Reckless Earnings Predictions: ZM, BBY, DE

0:05In the market for some reckless earnings predictions, you've come to the right place. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

0:20Welcome, fools. I'm your host, Tim Byers. And with me are longtime fools, Rick Binares, Dave Meyer. Fellas, how we doing? Fully caffeinated? Good weekends? Yes and yes. Yes to all. All right. Today, we're going to be making some reckless earnings predictions for three stocks reporting this week. Zoom Communications, Best Buy, so Zoom ticker ZM, Best Buy ticker BBY, and Deering Company ticker DE. Zoom will likely have reported by the time you're listening to this, so please leave us a comment to let us know how well or poorly we did. Now, let's get into it. The Reckless Predictions game is going to be pretty simple here, And we're going to start with, I'm going to give you the numbers we've got for what we should expect for each of these companies.

1:11And you guys are going to tell me, is it going to be a miss? Is it going to be a beat? Or is it going to be a beat and raise? And starting with Zoom, which again, reported this afternoon, consensus is$1.21 billion for revenue. and earnings per share. The consensus is$1.43 a share on a non-gap basis. So, Rick and Dave, Rick, starting with you, miss, beat, or beat and raise? Yeah. So, I'm going to go with a beat and raise on this one. And I guess I'll explain it later, but I think you just want me to say beat and raise right now. So, I'll leave that there. We're going to get into it. Dave, how about yourself?

1:50I'm going with beat. Going with beat. All right. I think I'm going to want you to explain first here, Dave, just to beat no raise. Yeah. So looking back at the last, I don't know, 10 to 12 quarters, they have beaten the revenue, beaten their numbers each time. And so to me, what I, what I see, I see a little sandbagging. I was just going to say, all right. So, because they're not, they're not big beats, but they are, they are ahead of what management has been guiding. So clearly they know how to play this game, if you will. But yeah, so that's why I say beat. I don't know enough to say if they'll continue to, if they'll raise based on expectations.

2:36So I'm very curious to hear what Rick has to say about that. Yeah. Yeah. Rick, let's talk about it. Beat and raise. Why you think the raise is coming in here? Yeah. So again, Zoom, it's like this toy you stashed away in a 2020 time capsule, but you forget to take out the batteries. So it's still going. And I think people don't realize this is the fourth consecutive year of single-digit revenue growth for Zoom. So yeah, single-digit growth, sure. But growth. And I think a lot of investors figured, oh, well, Zoom, like there's no place for Zoom in the post-pandemic future, but it matters. And to me, a funny thing happens after years of slow growth, you make sure that you have to impress on the bottom line.

3:13And as Dave points out, they have beaten in the past. And yeah, while it's usually like a slim margin, I think there's enough there where they've had enough time and they're starting to build momentum in their latest quarter. Revenue growth actually started to tick up a little bit that I think business is actually doing a little better. So, I figured they still have enough room to beat. Yeah, I think it'd be shocking if it doesn't happen and match in the comments section at the podcast. We'll tell how bad Dave and I may have gotten that. But I do think there's going to be enough room for a raise.

3:39So, let's talk a little bit and then we'll move on to Best Buy here of some of the key drivers here. The Zoom AI companion is something that Zoom has been looking for to maybe drive some additional upsell in the seats on its enterprise plan. But this is a platform play here. And they have two parts of the business. They have the enterprise business, and then they have the regular consumer business. The consumer business is the one that's dragging. They make very little, really nothing on it. It is like an anchor to margins. The enterprise business is where they get all the big customers. So if I had to ask you both, are you expecting some outperformance?

4:25There's a couple of ways this could go, right? If they beat, they could beat by just being very operationally efficient, or they could be beating by getting some real traction and generating some platform business, that enterprise business. So Dave, if I ask you this, are you expecting a little bit of momentum in the enterprise business? Or is this just, Hey man, zoom knows how to play the game. So I think again, if we go back to what happened, like zoom is one of the most quickly adopted products ever, especially by enterprise, right? Like there was a need and it met it. And so if, if at that point it's all incremental, so doing things incrementally to make their product a little better, a little more sticky.

5:10Maybe they get a little bit of incremental pricing. I think it's all incremental businesses a little bit better, especially on the enterprise side. All right. A little bit better goes a long way. Rick, you agree with that? Yeah, I do. I'm expecting mostly on the operational side just because, again, when I did say raise, I'm talking about the smallest poker chip on your table. That's what you're using to raise this. To me, this is a company that I'm not expecting great growth. And again, you are seeing sort of like, you know, go from 3 % to 4 % growth isn't such a big deal. But I do think there's minor improvements.

5:42I don't think any spectacular has happened in the last three months. But I do see that they're getting better about their operations and making sure that they're delivering on the bottom line. So, I think more operational than just the enterprise, you know, advancements and whatnot. All right. Let's move on to Best Buy, ticker BBY, which has underperformed the market by close to 24 % year to date. So our numbers here are$9.58 billion. That represents about 1.5 % year-over-year growth. So pretty meager growth here in a consensus estimate of$1.31 a share, non-gap. I'll also give you the comps here.

6:17The estimate is for relatively similar to what we've seen recently. So at least 1.5%. So Rick, going back to you, miss, beat, or beat and raise on those numbers for Best Buy? I'm going to go with a miss. I'm taking the long odds and rare miss. Yes. All right, Dave. Yeah, this one is hard, but I'm actually going to take the other side and go with the beat. Okay. Let's start with the miss. Rick, what makes you think that this is a miss? Yeah. Okay. So I imagine Best Buy, they sold a lot of iPhone 17s during the fiscal third quarter that ended at the start of this month. What else? This is the first full fiscal quarter of Nintendo Switch 2 on the market.

6:59But that came out in early June. So, most of those were sold in June and July before this quarter. I think consumers are leery of big-ticket purchases like PCs and higher-end laptops. The housing market, which is really important to Best Buy because they do a lot of appliances and they've gotten into outdoor furniture and stuff lately, that's icy. I don't see anything improving there. And yeah, the expectations are low. Sales up 2%. The earnings up 4 % per share. But even though Best Buy is three for three in its last three quarters, I think this feels like it's a perfect time for it to prove mortal right now with so many retailers putting out some different mixed pictures lately.

7:32So, yeah, I think this is the time where Best Buy is going to, in the words of NSYNC, Best Buy, Buy, Buy, and not say goodbye. The last two buys were the buy-bye. I'm not saying B-U-Y three times like Kramer. Yeah, very nice. All right, Dave, let me tee you up for your beat. Can you really go beat with the, you know, they've really struggled in the appliance sector here. And that's a big business for Best Buy. Tell me why you're confident in the beat. So I don't think that their customers have really started to feel a lot of what's happening in the economy. I think it's typically more felt by customers in lower income brackets.

8:10That being said, I get what you're saying. But the other thing I would say is this team, they know their business really well. and they're not going to set a target for themselves that is a high hurdle to try to jump over. They're going to try to set something that is, you know, something they can just step over. Right. So I could very well be wrong. I'll admit that. But again, if I go back to the most recent history, they have, uh, they have played this part of the game well as well. And I think they're, I don't think that they're setting themselves up. I don't think they would do anything to set themselves up for failure.

8:48So we shall see. Good to see we're on both sides of this one because it literally is like a coin flip. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. It is probably going to come down to foot traffic and comps. If I had to make my own reckless prediction here, it's probably going to come down to foot traffic and comps. And if they're able to go, let's say over 1.6%, then I think you're probably right here, Dave. But let's keep moving on to the biggest of the companies here, the big industrial monster that is John Deere. When I started prepping to this, the John Deere song came back into my head again. It took me back to the days when the kids were really small.

9:27It was like, why did I do this? Why did I select this ticker? I'll tell you why. It is an important indicator for this economy. Let's go through the numbers here. $10 billion in revenue is the consensus estimate. EPS, so earnings per share of$3.96. So, Rick, miss, beat, or beat and raise for the big agricultural monster that is John Deere? Miss. Miss. Okay. Dave, what do you say? Miss, beat, or beat and raise? I'm going with miss as well. Wow. Okay. This is going to be fun. Let's park on this for a couple minutes here. I need a little bit more from each of you. This is interesting because this is a company that doesn't just have a lock on the ag sector.

10:20They are introducing some AI features into some of their products, like the new Sean Spray for AI-powered weed killing. Why the negativity here? I'll start with you, Dave. First of all, I think there's a whole lot of farmers out there who are struggling. Okay. So we'll, we'll see just how much they're willing to excess spending. They're willing to do on technologies when some of their crops aren't even being sold. The other thing is, if I recall correctly through that, throughout this year, there was a drop earlier deer adjusted and has seen some momentum, some momentum come back. But again, the back, the, the demand picture, at least in my 10 ,000 foot level view of this, it seems dicey.

11:11That's why I would be, that's why I'd be probably betting more on the missed side than the beat side. All right, Rick, what do you, what else, what do you got to say for yourself here on that negativity? Yeah, I love that David are in this. I mean, again, companies more, more, more than likely not, they're going to be, they're going to have a beat. That's just the norm. It's just almost a default setting with some companies, but this one, and I, and I hate, I'm becoming like a, attractor detractor or an excavator hater or whatever rhymes with dozer or mower. I'll work that in next time. To me, the problem here is that this feels like a trap.

11:40Analysts, they already see profitability taking a big hit. So, you're already thinking, okay, it's already discounted. It's already priced in. But just last week, just in the last seven days, three of these analysts lowered their profit targets for this quarter. When you kind of see that last minute adjustment lower, these people, these Wall Street pros that watch a lot closer than I ever will are starting to see some weakness. So, that's why I went with the miss. I mean, I didn't expect you to go full Admiral Ackbar there, but that's well done. But there is an argument for this, and I'll say this and we'll move on.

12:11They have struggled with inventory. And if that inventory problem, if that backlog of used equipment is not moving off dealer lots, it's going to be really difficult to get new equipment onto those dealer lots. And that is a problem for Deere. All right. So to summarize here, we have three earnings reports. Zoom reports this afternoon. Best Buy reports tomorrow morning, Tuesday morning. And Deere reports Wednesday morning. Our tickers are ZM, BBY for Best Buy, and DE for Deere, the old John Deere company. Let us know what you think. Tell us, were we right? Were we wrong? Do you think we're off the mark here and do you want more reckless earnings predictions that's what we really want to know here but coming up next it's another game of faker or breaker when johan rawl received the letter on christmas day 1776 he put it away to read later maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside but what it actually was was a warning delivered to the hessian colonel letting him know that general george washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces.

13:27The next day, when Raw lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two Colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pocket. As someone with 15 ,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh well, this is The Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

14:04All right, welcome back to Motley Fool Money. It's another game of faker or breaker. As a reminder, the rules here are very simple. We go through three companies and I ask you both for each of these companies, is it a faker or a breaker? And what we mean by a faker is a company that has plenty of growth or a lot of opportunity ahead, but that opportunity is capped or limited. It looks like it might have the growth to achieve breakerdom, but it just doesn't have the attributes that would make it a rule breaker. This one's going to be a little bit different because this is a turnaround edition of Faker or Breaker.

14:47Some companies that have had, And we've done this before, right? Sometimes with rule breakers, you have companies where you have dark clouds you can see through. And I want to know, for these companies, and I'm going to start with you, Dave, for C3AI, ticker AI, do you think there are dark clouds we can see through for C3AI? So in the AI space, it is nothing but clear skies, clear blue skies ahead. And this is a company that cannot navigate it and hasn't been able to for a number of years. I mean, this is the biggest faker that there's been, right? This is a company that started right when AI was picking up.

15:33They were so well positioned and they just haven't been able to really capture the demand that's out there with their platform. And then, so if I give you new CEO, Steven, uh, I'm sure I'm butchering this name, but as a new CEO, that doesn't do anything for you. No, like seriously, you should like, you're at a point where your company should be selling itself. You know what, you know what I mean? Like, like you should have a brand, you should have a platform, you should have all the services that people are looking for, you know, and it's just the momentum just has not gotten there. And in fact, I believe the next year there are the, this year, um, or coming up very soon, they're expecting a decline in sales.

16:20So you're going to have to shrink in order to, to try to, you know, reinvigorate growth. So, so yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot going on at this company, new CEO, reorganizing the sales team, reorganizing or operations. This is not a rule breaker turnaround, in my opinion. Fair enough. All right, let's move on. Rick, I'm going to give you the honest company, ticker HNST, the Jessica Alba-backed company here. Lots of consumer goods. I think maybe best known for diapers. So, faker or breakery here, Rick, do you see some dark clouds we can see-through? I'm going to go with a faker, but I'm going to tell you why.

17:02It doesn't feel like a faker, but it definitely doesn't feel like a breaker either. A few years ago, right around the pandemic, I couldn't get enough of the citrus vanilla shampoo and body wash. It's labeled as a baby product, but it's a baby-friendly product that adults can use. You wind up smelling like orange creamsicle. I mean this in a good way as a fan of orange and vanilla coming together. But I haven't bought it in years. And sure enough, when I looked at the financials, I'm not alone. So this is a company that had this blowout 2020 and the year before that, too, with double-digit growth.

17:33But it's been five years of single-digit revenue growth here for the Honest Company. You mentioned Alba, of course, the co-founder and superstar. She stepped down as the chief creative officer last year, but she's still on the board, I believe. But it's just hard to stand out with consumer products like this. And even when your heart is in the right place. And again, you want them to succeed. It's almost like the food with integrity that Chipotle has. That's their approach to consumer products, making everything clean, eco-friendly, efficient. They do everything right. You want them to succeed.

18:01But there's not really a lot of growth here. And it's sort of hard to stand out, even though it is, obviously, especially on the personal care and the baby products, for the baby wipes and the diapers, they have that market where they have their very fanatically devoted user base. But then we're sort of asking ourselves if baby growth is the solution that we're talking about population rates. And I don't want to play that math. So I'm going to go with faker. All right. Let's end with one that has been around for a really long time. And I want you both to come in with a sentence on this one. And that is Yelp.

18:34Poor Yelp. Ticker Y-E-L-P. Faker or breaker. And I'm going to give you this to tee it up to see if I can convince you that maybe there's some breakerishness here. They do have a conversational AI tool that helps users book pros. There is apparently 400 % increase in project submissions through the tool, so they're getting some usage there. But the numbers maybe aren't as great as we would like to see. So, Dave, I will start with you. Faker or Breaker? So, a number of years ago, I was actually very bullish on this company from a valuation standpoint. I figured they have all sorts of data, all sorts of engagement.

19:17They should be able to continue to turn themselves around and grow. But man, it just hasn't worked out how I anticipated. So I'm going with Faker. And I think the reason is I don't know if they really have enough oomph to handle the substitute products that are out there that can do the job as well, if not in some cases better. So they haven't made their switching costs high enough for people to stay, in my opinion. And that hurts them over the longer term. Fair enough. All right, Rick, faker or breaker? Can you see through the dark clouds here? I can eat my way through the dark clouds. But I'm going to go, again, with this case, I'm going to go also with a faker for Yelp.

20:07And the conversation, I think, is interesting. But again, Dave just shot down the company that has the ticker symbol AI and has dozens of enterprise platform software solutions based on AI for a long time and just not showing growth. To me, Yelp has that problem. Yelp Elite used to mean something. Now there's so many other places you can get reviews for just about anything, even AI from the actual search engines themselves. But more importantly, this is a business that's been slowing for more than a decade and a half. So before the pandemic, revenue growth from six years up to 2019 went from almost 70 % growth to down to 8 % growth in 2019.

20:42The pandemic happened. Everything cratered. Then it picked up, bounced naturally in 2021-22. But we're in the same boat. This will be the fifth consecutive year of accelerating growth. And now it's a mid-single digits. I don't see Yelp finding a way out of this. So I went faker as well. Fair enough. All right. Three fakers. Your kickers are AI. That's for C3AI. The Honest Company, ticker HNST. And for Yelp, ticker Y-E-L-P. Poor, poor Yelp. I mean, they have not been able to get over. I'll tell you, it's been great for them. I was cheering for them. I mean, yeah. You hate to see it. All right. Up next, we'll preview Tuesday's show.

21:27You're listening to Motley Fool Money. All right, we're back. Thank you for listening to Motley Fool Money. Up tomorrow, Emily Flippen welcomes Jason Hall and Jeff Santoro. Expect plenty of stock banter and maybe a bit of Thanksgiving gratitude. As a reminder, there will be no podcast on Thursday this week, seeing as that is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. Allow all of us here at The Motley Fool to wish you and yours a wonderful time together. But again, tomorrow, you've got Emily Flippen, Jason Hall, Jeff Santoro. Bit of banter, bit of turkey talk, and we'll have more for you next week.

22:05But for today, thank you so much to Dave Meyer and Rick Bunares. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you being here. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For Rick Binares and Dave Meyer, our engineer is Dan Boyd, and our producer is Anand Chakalou.

22:46I am your host, Tim Byers. Thank you for listening to Motley Fool Money. See you again tomorrow, fools. Fool on.