| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 401K | 1 | $558.00 | $558 | 0.02% | $428.00 | $130 | +30.4% | — |
| HSA | 1 | $559.36 | $559 | 0.52% | $428.00 | $131 | +30.7% | — |
| Total | 2 | $1,117 | 0.02% | $261 | +30.5% | — |
In short: 300 million paid. Q2 revenue +14% Y/Y to €4.8B, essentially in line, with adjusted operating income +61% to €655M, gross margin at a record 33.4% (+190 bps) and free cash flow +14% to €797M. MAUs reached 777 million (+12%) and Premium subscribers crossed 300 million for the first time (+9%, 7 million net adds); automated channels reached nearly 40% of ad-supported revenue, up from 30% in Q1. On AI spending, management is framing cost as controllable rather than structural — building its own model-routing infrastructure to lower inference costs while developing more personalised products and higher-priced AI features. Reserved concert tickets with Live Nation gained early traction, with nearly 100,000 tickets claimed since June. The weak spot was guidance: Q3 MAUs of 788 million against ~794 million consensus, because Spotify is deliberately increasing ad load and adjusting the free product in some emerging markets to push users toward paid tiers, with operating income guidance of €670M also slightly light. "The near-term tradeoff is deliberate." A disclosed author holding.
In short: The committee move: Ethridge sold it. Down 18% ytd and 8.5% in a week after reporting increased costs tied to new AI-powered app features and guiding subscriber growth slightly below expectations. His reasoning: "this was a much growthier company back in 2023 when I first bought it," and he stayed because repeated price increases hadn't stopped paid subscriber growth — real pricing power. What changed is the cost line: operating expenses rising not only for marketing to acquire the next customer ("kind of a concern") but "because AI slop on the platform has gotten so out of control — they talk about how much time and how many tools they've had to create in order to manage that AI slop getting onto the platform. And I think it only gets worse from here… as the OpEx goes up, that tends to be one big problem they have a hard time getting away from." Valuation seals it: 34× forward "when you could own something like a Netflix that's trading below the market and they kind of operate in the same space." Baruch (also a holder, bought during the tariff selloff): "it ran up extremely nicely in 2024, became a tariff darling in early 2025… and it's just really giving that up." Brown's aside on the range: "this was 800, then down to 400 — it's unbelievable, the violence with which people change their minds"; he bought "in the 140s because of the freak-out over the Joe Rogan experience," a bet that people wouldn't cut the cord over one creator.
Malcolm Ethridge sold Spotify. He bought it in 2023 when it was a much faster-growing company, and the reason he held on since was pricing power — Spotify raised prices repeatedly and paid subscribers kept growing anyway, which is rare and valuable.
What changed is the cost side, and the specific cause is unusual enough to be worth noting: Spotify is spending more not just on marketing to win the next customer, but on policing "AI slop" — the flood of machine-generated tracks being uploaded to the platform. Management described the time and the tooling required to keep it off. Ethridge thinks this only gets worse as AI generation gets cheaper, and rising operating expenses of that kind are hard to escape.
Valuation finished the argument: Spotify at 34 times forward earnings against Netflix, which "operates in the same space" and trades below the overall market's multiple. Bill Baruch, who bought it during the tariff selloff as a name uncorrelated with everything else, agrees the tariff-darling premium is now being given back.
In short: Netflix's flow-comp — "it's hard to explain why Netflix and Spotify trade almost identically if all the problems… are fundamental." Spotify has none of Netflix's content/hit issues yet trades in lock step, proving the drawdown is money "pulling out of everywhere else and putting it in semiconductors."
Spotify comes up as Carlson's proof that Netflix's drop is about market flows, not the business. Spotify has none of Netflix's problems — no reliance on hit TV shows, no merger drama — yet its stock chart moves almost identically to Netflix's, falling in lockstep.
If the two trade the same despite completely different fundamentals, the common cause must be external: money being pulled out of "everything else" and pushed into semiconductors. So Spotify is used here as evidence for the rotation thesis rather than as its own buy pitch in this video.
24:27The comparable that I'll give is to Spotify. I've made this comparison before, but it's hard to explain why Netflix and Spotify trade almost identically if all the problems of the stock going down are fundamental. If it's all because of hit series or whatever earnings growth projection you make for Netflix, why is Spotify stock trading in lock step with Netflix? It's because a lot of this has to do with market dynamics of people pulling money out of everywhere else and putting it in semiconductors.
In short: The control case for the Netflix thesis — Spotify's price chart is "nearly identical" to Netflix's (and has fallen even more) despite no content glut or M&A desperation. Proof both are falling on flows/rotation, not company-specific fundamentals.
15:02But more to the point, I said that I don't think any of these reasons are the reason the stock is going down. And the biggest piece of evidence I would give for that is this chart right here. This is a comparison of Netflix and Spotify together. This is their price comparison. Do you notice something here? Netflix is in red and Spotify is in green.
In short: Terranova: chart "literally identical" to Netflix — both peaked June '25 and have gone "straight down ever since as they raised prices."
Spotify is the music-streaming leader, and Terranova flags it as a cautionary twin to Netflix: their stock charts are "literally identical." Both companies peaked in June 2025 and have fallen steadily since — and both did so right after raising their subscription prices.
The lesson the committee keeps returning to is the limit of pricing power: raising prices boosts revenue for a while, but if customers start balking, the stock can roll over even for a dominant company. Spotify is the live example of that pattern playing out.
In short: His proof that digital apps have a moat: Spotify took 60–70% audio-streaming share against Apple, Amazon and YouTube via the "innovation stack." Cited as the template — ~50% paid penetration (vs Duolingo's ~12%) and "scale precedes monetization."
Spotify isn't a pick here so much as Exhibit A in his argument. People say apps like these have no real moat; he answers: then how did Spotify grab 60–70% of music streaming while fighting Apple, Amazon and YouTube — companies with far more money? The answer is the "innovation stack," the same end-user obsession he sees at Duolingo. He also uses Spotify as the yardstick for upside: roughly half of Spotify's users pay, versus only ~12% at Duolingo, and the pattern for digital apps is "scale first, monetize later" — get everyone on the app, then turn on the money. It's a positive framing, but as a comparison and template, not a fresh buy recommendation in this video.
2:27You notice this even in your own life when you're using, as I'm sure many of you have, when you've used applications, websites, or something that have not been specifically tuned to the end user. And thus there is friction, long delay times, and tiny features that stack up and are noticeable to the end user on the platform. This is a moat that Spotify utilized.
In short: Rebuttal exemplar — resells licensed music it doesn't even own (same catalog as Apple Music, YouTube Premium), yet extracts massive pricing power: $3B+ TTM net income, rising FCF. The moat is distribution, algorithms, UI — the wrapper, not the commodity.
Spotify is the music-streaming app — and he uses it as a real-world example, not a stock pick here. The point: Spotify doesn't even own the music it streams (the labels do), and the exact same songs are on Apple Music, YouTube Premium and a dozen rivals. By that logic it should have no pricing power.
Yet it earns over $3 billion a year in profit and growing cash, because what it really sells is the experience around the music — the app, the recommendations, the playlists, the ease of use. That "wrapper" is the durable advantage, which is exactly his case for why commoditised AI models can still be very profitable for whoever packages them best.
13:30It elevates the commodity from something that doesn't have any pricing power to having substantial pricing power. But these companies are not the only example of companies that have taken a basic commodity and have made it worth far more. You can take the example of Spotify. Spotify is a reseller of licensed music.
In short: More debated — doesn't own proprietary data ("just access to music"), but learned-behavior lock-in means he expects it to be "differentiated and rerated higher."
18:29I think Uber and DoorDash will be spectacular winners. I think that Shopify is a spectacular winner. I think that Airbnb will do really well. We even have companies that there's a bit more debate about companies like Spotify and Duolingo. They don't own proprietary data per se. Spotify just has access to music. Duolingo has access to AI curriculum and courses.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.