drinking alcohol today, and I think no matter what technological innovation takes place, what chemicals do for our body and the things that we get excited about them doing aren't going to change anytime soon.
David Gardner: I think that's true. It's a remarkable thing just, before we move on to the next stock, to think about Boston Beer because it really spiked. I mean, over the last 10 years now, stock is up 100%, which is underperforming the market. Over the last 10 years, the stock market is up about 180%, so SAM is now an underperformer for the past decade. But if you just rewind two years ago, it was actually an eight-bagger. It was up 700%, an eight-bagger crushing the market. What's happened is just the last two years, there's been such a substantial decline of these shares that we've ended up with a loser in this five-stock sampler that was running so high not too long ago. It's a reminder of just how dramatic things can be when the stock, which was over 1,200 two years ago, is now below 400. Yet, I think you're right about the caveman and about the caveman of the future, where we're going to be looking for spirits and alcohol, I think. I think this company with its brands still remains well-positioned; a stock I would continue holding today on the down and out where it is right now speaking to this sampler. Let me just mention.
We start 72 points in the hole here, Nick, because this stock that I picked with the market up 35% is down 37%. Let's go from the worst performer to the best performer. I regret to say that only one stock among five stocks for America, only one stock is beating the market. I'm happy to say four of the five are up, so you've made money in these, but really only one is a substantial market winner. All four others are market losers. The best performer in this five-stock sampler, well, I mentioned it a little bit earlier in the podcast, Axon Enterprise, which was performing pretty well for five stocks pursued by a bear, much better for five stocks for America picked three years ago this week at 103. Tipping the scales, well, at the end of last week at 195, Nick, Axon Enterprise is up 89%. Again, the market up 35%, so we get a plus 54, which is not going to be enough to win for this sampler. But what went right, Nick Sciple, with Axon Enterprise?
Nick Sciple: Well, Axon has really just continued to execute the same plan they've been running for the past number of years. Last year, they set a moonshot goal to reduce police-related gun deaths by 50% within the next 10 years. Certainly, something that there's lots of demand for out in the market. They've continued to execute against that vision. For the full-year '22, revenue was up 38%. Year over year, it did $180 million in free cash flow. There was $100 million in stock-based comp, which I'll talk a little bit later, but still delivering meaningful amounts of cash. Because of the performance of the company, it got added to the S&P 500 in May, so it's a big checkmark for a company that had seen significant growth. In the first quarter this year, set a new record for quarterly revenue, up 34%. Cloud business still doing very well, up 50% year over year. The taser business still continuing to grow, up 17%, and that's before they launched their TASER 10 product, which is expected this year, the new, latest, and greatest. Seeing double-digit growth internationally, so taking what has really been a successful story in the US, North America. In the markets abroad, you saw triple-digit growth in Europe. In the justice segment, they're seeing triple-digit growth.
Basically, everywhere you look for this business, you're seeing really strong performance. Guidance expects for revenue to grow 22% this year at the midpoint. One of the big critiques, as I mentioned earlier, of the company has been significant amounts of dilution. Management has stated that they expect after they run through this current slate of stock grants to see that that dilution come down meaningfully. The business is executing very well. Stock-based comp expense coming down. It's good for the business. Really, the biggest critique that you could have against Axon, like many Rule Breakers, is the stock is valued very highly at 11 times revenue, triple-digit earnings multiple. But the story of the company is you've grown revenue at 20% or more for a decade, and if you tell the story of where the stock is today, you could see that continuing for another five or 10 years. This is the type of company where you can see that type of supernormal growth continue as far as the eye can see, which is why it's in the Rule Breaker bucket.
David Gardner: Well, it is a great Rule Breaker. This has been a monster winner for Rule Breaker members over time. I'm just checking the 10-year returns for the stock, it was below 10 10 years ago and it's right about 200 today, so it's about a 20 bagger over the course of these last 10 years. The market cap, Nick, still below $15 billion. A company that is certainly a national leader, five stocks for America. This is out and out the American, if not global, leader in what it does. I really appreciate that moonshot goal. I had missed that and I'm glad you shared that, reducing police death by 50%. That sounds like a worthy second-order outcome of the effects of its for-profit business. Certainly, it's pursuing profits first as a capitalistic entity, but its pursuit of profit can also win in other ways socially.
I really appreciate the transparency, Nick, that this company has brought to police work. Of course, a lot of questions about, well, just some of the bad eggs in the police forces nationwide over the last few years. I think a lot of us know some of those stories and might have been touched locally by them. But like a lot of stories, I'm not trying to be too cynical here, Nick. But like a lot of stories, it tends to be the bad guys get the headlines and all the good guys doing good work from one day to the next don't get reported on. I think that's my view today of law enforcement in America. This company is ensuring that it'd be done better, truer, and safer. I'm glad to note that this stock is up nearly 90%, just in these last three years. Nick, this is a company I would continue holding from this point going forward. Have you ever looked at the stock? Do you own the stock yourself?
Nick Sciple: I do own this stock, David, and it's done very well for me. It is the classic example of a Rule Breaker stock, where the big critique of the business is it's too expensively valued. But this is a company that is creating market that did not exist before, a solution that is 10x better than the others on the market. If you think about the folks they're selling into, the default tends to win in these types of contracts with governments and things like that, so they have a huge leg up against any potential competition. I think this is a business that is going to be a lot bigger five years from now than it is today, and the world would be better for it.
David Gardner: Good on you, Nick Sciple. Thank you for your analysis here. That leaves us with three other companies. Before we get to the nick brief briefly, is artificial intelligence helping, hurting, or irrelevant to Axon Enterprise?
Nick Sciple: I'd say artificial intelligence is helping Axon Enterprise. If you think about the problems that police face, you have to somehow keep track of all this data that your body cameras are producing on a day-to-day basis. You can do things like live transcription to help that, you use AI to help things with like dispatching, and things like that. Another thing that's interesting is Axon has technology that goes on police cars that helps you read license plates as they speed by. So being able to have superhuman abilities when it comes to detecting wrongdoing or tracking lawbreakers, that's something that you can enhance the performance of police through AI technology.
David Gardner: Nick, did you ever see the movie Minority Report?
Nick Sciple: I did. Tom Cruise, one of his best.
David Gardner: [laughs] The true future of law enforcement could be realizing that I or you is about to do something wrong before we've done it and apprehending us.
Nick Sciple: It could be. That's a dystopian movie though, David. I'm not rooting for that.
David Gardner: [laughs] Nor am I. It was fun to see Tom Cruise though gesticulate augmented reality in front of himself and make things happen. I think that part might come true.
Nick Sciple: Yeah, self-driving cars. I mean, there's more self-driving cars. Again, a little bit overhyped, but they're launching a new markets this year. In one way, the hype is over. In another way, the technology has just shown up.
David Gardner: Love it. Well, let's move on briefly because I really wanted to go deep on the biggest winner and the biggest loser. But Nick, the other three alphabetically are Etsy, Starbucks, and Take-Two Interactive, which by the way we should note was a Zynga when I picked it three years ago, but Zynga since acquired by Take-Two Interactive. Now, about all three of these, Nick, I want to say that each of them went up. Respectively, they went up 14% Etsy, 24% Starbucks, and 1% Take-Two Interactive acquiring Zynga. The bad news is the market is up 35%, so in every case these three stocks underperformed. Now, these are all businesses that I like and admire and would continue to hold as we do as Fools usually. Just because the game ended last week, and with this podcast, it continues. For all five of these companies, Nick, I would keep holding all of them. Of those three, which one interests you the most and what do you want to say about it?
Nick Sciple: The one that interests me the most, I guess, would be Take-Two Interactive because that's one that I own. I've recommended it for Motley Fool Canada members. Really, it's been an investment year for Take-Two. That's why you've seen some of the treading water for the stock. Net bookings in 2023, 5.28 billion, expecting to only have bookings up 3-5% next year. Burned cash last year, expects to burn cash again. This year, it's extending out some of its development timelines. However, stock is up over the last year, and pretty much all of that gain has come over the last month. Why is that? Well, it's not about this year, it's about next year. They gave out guidance for fiscal year 2025 where they believe that they're going to see net bookings jump up over 2.5 billion from 5.5 billion on the midpoint this year to eight billion dollars next year.
David Gardner: That's huge.
Nick Sciple: Also, expect to go from a cash burn to over a billion dollars in adjusted unrestricted operating cash flow that backs out some of their changes in restricted cash. The reason that is is analysts have read through the tea leaves as Grand Theft Auto 6 likely coming to market next year. Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the most successful video games of all time, will have been 10 years since its release in September, sold 180 million units worldwide. Last year was still the number 3 most selling game in the US even a decade after release, so lots of promise as that new game comes on to market and opens up next generation of gamers to that. Lots of expectations for the business to swing back to profitability, lots of operating margin, and hopefully another asset that will be a dominant entertainment brand for another 10 years.
David Gardner: Very well said Nick, and this is one of those companies that acquired one of my other companies. I love it, I call it a Foolretsu, tapping into the Japanese Keiretsu concept of my companies in my portfolio somehow speaking to each other, working together with each other. I'm not directing any of that concert, but I always like it when they start playing the same music. In this case, Take-Two Interactive, a longtime Rule Breaker, buying out Zynga, which had been a Stock Advisor pick for me. I like the company a lot and thank you for reminding me why. What a big year is coming next year likely with the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. Nick, let's close with the AI question, but I'm going to throw you a curve ball on this one. So there they're they are, these other three, Etsy, Starbucks and Take-Two Interactive. Would you, sir, please briefly rank them in the order in which AI matters to them over, let's say the next three years. So you'll lead off first with the one that you think AI matters most for this company and least with Number 3. How would you rank Etsy, Starbucks, and Take-Two Interactive for AI?
Nick Sciple: I would put Take-Two number 1, I said earlier, creativity fundamentally is going to be a human-driven pursuit. I think that is still true. A creative industry like video games or movies or TV or anything like that. However, a big part of video games is creating a virtual world with people that you interact with that aren't real but feel real. The more you can leverage AI to do that, the more successful you can be.
David Gardner: Well said.
Nick Sciple: Also, it takes a lot of talented people to make these games. If you can make those talented people that much more efficient and take some of the things that takes lots of time and shrink down the time it takes for them to do that work. I think that can really augment the productivity of those folks. Just to vote on the quality of the consumer experience and also on the productivity of the people making the game. I think Take-Two can benefit.
David Gardner: I like it. What's Number 2?
Nick Sciple: Second is Etsy, it's touching the tech side of the world. Although it's harder to see a direct one for one a translation for Etsy. But you could think about maybe things like chatbots if you have issues with shipping and things like that. But you can think about it implementations there.
David Gardner: I can also imagine across a lot of e-commerce. Maybe this is just wishful thinking Nick, but I could also imagine a lot better recommendations. These days, how often, we've seen this on Amazon for years. People who liked this book also like these books. I understand up to a point that works, but if you've just read a book about canoeing, often you're going to find out about five other books about canoeing and you've just read the one book, let's say that you were planning on reading about canoeing. I feel as if AI can get to know me a lot better, make much more interesting, sometimes surprising and yet awesome recommendations for what my next purchase might be on Etsy.
Nick Sciple: I think that would be interesting, and it'll also maybe strengthen Etsy's position. One of the ways Etsy has been able to drive revenue growth the past few years is increasing fees on the sellers on the platform. The big thing that Etsy offers is we bring a whole bunch of people that are interested in the products that you sell, and create discoverability for you. To the extent they can offer more value on the discoverability side than they're offering more value to, I think their true customer which is the sellers.
David Gardner: I like that a lot. Etsy, as I mentioned, up 14% for this five-stock sampler not had a good 2023. Was looking better up until then. Speaking of looking better, well, even though we will shortly now be sending five stocks for America off to Foolhalla with slightly Rick Engdahl, slightly sad or music maybe, I'll let you figure out what that means for us all, we are sending five stocks for America off to Foolhalla, but I would like to point out that even though as a basket, this group of stocks up 18.2% on average versus an S&P 500 up 34.8%. That's the average of the market last three-years. So we underperformed with this group by 16.6 percentage points on average. I'm at least happy to say, Nick and all my dear listeners, that these stocks are not as bad as they were a year ago. A year ago when you and I last talked, and you helped me review this very sampler this week last year, they were down 17% with the market up 18. So now they've gone from down 17% to up 18% on average. Not a bad place for this group of stocks who have ended up, and yet sadly, a market loser. [MUSIC] Rick Engdahl, it's time to send five stocks for America to Foolhalla. Nick, before you go, any final thoughts about these five stocks for America or about America overall?
David Gardner: Looking at the stocks, I think these businesses, while some of them have run into some headwinds, in particular Boston Beer, I think, these businesses are all still remains strong. Even the ones, take too, as dipped into unprofitability, very clear path. You talked about dark clouds, you can see through very much. You can see through what's going on here for some of these companies. I think all of these business is strong, some facing near-term headwinds, but I would be confident that these businesses will be bigger and more important businesses five years from now than they are today, particularly Boston Beer can continue innovation the way they innovated from craft beer to some of these other areas. As far as America, I feel the same way. We have lots of times where we get down on ourselves and how things aren't going to go great, but the son always shines and things always turn out to look better. I think we're seeing that right now. A lot of folks have been talking about, I mean, better part of a year about how there was a recession coming down the pike and lots of need to worry, and yet we're now in a new bull market officially. I think pessimism is popular in the short term, but optimism is right in the long term and I think that's true of America.
Nick Sciple: Well, thank you again to my guests, Nick Sciple, that was such an eloquent ode to our country, Nick, thank you, and Asit Sharma earlier, and to you for listening in for this sad podcast this particular week. But I do want to end with a ray of sunshine. That would be just reminding us that, while we just covered two losing, well, one of them with an asterisks, not done yet, five-stock samplers. I'm happy to say that the 30 overall, and this is full accounting up to the minute, average gains of 74.5% with the market up 38.2%, and so we're just about doubling the market across all 150 stocks among these 35 stock samplers. But unfortunately among those 30, this particular week we talked about two [laughs] that are not performing very well, and the lessons that we can learn.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Rule Breaker Investing. On next week's show, it happens four times a year, it's the Market Cap Game Show where you play along with us and against my contestants, and see how well you know the market caps of so many of America's greatest companies. One thing I'm pretty sure I'll be asking, just as I did this week, I'll be asking next week, even when it's not even relevant, is how does AI effect this particular business as we continue AI month on Rule Breaker Investing. In the meantime, I hope you have a naturally, maybe artificially do, but, a naturally intelligent week ahead. Fool on.
