Wall Street Is Back in Charge: What Institutional Money Flowing Into Markets Means for Retail Investors

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is InvestTalk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Luke Guerrero.

Luke Guerrero (0:17)

Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome to the Friday, October 2nd, 2026 edition of InvestTalk. I'm your host, Luke Guerrero, and I'll be with you over the next hour as we dissect what happened in the market, talk about the stories that matter, and most importantly, answer your finance and investment questions.

I also want to give you a quick heads up. The date is getting closer. It is now only about three weeks away, so be sure to mark your calendars for October 24th. It's a Saturday and you are invited to join the KPP team as well as guest experts for our in-person InvestTalk Retirement Summit. This special event is free of charge, but seating is limited, so pre-register now at investtalk.com. Okay, in just a bit, we'll talk about the market today and those show topics, but why don't we tackle this caller question now?

SPEAKER_3 (1:12)

Hey, this is Thomas over in Santa Cruz. I'm calling about ticker GMRS.

It is actually a relatively new stock, but the company has been around since 2021 I have a family member who's interested in working for this company. Actually, they reached out to my family member, and I thought that it'd be interesting to hear what you guys have to say looking at the back end of things. I'd love to hear what's going on, football as well.

Luke Guerrero (1:40)

Well, GMRS is GMR Solutions. It is the nation's largest provider of EMS services, so that's Emergency Medical Services. Yes, I said EMS services, so services, services. Anyway, it is the only EMS provider that has both air and ground medical services. And so this company, as you mentioned, has been around for at least since 2023 That's where I'm seeing financials go back to. But it recently IPO'd on May 13th of this year, saw that initial IPO volatility, climbed to 1547 per share, then dove back down to $9.89, where it is currently trading today.

Revenue growth, a bit sluggish. 3.3% year-over-year revenue growth. They had a net loss of 28.3 million in this quarter, compared to a quarter a year ago, where they had a net gain of 800 million.

They reaffirmed guidance at their most recent earnings in spite of that EPS miss, so they didn't couple that with an earnings cut. But I think what you have going on here is an interesting situation because in spite of this earnings miss, you actually saw a 9% climb in the stock price after earnings were released. Now, of course you've seen a subsequent decline because earnings was back in August 12th. This thing has actually dropped off pretty significantly on 918 from 1253 to 989 where it trades today.

I think this is an interesting one. As a company, they seem to be very liquid. They have pretty solid free cash flow for a company of this size. It's about 508 million. Their free cash flow is 489 million. Their return on equity is pretty solid, honestly, for a company within this space. But one thing that management noted from a performance perspective was employee wages and benefits. Those costs are rising and you see that not just within this industry but across the board. After a confusing headline quarter, I think this thing is likely to be volatile. From a, is it going to have what we call a going concern, it's going to continue to exist most likely. I mean, I'm seeing a lot of debt here as of 2025, though they may have sorted out some of those debt pressures coming into 2026 Either way, for a company to be employed at, I think it's perfectly reasonable. But to invest in this company, well, it falls within my general IPO restriction. Remember, we don't like buying things until they've traded for a year because there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes on that is not inherent to the underlying value of a company within that first year of trading, such that in aggregate, IPOs tend to underperform the market in the first year. So for now, take your GMR, GMR Solutions, sorry, it's GMRS, GMR Solutions, you're going to have to pass. Thanks for the call. We had a great show yesterday. We looked into the data center backlash and what it meant for investment in AI infrastructure. We also answered a listener question on TJX, that is TJX companies, formerly TJ Maxx. If you want to learn more about data centers and hear my answer to that question on TJX, I encourage you to check out yesterday's episode. And in fact, I think the best way to never miss an episode of InvestTalk is to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Onto today where we got a great show to end this week. And it all starts with my main focus point on Wall Street being back in charge because institutional money managers are seeing flows into the markets. And what does that mean for retail investors?