In this episode of Industry Focus: Tech, Dylan Lewis chats with Motley Fool analyst Joey Solitro about some of the best-performing tech stocks of 2020 so far. It's been a topsy-turvy year for the stock market, but tech companies have managed to see good momentum, largely as a result of people staying indoors. Our hosts bring you four such companies that have done well during these trying times and offer a take on their businesses and future performance, plus much more.
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This video was recorded on Aug. 7, 2020.
Dylan Lewis: It's Friday, Aug. 7, and we're talking about the best-performing tech stocks of 2020. I'm your host Dylan Lewis, and I'm joined by Motley Fool premium analyst Joey Solitro.
Joey, it has been, I think to put it mildly, a good year to be invested in tech.
Joey Solitro: Oh, it's been the year of technology, and the year of the SPAC [special-purpose acquisition company], so, I mean, it's been fun to see the thesis behind a lot of these companies just play out. And, man, it's been a wild ride.
Lewis: Yeah, if you're looking at some of the indices as proxies here, the Nasdaq up about 20% year to date. And I believe the S&P 500 just eked into positive territory for the first time yesterday, or possibly today. So the heavily tech-weighted Nasdaq is outperforming. And that's because so many of the benefits of these tech models have been highlighted as people have been staying at home due to the pandemic.
Solitro: Yeah, the thesis behind a lot of these big tech companies is, kind of, like the digitization of the world or the shift to e-commerce. And all these different themes, that we think, you know, this could really play out over the next 10 years, and we see it firsthand, you know, e-commerce representing a larger percentage of overall retail sales. And you know, when everybody is stuck at home, you're not allowed to go out, it's like, these technologies are what enable you to keep your normal life going. So, it just kind of accelerated those trends, and, man, yeah, it's been the year of tech.
Lewis: [laughs] So, we'll be doing a countdown and we'll be talking about four of the best-performing tech stocks, and we're kind of looking at businesses of a certain size. You know, we tend not to look too much at companies that are in that micro-cap space, so these are going to be companies with market caps that are at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars, kind of more established businesses, not really looking in the penny-stock sphere. Talking four businesses, spending a little bit of time on each one.
And I will say, just to get us started, I think, most years you would look and say, OK, maybe the list is starting with No. 4 at, like, 80% year-to-date return or something like that. The threshold, the hurdle to even be in this conversation, Joey, is 300% year-to-date returns. And the first company we're going to be discussing is a Fool favorite. It's one that's probably known well by people that follow our premium recommendations, and that's Fastly (FSLY -5.23%).
Solitro: Fastly is one of my pride and joys. So, when I first got to the Fool, you know, IPO service was in talks, and, you know, I'm one of those that I'm always looking for the next big IPO, and I remember walking into a meeting; I think Jumia was a fresh IPO. And I started talking about this company Fastly, and a very senior just asked, what's Fastly? And I kind of explained it, and you see that light bulb go off, and he's just absolutely pushed that across multiple services at the Fool. And it's just one, you know, you see the long-term potential of a company like this, and we're going to kind of dig down into what they do. But, yeah, it's been a monster year for these guys.
Lewis: They remind me a little bit of Twilio, for people that are not familiar. And if you don't know the company at all, I would just say. talk to people at work, specifically tech people at work and developers. They probably know this business well. In the way that, you know, a comedian can be a comedian's comedian, I think a company can be a tech person's tech company. And that's certainly the case with Fastly.
Joe, do you want to give the quick summary on who they are and what they do?
Solitro: Yes. So, Fastly is a content delivery network, CDN. Basically, you know, it brings everything to the edge, which, you know, if you're thinking about, if you want content to be delivered quickly or if you want a website to load as fast as possible, you want it as close to the edge as you can possibly get. You think of it as falling off a cliff; the quickest way to fall off the cliff is if you're standing on the edge. So, that's kind of like how they explain edge computing.
So, how I would originally explain Fastly is, say Ariana Grande -- now, this is back when concerts were a thing. But, say, Ariana Grande, you know, her tickets were going on sale at midnight. Live Nation has all the concert tickets on Ticketmaster. They know, out of nowhere, they're going to have 8 million people flooding the site. So, they've got to quickly be able to, first, sustain that big of an audience, but also, you know, people add tickets to their cart, take it out, get different tickets, you know, best available, all this, they make it quick enough so those websites aren't just crashing. Another customer of theirs would be, I think, it's either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. Or say, the election just happened; everybody wants to know who won or who's winning what state. All these websites get flooded with people. Fastly makes the internet faster, makes sure it doesn't break. And you know, some other customers of theirs being Shopify, and these other big e-commerce platforms that, yes, everybody is sitting at home, they're going to these different Shopify-enabled websites, Shopify has got to be able to maintain these Cyber Monday-like volumes at all times. And Fastly is one of those tools that helps them do it.
Lewis: A couple of other names, I mean, just to kind of nail home here how bona fide this business is. You mentioned Shopify is a customer. I believe The New York Times and Spotify are also customers. So there are certainly some big names that use this. And, you know, all of those companies have a ton of traffic [laughs] coming to their site. These aren't small players. So, I think, to kind of put a bow on it, they specialize in making sure that your site, your app, whatever experience users are expecting from your site, works.
And that's really like the core of what they do. It's maybe not the most glamorous business, but you need for it to happen, especially if you're in anything digital.
Solitro: Especially in times like this. And that's kind of what has caused this acceleration in their business, and you know this accelerating growth that they're seeing is because people were using the internet more to do more things. You know, they were using Shopify more often, or the Shopify-enabled sites, or they were using Spotify more or all these different streaming services. But then, when people are stuck at home and told you can't go anywhere, they are relying on this to basically sustain life or entertain themselves. So, that's when, you know, there could have been 100 million people using these daily, then out of nowhere, the whole country is just sitting there, no choice but to use these services. So, that's when you see their usage just absolutely surge. And then Fastly has to be able to expand to maintain that capability.
And that's when you see, kind of like, Fastly and Cloudflare as the two-headed monster in this, you know, creating a better internet, as Cloudflare likes to say. And it's kind of like, this was built for these guys; it's almost -- it couldn't have been a better way for them.
Lewis: Yeah, they're thriving right now. And it's not that this business wasn't growing at a pretty decent clip beforehand [laughs]. It just, wow! It got even better for them. And this is a, you know, a type of business that a lot of people are going to be familiar with, high-growth pretty early on in the revenue story, pretty solid margins, because we're talking about a business that's delivering its product electronically, a lot of things to like here. And they have swelled now to, I believe, somewhere in the kind of like $8 billion-ish range for market cap.
Solitro: Yeah, the market cap has grown quite a bit, but as you'd expect from a stock that's up over 300%. So, this is a situation where, yes, revenue has accelerated significantly, but they still got to the point where, you know, that price-to-sales multiple was quite extended. So you've seen -- they had an incredible earnings release this week, but with how hot it has been, it's almost like anything they did wasn't going to be good enough or, you know, like a beaten race situation, they didn't beat by enough, didn't raise by enough. Which is absurd to think about it, but that's kind of how that Wall Street psychology works.
So, then you pair on top, now people are kind of worried about China fears, and you see it's almost like, I always say, with massive winners that come in, it's profits evaporating, not losses mounting, especially if you own this for a long time. Now, if you're buying at $115, I'm sorry, you're going to be in a world of pain for the short term, but if you invest correctly and invest for 10 years from now, then I look at this as an opportunity to build on that position.
Lewis: Yeah. And to put some quick numbers to that acceleration, Joe. We were seeing year-over-year revenue growth somewhere in the mid-30%, mid-40% for a lot of the late quarters of 2019. Sixty-two percent for the most recently reported quarter. So, huge jump, and this is really highlighting what they do well as a business.
Yeah, you're going to see people taking some profits when a company sees this kind of share price appreciation this dramatically. I would venture to guess that those are probably not necessarily hardcore Foolish investors. Those are probably not people that are thinking super long-term with their holdings and looking at this business as being a dramatically larger and more influential business five, 10 years from now.
Solitro: Yeah. And I always go back to the bulk of the volume on the market is algorithmic trading. So, as you get these stocks that are falling, those algorithms kick in and it's almost like accelerated to the downside. We all saw -- or I think a lot of us saw the flash crash years back. So, you know, that's all algorithmic trading. So, this is a situation where, if you see it dropping, now it's down 14% today, which seems quite steep, but it's still got that rich valuation, but paired with the fact that now its growth accelerated to over 60%, I see it as, it's a long-term buying opportunity, short-term pain.
Lewis: Yeah. And this is a great time for people who don't currently have something to help meet these needs, get introduced to companies that help them do these things. You know, I think that's maybe one of the great things that we should focus on with this is, a lot of companies are all of a sudden looking for solutions that they might not even realize that they had. And so, the best-in-class companies are probably going to see a huge swell in customers in those spaces. And if you can hold on to them, and we've seen that with a lot of these businesses, you know, dollar net retention rates are really strong for a lot of software-as-a-service providers. Those wind up being long-term customers, you know. Those aren't people that come and shop with you once. [laughs] It's a long-term relationship, and that relationship only gets more and more lucrative for providers like Fastly as it extends out.
Solitro: Yeah, page loading times are huge, not only with consumers completing transactions but in Google search results, because if your page doesn't load quickly, they're not going to put you atop the search results. So, yeah, the companies are saying, wow! We've got this huge surge in traffic, you know, what's going wrong? We've got to be better at this. Fastly and Cloudflare are who does that. And I own both of those and I'm in a world of pain in Fastly, and I think Cloudflare is having a good day, I don't know if these China tensions are bringing them down, but that's another one that, you know, I don't own this for where they're going to be next week; I own for where they're going to be in 2030. And I feel like they will both be significantly larger. I think my kids even own Fastly, so.
Lewis: [laughs] Well, your kids are very good investors, Joey. [laughs]
Solitro: They are incredible. I look at their returns. The 7-month-old had a two-bagger at his 6-month birthday in Sea Limited. I'm like, man! You are incredible. The girls, they've had, like, Etsy, Pinterest take off, Shopify, Sea Limited. Those kids, I need to take notes, because they are incredible.
Lewis: [laughs] I hope the 7-month-old paid for the party. [laughs] Our second stock we're going to be talking about, slightly better returns, up 350% year to date, is Fiverr. And this is one that I think has been introduced to the Fool community before. I will admit, I did a prospectus show on them when they had their initial prospectus available. And there were things that I liked about this business, but I had some hesitations about being too bullish on it.
Solitro: Man! I love Fiverr. So, this is one -- when it was first taking up, I actually sold stuff, and not, like, I sold like a service on Fiverr, because I was looking at, like, what the top trending thing is -- it's making lists for certain things. I would Google that list but then sell it on Fiverr, using just -- it was incredible. So, I saw what the platform does, and almost like the, it reminded me, kind of, like Etsy, it's a marketplace. You know, they're not selling these services; they don't have that big cost. And then you kind of see the ecosystem they're building behind invoicing, project management, all these different tools to enable these entrepreneurs or even just these side gigs, almost like a better version of Upwork, because Upwork was Elance and oDesk merge. Elance was fantastic; oDesk was a train wreck. Put them together, it's almost like the train wreck came out in the two of them. So, I would always default to Fiverr.
I remember pitching this one to services when it was in the teens, thinking like, you know, the marketplace aspect, the gig economy is strong with this one, you know, the force is strong with this one, and you see it's just absolutely taken off. And they had earnings earlier this week and you see it absolutely surging. And this is one I wish I would have bought, because I believed in it so strongly, but man! It's incredible to watch what they're doing.
Lewis: Yeah. And I could see how a business like this would be doing well right now. You know, people are either out of work or possibly looking for some extra income. They connect people that have skills, you know, folks that maybe work as illustrators, audio engineers, anything that can be kind of sent out as contract work, with people that need those services. I will say, I mean, I'm kind of amazed that Fiverr and Upwork have had such different stories as publicly traded companies, because I remember looking back at the prospectus and saying, OK, well, this is a high-growth business, Fiverr, the margins are really solid, because they are a marketplace, you know. There's not a lot that they really have to put out there in terms of costs. They had a decent balance sheet; they had a good amount of cash; they were covering their debt. But Upwork was so much bigger than them and already had such a bigger top line, already seemed to be such a more established business. We use Upwork here at the Fool. And I had a hard time seeing how Fiverr was going to make it work. I have been so wrong about that; Fiverr has been a much better stock to own.
Solitro: The platform of Fiverr is far beyond what Upwork is and could ever be at this point. I had a very bad experience with Upwork at my last company when I was trying to find different people who did different things, and Fiverr was so simple. You know, you wanted to have something done with your website.
My brother, he's a general contractor; he has an engineering company and does roofing and stuff. He had someone on Fiverr build out his website. He's like, someone quoted him for $10,000 before. He had done it for, like, $1,500 on Fiverr. And yet a lot of these people will be, like, international talent. I'm pretty sure Fiverr is Israel-based and they have operations throughout Europe and all that. But it's one of those where, you know, you've got this international community that have the same skill set that they can offer services at deeply discounted prices and result in as good of a product as if you hired someone from some fancy firm in New York City. And it's so easy, you're just scrolling through.
Now, the only part of Fiverr that is tough to navigate is, if you want someone who does, like, graphic design, there are 12,000 people that are offering that, but I also think that's impressive, because the network effect of that is, holy crap! There's 12,000 designers that are on this platform, they see just how powerful it is, and if they're also using these other tools that Fiverr does. I see the other tools as kind of like their optionality. If they can have the invoicing specifically for these people, it might be, hey, I want to offer my design services not only here but also on Fiverr or also on these other ones. Oh, I can also do my invoicing here, I can also do this management here, and you kind of see that ecosystem that they're building really take off, and it's kind of like they're the ecosystem of the gig economy.
And, yeah, it's had a massive run and that valuation is very stretched, but in the long term, you know, as more people do freelance work or the side gigs to drive extra income, you know, the work-from-home style, you know, everybody might be contractors one day. You can really see just how big this company could be in the future.
Lewis: Yeah, I was so excited to be an Upwork shareholder. I think I first bought in a little over a year ago, and that hasn't been a great position for me, but I looked at what was happening in terms of work and said, OK, my bet here is that more people are going to be doing gig work, are possibly living in other countries and doing work for companies; that contractor model seems to be successful for a reason. And it's helpful for businesses to be asset-light. I think a lot of workers like being able to be wherever they want to be. So, there are a lot of benefits here. Upwork seemed like an easy bet on that. If you wanted to blindly bet on the trend, you could buy them both, but Fiverr has been such a better business to own. I'm kind of kicking myself [laughs] in the same way that you are, Joey, for not scooping up shares earlier, because it's just been a fantastic company to own over the last, you know, six to eight months.
Solitro: Yeah, it's very rare that I pass on these massive opportunities. So, I am disappointed in myself that I didn't see this one, especially since I was familiar with the product and the ecosystem that they were building, but then I kind of deferred back. You can't own them all, so, you know, maybe if it pulls in or comes in a little bit and you want to take a stab at it, but this one, it's a little too red hot for me now.
Lewis: All right. The third company we're going to talk about is, ACMR, which is ACM Research, up 450% year to date. It's an extra 100% right there on top of what we saw with Fiverr. And this company specializes, and I'm going to quote from the website, because this is a business that I'm not super familiar with, Joe. You probably know better than I do. "In the next generation of megasonic wafer cleaning, an advanced and innovative suite of technologies utilizing smarter, more comprehensively controlled megasonic techniques." Whoa! That was a word salad. [laughs]
Solitro: So, this is one, along with even like an Inphi, IPHI, that they, it's such an advanced technology, and so far over my head, that when I was researching it, it was one of those, you know, it's too advanced to even understand. And then I go to, like, OK, so these guys more like the hardware angle servicing the semiconductors. And I see the purpose of their service and all that, but it's just one of those that semiconductors aren't my jam, and having these guys focused on it, I just wrote them off, after they had come public and when I was seeing, oh, the stock, it was, I remember looking at them, they were like $38 or something like that, and they had jumped. And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't really get what they do. And it just keeps running and running and running and I'm kicking myself, like, I should have done the research, because, you know, all these different chips that are going into everything that we do that are powering all the biggest trends around the world, like, this was a no-brainer. I just didn't apply my brain to see that.
And then you look at their technology. They have this advanced wafer cleaning technology and their customer base and just what they do. Now, the one negative I had seen was they had two companies that represented, like, over 50% of their business. And that was a big red flag. I brought it up, it's like, Yangtze Memory Technologies and Shanghai Microelectronics, two Chinese manufacturers. And not that I cared that, you know, that's Chinese manufacturers, but those very large customers. Now, what I should have seen is, these customers churn out so much that these are kind of like, if you sell boxes, you want to sell to Amazon-type situations, rather than seeing it as a concentration risk. But, man! have they continued to deliver on earnings.
Lewis: Yeah. And actually, this company, I think, brings up an interesting investing point. And I have generally stayed away from the inputs and the semiconductors that go into the tech space, because I've just felt like I don't have an advantage there. I don't know the technical elements of devices well enough to really pick out the winners and losers. And you know, anyone who has chased Apple suppliers and tried to make money investing in them, you know, some of them have made a lot of money, some of them gotten burned pretty bad. I look at this business, and even though they are a little bit more winner agnostic, and they are kind of servicing the industry, and still say, I think this is outside of my core competence, I don't think I know this industry or the space well enough to really know that this is a best-in-class provider, and it's awesome to see that there are some great gains here. I'm sure some members of our community have enjoyed those, but if this story turned around and started going sour, I don't think I would know it before it started really happening.
Solitro: And see, that's the problem that I have with this one is -- so, I debated buying it again when it was around like $82, $83 and I was seeing the growth story and you can kind of see this could really play out and be something huge. The problem is, then I started looking at it as, if the stock were to start taking, it's one that I would cut and run on, because I don't fully grasp what they do. I could watch all the videos on YouTube I want. I could look at all their presentations and think I have a deep understanding of what they do. But it's still not something that I was so confident in that I was willing to put money in. But if this is something that you specialize in or that you fully understand, then this could still be a huge winner long-term, because I'm looking at, I think the market cap is $1.8 billion and, yeah, the stock is down significantly today, but, you know, a $1.8 billion company, depending on the demand for these going forward, and you know how chips are going into everything these days. It could still be a huge winner going forward. I just don't have the confidence in my abilities to analyze a company like this to actually deploy capital into it.
Lewis: Yeah. And you know what, there are no called strikes in investing, right, you know. [laughs] Well, you can't own them all. It's not Pokemon. You can pick whatever metaphor you want to use, but the point here is, it's OK to say this is out of my wheelhouse; I'm going to invest in stuff that I understand better. I'm certainly putting that one in this bucket.
This last company, Joey, is up over 1,400% year to date, and while I understand what they do, I cannot wrap my head around these returns. [laughs]
Solitro: So, this is one that -- so, Austin Morgan is behind the glass today, and I swear, I must message him daily, where I'm like, yeah, this bottomed around $2.50; now it's $100. And I remember thinking it was funny when it was at $40, and then at $60, and then $80, like, Overstock.com. I get it. I haven't used that maybe since 2004, and when I bought one thing, like, something for my gym at my parent's house or something like that. Like, it's been so long since I used the platform. And I remember when they pivoted to being a cryptocurrency company. They had the [tZERO] or something like that, and they were selling cryptocurrency. So, I was like, is this the crypto-company? Is this the marketplace? And then I was like, wait! Is the marketplace, do they keep inventory for themselves, or they just kind of like a Wayfair, they connect buyers and sellers, like, what do they do? It's just, I wish they changed their name to something else, because I think Overstock.com, like, no one uses that. Like, how is this doing it? So, then I just think, maybe it's a Dave Portnoy trade or a Robinhood thing. It's just insane what's happening over there.
Lewis: Yeah. I think what's so hard for me to wrap my head around here is, this is not a new business, Overstock.com. To your point, it was founded in 1999. I think I used it in the early '00s to order some stuff, and then I basically forgot about it. And this business has been publicly traded for over 15 years and wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire. I mean, it was like, I think, kind of an also-ran in the e-commerce space. And prior to, I think, their most recently reported quarter, they were seeing year-over-year revenue declines. And so, it's not like this business is lighting it on fire. They've been a huge, huge beneficiary of COVID, because people are ordering online; they are staying at home. They've noted in their management calls that people are looking to outfit their patios and their home spaces, because they're spending more time there. And I think they've seen new customers triple year over year, but just because they are seeing all this action and this enthusiasm on the e-commerce side, is any of that sustainable?
Solitro: Not for them, I don't think. Like, I could see this with Wayfair, because my experience with Wayfair has been incredible. Now, I know they've had some very negative news and I hope it doesn't turn out to be anything true. But, like, I've ordered stuff from Wayfair that comes broken, and they're like, yeah, donate it; we're going to send you a new one. And they just completely trust it. I'm like, I'll send you pictures. Oh, no need. And so, like, the customer service angle of Wayfair. Then you see, OK, it's not -- they do have their in-house brands and they're kind of like connecting buyers and sellers of other brands as well, so you can kind of see that. With Overstock there's just so many question marks. Wayfair has been a consistent grower. Overstock, like you said, was declining, declining, declining, then out of nowhere accelerating.
So, when I put Overstock with Etsy, that's seeing just absolute surging growth, you know, Wayfair is similar, Amazon. When I put the whole e-commerce basket in front of me, Overstock is nowhere close to the top. So, to see the surge in the stock. Yeah, I get that it got down to, like, $2 a share and I could see, I could fathom, you know, them going to $10, but for them to be triple digits today is like the ultimate head-scratcher. I have no regrets about missing this one, because it would've been like the shortest of short-term trades I'd hold for the minimum period that The Motley Fool requires, and then I'd be blowing out of that thing. But, wow! Like, it's just a rocket ship and I don't know when it'll explode, but I don't want to be a part of that.
Lewis: Yeah, I certainly don't want to be holding the bag when the business has to live up to the valuation that it's earned. You know, Wayfair seems to have stepped in and taken Overstock's spot in the e-commerce, non-Amazon world. And it's insane. I saw a headline from some investing outlet that was saying "is Overstock the pure-play Amazon competitor?" And I looked at it, I was like, what year is it, you know, that we're having this conversation? It seems to me that this is entirely hype-driven. And I can't look out five years from now and say, yeah, this is going to be a bigger and better company. I feel like they kind of had their shot at that. Granted, they have some new management, their CEO has been at the helm, I think, since September of 2019, Jonathan Johnson, and it's possible they're making some operational shifts. I know CEO Patrick Byrne was a bit of a controversial figure before that. But nothing that I've seen, at least, says to me, like, yeah, this business is markedly better and there's been a step-change in how it operates and the thesis. It seems that they're benefiting from some e-commerce sales that probably would have been physical sales before, but I can't imagine that that's sustainable for them.
Solitro: And this is one where, you know, say it 10Xes from here, it's not one that I'm going to be kicking myself over, it's going to be one of those, I'm fine with watching this from the sideline, because I do not believe in the product. I don't believe in the platform. I don't believe in management. I still don't know about the cryptocurrency, like, what that situation is. And I don't care enough to even research to find out, because I don't care about Overstock or crypto. So, I'm just left in the biggest "I do not care" about this company, but, wow! If you placed the trade in the twos, please tweet it out and retweet it daily and just brag, because that's incredible.
Lewis: [laughs] Yeah, that deserves to be printed out and put on a fridge. [laughs]
Solitro: Oh, yeah, you frame that and you tell your kids for years.
Lewis: So, we've been a little skeptical or perhaps sitting on the sidelines and admitting to sitting on the sidelines with some of these, just because they're simply too hard. Of these four, Joe, if you are buying and holding one for five years, which one do you have the strongest conviction will be a better and bigger business?
Solitro: Fastly, no doubt. So, Fiverr, I love the platform, and that would be a close second. Like I said, ACM Research, it's over my head, If someone gets the gist of it, I don't believe in it enough to hold it long term. Overstock, absolutely no chance. Fastly, it's just, as I see everything shifting online, you know, whether it's e-commerce -- the phenomenal quote by Microsoft's CEO, where he was saying, you know, they saw, it was like two years of digital transformation in two months when the pandemic was first starting. And you see some of these charts with e-commerce shifting, where it's gone from, like, a single-digit percentage of total retail sales, pushing 30%. And you know that that trend just accelerated as people see, oh, we can do all this online or, you know, The Motley Fool, we probably didn't know that we could operate as a fully remote company. We were confident, but when we were forced to do it, you know, there's been no hiccup in anything that I've done other than, hey, we got to download this or, hey, update this.
So, you see how people are realizing everything that they could do online, and possibly even do it better, because I feel like I can do more work more efficiently when I wake up and come downstairs, I'm in my gym, in my office, and when I'm done, I can go straight up and take my kids out scootering rather than getting home just in time for dinner and bedtime. So, it's like, everybody is seeing just how much they can do, and how Fastly is one of those companies that enable it to happen more efficiently and quickly, or fast-ly. So, I love that, and that's why I own both it and Cloudflare.
And you know this is the one. It's almost like, if I owned all these, which would I be adding to today? So, Fastly is the hands-down winner for that. What about you?
Lewis: Yeah, I'd say, Fastly and Fiverr are both, I think, relatively strong investable ideas. There are things to be excited about with both of those businesses, both in the trends pushing them forward and the core fundamentals of those businesses. I put ACMR in the, it's out of my circle of competence; I know it's out of my circle of competence. And there's probably some returns to be gained there, but I'm not going to have any window into that business, and I'm not going to have any advantage there.
Overstock -- I hope it's not Kodak, you know. I hope it's not one of those situations, and I hope that they're able to revive the brand and turn into a successful business. Two decades of operating history, to me, says that they've had the chance to do that, and that I can put my money elsewhere.
Solitro: I put Overstock and Kodak in the same exact boat, where you were doing so badly for so long. Why now? Like, why do you deserve my money now? Why aren't you going to ruin it like you did for years? And there's no good answer to that question, so it's like, yeah, you don't even reach my top 100 list.
I did see, though, on one list that Kodak was one of the top 100 brands in the world on someone's list, and there's an ETF built around that. And I wanted to email them, like, what is wrong with you? How is that one of the top brands, and it was almost like, just because it's internationally recognized and you see that. I'm like, that doesn't -- everybody knows cigarette brands; that doesn't make it great. Like, they killed their consumers, but --
Lewis: I guess there's the Kodak moment, you know, and that endures as an idea, but I don't know. [laughs]
Solitro: Mic drop; that was good.
Lewis: All right, Joey, thanks so much for hopping on today's episode with me, always a pleasure chatting with you.
Solitro: Always glad to be here. Ready to do it next time.
Lewis: Listeners, that's going to do it for this episode of Industry Focus, if you have any questions or you want to reach out and say, "Hey!" shoot us an email at [email protected] or tweet us, @MFIndustryFocus. If you want more stuff, subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
As always, people on the program may own companies discussed on the show, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against stocks mentioned, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear.
Thanks to Austin Morgan for all his work behind the glass. Thanks for listening and Fool on!
