In SpaceX's $SPCX reports, AI has been a separate segment since this year's IPO, and its numbers are huge. In the second quarter, $15.8 billion was invested in it. I tried to break it down because everyone imagines something a little different under AI spending.
JB
Jan Blecha
@janblecha
I have been actively investing in stocks for 4 years. When analyzing individual companies, I don't just look at the numbers and balance sheets, but I follow the markets in the broader context of global geopolitics.
4 Followers
Read more
Xiaomi after a 55% drop: time to get in, or are margins never coming back?
Xiaomi's profit fell 42 percent in the latest quarter and half the stock's value evaporated. But neither competitors nor management are to blame. Memory chips have roughly quadrupled in price since the start of 2025, driven by demand from data centers being built for artificial intelligence. Xiaomi…
Read more
Buyer offers $35 per share, the stock trades at $27. Decision due September 9
Hapag-Lloyd is offering $35 in cash for ZIM, and shareholders approved it with 97 percent of the votes. Yet the stock still trades about a fifth lower. What's missing is approval from the Israeli government, which holds a golden share in the company. Eight authorities will submit their positions on…
Read more Show full post
JB
Over the past year, a lot of people have experienced the same thing. A position they bought as a small addition to their portfolio has grown so much that it now decides their entire result. It's a nice problem to have, but I think it's harder to solve than the opposite one. With a losing position, I can at least tell myself the thesis and either it holds or it doesn't. With a…
Read more
Dino after a third of its value dropped: end of the Polish miracle, or the cheapest entry in five years?
Poland's Dino added two billion zlotys in revenue in the first half of the year. But the credit doesn't go to the salespeople; it goes to the bricklayers. Sales area grew by 12.4 percent, exactly as fast as revenue. Inside the stores, growth was halted by food price deflation. Poland's most…
Read more Show full post
JB
I have held Adobe $ADBE for a long time and it is by far the worst position in my portfolio. The company is interesting precisely because it is a nice test of whether cheap and value are the same thing.
The company's numbers look good. For the second fiscal quarter, Adobe reported record revenue of $6.62 billion, up 13% year-over-year. Total recurring revenue climbed to $27.1…
Read more Show full post
JB
Can fintech definitively replace traditional banks?
Try to remember the last time you happily went to a bank branch to handle routine matters. The way we think about money and work with it is changing rapidly. Traditional banks still represent stable and highly profitable pillars of the global financial system, but the rules of the game are increasingly being set by modern…
Read more
Overlooked Costco rival with more attractive valuation and room to grow
BJ's Wholesale beat estimates and raised its full-year outlook. But the fastest-growing part of the chain isn't groceries. It's gas stations, where gallon sales jumped 10.5 percent while the whole industry reported a five percent decline. It's driven by member discounts at the pump and gas above…
Read more
Construction profit +84%, tractors -9%. Deere near all-time high
The construction division lifted operating profit by 84%, the large agriculture division lost it. A large part of the surprise against analyst estimates came from tariff refunds. And for Deere's weakest earnings in five years, the market pays 36 times.
Read more
Profit down 75%, capex up 75%. Alibaba just showed what its AI bet is costing it
On Thursday, Alibaba announced that its net profit for a single quarter had plunged by three-quarters. In those same three months, it spent 206 billion crowns on data centers and slashed its share buybacks from $11.9 billion a year to $162 million a quarter. This isn't a crisis; it's a decision:…
Read more Show full post
JB
For the American retail chain Target $TGT, it's worth digging into the more detailed numbers. On the surface, yesterday's report looked like an absolute miracle and the best quarter in years. Profit exploded and the stock rallied after the results.
Read more
Pricing Power Without Discounts: Why ODFL Generates Higher Margins Than Its Peers
An American carrier that hauls a quarter less freight than it did four years ago just matched its record earnings per share. It sounds like a masterstroke of management, and in part it really is. The rest came from the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Old Dominion trades at forty times earnings, more…
Read more
Margins at a high, shares at a low, CEO back after two years. What's going on with Copart
For twenty years, Copart was considered one of the best businesses in America: a debt-free duopoly, hundreds of company-owned lots, and a gross margin above 45%. Since November 2024, the stock has nevertheless lost half its value, at a time when margins are rising and the balance sheet is the…
Read more Show full post
JB
There are companies on the market that don't stand in the spotlight like tech giants, yet consistently deliver exceptional profitability. They essentially collect a toll from the everyday functioning of the economy without needing to invent revolutionary products.
Waste Management $WM achieves an operating margin above 15% and annually generates free cash flow exceeding $2.5…
Read more
Showdown with Eli Lilly in the obesity market: manufacturing limits and pressure on net drug prices
Back in June 2024, the market paid more for the Danish company that makes the weight-loss injection pen than for any other company in Europe. Novo Nordisk stock $NVO climbed to 1,033 Danish kroner in intraday trading in Copenhagen, market value exceeded 4.6 trillion kroner, and analysts wrote about…
Read more
The Hidden Architect of the AI Boom: Why Broadcom Earns Billions Even Without Its Own GPUs
Record revenue, record operating profit, and orders for AI chips that in a single quarter were nearly three times what the company could ship. The stock responded the next day with a 12.6 percent drop, and last week one of the largest U.S. banks downgraded Broadcom. It wasn't about results, but…
Read more Show full post
JB
I hold Nu Holdings $NU in my portfolio, so I was waiting for this report more than for others. The company published its second-quarter results on Thursday after market close, and I have to say I'm happy with them. But I'd like to put it into the context of the last nine months, because one good quarter doesn't settle anything yet.
Read more
Real estate sell-off: Is ARE hiding the best dividend in the sector?
At the start of last year, it bought back 2.2 million of its own shares at an average of $96.71. Today the stock is at 48, the company has a half-billion buyback authorization, and it is buying nothing. The reason isn't in how cheap the stock is, but in what expires for the company in 2027.
Read more
Bouncing off the bottom: Can TUI pay off its debts and soar?
Hotels, ships and excursions earned TUI 1,283 million euros in the last completed year, tour operators with their own planes 200 million - and in the just-ended quarter, a loss. The stock trades at roughly five and a half times earnings and nobody cares. The answer to why lies not in the numbers…
Read more Show full post
JB
I've been following Booking Holdings $BKNG overall, so I'd like to retroactively summarize the second quarter results here.
The numbers themselves were good. 325 million room nights booked, up 5% year-over-year. Gross bookings of $51 billion, up 9%, revenue of $7.35 billion, up 8%. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 36% and free cash flow of $3.6 billion in a single quarter, almost half…