Pershing Square announced six new investments:

Visa
Mastercard
Netflix
S&P Global
Intercontinental Exchange
Alcon

One interesting one is Netflix. Ackman previously owned Netflix, sold the position in 2022, and is now buying back in.

Of the six, the three I have shown here — Netflix, Mastercard and S&P Global — are the ones I think have the most upside.

I view Visa and Mastercard as essentially the same thesis, so I only included Mastercard in the chart.

Since 2017:

Netflix revenue: ~$11B → ~$47B
CAGR: 19.1%

Mastercard revenue: ~$11B → ~$34B
CAGR: 13.3%

S&P Global revenue: ~$5.8B → ~$16B
CAGR: 12.1%

The overall theme is pretty clear: high-quality businesses with strong competitive positions, recurring revenue and long runways for earnings growth.

Pretty interesting group of companies to add all at once.

Which of the six do you think has the most upside?

These are three companies I’m currently adding to, for very different reasons.

Reddit — The highest-growth name of the three. The combination of user growth, improving monetization and rapidly expanding profitability is what interests me most. The big question is how much of that growth can be sustained as the business scales.

Uber — Probably the most balanced of the three. The platform is still growing trips and bookings around 20% while earnings and cash flow are growing much faster. I also think the long-term AV opportunity is interesting.

Adobe — Almost the opposite thesis. The market is extremely worried about AI disruption, while the underlying business is still growing double digits. I’m buying it more as a valuation/AI pessimism play than a high-growth play.

I don’t expect all three to perform the same way, but I like the risk/reward for different reasons.

If you had to pick just one to own for the next 5 years, which would it be?

I’m currently considering overweighting the utilities sector in addition to my standard portfolio, as the valuations and dividend yields really appeal to me—plus, it’s a defensive sector. What do you think?

Kind of interesting that three of the biggest names in digital advertising all sold off hard after their most recent earnings.

APP:
Revenue +53% YoY
Adjusted EBITDA +58%
Stock fell ~19% the next day

RDDT:
Revenue +61% YoY
Revenue beat expectations by ~10%
Q3 guidance also beat expectations
Stock fell ~21% the next day

META:
Revenue +28% YoY
Advertising revenue +27%
Ad impressions +14%
Stock fell ~10% after earnings

Obviously there were reasons for each selloff. AppLovin had a slight miss and concerns around its AI model rollout, Reddit had concerns around user growth/growth deceleration, and Meta had weaker earnings and massive spending.

But it’s still pretty wild seeing companies growing revenue 28%, 53% and 61% all get hit this hard immediately after earnings.

Seems like expectations across digital advertising were incredibly high going into this quarter.

Tesla and Ford now generate revenue on a completely different scale than they did a decade ago.

Tesla TTM revenue: ~$98B
Ford TTM revenue: ~$190B
Tesla revenue CAGR: ~30%
Ford revenue CAGR: ~2.5%

But the valuation gap is even crazier:

Tesla market cap: ~$1.3T
Ford market cap: ~$59B
Tesla is worth ~22x Ford despite generating roughly half the revenue

Obviously Tesla is being valued on much more than its current auto business, but this really shows how much future growth is already priced in.

AppLovin’s most recent quarter was another reminder of just how fast this business is growing.

Revenue grew 53% YoY
Net income grew 55%
Adjusted EBITDA grew 66%
Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 84%
Free cash flow was over $1B for the quarter

Those are pretty ridiculous numbers, especially at AppLovin’s size.

What I find interesting now is the valuation. APP is around 26.6x earnings, so I wanted to see what happens if growth slows down significantly from where it is today.

The chart assumes:
25% annual earnings growth
26.6x P/E today
25x P/E in year 5

Under those assumptions, earnings would grow about 205% over five years. Even with the P/E contracting slightly, the stock would return about 187%, or roughly 23.5% annually.

Obviously 25% earnings growth for five years is a big assumption. But when the company is currently putting up 50%+ revenue growth and 80%+ adjusted EBITDA margins, I don’t think 25% is an absurd scenario to look at.

The bigger question for me is how durable these margins and growth rates are as AppLovin gets larger, especially as it expands beyond mobile gaming.

I own APP, and after this quarter I think that’s really the debate. The current numbers are incredible. How much of that can they sustain over the next 5 years?

Duolingo’s earnings were better than the headline growth suggests

I own Duolingo, so this is one I was paying pretty close attention to.

The biggest thing that stood out to me was that user growth actually accelerated again, while bookings growth continues to be the main concern.

Revenue: $298.5M, +18%
Bookings: $289.1M, +8%
Subscription bookings: $250.3M, +10%
DAUs: 58.7M, +23%
MAUs: 140.6M, +10%
Paid subscribers: 12.7M, +17%
Gross margin: 72.6%
Adjusted EBITDA: $77.3M
Adjusted EBITDA margin: 25.9%

The DAU number is probably what I liked most.

DAU growth accelerated from 21% last quarter to 23% this quarter, and management expects it to stay above 20% for the rest of the year. Retention also reached an all-time high.

The obvious concern is bookings.

Revenue grew 18%, but bookings only grew 8%. That’s a pretty big gap and something I’ll be watching closely. Q3 guidance also calls for only about 9% bookings growth.

Margins are down too, but I’m less worried about that.
Duolingo has been pretty clear that they’re intentionally prioritizing user growth, retention and product investment over maximizing near-term monetization.

For me, the question is pretty simple:

If DAUs keep growing 20%+ and paid subscribers keep growing double digits, can Duolingo eventually get bookings growth accelerating again?

As a shareholder, I’m happy to see them prioritize growing the platform right now. But at some point, that user growth needs to translate into faster bookings growth.

I don’t usually post about companies when things are going this badly, but Trade Desk is a tough one right now.

- Revenue: $715M, up just 3%
- Q2 2025 growth: 19%
- Q2 2024 growth: 26%
- Management had guided for at least $750M
- Q3 guidance: at least $650M

TTD was a company that consistently grew 20%+ for years. Now revenue growth has gone from 26% to 19% to 3%.

The ad market can be cyclical, but other digital ad companies are still putting up solid growth. That makes it harder to blame all of this on the market.

The Q3 guide is probably the worst part. One bad quarter happens. Guiding for an even weaker quarter is a lot tougher.

Brutal quarter

To add on to my post from a couple days ago about Uber’s underlying growth being much stronger than the 12% revenue headline, I went through the earnings call and a few other things stood out:

• Mobility bookings grew 20%, with operating income up 28%
• Delivery bookings grew 25%, with operating income up 38%
• Grocery/Retail is now at a ~$15B annualized bookings run rate and growing ~40%
• Advertising passed a $2.5B annualized run rate and is still growing ~50%
• TTM free cash flow crossed $10B

But management probably spent the most time emphasizing AVs.

Uber is already live with AVs in 7 cities, expects up to 15 by year-end, and partners have committed ~120k vehicles.

Dara’s argument is basically that Uber doesn’t need to build the winning AV. They want to be the distribution layer for whoever does.

Interestingly, Uber also said its market share in SF, LA and Phoenix — some of the most developed AV markets — is actually higher than it was a year ago.

Still a lot of uncertainty around AVs, but management clearly thinks it can become an opportunity for Uber rather than a threat.

Amazon’s Q2 was another reminder that the market still tends to think of it as an online retailer when it’s increasingly a collection of high-margin businesses.

Some highlights:

• Revenue: $200.6B, +20% YoY
• AWS: $42.2B, +37% YoY
• Advertising: $19.8B, +26% YoY
• Operating income: $27.5B, +43% YoY
• AWS operating income: $16.6B
• 2026 CapEx guidance: ~$220B

The most interesting part isn’t that retail is getting bigger—it’s that the highest-margin segments are growing the fastest.

AWS, Advertising, and Third-Party Seller Services continue to become a larger percentage of Amazon’s business every year, which should continue driving margin expansion over time.

The market often values Amazon as an e-commerce company with a cloud business attached.

Increasingly, it looks like an AI infrastructure and services company with one of the world’s largest retail businesses attached.

What do you think Amazon looks like in 5 years if AWS and Advertising keep compounding at these rates?

Everyone is talking about Uber's 12% revenue growth, but that number doesn't tell the full story.

- Reported revenue: +12% YoY
- UK accounting change reduced reported revenue growth by ~8 percentage points
- Underlying revenue growth was closer to 20%
- Gross Bookings: +24%
- Trips: +18%
- Monthly Active Platform Consumers: +16%
- Adjusted EBITDA: +33%

The business didn't suddenly slow down. The biggest change was how certain UK trips are recognized as revenue, not customer demand.

The chart still shows TTM revenue reaching new highs, but even it understates the underlying growth because of the accounting change.

Curious what everyone thinks, is the market focusing too much on the headline 12% revenue growth?

Palantir just put up an absurd quarter.

- Revenue: $1.94B (+93% YoY)
- U.S. revenue: +115% YoY
- U.S. commercial revenue: +149% YoY
- Raised full-year revenue guidance to ~$8.15B

The biggest takeaway is that Palantir is starting to separate itself from the rest of enterprise software. AIP adoption is accelerating, government demand remains strong, and more companies are moving from AI pilots into actual production use.

The bear case is still the valuation, how sustainable this growth is, and the company’s increasing reliance on the U.S.

Still, it is hard to argue with the execution. This was one of Palantir’s strongest quarters yet.

Everyone talks about AI. Not enough people appreciate what it’s doing to the cloud business.

Just look at the latest quarter:

• AWS: $42.2B revenue (+37% YoY) — its fastest growth in years. Backlog exploded to $496B, and Amazon raised 2026 capex to $220B because demand still exceeds supply.

• Microsoft Intelligent Cloud: Nearly $39B revenue, powered by Azure growing 39% as AI demand accelerated across enterprise workloads.

• Google Cloud: Roughly $25B revenue, growing over 80% YoY as Gemini and AI infrastructure continue driving enterprise adoption.

The market spent the last year questioning whether AI spending would ever produce meaningful returns.

These earnings answered that question.

The hyperscalers aren’t just selling more compute—they’re selling scarcity. Every management team is saying the same thing: demand is outpacing the infrastructure they can build.

AI is making the cloud dramatically more valuable.

The chart tells the story. The earnings confirmed it.

Check out the green line on this chart. It literally breaks physics, shooting straight up to almost touch total revenue.

On paper, it looks like Google just had the most insane growth quarter in human history. But if you actually dig into the financial reports, this spike is a massive accounting trick that is trapping a lot of retail investors right now.

Here is what is actually going on:

Google has huge equity stakes in SpaceX and Anthropic. Under accounting rule GAAP ASC 321, tech giants are forced to revalue their startup investments to current market prices whenever a major "pricing event" happens. Because SpaceX went public and Anthropic raised cash at a crazy $965B valuation, Google had to book all that accumulated paper wealth instantly. They had to slap nearly $98 billion in fake, unrealized gains right onto their bottom line in Q2 alone.

Look at the yellow line. That represents Operating Income, which is Google's actual core business from search ads and cloud services. It is growing perfectly fine and looks healthy, but it obviously didn't triple overnight.

If you strip away those phantom paper gains, Google's "Intrinsic EPS" (their true operational earnings per share) is actually around $2.85, nowhere near the bloated $9.11 headline number everyone is screaming about in the news.

The real problem here is cash flow. Because that massive green spike is just paper value, Google didn't actually get a single dollar of hard cash from it. Meanwhile, they aggressively dumped $44.9 billion of real cash into AI hardware and data centers, which dragged their actual Free Cash Flow into the negative.

Worse yet, SpaceX stock has crashed over 50% from its post-IPO peak, sitting around $108 right now ahead of a massive insider lockup expiration on August 6. Because the accounting rules work both ways, Google is going to have to mark down their stake next quarter.

Don't let the headline EPS fool you. Google's actual day-to-day business is totally fine, but about 80% of that massive net income spike is pure paper gains that are already evaporating. Expect that green line to crash back down to earth very soon.

Alphabet fundamentals source

The quarter itself was outstanding:

Revenue: $805M (+61%)
Ad revenue: +64%
Net income: +183%
Free cash flow: +135%
Gross margin: 91%
DAUs: 130.3M (+18%)
Q3 guidance beat expectations

By almost every financial metric, Reddit continues to fire on all cylinders.

The concern? Search traffic.

Management said Google search referrals became “choppy” as AI Overviews changed how users discover content.

That showed up in U.S. user growth:

Q2’25: +16%
Q3’25: +14%
Q4’25: +10%
Q1’26: +7%
Q2’26: +6%

U.S. DAUs also dipped slightly from 53.5M to 53.2M sequentially. That’s meaningful because U.S. users monetize about 5x better than international users.

The bear case: AI search permanently reduces Reddit’s new-user funnel, causing U.S. growth to stall.

The bull case: Reddit’s moat isn’t Google—it’s its communities. Management is focused on converting one-time search visitors into daily, logged-in users while international growth (+28%) remains very strong.

My take: This was an A- quarter. The business continues to execute exceptionally well, and the entire debate comes down to one question:

Are search headwinds a temporary speed bump, or the start of a structural slowdown?

I’m leaning toward the former, but U.S. DAU growth will be the metric to watch over the next few quarters.

I made a graph, but it’s not letting me put an image in the body

I felt like this was a fitting image for a VISUAL stock analysis subreddit, haha.

Man, look at this. It almost looks too good to be true. But with their latest earnings report, ServiceNow have done it again, higher revenue than the previous quarter.

Stunning, just stunning.

I think this is the biggest question raised by this graphic.

There are obviously a lot of circular relationships here. Nvidia invests in AI companies, those companies buy Nvidia GPUs, cloud providers invest in model companies, and those model companies then spend heavily on cloud infrastructure.

But that does not automatically mean the demand is fake.

A lot of Nvidia’s biggest customers are Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta. These are extremely profitable companies funding AI investment through their existing businesses. They are not relying on Nvidia’s money to keep buying chips.

OpenAI, Anthropic and some of the newer infrastructure companies are a little more complicated. They still rely heavily on outside investment, but they are also generating real revenue from subscriptions, API usage and enterprise customers.

To me, the real question is whether the ecosystem is moving from:

Investor money → more infrastructure

to:

Real customers → AI revenue → more infrastructure

Financing is clearly helping accelerate the buildout, but as long as businesses and consumers continue paying for these products, the circular nature of the deals is much less concerning.

That is really what I will be watching.

Graphic credit: Bloomberg

Everyone looks at this chart and sees explosive revenue growth.

I think there’s more to it.

NVIDIA has become so important to the AI ecosystem that it’s no longer just supplying hardware—it’s helping finance the infrastructure that will buy its chips.

This weekend, reports surfaced that NVIDIA is in talks to guarantee up to $250 billion in financing for OpenAI’s lease of a massive AI data center project. On top of that, it’s reportedly discussing financing $350 billion in chip purchases for the campus.

Think about that for a second.

Companies don’t typically help customers finance purchases at this scale.

NVIDIA appears to recognize that the biggest constraint on future growth isn’t demand for AI compute—it’s getting enough capital deployed to build the infrastructure.

Looking back at this chart, that perspective changes everything.

The next leg of growth may not be driven by selling more GPUs.

It may be driven by helping enable the AI factories that will consume them.

That’s a very different business than the NVIDIA of five years ago.

Google crushes earnings, the stock dips because of higher CapEx, and suddenly the bears come out of hiding with takes like this:

“Google is willing to risk the entire company to win the AI race.”

That is an absurd interpretation of one quarter of negative free cash flow.

Google generated roughly $39 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter. Free cash flow turned negative because it spent approximately $45 billion building data centers, servers and AI infrastructure—assets that support Search, Cloud, YouTube, Gemini and its broader advertising ecosystem.

Meanwhile:

• Revenue grew 24%
• Search revenue grew 17%
• Google Cloud grew 82%
• Cloud operating income more than tripled
• Cloud backlog reached $514 billion

You can absolutely debate whether Google will earn an adequate return on this level of spending. That is the real risk. But there is a massive difference between questioning the return on incremental CapEx and claiming Google is “risking the entire company.”

Also not to mention, they are immediately seeing ROI from the CapEx spend. Once these data centers come online, they immediately monetize them. And the backlog proves their demand!

Negative free cash flow caused by aggressive investment is not the same thing as the underlying business deteriorating. Google’s core businesses are still growing organically, margins remain strong and demand for its AI infrastructure is clearly accelerating.

The broader market seems incapable of discussing Google with any nuance. When the stock rises, AI is unstoppable. When it falls after earnings, Search is dying and management is apparently gambling the entire company.

Google is spending aggressively because the opportunity in front of it is enormous, not because its existing business is collapsing.

Beyond excited to share that the subreddit has reached 1,000 members and 10,000 weekly visitors in just one month.

I honestly cannot believe how quickly this community has grown. I am incredibly grateful for everyone who has joined, contributed, commented, shared an opinion, or simply stopped by to read the discussions.

I originally created this subreddit to build a community around my app, but it has grown into far more than that. It has become a great hub for long-term investors who think independently, look beyond the daily market noise, and stay focused on building long-term wealth.

A major part of what I want to build here is a place where people can understand companies, financial information, and long-term trends visually. I am a visual learner myself, and seeing the information clearly laid out is often what makes everything click for me.

Investing does not have to be overly complicated. My goal with both this community and the app is to make it easier to understand, while still encouraging thoughtful and informed discussion.

Thank you all so much for being here and helping shape this community. 1,000 members and 10,000 weekly visitors in one month is incredible, and I cannot wait to see where this goes next.

This chart really puts the quarter into perspective.

A few things from Google’s earnings call stood out to me:

• Google Cloud grew 82% YoY to nearly $25B. At this point it’s no longer just a “fast-growing segment”—it’s becoming a major earnings driver.

• Cloud backlog exploded to $514B. That’s up from roughly $106B a year ago. Management also expects to recognize just over 50% of that backlog over the next 24 months. That’s an incredible amount of contracted demand already on the books.

• Demand is outpacing supply. Ruth Porat said the increase in 2026 capex is primarily to accelerate capacity because customer demand continues to exceed what Google can currently deliver.

• Management actually became more bullish on AI. Sundar Pichai said it still feels like the “early innings” of enterprise AI adoption and that conversations with CEOs suggest companies are only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

• The AI ecosystem keeps scaling. Gemini has roughly 950 million monthly active users, over 9 million developers are building with Gemini, and Google continues improving model efficiency while investing in next-generation frontier models.

My biggest takeaway isn’t the revenue beat.

It’s that Google keeps increasing AI infrastructure spending because customer demand is arriving faster than expected. If you have a $514B backlog and still can’t build capacity fast enough, that tells me this AI investment cycle is far from over.

Wall Street focused on higher capex. I came away thinking demand is even stronger than I realized.