🎯 Trendline Charts #67

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Welcome back to Trendline where I share 5 top charts on investing & business trends. Let’s dive into today’s post.

1) Wage growth in US has converged across income cohorts to 3% YoY: At the start of 2025, wage growth, particularly among lower-income households, may be supported by minimum wage increases occurring across 21 states. Many state-level minimum wage increases are linked to the rate of consumer price inflation. Additionally, retirees’ income growth may also be supported by the 2.5% cost-of-living increase to social security benefits effective from January

2) Department stores are dying: US department store sales have declined 22% in the last 10 years! Brands like JCPenney have gone under and iconic department store brands like Macy’s shutting down hundreds of stores.(Macy stock down -78% in the last 10 years)

3) Palantir is a 10 bagger! Palantir’s cult keeps getting stronger. The company had another great quarter and the stock has crossed $100 at the time of writing, officially bagging a 10x return from its direct listing price of $10 in 2020! . It continues to the biggest outlier in B2B SaaS with extremely high multiples - see “rule of 40” chart below: EV/NTM revenue multiple vs. LTM FCF growth. Maybe PLTR isn’t valued as a SaaS company by investors?

4) Pepsi continues to squeeze customers: Pepsi has now reported 10 quarters in a row of volume declines while still increasing prices. How long can they keep doing this? Stock is down 9% in the last 12 months.

5) Hottest travel destinations for Americans: “The wanderlust is real — 4 in 10 travelers surveyed by the group said they expect to travel more next year than in 2024, and roughly half said they expect to spend more money to do so.⁠”

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