What Stock Would Warren Buffett Buy If He Started Over In 2024?
So Sam, tell me this. Do you like watching sweaty men fight to the death in their underwear? Me too.
Every weekend I build my Saturdays around it.
Well, I think you should invest in your Saturdays. My pick for Stockapalooza 2024 is—
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. All right, we're live. Sean, did you just Go to the Black Friday sale at Tommy Bahama. What's going on?
I went into the old dad's closet today and got a little shirt because it's a special occasion and I needed to dress up.
That's your version of dressing up?
Yeah, this is up, dude.
All right, what are we doing today?
Today, this is Stockapalooza. The first ever, first annual Stockapalooza, which you may not know what that means because we made it up. Basically, me and Sam said, what if we did an episode where we pick a stock? So each of us are going to go through the stock market, we're going to each pick a stock that we have to make a case for. If you've ever seen, there's a conference called the Sown Conference, and it's kind of like a TED Talk but for stock pickers, and all the biggest names go there. Bill Ackman, goes there and Druckenmiller and whoever, Chamath, and they all, they get on stage and they make like a 20-minute case for a particular stock, why they're long or why they're bullish on something. And, uh, those guys are good and those talks are fun. We wanted to try it too and, uh, do it our way. So the MFM style of this, it's called Stockapalooza. Both me and Sam have picked a stock. We do not know what each other have picked. We're going to get 20 minutes each to present. And so if you're on the, like, just the audio podcast feed, I know I've been telling you YouTube's where it's at. Today, YouTube is for sure where it's at because we got slides. Your boys came prepared and I have data, I got charts, I have a whole bunch of stuff here. So you want to go to YouTube where you're going to actually be able to see the screen and see us sharing slides. So we got 20 minutes each to do it.
For the listeners who are on not YouTube, we have to ask them to do something when they finally go to YouTube.
That's right. That's right. If you go there and you don't hit the subscribe button, a curse is placed on your family for 7 years. And I don't want that for any of you guys. So go ahead and hit subscribe when you're there because it's super important for your family.
It's a simple pitch. We put all this work in and they don't have to pay us back with anything other than a subscribe on YouTube. It's free and easy for them and it makes just a ton of difference to us. So just go do that. All right. Now, what are you saying?
Okay. So you ready to begin? Do we need to, should we just go into it?
Uh, no rules. Okay. So we're kind of making up the rules on the fly. So, uh, we're going to do about 20 minutes. So you get 20 minutes. I'll ask questions, but I'll try not to interrupt too much. And then we'll do like, we'll just, we'll talk for about it for a few minutes afterwards. And then I'll pitch. And then the last 10 or however many minutes left, we'll, we'll each vote. But then in the YouTube comments, you guys actually have to vote who wins. But when we say win, what does win mean here? Because we're not exactly, we're going to be, you guys can like, we can play a drinking game where it's like count the disclosures. You're going to see this disclosure constantly of saying we have no idea what we're talking about. It's just something fun and cool. But how do we base win on it? Is it by showmanship? Is it by what company you think is going to have a long-term best case? But what does best mean? A 10-year?
Well, I don't know. And that's part of the fun here.
We can say, is it just entertainment? Because that's different.
Well, this is definitely entertainment, but the entertainment has to have a foundation of, you can't just be making shit up, right? We gotta have actual good insights or good analysis presented in a, in a wonderful way, right? The way that any presentation is sort of scored, you have style points and you have substance points, and we're going to take both of those factors into consideration to pick the, the ultimate winner. I don't know if you, have you ever gone and watched any of these, by the way? Like, you know, in, I remember when Chamath went on stage in 2016 and he was like, there's a, there's a multi-trillion dollar company hidden in plain sight. And he made a case for why Amazon was going to get to $3 trillion by 2025. This is back in 2015.
What is it now?
It's currently like close to $2 trillion and we got a year left. He's not far off. Uh, he then went up and did a case for Box and I bought a shit ton of Box stock and Box then just shit the bed for the next 3 years. And if you go back, all the smartest guys, Bill Ackman, he goes up there and he makes a case for some housing thing. Terrible stocks, right? I went back and I actually charted how, how these picks did. Really bad. So actually we might be just as good as them because we're also going to be terrible.
What's considered good for these guys? Like, is it like a batting average where it's like if you're .300, if you're, you know, which 30% right, you're the best?
No, I think it's just based on the returns, right? So like how much you put in versus how often you're right, right? The multiple, the multiple of those two. So, you know, they just got to get enough right where the overall returns are there. But we should say this. First slide is the most important slide, which is that this is not financial advice. This is entirely for entertainment purposes only. My lawyer has told me to say that, but it's actually true. This is only for entertainment purposes. I forbid you from actually investing in any of the things that we talk about. I am an idiot when it comes to the stock market. So if you take my financial advice, I consider you an idiot too. That's my disclaimer.
There needs to be a song where it's, what did you say? Throw your hands in the air and lose your money like you just don't care.
Exactly. Stockapalooza. That's the Stockapalooza anthem. All right, let's jump in. All right, my turn. Uh, I'm going to start my clock. Let's go. Okay. So here's the general idea. If you're buying one stock, Sam, I know you're an index fund guy, right? You like to go into the S&P 500 and spread out your risk. Uh, and you're right. If you're buying one stock, you're taking more risk than the index. And if you look back last 10 years, the index has given you about a 10.5% annual return over a 10-year period. 10.5% over 10 years. So that's— we'd have to beat that to justify taking the additional risk of picking one stock, because that's going to basically 2.7x your money in a 10-year span. So if you want to do a little better than double, almost triple your money in 10 years, just put it in the S&P 500. So we're looking for something that if we're going to take more risk, we need to get more reward. So here's what I'm, I'm thinking. I decided to peg for what do I think could get me a 5x in 10 years. Okay. 5x in 10 years, double what the, what the S&P 500 is going to do. So which stock did I pick, Sam? I'm sure you're wondering. Well, let's ask the Oracle of Omaha, a.k.a. Buff Daddy. What would Warren Buffett do? Because I'm not a great stock picker, so I wanted to go and study the great stock pickers of all time and look at what would be their criteria. What are they looking for so that I can learn from them? And I went back and I learned everything I could from Warren Buffett. And I realized that there's 5 big things that he looks for. Okay, so you ready for the 5 big ones? The first, understandability, meaning he doesn't invest in shit he doesn't understand. If it's too complicated or if it's outside of his circle of competence, he's simply not investing. And so the idea is, is the business simple enough that an idiot like me could understand it and that ideally an idiot could even run it, right? Such a simple business. So understandability. Number 2, an economic moat. So we want few competitors, we want some pricing power, and we want to make sure that this business is so defensible that it's going to be around in 50 years. Because, uh, you know, Warren is usually a buy-and-hold investor. He's, he's not really trying to trade in and out and time the market. He's looking for time in market, and he's looking to be in the, in the company for a long time. Um, and so we want an economic moat, something that's super durable. All right, number 3, competent management. So management, basically just a strong management team is always going to be a, um,, you know, big benefit for anything, for any stock. Okay. Last, last two. Margin of safety means we got to be buying this. We can't be buying this at some extreme price, even if it's a great company. If it's massively overpriced, it's too hot in the market, then we're taking too much risk. So what we want to do is buy dollar bills for 80 cents, right? That's a, that's a great margin of safety. And of course, lastly, strong financials. So high earnings, low CapEx, low debt. That's really what we look for. Okay. So This is why Warren Buffett is buying brands, not stocks. I, I love this line actually in my research. He goes, don't buy a stock, buy a company. Subtle difference, but he's looking to basically like, what would, what, don't try to buy the stock 'cause you think the price is gonna go up, buy the company 'cause you think that company's gonna endure and be successful and, and just grow steadily for a long period of time.
That's a new thing that he did. So it's not new for, I mean, he, he didn't start doing that until his 60s. So before he was buying stocks purely on the financials, he's like, I don't care what they sell. And then he like met Coke. And then he like invests in Washington Post and he is like, oh no, the brand is actually where it's at.
Exactly. He used to do the cigarette butt investing where, you know, if there's 2 puffs left on the cigarette, okay, let's do it. There's value there. But he credits Charlie Munger for showing him that actually it's better to pay, you know, a fair price for a great business than a great price for just a fair business. And so that's why he's now invested in Apple, Bank of America, American Express, Coca-Cola, GEICO. These are brands that have been around for 50 years, and that's what he's looking for. Okay, so simple Buffett formula, just to summarize: buy brands that you understand, that'll be here 50 years from now, that spit off cash at a fair price. If you do all that, you can hold forever. You've done well. So I looked and I looked, and truth be told, I actually started with one in mind and then reverse engineered this whole presentation. But, um, I have one. So Sam, Tell me this, do you like watching sweaty men fight to the death in their underwear? Me too.
Every weekend I, I build my Saturdays around it.
Well, I think you should invest in, in your Saturdays. Uh, my pick for Stockapalooza 2024 is TKO. TKO is the stock that owns, um, WWE and the UFC. And I think that TKO is a Buffett stock. And here's Buffett. Looking ready for WrestleMania. Why does it fit the criteria? So understandability, very easy to understand. It's a holding company that owns these sports franchises. It owns these leagues underneath them. Okay? That's all the business is. It does nothing else besides that. Fighting is the easiest thing to understand in the world. I don't know if you've heard this great thing that Dana White says. He goes, let's say you walk out into a sports field on a Sunday and there's a soccer game over here and a basketball game over there, and these guys are playing flag football. And you could go look in any one of those directions. You might have a favorite sport, but if somebody yells fight and there's a fight going on, everybody's head's going to turn. It is a human nature thing that we like to watch people compete and fight. And it is global everywhere in the world. People don't, you know, if you go to China, people don't know the rules of football. You come to America, people don't know the rules of cricket. But everybody understands the concept of these two guys are going to fight each other, everybody around the world. And so it is the easiest to understand product and business. The business is very simple. Fans pay to watch fights. People pay pay-per-view. Sam, how much do you think you've paid in pay-per-view per year? What are you spending on your UFC fandom?
So I would probably say I buy the 5 a year. So that's $500, I think. And then I only have an ESPN subscription. Like, dude, I don't know anything about sports. I just found out that the Super Bowl is this Sunday. I thought it was in November. I only, I pay for ESPN just for that. So that's another $60. And then I attend 1 to 3 a year, which is, uh, quite expensive. That's $1,000 a show at least.
Exactly. High LTV fans. Okay. So let's, let's go through these now. Economic moat. Um, name the competitor to the UFC. Name a competitor to WWE. They've all come and gone. Bellator was the most well-funded competitor to UFC. It was funded by Viacom. They put hundreds of millions of dollars into this thing. It failed, and they just sold it for, you know, less than what they put— what they invested into it. They sold it for $100 million. The number 2 competitor sold for $100 million. The UFC sold for $4.2 billion. So that's the gap between 1 and 2. Growing up, I loved WCW. That was the big competitor to WWE. Guess what? It folded and they took all the wrestlers. Uh, AEW, all those things. Basically, these two brands have over 95% market share in their market. This is total monopoly, more than Google has in the search market.
I have, I have a couple slides later. They dominate social media.
Right? Like the fact that these two have more market share in their market than Google has in the search market shows you the just kind of complete and utter dominance. And the fact that competitors have come and gone, people have taken their best shot and, uh, they haven't been able to touch them. So you have, you have two brands that have been around for a while and will be around for a while. Okay. Competent management. We have Ari Emanuel. If you've ever seen Entourage, the character Ari Gold is based on, on Ari Emanuel. He is an absolute power player, power broker in in the entertainment business. You have Dana White, the guy who's basically been the founder CEO of this essentially since they bought it for $2 million, bought it for $2 million, sold it for $4.2 billion. And he's still going and he's still going strong. This guy is an absolute animal. And you have Egan Durbin, who's with Silver Lake Partners. That's their kind of institutional capital behind this. And that guy's also got a pretty crazy track record with multiple billion-dollar are multi-billion dollar plays like Skype and whatnot. So super good management team. Okay. Margin of safety. So I don't know if you know how much money these make, but they basically— the combined entities generate over $1 million— oh, sorry, $1 billion a year of EBITDA. And it trades at about 14x. So it's about a $14 billion market cap company right now with $1 billion of EBITDA. Just to put this into comparison, if UFC plus WWE, two full leagues, are $14 billion, the Phoenix Suns, one NBA franchise, just sold for $5 billion. So this is basically three Phoenix Suns, and you get the entire universe of combat sport, of fighting entertainment, which is wrestling and UFC, everything except for boxing. F1, which is, to me, seems super niche. Like, F1 is it's so, so niche. Do you know how much F1 just sold for?
No idea.
$8.5 billion. And F1 has a big problem, which is no matter how popular F1 is, they have to pay out to all the teams, the franchises. So, you know, half the revenue goes to the Aston Martin team and then the Mercedes team and whoever else. So UFC doesn't have any of that. All the fighters are independent contractors. They don't even pay them salaries. There's no guaranteed salaries. Independent contractors. Who make about 15 to 17% of the overall revenue goes to the fighters. Way less than every other sport. No teams, no, no, no rev sharing with anybody.
Basically, they get to bring that up later in your presentation.
We do. I do have a risk slide which is around that. Yes. And the best part, this is all AI resistant. Like, we don't know what the hell is going to happen with AI. AI is pretty clearly the next big thing and it's going to wreck a bunch of industries, going to redo the way that insurance works and the way that cars work and the way that software is built and all this stuff. How are you going to use AI to generate, like, you can't use AI to make two guys fight in a ring. It's not going to happen. And so this is an AI-proof industry, which is nice because Warren Buffett, Buff Daddy, he's looking for things that are not going to change. And I think this is not going to change. All right, last one. It's growing nicely, so it's growing 20% a year right now. But there's also the big prize with any sports league is media rights deals. And the media rights for both of these are coming up this year and next. And so they have a chance to renegotiate and basically double what they're getting paid for by all the streaming companies, by Netflix and by Amazon and ESPN and all the companies that want— they need live sports because live sports are one of the only things that people watch concurrently and have to look at the ads because they're watching during the thing. There's no DVR, there's no binge mode, there's no streaming. And so Live sports is one of the few live sports assets that exists, and the media deals are coming up and they might be a lot bigger than people think. All right, last few slides. Consistent cash flow. So these are profitable companies. They spit off cash. Uh, you know, they're spitting off, you know, a couple hundred million bucks a year of free cash flow, and they don't need to invest it. They don't own a ton of, uh, real estate, or they don't have to buy more machines in order to grow. They just put on, they just keep putting it on shows. It's all variable. A couple of the risks that are worth mentioning. It's got a bunch of debt. They used debt to buy the franchises, these leagues. And so they still have a few billion dollars of debt. The last thing, stock performance has not been great. I think this is one where we're going to have to buck the trend. We're going to have to know what the market doesn't know right now. And we're going to have to go ahead and outperform.
What date did that drop?
So they merged in like Mid-2023.
But does that drop because Vince McMahon?
Um, not just Vince McMahon. I think basically what happened was they merged, people didn't understand the terms, they didn't understand what was going to happen, what was the plan, all that stuff. And the Vince McMahon stuff happened at the same time. And so they dropped about 15% on the merger, which is kind of crazy. Before, they were both public and they were both trading at about $8 to $10 billion in valuation. And so when they merged, they were supposed to be like a $20 billion entity, and they're currently trading at $14 right after they merged. And so that was, that's what happened last year. Lastly, a couple other risks, like you talked about fighters not getting paid enough. So their costs could go up if the fighters ever unionized and were able to collectively bargain, which they haven't done, but the NBA and NFL all has. And lastly, I don't know what's going to happen if Dana ever leaves. He is the powerhouse and the CEO who's driving this thing. He's cashed out. So he does not own the same stake that he owned before. He's not even on, if you go look at the stock filings, he's not on the cap table. So he said he has skin in the game still, but it's not listed anywhere. So I'm not sure what he has. And he might, you know, might retire one day. And I think that would be a big shock to the business, like Zuck retiring or Bezos retiring. You know, it can affect the business.
Can I add a few risks? Let me add a few risks.
Yeah, go for it.
All right. First, Dana White is insane. So he's mostly insane in a good way. But there's a lot of liability. There's a lot of liability in this industry because we're talking about grown men fighting in their underwear in front of millions of people. The, the person who likes that and runs that, as well as the person who actually does that, in order to be great at that, you have to be insane. And so what that means is there's been risks with Dana. Dana has said a lot of crazy stuff. I don't even think that— I'm not even going to say if I think it's right or wrong. That's irrelevant. What's irrelevant is that a lot of people think it's wrong. He also got in trouble for smacking his wife, uh, and that was on video. Vince McMahon's now in trouble for, uh, not even sexual harassment. I think it's beyond that. And then also like the third famous guy in the UFC right now, Sean Strickland. Again, I don't care if you like what he says or dislike what he says. There's a lot of people who dislikes what he says as it regards to like the whole trans thing and gay thing. And so inherently there's going to be all types of nutty people like that. I think it won't impact the business at all. I think it's actually going to make the business better because the people who are behind them are going to be harder behind them. And I think, but, but I do think it will scare institutional money. Um, and that's basically my downside and that lawsuit, that lawsuit's actually a pretty big lawsuit.
So I think that the only, uh, counter to that is usually the risks are what-ifs. All the things you mentioned have already happened.
They've already happened.
They've already happened. Uh, and the business is doing fine, right? So like Dana has been saying crazy stuff for 20 years. Is what— okay, I guess he'll just continue, continue as is. That's business.
That's a risk. That's a risk. That's a what-if.
I think there's some, some risk there, but, but not that much. In fact, I would actually say, um, they— the UFC has shown tremendous antifragility. So for example, if this is a business that depends on live events, it's all based on live events, and it survived COVID, it could survive anything, right? Live events had to all shut down and the UFC figured out a way. Why? Because founder CEO, he's got the willpower. The guy went to like Abu Dhabi, created a bubble and started— created something called Fight Island and hosted the fights in a bubble on Fight Island himself. You know, they found a way around the pandemic. I think they could find a way around.
But I'm an idiot. Keep in mind, I'm an idiot. I don't think that's going to impact any of the business. I think all those things are going to make their business, their revenue, their profit greater. I just wonder how will that impact like if Fidelity or whatever If one of these big companies wants to buy a huge chunk of their comp— of the stock. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that's, that's fair. Um, all right. Last couple of things. I think the global nature of this is underrated. And so when you think about where does growth come from for these types of leagues, it comes from two things. One is streaming, streaming deals, which are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the other is globalization. I don't know if you know, but the NBA does like crazy amount of work to globalize. They, you know, have like camps all throughout Africa and India. They go every summer. They broadcast games, they cut deals to broadcast games. They will play a game in Europe to try to get fans. The NFL does the same thing. They play a game in London to try to get fans there. But the UFC actually, like, inherently has that. They get champions from all over the world, but they've never gone to Africa.
They've— I think maybe one time they've done one event in China.
Basically, China, India, and Africa are still untapped, but they're proven that they have product-market fit. They have, they have, they have fans. They just haven't done the events there yet. And the biggest case for this is really that these leagues, they develop lifelong fans. You've been a fan, and I would guess that 20 years from now, you're probably still going to be a fan. Your kids might become fans. This is how sports works. It's basically generational. People watch them until they're— my grandparents will watch sports, but then they'll take their kids to the events and they'll get their kids involved and they become fans as well. The UFC is only 30 years old. That's incredibly young when it comes to a league like this.
And you know what they're better at than everyone else? Telling stories and creating characters. They are without a doubt the best at this. They kick ass compared to any of the other leagues.
So check this out. This is on Instagram. The NFL, which is the biggest, most profitable sports league in the United States, biggest, most profitable league, has 29 million followers. The UFC has 39 million followers because they are better at social media and they're better at storytelling. Which is essentially saying they're better at the way the world works now. And the NFL was better at the way the world worked 20 years ago. Same thing, here's YouTube. Here's the YouTube channel has 17.5 million subscribers for the UFC on YouTube. Baseball, which has been around for whatever, 100 years, 4.9 million subscribers. It's insane how they get dominated by this. And so you get to ride on the back of that. And the other thing is that Ari Emanuel's company, which bought these, they're just better at negotiating media rights. That's what they've been doing for their entire career for actors and television shows and whatnot. Better negotiating sponsorships. If you look at where the UFC was when they bought it versus where it is now, it was unprofitable there and growing at an okay clip. Now it's growing faster and more profitable, and it is profitable because of the work that they've done. WWE just cut a 10-year, $5 billion deal with Netflix just for one of their shows, which is kind of insane. Insane. It's going to go from USA Network to Netflix. These are now like $300 million a year streaming deals that they're picking up. And that is all, Sam. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, Stockapalooza.
That was very good. That was very good. My, um, bias is heavy here. I, I tell people if they, they ask like what my hobbies are, if I pay attention to sports, I say I pay attention to only two sports, fighting and the other one's way nerdier, track and field. I like track and field and UFC. I'm a super fan and I think there's so many super fans like me. I don't know how those super fans compared to the other sports. I, I don't know if it's as strong, but I'm a huge fan. The stock, it's a, it's a good brand. I agree. I think the risks are too high though. I think they're, I think they're— Dana is a— is— do you think if someone left, he could— you said that on your second point, it was like anyone can run it. Do you think someone can run it as good as him?
I do think you get the benefit of the kind of founder-led company when you have Dana there. Um, and you would lose that if he, if he left. So I do think it'll, it'll continue to run, but I don't think you'd get that X factor back of what Dana brings to the table and what Vince McMahon brought to the table till he was— how old is Vince McMahon? He's like 80 or something like that. The guy ran the league for like 50 years or something.
And he was a character. He was a character on the show, in the show.
And I think Dana is a character in the show.
I think Dana is the most popular UFC fighter.
Right? Well, Conor, but like, I think he could run this thing for like 30 more years.
Maybe. I think maybe. I think that running this type of league is harder than any other league. Maybe F1 actually would be really challenging because they're like, they kind of seem like divas. But the UFC, I think dealing with these types of fighters, have you ever hung out with a professional fighter or like up-and-coming professional fighters? I've been around a handful of them. They're insane. They're insane. They're, they're hard to work with. They're, they're nuts. And it would be very challenging. And also the lawsuit that they have. So to put that in perspective, you said that they pay their fighters 14%.
How much does the NFL pay their, uh, or the NFL and NBA are about 50%. Um, that's the collective bargaining. That's what they negotiated.
And right now you made a case that they're a monopoly. That's the exact case that the lawsuit is trying to make, which is that the UFC is a monopoly and that you guys, You have to allow us to do collective bargaining. And I have looked into it a little bit, but it seems like they've got a great case and that could meaningfully change the economics.
It could, it could. That is, I would put that as the number one risk to shift the economics of the business.
Dude, there's some guys, like they'll say in the post-fight interviews, they're like, I'm the champion now. 8 months ago, I was driving Uber.
Well, like to put this in perspective, there's this guy named Francis Ngannou. I think he's from Cameroon. He's like the, uh, The American dream. He came over here with nothing. I think he worked in like a mine, you know, like a blood diamond type of mine, like crazy stuff. He's now champion. Do you know how much money he was? He was a world champion in the heavyweight division of the UFC. He looked like an animal. When you think of a heavyweight champion, this is what you want this guy to look like. Beautiful story. Great guy. Do you know how much he was getting paid per fight?
I feel like it was like $500K or something.
It was about $600,000. That's how much this guy was getting paid to fight The scariest people on earth. It's insane.
It's insane.
It's the same on the planet.
Yeah, it's insane. Uh, it's, it's, it's insane. And so that needs to change, I think, for there to be true longevity for this sport. And if that changes, there's actually going to be bad stuff for the business, or at least there'll be less good. But great presentation. I, uh, I'm a fan of UFC. I think that was a great presentation.
All right. Your turn.
All right. Now it's my turn. So look, we said the disclosure already that this really— we don't know anything. So I'm actually going to not even focus too much on the numbers. I'm going to focus on the story. And I just want to put this disclosure up front. Now, before I get into this, I want to tell you a few other companies that I looked at. I looked at Rivian, I looked at 23andMe. That's a total shit show. I looked at Container Store because maybe that's the next meme stock. And of course, I looked at HubSpot because I own HubSpot and I'm trying to do a little pump and dump scheme. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm not going to talk about that. Now, I was trying to think about this and I was like, should we do like a Wolf of Wall Street pitch? You know how he's pitching penny stocks where he's like, hi, John, the reason I'm calling is I've got this new patent technology that has huge upside potential and little downside potential.
Is this something where I could maybe get in on the ground floor?
Yeah. And then I realized I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to tell you, I'm just going to base all of everything that I'm doing here on what do I think is cool and interesting. And so what do I think is cool and interesting? Look, if you want to make great money, you invest in Amazon. It's a slow, predictable— it's going to be— I think it's a great company, but that's not interesting to me. We all know that. Same with everything Elon's doing at this point. He's the man. I can't invest in Tesla. I can't invest in anything he's ever done. That's dorky. Plus, look at him. I don't want to invest in that.
Yeah, I like how you use the, uh, pre-plastic surgery, uh, Elon one there.
Nice. There's a point. I've got a point here. And then I looked at Bill Gates, and I looked at this guy. He's like, you know, Microsoft, also great company. I like the CEO. They're doing great things, but we've been there, done that. I think it all makes money, but it's a little bit boring. It's not for this podcast. So what is interesting? Look at this guy. Do you know who that is?
The LVMH guy. We're going to call him Escargot because I don't know how to pronounce his name. What's his name? Bernard. Bernard— how do you say his last name? Bernard— Arnold. Yeah, we're going to call him Escargot.
Bernard Arnold, as we call him here on NFL.
The slug-eating Suit-wearing, beautiful Frenchman. That's what we're going to call this guy. So he's great. So LVMH, what— here's what they do. This isn't my company, but this is the person I got inspired by. So they own 100+ luxury brands. Dior, Fendi, Sephora, Tiffany's, Hublot. They own luxury brands. And the reason why this guy, this guy got into the luxury business, and I found 3 quotes by him. You use Warren Buffett as your kind of like rule setter for how you're going to pitch a stock. I'm going to use this guy. He used to own a construction company and then he got super into luxury businesses. And I'm going to explain 3 quotes as to why he said that. So he said, in luxury business, you have to build on heritage. And so have you ever heard that phrase Lindy? So Lindy's a popular phrase that's floating around on the Twitter circles. It basically just means the time of which something has existed is directly correlated to the time that it will continue to exist. So something that's been around for a long time will likely be around for a long time. Something that's brand new and hasn't been around for a long time can go away easier. And so for, in order to build a luxury brand, what attracted this guy, he's like, I need something that can last, that's been around for a long time. And that means it's going to last a long time. He also said luxury goods are the only area in which it's possible to make luxury margins. Okay. High margins. So I've got to find a company that has, that can last a long time because it's been around for a long time. It has high margins. And then the final thing he says is affordable luxury. Those two words, they don't even go together. Meaning I've got to find some, a product, a company that sells a product that is expensive and exclusive. Now, what fits that bill, Sean? Originally, I thought of James Bond. James Bond, like, that's like the definition of cool guy and exclusive, and like you dream wanting to be him, but it's going to be impossible to attain. And so the product and the brand that I almost chose was something that James Bond is synonymous for. Do you know what that car is?
Uh, the Aston Martin, I believe.
That is an Aston Martin. And so Aston Martin, that kind of, that kind of that kind of got me interested. Aston Martin has a strong brand, but they have a shit multiple. They've got a decent product, but it's actually one of the least valuable car companies in the world. I believe right now it's only trading at like $2 billion. So it's not that big of a business. Now, Aston Martin, it's been around for a long time. I think it's going to continue being around for a long time. I think a lot of young men dream of having an Aston Martin. Their margin is shit. So it's been losing money. So that kind of gets it out of the way. I can't do that. And in terms of like being exclusive and expensive, it is expensive, but because not that many people want an Aston Martin compared to all the other cars, I wouldn't exactly say that it's that exclusive. So Aston Martin, not good enough. So what is good enough? So I found a company that has been around for a very long time. It's got huge margins. In fact, it's got the best margins in its industry. It's very expensive and it's so exclusive that even if you wanted to buy it, in many cases you cannot. Do I have your interest?
You have me interested. You had my attention and now you have my interest.
Okay. So you probably don't know who this person is.
Do you?
I do not. All right. This man, he's, he's no longer around, but he was born in the early 1900s. His name is Enzo. Enzo started out as a race car driver and he drove, I actually believe he might've drove for, uh, uh, Aston Martin at one point, but, uh, he also drove for Fiat, an Italian car company. And he was so into race car driving that he goes, these Fiats, they ain't cutting it for me. I have to make my own car and I'm going to make the best car. He goes, I'm basically just going to make an engine and I'm going to put wheels on it and aerodynamics be damned. That's what you say if you have a shit engine. I'm only going to focus on the engine. And he was obsessed with making an engine. And eventually other people got obsessed with his engines. And so in the first year, he made a car for himself. In the second year, he sold 2 cars. In the third year, he sold only about 8 cars and he kept slowly growing. And eventually that company became Ferrari. So Ferrari is my company and you're going to like Enzo Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari, he's a crazy person. He's sort of like Conor McGregor, that quote that we have from Conor McGregor. He goes, I'm like Vincent van Gogh. I've lost my mind at this game. Enzo Ferrari is like that. He's got this great quote where he goes, a great mania to which one must sacrifice everything without reticence, without hesitation. So he's one of these guys who has totally bought into his brand. Sort of like Dana White, where he lives and breathes this shit. He was known as being kind of a shit dad, kind of a shit husband, and all he cared about was Ferrari, making it great. So let me give you a little bit of high-level facts about Ferrari. In 2023, the revenue grew 17% to about $6.5 billion. They're very profitable. Their net profit last year was $1.3 billion. Now here's an interesting stat. An interesting stat. So Honda last year sold something like 1.2 million cars. Ferrari only sold 13,000 cars. Their market cap— now, when I started working on this, their market cap was a lot lower. They released some really big news on Friday and their market cap skyrocketed and they are now worth $72 billion. That makes them roughly the 8th or 7th largest car company in the world, and they're still growing at around 23% a year. Unfortunately, their PE ratio is crazy high. It's like 54. So 54 times earnings, which is like one of the highest. But check out this— look at the highest, uh, or the most valuable car companies in the world. Number 1, Tesla. Number 2, Toyota. And then Porsche, Mercedes. And then you go down to Ferrari, $68 billion. I think, um, on Friday it was like $75 billion. So they're more valuable than BMW, more valuable than Volkswagen, more valuable than Honda. And they only make something like 13,000 cars a year. Isn't that insane?
That's crazy.
So here's my case as to why this is an interesting company. I'm going to try and talk a little bit about the numbers, but again, that's not our specialty. So I'm going to try to stay a little bit away from it. But they are a cash cow. They are the cash cow of the industry. In fact, Ferrari makes more profit per unit. For every unit they sell, they make more profit than any other car maker in the business. Some carmakers, in fact, like GM, they actually lose money and they hope to make money through their other models or through selling parts or fixing the cars. Ferrari makes a profit on everything. Everything they make. Last year— or sorry, in 2021, they made over $100 grand per unit sold. The second place company that sold the— profited the second most was Tesla at $6,700. Isn't that insane?
Wow. So, you know, whatever, 15x more profit per car than, than the second place person.
But it gets even crazier. So in order to make the same amount of profit that Ferrari makes per car, Ford has to sell 900 cars. Okay. And you think Ford, that's just a middle of the line car. Okay. What about Mercedes? Mercedes has to sell 67. BMW also has to sell 67. They make the most profit of any other car, a luxury carmaker in the business, and then make more profit per unit sold than any other car in the, in the industry. Now here's where it gets even crazier. You don't choose Ferrari. Ferrari chooses you. So if you, so did you, do you know about this with Ferrari about their waitlist?
I did not know this.
All right, so here's how it works, and there's a lot of mystery around this. Like, they don't even openly say, like, exactly how it works. But let's say you want to buy a base Ferrari, like the cheaper models. A lot of times you can just go in and buy it. But if you want to buy the more expensive one, what they do is they have got a waitlist, and they look at the waitlist. And, and in order to buy the fancier ones, oftentimes you have to buy 3 to 4 of the base models. And so Jay Leno, you know how Jay Leno's a big car nerd?
Yep.
He openly says, he goes, I refuse to buy a Ferrari because of how elitist they are. You have to— they're not— well, he's like, obviously they're not the every guy, everyman car, but you can't even buy one if you want one. And you have to— and once you buy one, if you, if you're able to acquire one, you have to sign paperwork that says that you're not going to put any stupid parts on it. You can't repaint it certain colors. So there's this lawsuit that just ended recently where this famous celebrity painted his Ferrari pink and they sued him and he had to pay them $350,000 because he posted it on Instagram and they said that that hurt their reputation. Justin Bieber did the same thing. Justin Bieber bought a car and he did 3 or 4 things that were crazy. The first thing is he just left the car at the, at a hotel parking lot for like a few weeks or something while he traveled. Another thing that he did was I think he took like the Ferrari badge off of it. You know, some people debadge their car to be cool. And so they banned him. Justin Bieber can no longer buy a Ferrari if he wants to. Another thing is bummer for the Biebs. Bummer for the Biebs. If you, and if you, and just, this is very similar to the Rolex and luxury watch industry. So do you know that if you buy like a Rolex and they find out that you buy it at retail and you flip it for above retail, oftentimes the dealer will never sell you a Rolex again. Ferrari does the exact same thing. So if you flip a Ferrari and you don't tell them and ask for their permission, you get in trouble. And so it's a big deal and they ban you. And so they have so much demand that they literally ban people from buying a $500,000 item. Is that insane or what? I mean, that's like truly pinnacle of exclusive and elite. Like people are dying to have this product.
Nothing makes me want to get in more than a wall preventing me from getting in.
And they do a great job of creating that wall. And their brand is incredibly hard to kill. So if you, if you Google what are the most expensive cars ever sold at auction, a recent one is a, I forget, it's a GTO 250. I forget which year it is, but it was an $80 million car. 11 of the top 15 most expensive cars ever sold are Ferrari. In fact, people love Ferrari so much that there's a theme park, obviously in Dubai, just for Ferrari. They make something. So this company, what did I say? $700— $7 billion a year in revenue. Is it something like that? $6 billion. $6 billion. $500 million of that comes from merch. So a pretty substantial amount just comes from people buying Ferrari hats. And this is even crazier. So for every Ferrari sold, something like 65% is being sold to someone who already buy or who already owns a Ferrari and has bought one from a dealer. Meaning their LTV is massive. They've done a bunch of really crazy, crazy things to prevent, like, or to keep their brand strong. So they have this bounty program. So they basically have just created a bunch of snitches. So if you're in the streets and you see someone has painted their Ferrari a certain color, has put a modification on it, like a part that Ferrari doesn't approve of, if you report that to Ferrari, you get an allowance, you get a little bit of money. They pay you to report that people are breaking the rules. They have a new bounty system. It's insane. Now, uh, I talked about the Lindy effect, so here's the exact definition: the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like technology or an idea is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period of something has survived to exist, or, uh, the longer something has existed, the longer its remaining life expectancy. So Ferrari has been around— it's, it's going to be, uh, I believe they were launched in the '50s or so. They're going to be around, I think, for an extended period of time. I think Ferrari's a very hard brand to kill. If you put Ferrari on a Rolex, someone's gonna pay extra to buy that Rolex. If you put Ferrari on anything, someone's gonna wanna pay more money to have that item. And that's not the same case with a Honda. It's often, I mean, there's like a handful of car companies that are able to pull that off, or there's a handful of any type of companies.
I just went to the website and put a $600 baseball cap into my cart, but I need to like have a cooldown period before I click buy, just because I think, I don't know if you're selling me the stock, but you're definitely selling me some Ferrari merch today.
Was the hat really $600?
There's, yeah, it's a $600 hat. The cheapest hat is like $180.
That's insane. That's absolutely insane. Like I went to a kid's, uh, I went to a friend's house the other day and their kid had like a Ferrari coat that he was wearing cuz he like love, he like, you know, and he has like Ferrari toys and they, they sell so much of this stuff. It's insane. Is it, was it really a $600 hat? What makes it so good? Does it, does it, does the hat drive?
The entire story you just told me made it so good.
It's an insane brand. And have you ever been in a Ferrari?
I have been in a Ferrari. Yes.
It's a wonderful car. I've been in a Ferrari. They're definitely cool. My takeaway is that they're a fucking pain in the ass to own. Everyone stares at you. So they've, that Ferrari red was actually formerly the It was the national racing color of Italy and Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari was like, oh, we'll just use that. And then eventually they got so popular, they patented or they trademarked that red. So that red is only for Ferrari. But if you're in one of those cars, you get stared at like crazy, which is one of the reasons why people love driving it. I hated driving it for that reason. And they're loud and they are kind of rough. They're fucking race cars. It's a race car. And so if you like driving Ferrari, you're going to love it. My opinion was this is a pain in the ass to drive. But I get it. I get the appeal. Ferrari is badass, but their PE ratio is insane. So I don't know how much value is left to be had here, but they are growing consistently. So if you look at their last, I think they went public in 2018, it's grown on average roughly 30% a year, their stock price. So it's like been a pretty consistent growth. They, Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari, when he died, he sold a lot of the business to Fiat and then Fiat spun it off and they built a, they took it public on its own. And so it's been very consistent since it's gone public. You had a great return recently. They signed a deal with Lewis Hamilton, who's like the LeBron James of like F1 racing. And their price skyrocketed because also their earnings, they're like, dude, we're killing it. So they make something like, I believe their EBITDA margin is 35%. So no car company has that much, that big of a margin. I mean, that's like ridiculous.
You got to do the smart rich guy thing, which is you say Ferrari is not a car company. It is a luxury brand and it's priced incorrectly. They're pricing it like a car company, but it's actually a luxury brand, right? That's what all the stock pickers do. They're like Tesla. It's not a car company.
That was my argument. And then I looked at what the P/E ratios of some of the other luxury brands were.
You need to be like, it's actually a It's actually an AI chip company, I guess, based on this P/E multiple.
Well, my original point, I was like, this is a luxury company. And then I looked at what some of the numbers were for some of the other luxury companies. I was like, well, this is bad timing. If we would have done this like 2 or 3 weeks ago, it would have made a little bit more sense. But they just had, they just released earnings on Friday and so they crushed it. But there is a bunch of downsides. So P/E ratio is insane. It's at an all-time high right now. I think it's, what did I say? 55 times earnings. That's insane. That's a lot. Another question. When you were a kid, did you have like car posters on your wall? Like, or like a folder, like a binder that had a car on it?
I did not. I had a life-size poster of The Rock.
Okay. Well, you didn't do the bro move and prove my point, but many young kids when we were young did. You go to that book fair and you buy like a Ferrari eraser or you'd buy like a Porsche Lamborghini folder or whatever. We cared about that when we were kids. And so it was very aspirational. Do you know that young people nowadays are barely even getting driver's licenses?
Yeah, it's like a loser move, right?
It's like a loser move to have a driver's license. And so oftentimes I wonder, are young kids even going to care about this? And then finally, EU regulations. So Ferrari's based in Europe. The EU is cracking down. So for a lot of cars, they have to be hybrid. I think the ruling is by like 2030, I think all cars have to be have some type of hybrid component. I don't think it's going to kill Ferrari because they're already making hybrids and a large percentage of their cars, something like 25%, are already hybrids. So I think they're going to be fine, but that is a risk. Now, beyond the stock, I just want to talk about a couple lessons here. Ferrari is an amazing company to aspire to build, at least if you wanted to build like a luxury product, a great company. The first thing, they're fucking missionaries. They're not mercenaries. A lot of times we talk about, we use that word arbitrage. If Enzo Ferrari heard that word arbitrage, he would take off his leather glove and smack you in the face. He would ask you about passion. That's what he cares about. And it's paid off. He's built a brand that, you know, is one of the most valuable brands known by billions of people in the world that they aspire to attain. And it's all about him being a missionary. He's truly bought in. The people who work there are bought in. They built a brand that's aspirational. Now, in order to do that, in order to build one of those brands, you have to do something really hard, something you and I struggle with, something that I think every entrepreneur struggles with, which is you have to say no to so many great opportunities. And that's really hard. So someone could have said, hey, Enzo, what about like a $50,000 car that like everyone likes? Like we would just, we'd crush it. Like the average man would buy this and they all want it. We'd kill it. He said, uh-uh. How do they say no in Italy? He would say no. I don't know how they say it, but I bet it's just no. That's what he would say. And they didn't, and they've refused to do that, but that's been very hard for them to do, I'd imagine, because there's so much opportunity. But that's just a real lesson for a builder. However, the last lesson is if you can say no for that long and you do build a really good luxury brand, it can pay off so much. I had no idea getting into this. I would have thought that Ferrari was worth like $10 billion. I didn't realize it was the 7th largest car company in the world, only selling 10,000, 13,000 units. That's insane compared to another company like Honda or Toyota that's selling a million plus units. So anyway, that's my pitch for Ferrari.
Good job. Give it, let me just give it up. Let's give it up. Um, that's kind of insane. And by the way, I feel like your point about Italians, not just Enzo not doing arbitrage. Have you ever met an Italian running an arbitrage? Like, is there an Italian affiliate marketer on Earth? I don't think I've ever seen one. It just seems so beneath them, as it should be. They are the luxury brand of ethnicities also.
Yeah, dude, you want like an old lady in the back. So I grew up in an all-Italian neighborhood, by the way. I grew up in St. Louis. For some reason, St. Louis has a large amount of Italians. I was the only non-Italian at my grade school. We used to learn Italian in grade school. They used to teach it to us. We have to go to mass 3 days a week. And one of those days was in Italian.
But you didn't know the Italian word for no?
I wasn't a good student, but I could tell you the Our Father in Italian. And the best part was like everyone would have their old grandma like in the back of the house, like rolling up these raviolis.
I want to hear you speak some Italian.
Let's go. Don't put me on the spot, bro.
You just said I could tell you the Our Father in Italian. Okay. Tell me.
No, I don't even want to say it. I'm so bad, dude. I got a thick tongue, just like our boy Bernard. I got a tongue like a slug. It's a thick tongue. I can't roll my Rs. It's disgusting.
The back is just bad.
My first girlfriend in grade school, her name was Filomena. Like, I was all in. I was all in on the Italians.
I feel like American Italian people, like Italian people who live in America, are just— they give it the wrong rep, really. It's sort of like Tex-Mex or whatever. It's like too Americanized. Italian Italians, oh man, it's just—
Yeah, I want like a really— I want a skinny Italian with like wearing skinny tight jeans, smoking a cig constantly, drinking espresso with a buzz cut. I don't want like these gabagool, like, you know what I mean?
That's not the type of Italian. I don't want Tony Soprano, right? Like, yeah, like the Italian grandmother who's still like, you know, smokes the cigarettes.
And a lot of great, uh, car companies are Italian. You know, Lamborghini is also Italian, uh, and I believe the story— by the way, do you know the story of Lamborghini? He invented the Lamborghini because Ferrari wouldn't sell him a car.
Oh, revenge.
And he was making tractors. Lamborghini was a tractor maker and Ferrari wouldn't sell him a car, so he made his own. And so they've been assholes from day one, and that's why it's such a great brand.
You definitely sold me on how cool Ferrari is as a business. Um, I don't think you sold me on the stock just because it's like at an all-time high and $70 billion.
It's at an all-time high.
It also sounds like they're not trying to grow fast, right? That's like part of the shtick is like sell a limited number of these at insane margins. And so I think that's, uh, you know, maybe, maybe one of the downsides, but very cool story. And also more like MFN, more, more of, uh, inspiring for how to build a business than, uh, but hold on, great stock.
Don't discount, don't discount me. Listen, I actually don't know how stock, stocks works. You know, I'm a dummy. How does a stock work? I don't know.
Let's start, let's go back.
But if it's growing 20% a year and if we think that it could continue doing that—
but you're saying the stock price is growing 20% a year, not the revenue.
Revenue, revenue is growing 20% a year. If revenue is consistent, doesn't like that, that other shit follow?
It does, it does, it does. But you didn't talk about that. So, um, you know, it was on the slide.
I can only go based on what you told us, right? The business is growing. It's good.
Just, you started the pitch with "For my stock analysis, we're not going to be talking about numbers," which was just a masterful—
Isn't that what you said Warren Buffett said? Brands or some bullshit?
Yeah, something like that. Something like that. I do think that that's the best way, right? If you didn't prepare for your speech in school, you're just like, "You know what?" You rip up the— "I'm not going to read off those prepared notes. I'm just going to speak from the heart." It's like you're just ripping a blank piece of paper up and throwing it away.
Dude, I did prepare. I prepared a long time for this. I just, I just really took, uh, uh, Buff Daddy's words to heart and I looked at the brand.
Fair enough. Okay.
It is kind of an interesting dichotomy here. We did just pitch the two exact opposite things, right?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The highest of high fashion and luxury and, uh, sort of the, uh, the lowest form of human behavior, getting in your underwear and fighting in front of other people for their entertainment. We give you the full spectrum here on MFM, right?
We, we give you everything. So let me, let me think about it. Okay, so if I had to put my own money, if I had to put $100,000, let's say, into either Ferrari or TKO, I think I would go Ferrari. I think I would go Ferrari, but I think TKO has significantly higher upside. Significantly, right? Right. So that's right.
So I don't know how you want to gauge the way I had to put my money in either, I would put it in neither, is my takeaway from Stockapalooza.
Oh, I emphasis on the if I had to, which I don't have to, which I will not. Yeah, which I'm not in that position.
And by the way, I don't know if it showed, but I definitely worked backwards from— I looked at the stock and I was like, I actually, what happened was I saw that they merged and I was like, dude, these companies have no competitors. This is a true monopoly. And in tech, people, you know, from the Peter Thiel school of thought really value a monopoly. And it's so hard to build a monopoly. Like, there are so few businesses that are truly a monopoly. We talked about even DuckDuckGo eating into Google's market share last time. But, you know, Google, Facebook, these are one of the few monopolies that exist. And I was like, huh, it's funny that like this TKO thing is actually a monopoly, but I don't know how good of a business it is. I don't know how— I don't know if that's going to grow, but If you're Warren Buffett and you're looking for something with a sustainable competitive advantage, that would be it. And so that's where I started. And, and to be truthful, I didn't even consider any other stocks. I started with that and then I texted Sam, hey, we should do a stock picking episode because I already have one picked.
All right, I'll give you my vote. There we have it. Unanimous decision.
You win. Oh, I got the vote too. Oh, amazing. Well guys, I don't know if I'm supposed to do an acceptance speech now or if I should just say, I'm not surprised, but that's where I stand as far as Stockapalooza. I hope you guys liked it. Go to the YouTube comments and vote in the comments who won, Sam or Sean. Put it in the comments. We will tally them up and name the official winner after we do that.
And if you got any joy from this, or if there was a time that you were pulling your hair out and being like, these fucking idiots don't know anything about this stuff, whatever that spectrum is, if you got a little emotion, click Click subscribe, uh, and, uh, we'll owe you one. Um, all right. That's a pod. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.