cover of episode Tech Stocks Without A Net & A Conversation with Mark Mahaney

Tech Stocks Without A Net & A Conversation with Mark Mahaney

2025/3/11
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Dan Nathan
知名金融分析师和评论员,常在 CNBC 上提供市场分析和评论。
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Mark Mahaney
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@Mark Mahaney : 我专注于寻找那些在市场波动中被低估的高质量公司。当前市场中出现波动的股票,其质量远高于我们早期互联网泡沫时期看到的股票。与互联网泡沫时期相比,如今科技公司的基本面要强大得多,拥有更多现金储备。尽管有人可能对它们的策略有异议,但不能说谷歌、Meta和亚马逊的股票价格过高。我寻找的是在市场波动中被低估的高质量公司,并抓住机会买入。 我更看好亚马逊,其次是谷歌,最后是Meta。亚马逊在零售、广告和云服务领域占据领先地位,并拥有其他有潜力的增长领域,例如Alexa Plus和云计算业务。谷歌面临着反垄断调查、搜索竞争以及缺乏成本控制等问题,但这些问题都有可能得到改善。Meta的估值相对合理,但其增长潜力可能不如亚马逊和谷歌。 我认为科技公司应该根据投资回报率来调整资本支出。如果科技公司能够持续展示投资回报,那么他们增加资本支出的行为将被市场接受。如果科技公司的收入增长大幅放缓,那么增加的资本支出将成为负面因素。云服务收入增长可能在今年下半年加速。 投资者应认识到,对大型科技公司的监管结果可能比之前预期要温和。拜登政府的反垄断政策与之前的政府相比有所不同,但目前来看,对大型科技公司的监管风险已经降低。Meta和亚马逊并非垄断企业,但谷歌存在反垄断问题。谷歌面临着美国司法部对其反垄断行为的调查以及搜索引擎竞争的风险,但这些风险已经降低。谷歌的搜索市场份额仍然很高,并且我的调查数据显示,人们对谷歌的使用频率没有明显下降。我认为谷歌的搜索业绩将好于预期,并且其股价有上涨空间。 我认为自动驾驶出租车是未来,Uber必须在其网络中整合自动驾驶出租车技术。如果Uber能够成功地将自动驾驶出租车整合到其网络中,那么它将从自动驾驶技术的普及中获益。 @Dan Nathan : 我与Mark讨论了当前科技股市场的状况,并与2000年的互联网泡沫进行了比较。我们关注了Meta、Netflix和谷歌等主要科技股的近期大幅回调,以及这些回调可能带来的长期投资机会。我们还讨论了资本支出对科技公司未来发展的影响,以及Uber在自动驾驶汽车市场中的潜力。

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All right, welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. I am Dan Nathan, joined by Mark Mahaney, the Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research at Evercore ISI, also the author of Nothing But Net, 10 Timeless Stock Picking Lessons from one of Wall Street's top tech analysts, which is exactly what I view. Mark, Mark, welcome back to the podcast.

Good to be back, Dan. Last time you were here, geez, it was like two years ago, I think. We talked a lot about your book. I had just read it. And for me, it was like taking a walk down memory lane. You and I have known each other, I want to say, for 26 years. When you were back at Morgan Stanley, you were working with legendary internet analyst

Mary Meeker at what was probably one of the most exciting times to be in the market. You and I were young chaps back then. And here we are. It is the 25th anniversary of the top

of the NASDAQ going back to 2000. I don't think you or I thought it was going to be a top that was going to result in a nearly 70 some percent drawdown in the NASDAQ from its highs in March of 2000 to its lows in October 2002. So Mark, talk to me a little bit about how you're feeling now versus back then. Oh, Dan, I think it's dramatically different, but I'm glad you brought it up. You know, like we, it's just a reminder and we've had a few others

of just how much risk you can take in these stocks. And I think just about this reason, like a 70% correction, we've never seen anything like that again. But yes, we have. Meta was a 70% correction. Netflix was a 70% correction just in the last two or three years. And by the way, those created wonderful long-term opportunities. One of the things that inspired me to write the book was this concept that it took me a while to come up with, but it

Yeah, I've come up with it. It's DHQs. I'm looking for high-quality companies that get dislocated. And the question is, can you really step in and buy a stock? Look, in our group that we're looking at today, let's see, Google, none of these are off like that. A trade desk is off 50%. Netflix is off 30% in a relatively short period of time. There's a separate set of questions you have to figure out whether a company in the stock is high-quality or not. I don't want to buy low and sell high. I want to buy high.

by high quality companies when they're low. That's kind of another way I think about dislocated high quality stocks. So I think about it this way. I think that the stocks that are dislocating today are dramatically higher quality than they were back when you and I were cutting our teeth during the dot-com boom and bubble. I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal today about the 25th anniversary, and I'd forgotten that it was this week.

But, you know, we had a category that was speculative. Internet, advertising, retail, travel, all that was speculative at the time. We had business models that were very speculative. I think the only profitable name in there was Yahoo and eBay. There were two somewhat profitable business models in there. Everybody else, especially Amazon, was not profitable. It was very unclear whether they needed capital markets to get the profitability. That was real risk back then. Capital market risk, like you don't,

You don't normally see today for a variety of reasons we can go through. And then the third one was the management teams were unproven. Well, you know, like, I mean, I don't know who knew that Jeff Bezos is going to turn out to be one of the best entrepreneurs slash business managers of our generation. I think that's an accurate assumption.

objective statement, whether you'd like to die or not, it's an objective statement. And that probably could be said for a couple of other teams, although there's been so much turnover in these management teams. And then we've also had these new companies like Google wasn't around back then. Facebook wasn't around back then, but you needed the internet bubble to kind of create

what turned out to be these great market cap names today. If you look at the top six or seven market cap names in tech today, I mean, none of them would be there if you hadn't have had the internet build out and boom and shake up. And some of those managers, I think, along the way, found their ways to second and third careers and created a lot of wealth. So let me just stop there. I think that setup is very different

in that i just think the underlying fundamentals are so much stronger now there's more cash on the balance sheets of these companies than there was market cap back then and uh you know we can talk about whether uh meta and google are expensive or not but i'm sorry google's trading at 16 times earnings and that is at 20 times earnings and amazon is at 25 times earnings like

Like, I'm sorry, you can say you don't like their strategies, but you can't say that they're expensive stocks. Yeah, no doubt about it. I guess the one similarity is sentiment, right? And so, you know, you can say all you want about valuation. You could also...

say all you want about moats, whether it's management, whether it is the balance sheet and the like, and just basically those companies that you just mentioned are kind of near monopolies. And, you know, it is interesting you mentioned Google because under the surface, there were some very disruptive names that were about to kind of displace the, you know, the yahoos of the world. And that was Google, but Google didn't go public. I don't think until 04 or 05. So in the private markets, it was Google.

a high growth name that was going to be very disruptive to a lot of public names. You just mentioned today. So today, as we are recording this, it's about 2.40 in the afternoon on Monday. This is going to drop by the time you're listening to this. You will know how we close. The S&P is down about 4%. It's down about 5%.

five percent on the year it's down about nine percent from its all-time highs made just a couple weeks ago the nasdaq is down um a little more than four percent it's down about ten percent of the year and it's down about 15 from its all-time highs amazon meta and google you all you mentioned that all three of them are cheap relative to you know the market relative to themselves right and so they're all down 20 from their recent all-time highs so the thing that's interesting mark to me

All three of those stocks, which are all in your coverage, heading into their Q4 prints, they were all trading at all-time highs. So that's the point about sentiment. So how do you think about the setup now? Is enough of the exuberance taking out of these names as you, let's just say we're assuming that very soon the market's going to find its footing. These are going to be some of the first stocks, question mark, that come back in the market?

Probably. I think so, Dan. Probably. Let me just step back here. We did have a two and a half year Uber bull market, especially for tech stocks, for growth stocks. We know what the S&P 500 did, but these stocks...

did phenomenally better than that you went into last year and then you had the trump bump so you even had uh stock still when you were right about i look at a lot of these names that were trading actually not the case with amazon or or google but definitely the case with with meta and a good number of the other companies that i look at like uh

Spotify and Netflix that were at a three-year peak, uh, multiples are now we realize they were peak, but there were three year clear. You could see it then they were three year high multiples. And the question is, is the growth rate going to be that much better than we thought a few months ago? So there was a lot of risk going into the air just on the multiple, uh, uh,

level. And then for a variety of reasons, political uncertainty, policy uncertainty, I'm sorry, is definitely part of it. There's no question about it. And then the third factor here is these concerns over stagflation. And you and I have talked about stagflation in a long time. But inflation is a little bit persistent and economic big economy starts getting a little soft. Now, there aren't any hard data points to prove that up, but the sentiment indicators are there. Whether it's

the sentiment indicators are right or wrong, you know, we'll find out. But the sentiment indicators, so you have these three things that are causing people to say, one, let me lock in my winners. Let me sell my winners. Two, I want to take risk off. So I want to sell tech. And it's, you know, in the middle of all that are Amazon, Google, and Meta. The one that's held up the best and frankly, it's outperformed the market is Meta. Meta's still doing fine. It's still up on the year. So it's nicely outperformed the market.

But it has pulled back. And to me, if I look at current levels, I guess I'm more surprised by the big bulk we had at the end of last year. And I look at Meta now trading at 21 times earnings. I'm not going to have a huge debate with somebody over whether it's worth 21 or 25, but it

It could be somewhere in there. And we were getting at the high end of that range at the end of last year, which created the risk. It made it a compounder, but it didn't make it a re-raider. Let me stop there. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting, you talk about, you know, this change of administration, you know, the ramp that a bunch of these stocks had into the end of the year. And then you had this period in January into February where meta went up 25%.

consecutive days. We've never seen something like that. And when I think about just what happened, the promise of deregulation, the fact that all of these mega cap tech companies, whether it would be personally by their CEOs or from their companies, they donated to the inauguration fund. When you think about Zuckerberg, you think about Sundar, you think about Satya, you think about

Bezos, you know, I'm missing Elon, obviously. All of them were on the dais at the inauguration. All of those companies are being investigated by the DOJ or the FTC in some way, shape or form for monopolistic practices and a handful of other things. And so I think that was

part of the strength, if that makes some sense. But just today, or I think over the last few days, the DOJ said they are not going to back off of the call to break up Google. So how important do you think deregulation is for these companies? Because we've been hearing about these suits, many of which were

initiated under the first Trump administration. Is it, the longer these go, does it become more of a threat for these companies to be broken up? - Depends on the time perspective here. So if we go back five years, there's much greater regulatory risk to these things than there was back then.

If you go back 10 years, absolutely the case. These assets become really good. If you're working at the Department of Justice and you're not investigating Google and Amazon and Microsoft and maybe Nvidia, I don't know, like you're not doing your job. These are very powerful companies.

Now, I pretty strongly disagree with the point that they're monopolies. I'm sorry. Leave aside Google for now. I mean, Meta, you know, we've had this big debate over TikTok. But leave aside the political debate and national security debate on it. It clearly is. They came into the market and, you know, we were all concerned about whether Meta would survive in TikTok era a few years ago. And clearly what TikTok showed is that a really good innovative new asset can easily come in and gain a lot of viewers. So, yeah.

I don't think there's any great monopoly evidence when it comes to when it comes to that. And Amazon, I'm sorry, is 10 percent of retail sales. It's the same as Walmart. You want to break up Amazon, you got to break up Walmart. Now, it's it's much higher percentage of online retail sales. But I think I don't think any of us think I don't wake up in the morning and say, you know, do I want to shop online? What do I want to shop for online today? I wake up in the morning and say, what do I want to shop for, whether it's offline or online? So it depends how you define the market.

I think that's how most consumers think about it. And so I don't think there's a monopoly issue. There is one with Google. Absolutely. They've been found guilty for anti-monopolistic practices. That's the law of the land. The question just is, are the remedies that are going to be laid out? I just think that most investors should realize that the regulatory outcome is likely to be less severe now than it was before.

Five months ago, you had a generational change for right or for wrong in the view of antitrust under President Biden with Kahn and Cantor. It was a generational change in how to define antitrust activities and how to enforce antitrust regulations. And I think we've gone back. And so I just think the chance of the worst case scenario, Google not being able to pay for distribution, I think that's much less of a risk than it was

about a year ago, nine months ago. And I think the chances of a deal occurring between, you know, like a deal, a settlement, and I think most judges in these cases, based on the work we've done, you know, would probably prefer to have a settlement between the Department of Justice, the people, you know, our representatives,

uh you know the us government prefer to have some between them and a company rather than a judge have to sit in there and micromanage don't micromanage that they have to but i think they'd prefer to have a settlement i think the chances of a settlement are much greater i saw the news this weekend i wouldn't have expected the doj under under president trump to come in and say we're dropping the case of course they're not going to do that they were the one who started in the first place of the first trump administration

But I just think that they did shave back a little bit some of the things that they were talking about. And I think we're just in settlement negotiating mode for a while. And my guess is that we get some sort of settlement prior to August, which is when the current judge is supposed to issue his final remedies.

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Tune into strategic alternatives, the RBC capital markets podcast today. So Mark, let's talk about just CapEx. It seemed to be a big theme in the Q4 earnings as far as the guidance for 2025. So meta Google, Amazon, Microsoft, um, they all at least, uh, you know, reiterated the guidance that they had already given for the year. I think cumulatively it's over, you know, $250 billion. Amazon saw the biggest bump, um,

of all three of them. And, you know, when I think about just kind of revenues decelerating a little bit, plus the increased spend, that's the thing that kind of kicked off the sell-off. And so it didn't really have much to do. Right now, it has more to do with the market. Back then, it had to do with expectations.

where the stocks were, maybe not valuation, as you just mentioned. Is this something, though, and we'll talk about use cases as it relates to your coverage, but if the use cases don't emerge out of their customer base, if you don't see a reacceleration in their cloud businesses, is that something that you would expect them to pull back from those CapEx numbers?

I would hope so. I would hope that they're thoughtful capitalists and that they're not getting a return on their investment spend. They cut back on the investment spend. We've been looking for this evidence of ROI, return on AI investment. And you mentioned those numbers. I think you're absolutely right. It's 250.

I just look at three of these names, but you can throw in Microsoft and there's probably 300 billion then. The question is how much of that is AI related. But these CapEx numbers, if we're all honest with ourselves, are materially higher in going into 25 than we would have thought 12 months ago, nine months ago, six months ago, even three months ago. These companies are spending a lot more on CapEx than we thought. And a lot of that is driven by AI. And these companies seem to be very confident they're going to get the return on it.

Now, we're going to start reeling off a bunch of positive ROI data points, but I think these companies are going to be rational about it. My conversations with them over the years have suggested that they are. This is not their first CapEx cycle, although it's bigger than anything we've seen before. But I've seen companies like Meta say,

We don't know what's going to happen to our CapEx in the future. If we feel like it's really getting us good returns, we're going to lean in more heavily. If we cut back on it, that means we don't think we're getting a return on it. And I almost wonder, in an ironic way, bulls sort of would like to see the CapEx levels rise because what should come with that would be faster revenue growth, higher profitability levels.

levels. And that's kind of what you got in the last two or three years. This is, you know, Metastar increasing its CapEx three or four years ago. Like it used to be 15 billion a year. Then all of a sudden it shot up to 30 billion a year. And I was like, whoa, this is getting out of hand. But then they generated, they reaccelerated it.

re-accelerated revenue growth to like 30% year over year. At that scale, we've never seen that before. And their margins rose up because they got efficiencies in other parts of their business. So if they can continue to show that, I think though people will say, you're getting your ROAI and I'm fine with you spending those levels of CapEx. This could easily amplify then, like they have a couple of revenue misses, revenue shortfalls,

or even better, revenue growth sharply decelerates, then that's a pile-on factor. Not only is your growth decelerating, you're not getting your return, but look how much you're spending on CapEx and selling your stock. I could see that market reaction. My guess is that we're going to see that the revenue growth is going to stay relatively consistent and maybe even improve. Maybe we're going to have faster growth rates

I think we may be seeing that first and foremost in cloud services. I think cloud revenue growth rates could possibly accelerate in the back half of the year. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, AWS all talked about these supply constraints, you know, that they had more demand that they could handle. That's a pretty good position to be in. I sort of take them at their word. I don't know what else to do other than to take them at their word for now.

I guess where you could take the other side of that and not too different than 2022 is that, you know, if the use cases don't emerge right now, then you have, you know, a macro environment. These companies are cyclical when you think about their dependence on

advertising and meta, you think in particular that, you know, a disproportionate amount of their ad sales calls comes from small, medium businesses, right? Like if you think about that to some degree, and maybe Instagram is a bit of an outlier there versus like the blue page. But I say to myself, you know, and you just mentioned this, that meta sold off 70 some percent.

Nvidia, Tesla, Netflix, they sold off 70 some percent from their highs in 21 to their lows in 22. And with Meta, it wasn't until they started cutting costs, they started cutting jobs in a meaningful way and cutting costs is then you saw a reacceleration of revenue on lower costs and then the stock took off, right? And so, you know,

but we haven't gotten to the point where they cut costs and, you know, and that will only happen if a revenue decelerates to some degree. But let's talk about those three names and the potential. What are you most interested in? If we want to talk about, you know, Google for a second, you know,

BARD was a disaster. Gemini doesn't appear to be much better. Google Cloud had been taking share, but decelerated a bit. Where do you think the best opportunity... Let's assume that all three of these stocks in the next few months are down 30-some percent on the year. And I'm not saying you have to make that assumption, okay? But if that were to happen, which one of these three, if it was baby with the bathwater, if it was more about the markets and what...

Which one or is it all three that are you most excited about of trying to kind of, you know, say that this is a great long-term buy right here? Right now, I prefer Amazon of the three. I'd probably put Google second and I'd put Meta third. Meta trades 21 times earnings and Google's at 16, 17 times earnings.

If you had them at the same multiple, I'd probably go Meta over Google. But just the valuation setup right now, I prefer Amazon first and then Google second and Meta third. Which is the best long-term asset?

I'd probably go with Amazon. It doesn't have the best business model, it doesn't have the highest margins, but it just in terms of, I think about their categories. So they're the leader in worldwide retail, number three player globally in advertising, that's a good position, leader in global cloud services. And I think they've got these interesting newer growth areas. I'm very intrigued about what they're doing with this Alexa Plus. When that comes out, it's a small thing for now, but if anybody can bring home

literally and figuratively uh ai into people's homes it's amazon so they could do if they do this right there's 600 million of those alexa devices out alexa echo devices out then i think there's really interesting play into the into space uh with the hyper those launches they get two launches coming up figuratively and literally kyper and um and alexa alexa plus and then i still think they've got more they can do and uh business uh business supplies industrial supplies i'd

I just, I think that that business could be multiples bigger than it is today for Amazon. So, and Amazon's got such a well, well proven, you know, disciplined management team that knows how to handle costs. And, um, and it's kind of, uh, it's kind of correctly avoided a lot of, uh,

public and social debates. So I just, I probably have the most confidence in that one. And then what I find interesting about Google here is I just think there's a lot of overhangs. You already mentioned one. There's the DOJ overhang. Oh, and you also mentioned the second one, which is the, you know, the chat GPT taking over Google. I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. And the third overhang is lack of cost discipline at the company's perception that they're just going to squander your money, shareholders' money.

And I think all of those three can turn like there's I look at these ones that can have the biggest narrative shift could be could be Google. So that's why it probably was my number two pick. And meta it's look, it's the deepest consensus long of the names that I look at for good reasons. The fundamentals have been really great.

So, you know, I don't see how the narrative gets a lot better if it sells off with the overall market and sustain multiple as Google. Yeah, I'd buy that. I'd buy that hand over fist. We know we're not there at the back up the truck prices on these. But what would it be? I know probably Amazon at 20 to 25 times earnings. And we're at the high end of that. So we're darn close to it. Google, I don't know, 16 times earnings. Really? You're going to stay?

sustainably trade for a lot lower than that. Yeah, the market really rolls over, but then you're going to have a snapback opportunity. And Meta at 21 times, it's probably a little bit of downside in the multiple, but not huge. I don't think we're that far away from those backup the truck prices here.

Yeah, let's talk about Google for a second here because of the underperformance relative on a product basis, but obviously on the stock. And maybe you could make the argument it's a bit of a value trap if that's one of the main reasons. Because I think of some of the headwinds you just mentioned. If one of the remedies from the DOJ is not being able to pay for distribution and that Apple is a big part of that, I think it's probably more negative for Apple when you think of the high margin. And I'm not asking to comment on that. I know it's not in your coverage.

But then I think about, okay, you know, chat GPT. You know, I am finding myself, I have perplexity. It is my home on my Chrome browser. I use that. I go there first before I go to Google. Actually, I don't even know why I go to Google. Now, I go to Google for maps and I go to Google for YouTube and, you know, a handful of other things. But, you know, perplexity is becoming my default choice first.

for search. Do you think that perplexity and these basically, and I know that Gemini, they're trying to do the overlays on Google searches, so the idea that you get these blue links. What I would worry about with Google is that as we gain more confidence in a perplexity or a chat GPT search,

and you get embedded in that behavior relative to, let's say, Gemini on Google, the more confidence you have, the less likely you are to click through a citation, which means that Google will not get paid if you do it, you know what I mean, there. And so I just worry, 'cause I keep hearing about these SEO models, Mark,

they are, as you know, they are getting absolutely destroyed. I keep hearing about, you know, some of these websites that you and I go to daily that are seeing their traffic being cut in half year over year. Well, you just laid out the really thoughtful bear argument on, uh, on, on Google. I mean, it's possible that the DOJ blows up Google and really stops them from paying for search distribution, in which case they lose 10, 20% of their search queries. You couldn't touch the stock under that environment. Uh,

So I don't think that's going to happen. I think the risk of that really has come down materially over the last six months, but you know, that's risk number one. And if, and if Google, you know, a year from now is trading at, you know, back to lows of like 120, 130, that'd probably be the number one reason why the second would be what you just mentioned, which is the search competition. Dan, all I've tried to do in order to, you know, like,

In order to assess this risk is I do quarterly surveys and, you know, we've got another one in the hopper now. And, you know, I look at this data and I run surveys and ask people where you go search and then for commercial searches, you know, looking for, you know, for vacation ideas, shopping for shoes, shopping for cosmetics. Where do you go to look?

And our survey may be wrong, but I do have done surveys a lot. And the last time I published this a few months ago, the results are very consistent. Like I haven't seen any real shift on the most commercial searches ever.

I think people still use Google just as much as they did. And there's even a little evidence of using it slightly more. I'm just not seeing, I know everybody thinks that the market's going to perplexity and chat GPT. And you may be right, Dan. My survey data doesn't support that. So if Google can maintain 80% share, roughly, that's what we've tracked in search query, general search queries.

and a much higher percent share of commercial search queries. But then I think the market's got this wrong and you want to be buying Google on this correction. And that's my point of view. I think the Google search results are going to come in better than feared. I don't think there's going to be a big blow up case with DOJ. I assume they're going to get this settled. And then if I get on top of that, better than expected cost management, I mean, that is probably the least likely thing to happen.

But if I get that, I'm going to have a lot of upside on Google. And the stock is not, you know, in an average market, in a relative market, this thing's going to be, you know, 250. That's my upside on the case. So, yeah, that's why I think the risk reward is super interesting here. 120, 130 on the downside. In your worst bear case scenario, and I can get you 250 on the upside in my best case scenario.

And just a reminder, this company has a lot of cash. It's a very profitable business. And these assets like YouTube, YouTube hasn't lost any share. They keep gaining share of total video viewing. They may have over-monetized this thing. They've got a pretty good hand to begin with. Oh, and then there's that Waymo thing. If I look out my window, I probably see three of them.

wandering around my building here in downtown San Francisco. They get no credit for it. They probably shouldn't. And they may blow this. They may blow it. But still, I'm just a treat. But they got this little option value out there with Waymo that, you know, I think it's marked to market $50 billion. That thing could be

Whoever the leader is in AV technology is worth a lot more than $50 billion five years from now. Yeah, I love that. I've been in San Francisco, and I have taken the Waymo. It is an absolutely amazing experience. And to your point, nothing's priced in there. And last question here, when you think about that, I heard Dara on Stratechery. I know that you listen probably or read Ben Thompson. And he seemed pretty jazzed up about the opportunity and autonomous technology.

for Uber and doesn't seem particularly worried. I think he's willing to take the over on when Tesla RoboTaxi is in the market. So my question to you is on Uber, do you see what Dara sees? Do you see a big opportunity for them given the gazillions of rides that they have

and the behavior that they have created among specifically U.S. consumers, but then also broadening it out to Eats and the like here. Is this a big opportunity that you see in Uber over the next few years also? Well, I think what I've—coming from Waymo Central here in San Francisco—

I've seen the future and its name is robo taxis. I think we're all going to be using robo taxis. It's going to take a freak of a long time. We're talking five to 10 years for this to really roll out all these local municipalities.

We still haven't had inclement weather. You know, Waymo's haven't rolled. I think they're in Buffalo, but you know, like I don't, I don't know how they would do with a, I don't think Waymo knows yet how they'll do with really a nasty snowstorm and ice conditions. They haven't had a lot of miles on, on, on highways. Safety track record has been wonderful, but I don't think they've ever driven, but,

above 40 miles an hour, maybe 35 because it's almost all urban. So there's just still a lot to prove. But, you know, the experience is just great. But I still check you. You know, when you want to go to LaGuardia or you want to go to SFO, you know, I want to, you know, how much are you going to charge me and how long is it going to take to pick me up? I'm not going to pay extra for a robo taxi. Some people will, but that's a very small percentage. And a lot of people won't step into one, by the way, for personal reasons. You know, I get that.

I think that what I, let me just nail it all like this. I think Uber has to have robo taxis on their network in the future. I think it's been very successful, right?

ride share network, it's going to be a requirement. And my guess is that they will, because I don't think there's going to be just one or two AV vendors. And I think the more AV vendors there are, then the better for the intermediary in there, the demand aggregator, which is Uber. And I think all of this is being proven right now in Austin, Texas, and this summer in Atlanta, Georgia, where Waymo gave 500 cars in each of those cities to Uber. And Uber per

perfects this and they, you know, they run them a big check. So that's easy. They can perfect that part. But if they can show that they can seamlessly integrate them into the network, make sure that the experience, the Waymo experience is as flawless there as it is here where, where, where, where Waymo does it all internally. But Waymo, if Uber can show that they can make it flawless there too, there's no, there's no bad incidents. There's no safety problems. Nobody

Nobody gets dropped off in the wrong neighborhood. You know, the trip to the airport goes as promised if it's if it is promised. If Uber gets that right, I think they'll prove that that they can be the ultimate. They can be that they'll be a beneficiary of robot taxis in the future. My guess is that Uber will prove that.

That's why Uber is actually my number two pick. Amazon first, Uber second, Google third. Yeah. And I agree with everything you said about Uber and listening to Dara on that podcast makes you feel like this is the guy to do it too. When you think about when he came in and ironically, one of the reasons why Travis got kicked out, obviously there was a handful of them, but one of them was the way he was talking about the drivers. And he basically said, you remember really well. I think this is back to

17 or 18. He was talking about those are our big problems. And as he thinks ahead towards autonomy, you know, the one thing I'll just say also about Waymo is like, you know, when Elon Musk says they're going to have cars on the road and the way in which they talk about the fleet and the fact that he is, you know, focused not away from LIDAR, which Waymo is, I'm going to take the over on robo taxis out of Tesla and it gives people

In my opinion, Waymo that much more time to figure out how to aggregate the market to some degree. So the same way that they have done with North American ride share. And I don't believe that, you know, the fleet in which the way that Tesla wants to manage it is something that is going to be, you know, half the fleet they're talking about from existing owners. It just seems like pie in the sky sort of stuff.

Mark Mahaney, I really appreciate you being here on a very difficult day in the market and specifically as it relates to technology and some of the biggest winners here. It's been a heck of a week or so. So hopefully we find a little footing soon, but I appreciate your time. Good seeing you, Dan.