00:00 Speaker A
Now time for some of today's trending tickers. You can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks this session with Yahoo Finance's trending tickers page. Joining me now, Catalyst co-host, Madison Mills. Um and Maddie, we're looking at Shake Shack here this morning, Roblox and Goldman Sachs. First up, we got Shake Shack. It's raised to buy from hold at Loop Capital Markets. The firm citing a recent pullback in shares and potential upside from earnings as a reason to buy here. It's interesting because the the tenor of the note, even though it's just now upgrading it, sounds like they've been relatively constructive on the company for a while. Maybe they were just waiting for the stock to pull back.
00:41 Speaker B
Yeah, and they talk about the 25% decline since the last report that they had in January, calling that a buying opportunity. They talked about how Shake Shack has had better than expected comparable sales growth for three consecutive quarters, which they see as bullish com sales growing 3.7% in January, despite poor weather, which we saw pulling back on some of their competitors in the space here. Uh they talk about also the success of some of their, you know, company fundamentals, things that are specific to Shake Shack, the offering of the Black Truffle burgers, which made me excited to go try that because I have not, and the KBBQ burger as well. And also continued digital sales growth. So they see that management's guidance for a 3% com sales growth for this year, they see potential upside in that. And you can see there that the stock is under pressure over the last year, so potentially some upside there according to this note.
01:53 Speaker A
Have you had that Korean barbecue burger?
01:56 Speaker B
I have I've only ever had the main burger, which is ridiculous. I haven't even tried the shroom burger.
02:02 Speaker A
I have had the shroom burger.
02:03 Speaker B
I have a lot to try.
02:04 Speaker A
It's been a minute. It's been a long time since I've had that shroom burger, but it is quite good.
02:11 Speaker B
Yeah. It's good. I've heard.
02:14 Speaker A
Let's move on to Roblox here. It's announcing a new format for video advertising along with a partnership with Google to help boost its ad business. And you know, the challenge, I got some Robloxians in my household and the challenge is like getting the ads to be a part of the ecosystem that makes sense. And so it seems like they're trying to get there.
02:40 Speaker B
Yeah. I that was a fascinating learning for me as someone who is not a gamer and does not live with gamers and you already knew that. I I really perked up at that takeaway from Scott Schefer, the VP of Sell Side Monetization at Google talking about this. He said, gamers are so entrenched in the experience that you can't rely on your laurels when it comes to advertising. You have to kind of have a unique format. So moving forward, gamers are going to be able to choose to watch a video ad up to 30 seconds long in exchange for kind of gaming rewards, like lifeline boosts. I'm sure you know the terms better than I do, Julie.
03:34 Speaker A
I mean, I'm just a tourist. I don't really know that much. I got secondhand knowledge, but not entirely. But yes, anything that can get them more in Roblox, Robux. Anything that gets them further along, they will do. There's a lot of AFK training that happens, away from keyboard, where you like set a thing and it just runs through the, yeah.
04:26 Speaker B
Can I be away from keyboard? Is that something we can incorporate into into day and day of life? I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
04:34 Speaker A
I'm not sure it'll work quite quite as well for our purposes, but yeah, so, but it is, you know, it's important to like get the rack up the, whatever. So if the ads can get help, get them there, that might indeed be a helpful thing for the company.
05:00 Speaker B
Right, exactly. Yeah. It's critical. It might indeed, that is true. Yeah.
05:05 Speaker A
All right. And finally, big bonuses for Goldman Sachs CEO and president. They're drawing criticism from proxy advisor institutional shareholder services. First, it was Glass Lewis sounding the alarm on this $80 million retention bonus for the CEO and president. Now it's ISS who is also chiming in.
05:35 Speaker B
Yeah, the the kind of push and pull, which has historically also been a challenge, right? How do you retain top talent while also not leading to any sort of pushback from shareholders or from firms like this about, you know, potentially overpaying and that being a headwind to the company moving forward, especially if these compensation packages are deemed a little bit too excessive. I know that for 2024, we saw Wall Street bonuses hitting a record high in New York. I believe it was somewhere along the lines of 240,000 annually for for a record there and a huge pop from 2023. So it'll be interesting to see where these bonuses go given that the deal making environment hasn't necessarily cooked to the degree that was anticipated for this year.
06:31 Speaker A
Right. I mean, I will say usually these pay packages do get approved, even sometimes when you have the proxy advisors recommend against them. In this case, we're talking about David Solomon and John Waldron. Bloomberg's reported that other firms have tried to poach John Waldron, although he's seen as a successor to Solomon. And so the firm said in a statement that, you know, this is about competition for our talent is fierce and this is about keeping them here. Um this even as Glass Lewis said that that compensation was excessive. And ISS talked about, I guess there's already a pay package in place from 2021 that hasn't run out. So they said it's not good practice to then introduce another before the last one has finished.
07:31 Speaker B
Makes sense. Makes sense. And is the risk of losing the successor to Solomon enough? I mean, that's also not good for shareholders, potentially, as you point out.
07:46 Speaker A
Right. Exactly. It does make sense.
07:47 Speaker B
Something to consider.
07:49 Speaker A
Absolutely. Thanks, Maddie.
07:51 Speaker B
Thank you, Julie. Appreciate it. Yeah.
