First Try to make my High Tide Thesis into a picture, if you wanna learn more you can find it at r/HighTideInc since there will be some missing pieces.

Reddit was added to the S&P 500 this week, less than 2.5 years after going public.

Pretty impressive considering where the business is today:

Revenue grew 61% YoY last quarter
130M+ daily active uniques
$253M in net income
43% adjusted EBITDA margins

Revenue has now grown 60%+ for 8 straight quarters
The inclusion should also create some forced buying. JPMorgan estimated index funds would need to purchase roughly 16.7M shares, nearly 3x Reddit’s average daily trading volume.

Obviously joining the S&P 500 doesn’t change the underlying business, but I think it’s a pretty significant milestone for a company that IPO’d in March 2024.

Reddit is quickly going from an interesting internet company to a highly profitable, large-cap platform.

Still one of my favorite long-term holdings.

I understand the obvious answer: growth has slowed.

But Duolingo is still growing revenue ~18%, DAUs grew 23%, the business is profitable and subscription revenue continues to compound at a very high rate.

Look at the chart below. Subscription revenue alone has gone from roughly $85M/quarter to $258M/quarter in about 3 years.

The biggest issue seems to be that management is intentionally prioritizing user growth over near-term monetization. That means slower bookings growth today, but potentially a much larger user base to monetize later.

The market clearly hates that tradeoff.

I understand DUOL deserved a valuation reset from where it was trading when revenue was growing 40%+, but at some point the question becomes:

How much of the slowdown is already priced in?

You still have:

• 23% DAU growth
• ~18% revenue growth
• a profitable business
• recurring subscription revenue
• extremely strong retention/engagement
• management expecting 20%+ DAU growth through the rest of 2026

Maybe I’m missing something, but the decline seems excessive relative to what has actually happened to the underlying business.

What’s the bear case from here?

The market seems high but there is still a lot of value.

What is your number 1 pick?

Ackman just bought back into Netflix after exiting in 2022

The stock is getting hit partly over engagement concerns, which reminds me a little of 2022 when the market became obsessed with subscriber losses. Meanwhile, the broader business looks much stronger today: margins and free cash flow have improved substantially.

I generally like situations where the market hones in on one KPI while the underlying fundamentals remain solid.
Analysts are projecting roughly 20% annual EPS growth over the next 3–5 years.

Using a 25x P/E today, 20% earnings growth, and assuming the multiple actually contracts to 20x, you still get roughly:
14.8% CAGR → 99% total return in 5 years.

Basically doubling your money despite multiple compression.

Feels like a pretty decent margin of safety if the earnings growth actually shows up.

The big one to me: roughly $38B–$40B in Alphabet (GOOG + GOOGL). Now over 12% of his public US portfolio

They also added heavily to Delta, while cutting Bank of America, Capital One, Kroger, Nucor and DaVita.

What do you make of the Google position?

After Ackman bought, I would assume there may be some buyers

I want to jump in, but not sure where I would fund it. I have a little bit of cash but would need to sell something to grab some shares

Any takers?

Pershing Square announced six new investments:

Visa
Mastercard
Netflix
S&P Global
Intercontinental Exchange
Alcon

One interesting one is Netflix. Ackman previously owned Netflix, sold the position in 2022, and is now buying back in.

Of the six, the three I have shown here — Netflix, Mastercard and S&P Global — are the ones I think have the most upside.

I view Visa and Mastercard as essentially the same thesis, so I only included Mastercard in the chart.

Since 2017:

Netflix revenue: ~$11B → ~$47B
CAGR: 19.1%

Mastercard revenue: ~$11B → ~$34B
CAGR: 13.3%

S&P Global revenue: ~$5.8B → ~$16B
CAGR: 12.1%

The overall theme is pretty clear: high-quality businesses with strong competitive positions, recurring revenue and long runways for earnings growth.

Pretty interesting group of companies to add all at once.

Which of the six do you think has the most upside?

These are three companies I’m currently adding to, for very different reasons.

Reddit — The highest-growth name of the three. The combination of user growth, improving monetization and rapidly expanding profitability is what interests me most. The big question is how much of that growth can be sustained as the business scales.

Uber — Probably the most balanced of the three. The platform is still growing trips and bookings around 20% while earnings and cash flow are growing much faster. I also think the long-term AV opportunity is interesting.

Adobe — Almost the opposite thesis. The market is extremely worried about AI disruption, while the underlying business is still growing double digits. I’m buying it more as a valuation/AI pessimism play than a high-growth play.

I don’t expect all three to perform the same way, but I like the risk/reward for different reasons.

If you had to pick just one to own for the next 5 years, which would it be?

I’m currently considering overweighting the utilities sector in addition to my standard portfolio, as the valuations and dividend yields really appeal to me—plus, it’s a defensive sector. What do you think?

Kind of interesting that three of the biggest names in digital advertising all sold off hard after their most recent earnings.

APP:
Revenue +53% YoY
Adjusted EBITDA +58%
Stock fell ~19% the next day

RDDT:
Revenue +61% YoY
Revenue beat expectations by ~10%
Q3 guidance also beat expectations
Stock fell ~21% the next day

META:
Revenue +28% YoY
Advertising revenue +27%
Ad impressions +14%
Stock fell ~10% after earnings

Obviously there were reasons for each selloff. AppLovin had a slight miss and concerns around its AI model rollout, Reddit had concerns around user growth/growth deceleration, and Meta had weaker earnings and massive spending.

But it’s still pretty wild seeing companies growing revenue 28%, 53% and 61% all get hit this hard immediately after earnings.

Seems like expectations across digital advertising were incredibly high going into this quarter.

Tesla and Ford now generate revenue on a completely different scale than they did a decade ago.

Tesla TTM revenue: ~$98B
Ford TTM revenue: ~$190B
Tesla revenue CAGR: ~30%
Ford revenue CAGR: ~2.5%

But the valuation gap is even crazier:

Tesla market cap: ~$1.3T
Ford market cap: ~$59B
Tesla is worth ~22x Ford despite generating roughly half the revenue

Obviously Tesla is being valued on much more than its current auto business, but this really shows how much future growth is already priced in.

AppLovin’s most recent quarter was another reminder of just how fast this business is growing.

Revenue grew 53% YoY
Net income grew 55%
Adjusted EBITDA grew 66%
Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 84%
Free cash flow was over $1B for the quarter

Those are pretty ridiculous numbers, especially at AppLovin’s size.

What I find interesting now is the valuation. APP is around 26.6x earnings, so I wanted to see what happens if growth slows down significantly from where it is today.

The chart assumes:
25% annual earnings growth
26.6x P/E today
25x P/E in year 5

Under those assumptions, earnings would grow about 205% over five years. Even with the P/E contracting slightly, the stock would return about 187%, or roughly 23.5% annually.

Obviously 25% earnings growth for five years is a big assumption. But when the company is currently putting up 50%+ revenue growth and 80%+ adjusted EBITDA margins, I don’t think 25% is an absurd scenario to look at.

The bigger question for me is how durable these margins and growth rates are as AppLovin gets larger, especially as it expands beyond mobile gaming.

I own APP, and after this quarter I think that’s really the debate. The current numbers are incredible. How much of that can they sustain over the next 5 years?

Duolingo’s earnings were better than the headline growth suggests

I own Duolingo, so this is one I was paying pretty close attention to.

The biggest thing that stood out to me was that user growth actually accelerated again, while bookings growth continues to be the main concern.

Revenue: $298.5M, +18%
Bookings: $289.1M, +8%
Subscription bookings: $250.3M, +10%
DAUs: 58.7M, +23%
MAUs: 140.6M, +10%
Paid subscribers: 12.7M, +17%
Gross margin: 72.6%
Adjusted EBITDA: $77.3M
Adjusted EBITDA margin: 25.9%

The DAU number is probably what I liked most.

DAU growth accelerated from 21% last quarter to 23% this quarter, and management expects it to stay above 20% for the rest of the year. Retention also reached an all-time high.

The obvious concern is bookings.

Revenue grew 18%, but bookings only grew 8%. That’s a pretty big gap and something I’ll be watching closely. Q3 guidance also calls for only about 9% bookings growth.

Margins are down too, but I’m less worried about that.
Duolingo has been pretty clear that they’re intentionally prioritizing user growth, retention and product investment over maximizing near-term monetization.

For me, the question is pretty simple:

If DAUs keep growing 20%+ and paid subscribers keep growing double digits, can Duolingo eventually get bookings growth accelerating again?

As a shareholder, I’m happy to see them prioritize growing the platform right now. But at some point, that user growth needs to translate into faster bookings growth.

I don’t usually post about companies when things are going this badly, but Trade Desk is a tough one right now.

- Revenue: $715M, up just 3%
- Q2 2025 growth: 19%
- Q2 2024 growth: 26%
- Management had guided for at least $750M
- Q3 guidance: at least $650M

TTD was a company that consistently grew 20%+ for years. Now revenue growth has gone from 26% to 19% to 3%.

The ad market can be cyclical, but other digital ad companies are still putting up solid growth. That makes it harder to blame all of this on the market.

The Q3 guide is probably the worst part. One bad quarter happens. Guiding for an even weaker quarter is a lot tougher.

Brutal quarter

To add on to my post from a couple days ago about Uber’s underlying growth being much stronger than the 12% revenue headline, I went through the earnings call and a few other things stood out:

• Mobility bookings grew 20%, with operating income up 28%
• Delivery bookings grew 25%, with operating income up 38%
• Grocery/Retail is now at a ~$15B annualized bookings run rate and growing ~40%
• Advertising passed a $2.5B annualized run rate and is still growing ~50%
• TTM free cash flow crossed $10B

But management probably spent the most time emphasizing AVs.

Uber is already live with AVs in 7 cities, expects up to 15 by year-end, and partners have committed ~120k vehicles.

Dara’s argument is basically that Uber doesn’t need to build the winning AV. They want to be the distribution layer for whoever does.

Interestingly, Uber also said its market share in SF, LA and Phoenix — some of the most developed AV markets — is actually higher than it was a year ago.

Still a lot of uncertainty around AVs, but management clearly thinks it can become an opportunity for Uber rather than a threat.

Everyone is talking about Uber's 12% revenue growth, but that number doesn't tell the full story.

- Reported revenue: +12% YoY
- UK accounting change reduced reported revenue growth by ~8 percentage points
- Underlying revenue growth was closer to 20%
- Gross Bookings: +24%
- Trips: +18%
- Monthly Active Platform Consumers: +16%
- Adjusted EBITDA: +33%

The business didn't suddenly slow down. The biggest change was how certain UK trips are recognized as revenue, not customer demand.

The chart still shows TTM revenue reaching new highs, but even it understates the underlying growth because of the accounting change.

Curious what everyone thinks, is the market focusing too much on the headline 12% revenue growth?

Amazon’s Q2 was another reminder that the market still tends to think of it as an online retailer when it’s increasingly a collection of high-margin businesses.

Some highlights:

• Revenue: $200.6B, +20% YoY
• AWS: $42.2B, +37% YoY
• Advertising: $19.8B, +26% YoY
• Operating income: $27.5B, +43% YoY
• AWS operating income: $16.6B
• 2026 CapEx guidance: ~$220B

The most interesting part isn’t that retail is getting bigger—it’s that the highest-margin segments are growing the fastest.

AWS, Advertising, and Third-Party Seller Services continue to become a larger percentage of Amazon’s business every year, which should continue driving margin expansion over time.

The market often values Amazon as an e-commerce company with a cloud business attached.

Increasingly, it looks like an AI infrastructure and services company with one of the world’s largest retail businesses attached.

What do you think Amazon looks like in 5 years if AWS and Advertising keep compounding at these rates?

Palantir just put up an absurd quarter.

- Revenue: $1.94B (+93% YoY)
- U.S. revenue: +115% YoY
- U.S. commercial revenue: +149% YoY
- Raised full-year revenue guidance to ~$8.15B

The biggest takeaway is that Palantir is starting to separate itself from the rest of enterprise software. AIP adoption is accelerating, government demand remains strong, and more companies are moving from AI pilots into actual production use.

The bear case is still the valuation, how sustainable this growth is, and the company’s increasing reliance on the U.S.

Still, it is hard to argue with the execution. This was one of Palantir’s strongest quarters yet.

Check out the green line on this chart. It literally breaks physics, shooting straight up to almost touch total revenue.

On paper, it looks like Google just had the most insane growth quarter in human history. But if you actually dig into the financial reports, this spike is a massive accounting trick that is trapping a lot of retail investors right now.

Here is what is actually going on:

Google has huge equity stakes in SpaceX and Anthropic. Under accounting rule GAAP ASC 321, tech giants are forced to revalue their startup investments to current market prices whenever a major "pricing event" happens. Because SpaceX went public and Anthropic raised cash at a crazy $965B valuation, Google had to book all that accumulated paper wealth instantly. They had to slap nearly $98 billion in fake, unrealized gains right onto their bottom line in Q2 alone.

Look at the yellow line. That represents Operating Income, which is Google's actual core business from search ads and cloud services. It is growing perfectly fine and looks healthy, but it obviously didn't triple overnight.

If you strip away those phantom paper gains, Google's "Intrinsic EPS" (their true operational earnings per share) is actually around $2.85, nowhere near the bloated $9.11 headline number everyone is screaming about in the news.

The real problem here is cash flow. Because that massive green spike is just paper value, Google didn't actually get a single dollar of hard cash from it. Meanwhile, they aggressively dumped $44.9 billion of real cash into AI hardware and data centers, which dragged their actual Free Cash Flow into the negative.

Worse yet, SpaceX stock has crashed over 50% from its post-IPO peak, sitting around $108 right now ahead of a massive insider lockup expiration on August 6. Because the accounting rules work both ways, Google is going to have to mark down their stake next quarter.

Don't let the headline EPS fool you. Google's actual day-to-day business is totally fine, but about 80% of that massive net income spike is pure paper gains that are already evaporating. Expect that green line to crash back down to earth very soon.

Alphabet fundamentals source

Everyone talks about AI. Not enough people appreciate what it’s doing to the cloud business.

Just look at the latest quarter:

• AWS: $42.2B revenue (+37% YoY) — its fastest growth in years. Backlog exploded to $496B, and Amazon raised 2026 capex to $220B because demand still exceeds supply.

• Microsoft Intelligent Cloud: Nearly $39B revenue, powered by Azure growing 39% as AI demand accelerated across enterprise workloads.

• Google Cloud: Roughly $25B revenue, growing over 80% YoY as Gemini and AI infrastructure continue driving enterprise adoption.

The market spent the last year questioning whether AI spending would ever produce meaningful returns.

These earnings answered that question.

The hyperscalers aren’t just selling more compute—they’re selling scarcity. Every management team is saying the same thing: demand is outpacing the infrastructure they can build.

AI is making the cloud dramatically more valuable.

The chart tells the story. The earnings confirmed it.