🎙️ Remitly: Remittance Giant or Crypto Casualty?

[Just 5 minutes to read]

Remittances don’t exactly scream excitement. I don’t sit around the dinner table talking about corridor-specific payout rails or disbursement prefunding.

And unless you’ve sent money to family abroad, or received it, you’ve probably never even used an app like Remitly. But for millions of people, Remitly is an essential part of their lives.

Now, a company that is more familiar to most of us is Uber.
Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I’ll make the argument that Remitly and Uber have some interesting similarities.

And if you're wondering what a remittance company could possibly have in common with a ride-hailing platform, I’d advise you to stick around for this deep dive.

Let’s dig in and see whether Remitly can follow in Uber’s footsteps…and earn a spot in our Intrinsic Value Portfolio.

— Daniel

Remitly: Sending Money to the World

An Idea born in Kenya and grown in the U.S.

Remitly was founded in 2011 by Matt Oppenheimer. Matt was born and educated in the U.S., but unlike most American entrepreneurs, he began his career abroad before starting his own business. Specifically, he worked as Head of Mobile and Internet Banking Initiatives for Barclays Bank Kenya and later in the United Kingdom.

While working in Kenya, he saw firsthand how expensive and frustrating it could be for people to receive money from abroad — long lines, high fees, and unpredictable wait times. Sure, part of the reason was that the world in the mid-2000s was simply more analog than today. Most remittances still relied on cash agents and pick-up stations.

Another reason was the outdated financial infrastructure, which lagged far behind that of the Western world. But this was about to change, and Matt Oppenheimer knew it. Back in the U.S., he set out to create a product that would solve the complexities of the remittance market. And so, Remitly was born.

Matt Openheimer (middle) with co-founders Josh Hug (left) and Shivaas Gulati (right)

The main idea was to build a digital-first product. Doesn’t sound all that revolutionary today, but remember — this was 2011. And chances are, you still recognize that yellow sign below. It belongs to Western Union, the undisputed heavyweight of the remittance world at the time. But famously, a pure offline business. Physical branches all over the globe served as cash pick-up spots.

Western Union’s global footprint, combined with the fact that remittances are complex, a business of trust, and often sticky transactions, allowed them to charge sky-high fees. So you had a dominant incumbent, offering an expensive, limited service. Seemed ripe for disruption, if you ask me.

And disruption came. Western Union’s revenue has been declining for years now. In the past six years alone, it shrank at a negative CAGR of nearly 5%. Remitly, on the other hand, grew its revenue at a staggering 57% CAGR over the same period.

The good news? There’s still a long runway before Remitly gets anywhere near Western Union’s scale. And that’s just one company being disrupted. The broader remittance market is much bigger, and Remitly is still only scratching the surface, with an estimated market share in the low single digits.

So, before we dive deeper into Remitly, let’s zoom out and take a quick look at the remittance market as a whole.

Despite the outdated model, WU is still massive. That means, still plenty of market share up for grabs.

The In’s and Out’s of the Remittance Market

At the risk of telling you something you already know: remittances are cross-border money transfers, typically sent by migrant workers back to their families.

Picture this: A construction worker in Texas gets paid on Friday. Over the weekend, he opens the Remitly app, selects “Mexico” as the destination, and sends $300 to his mother in Jalisco. She receives the money either into her bank account, a mobile wallet, as cash, or even stablecoin (we’ll get to that). In over 90% of cases, this happens within minutes.

Back home, that $300 might go toward rent, school fees, groceries, or medical bills. Most of it is spent on non-discretionary goods and services — essential stuff. And these payments aren’t one-offs. Because they make up a meaningful part of household income, it’s highly likely the same transfer will happen again next month.

Multiply that by tens of millions of similar senders across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Gulf states, and you start to see just how massive and critical the global remittance engine really is.

Globally, we’re talking about a market approaching $1 trillion. In fact, more money flows into low- and middle-income countries through remittances than through most forms of foreign aid or foreign direct investment.

The bigger the circle, the more remittances countries receive

Remitly talks about a total addressable market (TAM) of around $2 trillion. That includes remittances, but also the broader financial needs of immigrants. As of yesterday, Remitly actually expanded that TAM to $22 trillion…just a casual 10x increase. We’ll get to that in a bit.

For now, let’s stick with the characteristics of the remittance market. One major advantage is its recession-proof nature. As mentioned, the vast majority of remittances are spent on essentials — groceries, energy, and education. As long as money’s coming in, it’s getting sent out.

Remitly’s most important corridors are from the U.S. to Mexico, India, and the Philippines. The U.S.–Mexico corridor is the largest in the world. Mexico receives more than $50 billion in remittances each year, and over 95% of that comes from the U.S.

It won’t come as a surprise to you, then, that the U.S. is Remitly’s biggest market. That said, international revenue has actually been growing faster. Just five years ago, which is a pretty long time in the life of a company founded in 2011, the U.S. revenue share dropped by ten percentage points.

International growth is outpacing U.S. growth

The Backend and Remitly’s “Moat”

Understanding how remittances work isn’t all that complicated, but executing well in the space is a whole different story. You might wonder how Western Union managed to stay on top for so long. The answer is simple: trust.

When people send money home for essentials — often a big chunk of their income, and an even bigger share of their family’s budget — they’re not shopping around between a dozen apps.

What matters most is that the money gets there safely, reliably, and without hassle. That’s why remittances are sticky.

At a high level, there are two key components to every remittance transaction: the payment rail on the sending side and the payout rail on the receiving side.

So, for every corridor, say, the U.S. to the Philippines, Remitly maintains two separate accounts: one to collect dollars from the sender, and another pre-filled with the local currency in the destination country. This prefunding is what allows recipients to get their money within minutes. But it also ties up capital in advance, especially when the company is growing fast. We’ll see the impact of that in the financials later.

To avoid currency risk, the system constantly monitors how much of each currency it needs and buys just enough at market rates throughout the day. That system is likely about to change. Remitly just announced partnerships with Circle, and stablecoins are set to play a much bigger role, both behind the scenes and, eventually, for customers as well.

All of this happens on the sending side. On the payout side, it’s all about which rail is preferred in the recipient’s market. In many East Asian countries, mobile wallets are the go-to. In others, it’s bank accounts. And even cash is still in demand. In the Dominican Republic, for example, most remittances are hand-delivered by cash agents right to your home.

The only thing left for Remitly to do is ensure the payment is legitimate. Its fraud engine checks both the sender and recipient in real time, using global watchlists and behavioral signals. Similar to what we talked about when covering Visa.

Now, you might be thinking: Daniel, why are you telling me all this? Is it even relevant to the investment case? And the answer is: Yes, absolutely.

Understanding that this process isn’t as simple as it looks is key to grasping the competitive dynamics in this space. It’s not just about moving money. The main task of a company like Remitly is to convert currencies and solve the last-mile problem, getting that money in the hands of the customer on the receiving end. And all of that securely, reliably, instantly, and at scale.

The Competitive Landscape

Speaking of the devil — how much of a threat is competition?

Legacy players like Western Union and MoneyGram are clearly bleeding market share. At this point, there’s no way around it: they’re in structural decline. The only real way they could become dangerous to Remitly and other digital-first players would be by making a last-ditch move, massively undercutting on price, even to the point of running unprofitable operations. Essentially, betting that they can outlast their competitors and rebuild later.

In theory, that might sound like a strategy. In practice? Highly unlikely. Western Union’s stock trades at 3x earnings, and the only real reason to own it is the dividend. In a price war, that dividend would vanish quickly, and shareholder lawsuits would probably follow long before any turnaround materialized.

Alright, with the legacy players mostly out of the picture, who’s the biggest fish in the pond?

You’re probably thinking of Wise. And fair enough. Payments is a scale game. There aren’t many moats in this space. Trust might be one. But scale? That’s the strongest moat of all.

It’s one of the many reasons I like PayPal. Scale comes with a lot of optionality. When I spoke with a fellow investor covering PayPal, Emerging Value, we talked about the many ways PayPal is leveraging that advantage.

In remittances, scale advantages aren’t so much about launching new business lines. Instead, they show up in the form of better service, which drives higher customer retention, greater lifetime value, and stronger unit economics.

On the platform side, scale means more data, more operating leverage, and more cash flow. That cash can then be reinvested into high-ROI marketing campaigns, fueling the next wave of growth.

It’s a compounding cycle. One that favors the digital players who reach scale first.

When it comes to scale and moving money from one account to another, Wise often comes to mind, and rightfully so. It’s a giant. But I would argue Wise and Remitly are not competing against each other. They are not operating in the same market.

The biggest difference is the target audience. Remitly is built for migrant workers. Its core mission is to enable money transfers to countries with limited banking infrastructure.

Wise, by contrast, serves expats, global professionals, freelancers, and increasingly, small and medium-sized businesses. My own salary, for example, is paid via Wise. Wise customers are mostly moving money between their own accounts across countries, paying international invoices, or making larger one-off transfers. If anything, Wise wants to move up and serve larger businesses.

This distinction matters more than it might seem at first. Remitly’s users care about things like cash pickup options, speed, trust, and local-language support. Every transfer carries real emotional weight. It’s not just money, it’s groceries, rent, or school fees back home. Wise’s users, on the other hand, care about bank-to-bank transfers and low FX spreads.

This has several implications, but the most important one is long-term strategic focus. Remitly is centered on B2C remittances. Its priorities include expanding the payout network, strengthening fraud and risk controls, optimizing unit economics in top corridors, and branching into value-added services. We’ll get to that part later.

Wise, on the other hand, is increasingly focused on B2B services like Wise Platform (embedded payments for partners) and Wise Business (cross-border treasury services for SMEs). The company has little incentive to chase high-support, low-ticket remittances. Wise’s average transaction size is roughly ten times larger than Remitly’s.

Stablecoins — The Disruptor of Remittances?

Stablecoins, the elephant in the room. So, before we dive into Remitly’s financials and explain why this newsletter kicked off with an Uber comparison, let’s talk about stablecoins.

The big question: Could crypto, specifically stablecoins, make Remitly obsolete?

It’s not a crazy thought. Stablecoins like USDC or USDT are crypto tokens pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar. They move across blockchain networks 24/7, instantly, and almost for free. They were practically designed to solve the very problems that plague international money transfers: slow settlement, high fees, and limited access to banking.

And with the current hype around Circle, USDC, and even global banks and retailers exploring how to integrate and benefit from stablecoins, it’s not unrealistic to think real change could be coming.

But I believe there are good arguments for believing that there’s still a place for Remitly. The first, and I underestimated this before digging into the research, is trust, and the stickiness it creates. It took customers decades to move on from Western Union to digital-first players. Would it take decades again for a better technology to take over? Probably not. But it’s not happening in a year or two either.

The real problem is still the last mile. Stablecoins can make the middle of a money transfer fast and cheap, but they don’t solve the messy end. Crypto wallets are nowhere near mainstream, especially among Remitly’s core users. These customers want cash, or money delivered to a mobile wallet or bank account they already trust. That’s the last mile. And that’s where Remitly makes its money.

Regulation is another piece of the puzzle. Yes, we’re seeing more openness toward crypto and stablecoins. But global regulators are still figuring out how to handle them, especially when it comes to cross-border transactions. That uncertainty makes it tough for crypto-native startups to scale remittances globally.

But it does strengthen Remitly’s hand. It’s already licensed, compliant, and deeply embedded with local payout partners. Should customers demand stablecoins, Remitly can deliver them. In fact, they already are.

Let’s take a look at Remitly’s financials and review the earnings report released just a few days ago. There were quite a few announcements worth noting.

Financials, Inflection Points, and the Future of Remittances

It’s time to explain why I compared Remitly to Uber in the intro. As you might remember from our Uber pitch, it took years for Uber to reach profitability. The company spent heavily on customer acquisition and scale, prioritizing reach over near-term margins.

That changed about two years ago. Uber went from being chronically unprofitable to a cash flow machine. Just three years ago, free cash flow was negative $700 million. Today, it’s over $8 billion.

Remitly is a couple of years behind on that same path (and a slightly different size…), but the pattern is similar. It spent years building scale and acquiring customers. Now, it’s the clear leader in its niche and continues to outperform the competition on all metrics.

Remitly has a phenomenal ROI on its marketing investments. The payback period for an acquired customer is well below 12 months, and the lifetime value is more than six times the acquisition cost. The marketing playbook actually reminds me a lot of Booking.com.

The travel booking industry doesn’t have strong natural moats either, but Booking won by outspending everyone on marketing. Even today, its marketing spend still sits in the mid-30% range as a share of revenue.

Remitly followed a similar path. It used to spend around 40% of its revenue on marketing. That figure has now come down to about 20–25%.

Remitly’s marketing cost as a percentage of revenue

But getting back to Remitly’s financials. You might have noticed in the graph comparing Remitly to Uber that FCF looks significantly larger than profits. The reasons are accounting gimmicks related to working capital.

A large part of Remitly’s working capital is tied up in pre-funded accounts, the mechanism that allows recipients to receive money within minutes. When a customer sends money through Remitly, but the funds haven’t yet been withdrawn on the receiving end, it creates a short-term cash inflow. This temporarily inflates reported cash flow, even though the transaction isn’t truly settled.

Depending on when a quarter ends, this timing effect can distort cash flow figures — sometimes slightly, sometimes meaningfully. In my valuation model, I’ve adjusted for these effects.

Remitly stated that 2025 should be its first GAAP-profitable year, and based on recent results, they’re on the right track. The earnings release on Thursday was well received by the market, with the stock jumping more than 15%.

Not only did Remitly deliver strong revenue growth in the mid-30% range, but it also posted its second consecutive quarter of positive net income, reinforcing the case that an inflection point has been reached. On top of that, the company announced new value-added services and stablecoin innovations, a smart move to directly address the crypto threat.

The first new offering is Remitly One, the company’s first membership program. Members receive added benefits on services Remitly already offers. For example, they can send instant remittances using the new “send now, pay later” feature, something that typically takes a few days for non-members. Members can also earn rewards in their Remitly wallets.

These wallets will now also be able to hold, send, and receive stablecoins. Remitly has partnered with Circle to launch USDC and with Bridge, a Stripe-owned company, to facilitate these payments.

This is exactly what I had envisioned for Remitly: using stablecoins within its own ecosystem, leveraging its market position and customer trust to be part of the innovation rather than getting disrupted by it.

With this setup, Remitly can use stablecoins behind the scenes to reduce costs. And even if stablecoin-only transactions generate lower fees over time, the company is building a suite of value-added services to boost margins and offset potential pressure on take rates.

Most importantly, remittances are fundamentally a business of currency conversion. That’s where the complexity lies and where the profits are made. At some point, and for this type of remittance, it’s usually sooner rather than later, that stablecoin still needs to be converted into pesos or rupees. And that’s where Remitly continues to capture the bulk of its margin.

 â€œDoing that [converting currencies] requires an enormous amount of infrastructure, an enormous amount of regulatory expertise, an enormous amount of risk systems that do it quickly and also at a low cost. We feel really well positioned in terms of our ability to drive stablecoin adoption, given that we have always been and will continue to be in the business of currency conversion, and we’re very well positioned to do that with stablecoin as we’ve been with fiat.”

– Remitly CEO, Matt Oppenheimer

Of course, no 2025 earnings update would be complete without an AI mention. But jokes aside, what Remitly announced around Agentic AI is actually a strong new feature.

One of the key elements is that it’s not just available within the Remitly app. It can also be integrated into any messaging app or conversational interface. It’s already live on WhatsApp and has been used over two million times by Remitly customers.

And this could be big. I know WhatsApp isn’t huge in the U.S., but remember: Remitly’s customers are international. And internationally, no messaging app comes close to WhatsApp’s reach. It has over three billion users, and I suspect that very few of Remitly’s customers do not use it.

The main advantage here is accelerating market share gains from people who still send remittances offline, which, even today, makes up a significant share of global remittance volume. A text-based, frictionless way to send money through the world’s most popular messaging app could dramatically speed up that shift.

Last but not least, Remitly shared its first insights into Remitly Business, which officially launched in Q1. The new offering targets freelancers, micro, and small businesses, significantly expanding the company’s total addressable market.

The opportunity is clear: larger ticket sizes and a much higher lifetime value per customer. That said, one of Remitly’s core strengths has been its laser focus on remittances for migrant workers, and avoiding the even more competitive nature of the B2B payments space.

I’m curious to see whether the promised “best-in-class pricing” will come at the expense of margins, or if targeting a still relatively narrow segment of freelancers and micro businesses can deliver profitability comparable to the core remittance business.

Valuation

Alright, we’ve spent a lot of time on the business, now it’s time to see what the numbers say. Some readers have occasionally mentioned that they’d like us to cover more “under-the-radar” companies. And I’m receptive to that.

As members of our Intrinsic Value Community saw on Thursday, when I hosted a portfolio call, I personally like investing in the small- and mid-cap space. That said, our primary goal with the Intrinsic Value Portfolio remains finding quality compounders. I understand the appeal of finding them early and capturing more of the upside, but durable competitive advantages take time to develop. And with smaller companies, the range of possible outcomes is just much wider.

That’s why I’ve gone with two different valuation approaches today. First, we’ll run a standard DCF, as we usually do. Then I’ll share my take on a steady-state model: a scenario where Remitly spends just enough on customer acquisition to maintain its current customer base. It helps to get an idea of the underlying profitability of the business.

Starting with the DCF, I’ve modeled revenue growth in the mid-20s over the next two years, driven by continued strength in both customer acquisition and send volume. After that, growth tapers slightly but remains in the high teens for the following years.

Given the 34% year-over-year revenue growth reported this quarter, one could argue that this base case is actually too conservative, and that Remitly might continue growing closer to 30% in the near term.

Since I prefer to stay on the conservative side, this higher growth assumption is something I’ve reserved for the bull case scenario. Management has also noted that the current growth is still primarily driven by the core P2P remittance business, with the newly launched services not yet contributing meaningfully to overall growth.

If that changes, we could see the gap between account growth and send volume growth widen. Send volume already tends to grow faster than account growth, as newer cohorts send more money than older ones. With more business customers entering the mix, that gap could widen further, creating an additional tailwind for revenue growth.

On the cost side, I’m assuming that marketing expenses will keep growing meaningfully in the coming years. Not necessarily higher than in previous years, but given the rollout of new features and the shift toward a new customer segment (B2B), I don’t expect marketing growth to decline meaningfully in the near term.

In fact, with these just-released offerings, marketing could stay higher for longer and end up well above the ~10% growth I had previously forecasted for 2027 to 2029.

As always, if you’d like to tweak any of the assumptions and see how they impact the valuation, you can download the model here.

Factoring in stock-based compensation and a steady increase in the FCF margin, I arrive at free cash flow per share of $2.72 by 2029. From there, it really comes down to what multiple you're willing to pay.

Right now, the market values Remitly at a P/FCF of around 11–12x, which is very cheap for a company growing at this pace. Current sentiment likely reflects caution around potential disruption in the remittance space, concerns about tax threats (which haven’t materialized for Remitly), and perhaps lingering fears tied to U.S. migration policy.

As we explained in our podcast, this doesn’t actually impact Remitly, since the company only serves legal migrants. The latest earnings report helped reinforce that these concerns were largely unfounded. Despite that, I’ve assumed only a modest multiple expansion to 14x P/FCF in my model.

The estimated fair value — and more than with most models, this is a rough approximation — comes out to around $25 per share. Depending on your risk appetite, you might choose to apply a higher or lower margin of safety. With a 20% margin, the price target would land closer to $20.

With a young, high-growth company like this, it’s reasonable to demand a larger margin of safety. And if you play around with the numbers, it becomes clear pretty quickly: if growth were to slow, even to mid-teens free cash flow growth, the estimated value of the stock could be cut in half almost instantly.

So if a DCF has limited meaning in this case, let’s try looking at the business from a different angle.

One of Remitly’s most important cost drivers is marketing. So what would profitability look like today if the company only spent enough on marketing to offset churn? Call it “maintenance marketing.” (Feel free to skip this if you’re not in the mood for some quick math.)

In 2024, Remitly spent about $300 million on marketing. Management broke out that roughly $225 million of this was advertising aimed at acquiring new customers. Over the same period, the active customer base grew from about 5.9 million in 2023 to 7.8 million in 2024. To turn that into a customer acquisition cost, we need to estimate how many gross new customers were acquired.

Management has stated that Remitly’s customer retention rate is around 90%. With that, we can estimate how many new customers were added last year.

Starting with a user base of 5.9 million in 2023 and applying the 90% retention rate gives us about 5.3 million retained users. Since the current customer base (2024 numbers) is 7.8 million, this means Remitly added roughly 2.5 million new customers in the period.

So, Remitly added roughly 2.5 million new customers in 2024. Dividing that by the $225 million in marketing spend dedicated to new customer acquisition gives us a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of $90.

If Remitly were to spend only enough on marketing to replace churn, that is, 10% of its 8.5 million active users (Q2 2025 numbers), it would need to acquire 850,000 new customers. At a $90 CAC, that comes out to a “maintenance marketing” spend of roughly $75 million.

Compare that to the $300+ million Remitly is spending today, and you start to see the company’s underlying earnings power if it were to shift into a steady-state, lower-growth mode. Remitly would be highly profitable and trading at single-digit multiples.

This doesn’t mean Remitly should stop spending on marketing — given the strong ROI, that would be the last thing I’d recommend. But it does highlight the hidden profitability embedded in the business.

Portfolio Decision

Today’s decision wasn’t easy. Remitly is still in the early stages of its journey. While it’s already one of the leading players in the migrant worker remittance space, there's still a long runway ahead — and just as much room for missteps.

If you look through our Intrinsic Value Portfolio, you'll notice that it’s built around high-quality businesses, many of which have already compounded value for a decade or more, and others that are clearly on their way. Remitly isn’t there yet.

Making an investment decision here is less about predicting whether Remitly will ultimately succeed and more about reinforcing the type of companies we’re aiming to include in this portfolio. As I’ve mentioned before, I do invest in earlier-stage businesses in my personal portfolio, and Remitly fits that profile.

But the Intrinsic Value Portfolio is designed to highlight durable, high-quality compounders. Businesses you can own for years without having to worry. The bar for inclusion is high. You might argue that not every name currently in the portfolio fully meets that definition, but they all share best-in-class traits that make them leaders in their space.

Remitly simply isn’t at that stage yet. And when you add in broader uncertainty around the payments industry, plus Shawn’s concern that this space is in a race to the bottom, we ultimately decided not to add Remitly to the portfolio at this time.

To be clear, this is less a verdict on Remitly itself and more a reflection of what qualifies for the Intrinsic Value Portfolio. More on the Portfolio, below.

Weekly Update: The Intrinsic Value Portfolio

Notes

  • Airbnb: Our portfolio company, Airbnb, reported earnings this week, and right now, the market seems to operate in absolutes. You either overdeliver and the stock takes off, or you miss expectations (even slightly), and you're punished. Airbnb found itself in the latter camp, despite posting a solid quarter. We used the 8% selloff in the stock to add meaningfully to the position, doubling our stake, making Airbnb our largest portfolio holding and bringing our average cost down to ~$125/share.

    Here’s why:

    • We remain excited about $ABNB’s move into experiences and its ambition to become the “Amazon of services,” enabling users to book everything from massages to private chefs — whether traveling or at home. Airbnb has the potential to evolve into a kind of super app for local services, with many experiences naturally pairing as add-ons to vacations. This is where Airbnb is uniquely positioned to suggest and facilitate bookings — think vineyard tours, booze cruises, private museum visits, hot air balloon rides, snorkeling, fly fishing, and more.

    • For the last six consecutive quarters, nights booked in "expansion markets" (ABNB's growth markets like Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, India, etc.) have grown at twice the rate of core markets like the US, Canada, Australia, France, and the UK. That bodes well for the Airbnb bull case that Airbnb will become much more mainstream over time across many more countries beyond just its five core markets.

    • Overall, it was another solid quarter during a turbulent time for international travel, though the market seemed to react negatively to a lack of more full-throated guidance for the rest of the year, which is the sort of thing that matters a lot to short-term analysts but not to long-term investors like us. We saw the 8% share decline post-earnings as an excellent chance to double down on one of our highest conviction bets at an even better price.

  • Uber: It was a busy week for us because our other portfolio holding, Uber, also released earnings. Mr. Market was a bit more ambivalent about the results, pushing the stock up slightly, about 1.5%, for the week. Uber is now up 50% since our original investment, even though it’s a relatively small position. In short, the results for this past quarter were very solid, and Shawn’s conviction in the company has really grown dramatically in the past few months, such that he’d like to, at the right price, make a much bigger bet on the company. So, we’re not trimming the position, but we don’t think it’s the same screaming buy at $90/share today as it was in April at $61/share. More updates to come on this company in the future and its role in our Portfolio.

  • The Trade Desk: Sometimes, you just get lucky. Last Sunday, Shawn pitched The Trade Desk as one of the biggest beneficiaries structurally of growth in digital advertising, smart TV streaming, and the downfall of the Google Network monopoly, yet the stock fell as much as 40% on this past Friday after reporting earnings. Ironically, Shawn mentioned that his target buy price for the stock, assuming no changes in the thesis, was roughly $50 per share, and the gargantuan selloff in TTD brought the shares down to, well, almost exactly $50 per share! That’s not something we expected in such short order.

    • So are we buying? No, at least, not yet. That price target was contingent on the thesis remaining the same, but some new yellow flags have emerged in the past few days. While much of the selloff was due to a deceleration in growth guidance for the next quarter (relatively trivial for long-term investors), it’s more concerning that the company’s long-tenured CFO abruptly resigned with two weeks’ notice after the weak outlook.

    • With that troubling development, and several ongoing shareholder lawsuits, it doesn’t feel like the right time to dive into the shares until we can digest these changes further and assess whether our estimate of the company’s fair value remains intact.

Quote of the Day

"Earnings don’t move the overall market; it’s liquidity that moves markets.”

— Stanely Druckenmiller

What Else We’re Into

📺 WATCH: Stig Brodersen and David Fagan discuss Investing as a Business Owner

🎧 LISTEN: Pernas Research’s X Space on Remittances, Regulation and Stablecoins

📖 READ: Detailed breakdown of Airbnb’s Q2 earnings by MBI Deep Dives

You can also read our archive of past Intrinsic Value breakdowns, in case you’ve missed any, here — we’ve covered companies ranging from Alphabet to Airbnb, AutoZone, Nintendo, John Deere, Coupang, and more!

Which company size do you primarily target?

Leave a comment to elaborate!

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

See you next time!

Enjoy reading this newsletter? Forward it to a friend.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Use the promo code STOCKS15 at checkout for 15% off our popular course “How To Get Started With Stocks.”

Follow us on Twitter.

Read our full archive of Intrinsic Value Breakdowns here

Keep an eye on your inbox for our newsletters on Sundays. If you have any feedback for us, simply respond to this email or message [email protected].

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

All the best,

© The Investor's Podcast Network content is for educational purposes only. The calculators, videos, recommendations, and general investment ideas are not to be actioned with real money. Contact a professional and certified financial advisor before making any financial decisions. No one at The Investor's Podcast Network are professional money managers or financial advisors. The Investor’s Podcast Network and parent companies that own The Investor’s Podcast Network are not responsible for financial decisions made from using the materials provided in this email or on the website.