Stick with Quality: Doordash Example

DoorDash (DASH), has built a nice business, but is it really worth $31 billion at $90 per share? Revenues and cash flows are a tale of two stories:

Revenues are growing nicely but cash flows are not. In general, tech companies can do well growing revenues at a loss, BUT, once they go profitable, tech companies need to have cash flow growth otherwise their stock is doomed.

Trailing 12 month free cash flows are about $455 million, so it looks like the company can grow to $1 billion in free cash flow and be worth 25x that, which, plus the net cash of $3 billion equates to a stock that is worth 10% less than the current stock price.

Alternately, you can factor in the stock issuance of 5 million to 7 million shares per quarter, which negates all the current free cash flow, and one could reasonably say, that after stock issuance, the company is not worth anything. The answer is probably in between, and this is the problem in today's high-valuation markets. DASH is a decent company with a good balance sheet but its not a good buy at $90 and the most likely range of outcomes is down 10% to down 70%.

When stock price lags market cap, "Houston we have a problem":

Stick with quality in this market. Every 10 years we get a bull market in low quality stocks: April 2003, April 2009, April 2020 - these markets were lower quality is better - the rest of the time, stick with quality. Its going to be many years before we get another Robinhood market.