MBI Deep Dives

MBI Deep Dives

Roblox 1Q'26: Age Check Hangover, But Aiming to Go Beyond the Blocks

Programming Note: In case you missed it yesterday, I have released "MBI" Skill for Claude and Codex. Back in 4Q’25 call, Roblox management announced that they will not provide any annual guidance from 2027 onwards: we've learned that it's difficult to predict exactly

"MBI" Skill for Claude and Codex

Today’s post is about how to get more out of MBI Deep Dives. When MBI Deep Dives was only about the monthly Deep Dives, it wasn’t very difficult to keep track of everything I was writing about. However, since I started publishing daily in July last year, it

Digital Advertising Industry Snapshot 1Q'26

As I do after every quarter, let me share the snapshot of the overall digital advertising industry. Please note that digital advertising industry is defined as Alphabet’s advertising revenue+ Meta’s advertising revenue+ Snap revenue+ Pinterest revenue+ Microsoft Search advertising revenue+ Amazon advertising revenue+ Trade Desk revenue+ AppLovin revenue.

Airbnb 1Q'26: Growth Acceleration Despite War Headwind

Airbnb reported +15% (FXN) revenue growth in 1Q’26 which was its highest topline growth over the last eight quarters. It is particularly impressive given the the backdrop of Iran war. Airbnb mentioned growth accelerated from January to February but then experienced a “slight deceleration” in March due to cancellation

Insurance Brokers 1Q'26 Update

Insurance brokers are currently in a world of pain as the halcyon days of hard market is clearly behind us. At first glance, the organic growth still seems to be holding up reasonably well (ex BRO), but nonetheless investors are somewhat spooked. Every broker reported sharper property declines. The quantification

Shopify 1Q'26: Impressive, But Still Not Enough to Justify Valuation

1Q’26 was yet another quarter for Shopify in which it added almost the same GMV as Amazon retail likely added in the same quarter. Back in 2017, Shopify’s GMV was only ~10% of Amazon’s estimated GMV. Given the way Shopify is growing, it seems likely that it

Floor & Decor 1Q'26: Persistent Macro Challenges, but Pro Growth Encouraging

Floor & Decor (FND) posted an ugly quarter and provided an uninspiring outlook for the rest of 2026. In fact, given that FY25 was guided down at every revision i.e. three consecutive cuts across the four reports and that’s exactly also how 2026 started, I am a bit

"Never Sell" Episode: Big Tech earnings, S&P and Moody’s, AI

For the “Never Sell” podcast, Scuttleblurb and I published a new episode yesterday. While I have already covered big tech's earnings over the last few days (Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft), we expanded on how IT budget reallocation towards AI may not lead to any sustained long-term advantage

Microsoft FY 3Q'26: Multi-Model Mirage, Copilot Momentum

Programming Note: While I typically don’t write on company specific topics on Sunday, I’m making an exception during the earnings season. Microsoft’s own narrative about their future has evolved quite a bit following the ChatGPT moment in 2022. While they used to highlight how their exclusive access

Amazon 1Q'26: Rosy Near-term but "Cloudy" Long-term

Amazon’s highlight from 1Q’26 was that AWS has accelerated to 28%, which was the highest growth rate in the last 15 quarters. In fact, looking at the guide, it appears even a more pronounced acceleration is likely for 2Q’26. I will talk more about AWS, but as