FCF

themattissue

I do not get how I am getting downvoted. Forward p/e of 36 is not cheap… PEG ratio is still at 1.2, P/FCF of 41x, gross margin is amazing but it’s net profit margin isn’t close to Meta’s because they will have a much harder time advertising as aggressively and getting data on its anonymous users is much harder. There are structural reasons Reddit will not likely get Meta’s net profit, at least not any time soon.

pennquaker18

P/E of 21x given the FCF conversion and earnings growth of many of the biggest companies (NVDA chief among them) is fine. Yes volumes were low today - there's clearly a squeezy element to many stocks.

_hiddenscout

I guess, but it's also communication services sector, which is like GOOGL, META, DIS, which also sold off. Could be some technical things like ETF selling off, impacting the some of the names. Probably less AI fears and just general selling in the sector. Also with the sale off, it's still kind of expensive. Not saying it's the worst, but even at today's price, the P/FCF is still at 30, with a forward PE of 30. I wonder if investors not wanting to pay for software feel the same for other names in the space. Nothing feels related to the company as much of just narrative surrounding some of this stuff.

_hiddenscout

Hhahah yeah. MWH is pretty rad company. I own a lot of these type of names like PWR, AGX, PRIM. MWH valuation isn't too bad and it's always cool to see a company IPO to use the money to pay down debt vs enrich themselves, especially since the company is already profitable. NXT is great because it's software and the stuff that moves the arrays, so it's not a panel play. They are growing a lot intentionality too. Another non solar name that is not an American company, but CDLR is really interesting. They are going to be ramping up pretty big the next year or so, they been building all their FCF on new ships. They do offshore wind installation, mainly in Europe. Which I think will be a big winner after this war. Right now they are exiting the high ramp up phase, since the ships are built.

dljmonkeyboiz

FCF is 💀 they’re gonna burn all their cash by year end

Gold-Guy-8

You mean the AI companies that have massive amounts of debt compared to ADBE which has a record FCF and its own built-in AI? I’ll bet on ADBE to maintain its 90% recurring revenue

niaqr

This is genius - people need to wise up to the reality here and look at this logically: 1. Enterprises need to be geniuses to harness AI and make something useful of it 2. If they were as smart as they say they are, they would be smarter than a bag of rocks 3. If they were in fact, smarter than a bag of rocks, they wouldn't have signed an SLA with the garbage that is service now in the first place. Anyone who's worked with it knows this by heart. 4. Therefore, they'll be regarded enough to keep resigning a new SLA rate - and we have the number on just how regarded these enterprises are 5. Servicenow's renewal rate is 98% and their FCF margins are 36% which implies a $190 price target just on FCF multiples alone 6. You'd be a complete idiot to bet against this FREE MONEY PRINTER of a company Jesus Christ

augustus331

Adobe generates roughly 13% of Microsoft's FCF at roughly 3.5% of its market cap. The valuation gap between the two is enormous and can't be explained by growth rate differentials alone. Microsoft is growing revenue \~17% vs. Adobe's \~10–12%, but that doesn't justify a 3.5–4x P/FCF premium. There are companies that are providing far better returns from Saaspocalypse narratives.

ShootsnLadders

I follow several creators who are giving different AIs capital to trade with and having them compete. Several of the Claude agents bought Service Now today, which I think is quite ironic. On its entry it wrote, “ServiceNow is the portfolio's first direct entry into enterprise workflow SaaS, and we're initiating because the market just handed us a gift wrapped in a category error. On April 8, Anthropic launched Claude Managed Agents, a cloud-hosted AI agent platform for enterprise. The market read this as "AI will replace SaaS" and sold NOW down 7.56% to $89.53, a 52-week low. Down 58% from its high of $211. What the selloff missed: ServiceNow is an Anthropic design partner. Claude is the default model powering the ServiceNow Build Agent platform. This company is not a victim of the AI agent buildout. It is infrastructure for it. The valuation: 24x forward P/E against a 5-year average of 50 to 55x. That's a 50%+ discount to its own history. Still guiding roughly 20% subscription growth, 32% operating margins, 36% FCF margins. This is a strong business at an irrationally cheap multiple. Street consensus PT: $185, which is +107% from our entry.”

LushLustPin

Yeah this is a really good way to frame it. “Small cap” feels like a factor but it’s really just a zip code on the market map. I’ve noticed a lot of the flashy ones are basically revenue-at-all-costs with constant share issuance. Curious what you look for as proof of a real FCF path besides just management’s slide deck.

_hiddenscout

SNOW is cool, but i don't really find them unique or that different than something like data bricks or even PLTR. Most of these companies are just ETL's that load over the your data into a BI table that allows you to run different models on your data. Even with it being down like 46% in the past 6months, the stock still isn't even cheap, using fundamentals. Still looking at a forward PE of 83, PS of 10, P/FCF at 43 and PEG of 2.8 [https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/snow/statistics/](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/snow/statistics/) People will say "fundamentals don't matter", but I do think they do. They help you avoid over paying for something. Even at these levels, I find the stock expensive.

Obvious-Ad-3171

Ran $NVDA through my analysis tool. Diamond Rating 35/50 — Quality Stock, not overvalued by traditional metrics but P/E at 151 is pricing in perfection. Interesting insider data: Jensen has been moving massive blocks in December via "J" transactions (trust transfers, not open market sales). Classic wealth management move, not bearish signal. The real bear case: Blended fair value comes out \~$22 vs $182 current price. FCF is insane ($101B) but the market is pricing 10 years of perfect execution already. For $6K concentrated position — the business is real, but the valuation risk is also real. What's your cost basis?

dljmonkeyboiz

It’s losing money now .. FCF is gone

I_invest_in_AAPL

April 8th vs 9th, haha been there. On MU at 312 though... that's a tough one. Always tricky spotting the top/bottom on those hypergrowth names. For me, still thinking about where the FCF goes for my picks. Thinking more long-term for MSFT and even a little GOOGL, their moats still look wide even if the P/E is a bit stretched. TSLA, definitely agree on the regard strength. Wild ride for sure.

_hiddenscout

MSFT just has the openAI over hang. Just me theory around what is going on, is that since a lot of the hyperscalers are looking to spend almost all their FCF on capex it, the market isn't happy. Add in that like 40% of MSFT cloud backlog is OpenAI, with OpenAI being viewed as losing to anthropic. Then market looking at copilot as a loser. It's basically a lot of sentiment, but it's going to be a overhang on the company. Not saying it Google, but a lot of people where posting the same thing about Google like a year or two ago. The company has sound fundamentals and it's basically just going to take patience right now if you are investing.

microdosingrn

Tim Cook and Apple are so fucking smart. Not torching their FCF on this, just paying a pittance every year to buy whatever the best model is. Inference will be done locally by users on their own devices. Absolutely brilliant.

dljmonkeyboiz

FCF is gone .. TSLA losing money every quarter now

I_invest_in_AAPL

Interesting read. That kind of market cap hitting public markets at once, especially for companies with less traditional FCF profiles, could definitely be a test. I'm always looking at the moat and capital allocation more than the sizzle. Wonder what kind of P/E or FCF yield these companies will command out of the gate. I've got some holdings that might see a ripple if that much liquidity shifts. Not financial advice, just my two cents.

I_invest_in_AAPL

Interesting read. That kind of market cap hitting public markets at once, especially for companies with less traditional FCF profiles, could definitely be a test. I'm always looking at the moat and capital allocation more than the sizzle. Wonder what kind of P/E or FCF yield these companies will command out of the gate. I've got some holdings that might see a ripple if that much liquidity shifts. Not financial advice, just my two cents.

I_invest_in_AAPL

Interesting read. That kind of market cap hitting public markets at once, especially for companies with less traditional FCF profiles, could definitely be a test. I'm always looking at the moat and capital allocation more than the sizzle. Wonder what kind of P/E or FCF yield these companies will command out of the gate. I've got some holdings that might see a ripple if that much liquidity shifts. Not financial advice, just my two cents.

miguel_equivara

The PE isn't even the right metric here Tesla's GAAP earnings are so distorted by regulatory credits and one-time items that trailing PE is almost meaningless. The honest number is FCF. In Q4 2025 Tesla generated about $1.97B in FCF. Annualize that, apply it to a $1.1T market cap, and you're at roughly 140x FCF on a business that just missed delivery estimates, has 50K units sitting in inventory, and watched its highest-margin energy segment drop 38% sequentially. The PE looks bad. The FCF multiple is worse.

Good_Tap6905

Lol well said. But jokes aside, the situation with 50*k* vehicles sitting in inventory is exactly what my model predicted. Whether you call them “three-wheeled taxis” or unsold Model 3, the real issue is that working capital is tied up. At an average selling price of $45k that means $2.2 billion in cash is sitting idle in the parking lot, while free cash flow (FCF) is already under pressure due to spending on H100 computing chips.

Artistic_Item_5710

Check Impax Asset Management (LSE: IPX), they manage in £24B in energy transition-related assets in public markets, private markets and fixed income. I expect their AUM to grow in the coming quarters as more investors seek exposure to clean energy and other transition-related investment. Of note, Impax has $0 debt, has over 20% EBITDA margin, 56% ROIC, 16% FCF, and trading 6 P/E (45% of marketcap is cash).

_hiddenscout

Haven't really dug into either of them too much, but I'm a big valuation person. Like, at the end of the day, you are buying a piece of a business. To me, WM just seems more on the expensive end of things. Like the PEG is 2.5, P/FCF is 33. Forward PE is still at like 28. So you paying a bit of a premium for a great company. Not the worst thing, but just you aren't really buying "low". Republic Services is more expensive based off those as well. PEG is 3.69, Forward PE is like 30, and P/FCF is like 28. [https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/rsg/statistics/](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/rsg/statistics/) [https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/wm/statistics/](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/wm/statistics/) If I had to pick one of the two, even though it's more expensive, RSG has better things I like in companies. Like RSG has better ROIC and tiny bit better margin. But for me, I'd pass on both at these levels, just don't seem like the returns will be as great buying here.

ElectricalGene6146

Yes if you use debt well it CAN have a better impact to your cash flows, obviously. But arguing that a company is healthier because they took on more risk and borrowed money is one of the more outrageous arguments. AVAV at this point can always take out debt if they need to, the opposite is much less true with companies already hampered in debt (and negative FCF).

ValueEquities

$100B FCF + services scale is why dips keep getting bought. though only I would argue at \~30–35x FCF, it’s not really cheap

_SirShackleton_

For pure gas plays I tend to invest in quality leaders like EQT. They are not cheap tho unfortunately. If you want an underdog have a look at Harbour Energy Plc, great gas assets in NorthSea and super low lifting costs in the british/norwegian coast shelf. They recently acquired longlife oil assets from LLOG in the Gulf of Mexico so they have assets in multiple markets opening arbitrage options. FCF will be insane. Coterra is a nice mixed play in my opinion. They will merge with Devon and have a decent amount of gas in their future portfolio. Long term LNG deals with UK linked to TTF pricing. Personally i hold CVX, DVN, EOG and OXY.

milkplantation

I'm finding it difficult to understand how this differs in any meaningful way from value investing. It seems you're suggesting that value investing hasn't evolved beyond Benjamin Graham's philosophy and that couldn't be further from the truth. That comes across as pretty disingenuous. Value investing today is wonderful companies at a fair price. Graham's concept of "cheap P/E” was updated to look for a good cash yield via FCF Yield, DCF, ROIC, adjusted EBITDA. Value investors want to invest in understandable businesses with a strong balance sheet, consistent earnings, high sustained returns on capital, and a meaningful margin of safety. I think anyone looking to learn more about this framework might be better served by reading something like Lawrence Cunningham's *"Quality Investing"* or Bruce Greenwalds, *"Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond."*

stop-sharting

was thinking about this as well - not sure how easy it would be to hide. at the bare minimum it would show up in capex/FCF.

MeasurementSecure566

The point i was making is that no matter the outcome, the Free cash flow on these companies is superior to the spx500. for example, even at 100 dollar oil, oxy will have a 19-22% FCF. where as the spx500 is at like 4.5% fcf i think? and tech companies at 1-3%? so i say 100, because thats the middle ground between bearish and bullish. But if price went lower, the FCF are still going to be better than anything else. they are the safest play in the market, with the highest moonshot you can get.

MeasurementSecure566

There will be structurally higher prices on oil going forward. so these stocks will have exceptional FCF. and frankly, if nobody buys them, they will buy themselves at a cannibalizing rate of 15-25% of all shares per year.

WingWorried6176

Gotta see how May earnings + guidance play out. If oil is still elevated in the future and XOM FCF per share goes up, the street will rerate the stock on the new P/E an it will trade higher. As of right now they are trading at a premium already. From what I’ve read there can be some divergence until the oil companies post earnings.

Ancient_Plan2953

100%. Earnings can be manipulated by accounting, but cash doesn't lie. P/E just gets a stock on the radar, but FCF yield is the ultimate sanity check against value traps. And like you said, without looking at PEG, you're flying blind on whether that low multiple is actually justified or if it's just a dying dinosaur.

ryzetard

okay. so what about PEG and what about FCF in all of this? you can have low P/E company with high EBITDA and still be a value trap due to liquidity risk associated with low FCF

CowboysfromLydia

> They've been buying back $524M worth of stock on \~$31M of free cash flow. That's 1,600%+ of FCF returned to shareholders I've searched for this but i didn't find anything. Also looks unlikely if not impossible, its only a 3.5B market cap.

Personal_Repair_3579

Threw LEU through a tiil real quick - here's the short version. Balance sheet is actually solid. Net cash, current ratio of 5.6x, interest coverage above most energy peers. Real cushion there. Cash flow is the weird part though. They've been buying back $524M worth of stock on \~$31M of free cash flow. That's 1,600%+ of FCF returned to shareholders. Coming out of reserves, which works until it doesn't. Moat scores "developing" - not wide. The sticky revenue makes sense given long-term enrichment contracts, but margins are below the peer median and capital efficiency is weak. What I found interesting: over 3 years they've quietly shifted from growth to margin + balance sheet. Profitability up 32 pts, safety up 19 pts, growth down 11. Discipline or constraint - hard to tell. Uranium tailwinds are legit. Just watch the cash flow math before going full port

Personal_Repair_3579

Pulled $CEG through a tool - a few things stood out. The moat is real. ROIC is top of its utility peer group, interest coverage is strong, balance sheet has been quietly improving for 3 years. Not a broken business. The cash flow situation though - gross profit nearly tripled YoY but operating income dropped 36% and FCF is sitting at -$5B. They're still paying dividends and buying back stock while FCF is negative. Heavy CapEx is eating everything right now. Also, 3-year revenue CAGR is bottom 20% among peers. The recent growth looks better but the longer trend is weak. So basically: solid fundamentals, mid heavy investment cycle, and the whole thesis hinges on whether that AI/energy demand actually shows up. If it does, they're well positioned. If not, holding at $323 gets uncomfortable.

jretzy

Oracle is loading up on debt and I don't know what there moat is. OpenAI seems me behind Anthropic and Googles models. Oracle is loaded with debt same with Coreweave. I bullish on AI and super bearish on them. Google is in a much better postion they have so much FCF they aren't piling up debt, they have a good model and also have their own chips and use and sell their own cloud. I wouldn't touch Oracle with a 10 foot pole. Doesn't mean much in the big AI picture.

dragoon7201

So when you buy stocks, are you forward looking for trading based on history? Do you also drive staring at the rear view mirror? Cause their trailing PE is crazy due to one time expenses in 2025 (acquisition). Their free cash flow is growing and will likely accelerate from those acquisitions. It literally doubled after acquiring Alani in April. A put strike of 20 would give them a market cap of 5B. Their FCF is around 0.32B in FY 2025, and that is only capturing about half the growth from acquiring Alani. So lets say 0 organic growth next year, their FCF will still probably be around 0.35 - 0.4 M, A 5B market cap will would imply 7-8% FCF yield. Compare that to monster energy, which gives about 2.8% FCF, and grows at low 10% in revenue. And there is no reason to assume monster can grow at 10%, but Celcius with Alani and Rockstar grows at 0. They have shown much faster growth in the last 5 years at least.

ga643953

If you look at the current valuation of the mag 5 and think to yourself those companies are still too expensive with the FCF they are generating like Warren Buffett does, then you really should just put everything into the S&P.

ohgodthehorror95

Gotta improve that FCF Free cum flow

Shotgun516

Idk about high risk but JOE is going to be huge in the next few years. It’s severely profitable, great balance sheet, great FCF. Owns tons of northwest Florida real estate that’s been in development for the last 5 years. In the next 4-5 years, I predict it printing

ChefDry8754

100mio FCF, capex under 200mio, to early for EBITDA, expect improved comps and higher foot traffic + more franchising. Right now its a bet on if they execute the next two quarters really well. Neutral margin compression on their promotions as well, which I find very interesting, tbh I thought the $1 Eat and Play was compressing their margins, but it really has no effect.

Sea_Custard2892

We are witnessing a classic transition from the 'Hope' phase to the 'Show Me' phase of the AI cycle. The Q1 sell-off is a fundamental repricing of the Capex-to-FCF ratio. With the Big 4 projected to spend over $650B on AI infrastructure this year, investors are finally reacting to the inevitable margin compression. When you combine that with oil-driven inflation keeping the Fed's hands tied, the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) rises, which naturally punishes high-multiple growth stocks. It’s not just an overreaction; it’s a multiple contraction driven by the realization that AI monetization might take longer than the infrastructure burn suggests. Growth at a reasonable price (GARP) is back; growth at any price is dead.

Personal_Repair_3579

Checked out BP in a cash flow tool out of curiosity . FCF yield is solid at \~8.9%, but they're paying out 85% of it to shareholders. Leaves almost nothing for debt or reinvestment. Margins are also lagging peers across the board. The whole thesis basically needs oil to cooperate. If Brent softens, that payout ratio gets uncomfortable fast. At 70% up I'd probably trim a bit tbh. Not a disaster, just not cheap anymore.

ohgodthehorror95

Their capex spend puts a dent in their FCF. This buildout for agentic AI hoes isn't gonna pay for itself

solemnlowfiver

Which company? A lot of tech has supremely good FCF - and they’re also getting obliterated

MoreOutcome8541

Yeah so PE means nothing when the financials are based on overspending, debt, and negative FCF… sorry bulls

SamLeCoyote_Fix_1

* **The Musculature Thesis:** While LLMs provide the "brain," enterprise-grade execution requires the "musculature" of UiPath’s security and governance moat. Consensus underestimates the difficulty of replicating 15+ years of UI-automation libraries in a secure enterprise environment. * **Buyback Arbitrage:** Management is aggressively utilizing FCF to shrink the float (-2.69% YoY), moving from a "Capital Destruction" phase to a "Value Extraction" phase for shareholders.

nvrForgettiSadghetti

I would argue: if you think a stock can triple its market cap in a year not based on hype... then a stock can just as easily lose 66% of its market cap.. again not based on hype. Many of the stocks you bought were near penny territory a year or two ago. Do you really think buying a stock that has quadrupled (reddit 6x or 7x, meta was 90... etc) during a World War and largest geopolitical situation in recent tines was a good idea? Stock picking works when you evaluate based on FCF, etc. In this case, everything is being re-rated to "new paradigm" sticky inflation, high gas prices, etc. Everyone is so used to stocks doubling their market cap in a year after changing a logo and saying the words AI and layoffs 11 times in their earnings report- nobody realizes that this is not organic. All the funny money floods in quickly, it can also flood out just as fast. When you buy funny money assets, you need to be ready for a roller coaster. You go stock picking after a crash or correction. ETFs are still holding up fine because it isn't funny money suspending them. BTC has been a yo-yo too even though the market cap is huge.. people are achieving 10-100x margin on a large scale and pumping stocks to astronomic highs. Nobody does the 10x margin thing to go all-in on J,&J or Ford, so these non-sexy stocks turn into "safe havens" when actually their companies are quite bad (imo about Ford). Trump econonics says wait for lows to buy, sell for profit at highs. You cannot stock pick organically when the president literally goes on TS and "bans" companies for not falling in line.

Eliav_1991

solid breakdown. one thing from the Alibaba 6-K thats easy to miss is how much the free cash flow dropped alongside net income. the cloud growth at 36% is real but the cash burn to get there is massive and the filing shows it clearly. the $52B capex plan with the CEO saying it "might be on the small side" while FCF is cratering is the whole bull vs bear case in one sentence tencent is the opposite story in their filings. steady margin expansion, buybacks retiring 3-4% of float annually, no crazy capex promises. boring but exactly what you want to see when you read the actual numbers

iyankov96

It's also not at 5x FCF. Commenter is lying.

Lost_Grand3468

Right. OP doesn't see the contradiction in his own post. Uses index statistics and then quotes people saying "stocks are cheap!", both things are true. I'm gobbling up some adobe at 5x FCF.

gdren

No way man. Canopy Growth is King Kong of cash burn. They burned $1.1 BILLION DOLLARS in FCF in 2020 alone. Those guys bought a fucking chocolate factory and tried to grow pot in it... they are masters of wasting money.

solemnlowfiver

Do we feel that way about MSFT and Google? With their growth and FCF, I donno. Precious support at 400 and 300 made way more sense but I’m regarded so disregard literally everything I just said

Personal_Repair_3579

Checked out TASK through some analytical engines out of curiosity. Balance sheet is fine - liquidity is solid, not over-leveraged. But revenue is declining and sits in the bottom 1% of IT services peers on growth. Operating margin is in the 19th percentile. And FCF is actually negative, which makes the dividend a bit of a head-scratcher. My guess? Market looked at stalling revenue + weak margins + debt refinancing + a dividend they probably can't really afford and said "nah." The dividend might've been the thing that triggered the closer look, not the reassurance they hoped it would be.

Always_Curious_One2

FOUR = extremely undervalued. RayJay downgrade is silly. “PEG” ratios completely miss ROIC and Free Cash Flow trends. And fundamentally: While AI can automate a digital checkout or a customer service chat, it cannot physically pour a beer at a stadium, check a guest into a Marriott, or manage the "split-check" chaos of a 200-seat restaurant. AI-native payment systems (like those being built into Claude or ChatGPT) are great for buying a digital subscription. They are Terrible at managing VenueNext—Shift4's software that powers over 50% of the major stadiums in the US (NFL, NBA, MLB). • The Physical Reality: In a stadium, you have 60,000 people trying to buy hot dogs simultaneously on a laggy Wi-Fi network. You need specialized hardware that works offline, integrates with inventory systems, and handles mobile ordering. • The "Sticky" Revenue: Once a stadium or a luxury hotel group (like Hilton or Mandarin Oriental) installs Shift4's hardware and software, they almost never leave. It is too physically disruptive to rip out thousands of terminals. 2. AI as an "Upgrade," Not a "Replacement" In 2026, we are seeing that AI isn't killing physical POS (Point of Sale) systems—it's making them more profitable for Shift4. • Shift4 + xAI (Grok): Management recently confirmed they are integrating AI (via Elon Musk’s xAI) into their SkyTab (now Shift4Dine) terminals. • The Benefit: Instead of replacing the terminal, AI is being used for "Physical World Analytics"—predicting how many burgers a restaurant needs to defrost based on local weather and events, or automatically flagging a waiter who is consistently forgetting to "upsell" appetizers. This makes the Shift4 terminal more essential, not less. 3. The "Experience Economy" Resilience The March 2026 data shows that while "Online Retail" (where AI is strongest) is slowing down, the Experience Economy (hotels, dining, travel) is booming. • Travel Surge: Shift4’s acquisition of Global Blue (completed in 2025) gives them a near-monopoly on "Tax-Free Shopping" in Europe. As international travel hits record highs in 2026, Shift4 collects a fee every time a tourist buys a luxury watch in Paris or Milan. This is a purely physical transaction that AI cannot commoditize. RE Debt Maturity: The reason the stock surged 19% this week (Tuesday, March 24) is that the market realized Shift4's debt isn't the "death trap" bears claimed it was. • The Refi: In January 2026, they successfully refinanced $1 billion of their term loans, lowering their interest margin. • The Schedule: They have no major "bullet" maturities until 2027 ($642M) and 2029. With $500M in FCF coming in this year, they can effectively "pay as they go" for their debt, significantly lowering risk

dietchlicious

My app is showing FCF took a 60% dump. Not seeing it anywhere else. Anybody know?

DesertNomadAZ

Seen it as well, probably highest in 10 yrs on weekly. I am accumulating. Lots of FCF, low p/e, very cheap historically on all metrics. Only downside is growth isn't too strong.

FlyingCats17

Coming from someone who is short Tesla, you are insane to short this stock. The FWD PE is under 4 and they have significant FCF even while growing. If the market settles and this doubles, no one would be surprised.

ai-moderator

#TLDR --- Ticker: PLAY Direction: Up Prognosis: Buy Shares or Calls ahead of Tuesday's Q4 earnings Catalyst: Undervalued due to arbitrary SP600 index removal selling pressure and 29% Short Interest Fundamental Logic: It's priced like COVID lockdowns are back, but FCF is $200M and going outside is currently legal. Secret Weapon: The new CEO used to run KFC and is highly qualified to deliver the chicken tendies.

Junior-Valuable2071

Eh .. when people talk about stocks being overvalued the pillar this argument stands on is “if the growth stops”. When looking at the snapshot of these companies current FCF they look like terrible buys. But you just can’t price companies based on their current FCF anymore. The growth story has to be taken into consideration. Moats, monopolistic pricing power, and network effect products all contribute to the growth story.

ReDesignMe

It's from a paid subscription which is why you can't find it. It's an evaluation assuming TTF prices stay elevated at these levels for a prolonged period of time which TTF market hedges indicate to be the case, at least through December 2027. Again though, markets always price in the best case scenario. Truth is the situation is very bad and will only get worse. "Revisiting Tenaz Energy (TNZ). Since we launched our 2026 outlook with TNZ as our top small cap pick in early January, the stock is up a whopping 170%. With shares of TNZ once again advancing +5% yesterday, analyst Travis Wood revisited valuation on strip numbers on account of the material gain in European gas prices. In addition to pricing tailwinds, 2026 will be framed by a low-risk development program that will add TTF exposed volumes into this market where prices prior to the war were already being fundamentally supported by low inventory levels across Europe (notably Germany and Netherlands). • Under current prices, TNZ could generate at least $242mm in FCF in 2026 and $560mm in 2027 should pricing hold, reflective of a 12% and 28% FCF yield and implies EV/DACF multiples of 4.2x and 2.1x, respectively; • Assuming this pricing dynamic holds and a 4.0x multiple, the implied value of TNZ would be $110/sh."

Bitter_Chef3243

I have a few theory’s but at the end of the day snap has 100 different things they can do to boost the stock. -cut sbc -turn 60% of the 1.7 billion R&D spending into FCF -give us voting rights - cut the absurdly large workforce in half - Follow through with the damn 400m perplexity deal I’m just getting started. One thing I’m certain of though is this year consists of 3 huge catalysts. 1) snap subs is set to generate 300m q1 which will start making a dent and has a huge margin to make snap profitable 2) perplexity revenue (also huge margin) will push us to have at least 3/4 profitable quarters which will then cause the stock to re-rate multiples 3) specs launch which will probably fail but cause investors to buy the rumor and sell the news. Also it will free up a lot of revenue from r&d.

ElectricalGene6146

In a sane market, businesses are valued on FCF, not dreams.

illinformed-will

They were like the regards here discovering CSP in a bull run 'whoa infinite money glitch' Imagine last summer after the pop to 560 selling MSFT 250DTE 520p for big ass premium convinced surely by then even with some vol it couldn't be lower. And even if, impossible that the premium wouldn't net you profit nonetheless. No way this behemoth drop below EMA200. Being a bank, you can cook your books and pass that premium as cash so you leverage that position ten fold. At that time, show me one analyst/quant/wsb crayon eater projecting a 30% price drop. Everyone was shilling this shit ''the FCF machine vertically integrating the AI revolution, the everlasting flywheel of everything computer blablabla'' Institutions and funds were still buying. That's it.

_hiddenscout

I could be wrong, but I don't think tech earnings are too related to the war, since a lot of names where already declining like 20% before the war started. Like the hyperscalers are more about their capex spending, basically amazon, msft, and google are looking to spend like all their FCF is not more into capex this year. Software seems more of a multiple compression story, since a lot of SaaS usually traded at higher multiples due to things like higher margins. Market thinks AI will impact this and now are not willing to pay those higher margins, plus the story with private equity and software also adds an overhang. That's just my 2cents.

Stonkgang_

Zoom no need too, over $7bn in cash, 2bn FCF and 58m debt. Likely the opposite via share repurchase

Stonkgang_

Yeah I looked into them, but in terms of FCF yield and liquidity I much prefer ZM.

Stonkgang_

How is nobody in $ZM here This move in $VCX because of their exposure to Anthropic.. then you have people pumping $ORBS because of its exposure to inferior OpenAI. Yet $ZM, yes, Zoom Video owns a 1% stake in Anthropic due to its early investment in 2023. In fact, it owns far more than any of these combined. Furthermore, it generates 2bn in FCF a year, has a market cap of 22bn, with 7.8bn in cash. Giving it an EV value of 14.8bn with its Anthropic investment worth approx 4bn Meaning, its entire core business trades at 5x FCF ($10bn) Making Zoom essentially the best way to publicly gain exposure to Anthropic. In a realistic sense you’re buying Anthropic here for below NAV, when standard multiples are applied to ZMs core business. Making $VCX $ORBS and $DXYZ look ridiculous.

chomerics

I would push back and say you are in the wrong sub. r/wallstreetbets is a lot more your style. You bought a stock after it already grew 25 fold to a $2k evaluation. You then ask questions about value when the stock falls. I’m not really sure why. you should have asked the questions at the opening. Run a FCF and DCF of Rheinmetall. Plug that into AI BEFORE you open a position. Seriously, it takes less than 15 seconds to type. Intrinsic value is $2050 if they convert in their $135B orders to a 20% margin and the war continues on. If you want to make war bets, I’d look elsewhere myself, the winds have been removed and you bought at the peak. I could also be wrong, but it’s not my money.

Background-Island923

**$ARM — Pelican's Take** ARM licenses the chip architecture that powers 99% of smartphones. Gross margins are 97.5%. The v9/CSS transition is driving higher royalty rates per chip. The bull case is that ARM becomes the toll booth for the AI era. That said, our system rates it a Sell at current prices. Here's why: **Valuation:** At $136, ARM trades at roughly 179x earnings. We comp it against Cadence CDNS) and Synopsys (SNPS) — the two closest business models (semiconductor IP/EDA licensing, 86% and 75% gross margins respectively). Those peers trade at \~70x P/E and \~12.8x EV/Sales. ARM trades at 2.5x the multiples of its closest comps. Our blended fair value comes in around $54 — DCF gets $43, comps get $51, analyst consensus is $170. **Estimates:** ARM is currently generating roughly $1bn in free cash flow and analysts expect this to grow at a massive CAGR to \~$4bn by 2030. In other words, assuming perfect execution, the business would still trade at \~35x 2030 FCF. Pelican tends to dislike companies trading at very high multiples, like ARM, PLTR, SNOW, etc due to it's valuation centric approach. **What concerns me:** \- R&D is 56% of revenue — margins are still years away from maturity \- SoftBank owns 87% — governance risk and potential share overhang if they sell down \- RISC-V is gaining traction in data centers as a lower-cost alternative \- Qualcomm litigation (trial March 2026) could disrupt a major customer relationship \- Zero insider purchases over the last 12 months The bull case works if: CSS adoption accelerates and ARM captures 50%+ of the hyperscaler CPU market by 2030, pushing data center royalties to $4B annually. **Bottom line:** Great business, but at 2.5x the valuation of its closest peers, a lot has to go right for a long time. I'd want a more attractive entry point. Full report with valuation breakdown, management scoring, and moat analysis: [https://pelicanalpha.com/research/ARM](https://pelicanalpha.com/research/ARM) Full disclosure: I'm the founder of Pelican Alpha. This isn't investment advice. No position in ARM.

_hiddenscout

Not OP, but if you look at the fundamentals of the company, it's in a very GARPy, growth at responsible price, valuation. [https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=MSFT&p=d](https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=MSFT&p=d) PEG is at 1.08, which points to the stock being closer to undervalued. Forward PE is at 19, which isn't bad by any means. Even if you want to use the trailing PE, it's still at 23, which isn't bad. I think you can say the P/FCF is a bit higher, but company has really high ROIC and in reality should be trading at a premium. It does have it's issues around the amount of FCF is going into their capex for data centers, the market seeing copilot as a failure, and OpenAI making up a big part of the cloud backlog. If you think Microsoft can navigate these issues, you are buying a high quality company at a fair to cheap price. I still think one of Buffet's best nuggets was this: >'It's Better To Buy A Wonderful Company At Fair Price Than A Fair Company At A Wonderful Price'

_hiddenscout

Interesting name, going to dig more into it. Just for me personally I try to avoid anything that isn't profitable/generating FCF. Thanks for sharing!

_hiddenscout

I think it’s a few things keeping sentiment bearish for MSFT. Market doesn’t seem happy with co pilot growth. Also they are going to spend almost all of the FCF for Capex. Then there is the OpenAI being like 45% of the cloud backlog. Still think it’s a great company and actually solid buying levels, but those things are going to weigh on the stock.

RichieFromCuba

Gracias!🙏 🙏 En el análisis incluyo una tabla comparativa de valoración (P/E, EV/EBITDA, FCF Yield) frente a Carrier y Trane en la sección de valoración. Si te refieres a algo más amplio con márgenes operativos y ROIC lado a lado, es una buena idea que tendré en cuenta. Normalmente consulto ese tipo de comparativas en herramientas como InvestingPro o alguna que otra páginas de este tipo.

c-u-in-da-ballpit

| Metric | NXT | NEE | |---|---|---| | Revenue Growth | 20–40%+ YoY | ~6–11% YoY | | Free Cash Flow | Positive, ~$620M FCF | Structurally negative (CapEx) | | EPS Growth | ~59% 5-yr CAGR | ~8–9% annually | | Debt Load | Near zero ($0 LT debt) | $95.6B, growing | | EPS Beat Rate (3yr) | ~100% — avg surprise 20–89% | ~75% — avg surprise 3–9% | | Stock Return | ~350% since Feb 2023 IPO | ~24% total over 5 years |

redpillsbluepills

Why would anyone invest in IRDM when it has $1.8 billion of debt on its balance sheet against only $97 million of cash and $300 million of FCF? YoY revenue growth went from 17.34% in 2022 to 4.93% in 2025 and has been trending downwards each year in-between. What’s stopping L3Harris or Northrop from buying its L-band spectrum (arguably IRDM’s most valuable asset) and locking up government connectivity?

_hiddenscout

Happened before the war. Hyper scales/Mag7 lost favor of investors because of the amount of FCF going into data center spend. With software stuff, same thing happened with the fear of software companies losing moats and multiple compression because of AI.

MitchCurry

What's your math that gets it to $1,000/sh? I see a company trading at a premium to it's 3Y historical averages of 60% for P/S, 180% (!) for P/GP and P/FCF, and 20% EV/EBITDA. Seems pricey to me, not discounted, especially when you consider they're only 6% of their ATH.

CriticalAnybody6686

I would argue and say that it’s just the nature of the economy taking a dip. Eventually the war will end, and inflation rates will start to drop off. Sounds stupid, but take for example companies like NVDA, SOFI, MU, hell any mag 7 stock is getting shafted right now. Despite the fact that cap ex is increasing and FCF is following the same trend. Yet despite this, these “pillars of the economy” are getting merced. Once the war ends, oil prices stabilize, and maybe impossible Mango shuts ups… everything will spike hard. The fundamentals for many of these companies are so solid, it’s just market sentiment. But hey, I need to get back to the fries

Lookingud

for every $5 increase "from $60" in a year average is 300M FCF. I OWN ALOT

Agitated_Patience_75

what do you mean why is it relevant? it's one of the biggest lessons learned for the cruise industry, it taught them to not get caught again with their pants down (in their case pants down means having too much debt and not enough FCF). RCL wasn't in as much trouble as its competitors and its balance sheet was more solid than a lot of these other cruise companies. They're fine and their management is solid. Now with the war situation and the oil prices: if i were them i would have price locked fuel contracts for at least 1 year so that fuel price swings don't affect me as much. I'm pretty sure they did that, if i, an anon account on the internet thought about it, they did too. And they have the negotiation power and leverage to do it. As for the war...it's disrupting a lot of countries around the world, it's in everyone's best interest to finish as fast as possible. Give it a month or two, my 2 cents is that it's over before the summer starts and things go back to normal. And when that happens nothing will happen in the stock market, except a small bump and then back to slowly crashing. It's been doing that since before the war started. Just my opinions, personally I'm long RCL at any price below $270 (pretty sure i sold them to OP). Currently I'm short puts hoping i get assigned, getting paid while i wait. But otherwise I'm 6figs all cash, not buying anything else in this environment. Just nibbling

Personal_Repair_3579

Interesting post - I actually ran AAPL through a tool I use to check fundamentals and it mostly backs up your read, but with a few wrinkles worth mentioning. The moat is genuinely ridiculous. Like, top percentile vs peers on basically every dimension - margins, capital efficiency, pricing power. This isn't a company that's about to fall apart, and the market clearly knows that. But here's the thing that caught my eye: free cash flow is actually down \~9% year-over-year, and Apple is returning more cash to shareholders than it's actually generating. Over 100% of FCF going out the door in buybacks and dividends. Not a disaster at their scale, but it does explain why the market isn't exactly frothing at the mouth. Over the last three years, growth has slowed pretty meaningfully while the balance sheet has gotten safer. Apple has basically been optimizing for stability. Great company to own, maybe not the most exciting near-term story. So yeah, "Apple is probably fine but not about to rip" feels about right to me too. The longer-term stuff - foldable, deeper AI integration, whatever comes next - is what would actually change that. Until then it's kind of just... a really excellent, slightly mature business sitting at a full valuation.

DJ_Mimosa

Earnings. They've been blowout after blowout for a few quarters here. So increasing earnings and a 6% correction (so far) has compressed multiples on SPY decently, and really compressed forward PE. The market is still astonishingly over-valued by FCF and PE metrics, but by forward PE it's actually starting to look not too shabby. Shiller PE is a bit scary, but also looks behind, not forward: [https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe](https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe) Trailing PE is approaching the upper band of it's average interval, still very hot: [https://en.macromicro.me/series/20052/sp500-forward-pe-ratio](https://en.macromicro.me/series/20052/sp500-forward-pe-ratio) Forward PE: Actually starting to look inviting, approaching lows not seem since the Liberation Day nonsense.

Icy-Sheepherder-7595

Maybe a year ago. You're kind of late. CAPEX is high FCF low. Not at all like how it was before where they were the only Mag7 not burning cash but now they're spending to catch up.

Full_Cash6140

Well they could issue bonds. Is there no FCF?

MutaliskGluon

More like why is a company with deteriorating performance and ugly YoY numbers trading at 2 billion PE and 4 trillion EV to FCF

Comfortable_Oil6642

Care to name some for a company which is moving from a cap ex intensive phase to having fully function FCF generating data centres?

Hamzehaq7

yelp’s definitely got some solid fundamentals, but man, that Google dominance is a real killer. like, how do they expect to compete with 73% market share? the valuation looks tempting at those PE and P/FCF numbers, but it's kind of a gamble with the fake reviews and ad softness. tbh, the growth from AI tools sounds promising, but I’d wanna see more concrete results before jumping in. what do you think the timeline is for those acquisitions to pay off?

A55BAG

NVDA putting 50% FCF into buybacks. Michel Burry maybe should close his short...

Independent-Cress382

Let's take a look at this LanzaTech stock. Implemented a 1-for-100 RS to stay compliant with Nasdaq. TTM Net Income Common Holders is -$75 million. FCF has been deeply negative for it's entire existence. End Cash Position has been steadily declining. Already I wouldn't touch this with a 12-foot pole. You literally acknowledge in your post that the core business is cash burning and not worth much. For this play to work, there has to be no bankruptcy and no serious dilution. These guys are burning cash like a biotech company, where do you think they are gonna get cash? A lot of today's price action seems based around the low float. Another risk factor. Asset sales take time, doesn't happen overnight. Asymmetry requires downside to be limited. There is way too much risk here. This is a lotto ticket not an asymmetric bet. Just because your loss is capped at what you paid doesn't mean it's asymmetric.

the_mammynun

HITI earnings today after market. We're hoping for C$170m revenue and positive net income. $5m+ FCF would be ideal however due to higher capex relating to Remexian I'm not counting on it.  It's exciting. Hopefully those who missed out on CWEB will come to see that HITI is in a strong position to benefit from the executive order as it pertains to CBD. They offer some of the highest quality products at the best prices.

gamblingPharmaStocks

> Do you think all the users paying more and more money are just going to be like nah, this isnt actually for me anymore? Not the users, but their shareholders. Hyperscalers are not making anywhere close to 1T in FCF, so this has to come from debt, and they con only shove so much of it into SPVs off their balance sheet before people start worrying. Unless they start making money out of AI, of course, but this has yet to happen. Beside this, while I think that > demand for AI will vanish overnight I think NVDA growth can slow down also for other reasons, like competition from AMD, TPUs, Trainium, Cerebras... NVDA had a monopoly because if you were developing software, it was not worth it to make your own chips. The hardware costs were much lower than salaries. If instead hardware is the bulk of your costs, and you a trillion dollar company, you are quite happy to make your own chip. The only thing holding these competitors back is that NVDA has preordered most of TSMC's capacity for the coming two years. However now we see orders overflowing into Samsung and Intel. Lack of backlog was the main thing holding them back from doing their CapEx and bringing up capacity... As a final point, I don't trust NVDA's numbers anyway. NVDA, under Huang, was ruled guilty of prebooking revenue during the dotcom bubble, in order to meet guidance and mislead investors. I see no reason why they wouldn't do it again.

DocInABox33

That’s an impossible objective bc related to the last question, what is the book value of SaaS, how can you measure an overreaction? It really is difficult because there’s no objective data points to analyze. At least with companies with hard assets or even looking at just cash balance, you have a basis for accurate valuation (bc cash’s value doesn’t fluctuate and hard assets can be priced in real time). You’ll need to monitor a trend in FCF and even then what’s not an arbitrary timeframe? 2 quarters? 2 years? You’ll only know if it’s an overreaction vs accurate commoditized risk after it’s already occurred. Probably for you the best way to answer the question is look at the first principle: CRM SaaS and AI capability. Do a mock case study; use AI in such a way that mimics what CRM does. Then you need to ask 4 questions: 1) Does AI effectively, accurately, and consistently perform the same as Salesforce? 2) How easy/time consuming is it to use AI or set it up to act like Salesforce? 3) What is the real cost (tokens consumed, employee time used to engage, etc.) to use AI and compare to Salesforce price? 4) At what point would I use Salesforce over AI; if it were priced the same? lower? if AI companies increase their prices? It’s all speculation but you’ll be far closer to having a reasonable answer to your question than most people who are using AI news headlines, which in my opinion, are overstating the effect of AI. Not in terms of application, but more so people just are too lazy or don’t want to learn how to use the tools. Far easier to hire someone else and complain to or blame them when things go wrong. How can you blame computer code? People are significantly mispricing the ability to hold a human accountable when things go wrong.

Routine_Gazelle_3522

Salesforce’s value isn’t actually its software. It’s the data it has collected. It has a database with more business data than maybe only three other companies in the world. AI has the potential to unlock any unrealized value in that data. The quality of its software going forward will be secondary to its ability to be a business matchmaker and intelligence provider (it’s gonna steal a lot of consulting business). The potential is huge. That said, I haven’t bought any of it because I think it’s a poorly run business. 1) Benioff is a piece of shit. Other than his donations to children’s hospitals, he’s a fake MF. 2) their questionable M&A choices of the past have only been made worse by their seeming inability to integrate them and monetize them. 3) they not only have high SBC, but high operating costs for a software company, 4) this choice to use debt to do share repurchase is stupid. If a company doesn’t have the FCF or Cash to buy back shares, it simply shouldn’t. It’s another example of bad management.

Routine_Gazelle_3522

Salesforce’s value isn’t actually its software. It’s the data it has. It has a database with more business data than maybe only three other companies in the world. AI has the potential to unlock any unrealized value in that data. The quality of its software going forward will be secondary to its ability to be a business matchmaker and intelligence provider (it’s gonna steal a lot of consulting business). The potential is huge. That said, I haven’t bought any of it because I think it’s a poorly run business. 1) Benioff is a piece of shit. Other than his donations to children’s hospitals, he’s a fake MF. 2) their questionable M&A choices of the past have only been made worse by their seeming inability to integrate them and monetize them. 3) they not only have high SBC, but high operating costs for a software company, 4) this choice to use debt to do share repurchase is stupid. If a company doesn’t have the FCF or Cash to buy back shares, it simply shouldn’t. It’s another example of bad management.

DocInABox33

You are missing the fact that the market is future/forward looking. It’s the same reason why any company that reports great earnings (i.e. beats EPS/Rev/Margins etc which are related to the same valuation metrics you focused on) gets hit when forward guidance is bad. Your valuation is based on TODAY’s FCF; but the market is saying they don’t want to pay for TODAY’s FCF they want to pay for 2027,28,29 etc FCF. What changed is CRM has always been a premium product that defended its pricing power, but the market is factoring in the fact that AI is going to commoditize their service. The other companies you mentioned may be due to more growth/retail sentiment or some AI news driven speculation who knows. But CRM’s valuation has always been a dominant staple in pricing power that’s going to swing in the other direction… a commodity, at least that’s what the market believes. Since it’s a technology company that’s sells a service, it difficult to use traditional Buffet valuation metrics bc they have no hard assets. In other words, what’s the true book value of a SaaS company?

LumpaLard

There is very little detailed analysis on the LPSN sub. It's either dead or the minute someone applies any analysis, it is shut down or the person banned. Lol. Discord from Tradespotting is also low on analysis - I only look at the free side and I noted he was quite tetchy with some people after recent earnings call saying he always said manage risk responsibly. It's no Carvana which I think Tradespotting once said LPSN had potential to be, it doesn't have squeeze potential. I don't want to be all negative: They’ve clearly found some operating leverage: adjusted EBITDA $10.8m on $59m revenue (~18% margin) is a legit short‑term improvement. Syntrix and Google Marketplace gives an angle for news‑driven pops if they announce more proof‑points (new big logos, usage spikes, ARR milestones). Balance sheet is still alive - net loss narrowed from -$134m to -$67m for 2025; debt is painful but they bought time, which keeps the equity as a viable trading instrument. But: Structural top‑line decline is explicitly guided to continue; they are not even pretending to re‑accelerate in 2026. NRR below 80% with falling RPO - this is not a compounding SaaS engine, it’s slow erosion. FCF still negative, cash trending down; any macro or execution wobble re‑opens the “more dilution / more refi” scenario. Management is framing 2025 as “defining” and “inflection,” but the numbers don’t support a true growth inflection - that disconnect is a tell to me. As you can gather: I enjoy picking at the scabs of my failed investments 😅 Godspeed whatever you decide, friend

Beneficial-Ad-7771

Planet is pre GAAP profitable so PE is useless and so is FCF. The valuation IS the P/S re-rating from SaaS to defense infrastructure. And I already mentioned I used Claude to help me put everything together.