It is so good to see you this morning. We had your biographer on the broadcast before and we're speaking about you now in third person, but now we're doing it in first person. The earnings were a blowout, I think, across the board. we can talk about maybe why the stock market's reacting the way it is but you know I was listening to the call yesterday and I wanted to just for those who didn't get an opportunity to hear it I think you made some fascinating points about why you think this company and maybe even yourself are so misunderstood.

Well there are lots of easy ways to misunderstand me. I misunderstand myself and you know it's not like the super conventional playbook thing. Look we're an anti-playbook company. If you want to do the personal version. I'm like this dyslexic formerly and I believe currently still left of center who actually sticks up for progressive values which triggers you know TDS loving people because I think the Democrats aren't no longer progressive.

And then the company is built in a truly generous unique way which would only be possible in America and actually explodes every assumption of how an expert would build a software business. The more you actually know about building software, the more odd, unique and inexplicable our rise in success and I would say domination on the enterprise software battlefield looks and is.

Um, and then I would say one of my main issues is Palanteer because we were anti we called a lot of things that are kind of establishment views that often are viewed as kind of being super woke into question in every single assumption of Palanteer. The people who piled in to Palanteer were people investing their own money often people who are not in the investor class non-experts and even till today the experts sit on the sideline and say hey this can't be true while the average American who invested in Palunteer and for the first time maybe arguably in since World War II average Americans got venture returns investing in Palunteer. So you have this massive divide between the average person who evaluated themselves and the expert class that still was working on assumptions that have historically not been true that obviously if you look at the earnings if you actually look at we grew the company I mean I'll go through if you want to get through the numbers but extraordinary results and then the expert classes we need and the retail people are all in.

But that's what I want to ask you about in terms of the mis there because there is a misunderstanding. Clearly, you know, you look at the analysts, most analysts, you know, think that this stock is overpriced. You have people like Michael Burry out there shorting it. Everybody who's shorted this stock thus far has been on the losing end of it. And I'm trying to understand just if you look at sort of the growth trajectory, the sales, how much of the sales frankly I think actually even coming there was a huge part coming from even existing customers and just what the scale of this thing ultimately looks like in your mind.

Okay, there are two parts. You know, of course, when I hear short sellers attacking what I believe is clearly the most important software company in America and therefore in the world in terms of our impact simply to make money and calling trying to call the AI revolution into question where we have these this anomalous numbers 114, rule of 40, etc., it just is super triggering because these people they could pick on any company in the world. They have to pick on the one that actually helps people that actually has made money for the average person. that that is actually supporting our war fighters. Why do they have to go after us?

And I'll tell you what though, it's crazy motivating because I'll tell you why the short sellers are constantly getting screwed by Palanteer because every time they short us, we just are like tripling down on getting the better numbers and part honestly to make them poorer.

But okay, so the question of like the actual power of the business and what is it worth? I mean, at the end of the day, one of the things that is actually in the book, the biography, and that I actually think that you always have to ask to the is the person persuasive or are they right? And across all sorts of movements, political, I mean, you see this on the regressive part of the Democratic party. We're about to probably have a complete disaster. I was born in New York. Like, but if you actually said, "Do these things actually work?" Everyone's like, "Of course, I'm not going to vote for that." But instead, they asked, "Does it work in theory?" The theoreticians, you have to ask, how often have you been right?

And Palanteer is about pragmatic decisions that create unfair advantages for America and its allies. And on that, we've been right for almost 20 years on all major decisions. And I believe we'll be right going forward. Now, you could argue, I don't know, like they're constantly like, but they they thought Palanteer was overvalued at 10. They thought it was overvalued at 20. I'm not even here saying what the valuation is. I'm just saying find a company in the world that has a rule of 114 that has US commercial growing at 121% that aggregate growth in the US is 77% that has throwing off free cash flow in a way that's anonymous and that is fully aligned with our customers and you figure out the value but they're in the business of being skeptical and being wrong and we're in the business of giving an unfair advantage to American workers, American war fighters and our investors.

Being short is is a very difficult place to be because you can lose everything, right? You can drive these people into the ground. Michael Burry put a really big bet on. It's almost a billion dollars. It's $912 million. That's a big step for him to put into that. What when you say you redouble your efforts, what do you do? What do you go back in?

Um, well, first of all, he's it's like he's actually putting a short on AI. So, the way I read it was us and Nvidia and it's like the biggest position is you though. I'm just thrilled. Okay. So, and and then by the way with the shorts is very complex. It's not even clear that I honestly I think what is going on here is market manipulation. We delivered the best results everyone anyone's ever seen. It's not even clear he's not doing this to get out of his position. I mean these people they claim to be ethical, but you know like they're they're actually shorting one of the great businesses of the world. And I'm not against shorting as a matter of theory, but I'm just saying pick something that is not doing a noble task. And you know, it's us against them and that's a good position for us.

I mean look when you're printing a rule of 114 again people who aren't technical I think roughly a an incredible score like an Olympic grade score on rule of 14 is like 50 I mean that's roughly like if you're between 50 and seven you're an Olympic athlete a unique implement athlete this is like Michael Phelps like score like Michael Jordan like there are no scores like this there and and 121 growth off of almost a 1.5 run rate in US commercial and a 77 77% growth in the US and an aggregate off of an aggregate base of of $4.5 billion. By the way, I predicted we'd get here. So, you know, it's like I if you want to short that, be my guest. You go ahead. We're just going to go do our things.

Alex, we've heard a lot of talk from the likes of a Michael Burry, but more broadly about whether we're in an AI bubble, whether the economics make sense. Clearly in the context of Palunteer, they do make sense in so far as you're printing money over there. Um not everybody in the AI space is printing money in the same way and they're spending an enormous amount on chips, data centers and the like. How do you see the broader space right now in terms of just how things are are are developing?

There there are two subtle issues in AI. What is the addressable market and what is the addressable market for things that work? meaning you make more money and your the quality of money is higher. So top line and bottom line grow talent we're in the business of the a part of the addressable market where it works and it can be quantifiable either commercially or on the battlefield.

So you that clearly and and over time you're going to have trader optimality meaning that every part of the a stack is going to have to create more value than they charge. That's just obvious. And if that doesn't happen it will be a bubble. And you know, I mean, I'm sorry short sellers can't tell a difference between products that work and products that don't, but these numbers should show you that there's a part of the market that to you quote you is printing cash. And it looks like that part of the market is the park we own.

There's a separate question, by the way, which I think is equally relevant. What part of the GDP growth is available for workers? What we call worker available GDP? And that's like one of the unique things about Palunteer is whether it's on the battlefield like the people writing the scripts for these very complicated operations or building batteries or doing things on the factory floor are being enhanced by our product. And those two it's really those two questions are going to define arguably the future of what happens in this country. Does GDP grow because of AI which only can happen if if there's prao optimality or and and what the way we see it the c the customer pays less than the value they create which is abnormal uh not exactly equal prao optimality and that it's unknown honestly.

You have this massive growth but you know currently as far as I can tell the two companies he's shorting are the ones making all the money which is super weird like the idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is batshit crazy. But leaving that aside, there's a bigger question, which is the average American believes AI is happening. They're just not sure if it's going to happen for them or it's just me getting rich. And that's the battle we have to fight because if you want a sane society, you can't just have GDP growth for us and no GDP growth for them. So like finding out what is available for the worker and proving it's available for the worker is going to be absolutely crucial.

Are we safer as a society or less safe than we were 5 years ago because of AI? And I wanted to ask you, I talked to Lansdale about unfortunately packed stadiums and drone attacks and and things like that and and he said that's something that we need to at some point face.

Well, you know, there's a lot of complicated questions because there's like I mean it's so funny because you know like I mean in this book which is there's like a lot of it's true but then it's like the surveillance state. So like interestingly I and Palanteer have historically been on maximal safety and maximal data protection and the product is actually built despite you know if you if you're being told Palunteer is easy is the product you use to surveil you you're the mark like you know we actually so how do you have maximum safety where you can still have a personal life.

The truth in our society is you're pretty safe if you have money. What happens to you if you're in an environment where you're poorer, working class, black, white, Hispanic, anything is you are then in an environment where people are espousing they believe in what they're saying while in facto letting you live in a war zone. Whether it's the inner cities or the border, we essentially have a class divide in this society where underclass people, white, black, Hispanic, everyone, they absorb all the negative externalities of policies and those of us who can afford to sit here have a great life.

And the real question for our society in my view and for AI is how can we make sure people participate in GDP, which also means they can go home safely, they can go to school, they can come back from school, they can go to the border and not get shot. We don't have fentinol coming in our society and you know more people have died from fentinol in the last year than all service members since World War II and almost all those people are working class and that's why no one cares. If they were Yale grads you'd have a bomb being dropped on some South American country. It would stop and we have that's so there's a huge societal thing.

And so, and these are the what we should do with technology is make sure the people who are living the worst lives live lives closer to ours and make sure our lives advance as well. But never with the idea that we're going to reduce crime to zero because the only way to do that is to reduce deviant behavior to zero. And none of us want that because I'm not the only one who's a freak show. I'm just more open about it.

We got a ton of earnings. We had Palunteer and Grab yesterday. And I guess most importantly, what everyone is likely paying attention to is that we've got a pretty red pre-market. We've got a pretty red pre-market.

First off, why are we red? I think that's the number one question I'm seeing in the chat. And, it's a fair question because obviously we are pretty red. S&P 500 right there is down 1%. I woke up at like 5:30 today and I saw the carnage. I was trying to figure out exactly what was happening. I don't have a definitive answer. I have a couple of theories that I'm going to lay out and and then we'll go through them and kind of see what's going on.

Number one is the overall choppiness of November. Tom Lee was talking about this yesterday that we are likely going to have some consolidation of the gains. A lot of people like what gains? Well, I think people forgot we were up two and a half% for the S&P 500 in October. So, the idea that there were no gains in October, like I think it's, you know, people are trying to be funny. Like, oh, there were no gains in October. Like, no. When you look at the index, it was the sixth green month in a row, up two and a half%. So there were gains and obviously there might be some consolidation in those gains and that's rather normal to happen.

The second thing which I'm going to share right here. Delinquency rates on commercial mortgageback securities CMBBS for offices surged 63 basis points in October to a record 11.8%. This is a full percentage point above the post 2008 financial crisis peak of 10.7. This seems like a broader issue in commercial real estate, not in residential real estate.

Another reason right here is Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley CEOs were at a summit in Hong Kong and they said expect a 10 to 20% equity drop over the next 12 to 24 months, but they also described the current environment as constructive. Morgan Stanley CEO said investors should welcome 10 to 15% corrections not tied to major macro shocks. and Citadel's Ken Griffin also added that markets are deep into a bull run, which means you might see a little bit of a pullback as well.

So, you've got November consolidation, you've got this commercial real estate potential issue that's going on, and then you got big Wall Street executives saying, "Hey, we think, you know, expecting a 10 to 15% drop in equities would not be crazy given the massive bull run that they had." And they're not really saying it because of any specific macro issue or any specific thing that they're highlighting in terms of like a environmental reason for for what's going on in the broader macro environment. Rather, they're just saying, "Dude, we've had a massive run."

I think the combination of all those reasons along with the fact that today is election day. You've got, as Doug says in the chat, election day volatility. you get just got a variety of issues that's going on which I think are creating this type of volatility and obviously it's annoying to deal with. But yes, S&P 500 is down 1% and that means Palanteer after a phenomenal quarter goes down 8%.

The biggest reason but one of the biggest kind of viral reasons you could be seeing a selloff right here because I do think this is affecting market psychology at least for retail investors is this Michael Burry is back. His 13F was disclosed early and he has taken a $912 million put position on Palunteer and a $187 billion put position on Nvidia. That is a $1.1 billion bet in notional value.

I think this is also definitely freaking people out because at the end of the day, whether you like Burry, you think he's a one hit wonder or whatever, someone taking a billion dollars short against two of the biggest AI companies that have just put up, you know, some some of the most phenomenal numbers ever means that he's thinking that the policy tailwinds, the Trump administration, the earnings results, the growth, the momentum, none of that stuff is enough to stop both of these companies from facing a dramatic decline in pricing.

And obviously he's putting his money where his mouth is, which I do have respect for. By the way, Suchin had a great tweet this morning saying there's so many bears on Palunteer and Nvidia that are calling AI bubble, but they have zero guts to actually put their money where their mouth is, right? Bur's putting his money where his mouth is, and he's saying, "Look, I think these stocks are going to go down and as a result, that's why he has puts on them."

Why is Paler down 8%. Because of pretty much exactly what we talked about yesterday. You could have had a phenomenal quarter for Pounder, which by the way, 63% revenue growth, 40% net income margins, 45% customer growth, TCV value up 300% year-over-year. I mean, just every single number I could read off right here doesn't do it justice to say how phenomenal this quarter was.

However, the company is almost a half a trillion dollar market cap. And this is what we talked about yesterday. It's like a lot is baked into the price and they could have an amazing quarter. The stock already moved from 170 to 205 at one point. Got to 221 right when the numbers came out. And people are crying because it's at 189. It's like, hold on. The stock was at 60 in the beginning of the year. The stock was at 15 February of 2024. And people are mad that it's not at 200.

I know the actual investors in Palunteer, not the people that are traders that just got in because they want to see the price go up or, you know, wanted to speculate on it, understand how transformative that quarter is. And quite frankly, probably understand that the price needs to get consolidated with the earnings growth and that's rather healthy for the company at scale. And so, you know, to me, it's not that big of a concern seeing the price come down. It's something that I think a lot of us expected even if the numbers were phenomenal.

Okay, Grab. Let's talk about it. First of all, I thought this was a phenomenal quarter. I know the price action is not reflecting that. That's fine. If you judge every stock based on its price action, then I don't think it's going to be easy to analyze stocks throughout the lifetime of a career when it comes to analyzing companies especially on a day where the macro's down. But, if you ignore the price action, actually look at the numbers, which is ultimately what the price action catches up to, I thought this was an incredible quarter.

873 million in revenue, that's up 22%. On demand GMV up 24%, they were profitable. 886 million in loans, up 56% year-over-year, and 48 million monthly transactive users, that's up 14% year-over-year. And that is now reaching an all-time high and 7% of the entire population in Southeast Asia. The company also raised their EBA guidance to 500 million. This was the magic number I was looking for on 500 million. That's representing 60% year-over-year growth in adjusted EBA, which is what's necessary in my model to get to $10 by the end of 2027.

Ethereum and Bitcoin. I don't know what the heck is going on with these two asset classes. And I want to do a lot more research on kind of how this is playing out, but there is something broken in the mentality of the crypto ecosystem. Either it's this crypto winter cycle is coming up and get ready for these assets to get hit or there is a bunch of whales that are just like not feeling the ability to stay long right now and they want to capture in some gains and as a result you're seeing some downside pressure.

you're getting a ton of pain even if you're seeing macro catalysts on both of those assets from an institutionalization perspective i.e. the biggest institutions in the world are starting to commercialize these assets and from a stable coin tokenization perspective which is one of the biggest tailwinds for Ethereum. If you take a look at callshi right here, there's a now or poly market. In the face of rate cuts, in the face of quantitative easing, in the face of monetary policy that is a lot better than what it was 10 months ago, and in the face of better regulatory frameworks and and in the face of, you know, the president of the United States being very incentivized to do well in crypto because a lot of his net worth is now in crypto, you're not seeing these assets catch a bit.

Which, by the way, we are officially in the longest government shutdown ever. I think today makes it the longest shutdown ever.

Okay, Schwab and Tesla, what's going on? So Jason Debbolt, this guy has like I don't know how many millions of dollars of Tesla. He publicly is calling out Schwab. He says, "Look, I need to speak with someone from Schwab Private Wealth Services this week. Here's why this is urgent. At least six of your ETF funds around 7 million Tesla shares voted against Tesla's board. And my 240,000 Tesla investor followers are asking why Schwab would oppose one of the most successful corporate boards in history."

As a custodian of ETF shares, your fiduciary duties to vote in shareholders best interest. If Schwab's proxy voting policies don't reflect shareholder interest, my followers and I will move our collective tens of millions of Tesla shares to a broker that does via account transfer as soon as this week.

Linda Randelle of Clorox and this is where the consumer pain is really being felt in some of these staples companies. The consumer continues to be under stress. Definitely reacting to the level of volatility and uncertainty that's out there and we're seeing that in their shopping behaviors. Marriott CEO Tony Capiano high-end consumers he says have demonstrated resilience to macro uncertainties and continue to prioritize travel. So they're they're not prioritizing Clorox, bleach or whatever. Um and they are prioritizing travel. Um and that's kind of a a continued theme. high-end, low-end is also obviously obviously a big one as we get through some of these earnings.

Uber CEO Darra Kasra Shahi was on Squawkbox this morning. I thought pretty bullish about what they're seeing from consumers. Listen, when we look at our results in terms of the high-end consumer or the more budget consumer, they both continue to grow. We're actually now penetrating increasingly outside of the of the large cities and our growth rates outside of the large cities and some of the sparser geographics that we're going after are one and a half to three times faster growth than in the big cities. Uh so we're not seeing consumer trends one way or the other change. They continue to be strong.