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MarketFoolery

Zillow’s Falling. Don’t Rush In.

MarketFoolery

The Motley Fool

Money, Business, Motley, Business News, Stocks, News, Investing, Market, Fool

4.71.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Zillow announces the layoff of 25% of its staff and the shuttering of its home-buying business, causing shares to hit a 52-week low. Bed Bath & Beyond pops on a partnership with Kroger and an update on its share buyback plan. Asit Sharma analyzes those stories and Lyft’s ongoing struggle to work out its own economics.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's Wednesday, November 3rd. Welcome to Market for War. I'm Chris Hill with me today,

0:06.6

the one I know only, Mr. Sharma. Thanks for being here. Chris, thank you for having

0:11.1

me, sir. We've got ride sharing. We've got the stock of the day. We're going to begin

0:17.4

with the three alarm fire that is Zillow. The third quarter results that Zillow posted

0:23.2

after the closing bell on Tuesday. Kind of don't matter. I'm sorry to say that, Zillow.

0:29.9

But they kind of don't matter because the company announced it is getting out of the

0:33.4

home buying business altogether, and it is also laying off 25% of its employees. And at

0:39.6

the moment, shares of Zillow are down more than 18% hitting a 52-week low. We can go over

0:48.4

the results if you want, but to me, this announcement about the home buying business

0:54.7

answers the question that we raised a couple of weeks ago when they announced that they

0:59.4

were pausing it, because they said, we're pausing this for the rest of 2021, which was

1:06.5

a 10-week window. And at the time, we were like, OK, so at some point in the next 10 weeks,

1:11.2

we're going to get an announcement, right? They're going to say it's either back on in

1:14.4

January or they're going to push it back. It didn't occur to me that they would just

1:17.8

shut the whole thing down altogether. I know, right? The other shoe drops with a huge

1:23.6

thud. This is very surprising in some ways, Chris, but maybe not so surprising in the

1:31.0

others. I want to say here, this is not peanuts. We're talking about a $300 million right

1:40.9

down of inventory, additional charges related to homes that are under contract of $240 to

1:49.4

$265 million, and also pre-tax restructuring charges estimated at approximately $175 million

1:58.2

to $230 million. This is hundreds of millions of dollars all told and a hit to this business

2:05.9

model, which was predicated on being able to buy homes at reasonable prices and flip them

2:12.9

out of profit. A couple of things that I wanted to point out here and then get your thoughts,

...

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