Robert Armstrong

There's a lot more to running a business software company than just writing code.

There's distribution and customer relationships and all of this stuff.

So do we know who's going to be steamrolled and who's going to adopt?

No.

Yes.

And we're just it's guesses and it's volatility and it's one narrative takes control for one day and then the next narrative.

So I think, you know, the contradictions are not going to go away.

Over the long run, markets will price this, but it's really struggling to do it right now.

Past the retail, but you know, and first of all, Walmart, we should just say, and Costco are brilliantly managed companies.

Like it's, to say those are boring old grocers really misses it.

You know, I think Walmart, Walmart's management has been courageous about kind of grasping the online nettle and making hard decisions about accepting lower margins in return for, you know, uh, higher revenues and all this stuff.

But the point is you just know more about Walmart's future than you do know about Amazon's future.

Right.

Right.

It is, it is easier to predict.

And that's why, that's the difference in multiple right there.

It's an uncertainty, it's a certainty premium for the Walmarts and the Costcos and an uncertainty premium for the Amazons.

And look, all of these staple stocks, even the, those are the two best staples companies in the world, but like all these, like the crappy staple stocks like Campbell's Soup, those are doing well too.

And those aren't growing at all.

Like there's all these kind of old school consumer goods companies