Title: PRO: This Week in Visuals (BRK/TCEHY/CSCO/AMAT/SE/NU/JD/ADYEY/ONON/HIMS/GLBE/MNDY/STNE/DLO) Show: App Economy Insights (How They Make Money) Author: Bertrand Hartman Date: 2026-08-15 URL: https://www.appeconomyinsights.com/p/pro-this-week-in-visuals-3f0 Note: PRO/paid Substack post, saved verbatim for personal study. Prose article โ€” no (mm:ss) timestamps. Body reproduced as published (subscription-tier boilerplate + share/like chrome omitted). Disclosure at the end lists the author's App Economy Portfolio holdings. --- Welcome to the Saturday PRO edition of How They Make Money. Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: ๐Ÿฟ Streamers Grow Up ยท โ˜๏ธ Neocloud Economics Today at a glance: ๐ŸฆŽ Berkshire: Cash Starts Moving ๐Ÿ“ฑ Tencent: AI Bill Arrives ๐ŸŒ Cisco: Networking Supercycle โš™๏ธ Applied Materials: Tool Bottleneck ๐ŸŒŠ Sea Limited: Shopee Monetizes ๐Ÿฆ Nubank: Credit Fears Ease ๐Ÿšš JD.com: Profit Inflects ๐Ÿ’ณ Adyen: Platform Broadens ๐Ÿ‘Ÿ On: Premium Focus ๐Ÿ’Š Hims & Hers: GLP-1 Trade-off ๐Ÿ›๏ธ Global-e: Managed Markets Scales ๐Ÿ“† Monday.com: AI Mix Jumps ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ท StoneCo: Credit Risk Rises ๐ŸŒŽ DLocal: Volume Eats Take Rate 1. ๐ŸฆŽ Berkshire: Cash Starts Moving Berkshire Hathaway Q2 revenue rose 10% Y/Y to $101.8 billion, while operating profit before tax reached $14.4 billion. Manufacturing was the standout, with revenue up 13% and profit rising 24%. Insurance was softer, with underwriting profit down 13% and GEICO underwriting earnings falling 45%. The bigger story is the capital allocation under new CEO Greg Abel. Berkshire bought $23 billion of stocks while selling just $3 billion, its first quarter as a net buyer of stocks in more than three years. That included roughly $10 billion of Alphabet. Berkshire also repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in Q2, followed by an estimated $3.4 billion more in July. As a result, the cash pile fell to $365.5 billion from roughly $397 billion in Q1. That is still enormous, but the direction has changed. Berkshire is also deploying capital through acquisitions, including the $6.8 billion purchase of homebuilder Taylor Morrison. Bottom Line: The Abel era is starting to look different. Berkshire remains extraordinarily liquid, but buybacks, equity purchases, and acquisitions are finally putting meaningful chunks of its cash pile to work. The question is no longer when Berkshire will deploy capital. It is whether Abel can earn Buffett-like returns on it. 2. ๐Ÿ“ฑ Tencent: AI Bill Arrives Tencent Q2 revenue rose 11% Y/Y to 204.8 billion yuan (~$30 billion), beating consensus and accelerating from 9% in Q1. Adjusted net profit increased 9% to 68.4 billion yuan. Marketing Services remained the standout, rising 22% Y/Y, helped by AI-driven ad targeting, while domestic gaming rebounded 17% as Honor of Kings and Delta Force performed strongly. CapEx surged 176% Y/Y and 65% Q/Q to 52.8 billion yuan (~$7.8 billion) as Tencent dramatically increased AI compute purchases. Free cash flow consequently swung from 56.7 billion yuan in Q1 to an outflow of 13.8 billion yuan. Tencent argues the downside is protected because excess AI infrastructure could ultimately be rented through Tencent Cloud if its own products fail to consume it. Sounds familiar? Tencent has started testing a native WeChat AI agent that can perform tasks such as booking rides, while WorkBuddy has become China's most widely used office agent. Hy3 token usage has increased 20-fold since its April preview, and Hy4 is planned later this year. Monetization, however, remains early. Bottom Line: Q2 shows the first payoff in better advertising and accelerating AI products, but also the size of the bill, with free cash flow flipping negative. The next test is whether WeChat's 1.4 billion-user distribution can turn that infrastructure into meaningful new revenue. 3. ๐ŸŒ Cisco: Networking Supercycle Cisco Q4 revenue rose 18% Y/Y to a record $17.3 billion ($0.4 billion beat), while adjusted EPS was $1.22 ($0.05 beat). Product orders grew 35%, or 25% excluding hyperscalers, showing that the acceleration extends well beyond AI data centers. Networking revenue jumped 28%. The company booked $4 billion of hyperscaler AI orders in Q4, taking FY26 orders to $9.3 billion versus the ~$9 billion target. About $4 billion converted to revenue in FY26, and management now expects $7.5 billion of AI infrastructure revenue in FY27. The stock still fell ~4% after earnings as investors questioned why that revenue target was not higher given the backlog. Source: Fiscal.ai Importantly, Cisco sees a broader infrastructure refresh developing as enterprises prepare networks for AI. FY27 revenue guidance of $72.2โ€“$73.4 billion implies roughly 15% growth at the midpoint and sits well above consensus, while Q1 guidance of $18.0โ€“$18.2 billion was more than $1 billion ahead of expectations. Gross margin remains the trade-off, falling 2pp Y/Y to 66% as higher hardware mix and memory costs offset some of that growth. Bottom Line: Q4 delivered $4 billion of AI orders and pushed the year above target. The debate now shifts from AI demand to conversion. How quickly can Cisco turn its enormous order book into revenue without letting the hardware-heavy mix erode margins? 4. โš™๏ธ Applied Materials: Tool Bottleneck Applied Materials Q3 revenue jumped 25% Y/Y to a record $9.1 billion ($0.1 billion beat), with adjusted EPS up 41% to $3.50 ($0.11 beat). Semiconductor Systems revenue surged 30% to $7.0 billion, while non-GAAP operating margin reached a record 34%. DRAM reached 26% of Semiconductor Systems revenue as memory makers race to expand HBM supply, while advanced packaging revenue is now expected to grow more than 70% this year. Customers continue providing eight-quarter forecasts and are pushing Applied to deliver equipment faster. The company has nearly doubled manufacturing space and now plans to double quarterly system output by 2028. Applied raised its calendar 2026 Semiconductor Systems outlook again and expects another strong growth year in 2027. Q4 revenue outlook is $10.25 billion, well above the $9.56 billion consensus, with adjusted EPS of about $4.02 versus $3.69 expected. The stock still slipped after earnings after nearly doubling this year, reflecting how much AI optimism is already priced in. Bottom Line: Q3 showed demand is getting stronger. Customers want tools faster than Applied can currently build them. That is a good problem to have, but high expectations are now baked into the stock. 5. ๐ŸŒŠ Sea Limited: Shopee Monetizes Sea Q2 revenue jumped 48% Y/Y to $7.8 billion ($690 million beat), while GAAP EPS of $0.70 missed by $0.06. Shares initially jumped ~12% as all three businesses maintained strong growth. ๐Ÿ›’ Shopee GMV rose 28% to a record $38.3 billion, but revenue grew much faster at 49% as Sea captured more economics from every transaction. Shopee's take rate climbed to 14.6% (from 12.6% a year ago), helped by higher seller fees and advertising revenue growing more than 70%. Core marketplace revenue surged 66%. Shopee adjusted EBITDA increased 12% to $255 million, prompting management to raise its FY26 target to $1 billion, above its previous commitment to at least match 2025. Sea maintained its ~25% Shopee GMV growth target while continuing to invest in logistics, fulfillment, and user acquisition. ๐Ÿ’ณ Monee remains the fastest-growing engine. Revenue increased 59% to $1.4 billion as its loan book expanded 63% to $11.1 billion. But adjusted EBITDA increased just 13%, pushing its margin to roughly 21% from 29% a year ago. Credit quality remains strong, with 90-day NPLs at just 1.0%, but marketing and credit-loss provisions are rising much faster as Sea aggressively expands lending. ๐ŸŽฎ Garena revenue rose 34%, with bookings up 15% to $764 million as Sea continues trying to broaden the portfolio beyond Free Fire. Adjusted EBITDA across all segments only rose 11%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin fell to roughly 12%, down from 16% a year ago, with Monee taking a larger share of the mix. Source: Fiscal.ai Bottom Line: Q2 proves monetization is improving, with Shopee revenue growing almost twice as fast as GMV. Revenue has now grown close to 50% for two straight quarters while EBITDA has barely grown double digits. The next step is showing that the infrastructure Sea is building can eventually turn this extraordinary top-line growth into operating leverage. 6. ๐Ÿฆ Nu: Credit Fears Ease Nu Q2 revenue rose 50% Y/Y or 39% Y/Y in constant currency to $5.5 billion ($0.4 billion beat), while GAAP EPS of $0.22 beat by $0.03. Net income jumped 49% and crossed $1 billion quarterly for the first time. ROE reached a record 33%. Nu added another 4 million customers, bringing the total to 139 million, while ARPAC (revenue per active customer) climbed 22% Y/Y in constant currency to $17.1. The credit portfolio grew 37% to $39.4 billion, but cost of credit fell 9% Q/Q to $1.7 billion. Risk-adjusted NIM (net interest margin) rebounded to 12.4% (from 9.5% in Q1), above expectations. Early delinquencies improved to 4.8% (from 5.0%), although 90+ day delinquencies rose to 6.9%. Mexico is increasingly looking like the Brazil playbook on fast-forward. Nu reached 15.8 million customers there and has now launched as a full bank. The best part is that Mexican ARPAC is already $12.3 compared to $5.6 for Brazil at the same stage of development, suggesting customers are monetizing much faster. NuFormer (Nu's foundation model) continues expanding across underwriting and customer service, with AI agents now handling more than 60% of support conversations in Brazil. Bottom Line: Q2 showed Nu is not growing credit too aggressively. Credit kept expanding while costs fell, risk-adjusted margins rebounded, and early delinquencies improved. With Mexico showing strong early signs, Nu is showing it can deepen monetization without giving up its exceptional profitability. 7. ๐Ÿšš JD.com: Profit Inflects JD.com Q2 revenue fell 3% Y/Y to $51.1 billion, its first quarterly decline since going public, though it still beat expectations. Adjusted EPADS of $0.93 beat by $0.10, while adjusted net income rose 21%. The revenue weakness partly reflects tough comparisons against last year's government-subsidized appliance boom and softer Chinese consumption. Product revenue fell 5%, while higher-margin service revenue grew 7%. JD Retail operating margin reached 4.6%, a record for the peak promotional season, with gross margin expanding for the 17th consecutive quarter. More importantly, the food-delivery damage continues to unwind. Losses narrowed by more than 50% Y/Y as JD pulled back on subsidies and improved unit economics. That helped adjusted EBITDA more than double, with margin expanding to 2.3% from 0.8% a year ago. Management expects JD Retail growth to reaccelerate in H2 as comparisons ease, while higher-margin marketplace activity continues gaining share of the mix. International expansion through Joybuy is also scaling, though it remains early. Bottom Line: Q2 delivered another step forward in narrowing food-delivery losses. The trade-off is that revenue has slipped into contraction, but margins and profits are recovering rapidly. The next test is whether JD can restore top-line growth without giving those profitability gains back. 8. ๐Ÿ’ณ Adyen: Platform Broadens Adyen H1 net revenue rose 19% Y/Y to โ‚ฌ1.30 billion, or 21% in constant currency, while processed volume jumped 24% to โ‚ฌ804 billion. EBITDA margin reached 49%, mostly in line. Growth accelerated through the half, with Q2 constant-currency revenue growth reaching about 22%. The company is moving beyond payments. Adyen completed its first two acquisitions in July: Talon.One, which adds loyalty and promotions, and Orb, which adds usage-based billing. Together they push Adyen toward what management calls a broader "financial operating system" for merchants. OpenAI also became a customer, reinforcing Adyen's positioning around AI-native businesses and agentic commerce. The acquisitions lifted FY26 constant-currency revenue guidance to 21%โ€“23% (from 20%โ€“22%). Underlying H2 growth is expected to look similar to H1. The trade-off is profitability, as Talon.One and Orb should dilute FY26 EBITDA margin by about one point, while Adyen is also pulling data-center investment forward, lifting CapEx to roughly 7% of revenue this year. Bottom Line: H1 FY26 looks constructive. Organic growth is reaccelerating while Adyen expands from payment processing into loyalty, billing, and money movement. The acquisitions make the platform more valuable, but they also raise the execution bar as Adyen tries to preserve its 55%+ long-term margin ambition while broadening the business. 9. ๐Ÿ‘Ÿ On: Premium Focus On Holdings Q2 revenue rose 13% Y/Y (or 22% Y/Y in constant currency) to CHF 850 million, missing the CHF 878 million consensus. Adjusted EPS of CHF 0.35 beat by CHF 0.01. Shares fell nearly 20% as management lowered FY26 constant-currency sales growth from at least 23% to the low-20% range. The slowdown was intentional in part: DTC remained very strong, rising 26% Y/Y (or 34% in constant currency) and now represents 46% of sales. Wholesale grew much more slowly as On held back shipments in the Americas rather than push inventory into an increasingly promotional retail environment. CFO Frank Sluis said the company was willing to sacrifice volume to protect full-price selling and retailer inventory health. That strategy is helping margins. Gross margin reached a record 65%, while adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to CHF 168 million and margin expanded to 20%. Apparel also remains a major second leg, growing 56% in constant currency. While the FY26 sales growth in the low 20s disappointed, management raised gross margin guidance again to at least 65% while maintaining its 19.5%โ€“20% EBITDA margin target. Bottom Line: Q2 shows what management is willing to sacrifice to protect its premium sartegy [sic]. DTC and margins remain excellent, but wholesale restraint is now visibly slowing the top line. The question is whether this is temporary inventory discipline or the beginning of a more durable growth slowdown. 10. ๐Ÿ’Š Hims & Hers: GLP-1 Trade-off Hims & Hers Q2 revenue jumped 38% Y/Y to $753 million ($23 million beat), while GAAP EPS of -$0.37 missed by $0.32. Subscribers grew 19% to 2.9 million and monthly revenue per subscriber rebounded from $80 in Q1 to $92. Adjusted EBITDA was $60 million, but free cash flow swung negative to -$68 million. The branded GLP-1 pivot is driving volume, but the economics have changed. US revenue growth accelerated to 16%, while gross margin fell from 76% a year ago to 64% as branded weight-loss drugs became a larger part of the mix. Management expects that lower margin profile to persist. International is becoming meaningful after the Eucalyptus acquisition closed in June. International revenue reached $131 million, including roughly $40 million from Eucalyptus, and management now expects at least $600 million internationally this year. Testosterone is also scaling faster than any Hims category outside weight loss, while peptide launches remain a potential additional catalyst pending FDA decisions. Hims raised FY26 revenue guidance again to $3.1โ€“$3.3 billion ($0.3 billion raise), although adjusted EBITDA narrowed to $275โ€“$325 million (from $275โ€“$350 million). Q3 revenue guidance of $880โ€“$900 million also came in above expectations. Bottom Line: Branded GLP-1 volume comes with a margin tradeoff. Hims is scaling faster again while increasingly looking like a lower-gross-margin global healthcare platform rather than the exceptionally high-margin telehealth model investors were used to. 11. ๐Ÿ›๏ธ Global-e: Managed Markets Scales Global-E Q2 revenue rose 39% Y/Y to $299 million ($16 million beat), while GMV accelerated 44% Y/Y to $2.1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA surged 62% to $62 million, with margin expanding three points to 21%. Free cash flow rebounded to $73 million after the seasonal Q1 outflow. The company completed the migration of Managed Markets merchants to V2, expanded the product into Canada and the UK, and simplified onboarding enough that most merchants can now activate in a single session. Same-store sales also remained above historical trends, helping GMV growth accelerate again. Global-E also closed its acquisition of Passport, an asset-light cross-border logistics platform. Passport expands the addressable market beyond merchants that fit Global-E's traditional Merchant of Record model and adds another route into international commerce. FY26 guidance moved higher again, with GMV now expected at $8.81โ€“$9.11 billion ($0.2 billion raise), revenue at $1.305โ€“$1.355 billion ($75 million raise). The increase partly reflects Passport, but the underlying business is also running ahead of plan. Source: Fiscal.ai Bottom Line: Q2 brought the first real evidence that Managed Markets 2.0 could become a meaningful Shopify growth lever, with geographic expansion underway. Passport now broadens the opportunity further while margins continue moving higher. 12. ๐Ÿ“† Monday.com: AI Mix Jumps Monday.com Q2 revenue rose 22% Y/Y to $365 million ($9 million beat), while adjusted EPS was $1.48 ($0.37 beat). Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 17% despite a ~210bps FX headwind. RPO grew 34% to $937 million. ARR from AI products doubled Q/Q and represented 17% of net new ARR, up from 10% in Q1. The new seats-plus-credits model is seeing customers consume beyond their included credits, while enterprise momentum remains strong. Customers above $100K ARR grew 37%, and $500K+ customers grew 68%. Monday is leaning harder into the pivot, cutting roughly 20% of its workforce and concentrating investment around the AI Work Platform, CRM, and service management. Despite the stronger Q2, FY26 revenue guidance stayed at $1.466โ€“$1.474 billion, while Q3 guidance implies growth slowing to 16%โ€“17% and came slightly below consensus. Bottom Line: Q2 shows that AI could become a meaningful growth lever. The harder question now is whether that momentum can offset the broader growth deceleration as Monday restructures around AI. 13. ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ท StoneCo: Credit Risk Rises StoneCo Q2 revenue rose just 3% Y/Y to R$3.6 billion, below expectations, while adjusted net income fell 3% to R$0.6 billion. Adjusted EPS still increased 9% to R$2.40 because aggressive buybacks reduced the share count by 40 million shares over the past year. TPV growth improved slightly to 4% (from 3% in Q1), while active clients grew 6% to 4.8 million. Stone's loan portfolio more than doubled Y/Y to R$3.75 billion, while credit revenue surged 153% to R$349 million. Retail deposits grew 22% to R$10.8 billion, supporting Stone's broader push to become the primary bank for Brazilian merchants rather than simply their payments provider. But credit quality is now the key risk. Provisions jumped 128% Y/Y to R$188 million, while 90+ day delinquencies climbed to 8.6% (from 4.7% a year ago). Stone blamed weaker H2 2025 and early-2026 loan vintages alongside several specific troubled borrowers. Cost of risk improved slightly Q/Q to 21.5%, helped by the introduction of lower-risk government-backed loans, but remains above last year. Management maintained FY26 guidance but now expects results toward the lower end as Brazil's high interest rates persist. Bottom Line: Stone's transition from payments company to merchant bank is working on the growth side, with credit revenue more than doubling and deposits expanding rapidly. But loan growth is coming with sharply higher delinquencies and provisions. The next test is whether those weaker vintages are an anomaly as Stone continues scaling credit. 14. ๐ŸŒŽ DLocal: Volume Eats Take Rate dLocal Q2 revenue rose 56% Y/Y to $400 million ($33 million beat), while GAAP EPS of $0.18 missed by $0.01. TPV accelerated dramatically to 92% growth, its fastest pace in four years, reaching $17.7 billion. Net revenue retention improved to 153%, the fifth straight quarter above 140%. Gross profit grew just 29% to $127 million as gross profit per dollar of TPV fell to 0.72% (from 1.07% a year ago and 0.84% in Q1). The biggest reason is the mix. Lower-margin local-to-local payments surged 141% and now represent 61% of TPV, while several large merchants reached volume tiers that carry lower pricing. In other words, dLocal is processing vastly more money but earning less on each dollar. There are encouraging signs below gross profit. Operating profit rose 22% sequentially to $64 million, with operating profit reaching 50% of gross profit versus 44% in Q1. Management expects further leverage in the second half of FY26 as AI automation kicks in and front-loaded marketing spending rolls off. Adjusted free cash flow also rebounded to $69 million. dLocal raised FY26 TPV growth guidance to 60%โ€“70% (from 50%โ€“60%) and gross profit growth to 25%โ€“30% (from 22.5%โ€“27.5%), while maintaining operating profit growth at 27.5%โ€“32.5%. Bottom Line: Q2 showed no stabilization in take-rate compression. But TPV is accelerating so quickly that gross profit expectations are still moving higher, while operating leverage is beginning to improve underneath. The key question is whether dLocal can eventually stabilize unit economics without sacrificing the extraordinary wallet-share gains driving today's growth. If you have any comments or suggestions, please reach out! That's it for today! Stay healthy and invest on! Thanks to Fiscal.ai for being our official data partner. Author's Note (Bertrand here ๐Ÿ‘‹๐Ÿผ): The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely my own and should not be considered financial advice or any other organization's views. Disclosure: I own TCEHY, SE, NU, JD, ADYEY, HIMS, GLBE, MNDY, and DLO in App Economy Portfolio. I share my ratings (BUY, SELL, or HOLD) with App Economy Portfolio members.