🗞 Week 4 of Earnings: The 5 Most Impressive Charts

Happy Sunday!

Here’s what’s on the docket for this week’s newsletter:

• 📊 5 Most Impressive Charts From Earnings Season Week 3

• 💼 How good was Michael Burry?

Let’s dive in!

Earnings Season Week 3:

Charts of the Week

Another 4,000 companies reported earnings this week, which for the FinChat team, meant thousands of new data points to sift through.

Here are 5 of the Charts/KPIs that truly stood out:

1.) DoorDash $DASH - Total Orders 

If you thought food delivery peaked during the pandemic, DoorDash is proving otherwise.

The company is now delivering 685 million orders per quarter, which is up 19% from the same period a year ago.

Performance since earnings: +9%

2.) Adyen $ADYEY - Total Processed Volume

The digital payments processor is showing what true growth at scale looks like.

As a core part of the payments stack for many young tech companies, Adyen’s growth comes naturally as grows alongside its customers.

Performance since earnings: +18%

3.) AppLovin $APP - Software Platform Revenue

AppLovin's advertising platform is catching fire with mobile app developers. The company is on nearly a $4 billion annual revenue run rate in its software business and it’s still growing by more than 70%.

Performance since earnings: +28%

4.) AirBnB $ABNB - Gross Booking Value

AirBnB is proving that it can grow at a double-digit rate for longer than many investors expected. Homes listed and Nights & Experiences booked continue to grow.

Performance since earnings: +15%

5.) Shopify $SHOP - Gross Merchandise Value

E-commerce enabler Shopify has delivered outrageous platform growth over the last decade. The Total Gross Merchandise Value sold across Shopify powered websites has grown at a 65% CAGR since 2012.

Performance since earnings: +4%

Featured Story

How good really was Michael Burry?

If you’ve seen the movie The Big Short, you know who I’m talking about.

If you haven’t, let me introduce you.

Michael Burry was the founder and portfolio manager of Scion Capital, a hedge fund he started while in his medical residency to become a neurosurgeon.

As a true “Deep Value” investor, Burry scoured corners of the market that gave most investors the “ick”. And in doing so, his fund delivered outrageous returns during a decade when most got crushed.

Then he disappeared.

Who was Michael Burry? How did he invest?

During his time in school, Burry became enamored with the investment world, particularly the world of “Deep Value” investing.

But he wasn’t just interested in the topic, he was exceptional at it.

His strategy for identifying undervalued securities was seemingly simple:

“I try to buy shares of unpopular companies when they look like road kill, and sell them when they’ve been polished up a bit.”

Through his coldly quantitative approach Burry was finding companies that most investors were completely ignoring. These companies (often small or micro caps) were typically trading so far below their net asset value or at such a discount to their future earnings, that multiple expansion alone would have driven great returns.

“I tend to become interested in stocks that by their very names or circumstances inspire an unwillingness — and an “ick” accompanied by a wrinkle of the nose — on the part of most investors to delve any further.”

As Burry would find these ideas, he would also write them up on his personal blog. And that blog was beginning to garner some serious attention.

So much attention in fact that some famous investors, most notably Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Capital, were starting to copy some of his trades.

With backing from Joel Greenblatt and Jack Byrne (a man Warren Buffett has called the Babe Ruth of insurance) Michael Burry dropped out of his residency in November of 2000 to start Scion Capital.

The Housing Crisis Bet

Within 14 months of starting Scion, the fund was up 68% on a gross basis. During that same time, the S&P 500 was down by more than 18%.

Outperforming the S&P by 86% within 14 months isn’t too shabby. But that was just the beginning.

In 2004 - 2005, Burry began analyzing the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market. Without getting too deep into the weeds, and trust me there was some real complexity involved here, Burry discovered that the underlying mortgages across these securities were a mess. To capitalize on the opportunity, he devised an instrument known as a Credit Default Swap to bet against them.

Only issue with this instrument was he had to pay premiums on it, which meant that the fund would show losses.

In other words, this was a race against the clock. If the credit event didn’t come quick enough, he’d run out of money.

This had Scion’s investors worried and many were looking to withdraw funds. To try and ease concerns, in 2006, Burry wrote a letter to his investors that laid out one of the most complex, hyper-detailed descriptions of a trade I’ve ever read. You can read it here if you’d like.

I imagine this did little to quell concerns. Eventually, Burry was forced to gate redemptions (restricted investors from pulling out money) and fortunately for him, the bet paid off.

What are his returns?

After the events of 2008, it is reported that Burry closed Scion to outside capital.

Perhaps this was born out of frustration from lack of investor trust, perhaps it was the numerous IRS audits he received after, or perhaps it was due to a newfound lack of trust in the American banking system.

Whatever the reason, Burry has become notably quiet.

While that makes it virtually impossible to know his returns since 2008, we can at least analyze what we know.

From November of 2000 to June of 2008, it has been reported that Scion generated 489.34% returns net of fees.

Over that same time period, the S&P 500 was roughly flat. 

He crushed the market.

What does he own today?

While his portfolio is somewhat mysterious, and his exposure to options distorts some of his position sizes, we do get a peek into his US-listed holdings every quarter.

Meme of the week

Though inflation in the US has come down quite a bit off of its 2022 highs, certain items are still seeing rising prices.

The price of eggs in particular were up 53% from January, 2024 to January, 2025.