Big Tech Breaks the Bank for AI

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman and analyst Asit Sharma discuss:

• Alphabet's big cloud quarter.
• Meta's AI questions.
• Amazon and AWS growth.
• Netflix's surprising stock split.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Oct. 31, 2025.

Travis Hoium: Big Tech earnings are in and news flash, they're spending a lot of money on AI. Motley Fool Money starts now.

Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium joined today by Lou Whiteman and Asit Sharma. We have to start with the big news of the week. That is big tech, and I want to start with I think one of the most surprising earnings reports, that is Google. They were nano bananas, if you will, their results. The stock was up a little bit, although not a huge move, 4 or 5% after earnings, but revenue was up 15% in search. The cloud business grew 13%. Asit, I want to start with you. What was your biggest takeaway from this quarterly report, because there's so many pieces of Alphabet now, but it seems like they're all moving in the right direction.

Asit Sharma: Yes, Travis, it's like an Alphabet soup of earnings to piece together what's really driving that engine. For me, the step up in cloud margin was pretty important. The profit that the cloud business, which is full of generative AI is making, this was 17% margin this time last year. This quarter, they came in at 24%. What does this mean? Alphabet likes to brag that it provides the full stack to its customers in AI, so from the infrastructure to agents to all kinds of machine learning algorithms, etc. You can price for that. The pricing is favorable, and we're seeing that as this little business grows, it's getting more profitable as it goes along.

Travis Hoium: The interesting thing with that is that business just became operating income profit positive in the first quarter of 2023. We're less than three years into that actually being a profitable business for them. Lou, what were the big things that you saw when you looked at earnings from Alphabet?

Lou Whiteman: We'll vibe off of Mark Twain and his reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. Remember when AI was going to swamp Google Search and just everything was down from here? As Asit said, the margin improvement. Overall margins up 200 basis points. But what that shows is, this is so much more than search. That wasn't really ad revenue that drove that. That is all of the premium things they offer as consumers. That is cloud, Cloud grew revenue by 34%, but operating income by 85%. That speaks to the benefits of scale, and that speaks to, I think, a really well positioned company from here.

Travis Hoium: As Lou mentioned some of these other businesses. YouTube is the other one that I think we often forget is under Alphabet. One of the things that stuck out to me in this report was that search and YouTube grew at the same rate, which may sound a little bit strange, but what that's telling me is that they're monetizing at basically an equivalent level on both of those. Your views and number of searches and number of videos watched and things like that may change a little bit but if you were seeing search grow at 5%, but YouTube grow at 20%, that would be problematic. Am I thinking about this correctly that it's actually good that they're growing at about the same rate?

Asit Sharma: I think so because in some ways, Alphabet is still using search as a way to funnel people to YouTube. Although those who get a little bit addicted to a certain type of YouTube shorts like myself, I'll be honest here, we don't need the search to get us there anymore. But this is a business that is, I think it's of it as being tiny but powerful. Tiny in the scale of Alphabet's total earnings, but powerful because of that growth rate that you mentioned, Travis. The attention economy, which we'll talk about in a bit when we get to Meta is such a big part of the earning stories of much of Big Tech. The fact that alphabet continues to grow this little enterprise is important because over time, the rest of that business inevitably is going to slow a bit, but I have a belief that YouTube will keep scaling along the lines that it is 15-20% reliably quarter after quarter after quarter.

Travis Hoium: They continue to take market share, even from Netflix, which I think is surprising when you look at some of these results. Let's move to their AI spending because this is we've mentioned Google Cloud, that's the big growth story within Alphabet, but they have to spend a lot of money to build out the infrastructure to actually grow at 34%. Lou, they increased their CapEx guidance, it was increased last quarter to $85 billion. This quarter, I think they said it's actually going to be $91-$93 billion. Then they said, more next year. We've heard whisper numbers of around $120 billion. This is a lot of money. Is that bullish or bearish for investors long term?

Lou Whiteman: Time will tell, won't it? To put meat on it. CapEx up 83% year over year, and I know it's really accelerated this year, but look, AI was around last year. We are now doing year over year comparisons when this spending was starting to ramp. Look, the good news is, everything we said, they seem to be finding ways to monetize this, and if that can continue, we will be glad that they are investing more. But yes, when you're spending $24 billion every three months on just infrastructure on CapEx, you darn well better figure out how to monetize it. I do think it's the elephant in the room. It could be fine, but it's definitely also what we should be watching.

Asit Sharma: I want to chime in here and agree with Lou. There's a little bit of risk in Alphabet's picture. There's risk in every big tech hyperscaler's plans to build out all these data centers and provide so much inference to the world. But looking at Google's business, they're much smaller than, say, Amazon Web Services, but their spends are approaching AWS spends for their buildout. That means that they're playing a lot of catch up. If things go south for all of these, they'll have a bigger hit on their P&L pound for pound than maybe Amazon Web Services will.

Travis Hoium: Speaking of CapEx, the market's response to Alphabet's earnings, where it was actually pretty positive, it was not as positive for Meta. That was another big one. They didn't actually increase their CapEx guidance. I think it was just actually at the top of the range that they had previously given. But the questions are starting to mount about how are they going to actually turn that spending into more money in the future. Asit, what should we take away from what the market thought was a flop of a quarter? But you look at the numbers, and I didn't see anything that was horrible. But then, again, you start to ask questions about, are they going to actually get an ROI on spending tens of billions of dollars a year on AI?

Asit Sharma: Totally, Travis. What happens when you merge Daddy Warbucks with what's arguably the door's most popular song? Come on, Daddy, light my fire. More specifically, we're going to set our cash on fire. That's been the mojo of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg for a long time. You've nailed it. This business is strong. There's nothing wrong with it under the surface. In fact, average price per ad was up 10% this quarter, ad impressions up 14%, revenue growth up 26%, billions of dollars to the bottom line in operating income. They had a big charge against earnings, but look at this spend. Will it remain something that investors can whistle past? I think today was a first indication that, no, maybe we're not. I know, Lou, you've got some thoughts on this as well.

Lou Whiteman: Everyone's spending money. Yes, that's right. The core cash generation machine is intact and is as strong as ever. The difference is now is that we are going off balance sheet at Meta, all of them. But we can no longer just justify all of this spending on AI as, hey, it's coming out of free cash flow.

Travis Hoium: What do you mean by that, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: It's a big difference between them. They make all the money in the world, and they're just choosing to spend. Whether or not it's a good move or bad move, it's healthy. When you start borrowing for this, so you're actually spending more than what you're making, it can still pay off, but it better pay off. There is just an added element of risk both to the company and probably to the system. The big thing for me here, just this continued question is Meta versus Google, Microsoft, Amazon, it's on the distribution side. I think we saw with Alphabet, and I think with all those other companies, they're cloud businesses, they're consumer businesses, they're office tools. I see how AI will be distributed and infused into the products. Meta stands out to me because the monetization plan, I think, to me, anyway, is less clear. When you're spending so much, borrowing so much, you got to get monetization right. I do think that's the difference right now.

Asit Sharma: Lou, it's funny. I used to have the same thoughts about Meta on their distribution, but I'm a WhatsApp user, and so that little AI agent is right at the top. I've never used it, actually, but I know people who do, I've got some cousins in India. They're using that all the time. Just the way that this business has been able to monetize things like Instagram where I couldn't make that instant connection. The platform is the distribution. It is different than the hyperscale businesses, but time over time, they prove that they're able to find a way for folks to fork over some more money.

Travis Hoium: It is one of those companies. This is the one hyperscaler that is spending tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure that doesn't have the same third party business that all the other companies has. If Google overbuilds for itself or for third parties, it can use some of those GPUs itself. Same thing with Microsoft. Does that present more risk? I think that's maybe the question that I have. I'm not a meta shareholder, but I have come to respect what Zuck has built, and then you get to these points where you go, it's really just a trust me. Asit, is that all we're doing is just trust do you trust Zuck or not?

Asit Sharma: Yeah. He's got a mini I told you so wrapped up in here, which is a few years ago before everyone really understood the import of GenAI, he said, all this money that we're spending for reality labs, the AI infrastructure, the GPUs, etc., it'll be useful. It'll help us really make our ads better, and we can use all this compute to squeeze more ad money out of our users, and lo and behold, that's what they've done. But I just want to point out here. I'm skeptical of what Zuck said in the earnings call that, hey, if we build extra compute, we'll just use it to make our stuff better. No worries. I don't buy that simply because the magnitude of what they're investing now, as Lou pointed out, going to having to have debt out in the public markets is a magnitude larger than this first iteration that we all saw. Yes, it worked the first time around. Will it work this time? I'm not so sure.

Travis Hoium: The stakes are getting higher. Next up, we're going to talk about one company that the market was very impressed with that is Amazon's result. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Amazon was the other big earnings report this week. Shares were up 10% after earnings came out, which is a huge move for one of the biggest companies in the world. Asit, what did we learn from Amazon? Is this a story about AWS? Is this a story about retail? Advertising? What should we take away from this quarter? Because just like Alphabet, there's a lot going on at Amazon.

Asit Sharma: It's a story of all three, and we can start anywhere. Maybe we'll start with AWS simply because the market breathed a little sigh of relief. People felt that it peers like Alphabet we're moving faster and maybe grabbing the business ahead of Alphabet. What we learned, and I know Lou has some thoughts on this as well is that Amazon has business proposition they feel the world needs to understand. Many enterprise businesses have converted from on-premises infrastructure over to the cloud onto AWS, and those are really ripe customers for that whole AI stack, just like Alphabet that we were talking about. It turns out that growth is reaccelerating. Margins look very healthy. I'll come back to margins in a sec. But Lou, that cloud business really stood out to you, didn't it?

Lou Whiteman: It was great. Guys, remember, what was it? Three months ago when the Cloud business didn't stand out and everyone was leaving Amazon for dead. Maybe we shouldn't read too much into any one three-month period, but cloud at 20% growth is everything you could have hoped for there. But how about across the board performance? Ad sale is up 24%. Even retail was up 10%, so much for that weak consumer. It's hard to find a hole in this quarter.

Lou Whiteman: All parts of this business seem to be firing, and it's just really impressive just to see the strength on display.

Travis Hoium: I say, one of the things that they talked a lot about was Trainium and the demand that they have for that chip. This is a competitor to Nvidia's chips.

Travis Hoium: This is a big can of worms, but it does seem, like the alternatives to NVIDIA are starting to gain some traction. Trainium is one, TPUs from Google is another. They apparently can't make those fast enough. Whether it's for use with TPUs or just Google Cloud, they're basically having to turn away some customers. Are we starting to see an alternative layer of compute in AI start to be built that is maybe getting momentum? Because all of these companies do have an incentive not to be beholden to NVIDIA.

Asit Sharma: That's right, Travis. They are spending a lot of money for these purpose built chips. Trainium is a great example. Even Microsoft, which was behind on the game now has their Maia chip, which is very similar. What these chips try to do is offer a reasonably similar level of performance for less cost, I think 30-40%. This is the cost savings that Amazon consistently talks about. Yes, lots of businesses want to use what is performant and also cheaper. But the issue here for Amazon, more than it is for NVIDIA, is that NVIDIA has this really fast cycle of iteration and Amazon doesn't iterate quite as fast. The Trainium chip while it's getting a lot of hype and it's got this huge customer in Anthropic which is a maker of Cloud, the LLM. They are going to be soon in a place where they're going to have to have a next generation of chips. This is where I think that maybe Trainium and these other chips just won't live up to the hype. We also see lots of deep pocketed customers still want NVIDIA's latest and greatest chips so they're doing both. They're spreading a little money to Amazon, but putting most of the dollars into NVIDIA's next big thing and I would say, AMD is playing that space now. I think you're right. There's a layer now of business that's up for grabs and some of these hyperscalers are getting it because they already have the customers in house, but are they going to supplant NVIDIA? No and do they know that they themselves, Amazon, must buy NVIDIA, because their customers want it? Yeah. Andy Jassy talked about that on the call.

Travis Hoium: Is the game for AI compute right now still just who can buy the most NVIDIA chips and then, maybe, add on some of their own custom Asix? Is that the idea, Asit?

Asit Sharma: It's interesting you should mention Asix, because these custom-built chips that are the Asix variety, they really help with cutting down the cost of compute. But then, here's another issue. GPU is very configurable, so you can reprogram it as use cases change where an Asix is more pointed so you can save customers money for a certain amount of time. But if the needs change, if we go not nano bananas, but I don't know, like polymorphin pairs, Asix might not be built to do the same thing that a GPU can do to adapt to what customers want on the inference side.

Travis Hoium: The way to think about it be, is if the rate of innovation in AI, the rate of these models being introduced. In 2023, it seemed like there was a new model every two weeks. Now, we've slowed down. Is that slowing of model improvements good for the Asic business? Because you can actually customize your chip to run optimally for Cloud, let's say, or Gemini and so they're able to actually get to scale before those are obsolete. Is that the right way to think about it?

Asit Sharma: It's a good way to think about it because what the models now are offering really is just more reasoning steps. It's not like we're having huge advances so Asix could fill that. In other words, you keep asking ChatGPT questions. It keeps asking me, Asit, do you want to drill down on this? After all, I'm like, baby, I'm tired of drilling. I'm going to take a break here. But it's so eager and all these models are so eager to have you keep reasoning. Because now it's a little bit cheaper for them to provide that and there aren't that great of leaps and improvements on what the models can do. I think that's an astute point, Travis.

Travis Hoium: Lou, as you look at all of these big tech earnings, what stands out to you and where do you think the best buys are in the market?

Lou Whiteman: I still like Alphabet a lot. Again, I'm worried about a world where the AI model becomes commoditized and so then it's going to be who has the resources to really make money off of it. Again, I'd point to probably Amazon, definitely Microsoft and Alphabet as just the ready-made customers. Wildcard here is Apple. Apple has gotten so much flack for failing at AI and I don't think that's just their Apple waits. I think they really tried and it didn't go well. But with their customer base, with that iPhone, as a prize for any one of these models, if we do get to a world where the models are not the big deal, it's who has the consumers, Apple could end up being the biggest winner here at all.

Travis Hoium: When we come back, we are going to play trick or treat. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. It is Halloween, so we thought we would have a little bit of fun and play investing trick or treat. The idea here is that I'm going to give Lou and Asit a stock and they have to tell me whether it is a trick, so they're bearish on the company or a treat and investors should be bullish. Let's start with some of the names that we have been talking about already on this show. Alphabet, Lou, you gave your answer earlier. But Asit, I want to know, is Alphabet, after these recent gains, is this a trick or treat for investors?

Asit Sharma: It's a treat. It's one of the biggest games in town. The tech is very solid. If you look at scholarly citations on AI, they're one of the leaders actually in papers. Of course, it was Google engineers who came up with technology, along with some others that underlies all of GenAI that we enjoy today. We're a little bit late to the commercial side of the game, but your knives out now. For me, a treat.

Lou Whiteman: Stocks up 74%, I think, six months. Maybe they've decreased to a fun size treat instead of just the full size but it's trick.

Travis Hoium: It's a dreaded fund size.

Lou Whiteman: It's still a trick though.

Asit Sharma: I was so surprised. It had been a year. Really quick, guys, I broke open some Halloween candy in advance and the fun size, I was like, wait, shouldn't fund size be big? The fund size is small. What a marketing genius thing. Sorry to interrupt, Lou.

Travis Hoium: Let's go on to Meta, another company that we've talked about a little bit. Price earnings multiple on a forward basis is 23, so it's actually cheaper than Alphabet. But there are maybe more questions. Maybe there's not. Lou, what do you think? Is this a trick or a treat for investors?

Lou Whiteman: It's a treat, but it's an apple or something. It's not the treat you want.

Travis Hoium: The one you don't want in your Halloween bag.

Lou Whiteman: It's a treat, but you have to wonder, is it really a trick? As long as that cash machine is working, I can't be too worried about it, but we already talked about it. There are questions here.

Asit Sharma: I'm going to say, it is a trick. I know this is wrong. I came on this show maybe three or four years ago and infamously said that Meta was one of the worst of Big Tech and I just had so many cogent reasons. It's really hard to bet against this company because of that ad revenue, the profits associated with it, the fact that 3.5 billion people around the planet are active daily users are one of the family.

Travis Hoium: I think the right way to say it is addicted to Instagram.

Asit Sharma: Totally. But look at the flip side of this. They continue to sink money. First, it was VR, AR, then I believe it was the metaverse. Then we went on to a couple of iterations. Lama was going to be the next big thing. Now, superintelligence is the goal. Mark Zuckerberg believes in this zero-sum game that the Internet can be one, AI can be one, all of revenue can be one. I just think you take a risk when you do that, even if you have such a beautiful business model underneath. I'm going to say there's a slight trick in this business. Beware.

Travis Hoium: Let's end our Big Tech on Microsoft, a stock that we did not really talk about today. But Asit, a lot going on at Microsoft, is this a trick or a treat?

Asit Sharma: It's a treat for me. I love me some Microsoft because it doesn't get quite the attention of some of its Big Tech peers, but it chugs along. Office is a franchise, it has so many franchises in the gaming world. It has done an aggressive amount of investment in AI through OpenAI and now it's playing good with them again. I think it's just a wonderfully managed company and don't forget it's got a core of a Cloud business that is really all about, again, that long term transition of enterprise businesses from premise into the Cloud. I think, for me, it's a treat that doesn't get the attention it deserves, long term.

Travis Hoium: Now, that we have a reorganization of OpenAI, $135 billion stake at their $500 billion valuation, now we hear that they're looking at an IPO at a trillion dollar valuation that could be, $250, 300 billion stake. Does that change? Is that something that you meaningfully build into your thoughts on Microsoft?

Asit Sharma: I think, increasingly, it is. They're in for a penny, in for a pound with OpenAI. We've seen that the management of Microsoft is deadly aggressive and usually deadly right in how they allocate their capital but it's getting a bit big for comfort. All in all, I think it will be a win for them, but maybe this is the equivalent of what Lou pointed out about the off balance sheet financing that Meta is undergoing. Each of these companies is getting a little deep in one part of this equation and that's maybe the pain point for Microsoft as we look at the risk landscape going forward.

Lou Whiteman: Let's be clear. That OpenAI stake is what? Less than 4% of Microsoft's market cap right now, I think. If anything, I think, Asit I agree, they're great capital allocators and I think this is them saying, it's OK you can play around. I think they're actually de-emphasizing from OpenAI, which I think is probably smart. If Alphabet was a fun size, Microsoft is still the full size candy bar treat for me because I will always favor the enterprise over the consumer in terms of monetization. I'm really annoyed with all of the, would you like AI's help every time I open Excel? But I get it as a business thing. We have, for decades now, taken for granted their ability to sell to the enterprise. I just think they are the most natural beneficiary of the AI revolution, which I still think is a lot of just back office mundane stuff getting done faster and as a consumer, I would love that, but as a business, I pay up for it. Microsoft is the go-to AI play for me.

Asit Sharma: Can I just underscore something Lou said for just a moment here? I was in, I think Word, maybe prepping for the show this morning and just jiggled my mouse. Hey, can I help you write this? Dude, my cursor is not even blinking yet. I don't need the help today.

Lou Whiteman: It's the modern clippy.

Asit Sharma: It's a modern clippy. Let me work. I'm glad you have these tools. I use them sometimes, but let me work.

Travis Hoium: Let's move on from AI to apparel, something that Lou is a huge fan of. Let's start with Nike.

Asit Sharma: I wear clothes.

Travis Hoium: Let's start with Nike. Here's a company that has gone through crazy changes over the past five years, became really unloved by the market. But at this price, where we are today, is this a trick or a treat?

Lou Whiteman: I think it's a trick and it's our fault. I think that there are too many people still anchoring to the Nike of old. I don't think the Nike of old is coming back. I don't think in the world of you don't need Sonny Vaccaro and a billion dollar advertising budget. All you need is one good Instagram influencer. I think just the pie is going to be split in more pieces.

Lou Whiteman: I think Nike can be a winning investment from here, but I think it's a mature, boring investment, and I don't know if investors have really readjusted expectations. That's my trick.

Asit Sharma: For me, maybe this is a fun size treat. I think, so short of term, it is a company that will reward investors. They are in a turnaround. Elliott Hill who was at Nike for so many years has done a good job of getting employees motivated to go back to the roots, to focus on product, to be more of a player, to start ramping up that technical innovation that they've ceded to other shoe business and apparel businesses. I do think Nike has a shorter medium term trajectory where it's extremely rewarding. But I actually think after that, it's 50/50. Maybe they're just too mature. There is one possibility, though, that they do get their old mojo back. They were able to operate at scale before, and they were very fearsome as a business so don't count them out. I'm still a little skeptical as much as I do like this business, but time will tell.

Travis Hoium: I have little kids, and it is amazing and especially the Jordan brand still really big brands among the kids. If they're going to go by the wayside, it's going to start with the kids first. Let's stay in apparel and go with On Holding. This is a stock that I own in full disclosure. But I want to give a quick comparison between Nike because I do think the market analysis of these two companies is interesting. The enterprise value to sales of Nike is 2.1, and their sales have been in decline for three years. Over the last three years, they have a negative compound annual growth rate. On, only about 50% more expensive. Enterprise value to sales of 3.4. Their three year compound annual growth rate, 43%. Honestly, I'm going to start with you, Trick or treat.

Asit Sharma: i think, On Holding is a treat. One of the differentiators between Nike and On Holdings is that On Holdings has a much more profitable direct to consumer business. It's scaling pretty quickly, and they have an eminent amount of pricing power because as I said before, as referring to a few companies, maybe Deckers Outdoor is another one with their Hoka brand. Nike let other businesses get on the shelves that were in front of customers, and businesses like On worked with small running groups. They're very community based organization. They spread their brand extremely well. They're smart with their advertising, and they have a leasing model for their warehouse space, and they have automation of very highly technical shoes. They have a robot factory that you can go take a look at On the web. There are not many machines, but they spin out on a single filament that's more than a mile long, a super shut.

Travis Hoium: It's a pretty cool shoe. I would love to try. I think it's like $350, so I'm not ready to jump into that quite yet, but it's really cool.

Asit Sharma: Yes. What I'm trying to communicate here is there's some credibility behind the thesis that on could be a long term fast grower. This company is for real, and it always feels pricey. But from the Rule Breakers perspective of how to invest in stocks, sometimes those businesses are sending you a signal for a reason because they're going to keep growing, and they're going to keep bringing profits home.

Lou Whiteman: Yes. I will concede that could happen. It's a great brand. My daughter, who's a competitive runner, she calls On the brand for people who don't really run but want to look like it, which, let's be honest, is a much larger market. That's the market you want. I am just so and I know there's plenty of exceptions Ons it's right. Companies do defy expectations and keep growing like this forever. But I'm always wrong on this because I just don't believe retail companies can remain the flavor of the month forever.

Asit Sharma: Really quick here. You're right about that Lou in one sense, I mean the prevalence of On on college campuses, and something funny, Emily Flippen sent me a picture of all the buyers at the Art Basel Show in Switzerland who were wearing Ons, dressed up real spiffy with Ons blow. Your daughter has a point there.

Travis Hoium: Let's end on this one. A company that had really surprising results this week that is Chipotle, have they lost their Mojo? Is this a trick or is it a treat at the current price, Lou you can go first.

Lou Whiteman: I think this is a trick. I still like the company. I think they can figure it out. But my theory here is that fast casual, a category that didn't exist when we were growing up, this in between, between fast food and sit down, that yes, it was real, obviously, but it is now saturated. It's reached its natural demand.

Travis Hoium: The trick part here would be that they're going to still add stores in this area, they're going to themselves. [OVERLAPPING]

Lou Whiteman: There are so many good rivals. I think it's a fight for share from here, and I think it's going to weigh on everyone. I love their food. I hope they make it. I think they will make it. But as a winning investment from here, I think it's a trick.

Asit Sharma: I'm not sure on this one. I'm leaning trick. I'll probably think on it some more, maybe unwrap the candy at home. But I will say this about Chipotle. They shifted over the last several years to a more decentralized model that's less focused on quality control and lots of things that made them great before. They say they're focused on throughput, I'm not so sure that real drive to have fast throughput is still there in the business. You can see the effect out in the real world. This is anecdotal, but I do think there's something that's underlying what management says, which is it's all about the younger consumer doesn't have money. Yes, they're broke. But I think they've also taken their eye off of what made them so appealing in the first place. Part of that is the experience and presentation and just the quality of the business.

Travis Hoium: It used to be such a no brainer from a cost standpoint, too, a burrito for five or $6. Depending on how much you eat, it might be two meals. That's really changed over the last few years. When we come back, we're going to touch on some interesting news from Netflix and get to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards, and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. One of the interesting pieces of news that came out late in the week is Netflix announcing a 10 for one stock split. This is going to be effective on November 17th. Lou, these get a lot of attention. You still own the same percentage of the company, but is this a big deal or not? Because the stock was up after the news came out.

Lou Whiteman: In general, they're not big deals, but they do get a lot of attention. But this one was weird. A week after earnings. Why not just announce this with earnings? I got to give credit to our colleague, Toby Borderlon who he saw this announcement on Thursday. The first thing he said was, wait, I wonder if they're going to buy something, cause a lot of times these four digit stocks, if you want to negotiate a deal with a four digit stock, it is really hard to do. Sure enough, hours later, reports surface that Netflix might be interested in Warner Brothers Discovery. I don't know if I really love that idea. I like that idea, but either way, I think Toby might be onto something. That really makes sense as a reason to do it, and it does make this split more interesting than most.

Asit Sharma: Yeah, Lou, I actually have the same. I got my opinion on this from Toby, as well so credit to Toby Borderlon. The only comment I have is Netflix is crushing it, in my opinion, in localized content around the globe, they're allocating their capital so nicely, and they are doing well both in subscriptions, advertising. I think it's great long term company. Why at this point would they even bother looking at other businesses to acquire IP? For me, it was a little bit of a nothing burger. Actually, I've become pescatarian, so let me change that. It was a little bit of a nothing fillet.

Travis Hoium: Before we get to stocks on a radar, I do want to shout out one of the most interesting conference calls every quarter, that is Brian Armstrong at Coinbase. He said at the end of the conference call, he was distracted because he was tracking prediction markets, and then went on to say, I just wanted to add the words I "Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain staking, and Web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call". I just thought it was hilarious that he is watching the prediction markets, and playing them. We'll see what happens with that. We're now at the point in the show where we give the stocks on a radar and bring in Dan Boyd to get his thoughts. Lou, let's start with you.

Lou Whiteman: Dan, it has been a crummy year for transports. There was talk of a slowdown already heading into 2025, which tends to depress volumes. Then I don't know if you've noticed, but there's this whole tariff and trade war thing that sprung up. That's not great for trade. It's pretty noticeable when a boring old trucker, XPO popped double digits following earnings this week. XPO is now up more than 300% in the last five years despite it being a bad time for transport. I think it still has more room to run. This is a self help story. New management has come in and streamlined operations. The results suggest they have been able to take share from rivals during this downturn. The restructuring is almost done, but if transportation demand finally begins to recover in 2026, and there are some green shoots, XPO can remain in the fast lane from here.

Travis Hoium: Dan, is trucking an interest to you as an investor?

Dan Boyd: I mean, I love a radar pitch, Travis, that starts with it's been a crummy year 4. There you go. I mean, it's compelling. Trucking, it's not going anywhere. We got to get goods from one place to another.

Lou Whiteman: Dan, finding stocks from crummy markets, that's what hidden gems is all about, baby.

Travis Hoium: Asit, what is on your radar this week?

Asit Sharma: Well, you won't believe this. But trucking is also on my radar [laughs]

Dan Boyd: Complete coincidentally. Maybe we should have led the show with trucking.

Asit Sharma: Should have. But I want to keep this freight train moving. I will talk about a company called CH Robinson Worldwide. Now, this is a logistics company, so they deal with ocean freight, with rail freight, different modalities. Trucking is a big one for them. It's a fragmented industry. There is a lot of software out there to help people try to do logistics functions. But CH Robinson has built this pretty interesting platform over the years. A funny equation occurred to me as I listened to their last earnings call, a+l = mm. AI plus logistics equals more money. CH Robinson surprisingly is using AI to just have better results for its end customers and to be more efficient through logistics around the globe. Income from operations surged this quarter, 23%, and their cash that they generated also really shot up to 275 million from 167 million in the period before. The stock is up 75% over the last five years only, but year to date, the stock is up about 49%. A lot of that due to this latest earnings report, which was all about AI.

Travis Hoium: Dan, logistics, but AI infused.

Dan Boyd: This is a hard one, Travis, because it's very similar companies and very similar places with very similar stock prices. But I think CH Robinson gets the edge because it's a little bit cheaper, and it has a dip then, so we're going to go CH Robinson.

Travis Hoium: Lou Whiteman, Asit Sharma, Dan Boyd, behind the glass, and the entire Motley Fool team, I am Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Asit Sharma has positions in Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Dan Boyd has positions in Amazon and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Lou Whiteman has positions in Nike. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Coinbase Global, Ethereum, and On Holding. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Bitcoin, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Deckers Outdoor, Ethereum, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Nvidia, and On Holding. The Motley Fool recommends C.H. Robinson Worldwide and Coinbase Global and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short December 2025 $45 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.