Disclaimer:
Just a quick reminder, this podcast may contain general advice, but it doesn’t take into account your personal circumstances, needs, or objectives. The scenarios and stocks mentioned in this podcast are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any financial products. Read the relevant PDS, assess whether that information is appropriate for you, and consider speaking to a financial advisor before making investment decisions. Past performance is no indicator of future performance.
Steve:
Hi and welcome to episode five of Stocks Neat, Forager’s podcast about the world of stocks and the world of whisky. We’ve got a new person in the hot seat today, I’m joined by Chloe Stokes, filling in for Gareth Brown who’s overseas on a well-deserved break and a little bit of holiday. Hi Chloe, how are you?
Chloe:
Hi Steve. I’m well, thanks. I want to say sorry in advance to any whisky fans that I might offend during this podcast.
Steve:
Well, we might attract a lot of other new whisky drinkers as well. Who knows? Thanks for coming on and filling in. We’ve got a lot to talk about today. We’re going to jump on a topic very close to our missing man, Gareth’s heart: Twitter and Elon Musk’s bid for the company. We’re going to talk about the wider social media landscape, TikTok’s rise and rise and then, finally, navigating the past nine months for you as a relatively new investor and how you are coping with some difficult times here at Forager.
All right, let’s jump to it. We’ve dragged Chloe in here. She’s not really sure how she’s going to go on the whisky-drinking side of things, but I think it’ll be good to get someone try out a new whisky. And today we’re going to be drinking the Suntory Toki whisky, T-O-K-I. It’s a blend from the Suntory distillery. It’s from three of their different distilleries, actually. And Toki, a little bit of interesting information, means “time” in Japanese. So the Suntory Time whisky. We’ll come to that lady, you’re looking at it with some trepidation there, Chloe.
Chloe:
I’m not a dark spirit drinker, so this will definitely be interesting.
Steve:
All right, we’ll come to that later in the podcast. Look, let’s keep things off. You’re channeling Gareth for us today, and we’re going to start with a topic that’s very near to his own heart, which is Elon Musk’s takeover bid for Twitter. It was a bid when we first started talking about it, it’s now become an accepted bid by the board. A lot of media talking about it as a deal done and dusted, but there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge. And bid $54 a share, the stock’s trading $49, that tells you some people are a bit worried and nervous about it not going through. I guess, first of all, what does it mean for Twitter, the platform, before we worry about the shareholders?
Chloe:
There are a couple of ways you could think about this. First of all, Musk has a pretty good track record of creating valuable companies. And I know there are a bunch of people that are on Twitter that want a lot of things that may or may not seem simple. One example that I see whenever I’m working on Twitter is, everybody wants an edit button. Something that looks like it’s quite easy from the outside and people aren’t getting what they want. So, there’s lots of people thinking he might make some dramatic improvements to the platform, which would be good for users and also good for advertisers. Then you’ve got other people weighing in that, one person privately owning a company and a person who has his own personal and business interests outside of that, that is meant to be a platform for free speech can only mean trouble. And then there’s a third perspective, which is, not much is going to change for users or advertisers on the platform. And everybody’s making a big deal about nothing from a user perspective.
Steve:
Well, I think on that last front, we invested in this stock in 2020. What was the share price then? Mid to low thirties, perhaps. So this big is above what we bought it at, but nowhere near what we thought the business was worth based on changes that were supposedly going to be made. They’d proven very difficult. Prior to us investing, there were a couple of new investors and board members there that suggested maybe it was more likely it was going to happen. It’s still proven very difficult in the couple of years subsequent. You touched on something really simple there, like being able to edit a tweet, even for a limited period of time that you’ve posted because you’ve put a typo in it or something. You can’t do that.
There’s a lot of people who have built very significant businesses off the back of Twitter, subscription-based models and people putting really valuable content up there, where they’ve wanted to give some away for free and charge for other content. And other people have built tools that have enabled them to do that, to become very successful businesses. And you just sit there and say, “It would seem pretty obvious that Twitter should be doing that themselves.” The fact that they haven’t made any progress, despite activist investors, despite a clear strategy to do so, suggest that it is hard. That there are problems with the underlying technology. But you’d have to think, Elon Musk, if there’s anyone that’s going to break it enough to fix it, it’s going to be him. When it comes to the free speech angle, I was asked by a journalist at The Age this morning my thoughts on the whole topic.
One of my pet hates, especially on Twitter is people that build up a very large following because of expertise in one area. And then start commenting, for example, on geopolitics or coronaviruses when their expertise is in finance, for example. And I think it’s hopefully clear to everyone that my expertise is not the nuances of free speech, so I won’t say much about that. Musk clearly has some very significant views. I think from an investment perspective, it creates risk around the actual takeover proceeding, because there’s going to be a huge amount of regulatory and political scrutiny here, on the power that this is going to give one person to influence all of that. It may well accelerate some things that I think need to happen. This needs to be regulated.
There needs to be an independent body appointed by an elected government that decides where are the limits on what you can and can’t say. And provides an avenue for people to appeal against a private company declaring that you shouldn’t be saying what you’re saying. That should not be the job of a privately-owned company to do that. In the US, they’ve had the FCC over there since 1934 that regulates the whole media industry and stopped people like Rupert Murdoch, for example, from using a newspaper. Some people would argue it hasn’t done it successfully. But that role has been thought about for a long time. And I think it needs to be transplanted across to the social sphere. And maybe this accelerates that. The big question for shareholders is, is it the right price or not? And what are your initial impressions on that?
Chloe:
As shareholders, we can’t help but be disappointed. As you said, we bought it because we thought the platform had a lot of potential. And we thought there were some low-hanging fruit. That being said, as you mentioned again, management haven’t managed to do any of that. It’s obvious that we think it’s worth more than the bid, because we held it through periods where it was trading much higher and we still thought it was worth more than those higher prices. So, we are definitely not happy from a price perspective, but on the other hand, we can’t stop talking about it. It’s crazy out there at the moment. There are so many stocks that are down 70, 80% from their highs, there’s a lot of opportunity out there. So getting some more cash might not be the worst thing in the world either.
Steve:
Can you be disappointed and relieved at the same time? Sort of a conflicting emotions going through us. And you’re dead right, the share price, if the aftermarket is to be believed, we’re recording this the day that Facebook’s results came out aftermarket in the US. Share price potentially up 20%, if that’s to be believed. But prior to that, you’ve got the world’s largest social media company already highly profitable, generating oodles of cash, trading on 12 times last year’s earnings. The ability to redeploy capital here is more attractive than it was when we first bought the stock, for sure. So, it’s up year-to-date in a market that’s down and in a sector that’s down a lot. And that’s the conflict for us is, it’s probably fair for the Twitter that’s in front of us today.
It’s disappointing they haven’t executed on what we thought the potential was, but that’s proving particularly difficult under current management, current board. So there’s nothing wrong with taking it and moving on as well. Now look, speaking of the wider ecosystem, it’s been under a lot of pressure. We’ve had a fair bit of exposure in our portfolio. We’ve owned Twitter, we’ve owned Meta, we’ve owned Pinterest in the portfolio. The latter two there, owner of Facebook, Meta and Pinterest have been performing woefully in terms of the stock market. And lots of questions being asked about the whole social media ecosystem. What’s happening out there?
Chloe:
Lots of things are happening. We’ve got privacy changes coming through Apple and also coming through Google later in the year, which are hampering businesses like Facebook, especially the more established ones. Their ability to send out the correct targeted ads. So they’re kind of behind the scenes trying to build up new technology and processes so that advertisers can actually see how successful or not their campaigns are. So, that’s one thing. But another that investors can’t stop talking about is new competition, especially in the form of short-form video and TikTok.
Steve:
It’s got to be the big one. Facebook has faced plenty of industry changes over the years. And if anything, when we were looking at Twitter, it was the poster child for, this is how you get the advertising algorithm right. These are the most effective ads that you can possibly run. And that’s why they generate so much revenue per user, relative to the other people. I think most people think, and are probably right, that as long as they’ve got the users using their assets for a long enough period of time, they will find a way to generate the optimal amount of revenue out of them. The question is, are people still going to be using Facebook’s main properties in 10 or 15 years time? Not, can they be monetized? What is it that’s causing the concerns out there in the ecosystem?
Chloe:
TikTok. So TikTok has been growing pretty phenomenally. First of all, in daily average users, which have gone up from 300 million in January, 2020 to almost 700 million now. So it’s more than doubled, which is phenomenal on its own. But what I think has surprised us even more is just how much time people are spending on the app. I got some information out of a Barclay’s report recently, and the average daily user is spending around 90 minutes on TikTok every day. Which sounds like a lot, like not that much, the users are a lot younger, I guess they have a lot more spare time. But when you compare it to other platforms, Instagram is 50 minutes a day. Facebook is 45 minutes and Snapchat is a measly 20 minutes. So, the difference in time spent is pretty phenomenal.
Steve:
I think even YouTube was 70 something.
Chloe:
70 minutes.
Steve:
73 or four. To me, an hour and a half a day on a short video Reels app seems extraordinary. And that’s the average. You must have a big chunk of that 700 million user base, hundreds of millions of people who are only using it for five and 10 minutes a day. So, you’ve got people that are racking up three and four hours on this app. You’ve used the product, I haven’t. Everyone tells me it’s the most addictive thing you’ve ever seen in your life.
Chloe:
It absolutely is. I downloaded it a month or two ago and I initially downloaded it, honestly, purely for research.
Steve:
Sure, Chloe.
Chloe:
That’s what all the young kids are looking at. We’re seeing some of our holdings talking about using TikTok. Lessons in particular is becoming popular on TikTok, so I thought it was a good idea to download. But it really surprised me just how addictive it is. It’s quite different to Facebook and Instagram, although they are pivoting a little bit more towards this. In that it uses AI to determine what to show you rather than you selecting who you follow and then that automatically comes up on your feed. So you open TikTok, for the first time ever. It starts sending you videos, and depending on how quickly you scroll through something, it collates a feed for you.
I don’t follow anyone and my feed is absolutely perfect for me. In, I think, maybe about a weekend, it became like that. But I think one thing that I’ve noticed about the platform, on top of the additional average time that people are spending on it, it is very addictive. Is, the level of engagement on the platform is so different, because you need to be completely focused on TikTok in order to watch it. Its sound, the sound is really important to the content. So you need to either be on your own or have your headphones in and focusing on the content. Which I think is a pretty stark contrast to how I would’ve used Instagram, waiting for the bus, scrolling through if I’m bored during a TV show. Not only are people spending longer on it, but they’re a 100% focused on the content, which I don’t think you can say for many other platforms.
Steve:
It’s been an extraordinary rise from a business that was only founded in 2016, to be frequently mentioned on the Meta calls, to be generating more time, growing users very rapidly. Does that mean the death of Instagram and Facebook? Is it growing the whole ecosystem? And what does it mean in terms of the ability for there to be another TikTok in 10 years’ time? It feels to me like each generation has its own tool here and there’s got to be a limit in terms of how much total time we can spend on this stuff and therefore how much advertising can be sold.
Chloe:
Definitely. I don’t think it spells the end for Facebook and Instagram. We had Facebook report earnings just this morning, actually our time. And Mark Zuckerberg said something, which I think he said multiple times and we’ve talked about. They have navigated their way through plenty of changes in the past. First, they had the switch from desktop to mobile. Then they had… Snapchat came out with their 24-hour videos that would then disappear. And Instagram and Facebook came up with… On Instagram, it’s called stories, I can’t remember what it’s called on Facebook. But a similar type of thing, where it shows up for 24 hours and then it disappears. And they have to invest a lot into that. Often those new forms of content don’t generate as many ad dollars as what they had in the past, so it can look quite bad initially.
But I think we have to have a little bit of trust or faith that they have navigated this in the past. And if it truly is just that people want short form video as their new form of content, I think Facebook is quite adequate to give that to them. I think on this morning’s call, they said that Reels, which is the short-form video, makes up 20% of time spent on Instagram. So they’re definitely switching users across to it. But then you had another question, which is around just the advertising pie in total. I think that’s another question completely. And that’s something that we’ve been talking about in the office a lot recently, because we’ve had online penetration increasing really significantly in advertising recently, which can’t go on forever. I think online is at around 65% of the total by now.
Steve:
Yeah. I think 65% is about the right number. And you’re seeing a bit of a rebound in things like outdoor advertising, even old linear TV doing okay. Those mediums seem to be getting still a share of the budget here. So we’re not going to a 100 online, it’s probably beaten most people’s expectations in terms of everyone always thinking that we were reaching the limit, and then Google who comes out and announces another 20% uplift in revenue. Even this morning, Facebook’s revenue was up 6% on the first quarter of last year, which was a quarter when half the world’s population was locked in their houses and sitting at home. You’ve had the Ukraine-Russia war take away from revenue, and they’re still growing at 6% across their total business there. So it is still growing, but it’s pretty clear that there do have to be limits on it. And at some point, I think in the next five to 10 years, you’re going to start having an ecosystem that’s growing in line with GDP, at some point.
Look, let’s just wrap up this whole space, Chloe, it’s been absolutely pummeled share market-wise and I think we invested in Meta late last year. Thinking it was going to be a stable, reliable part of our portfolio, only to watch the share price halve over the subsequent three to six months. It’s, I think, more squarely in our distress, everyone absolutely hates this category. Now, how are you feeling about the valuation?
Chloe:
I think, before this morning’s move, we were looking at the valuation yesterday and thinking, how much cheaper can this huge market-leading cash-generating business get? And I still feel like that. We’re lapping some reasonably tough comparables at the moment. I think we’re expecting the growth to start to pick up again towards the back end of the year. And they’re still in the phase where they’re investing really heavily in that new short-form video content. I think we should expect the past to be true to an extent, which is that when they start to the advertisers onto this form of content, the advertising dollars are going to flow through. So, I feel really good about this business and its valuation and also what we’re going to see from it in the coming years.
Steve:
I think it’s a reflection of this market that we are in, where everything is just so momentum driven. Social media is either the greatest thing ever and we’ll pay any price for the stock, or nobody wants to own it and the share … If you actually step back from this and you say, “Okay, the share price has more than halved, because we invested in it when it was already down a long way. So $400 down to $170 on what… Okay, you had a Q4 announcement where they said, “We think revenue, because of all these issues, is going to grow two to 11% versus market expectations of 15.” So you’ve had one quarter where that growth has slowed down and the market had just gone mental and completely chucked it out. They’ve produced six, it’s sort of bang in the middle of that range. I just think it is a more… There’s no doubt that those questions are real and need to be asked, but it’s a more reliable, predictable business.
It’s probably going to generate something like the returns that we thought when we first invested in it. It’s just going to be a wild ride in between. Wild rides have been pretty common, Chloe, over the past 12 months. And I just thought we could maybe have a bit of a chat today about your journey as an investor. I know you’ve done a few other podcasts talking about the first few years. We had that magnificent run in the 2021 financial year. The fund was up 80% for the financial year. And it seemed that everything we touched turned to gold, including a lot of stuff that you’ve recommended. It’s almost been completely the opposite the past nine months. The fund, we’re down 29% financial year to date. A lot of stocks have gone down a long way, not only that we owned prior, but ones that we’ve made new investment decisions into over the past nine months. How has that affected you? And how are you navigating that environment being your first time around?
Chloe:
Well, I think about the COVID hit as my first time around when stocks were hit pretty hard and that there wasn’t much discrimination. Most of the things that we owned were down. But it couldn’t be more different, because that happened really quickly. And during that time period, it was quite early on in my investing journey. And I remember thinking, I wish I had a really good watchlist of stocks that I’d spent time on, that might be too expensive. I’ve got a price in there and I’m ready to go. This time around, I have a pretty good bench list of stocks with prices in there. Stocks keep getting hit harder and harder. I think nearly a quarter of the NASDAQ is down more than 70%. And a lot of my stocks are flagging that they’re at a price that I would’ve thought, a year or so ago, would be quite interesting.
I’m going in, I’m having a fresh look at them. And a lot of them just don’t look cheap enough now. And I think that’s a function of, one, the market environment that we’re in. Obviously the pessimism is everywhere and that has to have some effect on you as well. You’re more pessimistic in your views. But also a lot of things have changed. Some of the supply chain issues that we thought were really temporary have lasted a lot longer than what we might have expected. Now, we’ve got a super-inflationary environment and a consumer that… We’re not seeing it so much in company results just yet, but consumer confidence surveys are extraordinarily low. So, it’s a very different environment and, yeah, I’m finding it difficult and very different to how I was thinking about it last time.
Steve:
I think that COVID experience is okay, there’s an event here that I can identify. I know exactly why the market is behaving like it is. And I think I can see through that to a point where people are going to price these stocks very differently. This environment is different to that, in that we’ve owned some businesses that have reported results that were exactly what we were hoping for, in some cases better. And the share price is still half what it was six or 12 months ago. So, I feel like that creates a feeling of helplessness that’s different from, I know exactly what’s happening here. And I feel like I’m seeing this world … And there was no less panic. And I think there was a lot of uncertainty in that COVID crisis period about whether some of these businesses were actually going to survive.
That was our benchmark. Whereas this is more, when is the market ever going to see what I’m seeing here? And have I got this wrong? And you start asking yourself questions about valuations. Back when we went through the really deep value route with our Australian fund, it’s amazing how quickly you start normalising different valuations for businesses. We had NZM get down to one and a half times earnings, and all of a sudden, you start going, well, maybe three or four times earnings is the right multiple for this business, because there are all these things to worry about. And it’s really easy to do that really quickly on both sides of the equation as well. I’m a lot older than you, that’s why we’ve started doing audio recordings instead of video recordings. So, you don’t have to get my old, withered face on video anymore.
I’ve been through a lot more of these, and I’m just really trying to encourage you and the rest of the team to… Let’s just focus on what we can control, which is, what’s the valuations of these businesses? And I think in times like this, narrow the universe down to the ones you’ve got the most confidence in. We’re going to get things right, we’re going to divest some stocks that go up a lot, I’m sure. But I just find it easier to own those businesses where you really genuinely don’t care what happens to the share price here over the next five years, because I know it’s going to be bigger, stronger and more profitable than it is today. And I’m not seeing anything that suggests that’s not the case. That list that you’ve got, have you got any stocks that we haven’t bought that you think are interesting?
Chloe:
It doesn’t exactly fit your criteria because we do own it, but it’s in very small position size at the moment. And it’s one that we need to make a decision on, because we don’t like owning stocks in such small size. We either want to double down on it or get out of it. And that is one that our investors should be quite familiar with, it’s Farfetch, the global platform for the luxury industry. That stock price is down really significantly. It’s trading at $11.42. And it got up to mid-seventies about a year ago, so that’s a pretty strong contrast. It’s back down to what it was pre-COVID. We’ve seen a lot of changes throughout that period. And I think it’s become pretty clear that, even when we invested in June, 2020, which is not that long ago, I think our biggest question was whether or not Farfetch would end up being the dominant platform for the luxury industry. Since then, we’ve seen a lot of signs and I feel pretty confident that it is going to be that.
You’ve got platforms around it like Net-a-Porter not doing very well and not able to grow while Farfetch is going from strength to strength. And they continue to do what they say they will. They said they would be EBITDA breakeven. Last year, they were… They’re growing at the rates that they said they would. There are definitely some challenges and things to think about at the moment. Russia, Ukraine is around 6% of the business, so there are some issues there. We’ve got the lockdowns in China, we don’t know how that’s going to impact demand coming out of that country. And that’s really important for growth in the luxury industry overall, but also growth at Farfetch. And another thing to think about is, if we do go into a really strong recession here, how many people are going to be buying luxury or designer items? We haven’t seen any signs of that really slowing down in the luxury brands yet. In fact, we’ve seen nothing but price increases coming out of them. There are a lot of things to think about with this business, but in terms of price, it looks pretty good.
Steve:
It’s pretty extraordinary. And I think it’s the perfect example of what we’ve witnessed over the past few years. The share price has gone from $15 to $60 something and all the way back to 11, while the business has trucked along exactly as we had hoped when we first invested in it. Sure, there are some things to worry about here. But the magnitude of the up was wrong and the magnitude of the down is probably wrong as well. I think one thing that I really bring to the team is that stomach and willingness to invest when you feel, not only a willingness to do it, but I guess an attraction to that feeling of not being sure, being uncertain, letting the market price and the direction of the market price impact your confidence. It happens to all of us. I feel exactly the same emotions.
But I know from a long history of doing this, that the best opportunities arise when those emotions exist, because that’s how everyone one else is feeling out there. So, I think we will see changes in this portfolio over the coming few months. I think as we really try and narrow down the universe, we’ve got more results coming out over the coming week to the stocks that we’ve got the most confidence in. The most important question of today’s podcast, you’ve been asked it before, so we can’t miss it here at Forager Podcast either. You’re renowned for being a burger expert and everyone wants to know, what’s your favourite burger? And is there anything new that’s come up over the past six to 12 months? Any lockdown creations that have appealed to you?
Chloe:
I don’t know how I became the burger expert. First of all, I feel like, Steve, you’ve thrown me under the bus somewhere and now everybody thinks that I know everything about burgers. To be honest, my favourite burger used to be Burger Project and it was very controversial. Many people in the office thought it was a rip-off and not good enough for the price. And it’s since shutdown, which makes me think maybe I know nothing about good burgers. One that I’ve been having recently, which is pretty well-known, it’s a chain, is Betty’s Burgers. That’s probably my favourite consistent burger at the moment, or we love Bar Luca in the Forager office. That’s definitely up there. In terms of new burgers, there’s a restaurant near our office called The Gidley. This is the restaurant of Bistecca and they have the self-proclaimed best burger in Sydney. They got us to order it when we were there by telling us that. That was pretty good, I will say. And the burger at Hubert.
Steve:
I think we’ll leave for Gidley for years where the performance is a little bit better than this past year.
Chloe:
Well, our investors might like to try it.
Steve:
Thanks for that. Some fantastic recommendations there. A lot of people love a burger around the office, so it’s a fun Friday activity for us. Now the moment of truth, we’re going to give this whisky a little taste and you’re going to let people know what you think. As I touched on earlier, this is a blend. And I said in one of our previous podcasts, they’ve come to have a bad name I think because people were mixing good quality whiskies with bad quality whiskies and calling it a good quality whisky. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with blends when you get the right group of whiskies together. So, have another taste, Chloe, because you’ve already had a taste and I saw the expression on your face, but I think people need to hear.
Chloe:
I’m nervous to do this on record. I wish we had a camera filming this, because it’s hard to describe what my face is doing when I try this whisky. It’s probably an insult. It’s not the whisky, I’m sure it’s just my taste buds. All I can taste is burning.
Steve:
And a bit of shuddering. That’s not an uncommon experience. You did have a bit of water in your whisky? No.
Chloe:
No.
Steve:
So that’s the first tip, I think, for people that are trying whisky first on, is don’t be embarrassed about that. I think it creates that sensation in most people the first time they do it. So, mix it with a little bit of water or have it with ice. Get a nice, big block of ice and put your whisky over the top of that. And that’s a much smoother, more mellow flavour. I really like this whisky. I actually discovered it in lockdown, my local bottle shop selling bottles of this on special. Like a lot of Japanese whiskies, it doesn’t actually come with an age. To be called a whisky, it needs to be older than three years.
You know that, but it looks like a pretty young whisky. It’s fairly clear, but I really like it. It’s a really nice, smooth blend in taste. Maybe not the way you would describe smooth, but if we bring you a really peaty one, one day – you’ll shudder even more from that. But this is a very reasonably-priced Japanese whisky. It’s about $70 a bottle, whereas a lot of them are hundreds and two hundreds. And it’s actually one that I think is a nice, just regular drinking whisky, quite a fruity flavour. And I think a really good example of a blend coming together to create a very tasty, regular drinking whisky. So, it’s one that’s actually high on my list of recommendations for people that are getting into whiskies. We’re going to need to work on you a little bit more, Chloe. We’ll see.
Chloe:
I’d like to opt out of the stronger whisky-tasting, and if I had $70, I’d definitely be buying a bottle of Verv instead.
Steve:
Well, thank you everyone for tuning in. We’ll be back in a month’s time with a lot more social media news under our belt and I’m sure a bit more Elon Musk Twitter stuff to talk about, plus some other interesting topics. Thanks for tuning in. As always, any questions, email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can find us all over the place. Don’t be afraid to give us feedback and send through anything you’d like us to discuss in future. Thanks for tuning in.
