Gene Munster: Tesla + Google Earnings Preview
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Eligibility and available amounts may vary and are subject to change at any time. For full terms and conditions, visit Current.com or call 888-851-1172 for more information. Welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. I'm Dan Nathan. I'm joined by Gene Munster. He is the managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. Gene, welcome back to the pod.

Hey, Dan. Great to be here. Yeah, it's not a great day to be here. You know, you and I were just talking for a minute before we started this thing. We turned the cameras on, the mics on. It's just, this is just...

It's frustrating. You know what I mean? Like someone like you, you do a lot of great fundamental work. You think in big picture ideas, you try to look out long-term, but then the near term is just really frustrating, right? Because it doesn't seem that fundamental. It doesn't seem that specific to the names, to the sectors, to the narratives, right? So just give me a sense. It's noon right now on Monday. It was not a great opening. I think we've

opened down in the S&P down 1%, the NASDAQ maybe 1.5%. Right now, as we're talking, the S&P is down nearly 3%, and the NASDAQ is down a little more than 3%. It's just a sea of red. The only name that I see that's up was Netflix that reported after the close, and good on you. I know that's a name that you've been universally bullish on, that sort of thing, but it doesn't bring you a whole heck of a lot of solace on a day like today.

It doesn't. Then my morning saw the soft open and then we were in our Monday research meeting and talking about a lot of fundamentals. So when I went about halfway through the meeting and checked the stocks, I thought my computer wasn't updating. I thought it was like a quote from like picking up something from last week when things were down big. And it's just been just frustrating for, like you said, that kind of the fundamental approach because it's,

As it stands today, a lot of these fundamentals are really strong. I remember as an analyst, I was...

probably 10 years in as an analyst. And I met with, I'll just say a West Coast respected buy side person. And they had the senior portfolio manager and then four associates in there. So I'm on one side of the table and they've got five people on the other side of the table. And we're talking about Apple and the iPhone and potential for a recession. And I was going through all my numbers about why

that Apple was gonna meet their numbers and all this positive feedback we had to the minute in terms of how the business was moving.

And as I was kind of going through my defense about why the business was going to be fine, this investor stood up and walked out of the meeting. It's the only time that's ever happened to me. And I was taken aback, of course, and I asked the lieutenants, the other four in the room, like, what's going on? And he said, you basically don't get it. Like, things are fine right now, but just wait and see. And so I'm reminded of that as I have a lot of good things to report in terms of the fundamentals of these companies.

I had a lesson. If you're curious, in fact, Apple did end up missing their numbers six, 12 months after that meeting. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great point for a lot of our folks, listeners, viewers who are not

institutional investors, right? Who don't do the level of fundamental work that you do. You know, your job as an analyst and as an investor now too, is to really know your companies, their products, their services, their managements, their moats. I mean, the list goes on and on, right? The estimates, where consensus is, you stress test them, where they can go. And a lot of folks just don't have those capabilities. They have other jobs. They're, you know, dentists or, you know, mailmen or whatever.

whatever the heck it is that, that people do. And so, you know, a lot of them just have to kind of think about where their market outlook is and what are their favorite names there. And, you know, like that sort of thing, the touchy feely sort of stuff. So I,

I'm in that camp too, man. It's like when I hear someone say the fundamentals are really good now, you know, if the stock market is a discounting mechanism and you have, let's say, if we're looking at the mag seven, you have every single one of them other than Microsoft and meta that are down at least 20% on the year.

All of them are down at least 20% from their highs. They're telling you something different than the market that's down 13%, the S&P, and the NASDAQ that's down nearly 20%. I mean, just think about that, right? And so here we are. We're three and a half months into the year, and the market is telling us that we are going to be on very shaky economic ground. The market is telling us that the uncertainty, not just here but globally,

for demand globally for what it means for supply chains if we're gonna go into a protracted trade war, right? The tariff situation, which is obviously a huge part of the trade war, I think you can extrapolate the term trade war away from tariffs because there's so many other knock-on effects, right? Like if that makes some sense and you know, like here's a good example.

And I'd love to get your take on this, right? If China and the US are going tit for tat here and it doesn't seem like either one are going to back down, there's like second derivative sort of things. Okay, well, iPhones, 90% of them are made in China. Foxconn makes them and the whole supply chain is oriented there. And if you're going to tax...

you know, basically the iPhone's coming in here and you're also going to tax every other component that goes into the iPhone. You know what I mean? Like all of a sudden, if you think iPhones are going to be only taxed at 145%, think about what Apple has to do, right? To get the components of the iPhones. Think about what shipping rates are going to mean like, or not mean like, think about what the disruption is after, let's say we have a

quick, you know what I mean, sort of resolution after a year, economies just don't turn on the dime, right? And then the other one is like, think about this. So I just read this this morning and we've talked about this. What if Sheehan and Timu stop advertising here in the U.S. because there's left demand because we killed the diminutives?

Who does that hurt? Well, it hurts Meta, right? So tell me how you're thinking about that because I am of the belief that no matter what happens, whether it's a month from now, whether it's 12 months from now, the economy is just not going to turn on a dime.

Well, I think there are two kind of tracks. There's maybe three tracks. The economy, what's going on with the fundamentals, that's related. We'll consider that one track. And there's second about what the market is discounting and ultimately where it goes. And so from like a market perspective, I can say that if...

I think just objectively, I'm going to try to just shoot right for the center of the road here in terms of politically taking all the political out of it. I think objectively, these tariffs are going to be punitive to economic growth, at least over the next couple of years. And so there needs to be that reset. And so one factor is, do you believe that this is the real course? And-

My sense is that just in talking to people who have orbited in the conversation before, I'll say that, is that Trump actually does want to get some sort of resolution with China. And I could be wrong on this, but my sense is that this kind of the summertime frame, we've talked about that before. I think we're going to see some resolution because I think that

Again, if this course maintains, we're going to see some sort of measurable reset. I don't think that that's priced in for these, this environment to continue for the next two years, but I do think there'll be some form of resolution this summer. And we can talk more about that. And then the other piece to this is just the conversation more broadly. I mentioned that story about Apple and missing their numbers. The piece I don't remember is what did the stock do? And again,

There's a South, it's Morgan Stanley piece out today that they're by side sentiment. I think they'd done for 20 or 25 years. It was the lowest in five, kind of has marked up a low point five times in the last 25 years. The last time it was this low was like in fall of 2022, just before things rallied. And so I'm not trying to like, like get out of jail here. I mean, this is bad, but there is a track that's going in my mind about what's priced in.

Yeah, but here we are, you know, we have no real idea what sort of concessions, you know, the Trump administration is looking for, right? You know, 30 years in the business and being one of those guys on the other side of the table, you know, and, you know, I look at, okay, you know, you know, whatever the sentiment indicator is in the last five times it marked a low or this, what's so different now, Gene, is that we have, in

inflation that doesn't appear to be going lower and inflation that will only go higher in the near term if we push for you know this sort of reshoring and that sort of thing we have growth that is slowing it was already slowing a little bit before this sort of thing we had high valuations

We had a market that was driven by a secular theme that I know you believe this is so investable over five and 10 years, and there's going to be other periods of great returns and the like here. But in the near term, every single one of them is flashing the other way, right? And when they're all going in different directions and not in the way in which we

are the conditions for, you know, making a bottom in the market, turning an economy around. Like, I just think that uncertainty is going to rule the day. So let me, let me jump in there. One question is that the uncertainty pieces you're looking at, let's go, let's jump a month from now, six months, a year from now,

Is there something like inherent in the other, are there points that you're looking at? Like the fundamentals today, again, the market's a discounting measure. So it's more important as kind of down the road, but I'm curious, are you seeing some cracks in the armor already? Yeah.

Or is it more of like the mechanics of this just aren't going to play out? Well, I think what's different this time and especially, you know, different than 2022 is that, you know, if we are the global leader in democracy and in capitalism and in defense, I mean, the list goes on in technology and innovation. Like, think about all those things, right? We've spent, it is a great country. And a lot of folks, you know, are really disappointed about leadership.

They were disappointed about leadership on November 4th. They're disappointed in leadership now. And if you can't come behind our leadership and see a clear way forward for us to continue to lead in those ways, and I think that this is a self-inflicted reality.

wound. There's no doubt about it. And we have lost a lot of trust from our allies and we've lost respect from our adversaries, right? When on April 9th we blink or the president blinks in the way that he did after all the tough talk, then if you are an adversary, you lose confidence that you can't

I don't know, man. Like you get it. And then let me ask you this. By now, weren't you expecting Canada, Mexico and the EU to have announced some sort of agreement? If you're our allies and you see no teeth to the threats that you're making and the fact that your adversaries are not

like kind of, you know, blinking at all. It's just, that's a, this is a real problem. And, you know, the flip side of that is in the last week, we've had Meta in front of the FTC. We've had a DOJ ruling in the Google case, you know, like, so these guys, these companies that thought this administration was going to be a bit easier to them than the prior administration, they're taking it, they're taking it right in the teeth right here. I would say that's been the biggest,

Um, it's been a lot of surprises. That's been the most recent surprise I should say is I thought Zuckerberg, all the hard work he's put in over the past six months was going to pay off in DC. It doesn't seem like it's having the payoff that I would have expected. Well, you and I've been talking about this. I thought he was going to screw every last one of them. He has a long memory and I think he remembers the

2016, despite winning. I think that he thinks that he won 2020 despite the censorship that went on by our large platforms and the like here. I understand that, but...

And Zuckerberg's come back and given the olive branch since then. But that's the point. This is not a guy that you can have, you know, these sorts of negotiations on the level. He's never been that way. To ask any New Yorker who's been a banker, a real estate investor, you know, a...

one of their vendors, you know what I mean? And again, you can say, not you, but anyone listening, that is a political, no, it's a fact. I mean, these are facts, you know what I mean? So again, I always knew he was going to do this and he's doing it. And so I just think again- But he didn't do it to, I don't think he's done it to Cook. Not yet.

You know, I mean, you tell me what sort of exemptions the iPhone's going to get. I mean, not yet. And you know what? Elon, he's going to get his too. Every single one of them. I'm just telling you. And I don't mean to sound so definitive, but this is how he operates. I don't think we're on two different pages. I think that I'm just more inclined to kind of just, you know. The piece I'm trying to figure out is the...

darkest before dawn piece. Well, I think that takes a while, Gene. I mean, if you're telling me that we're going to have some sort of resolution, hopefully by September, maybe by the fall, the NASDAQ is going to be down 40% by then. Some of our favorite stocks are going to be down 50, 60, maybe 70%. I would say Trump's birthday, she's birthday a day apart from each other in June. I'll put just...

I don't go to Vegas, but whatever it is, when you put kind of a long shot out there and has a big payoff, I'll say that. Yeah, okay. June 15th, June 16th. But then I guess it depends on where's the market, where are these stocks, what is the, you know, like, again, I'm not of the belief. Let's just say they have a big handshake, a hug. They're going to do, just like last time, they're going to do a phased-in sort of thing. You know what I mean? I don't think the market turns on a dime. I don't think the economy turns on a dime. And I think the United States, which is an amazing country, the best economy,

we've ever seen on this planet and just you know from a whole host of different things i just think we've lost a lot of trust around the world and and so that where i'm vectoring like way off course here but uh into outside of tech and

I think when it does come to leadership or politics, there's windows of getting things done. And I think the Trump administration sees a window here. I don't think that that window is going to be the same window in a year or two. And so we're in the vortex right now, hopeful thinking in the vortex right now. I don't think it's going to be as crazy a year from now, just because I don't think a lot of the political capital to be as aggressive.

Yeah. And again, if if 2017 through 2021 told us anything that, you know, not having political capital is not the thing that that stops this man. It's not the sort of thing that thwarts, you know, sort of policy that, you know, he feels very strongly about. And, you know, listen, you and I could talk for an hour about it. I mean, I think the idea of seeing, you know, like seeing an opportunity to do this, that or whatever, there seems to be nothing.

no agreement within his administration about this. You know what I mean? In my opinion, because any sort of trade situation that you reorient, it's not going to really have an impact for years to come. You know what I'm saying? So again, I think if you look around, if you look at Ukraine, if you look at what he's doing with the universities, if you look what he's doing with the law firms, if you look at, I mean, the list goes on and on. It's generally fairly punitive. It's not about policy. You know, a lot of these things he doesn't really care about. It's really like whimsical.

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This week, two really important earnings. Let's talk about Tesla, which is Tuesday after the close, and then we'll talk about Google a little bit Thursday after the close. And we got to talk a little bit about what's going on in Nvidia, because I think what's going on there is really interesting.

Let's talk about Tesla first. This is the worst acting stock of the mega caps. It's down 40% on the year. It's very near those recent lows. I think it was about 220. 220 was a level that the stock had gapped from just before the election. And the stock doubled. And now it's roundtripped the entire thing. I read some of your notes. I know you've been on CNBC. I know that you've become slightly, well, a bit.

less bullish about the near term. You're willing to kind of throw out some of those estimates. It's brand degradation. It's price wars. It's tariffs. I mean, the list goes on and on, his behavior. So where are you right now? Let's assume that estimates for deliveries, let's say margins are not going to get much better. Let's say they're going to have this write down for the crypto. They're going to have maybe a gain because the market

the board members paying back some cash or this and that, whatever, it's going to be a funky looking quarter. You don't care about Q1. You care about the balance of the year. And do you think they're going to have much clarity there? Well, I was thinking more like this year is kind of the throwaway. They set that tone last quarter talking about this 2025 being the transition year and taking the 20 to 30% growth feels like a light year away from where it's going to ultimately end up. So I think that, yeah,

Little is actually going to change on this earnings. This is, I think, going to be one of those earnings that it doesn't really matter. What matters is Elon has a superpower of getting investors to buy in in terms of the long term. I think we saw that last quarter. We talked about it. The numbers weren't good. Stock hung in there and then it gave it back. I think in this case, we're going to see the same message. Don't worry about 2025. All these great things coming in 2026. As far as 2025 is...

I had a prediction, but when the deliveries came out, the fee was at $275,000 in non-GAAP earnings for calendar 25. And my prediction was before they reported, the number would be $230,000.

and felt like it was going to $2. That's kind of my base for this year. So as of last Friday, the number had gone from 275 to like 262, something like that. Hadn't fallen by nearly as much as I thought. And I'm trying to figure out like what's going on. Is that like the real estimates or are the whisper numbers really orbiting more around two to 230? So I'd start there is that as far as the near term, I think that auto gross margins are

Just given the volume piece related to what's happened with the brand, you're going to see some, you're going to see low, lower auto gross margins. It was in the mid 13% last quarter. That's the pressure point metric. It's probably going to be mid 12 or 12% this quarter. And so when you kind of play this forward, it's going to be ugly. Like 2025 is going to be ugly and it's going to test the patience, I think, of Tesla believers and,

I'm in the camp. I'm still supportive. I still believe that they're going to turn the corner. I think next year is going to be a good year. I've believed that before, but I just paint this picture. Usually you go into a quarter thinking like this could be a big swing factor one way or the other, something going on. I don't think there's much they can say. They're going to push out. It was reported that they're going to push out this lower price delivery over the weekend.

Tesla didn't mention that, but third party. In our model, it wasn't until 2026 anyway. Elon said early 25. We put it in early 26. Sounds like it's probably going to be early 26. But I think kind of putting all that together, actually, I don't think there's much in play this quarter just because the message is going to be the same message that they had last quarter, which is

Give us some time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think the company is really ever confirmed that they're going to make a very low end car. There was an article in the information over the weekend talking about the battle internally that went on between him pushing that out last year and going all in on robo taxi. And I think this year is going to be a disaster.

I mean, like, I know you just said it. I think this is going to be the year where folks test the theory about what, you know, mass adoption of EVs looks like. I think if we have a weak global growth, weak demand. Yeah, that's something else like this. You have the brand damage. Then you got the broader car market too. Yeah. Well, if you have crude oil at 50 bucks, I mean, there's less interest in buying EVs. Like there just is. And I don't know how he ever turns it around again.

you know, here in the U.S. and places like Germany. I think China is super complicated. You know what I mean? As from a manufacturing standpoint, from a demand standpoint, from a rare earth material standpoint for the batteries and all that sort of and then BYD and what's going on there. So, you know, I'm with you. I think at some point, you know, I mean, listen, this stock in 2024 was trading one hundred forty three dollars.

I mean, think about that. And here we are at 225 down from 490. And if you tell me that we're going to $2 and in 2024, a non-gap earnings, it was 242 reported, 312 in 23, 407 in 22, late 22, stock was down 70% from its 21 highs. And you had $4 in earnings and you had auto gross margins at 18%.

And we're going to do 12 and a half. This stock should go much lower. But if you believe, and I know you believe in physical AI, which is going to be Robotaxi and robotics and optimists, I'm taking the over all day long. And I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I think this story is done for now. I think that he has made some of the biggest miscalculations on an

early lead of a technology, this whole idea of price elasticity here in the U S they've been in a price war for three years and they keep pushing out a $25,000 EV. And they keep telling you, don't look over here, look over there.

Robo taxi is not going to work for years. Optimus is not going to be a thing that people buy for 30 grand. I mean, it's just, that's my take. And you, I know you do 10 times more work and you could say you're full of shit. You don't know. I would say that there's a belief. I have a belief that they're in a great place to physical AI. I think it's, I think that is something that's real. I do think that

The robotics piece is going to take longer. I think that this is a year where the humanoid is going to get kind of like a, you know, a bid, a little bit of a bid just because people start seeing more of them. There is this marathon in Beijing. I don't know if you saw that half marathon. There are 20 of those humanoids, two of them finished running a smoking 16 minute mile. Yeah. But so, Gene, let me just say this. Those are made in China.

And the ones that they showed you and you were at the event last June or fall, I can't remember what it was. They didn't work. They didn't work. Oh, my point is I agree on the optimist side.

I agree that that's probably five years away from like even, I mean, he's saying a commercial available, but I think in that town hall, he did kind of selling it to some Tesla employees at the end of 2026, I believe. I thought they said they were going to have some in production by the end of this year. In production, but for use in the factories. But as far as like some actual sales, like late 26, I think that's like five years away. I do think we got this test done.

RoboFleet, CyberFleet,

ride sharing fleet in June in Austin. I mean, they could pay for it. They could do six people and say that there they check the box. I'll bet you that doesn't come until October like last year, how they pushed it out. I mean, like this is a story. I mean, listen, you and I, I don't think it's a great short right here, but if it bounced after earnings, I think you sell it all day long. I'm not telling you sell it. You have a longer time horizon. I just think the fundamentals this year get worse before they get better. And there's downright shitty right now.

Let's hit Google really quickly.

Thursday after the close, you know, I had a back and forth with a CEO of a tech company that's private. He's been in the space for a long time. He recognizes, you know, right now, I guess the psychology around Gemini relative, let's just say open AI right here is not particularly great, but also optimistic because a lot of reviews by a lot of folks, and I think you're in that camp, think that Gemini is not that far behind OpenAI.

open AI and their ability to deploy across their seven platforms that have billions of users each, you know, that sort of thing presents a really good opportunity. But right now stocks in the penalty box, much like the rest of its peers.

So we did change our position on Google, I'd say recently. And recently I put in the context of the last couple of months. And after, as an analyst, knowing the company really well, big believers in everything you talked about, and as an investor, having that same view that they're going to get this figured out, we closely watched the improvements at Gemini. Gemini has made a lot of progress. And

They've got the regulation piece that always orbits. That's, in our view, secondary. The primary is just still this concept about what happens with search. And if you look at what's happening with GPT and those user numbers, they're going up by a lot. They're basically doubling in half as much time. And so they'll probably have gone from two years ago, about 100 million weekly users. By my estimates, they'll hit 800 million in June.

And so that's on a daily basis. You can adjust that to 600 million. Google has about two and a half billion daily search users. So it's about a quarter of the way there. But my point is you're seeing a lot of growth in these simplified search results page through chatbots. But it's still small relative to the rest of the world. The world talks about AI, but very few people, a quarter of it, if you look at search, actually use these bots.

My sense is that that monetization piece, getting that right, what they're doing right now is essentially papering over the problem by throwing the results at the top of the page, the generative results at the top of their search page.

It's helping continue engagement. They're saying they're seeing the right return on that. But ultimately, I think consumers, even though they're habitual about using Google, I think they're going to want just a whole different experience. And I don't know how they turn the corner on the monetization piece. And so.

We've changed our position based on that. Yeah, I remember, you know, on the pod a couple months ago, you kind of articulating that based on what you saw out of the Q4 sort of results. And, you know, again, this is a stock that easily could get cut in half. You know, a lot of this stuff is going to be discounted, not until much later, you know, defending that search mode and the search advertising component. And it wouldn't take...

a lot for a lot of analysts, a lot of investors to see some sort of decel or some sort of market share loss. You know, it doesn't have to be a lot. It could be just a very little and then extrapolate that to a broader trend, especially the way in which ChatGPT is growing, like you just detailed, and the way in which they are adding services, right, and the like here. So I get that. I would also maybe be a bit more optimistic

optimistic, you know, as the thing, the sentiment gets worse, the stock goes lower, the estimates come down, you know, that sort of thing. I think they probably have one of the best opportunities. It's good. I mean, our views can take three years to play out. This is not, we're not predicting that Google is going to blow up because the search business is

They own people, but they do have to change and they've got to fix the monetization. Yeah, no doubt. And when you think about it from an estimate standpoint, I mean, consensus is still calling for 10% year over year growth. Like we could probably, you know, you kind of zero that out and you have a stock trading at 19 times right here. If you're going to say 8% or, you know, a flat growth at 8%.

eight bucks or something like that. So again, you probably need the stock to go a bit lower estimates not to go too much lower than flat ish, you know what I mean? Year over year. And then the stock probably at 1516 times is probably a layup to start averaging into that sort of thing with the time horizon that you have. Does that make sense? I know you're a perplexity fan are do you use Google as much as

today as you did two years ago no um i actually um and then over the weekend my friend who's the ceo of this company he was berating me like why and gave me about 10 reasons why uh you know chat gpt is much better than perplexity and i spent the weekend messing around with chat gpt i just unsubscribed from my pro perplexity and uh am now only using chat gpt pro um and yeah

Yeah, but it is better. And, you know, I had been making the argument is like, well, why would you pay 20 bucks, you know, for GBT or Gemini when you can have access to Claude Soner, you know, Grok, you know, all those sorts of things. And a lot of it has to do with his other services that they have, these other models that they have, you know what I mean? So you and I can check back on that. I know you've been a GBT fan from the get go, but that's the point. As soon as

GPT comes out with a browser, OpenAI, I think it could be lights out for Google at some point because I am only Google searching through Chrome, my browser. I'm no longer going to a search page, that sort of thing. How about you? What are you doing on that front? I mean, I'd say my – I'm just going to guess here.

Feels like 90% of what I do now is on one of the chatbots. Most of them. It probably means that it's really like 50-50. It just feels like more. But, I mean, versus three years ago, it was zero. So I think it's just a much more efficient way to get the answer. I mean, it's much better. And more and more you're trusting it and you're not having to click through the citations. And that's a problem for Google also. I did, by the way, ask GPT this morning.

who was president and it first said joe biden and then i really said down trump so that was that is not good um let's talk about uh nvidia really quickly um so this is one where um the

the narratives change really quickly right and the export ban the back and forth h you know 20 and whether the chinese are going to be able to buy it you saw the news this morning whether it's true or not you know huawei is ready to ship some chip that they're taking a gpu they're adding some cpus they're getting a level of performance that matches this they're you know they're doing this and you've been talking about this since january 27th with deep seek is that our issues over here

with the export bans is causing the Chinese to innovate in a way that maybe we didn't expect. So talk a little bit about that and how you're thinking, you know, NVIDIA is down five and a half percent today, largely because of that headline, maybe the market with the market would have been down two, 3%, that sort of thing, but it's no longer showing good relative strength relative to the market and some of its peers.

So if you look at the percentage of their business that comes from China, it's probably something around 15, maybe 20%. The exact number to China is more like those chips with lower speeds on it. The H-series tend to be, I think it's like 5%, but they sell indirectly to China. And that's kind of one of the things about clamping down on that. And so I think that from...

that's the impact on NVIDIA. I don't think that the Western world is going to build on Huawei chips. In fact, they make innovation and charge less. I still think that

what's the kind of integrity, the sovereign part about AI, I think is still gonna be important. And so I'm a belief that still they're the best chips, best bang for the buck. The stuff we hear out of China too, we learned that with DeepSeq. I mean, the headlines, beyond the headlines, I mean, DeepSeq at first, we thought we trained for $5 million. At this point, most people think there was probably somewhere between 100 and 200 million when you factor in other resources that were used. It's a big difference between those two numbers. And so-

This is cat five again. We're going, this is, NVIDIA's in it right now. And I continue to believe that this company's gonna grow faster for longer. - Yeah, I mean, you and I have been going back and forth. These numbers, to me, 50% year over year earnings in sales growth this year, I'd be shocked, you know what I mean, if it comes in anywhere near that. And I think that all these age 20s that the Chinese have put orders in for that they're not going to get, I think,

The moment that we hear about an inventory build at Nvidia, I think the stock's going to be down 50%, not from here, I think from the highs, but it's close to that right now. And again, I've said this a thousand times over the last six to nine months is that for any of you who forgot, Nvidia, Tesla, Netflix, and Meta sold off 70% from their highs

in 2021 to the lows in 2022. And you say it's very different this time. These companies are building from a position of strength like they've never had. They have a strong secular shift to the, but these stocks,

Also, you know, they all, you know, went overshot to the upside. They have the potential to do so. The downside and the idea of them being Google got cut in half, you know, at that time period, you know what I mean? Microsoft, I mean, the list goes on and on. So I don't know why we'd be discounting this right now with the S&P down, you know, 12 and a half percent of the year and the NASDAQ down 20 percent of the year.

So I want to get that. I like you zeroed in on what I think is the right or what I would agree with the pressure point around that 50% growth. And I think the street right now is just fractionally above that, but these curbs come in and they stay in, I think it's probably more like 40% growth. If the, if the curbs get lifted in the summer, which I don't know if they'll get fully lifted, but some level of getting lifted, I

I think that it's probably more upside. The second part of the conversation is next year for calendar 26, the street's at 23% top line growth.

I think that's going to be 30% plus. And so- Yeah, but 30% off a lower base. I mean, if you think that we're probably, you know, goes down to 40%, 30% for next year, you know what I mean? By the way, I think, I want to just be very, I need to clarify. As it stands today, I think there's upside to the numbers this year. If these-

Curbs stay in place longer than I think, then there's a downside piece. I'm not trying to split the hair. - No, no, no, I'm with you. That makes perfect sense that if the curbs are lifted, the Chinese come back really hard and they probably, you know what I mean, start double and triple ordering again circa like 2023. Does that make sense? - Yep.

Yeah. Well, listen, again, I hate to hit you on a day like today. No, it's fun. I mean, I always love coming on. So I appreciate the warm welcome. No, man. I mean, Gene Munster, you've been a Fast Money friend for a very long time. You've been an amazing contributor to this podcast and we really, really appreciate it. And

I love your optimism. I don't mean the here and now. And you have this amazing ability to kind of play the short term. You know what I mean? Seeing what you see right in front of you and kind of spelling that out and being, you know, basically saying, like, this is the way I think it could play out. But I think your long-term optimism, and I think it's been demonstrated in names like Apple for 15 years, as long as I've known you, you know, you're right on these big secular shifts. There's a lot of stuff in between that gets really hard.

Yeah. Well, we want to get it right in the future. That's the plan. All right, my man, Gene Munster, I really appreciate you being here. Hopefully we'll do it again really soon. Thanks, bud.