Underappreciated Rule-Breaking Small-Cap Stocks

In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Emily Flippen and contributors Jason Hall and Toby Bordelon dive into:

• Why the renewable energy industry deserves a second look, even with policy headwinds.
• If Phinia offers a pragmatic hedge against a slower-than-expected EV transition.
• A rapidly expanding premium Chinese teahouse that has changing unit economics.

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A full transcript is below.

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This podcast was recorded on Sept. 23, 2025.

Emily Flippen: Today on Motley Fool Money, we're diving into three small caps that are off most investors radars, but not ours. I'm Emily Flippen. Today, I'm joined by analysts Jason Hall and Toby Bordelon to discuss each of our picks for rule breaking small caps that we expect our listeners may have never heard of before. We have a rapidly expanding tea house with unit economics that will make your mouth water. A nice industrial player that I expect Toby thinks is undervalued. But to start, let's talk about a couple of small caps in an industry that may have been written off entirely. Jason, I actually think saying that this sector, which is the energy sector, saying that it's been written off is actually really probably an understatement. It's been one of the worst performing sectors this year with green energy in particular, losing a lot of policy tailwinds as initiatives have been increasingly rolled back, and yet your small cat pick really flies in the face of that narrative. Why is this sector in renewable energy in general worth a second look right now?

Jason Hall: I think it's so compelling, and in the Rule Breakers mindset, I'm going to immediately break the rules and talk about two stocks that I think are compelling that are part of two different parts of the story here. Renewable energy stocks, like you said, it's not just been this year. They've really struggled. Since interest rates started to be ratcheted higher back in 2022, we saw central banks around the world take aggressive steps to fight out of control inflation. The reality, and if we look at solar, really, there's two different segments. There's residential, which is call it a third of the market and then the other 2/3 is utility scale solar. It's expensive, and the reality is that it's almost always funded with debt. Interest rates going up that really hit residential solar extremely hard. Of the two stocks that I'm going to talk about Enphase, which I'm sure a lot of people that listen to the show are familiar with, it makes the electronic components of the solar system. It sent their micro inverter unit sales down 70% from the peak to the bottom. Just when we saw what looked like a bottom, that was last fall. Unit sales rebounded over the summer from those lows. We saw the US federal incentives for renewables get gutted as part of the big beautiful bill. Now, that's clattered up. What had been a clearing sky, we look on the utility scale. We can look at Fluence Energy. That's the large scale battery making love child of Siemens and AES, which are two companies that are very much involved in the energy industry. Its business and stock price has really been whipsawed more over the past year on a combination of the growth story unraveling, while competitors like Tesla saw its battery business hold up pretty well.

Emily Flippen: For investors who are unfamiliar, Enphase is tickers E-N-P-H Fluence Energy is tickers F-L-N-C. It's absolutely crazy that we're sitting here talking about both of these businesses as small caps. Toby, you work with me on the Stock Advisor team, and we have Enphase Energy actually, as a recommendation on the Rule Breaker side of the Stock Advisor scorecard. When we recommended it, it was very far from being considered a small cap, and now it's sitting at around a $5 billion market capitalization. When you think about Jason's pick here, what questions come to mind?

Toby Bordelon: Well, it's really not a surprise, I think, as Jason noted, the selector has been hit. Investors have become skeptical on the industry. They're moving on to other places with investment dollars. Not at all a surprise, given what we've seen in the headwinds facing this company right now.

Jason Hall: I think for public investors, yeah, they're looking at the stocks, that's the case, because especially if you're not intimately familiar with these industries, understanding the difference between the cycles, and we're in a brutally down part of the cycle right now versus the secular tailwinds, it does certainly feel like it's been left for dead right now. But when you start pulling apart the cyclical manufacturer part of the business and looking at the secular tailwinds, there's a little bit more to like right now than I think you might think. For a company like Enphase, there's a few things that I think are really appealing. I think the economics might be better than people realize. Now, as a starting point, Enphase has actually continued to take market share during the downturn and SolarEdge essentially have a duopoly in the US. They have about 90% of the residential share and pretty large share in Europe and other parts of EMEA. They both also have really good margin in cash profiles. Enphase has also done a really smart thing, leveraging contract manufacturing and as a result, it's actually remained cash flow positive every quarter through this down cycle of the business. We can bring Fluence into the conversation here. Really had a brutal first half of the year. After great 2024, it seems management just really missed the mark on understanding what the business flow is going to look like. But here as we've gotten into the second half of the year, business has stabilized, and management has reiterated that outlook. Now, its catalysts include continued focus on deploying utility scale wind and solar, and also grid resilience. You think about those are things when we come to energy storage. And after showing that it had the business model before the first half of this year, it looks like it's set up to really start generating positive cash flows as we move forward.

Emily Flippen: That being said, part of me just wonders, does it even really matter if there's no federal incentives or what happens to that cash flow? Toby, I know the stock pick you have coming up for us here in just a couple of minutes is the antithesis of this pick? When you think about playing devil's advocate to Jason's idea here, what stands out to you as key risk? Because for me, obviously, federal incentives are the obvious play.

Toby Bordelon: Yeah, I think that is the obvious one. You can't ignore the political risk with this company. This administration is simply not as excited about renewables as past administrations have been. That's a problem, at least over the short term for the company. Now, look, you might say, who cares? For instance, AI is going to boost our need for energy, so there won't really be a choice here. We got to have energy from wherever we can get it. I'm not convinced that's really the case, though I'm worried that we may be in a bit of an AI bubble and if that collapses, demand overall could go down.

Jason Hall: I think on both of those things, you're right to some degree, Toby. There's absolutely no doubt the loss of those tax incentives is going to have an impact. For the rest of 2025, it's actually a catalyst. Homeowners are moving really quickly to get that residential system installed before the credits expire. On the utility side, there's a little bit of a bigger time window for utilities to act. But beyond that, I think we're ignoring a really important thing on the math here. Utility costs are up more than 40% since 2019 in most US markets. Now, that's far more than solar system costs have gone up. Between higher utility costs, helping offset the need of those tax credits, and then interest rates now starting to creep down. That was the news cycle last week. It was all about what was the Fed going to do? I think residential solar in particular, Enphase is probably in better long term shape because of the secular trends than we think. We haven't even talked about the international opportunity, which I don't really want to get into very much.

Toby Bordelon: All that is true. I just wonder speaking about the large scale, the industrial side of this, the utility side of this. A lot of demand right now is coming from AI. If that bubble does burst, does that mean we're in an energy slump? What if we find ourselves with a bunch of half built, suddenly unneeded infrastructure here, Jason, because the demand just craters? What does that do to Fluence's stock price? I don't think it sends it up, does it?

Jason Hall: No, definitely not a go to the moon scenario if that happens. But I think if we look at the long tail opportunity, AI is certainly a part of the thesis. It has to be because that's the biggest catalyst driving total energy consumption in the US by far. But large scale energy storage is about more than just AI. This is about grid resilience. Think about how much we've talked about. You live in the West, Toby. Grid resilience is a significant issue. Think about what Taxis dealt with with winter storms a few years ago. We're going to continue to see a transition away from things like coal as a base load. That means utilities will need more storage to offset wind and solar intermittency. I think meeting the energy demands of the world is going to remain all of the above or most of the above in terms of the energy sources, and storage is going to be a really important part of that formula.

Emily Flippen: Well, I love the debate between you two, and I go back to Dave Meier, actually, who brought Fluence Energy to me, I want to say, a couple of years ago, to the Blastof team, and before AI was really a big part of the thesis and said this was just an obvious opportunity. While the thesis, I think, has very much changed over the course of the past couple of years, there is part of me that thinks while there's so much volatility in the space and clearly, I think investors who are interested in getting into renewable energy in this entire sector, Fluence Energy, Enphase, whatever it may be, they need to have a stomach to stand the volatility that comes with a lot of the political changes that are likely to continue over the course of the next couple of years. If you believe in the obvious transition and the need for renewable energy and renewable energy storage, then it sounds like, Jason, there's lots of different ways to play this trend. Fluence Energy and Enphase are two to consider adding to your watch list.

Jason Hall: I think that's exactly right. Again, there is still tremendous uncertainty and risk, but this is also where position sizing as investors comes in. It's a way that we can offset some of that risk, still having exposure, being able to continue to follow the story and see how it pans out, and maybe take the most Rule Breaker important thing of all to do, and that's look to add to our winners over time.

Emily Flippen: Beautifully said. Up next, we're passing the torch to Toby to dig into an automotive business that has more than doubled since the start of 2024. Stick with us.

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Emily Flippen: Welcome back. Toby, I want to rewind here a minute, because in preparation for today's show, I asked both you and Jason to give me a quick rundown of your thesis so I could ask at least some semi intelligent follow up questions for each of your stocks. I want to read to our listeners exactly what I read when I checked in on our show notes. Is everybody ready? You wrote, "Buy PHINIA if you don't want your portfolio to tank when Tesla goes bankrupt." Big words. Now, I have to imagine there's at least some tongue and cheekness there, but I have to know that you are a bit of a bear on Tesla. Why is PHINIA whose ticker I believe, is P-H-I-N, if I'm not mistaken, which is almost the antithesis of Tesla. Why is PHINIA the better buy today?

Toby Bordelon: Let's be clear. A lot of that was just me saying, let's stay up from trouble when Emily gets up in the morning. But in seriousness, this smaller lesser known company, I think is a great way to hedge your portfolio not just against Tesla, but the whole EV transition, which, let's face it, is not happening as fast as some of the Techno Bulls might like it to right now. Look, PHINIA is an auto parts manufacturer with rue that go back over a century. This is an old company. If you're a car person, you know the brands here, Delphi, Delco, Remy, Hartridge. The business and the brands have been around forever but the company itself was relatively new. This is a spin out of a much larger auto supplier BorgWarner. About two years ago, July 2023, they spun out PHINIA. The idea here was BorgWarner wanted to focus on the future electrification of the industry, EVs, and hybrids. They didn't phrase it like this, of course, but PHINIA was essentially created to take all the leftover nonsense that they didn't want. The legacy IC business that was catering to the dying parts of the industry. Well, guys, as it turns out, that part of the industry has refused to die. In fact, since the spin off, PHINIA has massively outperformed its former parent BorgWarner. About a 68% total return in the past two plus years or so versus less than 8% for BorgWarner. PHINIA has also outperformed the S&P 500 by a little bit. Pretty good for unloved leftovers, I would say.

Jason Hall: Toby, history is littered with spin offs that outperform their former parents. I think a big part of that is that those businesses, they don't have to compete with their siblings anymore for their parents' attention really resources. Now, my question for you is in the short term two years, we've seen PHINIA be the better investment, but will history continue to be the case here, or will that future of electrification that PHINIA can be the hedge against, will that render the company obsolete and a losing investment?

Toby Bordelon: Yeah, it's a legitimate concern, Jason, I think. I think it's going to take decades though before EVs overtake ICEs. The future never comes as fast as we think it will. But they're not ignoring the inevitable future. PHINIA is not at least. They're investing in things like hydrogen technologies, remanufacturing, software and calibration tools for increasing the efficiency of ICE engines, that thing. Look, if you want to believe that EVs are going to take over the world within a decade, you go ahead and do. But if you subscribe to the reality that change tends to be more evolutionary across an industry, then there are many customers who are just fine with enhancing and improving the existing systems they use rather than totally junking in for something new. If you think that's the case, PHINIA is company that might be for you.

Emily Flippen: I love that if you subscribe to reality. Well, here's the reality I subscribe to, Toby. I take issue with the comparison to Tesla, and albeit a hold one for me to really defend Tesla here because it's a little silly for me to do so. But I'll try, which is to say, I don't really understand what makes PHINIA's cash any more durable than Tesla's because from what I can tell, PHINIA's profitability is pretty low. Their debt's really high, and most of that cash has to be reinvested into their business. In my opinion, despite the fact that you're right, I think the transition to electric vehicles will be slow. PHINIA is just another example about why auto companies are generally bad investments. Tesla's valuation, we can debate that all day, all night. But Tesla has a stalwart balance sheet. It has profit margins that are more than double PHINIA's and its growth rates are even higher. Yes, I'm aware that both their growth rates are negative. I just don't understand how either of these companies, how you can come out looking and say, yeah, I like PHINIA more here.

Toby Bordelon: I think for me, PHINIA is not necessarily a pick against Tesla or a pick against any specific company. I like it as a nice hedge against an EV transition that may be slower than expected. That appears to be the case right now. I'm not saying EVs are not going anywhere. I own two electric vehicles myself. I love them. But we have to, I think, face reality that the Super Bowl cases have not materialized and probably will not. I like using a supplier like PHINIA if you're considering hedging your bets because it actually doesn't require you to pick a winner. You don't have to look at all the consumer facing companies out there in the automotive industry. This is the one that's going to win. Who was the Number 2 EV maker to Tesla in a decade? I don't know. Is it GM? Is it Toyota? Is Ford going to be the company that successfully straddles that line between the EV transition and the legacy world of ICEs? I don't know. The good news for PHINIA shareholders is you don't actually have to make that pick. You can say, look, I'm going to play in the part space. I'm going to buy a company that sells their parts to anyone and will do well. In a transition, it may be a slower transition and will continue to sell parts to cinema legacy automakers for assistance that are still very much needed in the marketplace. Do sales of new cars decline and consumers hold onto their older ones a little bit longer in the face of rising tariff costs? For instance, if that happens, great. PHINIA has got a thriving aftermarkets part business, take advantage of that trend, as well. I think there are a lot of things to like, and there are a lot of reasons you might look at PHINIA and say, this is a company I want even if I'm a believer in the EV transition ultimately happening.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, that's a really good point. There's a false dichotomy there that it's PHINIA in this case versus Tesla. Both actually are recommendations on the Stock Advisor scorecard PHINIA through that spin off from BorgWarner, as you mentioned. Tesla actually is one of the original Rule Breaker stock picks from Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner, who I actually have a little bit of a teaser here for our listeners today. David Gardner, co-founder of the Motley Fool, and Chief Rule Breaker, actually just released his newest book, Rule Breaker Investing. How to pick the best stocks for the future and build lasting wealth. There is more alongside this. David will be serving in a strategic advisory capacity for the Motley Fool's new Supernova service, one of the portfolios of which I will be the co-captain of. It's a service that closed in 2021 with portfolios averaging a 21.8% annual return across nine years. Supernova will be reopening actually for the next few days. You can go to supernovaisback.fool.com for all the latest details and to become a VIP for the event. Coming up next, we're discussing a still small but rapidly expanding high end Chinese tea chain. We'll see you in a minute.

For our last stock here, I want to try to pitch you both on a business that you've likely never heard of before, but I expect you're both going to be rightfully skeptical of, and that's Chagee Holdings. The ticker is C-H-A. Now, this is a growing chain of high end tea houses out of China. Yes, similar to Luckin Coffee all of 2020, they're expanding very aggressively via a franchised model. I know for a lot of investors that throws off a lot of red flags, but I hope you'll hear me out in this little elevator pitch, and then you can cross examine me. This is a founder led company. It was started in 2017 by 23-year old Jenny Qian Zhiya, who still owns more than 35% of the company, actually, has a market cap of around $3 billion, and it just went public earlier this year, so it is new to the public markets. The stock is down admittedly nearly 50% since the IPO. But the growth this company has put forth is wild. Store account up more than 80% last year, and a loyalty program that has over 200 million active members. They don't sell bubble tea. They sell high end tea lattes, which sell for higher price points and come with a bit of the like Starbucks S brand attached to them. Their GMV and store economics are absolutely incredible. The profitability is actually pretty high, and over the past 12 months, the business has produced nearly $300 million worth of profits on around $2 billion in sales. The stock trades at less than 12 times price to earnings.

Jason Hall: Come on, Emily. What's the catch here? A stock growing at hyper level rates based in China trading for 12 times earnings. Let's be honest here. It investing. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost always is.

Emily Flippen: There's no catch, Jason. It's the perfect company. Everything is going to go right for it. No, of course, there's always a catch. If I had to throw something out, there obviously cannibalization. This is a franchise model growth. It's leading to a massive slowdown in Same-Store sales growth, and that similar slowdown in Same-Store sales growth is, of course, leading to a similar slowdown in profits. The market is projecting a massive crunch here on the bottom line as the business right sizes its store account. For context, they have more than 6,000 locations across the world. They're mostly in Mainland China. That's a fraction of the locations of a Luckin Coffee for comparison. But they have massively expanded very rapidly and the store economics that look so good today. I imagine a couple of years from now are going to look a lot less impressive.

Toby Bordelon: Speaking of coffee, Emily, isn't coffee better than tea? Haven't we heard for so long how China, for instance, that the biggest tea market on Earth is discovering a love for coffee. It's not just Starbucks, that other company you mentioned Luckin. They're surging right now. Where does tea fit in in this world in terms of a long term growth play?

Emily Flippen: Well, it's a little ironic. I'm drinking a cup of coffee as we record here today. Obviously, I'm a coffee drinker, but not everybody loves coffee, and I like tea just as much as I like coffee. The good thing about tea is you don't have to worry about the growing conditions in certain regions to make your coffee beans, so you don't have to worry about the tariffs at least that we're experiencing right now. I will say, though, it's honestly more like lattes. You can imagine it. It's more of a premium brand. I think the comparison to Luckin Coffee is really misguided. You can almost compare more to a Starbucks because you can imagine that's more of their competition as opposed to a Luckin Coffee.

Jason Hall: Caffeine cream and sugar. That's the secret to success here. Now, Toby, you mentioned it too that this is a new public company that adds another layer of risk. How can a company perform in the public spotlight? Definitely, ramping up my normal IPO skepticism, and then you double it when you're talking about China. Now, as unfair as that might be, but I'm less concerned about Luckin 2.0. Of course, the big scandal there with fraud. But more thinking about China's demographics. This is where their base is, and China is getting very old very quickly. Is that potentially something that could unravel the growth story over the longer term?

Emily Flippen: That's a really good point, and you're concerned about it being a Chinese company, listen to US markets and the concerns about it being newly public. That's all fair. Big red flags there, of course, you can wait this one out. Actually, a lot of their expansion has been in East Asia, Malaysia in particular. Their international expansion is actually one of the bright spots for this company. They only have one location here in the United States. I believe it's in Los Angeles. If you're out there, maybe go check it out. I've heard mixed reviews so far about whether or not people like the product, but East Asia in particular is a big growth story for them, so it's not just about expanding within China. But I'm going to put you both on the spot here as we wrap up today's show for a little lightning round. If you had to pick a company, let's say, not the one that we brought, obviously, out of the three that we talked about today, which one are you talking with or which one are you picking. Toby, I'll start with you.

Toby Bordelon: Despite my skepticism here that I may have been evidencing when Jason was talking, I think I'm going to go with energy right now. I have a soft spot for industry that's really been beat up and I think there is demand to be had there. If you're looking for a great entry point, hard to argue, Jason, that right now is a worse entry point than what we've seen in the recent past.

Emily Flippen: Jason.

Jason Hall: This is one where I have to say those compelling unit economics, the growth rate, the potential, and that valuation make Chagee actually really compelling because if you find winners in those businesses and that have some brand strength, they can do really well. But it falls back to the history of industrial spin offs. The companies that are just really good at blocking and tackling, Peter Lynch has talked about how businesses and industries that everybody's turning away from, you can find the biggest winners because nobody's going to compete with them. There's not any VC funded start-up that's going to try to disrupt PHINIA, so I think PHINIA is the one that I'd pick. What about you, Emily?

Emily Flippen: To be honest, both of your picks do seem like more solid investment foundations than Chagee even though I do think Chagee is way more fun, in my opinion. But Jason, I have to go with your energy picks and Fluence and Enphase. I really like both of those companies, especially Enphase Energy. There is something that I love about contrarian style investing in really obvious and growing industries. Especially, renewable energy right now is one of those for me, and I realize not every investor is willing to stomach. I think the volatile ride that will be investing in renewable energy for the next couple of years. But for less risk adverse investors and people willing to take that leap, I think it could offer a fair bit of reward for that risk. That wraps up today's show. I hope all of our investors and listeners were able to take something away from these underappreciated, underrated small caps. Jason and Toby, thank you both so much for joining. Listeners, be sure to join us for tomorrow show where Travis will be discussing how the DTC trend went wrong and what the future of brands like Allbirds, Warby Parker, and Casper may look like in an agentic shopping world. As always, people in the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance contents follow the Motley Fool editorial standards and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out the show notes. For Jason Hall and Toby Bordelon, and the entire Motley Fool Money team, I'm Emily Flippen. We'll see you tomorrow.

Emily Flippen, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Jason Hall has positions in Enphase Energy, Fluence Energy, SolarEdge Technologies, and Starbucks and has the following options: short January 2026 $10 puts on Fluence Energy and short January 2027 $40 puts on Enphase Energy. Toby Bordelon has positions in Enphase Energy, Ford Motor Company, and Starbucks and has the following options: short December 2025 $50 puts on Enphase Energy. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Fluence Energy, Luckin Coffee, Starbucks, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends BorgWarner, Enphase Energy, General Motors, Phinia, and Warby Parker. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.