[SPEAKER_06]: This is Invest Talk, from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time.
[SPEAKER_06]: Here's your host, Luke Guerrero.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome to the Friday at May 29th, 2026 edition of Invest Talk.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Luke Guerrero and I'll be with you all these next 55 minutes or so as we around out the week, talk about the stories that matter and of course answer your finance and investment questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: To that end, before we talk about the market today and dive into our show topics, let's tackle this color question now.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hello, guys.
[SPEAKER_07]: I own a tutorial peri symbol TPC and I'm
[SPEAKER_07]: all of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm up 130%.
[SPEAKER_07]: What do you guys think?
[SPEAKER_07]: Does this stack have any more room to go up?
[SPEAKER_07]: Or is this the time for me to set it all and move on to something else?
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: To the perennial corporation to your T, PC is the Alas Angels based heavy civil and building construction company.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now they operate under three different segments, one they're civil, so I think public works infrastructure, transit bridges, and they got their buildings, so hospitality, health care government, and then they're specially contracts, that's their mechanical and electrical businesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are one of the largest US general contractors when you judge by backlog.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the company is $3.8 billion in market cap.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's got a little bit of debt, not much, $445 million dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: But revenue growth of the past five years has been pretty flat overall.
[SPEAKER_03]: Coming out of the pandemic, things started to pick back up again.
[SPEAKER_03]: They lost money in 2223 and 24.
[SPEAKER_03]: But now that margin sitting at around a projected 2.9% this year and return on equity, has grown from 6.8 to a projected 12 in 2026.
[SPEAKER_03]: Most recently, they reported earnings on May 6th where they missed on revenue but beat on earnings per share.
[SPEAKER_03]: They also had a record Q1 operating cash flow compared to a year ago as 146.9 million versus just 22.9 one year ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: Gappy PS was slightly below one year ago however.
[SPEAKER_03]: One benefit I already mentioned, huge backlog, 19.8 billion.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a broad based growth across all three segments.
[SPEAKER_03]: They guided a little bit higher than what analysts expected, not just a little bit, 30% higher than what analysts expected.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what's been going on?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, over the past couple months, over the past three months, they're down about 5.15% year-to-date.
[SPEAKER_03]: But since year ago, they're up 92.28.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this was after the stock dropped 11% despite the adjusted earnings per share beats.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, there are some positive negatives.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's that huge backlog.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's the record cash flow there, generally executing well.
[SPEAKER_03]: But revenue missing on Q1 and management explicitly flagged in contingency for project delays and slower ramp ups that's certainly not good looking forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: out of all the peer play infrastructure companies in the market.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this is probably one of the more compelling ones.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've had a $533 million balance sheet transformation in just 12 months.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that guide of 31% above analyst consensus in a 2027 outlook described by management as significantly higher.
[SPEAKER_03]: means that things could start to turn around here on the back of this revenue miss.
[SPEAKER_03]: Overall, it seems to me to be a pretty solid company trading at a bit of a premium to where it has been trading recently.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think some of the lack of top line growth in revenue miss is a little bit of a reason to stay out of it for now, especially given the recent runup.
[SPEAKER_03]: Next earnings will be at the end of July, and he's that is more of a check point to see whether or not this higher margin ramp up of some of their projects is on schedule and whether or not I would want to answer a position that is a TPC tutor for any corporation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for the call.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we had a great show yesterday looking into this story about SpaceX, OpenAI, and the IPO boom, answered a great listener question on Roth IRA strategy that was submitted via our radio station on AM1220 in the Bay Area.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you have any miss it, go check it out and remember the best way to never miss an episode of Invest Talk is to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[SPEAKER_03]: On to today, well, we will be discussing deep seeks permanent price cut, and what AI commoditization means for tech investors, because deep seek, while they made a permanent 75% discount on its flagship AI model, a move that, in a way, accelerates the commoditization of AI and starts to put pressure on the entire AI infrastructure investment thesis.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, examine what falling AM model prices means for the economy, means your company's building AI, buying AI and investing in the picks and shovels of the AI boot.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll also touch on how a lot of investors are focused on investment fees, but they're losing the war against taxes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another story about how the CEO of Chevron is warning oil prices will jump over the summer, supplies or dwindling, and should we have time at the end of the show and update
[SPEAKER_03]: We also have some voice bank calls ready to play, including one on Eli, Lili, and Company Ticker, L-L-L-Y, another international business machine corporation ticker IBM, as well some questions that came in from the comment section of the Invest Talk YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully, we hear from some of you live throughout the show.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're headed to New Quick Break.
[SPEAKER_03]: Please remember, you can call anytime and leave your questions on the Invest Talk of Voice Bank.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're listening via our live stream or possibly on a M1220 in the Bay Area, give me a call now at 80-89 chart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk about today's market activity.
[SPEAKER_06]: Guerrero is here, and he's ready with answers to your financial investment questions.
[SPEAKER_06]: Call in Vestock, 888-99, chart.
[SPEAKER_03]: US stocks finished mixed overall today, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq set fresh record closes, the S&P log its 9th consecutive weekly game the longest winning streak since 2023.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Dow added 7 tenths of a percent, the S&P rose to tenth the Nasdaq, roughly flat and the Russell 2000 dipped 60 basis points.
[SPEAKER_03]: Breath was only modestly, negative, tech and financials, the only sectors in the green.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, earnings really drove this session.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dell was the headliner, surging on below-out Q1 results in guidance powered by AI-demand acceleration, NetApp, Octo, or other big post-earnings gainers in tech while software continued to rally.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some eyes came off some early strength on the retail side gap in American Eagle, both disappointed, though the weakness appeared more merchandising specific than macro-driven, while Costco declined despite largely positive takeaways.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are of course some valuation and margin scrutiny concerns.
[SPEAKER_03]: Microsoft led the mag seven while the rest were mostly weaker.
[SPEAKER_03]: The U.S. Iran deal narrative continue to provide a bit of a tailwind the president saying he's making a final determination on a framework agreement and reiterated his widely discussed red lines.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oil reflected the elevated deal expectations, crude oil falling 2.4% on the day, roughly 10% for the week.
[SPEAKER_03]: That oil pull back combined with firmer treasuries and yields down about 2 basis points of the short end, offered a bit of a reprieve from the tightening of financial conditions that really have been a bit of an overhang for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fed's peak was a bit more balanced today following the hawkish tone of recent days.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bowman said she supports retaining Lee Devish tilting the policy statement, but noted an employment is showing signs of fragility.
[SPEAKER_03]: Daily said the Fed should restore price stability, but be wary of harming the economy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Chicago PMI'd be expectations and jumped to its highest level since January 2022.
[SPEAKER_03]: Diving into sectors, large-cap banks, investment banks, PE, credit cards, payments, airlines, life sciences all out performed on the day while staples, retailers, energy, farm-up rails, and hospitals were some of the laggards.
[SPEAKER_03]: Elsewhere, gold gained 1.3% silver and Bitcoin roughly flat and the dollar was essentially unchanged.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looking ahead to next week, Big Macro Week with ISM Manufacturing on Monday.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's expected to improve to 55.3.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're even getting Joltz and ISM Services midweek.
[SPEAKER_03]: The beige book on Wednesday in the Employment Report closes out the week on Friday.
[SPEAKER_03]: While street looking for about 95,000 jobs in May, following April's 115,000.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do we take a question from a hub spot?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because from time to time, we receive questions on our web's form.
[SPEAKER_03]: over on investor.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: So here's one that just came in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is on ticker VW, ILX.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now VWLX is the Vanguard Poser dramatic effect.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vanguard did a national growth fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: Admiral shares, it says, I'm an aggressive investor.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm thinking about buying Vanguard did a national growth fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: Admiral shares, what do you think?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, VW-I-L-X is an actively managed fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: What they're trying to do is they're trying to provide exposure to the global XUS growth segment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It holds stocks of any market cap.
[SPEAKER_03]: In terms of size, it's a $46 billion fund, most of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Really concentrated in large cap stocks, about 92.91% while 4.14% is in midcap stocks, I'm sorry, yeah, midcap stocks.
[SPEAKER_03]: And not much exposure to speak of within the small cap, universe only about 68 basis points.
[SPEAKER_03]: In terms of its international exposure, revenue coming from all over the world, Asia Pacific making up 41% of the revenue, 36% from the Americas, 18.62% from Europe.
[SPEAKER_03]: Over the past 10 years, it's done pretty well up 11.29% versus the index.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has is the MSCI Acquiet, all country world index X, U.S.,
[SPEAKER_03]: But it can be a bit volatile because of the international exposure.
[SPEAKER_03]: There tend to be higher growth concentrated.
[SPEAKER_03]: Physicians, not really typical of what you'd expect from a Vanguard fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, 8.69% of this fund is Taiwan's semi-conductor.
[SPEAKER_03]: Top 10% make up 32.56%.
[SPEAKER_03]: percent of the fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: Last bear market drawdown was about 57%.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you do get some violent downward moves if the market starts to fall off.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, this is not a conservative international fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is an aggressive bet outside the US market.
[SPEAKER_03]: And frankly, for a fund that's been around for, oh, how long goes?
[SPEAKER_03]: 40 years?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not right.
[SPEAKER_03]: 2008.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's in the
[SPEAKER_03]: but it's expense ratio of 26 basis points for an active fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's pretty cheap.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the bear case here is the five-year return is essentially flat.
[SPEAKER_03]: They've underperformed their index on the month to date, one month, quarter to date, three month, year to date, one year, three-year, five-year time frames, and just barely outperformed sense inception.
[SPEAKER_03]: You all have to understand the currency risk is going to add volatility on top of the stock selection.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the bottom line is I would say VW dialects.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a high quality fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is run by solid managers.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are sub-advisors to Vanguard at a pretty low cost on paper.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is one of the best international growth options available, but it's not for everyone.
[SPEAKER_03]: The bail gulford style, those of the people that manage it, means that they have extreme volatility and multi-year stretches of
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you can stomach 30 plus percent drawdowns at points, it's a decent option for you as an aggressive investor.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you need consistency or can't handle the wild cert swings, you should not be in this fund.
[SPEAKER_03]: For retirement counts where you won't panic selling a drawdown, I think it makes a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: And attack taxable account.
[SPEAKER_03]: The capital gains distributions, they can be a bit of a drag.
[SPEAKER_03]: So for you, an aggressive guy, or gal,
[SPEAKER_03]: that might make sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, VW-I-L-X.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for watching.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're headed into break.
[SPEAKER_03]: Still to come, my main focus point on deep sea experimented price cut.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as always, more answers to your finance and investment questions, you're on Invest on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Luke Guerrero is here and ready to tackle your questions.
[SPEAKER_06]: Every investor is working to build a secure financial future.
[SPEAKER_06]: The more you learn about how the market works, the better your chances for success.
[SPEAKER_06]: In Vestark, 888-99 chart.
[SPEAKER_06]: Deepseek!
[SPEAKER_03]: The Chinese AI started the shock to the industry back in January of 2025 just made a permanent 75% price cut on its flagship V4 Pro model and the promotion was originally scheduled to expire on May 30th but instead they locked it in as the new permanent price.
[SPEAKER_03]: 3API now costs 0.435 dollars per million input tokens and 87 cents per million output tokens.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a 1.6 trillion parameter reasoning model front to your grade capability priced at 20 to 35 times cheaper than Western competitors.
[SPEAKER_03]: GPD-5.5 charges to 50 input and 10 output per million tokens.
[SPEAKER_03]: Claude.
[SPEAKER_03]: 4.7 charges 5 input and 25 output, even Google's cost optimized Gemini.
[SPEAKER_03]: 3.5 flash is at 15 cents and 60 respectively.
[SPEAKER_03]: DeepSeek is below all of them, and the gap is widest against the premium reasoning models that enterprise customers rely on for those demanding workloads.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, this matters for every investor who wants tech stocks.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're in AI focused ETFs or if you own companies spending billions on AI infrastructure, when the core product of an industry, in this case, model inference, gets commoditized to this rapidly, it forces a rethinking of where the value accrues.
[SPEAKER_03]: The curve, for AI model pricing, has always pointed towards commoditization.
[SPEAKER_03]: It followed the same arc that flatten cloud storage, CPU cycles, and bandwidth, but the speed
[SPEAKER_03]: Anthropics annualized revenue search from 9 billion to 30 billion between the end of 2025 and early April 2026.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was driven largely by Enterprise Adoption of Cloud Code.
[SPEAKER_03]: Deepseeks pricing pressure threatens the revenue-protokin economics that support that trajectory.
[SPEAKER_03]: If enterprise customers begin routing lower complexity tasks to deepseek for, while reserve and clawed or GPT-5 for high-stakes reasoning, the frontier lapse token volume could hold, while revenue-protokin declines.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a margin compression story, not a revenue collapse, but it still matters for valuations.
[SPEAKER_03]: Open AI's pivot towards consumer platform features, personal finance tools, advertising, agent marketplaces, this reflects a recognition that API token revenue alone may not sustain its $852 billion valuation.
[SPEAKER_03]: When your core product is being undercut by a factor of 20 and 35 times, you need to find revenue streams that aren't priced per token.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anthropics $1.5 billion joint venture with Goldman and Blackstone to deploy AI inside private equity portfolio companies.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's another response, monetizing through services and implementation rather than law raw inference pricing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the company spending billions on AI infrastructure, Microsoft meta Amazon Google.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bit of a nuanced impact on one hand cheaper inference would accelerate adoption by making an eye affordable for use cases that previously did not pencil out.
[SPEAKER_03]: When the cost per unit drops dramatically, total consumption can increase even more dramatically.
[SPEAKER_03]: Software demand has historically been elastic as the price per unit of performance falls, demand rises enough to offset the price decline.
[SPEAKER_03]: Business spending on software jumped 11% in Q4 last year, the fastest in nearly three years, and that supports the thesis.
[SPEAKER_03]: On the other hand, if a Chinese lab running on Huawei ascent chips, not Nvidia GPUs can deliver front to your performance at a fraction of the cost, starts to raise questions about whether hundreds of billions in GPU-centric infrastructure spending, will actually generate the return's investors are projecting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Deepseek specifically warned that prices could drop further once Huawei ascended 950 nodes rolls out at scale in the second half of the year.
[SPEAKER_03]: That implication, the cost floor hasn't been found yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: The companies that actually benefit most from cheaper AM models, but the ones using AI, not building it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Enterprise software companies can integrate AI capabilities at lower cost, improving their margins.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every company with customer service, legal, coding data analysis.
[SPEAKER_03]: and users consumer and small businesses gain access to frontier quality AI at prices that were unimaginable just two years ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: The losers are the company's business models depend on charging premium prices for inference.
[SPEAKER_03]: If DPC can deliver comparable quality at 3% of the price, the mode for open AI andthropic and Google shifts from model capability to ecosystem lock and integration with enterprise workflows data security guarantees regulatory compliance.
[SPEAKER_03]: For investors in AI focused ETFs or individual text stocks, the commoditization risk breaks down by layer.
[SPEAKER_03]: The infrastructure layer, Nvidia AMD, memory chips, data center operators, they're most insulated because every model cheap or expensive still needs compute, but the Huawei angle, that introduces someone certainly about whether Nvidia's GPU monopoly on AI training, is going to persist.
[SPEAKER_03]: The model layer, open AI, andthropy Google, that faces more direct pricing pressures.
[SPEAKER_03]: The historical parallel here, it's cloud computing.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the early days, companies paid premium prices for compute.
[SPEAKER_03]: AWS gradually drove prices down, which didn't kill the cloud industry, just made it vastly larger.
[SPEAKER_03]: The companies that thrived weren't the one selling rock compute at the highest price.
[SPEAKER_03]: They were the ones that built differentiated services on top of cheap compute.
[SPEAKER_03]: The same dynamic is likely playing out in AI.
[SPEAKER_03]: The winners won't beat the cheapest model providers.
[SPEAKER_03]: They'll beat the companies that build the most valuable workflows, integrations, and applications on top of the inference.
[SPEAKER_03]: They'll purchase zero-marginal cost.
[SPEAKER_03]: The bottom line, Deepseek's permanent price cut is a signal, not a crisis.
[SPEAKER_03]: It tells you that AI inference is commoditizing faster than the market expected.
[SPEAKER_03]: It tells you to favor companies that use AI over companies that sell AI by the token.
[SPEAKER_03]: It tells you that the value is migrating for the model, to the application.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it tells you that AI investment thesis needs to evolve from who builds the best model or who captures the most value from the cheap abundant intelligence.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the investment framework for the next phase of the cycle.
[SPEAKER_03]: On the next-in-vest talk, we'll look into this story how to invest in volatile markets without panic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Investors are being told to stay combat market today or reacting to more than earnings and interest rates, supply chains, tariffs, geopolitical conflicts, and shipping disruptions are now directly impacting portfolios.
[SPEAKER_03]: So how do you invest without making emotional decisions?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's her Monday, but for now, I'm Luke Guerrero ready to take your calls at 888-99 chart.
[SPEAKER_04]: at KPP Financial.
[SPEAKER_04]: Accountability means more than advice.
[SPEAKER_04]: It means we invest alongside you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Through our parallel investing approach, when we recommend an investment for clients, one or more KPP principles invest their own capital at the same time.
[SPEAKER_04]: same day, same price, same percentage.
[SPEAKER_04]: If your portfolio moves, ours does too.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is alignment, that is transparency.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is the KPP difference.
[SPEAKER_04]: Visit investtalk.com to get your free portfolio review.
[SPEAKER_06]: Some things that make KPP financial special, one of them is parallel investing.
[SPEAKER_06]: This means they invest right alongside their clients.
[SPEAKER_06]: Here's how it works.
[SPEAKER_06]: When KPP financial makes a trade for their clients, just in client makes the same trade for himself and KPP.
[SPEAKER_06]: On the same day, at the same price, and same percentage.
[SPEAKER_06]: No front running, no special treatment.
[SPEAKER_06]: Learn more about Parallel Investing at Investalk.com.
[SPEAKER_08]: How can I help you?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_08]: I have your standard portfolio where I try to do it balance with the sectors and the industries and such.
[SPEAKER_08]: think, hey, this is material, but nothing seems to agree with that.
[SPEAKER_08]: Why isn't that considered a material item, and should I then move it down to the category of other alternatives of the one that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a great question.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the reason why GLDM, which is the spider-gold mini-share's
[SPEAKER_03]: ETF is not considered materials is because it does not invest in material companies it is a physically backed gold ETF that tracks the spot price of gold using gold bars that are held in London vaults.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, if you're trying to get exposure to gold, it's...
[SPEAKER_03]: cheap way to do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's only about 10 basis points, but understand, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is giving you direct gold exposure.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were talking about a materials company, something that might fall into that category is a minor that has gold exposure.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're still exposed to the same risks, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's going to be different profiles because where a gold minor can pair back,
[SPEAKER_03]: overhead win gold prices start to fall and then ramp back up when gold prices rise.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you essentially end up with in some ways a leverage bet on gold.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just giving you pure exposure to gold as a price.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you're going to categorize this, this is going to give you commodity exposure rather than a material's company exposure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Great question.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks to the commission.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now in Friday, so we generally make time to fit in a quick rundown of key benchmark numbers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I mean, here you with that list right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: The two-year treasure yield was 4.014% today.
[SPEAKER_03]: Last week that number was 4.123, 230 weeks back that number was 0.64.
[SPEAKER_03]: The 10 year was at 4.451% today.
[SPEAKER_03]: One week back, it was 4.558 and 227 weeks back.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was 1.762.
[SPEAKER_03]: Gold was $453 per ounce today that is $44 higher than it was last week.
[SPEAKER_03]: 43 weeks ago, it was 33-48 and 222 weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was 1806.
[SPEAKER_03]: Silver was 75, 50 per ounce today that is one cent lower than it was last week, 120 weeks ago, it was 2280 and looking back to 120 weeks, so it was 2394.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oil 8773 per barrel that is $8.27 less than it was last week, 88 weeks ago was 67.79 and 130 weeks back it was 74.30.
[SPEAKER_03]: The National average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.39 a 16 cent decrease compared with just one week ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: 156 weeks back it was 356 and 204 weeks back it was 425.
[SPEAKER_03]: California, gas is averaging 605 per gallon.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like a lot, but it did since lower than it was last week.
[SPEAKER_03]: 133 weeks ago it was 532, 209 weeks back it was 587.
[SPEAKER_03]: For comparison, in the great state of Ohio, gas is averaging four, 45 per gallon today that is $1.60 less than gas in California.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's pick up another question from the Invest talk listener, voice bank, 80, 899 chart.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Dr. Vanu York.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for all that you do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hoping that you'll be able to get this on the show later tonight on Friday, May 29th.
[SPEAKER_02]: For anyways, I'm sending a voice bail
[SPEAKER_02]: could you look into stock ticker ibm the latest news from what i heard the government is now just giving some money to these quantum computing stocks i did a little quick research on my own many quantum computing stocks do not make money and i feel like this is kind of like a another story or something like that but when i looked at ibm it looks like it's a natural business and they're actually making a lot of money
[SPEAKER_02]: So the return on equity is good, but can you just look into it and just tell me one, would you put money into it now or would you wait?
[SPEAKER_02]: And two, what are your thoughts about the quarantine computing space?
[SPEAKER_02]: Discurs about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for all that you do and have a great day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_03]: IBM is international business machine.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the AI hybrid cloud reinvention store.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are a software led hybrid cloud and AI strategy built around red hat, walks in XA.
[SPEAKER_03]: I platform consulting and mainframes.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have a 10 billion dollar quantum computing program.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a five billion dollar project, Lightwell, which they announced recently.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they still are a major mainframe business.
[SPEAKER_03]: Recently, they reported revenue Q1226 revenue grew 9% year over year on broad-based growth across segments.
[SPEAKER_03]: Software was up 8% data revenue was up 10% infrastructure surge 15% they had record, Q1 cashload.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now there's a bit of an AI story here, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they're generative AI book of business is now over $12.5 billion.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have an AI backlog, which grew 30%.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the central question is, how fast can you convert it to, recognized, revenue?
[SPEAKER_03]: They've also recently announced new cybersecurity measures, designed to counter AI weaponization.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have positioned themselves as the Enterprise AI Play, not competing with Nvidia or OpenAI on Frontier models, but helping Fortune 500 companies deploy AI into their businesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: So here's how it works out for them, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the bull case here's pretty strong.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every Dell AI server shipped needs a software management layer.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's Red Hat OpenShift.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is frequently that layer.
[SPEAKER_03]: That $10 billion in commitment plus chipsac foundry plus $7 billion Gen AI book plus Confluent real time data.
[SPEAKER_03]: IBM is building the infrastructure stack that sits above physical AI hardware at a time when enterprise aid deployment, it's just starting to begin at scale.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that being said, names easily expensive compared to where it has been about 20 times, price to 4 looking earnings.
[SPEAKER_03]: The consensus price targets about 280, it's currently trading at 297, it's up 23% over the past three months, and more than anything you asked about quantum computing, the quantum narrative.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a five to ten year story being priced as if it's arriving next week, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so with that being said, there is a lot of hype that is inherently in here.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you can't ignore it.
[SPEAKER_03]: IBM went from undervalued enterprise compounder at $215, trading bubble analyst consensus at $2.97 in about 11 days.
[SPEAKER_03]: The quantum narrative that delread through their legitimate catalysts, but by today, you're paying above what analysts think is worth for a consulting segment growing at 1%.
[SPEAKER_03]: The risk reward has fundamentally shifted from where was it the beginning of May before this massive run-up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you should understand that if you want to enter a position given where it is right now, this is certainly not a value entry and we are inherently value investors.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I would certainly keep it on my watch list because it is an interesting story, but one that will play out in years, if not a decade, not in months.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is IBM, international and business machine corporation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks to the call.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jason's wife published a, I would say, must read column this week, and this one is about the single largest drag on your investment or turns that most people never think about.
[SPEAKER_03]: With fund fees overall approaching zero, and I really mean it, you can now own the entire market for like three basis points annually.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's $3 on every $10,000 investment.
[SPEAKER_03]: Taxes have become the dominant cost of investing if for most investors, it's the last thing they think about.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the numbers are striking.
[SPEAKER_03]: New research.
[SPEAKER_03]: Analyze returns on the total US stock market going back to 1926.
[SPEAKER_03]: Over 30 year-olding periods, the market returned and analyzed average of about 10 and a half percent for tax.
[SPEAKER_03]: After tax, the doctor that's 7%, taxes hacked away between 1.6 and 1.8 percentage points of annual performance, more than 1.6 of the total return, no other cost comes close.
[SPEAKER_03]: From 1996 to the end of last year, the market returned 9.9% pre-tax, but less than 8.3% after tax, compound that difference over 30 years and 36% of your final wealth goes to the federal government.
[SPEAKER_03]: On a $500,000 portfolio, growing at pre-tax rates, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars diverted to Uncle Sam instead of compounding in your account, and this analysis doesn't even include state and local taxes if you live in California, New York, or another high tax state, the burden is significantly heavier.
[SPEAKER_03]: The explosion of derivative income ETFs is making that tax problem worse.
[SPEAKER_03]: These funds use options to generate eye-catching yield, sometimes market is as exceeding 100% annually.
[SPEAKER_03]: Since the beginning of 2025, through March, derivative income funds have attracted $71 billion of new money and now hold more than $184 billion total, but many of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Effectively convert potential long-term capital appreciation, which would be taxable, though, rates only when you sell.
[SPEAKER_03]: Into short-term capital gains taxable every year at ordinary income rates.
[SPEAKER_03]: The yield max, MSTR option income strategy TF return 41.1% pre-tax from its launch through the end of 2025, after tax.
[SPEAKER_03]: 16.3 The government earned more than the funds investors.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ETF wrapper rolls investors into a false sense of tax security.
[SPEAKER_03]: Traditional index ETFs, they are generally tax efficient.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can hold on to them for years without triggering capital gains, but the newest generation of ETFs.
[SPEAKER_03]: The auto-collables, the option income funds, the leverage daily return products, they generate taxable events constantly.
[SPEAKER_03]: The three letters ETF no longer guarantee tax efficiency.
[SPEAKER_03]: The practical framework here is simple.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you invest for income, seek the highest after tax income, not the highest headline yield.
[SPEAKER_03]: That steers you away from funds with fat payouts but enormous tax bills.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you invest for total return, something we emphasize all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Seek the highest after tax return.
[SPEAKER_03]: which means favoring by and hold over active trading and exotic strategies, avoid short-term trading.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stay away from funds that generate ordinary income when long-term capital gains treatment is available.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pandope Lolt.
[SPEAKER_03]: If I retire in an account, see us 401k is an IRAs that let you differ taxes, but when you withdraw in retirement, it's taxed.
[SPEAKER_03]: At ordinary income rates, an taxable account, you don't get the upfront deduction, but withdrawals can be taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rate.
[SPEAKER_03]: And your airs can inherit the money, without owning any taxes on its appreciation during your lifetime.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a genuine trade-off that most people never evaluate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bottom line, minimizing your tax burden is the most important thing an individual investor can do, but it's one of the last things they consider.
[SPEAKER_03]: In a world where fun fees have essentially gone to zero, taxes are in a way the final frontier of investment cost reduction.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is something that is inherent to every process we create for our strategies, here at KPP Financial, and it is something you need to consider as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's keep things going and drop in another lesson or question now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for taking my call here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Tyler from Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a question on the company Eli and Lily.
[SPEAKER_01]: Picker.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alison Lima.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why isn't he?
[SPEAKER_01]: One of what you guys thought of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a type out there about two drugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes a lot of heights and so one of the.
[SPEAKER_01]: See what you're taking.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're answering on the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_03]: Eli, Lily, and Company, to her L.L.I.
[SPEAKER_03]: is a pharmaceutical giant.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the world's most dominant GLP-1 franchise, Majaro for diabetes, Zephound for obesity, Fandayo, first oral GLP-1 for obesity, also as oncology, immunology, and neurosciences.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's take a look at their last earnings revenue up 56% year over year, beat by 12.4% adjusted earnings per share, beat by 23 to 28%, gross margins at 82.6%, 1.5 billion and dividends, 2.3 billion in buybacks in a single quarter.
[SPEAKER_03]: How's the stock been performing lately with all that going on?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you today, they're only up 2.82% of the past three months of 5.04 of the past year up 52.93.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, this is a perennial outperformer relative to not just the S&P, but the industry.
[SPEAKER_03]: As a whole, and they're seeing incredible, incredible growth.
[SPEAKER_03]: The FDA recently approved, from Dio, the first ever oral GLP one for obesity, four acquisitions have been announced in various pharmaceutical and therapeutic
[SPEAKER_03]: areas and they raised revenue guidance up 28% year over year at the midpoint from where it was before performance margins at 41 to 48.5% over the full year and so you're seeing targets rise you're seeing Eli Lilly holding 60% of weekly new GOP one prescriptions 56% revenue growth 156% earnings per share growth
[SPEAKER_03]: Medicare Access Expanding, CVS coverage restored the most powerful pharmaceutical franchise in history with an oral pill that could 5x the dressful patient population.
[SPEAKER_03]: How's it trading?
[SPEAKER_03]: Pretty expensive 28 times price to for look yearnings, but still well below this average.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say it is the most dominant pharmaceutical franchise of this generation.
[SPEAKER_03]: You cannot ignore those numbers.
[SPEAKER_03]: You just cannot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you have to ask yourself,
[SPEAKER_03]: Whether 30 times forward looking price earnings is worth it for what could be a $200 billion or plus annual revenue company by 2030, the multiple's rich, but that earnings power makes it arguable.
[SPEAKER_03]: If I was entering a position here, I would enter a full position.
[SPEAKER_03]: Certainly I would be looking to add it to my portfolio at some time in the future.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for the call.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I want to briefly mention the news KPP premium newsletter in this week's Insight section.
[SPEAKER_03]: We discussed an update on Iran stock idea section.
[SPEAKER_03]: We highlighted a consumer finance company and a leading government technology company.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully, a management we explored how investors can remain selected within the software sector.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're interested in learning more, head over to www.investalk.com and hit subscribe.
[SPEAKER_03]: The newsletter will come to your inbox on Saturday mornings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, folks, the weekend is almost here, but we still got time enough to answer your finance and investment questions before we head off.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is our final break, so get your questions in now at 888-99 chart.
[SPEAKER_06]: The weekend is here or almost here, but you've got an answer to investment questions, so step up and call in, in Vestock, 88899 chart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Chevron CEO, Mike Worth, delivered some of the most direct commentary on the oil outlook that we've heard from any energy executive since the war began.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking at Bernstein's conference on Thursday, he said the, quote, buffers and shock absorbers are being steadily drawn down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that the market's ability to absorb the supply and balance has, quote, drastically diminished.
[SPEAKER_03]: He predicted upward pressure on physical oil prices of the next few weeks intensifying and June and especially into July.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, worst time line is important because oil has actually fallen about 10% over the past week on optimism
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: Brent Crude is about $93, well, off its wartime highs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Markets are pricing in a resolution, but worth this saying, the markets are wrong or at least premature.
[SPEAKER_03]: The war has removed 12 to 13 million barrels of oil a day from global markets.
[SPEAKER_03]: The factors that kept prices from spiking even higher above normal pre-war crude stocks.
[SPEAKER_03]: releases from the strategic patrol aim reserve, flows of sanctioned oil from Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, they are all running low.
[SPEAKER_03]: Once those buffers are exhausted, the gap between supply and demand that could surprise directly into physical markets.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's when you see the real pain of the pump and in the economy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And here's the part that should concern anyone hoping for a quick resolution.
[SPEAKER_03]: The UAE's AdNox CEO said last week that even if the conflict is resolved, full oil flows through the straight-of-war moves are unlikely to return before the first or even second quarter next year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Getting back to 80% of pre-conflict flows would take at least four months.
[SPEAKER_03]: The damage to refineries, ports, storage facilities, pipelines across the Gulf will cost tens of billions of dollars to repair.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, even in the best case scenario.
[SPEAKER_03]: a peace deal this month.
[SPEAKER_03]: Gradual hormones reopening over the summer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oil prices face sustained upward pressure through the rest of 2026 from inventory restocking.
[SPEAKER_03]: Governments industrial buyers, they will race to refill the pleaded reserves, which puts additional demand into a market and supports prices.
[SPEAKER_03]: Worth described this as the, quote, insurance policy dynamic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Policy makers will want to rebuild strategic reserves to insulate against the next shock.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that rebuilding adds significantly to demand.
[SPEAKER_03]: The worst case is that the conflict drags on.
[SPEAKER_03]: An oil stays about $100 to the summer.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that scenario, worth himself acknowledged, it tips us into an economic slowdown or even a recession through demand destruction on the consumer side.
[SPEAKER_03]: For investors, the disconnect between market optimism and executive warnings is the key signal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oil futures, they are pricing in a resolution.
[SPEAKER_03]: The people who actually run the oil infrastructure, they are saying it can't be resolved quickly.
[SPEAKER_03]: The gap, the gap suggests either the futures market is too optimistic as the financial times analysis last week showed.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Ford curve is not a prediction machine.
[SPEAKER_03]: or the executives are being overly cautious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Given the physical realities of infrastructure repair and inventory depletion, I would say the executive view deserves more weight.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, before we head off for the weekend, I do want to remind you one final time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably won't be the final time, but certainly the final time this week that our latest in Vestock Wealth webinar is available over on our YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was a relatable one for all investors out there as we try to navigate a world that is likely to have higher inflation than it has on average over the past decade.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so as investors, how can we allocate our portfolios?
[SPEAKER_03]: How can we prepare for a time with elevated inflation, elevated elevated rates, and all the things that come with that?
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're interested in learning more, in watching it, head over to our YouTube channel, in Vest Talk with two teas.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, folks, that does it for another week of in Vest Talk.
[SPEAKER_03]: Justin and I, thank you for listening and encourage you to tell your friends and family members about our free podcast downloads, which of course, you can get a iTunes and Spotify and wire over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'd really appreciate it if you left us a raid and review.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have another invest talk well webinar.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is slated for Tuesday, June 30th from noon at 2 1 pm Pacific the title.
[SPEAKER_03]: Beyond the yield, how to invest for your income needs.
[SPEAKER_03]: And lastly, I want to mention our practice at KPP Financial of Parallel Investing, where when we make a trade for our clients, we make the same trade for ourselves, same day, same price, same percentage, no front running and no special treatment.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a way to invest right alongside our clients to share in the same risks and the same potential for success.
[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds like a quality you want in your advisor head over to investard.com to schedule your portfolio review.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is Investock.
[SPEAKER_03]: Enjoy a weekend.
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[SPEAKER_05]: It's important for the listener to understand that not all comments made will apply to them.
[SPEAKER_05]: Specifically, nothing said she'll be taken to be Investment Advice.
[SPEAKER_05]: or shell statements on this program be considered an offer to buy or sell security.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because such advice is rendered solely on an individual basis, and at times will require that the investor review a prospectus before investing.
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