• I'm joining me now, Mark Mahaney, head of internet research at Evercore, ISI. Mark, it's great to have you on. It's interesting to me. We went into the earnings season and the narrative was you want to see all these AI hyper-scalers increase their capex, increase their spending. That'll be a bullish sign. And now we're coming out the other side of earnings. They all did that. Everybody's worried that they're spending too much. Your thoughts.
    Host
  • Mark Mahaney
    Well, I guess it depends. It's company by company. So of the three Mag7 stocks that I cover, two of them did ramp up all of them ramped up their capex spend. Meta Google and Amazon, but the market was partial and took up nicely the stocks of both Google and Amazon because I think there were other parts of the story and then they started really proving in the case at least in Amazon that yes, they're probably an AI winner because you got this 20% plus growth for AWS. You can now sort of count on it it was very uncertain about a month ago, but now you can kind of count on it. So it depends. Look, AI spending, capex spending is rising above for all is rising materially for all the hyperscalers. But these companies are also showing what I call RO AI Morgan, it's return on AI spend instead of return on investment. It's return on AI investments. And you can see that in the revenue per employee and their operating income per employee. That's really inflected up. There's a lot of different factors in that, but one of them certainly is productivity gains from AI. They can continue to show that. I think some of those stocks can continue to outperform. That's one of the reasons why Amazon's at the top of our list.
  • Got it. So you wait for a pullback here, which I guess you could argue we're getting right now because valuations are stretched or do you actually see these companies growing so strongly that the valuations aren't an issue here.
    Host
  • Mark Mahaney
    Well, I throw a couple of things also by you, you know, and some of the other takeaways that will affect AI companies too is consumer demand. But I look at consumer demand, and one of the reasons Expedia is my number two pick is that consumer demand in what is probably the most discretionary of all categories travel has actually remained pretty resilient. It's snapped back from the June quarter where there's some softness to the September quarter. I'm not sure it's above trend line. I mean, permanently I don't believe that but I think that demand is showing that a fair amount of resilience from consumer spend. That's really helpful to a category like I cover internet which is very heavily levered towards discretionary spend. So there's that element too. And then it depends on the product cycle and how big the investment cycle is that each of these companies are. So Meta is not one of my top picks in part because you need kind of a super catalyst for all of that money that they're putting into super intelligence. I think you'll get it but I don't think that comes until sometime next year. So there are a few places where I think you kind of hold off a little bit.
  • So in light of that, why is Amazon your top pick? What is it about Amazon specifically right now?
    Host
  • Mark Mahaney
    Yeah, right specifically right now, you just got the unlock from AWS. You finally got this thing above 20% and that growth could get better than that next year. The demand across the industry is super strong. There's open AI deal that they did. The capacity is really coming online for Amazon. And then the rest of the business. Look, I've got my what I call these amplification catalysts. Advertising revenue is still clicking well north of 20%; it's wonderful for Amazon's margins. The retail business is doing just fine at about 10 to 11% growth and those operating margins that have really gapped up for the retail business the last couple of years I think they continue to gap up. It's a reflection of automation, robotization, greater efficiencies in their retail business. And then I love some of the newer products that are coming out. Two in particular I'll highlight. One is Kiper, we're going commercial satellite internet access for Amazon next year. I think Starlink has proven that this is a big opportunity. I think Amazon can participate too.
  • Yeah, I think you're right. I think 2026 will be a very big year in terms of the satellite ambitions that are worth tens of billions of dollars of investment at Amazon. We haven't been talking about it enough. Well, perhaps other than me, the resident space lady here at CNBC. I want to get your thoughts on another name that's had a strong run this year but you think could go higher and that's Netflix.
    Host
  • Mark Mahaney
    It's my number three pick. I wish it was dislocated. It's not dislocated. It's hard to get super pumped on the idea and I guess Morgan, in all fairness, there's not that much dislocation in the space. I mean, we're close to all-time highs in a good number of the stocks, the high quality large cap internet stocks that I look at. And there's really, you know, beginning of the year was Uber, and then four or five months ago I thought your best DHQ candidate was Google. I don't really have a great candidate now. I think there's a little bit of rerating opportunity for an Amazon or for Expedia Netflix. I don't think that multiple goes any higher but there are two catalysts I really like. So this is kind of a momentum call with a catalyst twist. And the two catalyst twists are, I think they have a golden invitation to raise prices if they want. Their two biggest competitors are 50% higher. Disney's 50% more expensive than Netflix for its basic ad-supported plan. And Netflix's content slate is super strong. So I think they have the ability to raise prices. That'll help. And I just think street numbers for next year when they give that guidance for 2026 I think street numbers are too conservative. So in the next three months I got two catalysts on Netflix. Is it going to rerate dramatically from here? No. But can it compound and maybe rerate a little bit? Yes. That's why it's one of our top three picks.
© 2025 - marketGuide.cc

We tailor state-of-the-art business-driven information technology.

bitMinistry