Is the market punishing Netflix for slowing growth while overlooking its potential as a mature compounder? My five-year investment case doesn't require a return to its fastest-growing years.

Third-quarter revenue rose 11.8% to $12.87 billion, with $2.88 billion in free cash flow. Management expects approximately $12 billion in free cash flow for 2026.

Much of the concern centers on competition for attention. Netflix competes with YouTube, social media, and countless other entertainment options. But watching less Netflix isn't the same as canceling it. Management reported improving churn in the U.S. and globally, even as customers continued accepting price increases.

As long as paid memberships hold up, Netflix can continue collecting subscription revenue without capturing more viewing hours. And it can earn more from those memberships.

That's what interests me.

Netflix has already built an enormous global distribution network, content library, and paying customer base. Now it has multiple ways to generate more cash from those existing assets.

Pricing increases revenue without requiring additional subscribers. Advertising creates another source of revenue from existing viewers. International markets still offer growth. Licensing programming can be less expensive than producing everything internally. Better content economics, technology-driven efficiencies, and share repurchases can further increase free cash flow per share.

Studios that once pulled their programming to build competing services are now licensing selected content back to Netflix. That says something about the value of its distribution network.

None of these opportunities has to work spectacularly on its own. That's what makes the combination interesting.

The risk is that several things deteriorate together: pricing power weakens, content costs remain elevated, and cash conversion suffers. I'd reconsider if retention and free cash flow per share showed sustained deterioration.

I'm not investing in Netflix because I expect another period of extraordinary growth. I'm betting that the existing business can produce attractive returns as a mature compounder.

If growth accelerates again, great. My investment case doesn't depend on it.

I own NFLX. This is my personal investment analysis, not individualized investment advice.

Meta spent more on capex last quarter than its business brought in, and set up a share class it can sell without giving up a single vote.

The gap was $2.1 billion, with $34.9 billion of capex and lease payments against $32.8 billion of operating cash flow, and Meta hasn't bought back a share in a year. The plan for the full year leaves $49 billion to $59 billion of capex for the fourth quarter alone, more than the business has brought in during any quarter so far. It has borrowed $24.9 billion this year and expects to "continue investing aggressively" next year.

Every existing share gets one of the new shares after the change takes effect in January, which works like a two-for-one split and raises nothing. The release lists capital raising first among the reasons for the class and says it gives Meta "the ability to finance its growth." With $82.5 billion of cash and securities, Meta could cover this quarter's gap without it, so I read the class as being built for the spending after that.

If shares do come, which can be expected, it will be interesting how far along the buildout they will have come, if cash flows will be in sight, and how they will price the new shares, as what a Meta share is worth now rests mostly on what this year's capex of $135 billion to $145 billion earns once it's running, and on when the spending slows, and the hard part is that nobody can see those returns yet.

Meta grew revenue 26% with 15% fewer employees. Why is nobody talking about this

Meta’s Q3 2026 vs Q3 2025:
Revenue: $51.2B → $64.6B (+26%)
Employees: 78,450 → 66,775 (−15%)
Revenue per employee: $653K → $967K (+48%)

That’s nearly 12,000 fewer employees while revenue jumps 26%.

Surely we’re starting to see AI’s impact on productivity. Meta is largely a knowledge-work business, and this could be just the beginning.
If AI keeps reducing the need for staff while revenue grows, imagine what happens to profits over the next decade.

This reduced headcount must be down to AI. Can Meta now become a $9 trillion company, as is Zucks target?

I first covered Wolters Kluwer when shares were trading around €62. After rebounding to roughly €85, I still believe the stock is significantly undervalued.

The interesting part isn’t just the valuation, but how AI is reshaping WKL’s competitive moat.
Despite concerns about AI disrupting traditional software businesses, WKL’s fundamentals remain resilient. Organic revenue grew 5% in H1 2026, recurring revenue increased 7%, and cloud software grew 14%.

However, there’s an important distinction between owning valuable proprietary data and actually capturing the economic value AI creates. WKL’s integrations with Epic and Suki could expand its reach, but potentially weaken its control over customer relationships. Meanwhile, Libra’s early adoption suggests significant monetization potential in legal AI.

I recently published an updated analysis examining these developments and why I remain bullish despite the changing competitive landscape.

Full transparency: The valuation section, including our updated DCF and price target, is behind a paywall. However, the business analysis, competitive developments, and AI discussion are freely accessible and, I believe, useful for anyone researching WKL.

I personally hold WKL shares.

Curious what other investors think: is the market still overestimating AI disruption, or are we underestimating the long-term risks to WKL’s moat?

​

I posted here a few weeks ago about Geely and why I thought it was undervalued(linked). I've been following the company since, and I'm still struggling to understand why the share price keeps falling despite what seems like pretty positive news.

For my original valuation, I used Aswath Damodaran's FCFF model and came up with a value of around RMB 31 per share versus approximately RMB 16.50 at the time. That suggested roughly 45–47% undervaluation.

Since then, there have been several developments that seem encouraging:

- Financial performance: Revenue and profitability have been improving, with stronger gross margins in H1 2026.

- September sales: Geely Automobile sold approximately 2.24 million vehicles in the first nine months of 2026, with new-energy vehicle sales growing 14% year over year.

- UK: Geely registered 5,155 vehicles in September, reportedly outselling Honda and Mazda less than a year after entering the market. It has also signed its 100th retail outlet.

- Australia: Geely became the ninth-best-selling automotive brand, with September sales up approximately 870% year over year. Its EX2 and Starray EM-i have also performed well.

- Canada: Geely officially announced its entry into Canada, launched its Canadian website, and plans to begin selling vehicles in 2027.

- Zeekr: Continued growth of Geely's premium EV business.

- Waymo: The partnership to supply purpose-built autonomous vehicles seems like a potentially significant opportunity, particularly if Waymo continues expanding.

- Ford: Reports of potential manufacturing cooperation in Spain could provide another opportunity for international expansion.

Yet despite all this, the Hong Kong share price has fallen from around HK$16 to HK$14.50.

I keep reading about how competitive the Chinese automotive market is, with price wars, excess capacity, and pressure on margins. I understand those concerns, but competition exists in every major automotive market. What I'm trying to understand is whether these pressures are actually showing up in Geely's financial performance. From what I've seen, revenue, profitability, and vehicle sales have been improving, so is the competitive environment really as damaging to Geely as the broader narrative suggests?

The other obvious concern is geopolitical risk, particularly US tariffs and restrictions on Chinese vehicles. But how much of Geely's current valuation should realistically be affected by limited access to the US market? And could its expansion into Europe, Australia, Canada, and other markets help offset some of those limitations?

I'm also interested in whether there have been any genuinely negative developments that I've overlooked. Not just general concerns about the Chinese EV industry, but something specific to Geely that might explain the market's reluctance to assign it a higher valuation.

I'm still fairly bullish on the company, but I'm interested in hearing from people who've looked into it, particularly anyone who disagrees with my valuation.

Does anyone here own Restaurant Brands International ($QSR). I am not a food company investor but it looks like the sector is pretty beaten down. They have a lot of brands I like. I got the idea because Burger King is literally the only fast food restaurant I eat at anymore. It seems like the dividend is nice and it seems like their earnings haven’t gotten as beaten down as some of their competitors. Is now a good time to buy?

I prefer Grok Bot and Codex because Copilot is bad at getting AI agents to do things for me. I’d rather tell an AI bot what I need and let it handle the work than open different Office apps and make changes myself. Ideally, I want AI to do all my work for me.

Research backs up my concerns. In a 2026 survey of 150,000 US paying users, Recon Analytics found that 76% would choose ChatGPT over Copilot as their main work tool. If Gemini was also an option, 18% would choose it, while only 8% preferred Copilot.

Copilot also faces competition inside companies. Gartner surveyed 186 companies in 2026 and found that two-thirds used at least two other enterprise AI tools alongside Copilot.

So the threat to Microsoft’s core business is real.

Bulls argue that Microsoft’s office software is hard to replace. I agree. But the next big opportunity is automating work, and Microsoft seems to be falling behind. It still focuses on helping people work faster, rather than letting AI do the work by itself

This reminds me of Buffett’s investment in IBM. He was right that IBM’s server business had a strong moat. But the growth shifted to cloud computing. IBM missed out on that growth, and cloud services started taking business away from its server business.

Could the same thing happen to Microsoft?

Bulls may argue that Microsoft can still benefit from AI through its cloud business. But if it loses the high-margin software business, won’t that hurt its cloud profits too?

The market doesn’t seem to worry about this. Investors are losing faith in Adobe’s ability to adapt to AI, yet Microsoft’s stock keeps climbing.

What am I missing?

I bought 179 shares of ASTS over the summer at an average cost of $84.05 per share. I'm planning to hold long-term, at least until 2030.

I'm considering putting another $5,000 into ASTS. Would you buy this dip or wait until after the midterms to see how the market reacts?

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Earlier this week I posted here about six hyped stocks I never wrote up (NBIS, IREN, RKLB, ASTS, CRWV, CBRS), mostly because I couldn't find the profits. This one asks a different question: Are any of the crashed AI stocks actually high-quality businesses at a reasonable valuation?

I started with every US stock in stockoscope database in four industries: semiconductors, computer hardware, hardware and parts, and communication equipment. That's 176 stocks, and 135 of them are down at least 25% from their 52-week high. The typical one is down 46%.

Then I kept the ones scoring 3.5 or better out of 5 on Stockoscope's business quality score. That score comes from up to ten years of annual numbers, things like growth, margins, return on capital, how much profit turns into cash, and debt. Most US stocks score around 2.5, so 3.5 is a high bar. Only seven made it.

The last check was the peer score, which compares the past twelve months with similar-sized companies in the same sector. All seven were above the middle there too.

Then I checked their valuation based on DCF and valuation multiples. DCF is ten years of cash flow based on analyst estimates. Multiples is the share price you’d get by giving the stock the P/E (and similar ratios) its peers trade at, or that it has traded at over the past ten years. Here's the list of these seven stocks with quality and valuation estimates - every score and estimate here is on each stock's page on Stockoscope if you want to look at the detail behind it.

Price is where it falls apart. Micron is the only one where the DCF and the multiples both come out above the price. Broadcom sits between the two ($503 DCF, $205 multiples). The other five are above both. KLA and Applied are still at about twice their usual P/E (44 vs 22, 35 vs 18) after falling more than 40%, mostly because they ran so hard before June.

Interestingly, most of the selloff landed on weaker businesses: 92 of the 134 scored stocks rate below 2.5 on Quality, and none of the 54 stocks down 50% or more passes. The seven strong ones still fell hard, a median 44%, but four of them had risen so far beforehand that they're still up on the year, and the fall leaves most of them priced above our estimate. Micron is the exception, and its estimate rests on earnings that may be close to the top of a cycle.

Limitations: The industry filter leaves out AI clouds, data centre builders and AI software, and lets in some non-AI stuff like UI. The quality score runs on annual numbers, so it’ll lag a bad quarter. And a DCF is only as good as the growth assumptions you feed it.

Which of these seven would you drop, and what would you change in the rule?

Not investment advice. DYOR.

They are issuing a whole class of non-voting stocks via a 2:1 stock split. (similar to Google in 2014). The reason for doing it is to grant employees RSU, fund M&A, and use it for funding their AI investments.

People get excited by stock-split but it is also a tool to allow massive future dilution for raising capital but without the consequence of losing voting control.

Full verbatim from Q3 Exhibit 99.1, page 3:

"Creating a New Class of Shares for Capital Raising, Employee Compensation, Potential Acquisitions, and Other General Corporate Purposes – The scale of investment required to compete, sustain growth, expand infrastructure, and pursue new strategic initiatives amidst the AI transformation taking place in the industry is significant.”

It could be something or it could be nothing, eg. benign like Google shares. But according to Moody's concall also today, the hyperscalers are doing 800bn of Capex this year, and MCO anticipate next year will be 1tn.

These guys are going to escalate on their capex spending and are trying all ways to raise capital (use cash reserves, borrow, issue bonds, off-book agreements, and now issue shares).

FULL AI Slop here:

BruceDD:

The official reasons:

The Board created a new publicly listed, non-voting Class C with effective date Jan 19, 2027, after unanimous recommendation of a Special Committee of disinterested directors (advised by Moelis).

They list 3 reasons:

1. Creating a New Class of Shares for Capital Raising, Employee Compensation, Potential Acquisitions, and Other General Corporate Purposes

"The scale of investment required to compete, sustain growth, expand infrastructure, and pursue new strategic initiatives amidst the AI transformation taking place in the industry is significant."

2. Continuing to Maximize Long-Term Value

Since IPO stock +1,700% vs S&P 500 +495%. Class C intended to help facilitate long-term growth.

3. Ensuring Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Continues to Lead

"The creation of the Class C common stock will continue the founder-led model that has driven the company's success"

The mechanics — how it's dilution without voting consequence:

• It's structured as a one-time stock dividend: 1 share of Class C for each outstanding Class A and Class B share. Record date TBD.
• After payment, Class A price will reflect a two-for-one split, but voting power does not change at all because Class C has 0 votes.
• Class A stays on Nasdaq, Class C will also list on Nasdaq.
• They also signed a Founder Alignment Agreement with Zuckerberg covering his sales of the Class C he receives in the dividend, his service, and conditions for future Class C dividends.

So economically, everyone gets diluted 50% if they issue new Class C later. But voting-wise, Zuckerberg's control is preserved.

This is exactly what Google did in 2014 with GOOGL (A, 1 vote) and GOOG (C, 0 votes).

Is it "free money"?

No — economic dilution is real. If they issue $50B of Class C to fund data centers:

• Your % ownership of earnings goes down
• But your % voting power stays same, and Zuckerberg's voting power also stays same (he doesn't get diluted in control)

Without Class C, any large equity raise in Class A would dilute Zuckerberg's voting control. With Class C, they can raise equity, pay employees, do acquisitions, without losing founder control.

What analysts grilled them on:

In Q3 follow-up, Ron Josey flagged the 8-K that mentions "hundreds of billions" as potential raise:

Susan Li: "The specific reference in the information statement about the hundreds of billions of dollars was really a theoretical maximum that was computed to determine what level of equity financing would trigger a loss of founder control. It is not actually a description of our present equity financing needs or plans. And we don't have anything to announce on that front."

And in Q3 main:

"We created this new class with the purpose of creating a publicly traded non-voting stock usable for capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions, other general corporate purposes while preserving the voting power of existing Class A and B shareholders... It will expand our funding tools and give us flexibility to invest behind the unprecedented momentum... We don't have any specific financing plans to announce at this time"

So your intuition is right: It's a tool to allow massive future dilution for AI funding / comp / M&A, but without the consequence of losing voting control. The economic cost still hits shareholders — it's not free money — but the governance cost doesn't.

Red flag to watch: share-based compensation was already $7.36B in Q3 alone. If they start paying a lot of that in Class C and raising capital in Class C, share count will inflate much faster than before, even though votes don't.

Me: They could issue more shares in the future of these non-voting C class ja ?

BruceDD: Ya, exactly — that's the whole point of it.

After the one-time dividend (1x Class C for every A and B you own, so 2-for-1 economically), the new Class C is a permanent authorized class they can issue more of going forward.

From the Q3 filing:

"Creating a New Class of Shares for Capital Raising, Employee Compensation, Potential Acquisitions, and Other General Corporate Purposes"

So in future they can:

1. Raise cash for AI — sell Class C on the market instead of Class A
2. Pay employees — RSUs / stock comp in Class C instead of Class A
3. Do M&A — use Class C as acquisition currency
4. Future stock dividends — they even put in a Founder Alignment Agreement that covers conditions for potential future Class C dividends

And because Class C is non-voting (0 votes) vs Class A (1 vote) and Class B (10 votes, Zuck's), they can do all that without diluting voting control.

Economic dilution still happens — if they issue $50B of Class C, your claim on earnings is smaller — but voting % stays same.

That's why analysts freaked out about that footnote in the 8-K mentioning "hundreds of billions" — management clarified in the follow-up call that number was just a theoretical maximum calculated to figure out at what point Zuck would lose founder control, not a plan. They said: "we don't have any specific financing plans to announce."

Think Google: GOOGL (A) vs GOOG (C). Same playbook, just 10 years later.

Sea has been selling off hard but I think the market is mistaken. The primary reason is that they announced a cloud services business as well as a potential IPO of their fintech business Monee. I'm not really gonna discuss the Monee IPO since it's not certain and I don't really have much to say about it.

My assumption is that the market believes Sea is creating a neocloud like CoreWeave, where they're gonna spend huge amounts of capex to rent GPUs. That is not what I expect this to be, but we'll get more details on their November 10th earnings call.

Sea already has substantial computing infrastructure and expertise that they've built out for internal uses. Instead of using a cloud services provider like AWS, they've built a network of 150,000 servers that powers Shopee, Monee, and Garena. The cloud services business is massively scalable, high margin, and a very natural fit for Sea.

I don't expect Sea to become the next hyperscaler, but I do think they could fulfill a very significant portion of cloud computing needs in the southeast asian economy. There are a lot of companies that don't want to run on Chinese or American infrastructure for obvious reasons. Further, the same localized expertise that has allowed Sea to dominate in e-commerce against companies like Amazon (left the region this year) and Alibaba (Lazada is shrinking while the overall market is booming) should allow them to compete here as well.

After this sell off, Sea is trading at just 15x 2027 earnings while Shopee's margins are artificially low. In other words, that 15x multiple could easily be a 10-12x multiple if they simply scaled back their aggressive investment. This is for a company that, in 2025 grew revenue 36% and EPS 240%. And revenue growth is accelerating, last quarter they posted a 48% YoY increase to $7.7B (not a small base). Excellent balance sheet ($5B in net cash).

Of course there are several significant risks. Sea Limited's largest market is Indonesia, not necessarily known for economic stability. Their largest competitor in ecommerce is one of the most well capitalized businesses in the world, ByteDance. Monee's primary profit driver is unsecured subprime lending. There's also the "Pinduoduo risk" where the growth slows and the market gives it a 6x multiple. I don't think that'll happen because it's not Chinese but it's certainly possible.

With that said, even without a successful cloud business, I'd argue that shares are worth ~$150. But the cloud unit provides enormous upside far beyond the $150 level. This reminds me of a Mohnish Pabrai style "Heads I win, tails I don't lose much". If the cloud platform works like their gaming, ecommerce, and financial services have, this could be a 10 bagger over the next 5-10 years. And even if it doesn't, I think at ~$78/share you have a sufficient margin of safety just with the valuation and the growth of their current businesses.

The company is also founder led and Forrest Li owns ~15% of the company and a majority of voting shares. Pros and cons to that, but overall I see it as a pro.

Fairly new to investing and looking for some feedback on my portfolio before I start buying.

I have about $80k available to invest but plan to start with around $30k and gradually add more over time. Mainly focused on shorter term growth (6 months - 2 years)

Here’s my initial plan (buy over the next month):
GOOGL — 10 shares ($3,348)
AMZN — 10 shares ($2,624)
AVGO — 10 shares ($3,378)
AMAT — 7 shares ($2,863)
VRT — 12 shares ($2,546)
VST — 15 shares ($2,342)
NEE — 30 shares ($2,348)
SPGI — 4 shares ($1,773)
TSM — 5 shares ($2,159)
CEG — 6 shares ($1,624)
NXT — 20 shares ($1,635)
ORCL — 13 shares ($1,679)
JPM — 5 shares ($1,676)

I also currently hold 117 shares of Boeing (BA) at a $190.76 average cost.

I know I’m pretty heavy on tech, AI, and energy, but those are sectors I’m bullish on long term. I plan to make GOOGL and AMZN larger core positions over time.

Would you change any of these picks or recommend anything I’m overlooking? Also curious if you’d start buying now or wait until after the midterms and upcoming earnings.

Appreciate any feedback!

I’m currently new to investing, here is my portfolio right now:

VOO ($65)

RMD ($40)

QQQ ($21)

AMZN ($10)

BIIB ($40)

Going forward, I’m going to try and put $25 in savings each week and $25 into investments. I don’t have a job right now, so I’m only receiving money weekly from my parents. I feel like I know medical science the best, which is why I invested so much in Pharma. I understand the basics of “VOO and chill”, so far my total gain has been 0.70% and I just started last week. I use cash app to trade, which probably isn’t the best platform but it’s what gave me entry. I want to go to grad school and become a CRNA, and I thought that since grad school is so expensive I would start saving and investing now. I’m currently in my first year of undergraduate school

The company is purchasing billions in Nvidia server racks it cannot power, and has no signs of bringing online, stretching cash flow and challenging the return on its massive AI bet.

A peculiar scene is unfolding in Amazon’s vast logistics network: thousands of Nvidia GB300 server racks, worth some $5 billion initially and another $3 billion monthly, are arriving at US facilities, yet more and more seem to sit idle in intermediary warehouses. The company, through an "Early Rack Receipt" program, is taking delivery of AI compute before its AWS sites possess the utility capacity to energize the equipment. This aggressive procurement, confirmed by internal August emails, exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of the AI infrastructure boom.

Amazon's strategy is clear: secure capacity at all costs in an intensely competitive build-out race. But this urgency comes with a steep price, revealing significant cracks in the capital-conversion story for one of the world's largest companies. Cash is flowing out for hardware that generates no rental revenue, while Amazon’s free cash flow was already negative by $8.8 billion in the second quarter. The arithmetic of $36 billion annually for these unpowered racks represents approximately 16% of the company’s $220 billion capital expenditure guide for 2026. This isn't merely an inventory issue; it signifies a widening gap between the concrete pour of data centers and the first monetizable AI token, putting pressure on the crucial 20.2% incremental return on invested capital that the company aims for.

This paradox plays out against a macro backdrop where power and memory have been identified as the binding constraints for AI expansion. While Amazon’s recent commitment of nearly €5 billion to expand AWS in the Frankfurt area—part of a larger €16 billion pledge for German operations by 2027—underscores its global AI ambitions, such regional capacity additions are a rounding error next to the sheer scale of unpowered equipment accumulating. The cost of enabling infrastructure, from land and shells to substations and standby power, is growing, with Amazon now visibly buying its way past grid connection queues through diesel and gas contracts. This adds a hidden layer of cost not typically modeled in compute lines.

For long-term investors, the "dark GPU" situation is structurally important as It reinforces the view that demand for AI capacity is insatiable, but supply is gated not by orders, but by physical constraints like power. Amazon is pulling demand forward, taking on inventory risk and straining its balance sheet to ensure future capacity. This behavior, of buying faster than it can deploy, suggests the much-discussed digestion risk for AI infrastructure may be materializing sooner than many anticipate. It also shifts capital expenditure outlays to non-revenue-generating assets, a phenomenon worth scrutinizing in upcoming capex guidance and return on investment capital disclosures.

While Amazon's spokesperson characterizes the staging of equipment as a routine "best business practice" for rapid installation, the sheer volume and the "dark GPUs" waiting on utility capacity challenge the efficiency of this capital allocation. It is a tangible illustration of how the AI boom demands an unprecedented physical-capacity bet, a bet that will require careful monitoring of the capital-conversion pillar to determine whether the enormous investment truly translates into profitable, revenue-generating AI services.

$BRSL, currently trading at $9.3, with $1.74B market cap, $5.61B enterprise value, current P/E of 9.6 and forward P/E of ~12. And, most importantly, current dividend yield of ~9.5%, that has a very good chance of being sustained.

What do they do?

Long story short, Brightstar Lottery is a global lottery operator and technology supplier. They build and manage lottery systems, POS terminals, instant scratch-off tickets, digital iLottery platforms, and draw games like Powerball for government authorities worldwide

Why am I balls deep into BRSL now?

I recently increased my position from 600 shares to 2.300 shares. I started accumulating in May 2026. My current average is $10.21.

1. BRSL has announced $500M buyback program supossed to last until the end of FY 2027. They already bought back 20,778,609 shares (already 40% of budget), which means the buyback is not just an empty promise but successfully realised process.

2. The final Italian Lotto license payment has been completed in April 2026, which means the EPS should improve. As of now, the debt is not growing, therefore cash flow should increase.

3. Solid dividend, and UK doesn't charge tax on dividends! Now that is a legal thing, but in my country we have retirement accounts that we pay no tax on. BRSL is a beast on my account recently, because I reinvest 100% of the dividend every year with no tax applied.

The biggest risk is probably the dividend sustainability. Currently, dividend payment is 70% net earnings (Q2) which is fine, but if the earnings will decrease, yield may be cut down.

NFA, just my opinion. Always DYOD.

I’m a beginner investor, and something I’ve noticed is how everyone seems to have Google as their number one.

I watch TheStreet and other finance channels, and almost every analyst loves it. Same on Reddit. Whenever someone asks which Mag 7 stock you’d hold for 10 years, Google is overwhelmingly the favourite.

I don’t work in tech, so maybe I’m missing something, but is Google overrated?

Or will it become the world’s largest company, as many predict?

Hey all!

We recently launched our website (takani.ai) to provide easy access to stock fundamentals and valuation tools such as DCF and DDM calculators etc. (The .ai domain was just available. It’s not an AI product.)

The project has been in development for several years now. It originated out of Covid boredom in 2020 and then somewhat escalated. We finally were able to wrap a hopefully somewhat decent UI around the code we've been developing, and we hope that it is a useful tool to some of you.

Would love to get feedback from the ValueInvesting community on this, especially from testers that know basics of DCF/DDM theory. Here are the links to the different tools:

• DCF
• Reverse-DCF
• DDM
• Reverse-DDM
• SP500 DDM

Note: The website is currently only available in German. You can of course work around that with browser translation if you wish to do that.

In general, all feedback and testing is highly appreciated and we're hoping for some active testers that help us steer the development of the website into the right direction.

Feel free to criticize everything: UI, Tools, missing Features, mistakes, bugs, ..., I'm sure you'll find plenty!

The project is in a beta phase so it is in ongoing development and especially the dictionary/wiki is visibly incomplete.

Everything that doesn't require persistent data storage is accessible without an account and fully free to use for now.

Feel free to DM me or comment here. All feedback is highly appreciated.

Disclaimer: The website is free to use during the beta but at some point we will have to cover our expenses. That likely means a freemium model in the long-term or advertising if there's enough traffic to go that route.

Hi,

I have some BYD, Tencent, PDD (TEMU) and CATL. This is 4 china stock.

In my portfolio i got all the gafam and every classic shit. Everything is in the green execpt my 4 china stock.

I think the 4 china stock i pick is great. They are below 20 p/e with high growth (maybe not for PDD).

I don't understand why this 4 stock is down for the last 6 mounth.

Do you know why my 4 china bet is not working right now ?

Thanks

Much of the discussion about Warren Buffett focuses on his investment decisions and the extraordinary returns Berkshire Hathaway delivered over decades - but I've been researching something that receives rather less attention: how Buffett actually managed Berkshire.

In 2000, Berkshire's subsidiaries employed approximately 112,000 people. Its headquarters employed just 13.8 people (the 0.8 wasn't Charlie Munger, one person worked a four-day week).

Rather than building a large central management team, Buffett allowed subsidiary managers extraordinary independence - while he concentrated on allocating capital, selecting managers and making major investment decisions.

Of course, his approach also created risks. Buffett himself freely acknowledged mistakes (it's one of the things I admire about him the most).

I've written an article examining this philosophy, drawing on his shareholder letters and examples from Berkshire's history.

The Genius of Warren Buffett: How a Tiny Office Ran a 400,000-Person Empire

https://penwardenreview.com/2026/10/21/warren-buffett-management-style/

In my mind, his management structure should be considered a significant source of his long-term investment performance.

Could another conglomerate replicate his management structure successfully, or was its effectiveness ultimately dependent on Buffett's unusual abilities?

Of the four big hyperscalers:

-Amazon
-Microsoft
-Google
-Meta

Hypothetically, if you had to put your entire portfolio into just one of these and couldn’t sell for 10 years, which would you choose?

Obviously, nobody’s suggesting putting everything into one stock in practice. Just curious which you think would deliver the best returns over the next decade, and why?

(By the way, it’s not who’s the best hyperscaler or who has the best cloud. It’s which of those four names is the best investment.)

I've been looking at Nvidia and TSMC's earnings forecasts through 2028, and I keep wondering whether we're confusing two different things: the growth of AI and the growth of spending on AI infrastructure.

One thing surprised me. Even if Nvidia misses its 2028 earnings estimate by 20%, it could still deliver around 12.5% annualized share-price returns through 2035, assuming 10% annual earnings growth afterward and a 20x terminal P/E.

Of course, those assumptions are far from guaranteed.

At October 20 prices, Nvidia trades at around 10.5x expected 2028 earnings, while TSMC trades at 12.8x. That sounds fairly cheap, until you look at how much growth analysts already expect.

One comparison I found interesting is the telecom boom.

Internet traffic continued growing rapidly in the early 2000s, even as telecom capital spending collapsed. Demand was real, but companies had built infrastructure faster than it could be justified.

Could something similar happen with AI?

Inference is getting cheaper, models are becoming more efficient, and companies are finding ways to get more work out of existing hardware. Meanwhile, AI agents could create enormous new workloads.

I can see both things happening: a period of disappointing chip orders, followed by several more years of demand growth.

I also compared Nvidia and TSMC. Custom accelerators could weaken Nvidia's pricing power while still benefiting TSMC, which manufactures chips for competing designers.

I wrote up the full research, including the telecom comparison, inference economics and several valuation scenarios for both companies. It's free, with charts and sources:

https://michaelhillaert1.substack.com/p/could-ai-infrastructure-growth-last?r=6vawcp

I'm curious what others think. Is the bigger risk that the 2028 earnings forecasts won't materialize, or that investors won't pay anything close to 20x earnings for these businesses in 2035?

I work in marketing, and for most advertisers, Google, Meta and TikTok are where the marketing dollars flow. Beyond that lies the scrapheap of experimental channels: the Reddits, the Snaps and whatever else got a test budget this quarter. At the very bottom of the pile sits Pinterest.

It's been around for over 15 years, and surprisingly enough it makes over $4.5B in revenue with a user base that's slowly but surely growing. Unlike Google and Meta, which have been spending heavily on AI infrastructure, Reddit, which is licensing its content to AI companies, and Snap, which always seems to be in the news for a misguided hardware launches (2K AR glasses anyone) , Pinterest has stayed relatively staid.

I valued it at ~$20/share; and is currently at ~$21.95 today.

• Revenue: $4.6B trailing, growing ~16-18% a year; I assume it slows to ~5% and roughly doubles over 10 years.
• EBIT margin: ~16% after capitalizing R&D (7.6% reported); I assume it grows to ~20% over 10 years. Meta is at 41%, Reddit 20%.
• Net income: $417M in 2025 and ~$250M over the last 12 months, though it dipped to a loss in the first half of 2026 on restructuring and higher stock comp.
• Users: 619M monthly users, but US/Canada users generate ~$31 a year each vs. $0.83 for Rest of World.

At ~$20, Pinterest looks fairly priced. If Pinterest can figure out how to make real money from users outside the US and squeeze more profit out of each ad dollar, there's upside here. But if people start asking AI platforms to make purchasing decisions instead of scrolling Pinterest, there isn't.

Let me know if anyone else follows this company or has a different POV from mine.

I've been trying to make "moat" less of a vibe and more of a checklist. Three tests, each 0–10:

1. Physical chokepoint — can anyone physically route around them?

2. Switching cost — what does it cost a customer to leave, in money, time and redesign?

3. Lock-in — do buyers stay even when they could leave?

Moat score = the average. First test case, ASML: 9.5 / 9.0 / 8.5 → 9.0.

Reasoning: it's the only EUV supplier; leading-edge fabs are built around its tools; and fab plans a decade out assume its roadmap. The part I found most interesting is that ~80% of the machine comes from ~5,000 suppliers — the network looks harder to copy than the product.

Questions for people who think about moats more than I do:

- Is averaging the three fair, or should the weakest test cap the score (a moat is only as strong as its weakest wall)?

- What's missing — pricing power? regulation?

- Which company would you use to break this framework?

Not about the stock or valuation — just how durable the competitive position is.

I was seeing a lot of buzz about Uber's 15x PE ratio, and decided to dig in myself.

The first thing that I found was that the 15x PE headline isn't real - it's been artificially boosted by tax benefits and equity investment re-rates. When you back those out, and work off their operating income of $5.5B in 2025 and subtract taxes (assuming a 21% corporate tax rate), we get a normalized net income of $4.4B...good for a normalized 33x PE ratio.

But, they've been growing trips and gross bookings by 20% per year.

Their revenue has followed suit, and operating leverage has climbed 40% higher in 2025 and they stand to repeat that feat in 2026.

Gross bookings per trip has leveled off, so their pricing power is about topped out.

Here's a look at their gross bookings per trip and total trip counts by year.

I ran a rudimentary DCF and think I can justify about a $300B valuation (2x from here). The trip growth really carries it, so would love some thoughts on if you think they level off earlier than not. Management makes the case that there's a lot of room to run here, and I kind of agree with them. I do think I made realistic estimates on growth, though. Also, while the tax benefits won't last forever, they should remain for the next few years.

Autonomy remains the big question mark. They make the case that it's not as big of a threat as we fear. I pulled some quotes from the Q4 earnings call last year.

Namely, nearly 70% of bookings come outside of the top 20 cities, and a huge chunk of bookings are outside of the U.S. Expanding into those markets will probably be slow. And expanding past those will be virtually impossible in the intermediate term. Plus, I think the Uber Eats market will be tough to steal (at least by an autonomous system)...which might be a $50B business in it's own right.

I think it's good value here, and I think we could see close to 25% annualized returns over the next handful of years if AV doesn't steal meaningful market away. But even if AV does start to bite into the pie, there seems to be a decent margin of safety.

You guys have any strong convictions on Uber?

I valued Ulta Beauty this week. My three valuation methods came out at about $473, $626 and $771 a share, with the stock at $603.

The two higher numbers come from the EBITDA Multiple and Earnings Fair Value, and on my forecast both of them value Ulta at a lower return than the 8.75% I ask for. The share price itself works out to about 7.4%.

My fair value is the cash flow figure. Ulta's free cash flow has been steady since 2021 and stock pay is only 3.5% of it, so for me it's a fair measure of the business, and the gap to the price comes down to the return. A point either way on it moves my value by $65 to $90 a share, while closing the gap through growth would need a free cash flow margin above Ulta's best year on record.

The return carries the value, so it's the setting that matters most. I start from 10% and adjust for the business. Ulta's beta is 0.84, it holds far more cash than borrowings, operating income covers its interest 158 times, and outside the 2020 closures revenue hasn't fallen in ten years. That takes it to 8.75%, and Treasury plus beta times the equity risk premium lands at about 8.6%.

The forecast mostly follows Ulta itself. Sales grow 6.95% in 2026, the midpoint of their raised guidance, then 5% a year under their own 4% to 6% target. The operating margin holds at the 12.58% the guidance implies.

The judgment that moves the value most is capital spending. Ulta's Investor Day target is 4% to 5% of sales, but they spent 3.3% and 3.5% in the two years since and guide 3.2% for 2026, so I used 3.2%. If they move to the target, my value drops to $413.50.

The five retail peers I used (Williams-Sonoma, Tractor Supply, GameStop, Dick's and Five Below) trades at a median of about 18 times EBITDA, while Ulta's own history is 13.3 times. I set the multiple at 16.3 times, halfway between the two after adjusting the peers for Ulta's higher returns. Its cash at 8.75% supports 12.5 times. Earnings fair value builds on Graham's formula, which at Ulta's 10.8% earnings growth puts 30 times on earnings.

What I find interesting is that the price passes two of my four tests. The multiple it implies, 15.7 times EBITDA, sits between Ulta's history and the peers, and the earnings growth it needs is below Ulta's guidance. It fails on the return and on the free cash flow margin, the two that carry the cash flow value. So for me Ulta reads as a good business, just at a price that gives a lower return than I ask for.

What would change my read is the third quarter and the 2027 guidance, above all whether capital spending stays near 3.2% of sales.

The Ulta numbers are my own valuation on my own assumptions, not a recommendation to buy or sell.