In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser and host Ricky Mulvey discuss:
- Investing in companies with a “singular” leader, like Tesla‘s Elon Musk.
- Earnings results from Home Depot.
- A listener’s suggestion to create a “laziness” stock basket.
Then, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp answers listener questions about Roth IRAs and dividend investing.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you’re ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on May 20, 2025.
Ricky Mulvey: Five more years. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money.
I’m Ricky Mulvey. Joined today by Jason Moser. J Mo, good to see you, my man.
Jason Moser: Ricky, happy to be here. How’s everything going?
Ricky Mulvey: It’s going great. Let’s talk about Elon Musk of all things. Elon Musk virtually joined the Qatar Economic Forum earlier this morning. One big takeaway, J Mo is that Elon said he still plans to be the CEO of Tesla in five years. Additionally, “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.” I could say that as well, but that quote attributed to Elon Musk. Good news for Tesla shareholders?
Jason Moser: I think it is. I think shareholders are likely happy to hear that Musk intends to stay in his role for at least the next five years. Like you said, the interview, when asked the question, he said, “Yes, no doubt about that at all.” He seems to be committed. In regard to political spending, and it makes a lot of sense. I was reading about that and he feels like, well, I don’t need to spend as much because I don’t see the use or the need for it. We all know. He’s a polarizing figure regardless, but he’s been a very polarizing figure as of late, of course, with his foray into politics and his work on DOGE. It could certainly be argued Tesla has suffered some brand damage because of it. Now, time will tell ultimately how forgiving consumers will be, but I definitely think in regard to the business, the certainty of who’s running the show for the foreseeable future, I think is a net win for the company, and so I’d imagine shareholders feel pretty good.
Ricky Mulvey: I chatted with David Gardner on the show that’s going to come out this Saturday. It’s about how Rule Breakers think about valuation. I really enjoyed the chat, and I think listeners will as well, and we talked about Tesla a little bit. One of the things that I want to highlight from that is basically how unpredictable, not just the stock market in general is, but specifically Tesla. J Mo, if you knew every news story about Musk and Tesla, we went in a time machine to May 20, 2024, and you knew everything that was to come over the next year, every story, but not the stock price, would you buy, sell, or hold the stock?
Jason Moser: Well, that’s a fun backward looking exercise. Chats with DG are just always so much fun. Well, clearly, a lot of people did sell the stock, at least in the early days. I’m not a Tesla shareholder. I’ve never been and I probably will never be because I really just like to be able to follow the company more objectively and not worry about it from an ownership perspective. Given what I’ve seen through the years with Tesla, I like to say that I probably would have considered buying shares because those types of events are, you could call it self-inflicted if you want, but you can recover at least. In knowing what we know about Musk, he defies all odds, and so it’s hard to ever bet against him coming back. I’d like to think I would have bought, but obviously, I didn’t. I didn’t sell or anything. I never owned it. But listen, time is going tell how the consumer really actually reacts to all this and how forgiving the consumer ultimately will be. But my suspicion is, I say never bet against Musk, man. I think he’ll be fine.
Ricky Mulvey: I’m on your side. Don’t bet against him, but I’m also happy to look at that company and say, wow, Jason, that is an interesting bird. No one that I would personally own, but that bird sure is interesting, and I do not want to bet on what it will do next. There is immense amount of pessimism about this company. I was seeing people wanting to short the stock on my Facebook feed. If they followed through on that at the time of peak pessimism when sales were going down, Musk was really involved in the White House, you’d have gotten absolutely burned. In fact, to answer the question, in the past 12 months, Tesla stock has almost doubled. I think it highlights, again, the importance of separating your political beliefs from your investing beliefs. The other thing the story highlights to me is just sometimes it’s good to have a singular CEO leader firmly in control of a company. Elon Musk has the voting rights at Tesla. If you are an investor in Tesla, you are an investor in Elon Musk, and sometimes that control can be a good thing. Tesla is inherently a polarizing company. Maybe not that as an example, but there are any other companies you look at and think, wow, I’m really happy to see this company with a very solid vision with a singular leader in control.
Jason Moser: Yeah, it’s nice to saddle up with the smartest person in the room. I think in regard to Tesla, certainly Musk has done something that really wasn’t being done until he started it. A company I do own, I own The Trade Desk. I’ve owned it for a long time. Jeff Green with The Trade Desk, to me, he’s one that comes to mind. Now, the proxy they just filed here in April noted he’s got 48% of the total voting power of the company. Obviously, The Trade Desk is going through a little bit of a low right now. Shares are down a bit from recent highs. But I look at the programmatic advertising space and the opportunity there, Jeff Green seems to me to be one of the smartest people in the room, and so I absolutely have no problem signing up for that trip.
Ricky Mulvey: I will say, when Tesla was getting smacked, there was a part of me. I heard commentators, oh, this stock is going to continue to sink and I thought maybe I should short it, but I didn’t act on that. For me, that was an important lesson. It’s OK to separate your thoughts and your actions sometimes. Also, The Trade Desk, a stock that’s absolutely gotten beat up lately and one that I personally own and along for the ride for. So Glad to hear you say that, J Mo. Let’s move on to Home Depot. Home Depot reported this morning. First, the business results. Total sales up about 9%. But what investors really like looking at are those comp sales numbers. Those were down a skosh overall, but back to rising in the United States. When you broke down earnings from Home Depot, a sleeper stock, what did you notice in the results?
Jason Moser: Yeah, this is another one that I own, and I think this was a good quarter overall. They benefit from the SRS acquisition here, and that’s about close to a year since they closed that deal. Earnings per share down slightly from a year ago, and that really was due to a little bit of a bump in operating expenses. When we talk about retail, you want to focus on traffic and ticket size. During the quarter, their average ticket was essentially flat. Transactions were down about half a percent, so not very surprising. One thing I did notice in the call, and I was a little bit surprised by this, just given the language we’ve heard from so many leaders these days, big ticket comp transactions. Those are transactions over $1,000. Those transactions were actually positive. They were up 3/10 of a percent from the same quarter a year ago. Home ownership and just the housing market in general, it’s a necessity, and so we spend there even when we may not necessarily want to. We may have to. Your dishwasher goes out. Well, you got to get a new one.
I did notice inventories were up about 15% though, so that’s something worth keeping an eye on. Operating margin, as I said, was down a full percentage point to 12.9% from 13.9% a year ago. But all in all, I think it was also really encouraging to see that they reaffirmed their full year guidance. I think we’ve talked about this on some shows here recently where there’s a lot of uncertainty out there and a lot of companies, they’re either pulling guidance or offering various scenarios. Home Depot is pretty cut and dry with it this quarter, which I thought was encouraging. Again, I think that just speaks to the market that it serves.
Ricky Mulvey: A huge part of the American economy when you think about Home Depot for listeners to put this into context, this is the second story of today. Yet, over just one quarter, Home Depot does about the entire global box office in revenue through their stores, and that’s global box office over a year. Home Depot does it in just one quarter. Now, you mentioned guidance. This is a big dog. CFO Richard McPhail highlighting that no single country outside of the United States will represent more than 10% of the country’s purchases by next year, and highlighting that nimbleness to CNBC and also saying, “Because of our scale, the great partnerships we have with our suppliers and productivity that we continue to drive in our business, we intend to generally maintain our current pricing levels across our portfolio.” Basically saying, we’re not raising prices due to tariffs. You buying that?
Jason Moser: Yeah, I do. I think when you look at Home Depot and you compare it to something like a Walmart, for example, and Home Depot noted in the call. They said today that more than 50% of their overall purchases are actually sourced here in the US. Then to your point about the 10% number there, that seems to be plausible, seems to be very reasonable. And so you compare that to something like a Walmart where Walmart is exposed somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70% globally. Their supply chain relies on China. But when you look at it from just the US market, it’s more like 75% or so. I think Home Depot just has a little bit more flexibility there. They don’t need to necessarily raise prices because they just aren’t as exposed to the current tariff environment. It was good news to hear.Source link
