Friday File: The Dumb Thing I Did This Week (plus hopefully some smarter stuff)

I was initially interested since it appeared in Sofi access to the IPO. I passed due to his political grandstanding.

Apologies i am a relatively new subscriber o tried to create a new thread. Does anyone know of the 5-6 super stocks pitched by James Altucher for Micro Millionaire? I didn't fancy watching another 2 hours of Paradigm pitch

Yes before the Fed supposedly announces rate cuts at 2pm and instigates a bull run in small caps. of course it is BS that all of a sudden prices will surge and you need to get in now but would be good to know names of the 5 stocks and place some small positions if it fundamentally makes sense

Maybe. I posted my updated thoughts here after their very weak quarter, including a reset of earnings expectations: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2024/08/friday-file-restaurants-energy-drinks-berkshire-and-more/There are a lot of moving parts -- ATKR is either a cyclical company that will never again see a peak anything like 2021-2022, or it's a cash-efficient compounder that will keep buying back tons of stock and benefitting from the need for electrical infrastructure investment and broadband expansion, or it's a commodity supplier of products in an industry where supply chains have loosened back up and imported PVC and galvanized steel conduit are destroying any pricing power they had.I'm willing to be patient for now, and I think it's cheap enough to be reasonable here, but am not chasing the price lower... we need some indication that they can maintain margins and grow their sales in the next few quarters, whether that's because of electrical infrastructure work or a long-delayed push for federal broadband extension spending or just because construction in general picks up a little.I don't know whether the short-seller allegations about price-fixing in the PVC market hold any water or not, and that's a potential risk, but the complaints from Atkore management this quarter about much bigger competition from Mexican imports are a yellow "caution" flag for me, which is the main reason why I'm holding and not adding more -- I think the biggest real risk is that their conduit becomes largely commoditized and customers become ever more price-conscious when buying. They have innovative products and good service in delivering and bundling products for large projects on time, but they're not ever going to be the cheapest provider of PVC or galvanized conduit, so they need customers to value the service and any proprietary edge they have in product design to make installation easier for electricians.

I think it's an opportunity, but that's because I think energy drinks will remain a growing sector of the market and I think Celsius is likely to continue taking share as it both competes well with Monster and extends the market to new customers. This is a case where we're dependent on growth, but we aren't dependent on the company somehow getting better as it grows -- it already has excellent margins and is profitable, we're just betting that the top line will keep growing at ~20%+/year for a while.The way I see it, if Celsius just keeps up with the energy drink market, and averages ~10% growth, it will take a long time to grow into this valuation but it should still work out. If it continues to take share, and averages 20%+ growth (remember, it's been near 100% in recent years), then it will work out exceptionally well.It's not a guarantee, but I think they have a good probability of outsize growth -- the "bottom" was obviously not $50, and it may not be $35-40, either, I don't know how the next few months will go and the third quarter is the key for pretty much all RTD beverage companies. Things could get far uglier for the stock if sales growth disappoints this quarter, but given the strong and (in some ways) improving margins, I think they're set up very well as long as they continue to grow share and take shelf space and show steady revenue increases, even if it's hard for investors to judge during this slowdown in revenue growth from ~100% to ~20%.Humans tend to be linear thinkers, and we expect whatever happened recently to continue happening in perpetuity -- so when it became clear that Celsius wasn't going to keep growing at 100% everyone panicked. And now that we see the growth slowing from 100% to 20%, the expectation seems to be that since it has been getting worse, it will keep getting worse. Given the big changes in the business over the past two years, I think we're just resetting for a mature company that has a good glide path in the future...... but, of course, I don't know the future. I could be seeing it wrong. Maybe Celsius was a fad, and has no staying power, and will recede like many past "third place" competitors in the energy drink space.