7 takeaways from Buffett letter, Reddit’s IPO & a question on share registries

Bryce: [00:00:15] Welcome back to Equity Mates Investing, the podcast where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined us for the first time, a huge welcome. My name is Bryce, and today we're unpacking our seven biggest takeaways from Warren Buffett's latest shareholder letter. We're answering a community question about share registries, and we're looking at one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year to chat through it all, as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you doing? 

Alec: [00:00:41] Very good Bryce, very excited for this episode. I'm sure we'll all clean it up in post, but a few stumbles as you got through your introduction there. So hopefully we lift. 

Bryce: [00:00:52] Yes, it's all, downhill from here. Uphill? Well, downhill, isn't it? Easier. Yeah. But it's getting well anyway. Whatever way you look at it. 

Alec: [00:01:03] So, we are back for another episode. A lot to cover. But as always, Bryce, as we kick things off, it's important to remind everyone. 

Bryce: [00:01:21] That's right. While we are licensed, we're not aware of your personal financial circumstances. Any information on this show is for entertainment and education purposes. Any advice is general. But Ren with that said, let's crack on for. 

Alec: [00:01:39] And there is no big news. Once a year, Warren Buffett releases his annual shareholder letter for people who aren't familiar with Warren Buffett, history's greatest investor. 93.

Bryce: [00:01:52] Four this year. I think. 

Alec: [00:01:53] He actually said in an interview with CNBC recently he wants to be the oldest person ever. 

Bryce: [00:01:59] Actually. 

Alec: [00:01:59] Full credit. Wow. Don't we all. But, he is, he bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 and has used it as his, I guess, personal investment company with his partner in crime. Up until recently, Charlie Munger. And together they both became billionaires. Warren Buffett is now worth about $100 billion. And every year for the last 59 years, he has written an annual letter to shareholders. And it is these letters are some of the, I guess, the best long term investing advice, that you can come across. Great place to start if you're a new investor. So when he released his latest letter, we thought we had to read it and pull out some of our biggest takeaways. And as you said in the introduction, we've got seven for this episode. 

Bryce: [00:02:51] First one without Charlie by his side, which is, which is sad. But we were fortunate enough to see both of them at the conference last year. But the first takeaway Ren, is to do with Charlie, and it is Vail, Charlie Munger,. 

Alec: [00:03:04] Valley of Vail. Just don't want you to get some mean dms. 

Bryce: [00:03:10] Valley. Charlie Munger who yeah, in his letter, said was the architect of Berkshire Hathaway and the one that really encouraged him to move beyond looking for, like, date value stocks and start thinking about buying reasonable companies at fair or great companies at fair prices. 

Alec: [00:03:28] The second big takeaway that we had from the letter is that Buffett still hates GAAP accounting standards. Now, this was a change to accounting standards, maybe about five years ago. That made companies, when they report the numbers, factor in the changes in values of investments into their profit and loss. So very simply, let's say that equity mates are running the business. And, you know, we make money from ads and we pay our staff and ourselves. And then at the end of the year we have a profit. But let's say we actually took some money that we had and invested a heap in the stock market as well. Now, the movement in the value of those investments also counts to whether we were profitable or not.

Bryce: [00:04:08] Which is a bit ridiculous in my view. 

Alec: [00:04:10] Yeah, I mean, this is certainly the reason for let's not get into it now. But for Buffet, he sees it as absolutely ridiculous. And the reason is they have hundreds and billions of dollars of investments. But and the movements in the share prices of those investments now cloud the actual operating earnings of the businesses that they own, 100% of their railways and their energy business and stuff like that. So he lays it out in the letter, according to GAAP accounting standards, the last three years of profit, $90 billion in profit, $23 billion loss, $96 billion in profit. 

Bryce: [00:04:46] And that loss was in 2022. And we know what happened with the markets there. 

Alec: [00:04:51] Yeah right. So wild swings in profit and loss. Whereas what Buffett says is his actual operating earnings 27,000,000, 30 billion 37 billion. So not so you can sit and you can just say how a consistent story of growth is clouded by these wild swings in the stock market. Yeah. So takeaway number two he hates GAAP accounting standards for people who are investing in the states. Something to be mindful of. 

Bryce: [00:05:18] Number three another year another smaller opportunity set as Berkshire gets bigger, the number of investments that could truly move the needle gets smaller, which makes the likelihood of another truly transformative acquisition less likely. This is something that both of them spoke about when we were in Omaha last year. It's just getting hotter and hotter, given the size of them too, to fund an investment that moves the needle. 

Alec: [00:05:42] Yeah. So Berkshire is about a $900 billion company now. So yeah, they've got to be buying companies that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars to be transformative. That leads to numbers for now. Buffett over the years has loved, I guess, taking a swing at some of his peers in the finance industry. And our fourth takeaway is that Buffett writes about the true incentive of Wall Street. He reminds us that the vast majority of participants in the financial industry don't get paid on performance, don't get paid on how well we do or other investors do. They get paid for their activities. Brokers make money. The more people trading investment banks make money, the more capital raisings and new listings. There are exchanges like the ASX that make money, the more trading that is then it really care about overall performance. I don't care how. You're going as an investor. They just care that there's activity. They care that you're trading. So it's a reminder to, I guess, shut out the noise. And as Buffett says, the casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants. So resist that temptation. Don't be active for activities sake. 

Bryce: [00:06:56] Love that. Number five Berkshire is built to last. Berkshire currently has $168 billion in cash and short term treasuries on its balance sheet, and Buffett has taken an incredibly conservative approach to Berkshire's financial position. And as we said in point three, can't find a lot of great deals to actually put that cash to work. So huge stockpile, but a company that is built to last. 

Alec: [00:07:20] Now, number six, the scorecard. So looking at Berkshire's actual business performance overall it keeps growing. It may not be able to find any transformative acquisitions, but it is growing organically. 2022, 30.9 billion in operating earnings. 2023, 37.4 billion in operating earnings. That's a 21% increase year over year. Now that's not the stock market investments. That's the companies that they own fully. So then there's also growth in their stock market investments on top of that. So it's a pretty incredible business vehicle. It just may not change a lot in the years to come. That makes sense. 

Bryce: [00:08:03] Yeah, yeah. And then finally he speaks about his track record here. Buffet includes the historic return of Berkshire Hathaway versus the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested. Now, the S&P 500 with dividends has averaged 10.2% since 1965. And which is everything we spoke about on the show. Average market return 10%. Can't complain with that, however, Berkshire has averaged a whopping 19.8% across the same period, more than double what the S&P 500, up almost double what the S&P 500 has returned so since 1965. That is a 30,000% return for the S&P 500, compared to 4.4 million percent for Berkshire.

Alec: [00:08:54] Now that is a demonstration of the power of compounding. You hear that difference 19.8% compared to 10.2%. And you're like, okay, that's a meaningful difference. But how much can that really be over time? Well, that is overtime that compounds into a 30,000% return. Not bad or a 4.4 million percent return. Just that consistent outperformance year after year adds up. 

Bryce: [00:09:22] Oh my goodness. Wow. 

Alec: [00:09:24] So there were seven takeaways. If you want to read the full letter, you can include the link in the show notes. On the Berkshire website, you can read all the letters going back to 1965. 

Bryce: [00:09:35] Of it. Have you done that? 

Alec: [00:09:36] I've read enough. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:09:38] Some good books that compiled them.

Alec: [00:09:39] Yeah. The snowball, was probably one that I'd start with. Yeah. But there's so many. 

Bryce: [00:09:44] All right, well, let's leave it there, Ren. Next up, we've got a question from our community. Nice. Well, we love getting community questions in. If you want to submit a question to be answered on the show or in our emails, hit us up at equitymates.com/contact. And this week our question comes in from Andrew. 

EM Community: [00:10:09] Hi guys Andrew from Adelaide here. Just a question around Computershare and any other similar platforms. Received letters asking me to log in and, renew tax residency and it's asked for SRN and HIN numbers, which is a bit confusing. I've tried logging in and I don't really know the best way to go about it. So any advice you could give someone like me and newer, investors on how to best access and set up those sorts of platforms? Cheers, guys. 

Bryce: [00:10:43] Nice. Thanks for the question, Andrew. A timely one as well, because we've had a lot of questions in the Facebook community around Hin, SRN, chess sponsored registry. So. 

Alec: [00:10:55] All right, well, now that you, now that you said all those acronyms, you have to define all those acronyms. 

Bryce: [00:11:01] I will in time. Okay. Yeah. I think the best first place to start is where everyone who starts their journey starts, which is with a broker. So the broker is where you obviously buy and sell your shares. The second component to that, a share registries, is they operate in the background that organisations that are set up to manage the list of shareholders on behalf of companies. So BHP, CBA, they all have shareholders on the registry and these companies operate by managing those. And they also track who owns what. There are three main ones. Computershare boardroom and link market services. Now, it is important to note that there are a number of online brokers who, not chess sponsored, and we'll get to that in a moment. And so you won't receive any letters or correspondence from the share registries because all of that is managed by the broker. And they are the HIN. 

Alec: [00:11:59] Yeah. They get the letter. 

Bryce: [00:12:00] They get the letters. Yeah. On your behalf. So if you're sitting there going, I haven't received any correspondence. I don't know what Andrew's talking about. It maybe could be because you're with the likes of superheroes or other brokers that are custodian. So the next part is what to do when you get correspondence from these share registries, because it can get confusing. What you need to do is follow the instructions on the letter, and you will likely get one when you buy a stock for the first time. So let's say you go through a stake and you buy CommSec. You'll receive a letter from the share registry saying you need to go in and register your account details, definitely do that. Once you have done that, you can then see all of the positions in your portfolio. The reason you want to do this is because share registries are where you update all of your personal contact information, and more importantly, where you give instructions on what you want done with your dividends. It is important to note this is not done through your broker. So why do you want to do that? If you want to get your dividends paid in cash, or if you want to get your dividends reinvested back in if that is an available option. The share registry is where you make that decision and give that information. Now, if you have received these letters and you've thrown them in the bin like many of us do, and you have no idea where to start, you can call the share registries to find out what your login details are. So I don't think don't sit there and freak out, because you didn't keep the pieces of paper. I've thrown all of mine out, but you can call them. What I would suggest doing is making sure you record that so that you can log in, at a later date. Now, because I've done that multiple times, I've completely forgotten what my logins. I had to, had to recall. 

Alec: [00:13:41] So you have to call. You can't just go forgot password. 

Bryce: [00:13:45] No, so in true style to all of this, everything is done in paper form, so their security is generally pretty tight, right? You need to give them a call. They can't then give you anything over the phone. They have to then send out a letter. 

Alec: [00:13:59] Can you opt for your communications to be via email? 

Bryce: [00:14:02] It's a good question. I don't think so.

Alec: [00:14:05] I've read that you can. 

Bryce: [00:14:08] That's done through the broker to make things more confusing. 

Alec: [00:14:10] Yeah I've read that you can through Computershare. They've got a website where it says you can, but every time I try and turn the letters off, they just keep coming. 

Bryce: [00:14:21] Nice. I think Stake allows you to turn. 

Alec: [00:14:23] I tried that, so let us keep it really.

Bryce: [00:14:26] Okay. We'll have to bring it up with them. So don't freak out. If you don't have the paperwork, you can't do it. Now to hit some acronyms that you'll often see when trying to log in to these platforms or on paperwork that you receive from the share registries. The two main ones are Hin and SRN, and that will likely be in the same box. A Hin is your holder identification number. Now this is given to you when you sign up to a broker. It is issued by the ASX and it allows the broker to connect you with the stocks you own and the chest sponsor system, or the way that the ASX register. Who is buying what? So the Hin is your number. It is the holder identification number. It is separate from an SRN which is a security holder reference number. That is a number that is given to every single shareholding that is out there. And the slot nuance here is that you only get an SRN when you are issued stocks outside of buying it through a broker. Now you might think, well, when does that happen? When I used to work at Woolworths, for example, I was given an employee share scheme and I was given stock in Woolworths. I didn't buy that through a broker. It was issued by Woolworths and straight into my share registry. So that's when you give an SRN, if you get stocks through IPOs, or off market, that's also when you're given an SRN. So in most cases you will have a Hin if your broker is chest sponsored a lot of jargon that a lot of chit chat. The long story is. 

Alec: [00:15:59] But let's answer the question, what do we actually need to do? 

Bryce: [00:16:03] The long, the long and the short of it? Ren is I if your broker is a custodial money model, you don't need to worry about it because you're not going to do any of this. It does mean you don't have control over what to do with the dividends. It'll all be paid in cash into your brokerage account. If you don't have the paperwork and you're worried you don't have your logins, give your share. Registries are cool. How do you find out who you share registries with? Google your company name and share registry, and the company will have information on their website as to who it is. Then call them and find out your information. Log in and save your login details. End of story.

Alec: [00:16:39] And one other thing. All the ETF providers also have a share registry. So everything that you've just said also applies to any ASX listed security. ETFs, listed investment companies, individual companies. 

Bryce: [00:16:55] And the three important reasons to do this are you want to put your tax details in so that any dividends that you are paid, it's traded effectively tax effectively i.e. you're not withholding tax.

Alec: [00:17:08] For saving. 

Bryce: [00:17:09] I guess for savings. And b update your details so that if you're moving houses or whatever, the paperwork is going to the right place. 

Alec: [00:17:15] You said three reasons. 

Bryce: [00:17:17] The third reason was, sorry. Dividend reinvestment plans. 

Alec: [00:17:20] Nice. Now, if people are wondering about overseas shares. Aall overseas shares, essentially. At least if you're buying them through Australian brokers, custodial. So there's no chess equivalent in the US that you need to worry about. It's just a unique quirk of the Australian stock market that we want to hold shares in our own name rather than with a custodian. 

Bryce: [00:17:43] Yeah. Well, I hope that answers the question, Andrew. And everyone in the Facebook community is also thinking about what the deal is with share registries. If you'd like to ask us a question, hit us up at equitymates.com/contact and leave us a voice message or an email. But Ren, after the break, we're going to be turning our attention to one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Equity Mates. We've covered Warren Buffett's annual shareholder letter and share registries. But now Ren, as we've alluded to, one of the biggest IPOs, almost anticipated IPOs, not only of this year, but I would say probably the last five it's been brought up is that these companies could be IPO. It's finally here. It's been announced who we got. 

Alec: [00:18:29] So it is Reddit that is going public. For people unfamiliar, it's a social media message board site. It was founded in 2005 by, few friends from the University of Virginia. One of these founders is the CEO currently. I think he left and came back. Steve Hoffman, one of the other co-founders, Alexis Ohanian. Does that name ring a bell? 

Bryce: [00:18:56] It does, but I can't remember where. 

Alec: [00:18:57] I'll give you a hint. He is the husband to a much more famous wife. 

Bryce: [00:19:04] Serena Williams. 

Alec: [00:19:04] Serena Williams' husband. Yes, yes. So Aaron Schwartz I think is the third co-founder have no interesting biographical information on him. So the message board site, founded in 2005, is now going public. And we know they're going public because they filed their S-1 with the SEC, over in the US. And the S-1 is essentially a detailed listing of their financial performance, where they've come as a business, where they want to go, risks all of that. So it's a pretty comprehensive look at this business, and it gives us an insight into how it's going. And so we've pulled out some of the key numbers probably in three key buckets. How it's going as a platform, like it's user numbers, then it's financials. And then finally, I guess the details of the IPO. And as a bit of a benchmark, we're going to compare Reddit to two of its and we don't mean this pejoratively, but to two of its second tier social media peers. So there's not so there's probably not much benefit comparing it to a TikTok or an Instagram or, or a Facebook even, we've pulled out Snapchat and Pinterest as two peers. So we're going to compare it to. 

Bryce: [00:20:23] Which is fair enough. I just don't say it as a social media comparison in Reddit. 

Alec: [00:20:28] What did you say it? 

Bryce: [00:20:29] I don't know, like, I know, I know it is, but it's kind of like it's a web. It's a website. 

Alec: [00:20:35] It's a website, like, where people. 

Bryce: [00:20:38] I know it is social media, like, you know what I mean? It's like, I don't think that is a web equivalent.

Alec: [00:20:44] Well, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:20:46] Like the. Anyway, Do you know? You know what I mean? Like, it's. 

Alec: [00:20:51] It's unique, but I don't think it's like that. 

Bryce: [00:20:55] It's a, yeah, it's community based posting called. 

Alec: [00:20:58] It's like yeah, yeah yeah it's definitely my favourite of the social media. 

Bryce: [00:21:02] Yeah it's great it's great.

Alec: [00:21:03] I definitely feel like it's time well spent relative to like spending time on Instagram. Like I feel like I'll come across something interesting. I'll learn something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, that's what we're here to talk about. So let's start with the platform itself. Oh, I actually I guess one thing we should say, for people who are unfamiliar the way that it is a little bit different to an Instagram site where you follow your friends and then Instagram, algorithmically generate a news feed for you. Reddit has it's broken up into subreddits, more than 100,000 active subreddits. So, you know, you could go to Reddit-AFL and there's a community of people that are posting and talking about the AFL or, r-cooking, and there's people sharing cooking tips and recipes and stuff like that. So it segments based on interest. There's also, you know, slash Australia and slash. 

Bryce: [00:21:59] Sydney, supination.

Alec: [00:22:01] Yeah. So you can segment based on interest or geography. 

Bryce: [00:22:06] Slash Equity mates. 

Alec: [00:22:06] Doesn't actually you know, I think I claimed it. Yeah. I just go so that I don't know if that counts as the active communities. And you can subscribe to different communities and then Reddit will algorithmically generate you a news feed as well based on the communities that you follow. So in that sense it is similar, but I guess you have more control over what you're interested in going. So, that's kind of how the platform works. Let's get to the user numbers. 

Bryce: [00:22:29] All right. So we'll start with daily active users. Reddit have 73 million daily active users. And as Ren said, more than 100,000 active communities. Not every company splits out their daily active users. So Pinterest, for example, reports MAU monthly active users. Snapchat. They do report daily and they have 414 million daily active users. Yes. That is huge. 

Alec: [00:22:55] Yeah. So what, like a fifth the size of Snapchat? In daily active Users. But let's tend to monthly active users now. Reddit didn't report monthly active users in its S-1 filing, but an estimate we found have Reddit's monthly active users at 1.02 billion in 2023. For comparison, Snapchat just crossed 800 million monthly active users, and Pinterest reported 498 million monthly active users. 

Bryce: [00:23:26] So on. An estimate based on Reddit is bigger than both of those. 1.2 billion. What's interesting is the difference in the 73 million daily and 1.2 billion monthly. 

Alec: [00:23:40] Yeah, so that ratio of daily active users to monthly active users Snapchat 414 million daily 800 million monthly, which means more than half of their monthly active users are using the product every day. That is a highly engaged user base, that is just like constantly on it. Whereas Reddit their ratio 73 million daily active, a billion monthly active. So that's 7% of monthly active users. It's just a different user behaviour like the they've got a bigger user base but they don't have as many power users. 

Bryce: [00:24:19] Yeah. Well I mean, often you'll do a Google search and one of the results will be a Reddit thread if you're asking a question, for example. So you might not be a Reddit user, but you might just click on that and you'll be one of those 1 billion monthly active users. 

Alec: [00:24:32] Here's a life hack for people. If you ever want real product reviews, type in the product you're searching. You know, like a Dyson vacuum cleaner or whatever. Reddit in Google and read the Reddit threads. 

Bryce: [00:24:46] Same with travel. Anywhere you going? Hotels. Places to visit. 

Alec: [00:24:51] Yeah. You just get you clear out a lot of the, you know, sponsored content or, you know, all that stuff. So yeah. Anyway, that's what we're here to talk about. Let's talk about the financials. 

Bryce: [00:25:00] So that's the numbers, the financials and how it compares. So in its prospectus Reddit said revenue in 2023 was 804 million, up about 21% from 666 million a year earlier. Now that compares to revenue for Snap of 4.6 billion and Pinterest of three, just over 3 billion. So, nowhere near as large as those two Reddit have it obviously have not trouble, but for the size of their user base, there's some opportunity to monetise. 

Alec: [00:25:30] Yeah, you could argue that under monetise for Reddit users certainly wouldn't. But let's turn to profit because that's what really matters. So, the company Reddit lost 90,000,000 in 2023, the year before they lost 158 million. So they're not profitable. That's a starting point. But you know what, Bryce, neither are their social media peers. Snap. 2023 lost. 1.32 billion and Pinterest lost 36 million. So they're all losing money. Pinterest. 

Bryce: [00:26:02] Interest is relatively, relatively breaking. 

Alec: [00:26:04] Well, I know that that is a comment on that's a sign of the times losing $36 million. Yeah.

Bryce: [00:26:10] Wow. 36.3 billion.

Alec: [00:26:12] If you lose, if you lose $36 million every year, at some point you're going to have to go to capital markets.

Bryce: [00:26:18] If you lose 1.32 billion every year, you're like, that's gonna be a lot quicker. 

Alec: [00:26:23] But I'm saying it's not it's not. But yeah it's comparatively comparatively. 

Bryce: [00:26:31] All right. Thirdly details of the IPO. 

Alec: [00:26:33] Can I just say just on that. So if you say that Reddit is under monetise from a revenue perspective relative to some of those peers and to its user base, and it's losing 90 million, you probably can say that there's a bit of operating leverage there. Maybe it can, you know, get to $1 billion in revenue and without adding to its cost base. So like that would be a good news story. I'm not saying they will do it because second tier social media loves burning cash. But, you know, when you compare that to snap, we're on a engaged but not as large total user base. They're already doing 4.6 billion in revenue and they're still losing over a billion. Like they've got to move the needle more. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:27:16] All right. Well the details of the IPO, so Reddit's bankers are seeking a valuation of about $5 billion. That is roughly half of the $10 billion valuation that the company fetched in a 2021 private financing round. Now, 2021 was the peak of the bull market. So, they're they doing a bit of a down round, so to speak. To put that in comparison, Snap's valuation is 18 billion and Pinterest is 24.5 billion. Wow.

Alec: [00:27:45] Yeah. So I was surprised by that. Like it's you you compare those three the user numbers we just spoken about. Yeah.

Bryce: [00:27:57] High market cap. 

Alec: [00:27:58] Yeah. It's interesting that it's such a lower valuation that they're seeking.. Now Reddit is really powered by its users, all these subreddits that we're talking about, moderated by volunteers that aren't paid and they just do it for the love of it. They're trying to cut these big power users into the IPO and give them an ownership stake in the company. They've said they would reserve a chunk of shares at the IPO price for 75,000 of the company's most prolific users. So interesting, based on daily active users of about 73 million. What's that?

Bryce: [00:28:37] That's good. Get everyone on the right 0.1%. 

Alec: [00:28:40] Top 0.1% of users. 

Bryce: [00:28:43] I like this idea. I think it'll, if you're getting the top whatever it was, percentage of users, active shareholders, they're only going to say positive things about it in the community. And we know based on what was that movie we saw, where they pushed up the price of GameStop on, on Reddit. 

Alec: [00:29:03] Dumb money. 

Bryce: [00:29:03] Dumb money. Maybe they'd be hoping for something similar. 

Alec: [00:29:06] Maybe. Maybe. So that's that's some of the key learnings from the Reddit S-1. Now things can move pretty quickly. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few weeks Reddit is listed, what they're doing now is they're doing a big roadshow with a lot of institutional investors and trying to get subscription for the IPO. And then they can list pretty quickly after, so watch this space. It'll be an interesting one to see. Particularly interesting, because Reddit is now going to be seen as a little bit of a test case, a little bit of a bellwether for, is the IPO window open? And what that means is, there are times when a lot of companies go public because investors are excited, they're feeling positive about the future, and they're willing to buy into IPOs and, buy once a company lists and there are times when the window is shut and no one is subscribing to IPOs, and if you do list, your probably share price might fall once at least. The IPO window has been shut for a little while because people you know, the interest rate and inflation story sentiments been pretty negative. Renaissance capital compiled some numbers in the US. Just 108 companies went public in 2023, which is roughly a quarter of the number of companies that went public in 2021. So 2021, the bull market was on, the IPO window was open. Over 400 companies went public. Last year it was just over 100 companies. So the question will be, if Reddit has a really good IPO here, then other companies will take notice of that. And there's another number of companies waiting in the wings. ByteDance is one that's spoken about Shein from China is spoken about. But he like in the West. I guess the one that everyone is looking at is Stripe. People would love that. I don't feel like it's going to go public. So the question, you know, just like Google in 2004 reopened the IPO window, just like Facebook in 2012, reopened the IPO window. Is Reddit going to. Is it too early? Time will tell. 

Bryce: [00:31:12] It's only going to open the window if it's a successful IPO. And a lot of the IPO as recently have just been way too overpriced and just bombed. So like I think just yeah. Anyway, that's my view. I think you get these bankers on the road who just try and make money at IPO and then get out ones, and then it's not a successful IPO because it's just priced way too high. So maybe 5 billion valuation down from ten is where it should be. Maybe less I don't know. 

Alec: [00:31:45] Well, Bryce, this episode has gone full circle because that brings us right back to where Warren Buffett started us. The true incentive of Wall Street is that, many of the participants in the finance industry, the investment bankers, advising and selling the IPO, the brokers pushing these shares in the IPO to their customers and the exchanges themselves pushing for more listings. They all make money from activity, not from performance. 

Bryce: [00:32:12] Well, there you go. The whole system is rigged. 

Alec: [00:32:14] No, you've got to go in with a you can make money if you think and do the work and, don't get caught up in the noise. 

Bryce: [00:32:22] No. That's it. 

Alec: [00:32:23] But that really does bring us full circle. And that's probably a great place to leave it.

Bryce: [00:32:27] Love it. If you'd love to come onto the show, if you have a question for us, if you have a question for our advisors, if you want to submit to pimp my portfolio or any of the other segments, hit us up at Equitymates.com/contact otherwise Ren, we'll pick it up next episode. 

Alec: [00:32:40] Sounds good.