Buy or Sell: Adam Keily with Scott Phillips – Qantas, Pilbara, Cochlear & more

Adam: [00:00:58] Hello and welcome. This is buy or Sell coming to you from the no holds barred here at Equity Mates HQ. I'm your host, Adam Kiley. Regarded by many as one of the simplest minds in finance. Luckily for all of us, though, I'm joined once again by an expert to educate me and hopefully you on how they're thinking about stocks and the stocks they're thinking about. This is not a deep dive, though. This is rapid fire. Buy or sell. We're going to rip through as many stocks as we can in the time that we have. And don't forget you can follow each stock on the buy or sell tracker on the Equity Mates website. And today I am super excited, because I am joined by no other than Scott Phillips, chief investment officer at The Motley Fool. Scott, welcome to the no holds bar. 

Scott: [00:01:41] I don't get very happy to be here mate and rapid fire. You're gonna have to keep me to it. I can talk, so I got pull me up if I'm. If I'm going over time. 

Adam: [00:01:49] I've got a big bell here. I'll just ring that. It's similar. It's similar to the Nasdaq bell. We'll just ring that as soon as you go, but I'll keep you in check. 

Scott: [00:01:58] Strings Bell. Yeah. 

Adam: [00:02:00] Absolutely. I, to get started, speaking of drinks, I'd like to offer you a drink. I find it's a nice little way to get to know people a bit more deeply. We do have a signature cocktail here this week in the no holds bar. It is the blue chip lagoon. In honour of the I primarily ASX stocks that we're talking about today, Scott, but, blue Chip lagoon for you or what's your drink of choice? 

Scott: [00:02:25] So that one. I sound like an alcoholic. My top ,I depends on it. Depends how I'm feeling. I'm a

Adam: [00:02:30] Gentleman here. I'll put that in no judgement whatsoever. 

Scott: [00:02:32] Thank you. I'm a fan of dark beers, so I'll go order a Guinness if I'm having. If I'm having a beer, that might arise if I'm on the red wine trying or maybe to finish off maybe last drinks. Nice Scotch whisky neat is that. 

Adam: [00:02:45] It's lovely. You just. You've just planned out my whole night. We're going to start with a dark beer, move to a short, and then finish off with a whisky. Neat. I love it. All right, now, I think you're actually the first guest who has completely understood the assignment here. The no holds barred you have, you have no holds. Five bars, five sales. oh. I can't wait to get started. So let's crack on. And we're going to start with Washington H soul Pattinson and company limited ASX SOL currently trading at $32.50. I had to sit down and have a sandwich about halfway through reading the name of that company, Scott, we're looking at a buy or sell for Sol Patts. 

Scott: [00:03:26] I own Soul Pats, and I reckon your listeners should too. It is a buy for me. So I'll be a listed investment company. So it's a conglomerate business. It owns partial or whole functions of other companies. It has an equity portfolio, with a lots of ASX shares. It owns large chunks of a few businesses and then some businesses outright. So Soul Patts, it's a really, really high quality business. Second oldest listed company in the country. That's why that name is on Wieldy. They weren't spelling with no vowels or only only lowercase letters, as long as the cookies do these days. Sol Patts for short. 

Adam: [00:04:00] Sol Patts. That would be. That would be fun. Exactly. 

Scott: [00:04:04] Exactly. Sol Patts for short. It's a great business run by the fourth generation of the same family. As I said, it's they are long term value oriented managers. They have beaten the market over one, three, five, ten and I think 15 years, because they just simply invest really thoughtfully in quality companies writing at pretty good prices. I own a cross shareholding in brickworks, a building materials company. I also own shares in, TPG Telecom and the spin off business called Joe's Out of Malaysia. A really, really high quality business. Pretty good dividend has increased, I think every year for 24 years. They very close to the quarter century of increasing dividends, a really, really high quality business. And I think one for the bottom drawer, one for almost every portfolio. 

Adam: [00:04:49] Okay. And not and so they're not it doesn't sound like they're focussed on one particular sector either, Scott. They've got their they're really broad, really diverse. Is that fit?

Scott: [00:04:55] Yeah. So they're an investment company. They don't have any real internal operations other than buying and owning bits of other people's businesses. As of the couple of internal I have an in-house, merchant banking business and a couple other bits and pieces. Funds management is their newest bit of business. They merged with Milton Corporation. They own some shares and a couple of other listed fund managers. That seems to be the big growth area they're looking for at the moment. 

Adam: [00:05:17] Okay. Sol Patts is a buy it is going to buy next up, another company people may have heard of Qantas Airways Limited, ASX Qan currently trading at $5.62. Really good news about Qantas these days. Could it be an opportunity for bonds to step up as the national carrier Scott is that is that a chance once it gets out of administration? Obviously. 

Scott: [00:05:39] Well, that's the problem. Apparently everyone was being looked at by its private equity owners. They've got to look at those and it's all a bit of a mess. Trying to run the airline is a stupidly difficult business. Qantas and Virgin have done a pretty good job recently because they've been ultra rational. They basically rationed capacity, and that meant really harsh airfares. We know that if you tried. To travel around the country recently or internationally. You're paying through the nose, so this is probably the best of times for Qantas, I would suggest. Now our long term investment is to sell on structural grounds. No idea what happens with the share price in the next month. Two months, six months, even 12 months. But long term airlines are awful, awful, awful. Businesses might eat up capital. They are really expensive to run. If your capacity drops even a little bit, you just bleed money. So yeah, a really, really difficult one. Look, so far so good. I love the airline. I love you know, I'm very proud of your brand Qantas as a flyer, as an investor. I'm not touching it. If I owned the shares I would sell them. Warren Buffett famously said if a far sighted capitalist had been Kitty Hawk, he would have shot Wilbur and Orville Wright down. That's how bad the airline industry is for investors. You need to say well, away from this one.

Adam: [00:06:44] Right. I'm not sure. The public sentiment is also favourable towards airlines in general. True. All right. So Qantas is a sell. Next up we're looking at Corporate Travel Management Limited ASX CTD currently trading at $15.09. Now when I think corporate travel Scott I think luxury I think style I think relaxing on legionella ridden refugee barge parked off of Dorset in the UK.

Scott: [00:07:15] It's very different, it's very fast set of businesses. Yet these guys are in that space either way so they did this contract with with the UK government to basically exactly manage refugees, you know, flooding bad shades of 1788 Australia by the way when we, that hulks of hulks of ships waiting for people to be sent to Australia, it's look. Yeah, that contractually is why the share price is down. That allowed for it was 30 or $40 million with a profit from this thing. Turned out to be a couple of million dollars that the contracts are bust. Not for anything Corporate Travel done bad. It simply, well, went well. High capacity is this much. And the government will pay us this much if we do what we do. It just didn't work that the business wasn't there. Now, probably good news for those otherwise, refugees, but, bad news for corporate travel because of that downgraded guidance recently. I own these shares, by the way. But it is a buy because I think the company is a long term winner. They've talked about the fact that if, if, if and when they get back to pre-COVID levels of travel, the share price pre-COVID was 22, up to 28 bucks at one point. If you look at a $15 share price. So a good 50% upside from here. Just to get back to those levels, I think it's really likely. 

Adam: [00:08:20] So they were hit by Covid as well where they. 

Scott: [00:08:22] Oh yeah massively. Yeah. Here's the I think now here's why I like them as a company. So the flight centre Webjet corporate Travel and hello World travel all got hit by Covid really hot. Effectively business went to zero. Those other three had to raise money because they didn't have enough cash on the balance sheet to stay afloat. Corporate travel had managed itself more conservatively, had the money on the balance sheet, didn't raise any capital at all, and in fact went and did some acquisitions during the end of the pandemic, whether it was just cheap businesses to buy. So this is a really good business. Jamie Ferris is the CEO and the founder. He's done a remarkable job building this company, I think is just too cheap. The growth will come back. It will be their market. Looking at the very short term future now and saying the short term looks a bit grim and it does. The long term, I think, is really bright. If you're an investor with a long term perspective, I think you should be, then I think corporate travel at 15 bucks is a really good buy. All right.

Adam: [00:09:11] All right. That's a buy I think I'm going to. But next up we're looking at Commonwealth Bank of Australia ASX CBA currently trading at $111.86. We had a look at the national airline carrier. Now we're looking at the national carrier of money. That's an unofficial title, obviously. Where are we at with CBA, Scott? Buy or sell?

Scott: [00:09:31] I am a capital S, Sell, Adam.

Adam: [00:09:34] Capital S, Sell, right? 

Scott: [00:09:35] I will say, I will say the other cells I've got today are going to be on structural grounds. I think long term they're businesses that are really struggling. CBA is not that. CBA is a dramatically strong, stable, quality bank. It has a very, very strong business, has a very significant mortgage book. It is the largest bank in the country. So this is not a structural problem other than structural growth, because we're looking right now at a situation where know house prices have been growing. Yeah, we know that. The economy's now in a bit of a lull. Business lending is going to be the next battleground for the banks. I don't see the growth that's required to justify the current price of CBA. The simple you again, great bank. Not going anywhere completely fine. But you don't want to pay a fortune. 

Adam: [00:10:17] If we don't want to, we don't want to run on the bank with paper. Let's go, let's go. I've said that's a sale. So I'm going to go take out all my money. 

Scott: [00:10:24] That's right. Where we I in the, in the court case, in the lobby of the of the business. Here us laughing about it. And people talk to me. Horrible stories about it. How dare I laugh about it? Look, it's going to be fine, but, yeah. Can it can it grow fast enough to justify the current share price? I don't think so. It's something it's close to. It's not exactly double the price of the other banks on a PE basis, but it's not miles off that either. And you can't say, hang on, what has to happen now? Here's the key. CBA for the last 40 years has been huge. Why? It is the biggest mortgage book in the country. It is the bank with the strongest mortgage book as a proportion. Of his total earnings while over mortgages have been growing quickly because house prices begin on quickly. That's been wonderful for CBA. They had the full sales. The tailwinds were blowing really hard. They are doing fantastically well. If and when we don't see the same strength from that part of the market as we have over the past few decades, then CBA's are going to be structurally disadvantaged, not advantaged. Investors looking in the Rear-view mirror, they're looking backwards and saying, hey, way back then, this was great. I think that's a mistake. I think it's too expensive. If I owned CBA shares now, I would sell them. 

Adam: [00:11:27] All right. It is a sell. Last one, before we take a quick break. We are looking at Goodman Group, ASX GMG currently trading at $30.49. Had it twice on the show already, Scott was a buy. A third buy here would put it into 90s boyband NSync territory. I trust you are familiar with the classic buy, buy, buy from NSync. 

Scott: [00:11:51] Nice. Look at that. 

Adam: [00:11:55] What are we doing with Goodman Group. Buy or sell? 

Scott: [00:11:57] It is not a buy. I'm going to go very, very 2024. I'm going to shake it off, Adam. That's why.

Adam: [00:12:02] Oh, did you. Have you got kids? Teenage daughters, by any chance? 

Scott: [00:12:07] I do not, and that's about the only Taylor Swift song I know. So it's all I've got. What is this house with? Shake it off when that's you. I've done. You can expect nothing else. But I am going to Nsync this one. It is going to be a buy for me as well. Here's, I want to be really, really clear though I hate I should have made some other sales. In fact I have about one coming up soon. I hate REITS, real estate investment trust as a matter of course for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you're in a real estate company, you're getting affected with the rent plus a little bit of development profit. There's not a big upside there if you're in real estate itself, in commercial real estate. Secondly, if you're in office real estate, you got to contend with the work from home. If you're in retail, you're contending with people shopping online more often now, the not now, but Goodman Group is in the warehousing business. So think about e-commerce. Think about the massive growth in parcel delivery letters falling off a cliff. Parcels are going through the roof. Goodman in that space. Their biggest customer is Amazon. I own shares in both Amazon and Goodman. Deutsche Post is its second biggest customer. And then a long line of it. These guys have great facilities in great locations. Greg Goodman, the founder, is doing spectacularly with building this business. And they are part real estate business and part fund manager. They actually have internal effective property trust within the business where they are getting paid as the manager of those and investing on behalf of outside investors, not the shareholders but other investors. So you get the return from the assets themselves and then you get on top of that, a return from the funds, management fees they collect from their partners to manage those other property trusts. It's the latter I really, really like because it's super scalable. The upside is effectively unlimited. If you can find more investors, you can make more money at Goodman Group. I really, really like it. That's why it's a buy. 

Adam: [00:13:50] And is it like I've heard lately, there's things like Temu and Shein coming on board that's threatening Amazon's business? Is this a way of just just getting like a layer down below that and going where in the parcel business now and I don't care who sells it. 

Scott: [00:14:04] Oh pretty much yeah. Look, I know your team will be using Goodman Group any time soon, but you're absolutely right. This is, and I think it's a it's a global thing. Right. This is not just an Australian, real estate business, but it's a global real estate business. Now, a large chunk is in Australia cause that's where it started. But you're getting geographic diversification. Getting customer diversification, as you say. So many. The Amazon, the big I think last time I checked it was but 1 in 7 or $8, of. Oh. What? Oh, yeah. Perfectly. Yeah. 600%. But but on top of that, well, then the tile is really, really long after that. So I like the business is a really good way of getting, as you say, diversified exposure to e-commerce more broadly. But even better than that, just really well-run assets and clipping the ticker as a fund manager on those assets as well. 

Adam: [00:14:45] All right. It's a buy, and that brings us to a break. We're going to take a pause here and grab another Guinness. Coming up right now, we have got Nsync with buy, buy, buy here and buy or sell. Back in a minute. Welcome back here on Buy or Sell. Coming to you from the no holds bar. My expert today is Scott Phillips, chief investment officer at Motley Fool. Scott, great to have you on the show. And we we've been through five stocks already. We've got another few to get through here. Starting off with Whitehaven Coal ASX WHC currently at $7.88. Scott I saw Whitehaven have abandoned plans for driverless trucks after their labour shortages eased. Apparently they're also considering the need for conveyor belts. Thinking they could just use more labour to form a human daisy chain and pass call along the lines. We'll see how that plays out. But is Whitehaven Coal a buy or sell for you?

Scott: [00:15:49] Yes, I am, as I'm always the bloke at the end shovelling into the furnace, by the way, I'll let someone else do that. Maybe I'll get to the middle somewhere. I can kind of show it off by the

Adam: [00:15:57] There's a hierarchy along the line as you go. Yeah. 

Scott: [00:16:00] That's fair, that's fair. Are you breaking the rocks or throwing in the furnace somewhere? But it's not. 

Adam: [00:16:04] Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right in the middle. 

Scott: [00:16:06] Yeah. Look, despite all of that, what I have is a sell. And here's why. It is really, really, really, really cheap. If you believe that coal prices remain high, and if you believe the company is going to be able to give out as much of that cash as it can to shareholders to make money along the way. The problem I've got is why I haven't continued to reinvest in its business. Now ordinarily that's great, but think about the changes that may be wrought. Policy makers, policy wise, I should say, by climate change. Now I'm a full card carrying member of the Climate Change Coalition. The scientists are right. The doubters are wrong. I'm happy to say that unequivocally. But even if you don't agree with that, even if you think the whole thing is a hoax, good luck to you if you do. The reality is that governments are going to make decisions. Consumers are going to make decisions on the basis of what they believe is the clear and present danger. Now, yeah. If and when they do that, if only coal becomes a stranded asset. The question is, what has Whitehaven done to make sure you as a shareholder get money out? Anything times zero is still zero, right. So if you get a double then a double, then a double, then zero, you still go back to zero. My real concern is if one continues to say we're a coal company, we're investing in college, what are we going to do? Eventually it runs out of customers, runs out of business, runs out of money, and the shareholders are left with, you know, an inferior share of a stranded asset. Now, maybe that doesn't happen, and maybe I'm entirely wrong, and that's fine. This is not a promise. The shares are going to go down. I'm not saying short Whitehaven coal. I'm simply saying the fundamental reality of the way the business is structured is unless it's got to pay out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders, it might. In which case I'd be wrong and I should jump in or it's going to go in a different business, somehow diversify or find something else to do. If you are stuck with a stranded coal asset. You're stuck with a stranded coal asset. For me, I don't want to take that risk until I know what the capital management, in other words, the plans a company's got for its cash. What is it going to do with all that money if it's staying in coal? I've got a problem. If it's paying it out or getting you a new business that I'm interested in. But for right now, if I own those shares because of that risk, I would sell them. 

Adam: [00:18:01] Yeah, we could just. I mean, could we find another use for coal? Could we start building things out of coal rather than just burning? 

Scott: [00:18:10] Like, let's say take it to Parliament, just, you know, just take it a bit of a build up of pit rocks, pit lumps of coal. It could be a new thing.

Adam: [00:18:16] Here we go. See.

Scott: [00:18:17] See a couple of googly eyes on them when your away. 

Adam: [00:18:20] Squiggles, going to have a new range of coal. 

Scott: [00:18:25] That could possibly. 

Adam: [00:18:25] Very good. All right. Sticking with mining we're going to look at Pilbara minerals ASX PLS currently $3.83. another one. We've had a few other times on this show. All three have been a buy. Scott where are you on Pilbara minerals.

Scott: [00:18:39] I'm Nsync, if that's now on you word. I am sell on Pilbara Minerals. I am, I sell and again think I'm talking structurally here the long term everyone says hey you know what electric vehicle is going to be massive. And if electric vehicles are massive then therefore the battery is going to be massive. If batteries are massive, then lithium is going to be massive. And if lithium is gonna be massive, I should buy Pilbara minerals, right? That's a really, really easy line of thinking to make. I did some numbers about five or so years ago on oil during the 20th century. Now super back of the envelope. I'm no, I'm no statistician. The price of oil after inflation went up about two and a half times in the 20th century, over 100 years, up two and a half times. Despite the fact the volume of the oil pump. The news went up exponentially. In fact, literally more than that, because I started at zero, the beginning of the century, using whale oil and whatever else, by the end of it were doing millions of barrels a day. Everything's, you know, going nuts. Yet despite that, the price of oil only went up about two and a half times. Why? Because every time demand went up, supply went up to match it. We found bigger, better, cheaper ways of getting it out of the ground. We discovered more of it. We got it to market in a more efficient way. So you don't have to go back to the airlines by the way, air travel has exploded over the past 50 years. Absolutely gone nuts. And if you told me 50 years ago air travel would do that, I would have said, sell a house, sell, mortgage the lot, put it all in airlines, I'm gonna make a fortune. And I would have gone broke about five times over. And the reason is that volume growth is not enough as an investor to justify an investment. Now, maybe again, maybe Pilbara was wonderful. Maybe lithium is fantastic. Maybe the price stays sky high. But you know what? There was a lot of lithium been identified. A lot of it is being developed. Some of it is being commercialised already as and when it does again, I'm a long term investor. Right. Maybe the price doubles in the next 12 months for all I know, but long term my bet is twofold. Either volume increases supply increases to match demand, in which case prices don't move or potentially don't forget. We think lithium ion is the only thing now. I'm old enough to remember when nickel cadmium batteries were your nickel batteries. The technology to zero, right? So now it's lithium ion in five years time. What is it? Is it still lithium ion? Maybe. Is it solid size? Is it something? Sulphite. It's been talked about. Who knows what the technology is going to be. So you've got to be right about the trend of EVs. You'll be right about batteries. You got to be right about battery chemistry. And then you have to be right about the fact that demand will outstrip supply for an ongoing basis. Now look at the price of oil or iron or gold or anything else. These things roughly track the cost of production, not some sort of astronomical margin on top of that. So yeah, I wouldn't buy Pilbara if I owned the shares again. Maybe it's a lecture to you. Maybe it goes really, really well, or maybe guys really badly. If you don't know, you shouldn't. That's not an investment. That's a speculation. If you're investing, you shouldn't own Pilbara minerals in my view. 

Adam: [00:21:17] Okay. Very good. That's a sell. So next up we're looking at Cochlear Limited ASX, COH currently trading at $315.65. I read some are concerned that cochlear might be under threat from pharmaceutical giant making drugs that might reduce deafness. Is there anything Ozempic can't do? I don't that's not that's not factual, by the way. I have no idea about most things. So, cochlear though, Scott, it's clear a buy or sell for you.

Scott: [00:21:47] So there is a very, very significant potential risk for something like gene therapy or other therapeutic treatments for deafness. And but as someone who likes health and life as well as and hopes that fewer people suffer from deafness in the future, there was a very good chance. And it'd be wonderful if that happened. The reality, though, is we're not there yet. And if you think about cochlear as business. Cochlear is one of the very, very few of the things you get put inside your body or on your body permanently, right? When you get a cochlear implant, it's there for life. It's there to stay. Now, if you're cochlear, firstly, this company invented the cochlear implant. That's pretty cool. They are the premier name in this business. There are other providers out there, but cochlear is the gold standard. And again, if you can put something in your body you're going to take the the cheaper option. If you don't have to. No. You're not. 

Adam: [00:22:29] I get my head, I get my hearing implants at Aldi. I'm going, I'm going to name a brand. 

Scott: [00:22:34] And some people do, and that's fine. I mean, there are competitors that have business. But again, if you're the best in the business, if you got the best brand, you can charge the best prices, the highest prices, hopefully give people the best solutions. Not only that, once they're implanted, you're a customer for life. And then the ongoing business for cochlear is they sound processes that take the signal from inside your head and turn it into understandable speech to let the sufferer actually hear what's being said. Now those processes get upgraded. Every few years they get replaced, they get improved. And so you think about that again, I want to be a little bit careful what I said to the mercenary here. Yes it is they, they they're not curing deafness but they, they're solving problems for people with hearing impairment. But as a shareholder of cochlear you also get to a lot by the way. You also get to have the upside of when that happens. Company does more business that giving better outcomes for their customers, their patients and the shareholders doing well. Now think about the long term trend of that. You've got more people being diagnosed with hearing impairment. You've got more people in the market, because all of a sudden the developing world becomes more developed and has access to these sort of things. You have a growing number of people who are receiving these implants, and then our customers for 50, 70, 90 years and some of these cases, right. Some of the kids you see with the implants, yeah. So this is long, long, long term customers who you're doing more business with over time, more and more people coming into the final. One of the very best, I think multi-decade investment ideas is cochlear.

Adam: [00:23:57] All right. Cochlear is a buy. Next, we're looking at Vicinity Centres ASX VCX currently $1.91. are they really centred or just in the vicinity. Scott, buy or sell for Vicinity Centres. Thank you. 

Scott: [00:24:13] Stay well and truly away from the vicinity of Vicinity Centres. In my view, I mentioned rates before. Real estate investment trusts. I think about the growth of ecommerce. Myer, one of the most boring, most backward companies on the ASX, one of the retailers who've done the worst over the past 20 years, desperately trying to get people back in the store. They're losing that battle. They keep losing that battle. And yet, during Covid, this sales online were about a third of their total business sales, even now, about 25%. So $1 in four of Myer. This is this is your grandparents store, right? This is not the store that most people go to. A quarter of those sales are online. Think about the growth of online commerce. The, the, the specific, you know, especially online guys, the Amazons of the world. There's others as well, all the others who are doing really significant business online. On that's growing like topsy. Now, we're not talking about it right now, by the way. People kind of moved on from the old line growth story, and yet it continues to grow and grow and grow. Fast forward five, ten, 15 years and ask yourself how much business is being done in physical retail. My guess about half of what it is now. Now, if that's even close to true and your retail landlord doesn't take a don't take a genius to work out, you're going to find it very, very tough to gain and retain physical retailers, though there will be some great physical retailers around. Westfield stores will do really nicely. They are centres that places people congregate and go to, to, to shop, spend time with people to go and have a toilet or a coffee. They'll do okay. The corner stores probably still find you. Tack up the woollies or Coles. Listen to all of that online as well. The stuff in the middle you don't really need to go, don't really day out. It's kind of like, well, I've got to go get a jumper, a pair of jeans or something. It's not gonna be long until more of that is being done online. Vicinity centres is right in the garden. It's in the worst possible, so I wouldn't want to own second tier, third tier shopping centres. That in my mind, is what vicinity is. And I'd sell those shares. 

Adam: [00:26:02] I heard I heard them described as a third place the other day. There's where you live and where you work, and then a third place, and that's where you're Westfield and things like that exist. So whereas a myer is probably not so much, you know, grabbing a group of mates and going and trying on some trousers. People are not even calling them trousers anymore. That's a 

Scott: [00:26:19] Slacks. I call them slacks. I think you're right. I think the challenge with the third place, though, is you don't. It is a third place. But where are you going to hang it now? Crazy people are doing online anyway. Yeah. Also, if you got to go, you might go to a coffee shop. You might get a Westfield, you might go somewhere else. Even if that is true, it's going to be a less attractive revenue model for the vicinity than literally clipping the ticket for every tenant in there who's telling me something I'm currently working to grab. Again, you know, physical retailers are dying tomorrow, but even if it reduces slightly, they have to drop their rents. The the values, the carrying values, the assets are going to be way overstated in my view. So again, no time frame on this. It could be. Maybe it's 50 years. My guess is much shorter than that. But at some point the other thing about retail is really, really, really difficult business with very thin margins. So if the retailers themselves lose 5 or 10% of sales, that's a percentage break. And if they go broke and you're the landlord, you got an empty shop much harder to fill. 

Adam: [00:27:13] All right. So Vicinity Centres is a sell. All right. It's time for the last call here in the no holds bar. We're looking at the Betashares Nasdaq 100 and ETF ASX NDQq currently trading at $40.84. Scott we had Fang then we had Faang. Then we had Fang+. Now we've got the magnificent seven. Is the Nasdaq 100 finally the the place we're going to land. Who's going top. We're just going to take the top hundred, call it the Nasdaq 100 and be done with it. 

Scott: [00:27:42] I'm gonna short meme stocks, but I'm going to go along with Nasdaq 100. I'd rather be the weekend me off the Magnificent Seven. Someone else come up with a fancy nice. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, it's always fun. Matt is just trying to get you to invest in their in their funds to do this sort of stuff. So be careful of that sort of thing. The Nasdaq 100 I own. You're not doing it by the way. It is so so I think about the companies are on the Nasdaq. Think about some of these as well. But I'll Amazon, Google, Netflix, Tesla, Nvidia, Apple. You know they and by the way the next generation we don't know yet. Nvidia wasn't talked about as one of the you know the Faang stocks. So all of a sudden it's one of the most valuable businesses in the world. A couple of years later. The you know, speaking of marketing, what I describe the Nasdaq 100 on the Nasdaq exchange generally as the companies that are inventing the future. Now, that sounds like a really hackneyed marketing label, and I get it. But it kind of is right. Think about the next generation of technology, the next generation of devices, of AI, of computing. Where's it going to come from? It's going to come out of the US. It's probably gonna come out of companies listed on the Nasdaq. It's probably Facebook with the metaverse, it's gonna be Amazon with e-commerce, it's going to be Apple with whatever they come up with next. Right. The the Vision Pro is the most recent thing from Nvidia or Intel one of those companies. So the growth of if you think about the economy and say where's the growth going to come in the economy, I would bet it comes from tech. And if it comes from tech, it's probably come from US tech and it comes from US tech. It's probably going to come from the Nasdaq. So my view is if you and you buy that you can buy us on the ASX. The beauty of this ETF, you can invest on the ASX in this ETF and get exposure to, as you say, the top 100 non-financial companies on the Nasdaq. And that's just a really great way of saying, firstly, I get currency diversification, I get geographic diversification, I get industry diversification. There's some tech here, but not much. And I get exposure to those companies that I think in all likelihood, are the ones that are going to be the big winners over the next five, ten and 15 years. So with one investment, you can get a diversified group of those. Yeah, it's one I've I've owned for ages. I recommend almost everybody. If you knock it out. I think everyone should invest overseas. But if you're not going to at very least get some overseas based ETFs, I reckon Nasdaq is probably the top of the pops tonight.

Adam: [00:29:41] Excellent. Brilliant. That's a great way to finish. Scott Phillips from The Motley Fool. Thank you so much for joining me in the no holds bar. Where can people find you, Scott? Obviously the Motley Fool. How should people find you? 

Scott: [00:29:53] Yeah, yeah, they can jump on fool.com.au. I'm on all the socials, by the way, TMF Scott P is my Twitter, Insta handle. I'm pretty prolific on Twitter. Which is either good or bad, depending on whether you like what I have to say. 

Adam: [00:30:03] That's a lovely place, Twitter. I really enjoy it. I really enjoy the constructive discourse that we find among the Twitter community. It can be. It can be good, can be good.

Scott: [00:30:12] It can, it can. So yeah, I'm there. I'm on Facebook as well. Yeah. Jump, jump anywhere there. I'm all over the joint. But yeah, it's been lots of fun. I'll just finish this drink.  

Adam: [00:30:20] A brilliant. All right. Thank you, Scott, for joining us. And you can continue the journey on the Equity Mates website. There's plenty of resources there. You'll find the buy or sell tracker, along with a find a company page where you can get more information on each of the companies that we've talked about today. And that's it. Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget, you can find us on YouTube as well now. I hope you'll join me next time as we jump back into the no holds bar. But, until then, it's bye for now.