Travel stocks ripping higher on a few upgrades despite TSA throughput stuck at flat vs 2019 and domestic air fares starting to roll over $AAL $RCL $CCL $YOU

Biggest risk for incumbents in travel is they get pushed to the bottom of the funnel, GDS will struggle to evolve when they’ve been clinging to 1980s tech and been dragged kicking and screaming to NDC

On @theallinpod this week @chamath said $SABR=AI winner and OTAs=dead. Reality is all disrupted and GDS worst, ChatGPT/WhatsApp LLM dont need GDS but OTAs can maybe provide value + unique inventory. Architecture of the entire internet is changing @altcap

Probably a $TURO IPO killer and not a bad business, @turo is doing $2B+ of GBV and 4% EBITDA margins on that and $UBER should be able to be more profitable given scale.

Deep-ish dive on @Instacart after A+ interview of @fidjissimo by @patrick_oshag Instacart is a behemoth of delivery with $29B of GBV & $740m+ of ad revs that are >2.5% of GBV Prime position to become a CPG advertising leader and growing the pie.

$UBER #GoGet: Group Rides: 1 trip, multiple pickups, split fares Uber Teen: Rides+Meals with supervision, tracking, recording UberEats Group Grocery: group order w/ bill split Uber Car Seat: rides w/ @Nuna_USA car seats Uber Central: @Marriott concierge booking Uber Boat: lol

@modestproposal1 @BearForce_Won And in 1Q22:

@modestproposal1 @BearForce_Won I thought marketing was a fixed cost though 🙃

@modestproposal1 I think everybody has been surprised by the strength of travel demand into Q1 and so it's hard to swim against the tide on that until you see the weakness.

@modestproposal1 All the OTAs magically thought cutting performance marketing and streamlining brand marketing was just free $$$, oops

$UBER launching UK flight bookings in partnership w/ @hopper, makes a ton of sense as digital native peers. Congrats to @fredlalonde, Dakota Smith & team Hopper aggressively taking share of flight funnel on B2C and racking up B2B partnerships w/ Uber/Cap One/etc on fintech side

Strong Q1 GBV beat from $RBLX, EBITDA missed as heavily investing and hiring (headcount +10% Q/Q) Stepping back, it's hard to overemphasize how much the trajectory of this business changed as a result of covid.

Telos $TLS cumulative on new products (including TSA pre-check) only expected $13m tailwind for 2023. They cut by $10m due to slower TSA roll-out which if assume that's all 2H23 is $20m/yr or roughly 25% of expected pre-check TAM. $YOU could do 50% share or $40m/yr max?

2/3 of win backs are from customers who forgot to put in a credit card, expect retention to go back to 80% range from low 90%s now Think they can push penetration to >5% of total population in their markets, how many people can feasibly go through the clear lane in SFO and JFK?

Clear Secure $YOU reported Q1, stock -7% TSA throughput was +20% Y/Y in Q1 and 60% of signups are at-airport. Seeing deceleration in enrollments as % of pax and on an absolute level as TAM is increasingly penetrated and pax growth slows. Can TSA pre-check re-accelerate things?

@JWhitehurst trying to managed $UAL comp committee that is market, aligns incentives, but still complies with US Govt Cares Act restrictions while coming out of a global pandemic

Some context on Cares Act restrictions for United exec comp: - NEOs limited to $3m or 50% over $3m of 2019 levels - Excludes promotions - Expired Apr 1 2023 - They even delayed awards for President Brett Hart to comply with limitations - 2022 program was structured to comply

In proxy you'll also get interesting lifestyle info, like the fact that the $AAPL BOD *requires* that Tim Cook fly private for all business and personal travel.

And although I have it charted out vs consensus in blog, here is 2022 $AAPL financial goals and results resulting in maximum payout

A nice dunk from proxy on the rest of the market by Tim Cook, look at the value created!

One challenge for $AAPL comp peer set is that they're just so much larger and profitable than everybody else, here is an excerpt from proxy on their peer group, they're 5x the median on revenues and 15x the median on market cap.

I know that the Cares Act has been an overhang on the airlines in terms of exec comp, but I would hope and expect given the comp limitations expired on Apr 1 that for 2023 the $UAL comp metrics are meaningfully improved.

$UBER put out an update to the proxy with a nice summary of executive compensation, as I previously noted there's new focus on SBC as a component of 2023 cash bonus and a 10% cut to equity grants vs 2022