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Yet Another Value Podcast

Andrew Walker

Yet Another Value Podcast is a new podcast from Andrew Walker, the founder of yetanothervalueblog.com. We interview top investors and dive deep into stocks and companies they are currently working on and investing in. While nothing on this channel is investing advice and everyone should do their own diligence, our goal is to frequently feature edgy and actionable value and/or event driven ideas.

Please see our legal and disclaimer at: https://yetanothervalueblog.substack.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

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  • 31 episodes
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  • Avg 50 min
  • English

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  • Yesterday · 1 hr 6 min

    $FOUR: Shift4 at 6.5x EBITDA. Is the organic growth real? | Emeth Value Capital

    Shift4 trades around six and a half times EBITDA while the company tells you organic growth is 11%. The stock was $120 eighteen months ago and it is $42 today. Andrew Carreon of Emeth Value Capital argues you are paying for zero growth or less, and he points at the piece almost nobody is tracking: the gross equipment under lease line buried in the footnotes, which has gone from a nominal $40 million before 2021 to a $400 million run rate today as Shift4 Dine gets deployed. More than 80% of those installs are net new merchants, not migrations off the legacy POS systems Shift4 already owns. I push back on the two things that keep value investors out of this name. First, the growth wall: the easy share gains from mid-sized restaurants running 1999-era on-prem systems are supposedly gone, and once that funnel empties you are in a churn fight with Toast and Square. Second, and more common, the distrust of management: they pulled the billion dollar free cash flow guide, they paid 12 to 13 times for Global Blue, they cut the buyback in Q2 after retiring 10% of the shares in three quarters, and they still will not name the acquisition they signed. We also get into what it means that Jared Isaacman is running NASA while owning 28% of the company and buying stock in the 40s, why he might be a back pocket activist, and the $1 billion mandatory convert that explains a real chunk of the 25% short interest. Andrew's write-up on Shift4: https://www.emethvaluecapital.com/letters-1 This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com/four. Trata is two buy side investors hopping on an anonymous call and talking about a stock they own or follow, and the real issues they see in it. Go to trata.com/four to see the sample transcripts I used to prep for this episode. Chapters: (0:00) Intro (1:03) Sponsor: Trata (1:53) Why Shift4 keeps attracting value investors (3:12) What Shift4 is: restaurants, hotels, stadiums, luxury retail (5:14) Payments has been a value investor graveyard (9:23) Isaacman leaves for NASA. Is the magic gone? (13:07) Card present, card not present, and what integrated payments means (19:25) Restaurants: how Shift4 assembled the vertical (24:07) Shift4 Dine: the balance sheet line nobody is watching (27:00) PAR, Toast, and the competition pushback (33:12) Credit card surcharging and the 0% processing pitch (37:24) International: buy the sales team, do not build one (41:31) Is organic growth about to hit a wall? (47:34) Do you trust this management team? (53:31) SaaSpocalypse, AI, and why payments has not bounced (57:05) The M&A history, and the bids they turned down (60:14) The 2029 catalyst if Isaacman leaves NASA (61:19) How to build your own organic growth number (63:17) 25% short interest and the $1bn mandatory convert (66:30) Disclaimer Andrew Carreon / Emeth Value Capital: https://www.emethvaluecapital.com/letters-1 Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • Friday · 1 hr 7 min

    $NTDOY: is Nintendo's flywheel actually there? | Accrued Interest

    Nintendo's flywheel is not there. That is Simeon McMillan's call, and it is the one that has media longs emailing me. His case: Switch 2 is the best console launch in history and the attach rate still came in well below Switch 1, the Mario Kart bundle flattered even that number, Nintendo Switch Online accounts have been flat for years and almost nobody has noticed, and Nintendo just took its first mid-cycle price increase because memory costs are not coming down. He is not calling for a crash. He is saying you cannot put this one away for two years. I push back hard. Ocarina of Time is going to be a top five selling game in the world and it is a remake, which is the old Buffett line about Disney being an oil well where the oil seeps back in. Simeon's answer is that Disney kept buying new IP to refill the well and Nintendo has not, and that two to three movies a year and a dozen parks would change his mind. Then we flip to the two he is long. Spotify is his highest conviction idea and he opens with a mea culpa: he assumed the labels would hold the margin hostage forever, and missed that the 2024 and 2025 renegotiations made the royalty rate fall as Spotify grows. I read those same deals less charitably, as Spotify winning outright rather than everyone winning together, and I think the next round goes further. We get into why advertising keeps underperforming, why that might be fine, and what marketplace programs actually are once you have worked in radio. On Netflix he is bullish on a stock that has been cut hard, and I ask the obvious question: Netflix trades at half Spotify's multiple with the same growth and the same margin story, so why is Spotify still the top pick. Also, the NFL ratings test. Netflix's Melbourne game did 18.5 million in the US this year against YouTube's 17.3 million globally for Brazil last year, and Netflix needs a login while YouTube was free. This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. I am a customer and I pay for the API myself. Two things I actually use it for: the fund letter database wired into the API, so when I prep a podcast I get every letter thesis on the name in one pass, and audited financials where every line in the model links straight back to the source. Use my link for 15% off the AI connector. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (01:02) Sponsor: Fiscal.ai (02:35) The quarterly media check-in (03:58) Why Simeon is bearish on Nintendo (08:37) Remakes: is Ocarina of Time the oil well? (11:48) Memory costs and the first mid-cycle price hike (14:30) The attach rate and the Mario Kart bundle (16:47) The bull rebuttals, and subscriber growth that isn't (19:08) Nintendo margins, and whether 40% is real (22:19) Should Nintendo have sold itself? (24:32) IP, movies and parks, with Pokemon as the template (28:09) Spotify: the mea culpa (31:39) The label deals, and who actually won (32:41) Advertising, and payola by another name (36:16) What AI does to Spotify (39:00) 40x earnings: priced for perfection? (42:36) Daniel Ek steps back, and are CEOs overrated (47:08) Netflix as a value stock (53:13) AI generated content and the Netflix moat (59:49) NFL on Netflix vs YouTube (1:02:08) Gun to your head: Spotify or Netflix? (1:05:34) Wrap, and the student tier Simeon McMillan / Accrued Interest: https://www.accruedint.com Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • September 15 · 55 min

    Ian Cassel on Stock Picker, the book that blew me away | MicroCapClub

    Ian Cassel has been picking microcaps for twenty years, and his argument in Stock Picker is that the edge everyone assumes has been arbitraged away is actually coming back. Not the spreadsheet edge. The one that comes from getting on a plane, spending a full day with a CEO instead of an hour, and learning to sense when something is wrong before the numbers say so. His line is that with AI write-ups everywhere, the only place left to get an edge is the conversations that are not recorded, transcribed or scraped, and that puts the game back where it was 30 years ago. The other half of the book is less comfortable and, for me, the reason it hit. Ian opens with his mother's death and keeps going: living off your own capital, the maturation of an investor running alongside the maturation of a person, what it costs to be the one who gets the credit and the blame. We get into why most microcaps deserve to be rented rather than owned, the junior miner curve and the 36 month rule, how he decides which company visit is worth the flight, scarcity as a reason a stock reprices, why capital allocation barely appears in a 300 page book about picking stocks, and the losing-streak instinct that kills concentrated managers: doubling down instead of diversifying. I push back on whether the microcap universe he describes still exists in the US. Fair warning, I loved this book and it shows. Buy Stock Picker: https://amzn.to/3UPA936 This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense, and specifically my upcoming webinar with them, The AI Agent Reality Check: What They Mean for Investment Decisions, on September 22nd. It is me, Steve Clapham from Behind the Balance Sheet, and two AI leaders at AlphaSense talking about what AI agents actually do for investors, the upsides, the downsides, and how fast the landscape is moving. It is free to attend: https://www.alpha-sense.com/resources/webinars/the-ai-agent-reality-check-what-they-mean-for-investment-decisions/?utm_source=pt_YAVP&utm_medium=sponsored&utm_campaign=SWB_DG_09-22-26_IMP-GENAI_FS_BTBS-YAVP-AI-Agents Chapters: (0:00) Introduction (0:57) Sponsor: AlphaSense (1:56) Welcome, and why this book landed (2:32) Why Ian wrote Stock Picker (4:16) The personal book: his mother, money, and the myth of the stoic investor (6:23) Where the chapter-opening stories come from (7:40) John Madden, Vince Lombardi, and knowing one thing cold (9:37) Is the microcap playbook describing a market that no longer exists? (13:38) Why most microcaps get rented, not owned (16:09) The hurricane pro forma, and the comp that needed two Katrinas a year (16:59) Meeting management without getting pantsed (20:17) How Ian decides which company visit is worth the flight (22:43) Do not ask multi-part questions (23:18) Consulting for the companies he wanted to own (24:59) Over the wall, and what it cost him (25:54) The value-added investor, and what his fund does now (28:41) Scarcity: why the stock nobody can buy reprices (31:05) Why capital allocation barely appears in the book (34:07) Great investors evolve or go extinct (36:25) Fundsmith, momentum, and shooting cannonballs (37:19) The PM has nowhere to hide (39:32) Building a brand, and spotting the real ones (43:12) Buying low, then buying higher (45:20) Journaling: every trade, what I did and why (47:37) Imposter syndrome after the big winner (48:28) The losing streak: diversify, do not double down (50:59) Wishing time forward, and the secret to compounding (53:49) Closing Ian Cassel / MicroCapClub: https://www.microcapclub.com Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • September 11 · 56 min

    UK stocks are dirt cheap. Why won't the boards act? $ZIG $CRW | Undervalued-Shares

    A quarter of the companies on the London Stock Exchange's main board have disappeared in four years. Private equity keeps paying 50 and 60 percent premiums and still walking away with a bargain, because the starting valuations are broken. Swen Lorenz of Undervalued-Shares has spent the last few months writing open letters to UK boards telling them to stop waiting to be rescued and start pulling the levers they already have. I have been calling the UK an emerging market on this podcast for three years, and my problem with the trade is right there in the setup: if the only way you make money is owning the one company that happens to get taken out, that is not alpha. So we spend the first half on what would actually fix it. Swen puts most of the blame on the big domestic funds, in outflow for a decade, pushing companies toward dividends to fund their own redemptions. I put most of it on boards that own no stock, treat the seat as a club membership, and check the dividend box every year. Then we get concrete on two names. ZIGUP (ZIG), which I own a little of, has a plan that pays seven executives up to 69 million pounds if the share price re-rates, trades under four times EBITDA, and still has not bought back a single share. And Craneware, which turned down a 26 pound approach from Bain last year and now trades at 13. Swen on how retail investors can unlock the UK market: https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/retail-investors-can-unlock-the-uk-market-here-is-how His earlier write up on UK M&A and activism: https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/uk-ma-and-activism-is-the-dam-about-to-break/ This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. I am a customer and I pay for the API myself. Two things I use it for: a huge database of fund letters wired into the API, so the first thing I do when prepping a podcast is pull every recent letter on the name and see the bull and bear case, and audit-linked models where every line in the model links straight back to the source. You can get 15% off their AI connector at the link. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (01:23) Sponsor: Fiscal.ai (02:57) Swen Lorenz, Undervalued-Shares (04:30) A quarter of the LSE has disappeared (06:05) If the only exit is a takeout, is that alpha? (07:52) The levers boards refuse to pull (10:17) Boards, funds, or shareholders: who is to blame? (15:23) Active outflows everywhere, so why is the UK uniquely cheap? (16:57) Culture, and the case for foreign activists (18:25) Index funds, proxy advisers, and a 95% approval vote (21:04) The dividend trap: the board or the fund manager? (25:33) Boards as a club, and the Gamma Communications topping bid (28:07) You get what you pay for: UK board pay and stock ownership (30:03) Swen's activist checklist (32:00) The dam is about to break (34:12) ZIGUP: the business, and the letter (36:18) The VCP: 69 million pounds riding on the share price (40:19) Why I am disappointed: no buybacks, still paying the dividend (42:14) The real risk is an unsolicited bid at too low a price (43:51) US roadshows and other non solutions (48:27) Craneware: from a 26 pound bid to 13 (51:59) SaaSpocalypse fears and the trading update (53:32) Closing: a golden opportunity, and whether to relist in the US Swen Lorenz / Undervalued-Shares: https://www.undervalued-shares.com/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • September 10 · 39 min

    Zack Buckley on $PRTH's take private

    In November 2025 Priority Technology's (PRTH, disclosure: long) chairman and CEO offered to take the company private at $6.00 to $6.15 a share, two days after a bad print knocked the stock from seven to five. Zack Buckley wrote a public letter opposing it. His sum of the parts gets to roughly $17 a share, a simpler multiple analysis gets to $19, and the June sale of a comparable payments business at 8.3x EBITDA implies $12 against a stock trading around $5.50. Ten months later the special committee still has not said a word. Zack walks through why the consolidated company is misread: over 90% of revenue is recurring or reoccurring, and 60% of it sits in Treasury Solutions, an 80%-plus EBITDA margin business built on the Finxera acquisition and CFTPay that has tripled EBITDA in four years. I push back on the payments-pocalypse, on the leverage, and on a Q2 that came in at the high end of the revenue guide and the low end of the EBITDA guide. Then we get to the part I actually care about: the 13D that says the chairman will not sell to a third party, the January 2025 secondary priced at $7.75 that the company said undervalued it, the $3 million of special committee legal costs added back in one quarter, and three straight earnings calls where nobody on the company side would say the word "process." I own the stock, so weigh all of it accordingly. Buckley Capital's public statement on the proposal: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/buckley-capital-advisors-issues-statement-regarding-controlling-shareholders-take-private-proposal-for-priority-technology-holdings-inc-302620153.html This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com. Two buy-siders hop on a completely anonymized call and discuss a stock they both actually own, or sometimes one is long and the other is skeptical. If you like this podcast, you will like Trata. Chapters: (0:00) Introduction and disclaimer (1:22) Sponsor: Trata (2:26) Welcome, and why I own this one (3:19) What Priority Technology is and why Zack thinks it is mispriced (4:50) The three segments, and why Treasury is the whole story (7:39) Finxera, CFTPay, and the enterprise distribution model (9:29) The payments-pocalypse: is this a melting ice cube? (12:01) The Q2 print, the guide, and the accounting complexity (14:14) Leverage and the balance sheet (15:21) November 2025: the chairman bids $6.00 to $6.15 (17:31) A bad print, an illiquid stock, and a bid two days later (19:23) Ten months in: what takes a process this long? (21:37) The 13D that rules out a third party (23:06) The January 2025 secondary at $7.75 (25:47) What dragged-out processes usually mean (28:03) Would a strategic pay up? (29:59) Three earnings calls and not one word on the process (32:00) How the earnings decks changed after the bid (35:31) Tuck-in M&A, cash building, and the standalone case (36:58) What a fair number actually looks like Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • September 7 · 48 min

    $TBBB: Tiendas 3B is Mexico's Aldi. Is it too late to buy? | Fruit Tree Capital

    Tiendas 3B has more than 3,700 stores in central Mexico, opens roughly 150 more every quarter, and earns its money back on a new store in about two years. It is the Aldi model, built by a founder who saw BIM work in Turkey, moved to a country where he did not speak the language, and has spent 21 years compounding it. Alberto Vadia of Fruit Tree Capital thinks it is a hundred bagger from here. My problem is the price. The stock is approaching $50, it has run a ton, and the bulls I was reading a few months ago were underwriting it in the mid 30s. So I push Alberto on the thing that actually decides this: do the unit economics survive the move from 3,500 stores to 15,000, or does a two year payback quietly become a four year payback once they leave central Mexico? We also get into the two equity offerings from a business that self funds every store it opens, why every other hard discounter on earth stayed private, what Costco at 40 times earnings implies for a Mexican retailer, and whether adding fruits and vegetables is an expansion or a risk. This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com/tbbb. Trata is two buysiders who own the stock talking about what they are actually worried about. They have two calls on TBBB that I used to prep for this one, and you can hear a sample at the link. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (01:48) Sponsor: Trata (02:50) Alberto Vadia, Fruit Tree Capital (04:22) What is Tiendas 3B, and the Aldi playbook (07:27) Why they own it: no debt, management, compounding (08:45) What is the market missing? (12:09) The chicken and egg problem in hard discount (13:25) Private label, 900 SKUs, and beating Walmart on ibuprofen (16:55) The stock has run: have we missed it? (18:52) Why every other hard discounter stayed private (21:12) Costco at 40x, and the Mexico haircut (26:43) Do the unit economics survive stores 5,000 to 15,000? (28:43) The self splitting distribution center model (31:46) The equity offerings, and who was actually selling (36:49) No loss leaders, and the missing fruits and vegetables (41:58) Why is a Mexican category killer listed in New York? (45:36) The bare bones deck and the HQ visit (46:50) Long term, volatility, customer first Alberto Vadia / Fruit Tree Capital: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertovadia/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • September 1 · 50 min

    $LMB: Limbach missed the data center boom. Is that the opportunity? | 1 Main Capital

    Limbach spent three years turning itself from a general contractor into an owner direct services business, and the market loved it right up until this summer. Then organic revenue went down mid single digits, EBITDA fell 30%, guidance came down from $90m to $80m, and the stock lost half its value. Yaron Naymark of 1 Main Capital pitched me this name in June 2023, watched it 6.5x, sold most of it, and is back buying it after a 75% drawdown. His argument is that the EBITDA decline is fixed cost deleverage on a demand air pocket, not a broken business, and that the bigger story is the one Limbach missed. While FIX and EME compounded on data centers, Limbach stayed singularly focused on owner direct work and ended up with effectively zero data center exposure. The CYMCOR acquisition announced alongside Q2 is the first real move to fix that. I push back on the bear case that management knowingly bid a pile of low margin work, on whether owner direct is just general contracting by another name, on whether wage inflation from the data center boom is quietly eating them, and on whether a 2016 de-SPAC ever escapes the gravity of $10 per share. We finish on how Yaron invests around AI without pretending to know who wins: Limbach, IWG, and why he re-initiated KKR. Yaron's first Limbach pitch, June 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GzW0ahswg This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com/lmb. If you like this podcast, you are going to love Trata. It is two buysiders getting on the phone and talking through a stock they are both interested in, the reasons they want to get long, the reasons they are worried about it. They have a Limbach call from six months ago that holds up really well, and I asked one of its questions on this episode. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (00:56) Sponsor: Trata (01:50) Yaron Naymark, back for round six (03:09) What Limbach is and why he is double dipping (03:40) Enron, a SPAC, and the shift from general contracting to owner direct (06:32) Called a data center winner when management said otherwise (07:48) The air pocket: tariffs, Medicaid cuts, and paused projects (09:29) Why the stock is down 50% when EBITDA is down 30% (12:14) Organic versus headline revenue and the Pioneer Power deal (12:40) Double dipping on a stock you already made money on (16:57) The bear case: low margin bookings and general contracting by another name (22:31) Why FIX and EME ran and Limbach did not (24:42) Wage inflation, technicians, and whether owner direct contracts trap them (27:01) Did management get caught off guard between Q1 and Q2? (30:35) The $50m buyback nobody has touched (31:18) Why M&A beats buying back stock at six times EBITDA (33:55) The math behind a $200 three year price target (35:18) Could Limbach be the seller instead of the buyer? (38:09) Josh Horowitz, insider ownership, and the de-SPAC stigma (40:50) CYMCOR and the data center pull through (42:52) Investing around AI: Limbach, IWG, KKR, and the mega-alts (50:29) Wrap Yaron Naymark / 1 Main Capital: https://www.1maincapital.com Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • August 30 · 52 min

    $SEE.L: Europe just made this duopoly mandatory. Why is it 11x free cash flow? | Hugo Navarro

    Every new car sold in Europe now has to watch the driver's face. Two companies in the world can actually do it, Seeing Machines and Smart Eye, and they spent twenty years and hundreds of millions of dollars getting there. Hugo Navarro's argument is that the market has not repriced what happens next: a roughly 55 million dollar fixed cost base, automotive production going from 488,000 vehicles in Q4 2025 to 2.1 million in Q4 2026, and 20 to 40 million of free cash flow in fiscal 2027 against a 330 million market cap. If Japan and the US follow with their own mandates, close to every incremental dollar of revenue drops straight to free cash flow. I push back hard in a few places. There is a 55 million dollar convertible due in October that this company has let get within two months of expiry, and my view is that no healthy business does that. Receivables are up 120% against 45% revenue growth. The fleet business, Guardian 3, is running trials that keep not converting, and "we are in a trucking recession" is the kind of management excuse I have learned to distrust. We also get into whether a new entrant can just build this now that the market is 16 million vehicles, why no tier one ever bought them, and whether full autonomy eventually kills the whole thesis. Hugo's write-up on Seeing Machines: https://smallcaptreasures.substack.com/p/a-cheap-tech-duopoly-posts-333-growth?r=1od1d5 This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is the modern financial data provider for global equities, and I am a customer who pays with my own money for the API. Two things I use it for constantly: a huge database of fund letters wired into the API, so the first thing I do prepping for a podcast is pull every recent letter on the company, and audit-linked financials where every line in the model clicks through to the source. Use fiscal.ai/yav for 15% off their AI connector. Chapters: (0:00) The setup: a duopoly Europe just made mandatory (0:54) Sponsor: Fiscal.ai (2:49) Why Hugo kept pitching this one (3:56) What Seeing Machines does, and why DMS is harder than it looks (5:13) The math: fixed opex, Europe now, Japan and the US later (8:06) The seatbelt manufacturer analogy (10:25) My pushback: what stops a new entrant or an in-house build? (11:47) Naturalistic data, Mitsubishi Electric, and the accuracy gap (14:54) The elephant in the room: a $55m convertible due in October (17:46) Footnote 21 and the accelerated royalty payment (20:06) Can the regulation slip or get watered down? (22:00) Robotics: $20 of silicon versus $20,000 chips (24:39) Smart Eye versus Seeing Machines: software only or full system (27:38) Why no tier one ever bought them (29:16) Fleet: Guardian 3 and trials that keep not converting (35:04) The balance sheet: receivables up 120% (37:37) How much operating leverage is left in Europe alone (40:10) Does full autonomy kill the DMS story? (42:39) Chinese OEMs selling into Europe (44:14) Licensing the fleet software to telematics players (46:34) CEO incentives and the overpromising track record (48:30) My last pushback: at some point it is them, not you (50:14) Why the stock reacts slowly, and where the risk really sits Hugo Navarro / Undervalued and Undercovered: https://smallcaptreasures.substack.com/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • August 27 · 25 min

    Late August 2026 Random Ramblings

    Rates just screamed to 20 year highs and stocks have barely blinked. That looks to me like the mirror image of the mid-2010s, when Treasuries yielded 2%, the math said stocks should trade for 25x, and they sat in the mid-teens instead because the equity risk premium quietly widened from 4% to 6%. If the premium can widen when rates fall, why would it not widen again when rates rise? That is the double whammy running in reverse: earnings that got a decade of help from the Trump tax cuts and the AI boom, multiplied by a multiple heading the wrong way. The other thing I cannot stop chewing on is what higher rates do to the AI data center buildout. These are 15 year leases where the NPV of the payments roughly covers the build cost, which means the developer is really underwriting the terminal value 15 to 25 years out. Move rates from 4% to 5% and you have to jack the lease rate up 5% to 10% just to stand still, and you discount that terminal value harder, right as the tenant credit gets scarier. If the AI trade cracks, you get hit twice: your tenant may not be around, and the release in year 15 goes from a $100m NOI lease to whatever the next best bidder pays. I do not think we are there yet, but finance 101 says investment gets crowded out eventually. Then two management questions. UWMC and Cogent both ran capital allocation that looked designed for the CEO's personal balance sheet rather than for shareholders, and I want a way to spot that before the blowup rather than after. And a friend's text about a CEO everyone was calling the next Mark Leonard got me wondering how you would ever know, because a real compounder and one great bet with hidden leverage look identical for the first ten years. I wrote the rates piece up this morning: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/rates-are-screaming-and-stocks-arent The UWMC post: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/uwmc-lost-600m-hedging-a-deal-theyd The Cogent episode with Aaron Chan: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/recurve-capitals-aaron-chan-on-cogent This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://trata.com. Trata is two buy siders talking to each other about a name they both follow closely. Trata records it, anonymizes it, and publishes it. It is the fastest way I know to get up to speed on something new. Chapters: (00:00) What is on my mind this month (01:07) Sponsor: Trata (01:41) Rates screamed higher and stocks did not listen (04:39) Should the equity risk premium rise with rates? (06:29) Rising rates meet the AI data center buildout (09:33) What a 15 year data center lease is really betting on (13:03) Does higher for longer start crowding out AI capex? (14:11) UWMC, Cogent, and CEOs who run capital allocation for themselves (18:45) How would you know if someone is the next Mark Leonard? (23:01) One great bet, or actual genius? (24:37) Wrapping up Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • August 25 · 29 min

    How to win a stock pitch competition | lessons from an Ira Sohn winner

    School is starting, which means a dozen college and MBA teams are about to email me asking how to win their stock pitch competition. So I made the answer. The core of it: a pitch is a game, and most people lose it before they open their mouth by picking an idea that does not fit the contest rules or the judges in the room. From there it is three things. Design the pitch for the timeframe the contest actually asks for and for the people judging it, because what wins with a concentrated-book judge is not what wins with a pod shop. Lead with the one thing only you know, not a sell side price target or a multiple that has compressed. And make your bull case the base case instead of hedging yourself into a 15% price target that reads as average. Then the three traps I see every single year: burning five slides on a DCF nobody will ask about, drowning the room in risk factors, and death by background. I also walk through the La Quinta pitch that won me Ira Sohn in 2018, and why the CSL and DoorDash teams at the Pershing Square Challenge won on legwork rather than modeling. Fair warning: I had AI build the slides, so do not hold the exact wording on any of them against me. If you are pitching to get hired rather than to win a contest, the companion episode is here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/how-to-get-a-job-in-investing-podcast This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://trata.com. Trata is two buysiders swapping thoughts on a stock they are both involved in. If you are prepping a pitch, go on and say you are thinking about pitching company XYZ, and they will find you someone to talk to about it. It is a very good way to hear the other side of your idea before a judge hands it to you. Chapters: (00:00) Why I made this one alone, with a deck (01:57) Disclaimer and a word from Trata (03:02) Why this matters even if you never enter a contest (05:20) Who am I to talk about stock pitches (07:18) Why a pitch is a free lottery ticket (08:51) Rule one: know the game you are playing (10:12) Know your judges: concentrated books, event funds, pod shops (12:19) Rule two: tell a story, and lead with something only you know (14:14) The La Quinta pitch that won Ira Sohn (16:07) Be bold: make your bull case the base case (18:04) Do the legwork: hard hats, expert calls, customer checks (21:43) What to avoid: excessive modeling (23:17) What to avoid: drowning in risks (25:08) What to avoid: death by background (26:22) Formatting is table stakes (27:48) Go win the thing Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • August 20 · 49 min

    $ELAL: El Al is a wartime monopoly at 2x EBITDA. Is that a trap? | ASB Partners

    El Al ($ELAL), Israel's flag carrier, has spent three years as close to a monopoly on flying in and out of Ben Gurion as an airline ever gets. Turkish and Pegasus left and aren't coming back, Ryanair lost its Terminal 1 slots, Delta and United keep pushing their return, and El Al has used the windfall to go from a levered balance sheet to net cash, buy nine planes off lease, and start returning capital. It trades at about 2x EBITDA. Adam Buckstein of ASB Partners (back after his Stride episode) thinks you're buying a hard-asset-backed airline (roughly $1.3B net cash, $1B+ of owned planes, a $700M-ish loyalty program valuation) for less than the parts, with two more quarters of gushing profits still to come. My pushbacks: every "delevered on wartime profits" story I can remember (steel, energy after 2022) didn't work as a stock; a chunk of the cash is customer float that vanishes if flights get canceled; the $40M competition-authority fine for wartime pricing plus the state's right to make them fly uneconomically looks like the worst of both worlds; and El Al flies 24/6 (no Sabbath, no holidays), so should you haircut the EBITDA, or does that create a moat nobody else can copy? We close with a Stride ($LRN) update: the abrupt CEO exit, the Canvas LMS disaster, the lost Texas school, why fall enrollments are the fulcrum, and whether AI is a real threat to virtual public schools. Adam's El Al write-up: https://adambuckstein.substack.com/p/el-al-israel-airlines-ltd-elal-write This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is the modern financial data provider for global equities, and it's what I actually use: their fund-letter database is wired into their API, so the first thing my AI does when I prep a podcast is pull every recent letter on the name, and every line in the models it builds links back to the source filing. Use fiscal.ai/yav for 15% off their AI connector. Chapters: (00:00) Intro and Fiscal.ai sponsor read (02:33) Adam Buckstein / ASB Partners joins (03:38) What is El Al: flag carrier, October 7, a monopoly on Ben Gurion (05:52) What the market is missing: underfollowed, delevered, Turkish and Ryanair gone (09:36) My pushback: delevering on wartime profits, and the customer-float problem (11:48) The balance sheet: $2B liquidity, air traffic liability, 2023 as the clean year (14:22) Valuation: net cash, owned planes, loyalty program vs a $2B EV (16:49) Slots: the New York City analogy for Tel Aviv (19:28) State of Israel risk: golden share, the $40M pricing fine, mandated security (24:23) The right comps: Wizz, Jet2, United at 6x vs El Al at 2x (26:12) Flying 24/6: should you haircut EBITDA, or is it a moat? (30:38) Stride ($LRN) update: the CEO exit and the prelim guide (34:01) Fall enrollments as the fulcrum, Canvas LMS, the lost Texas school (37:47) Pearson's read-through and in-year enrollment (40:16) The new CEO's contract and expert-call feedback on the old one (41:32) AI risk to virtual public schools, Alpha School (46:02) Long school choice; would Stride get taken private? (49:29) Disclaimer Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

  • August 17 · 52 min

    $NU: is Nubank Capital One in 1994 or Capital One in 2006? | Vanshap Capital

    Nubank ($NU) has 140 million customers, roughly 60% of Brazil's adult population, an efficiency ratio around 20% versus 40-60% at the legacy banks, and ROEs in the 30s. Evan Vanderveer of Vanshap Capital has owned it for four years and thinks the market is still treating it like a risky EM bank instead of what he thinks it is: a tech company that happens to hold deposits, with a founder (David Vélez) who controls it and a runway that runs through Brazil's $100 billion banking profit pool, Mexico, Colombia, and eventually the US. My pushback is the Capital One question. Capital One was the smartest data-science lender in the room, IPO'd in 1994, went up 13x in 12 years, and then spent the next 20 as a mature bank that lagged the market. Nubank was built by ex-Capital One people, so is this 1994 or 2006? We also get into what the right cost of equity is for a Brazilian bank trading at high-teens earnings with a 30% ROE, whether MELI and Kaspi tell you EM fintech never gets a big multiple, the 13,000-customers-per-employee stat, Brazil NPLs at 15-year highs, the wave of senior departures, whether any banking fintech has ever expanded across borders, Vélez joining OpenAI's board, and my bigger worry that AI eventually commoditizes every financial product and competes away the 30% ROE. This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://trata.com/nu. Trata is two sharp buy-siders hopping on an anonymized call to talk through the risks and upside of a stock, and it's the closest thing to this podcast in written form. Go to trata.com/nu for a free Trata transcript on Nubank that I read and used heavily prepping for this call. Chapters: (00:00) Intro and Trata sponsor read (01:55) Evan Vanderveer / Vanshap Capital joins (02:50) What is Nubank: 140M customers, 60% of Brazil, 20% efficiency ratio (06:11) What the market is missing: deepening relationships, Mexico's ARPAC (08:05) The Capital One DNA: QED, Nigel Morris, data science (10:38) My pushback: is this Capital One in 2006, not 1994? (13:00) Brazil's $100B profit pool, payroll loans, David Vélez's control (15:09) Valuation: 30% ROE, high-teens P/E, and the right cost of equity for a Brazilian bank (18:47) MELI and Kaspi: does EM fintech ever earn alpha? (21:59) Fintech or bank? SoFi 2021, lending competition, too big to fail (23:55) 13,000 customers per employee vs 1,300 at legacy banks (26:15) Brazil risks: NPLs at 15-year highs, the Selic, October's election (27:45) How much of the value is Brazil vs Mexico, Colombia, and the US (29:42) Can a banking fintech expand across borders? The Citibank precedent (31:03) Senior departures, the new CFO from Visa, capping US investment (33:47) Buybacks in the low $12s and the risk of losing local expertise (36:32) Valuation bet, business bet, or jockey bet? (38:52) David Vélez joining OpenAI's board (40:46) AI inside Nubank: 60% of inquiries, Devin agents, faster credit models (42:44) Does AI commoditize banking and compete away the 30% ROE? (46:54) The US expansion: God kings or a real niche? (50:35) Closing thoughts (52:07) Disclaimer Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • August 14 · 47 min

    $DNOW: the boring distributor that could double on 2029 numbers | Firebird Management

    DNOW spun out of National Oilwell Varco at $35 in late 2014. A year later it was $13. Today it is around $16. Steve Gorelik's argument is that ten years of that chart is one long headwind rather than a broken business: 1,800 US rigs at the spin, under 600 now, global oil and gas investment 40% below 2014 in real dollars, and DNOW still grew margins and bought companies at 4 to 5x EBITDA the whole way through. Rigs have started ticking back up. The MRC Global merger brings $75m of synergies to two businesses that earned $325m of EBITDA apart in 2024. Management has soft-targeted $350m of EBITDA for 2027 against roughly a $3.5B enterprise value, which Steve gets to about $300m of free cash flow on a $3B market cap. My pushback is that 10x is not deep value, and the double comes almost entirely from multiple expansion back to the 5 to 6% free cash flow yield the market used to pay. Why is 10x the wrong number and not 12 or 14? We also get into the acquisitive compounder paradox, whether the incremental drilling actually shows up in US shale or somewhere else, the Oracle implementation they inherited from MRC and why they are now running it alongside SAP on purpose, the $50m of stock they bought back in the middle of that mess, and whether a business private equity would happily lever to four or six turns belongs in the public market at all. Steve's 2029 case is $30 to $32 per share. This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. I am a customer and I pay for their API with my own money. Two things I use it for constantly. First, they have a huge database of fund letters wired into the API, so when I am prepping a podcast or looking at an event my agent pulls every recent letter on the name and tells me what the bull and bear cases actually are. Second, financials with sourcing attached: I ask for a model and every line links back to the company specific KPI, segment, or ratio it came from, so I can click through and see exactly where the number is from. Use my link, fiscal.ai/yav, for 15% off their AI connector. Chapters: (00:00) Nobody gets excited about a distributor (03:48) What DNOW actually sells (05:29) The roll-up playbook, without the leverage (07:13) Why the 2014 spin never worked (12:47) My pushback: does the drilling come back in the US? (14:23) Shale payback periods and rigs getting less efficient (16:50) The MRC Global deal (18:04) Upstream plus downstream: what the combination buys you (21:24) The ERP implementation they inherited (24:39) Why 2027 guidance sits below what the two did apart (28:16) Free cash flow yield as the North Star (32:40) Buying growth at 4 to 5x while trading at 8 or 9 (34:42) Paying down debt and buying back stock at the same time (35:38) $50m of buybacks in the middle of the mess (37:15) Running SAP and Oracle side by side on purpose (39:49) 1,907 rigs at the spin, 571 today (40:40) The 2029 case: $30 to $32 per share (41:01) Should this company even be public? (42:56) Would private equity lever it up? (43:31) Water, utilities and data centers (45:21) Why boring distributors compound Steve Gorelik / Firebird Management: https://fbird.com Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • August 7 · 1 hr 1 min

    $HIMS: Paul Cerro wouldn't trust the CEO to walk his dog. He's still long. Why? | Cedar Grove

    Paul Cerro was long Hims & Hers in 2024, short it through the compounded GLP-1 unwind, and covered when the stock broke $14 after Q1. He's long again, and his thesis has almost nothing to do with peptides, testosterone, or the international launches everyone else is excited about. Those, he says, are table stakes. Hims has never had a problem acquiring customers. It has a problem keeping them, and subscriber counts have barely moved in three quarters. His argument is that labs and patient data are what push retention and LTV up, and that is the part the market isn't paying for. I push back in three places. The data play doesn't look unique to me: Whoop and Oura own a wearable and a daily interaction, Hims owns commoditized blood work, and if Hims does unlock it, Apple or Amazon can walk in on top of them. The 2030 targets ask you to double trust management, once on 4x-ing EBITDA and again on a very heavily adjusted EBITDA number, from a CEO Paul says he wouldn't trust to walk his dog. And when peptides go legal, I think a hundred Instagram churn-and-burn startups compete away the customer acquisition edge. Paul's answers are worth the hour, especially the balance-sheet argument for a price war and the Ro story. We close on what to watch in the August 10 print. Paul's Hims & Hers write-up: https://www.cedargroveresearch.com/p/hims-whoever-controls-the-data-controls-the-industry This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://trata.com/hims. Trata is two investors who hop on and talk about a stock they're both in, sometimes one long and one short, sometimes both on the same side, but always about what actually drives the stock up or down. Trata now has an MCP, so you can point your AI agent at a company and pull the transcript, which is one of the first things I do when I start looking at a name. They have four HIMS calls, all less than a year old and one about a month old, and if you follow the link you can get their most recent HIMS coverage as a free trial. Chapters: (00:00) Long it, shorted it, now long again (02:57) Paul on the setup right now (04:17) What he learned building Ro (05:19) How cash-pay healthcare actually works (11:54) The original 2024 Hims thesis (13:26) The compounding loophole and its expiration date (15:58) Covering the short and going long again (18:54) Acquisition was never the problem, retention is (20:35) Why the money in healthcare is chasing data (22:33) My pushback: what is unique about Hims' data? (26:32) Hims versus Whoop, Oura and the Apple Watch (29:21) Valuation: 30x 2026 EBITDA, 6x 2030 (32:56) Why international makes the targets conservative (34:12) Double trusting a heavily adjusted number (36:16) Icarus, Napoleon and the Teflon Don (40:05) On putting too much faith in regulators (43:49) Peptides and the market nobody has priced (45:36) Chinese peptides and what is in the vial (50:12) Can a hundred Instagram startups undercut Hims? (54:40) Why the balance sheet decides a price war (56:13) What to watch in the August 10 print (57:40) CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Amazon (1:00:49) Closing thoughts Paul Cerro / Cedar Grove: https://www.cedargroveresearch.com Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • August 4 · 22 min

    August 2026 Random Ramblings

    Strategy filed an 8K this morning: they sold $300 million of stock, sold $100 million of bitcoin, and put the proceeds into buying back roughly $80 million of their own preferred at a discount. So you have a company trading over NAV, diluting shareholders, and selling the one asset it exists to hold, and it is still trading at a premium. Management is presenting the move from "one-way capital issuer" to "multi-way capital issuer" like it is a financial engineering breakthrough. It is just normal capital allocation, and it took them five years to get there. That is the through line for this whole ramble: selling. Strategy made a genuinely good call in 2020 and then never sold a thing. Situational Awareness made a generational call, long AI winners and short AI losers, went up something like 10x on it, never rebalanced, kept pressing a trade that naturally degrosses, and blew up when software went from 20 back to 30 and semis went from 400 back to 370. I do a miniature version of the same thing every time I decide in advance that I will start trimming at 15 a stock I bought at 10, and I am not sure that plan is as smart as it feels. I also get into why thematic trades are so hard to sell when there is no price to anchor to, whether the crossover funds actually had an AI information edge or just conviction, why I cannot make the memory valuations work under any assumption I am willing to make, and where I think the real opportunity is: the beaten-up AI power names Situational owned in size, several of which are not trading far above the DCF of the contracts they already have. Situational Awareness, crossover funds, and the AI edge: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/crossover-funds-ai-edge-situational-awareness This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com/glxy. Trata is two buysiders hopping on a call and talking through a stock they are actually working on, which is the fastest way I know to get up to speed on a name. They also have an MCP now that connects to Claude and ChatGPT, so the first thing I do on a new name is run the Trata search and see what buysiders are really saying. That link is a preview of the Galaxy call I mention on the episode. Chapters: (00:00) Cold open: three things on my mind (02:11) Sponsor: Trata (03:55) Why I am recording a bonus ramble (04:49) Strategy's new 8K: sell stock, sell bitcoin, buy back the preferred (06:05) "Multi-way capital issuer" is just normal capital allocation (06:58) A great call in 2020, and then they never sold (08:21) Investors are good at buying and bad at selling (09:37) Is my own sell plan its own trap? (11:37) The Situational Awareness blowup (13:19) The trouble with thematics: there is no price (14:44) Micro versus macro, and the software buy signal I missed (16:22) Do the crossover funds have an AI information edge? (18:41) Why I cannot get to the memory valuations (19:04) The opportunity in the beaten-up AI power names (22:05) Wrapping up Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/ Disclosures: I am short $MSTR and long $GLXY. Nothing on this podcast is investment advice. Please do your own work.

  • August 2 · 49 min

    Management interviews: the most underdeveloped skill in investing | Ross O'Toole

    Management interviews might be the most underdeveloped skill in fundamental investing. Ross O'Toole has been investing for 25 years and read over 500 investment books, and he couldn't find a single one on how to actually conduct an investor-management interview.... so he wrote Breaking the Script, a field guide to getting management teams off their rehearsed talking points. We get into why "what" questions beat "why" questions, whether you should grade a plastic surgery CEO and a coal company CEO on the same curve, the case for recording your management meetings, and why asking for examples is one of the biggest double edged swords in investing. I push back with my standing worry: management teams are really, really good salesmen, and I always walk out of these meetings wondering if I'm the patsy at the poker table. Ross's answers (build a longitudinal baseline over repeat interviews, ask for the negative example every time you get a positive one, and save the hard questions for the crescendo) are why this book went straight to the top of my "hand it to an intern" list. Grab Ross's book, Breaking the Script: https://amzn.to/4fLg8RO This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data platform for global equities. In addition to their web-based terminal, they offer API access to real-time fundamental data: 20+ years of financial statements, ratios, segments, and KPIs, with data updating within minutes of earnings reports, not days. I'm not just an advertiser; I signed up with my own money to plug their API into the AI tools I've been building. Use my link, fiscal.ai/yav, for 15% off. Chapters: (00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:00) Why management interviews are a double edged sword (00:03:47) Why Ross wrote Breaking the Script (00:07:15) Are we deluding ourselves? Testing management credibility (00:11:53) Should you grade CEOs on a curve across industries? (00:14:44) "What" vs "why": framing contentious questions (00:18:27) Are interviews actually an alpha source? (00:19:39) Where management matters most: deep value vs tech (00:22:32) Would interviewing 2008 Zuckerberg have helped? (00:25:14) Preparation and repeat interviews (00:29:20) Should you record management meetings? (00:31:54) Asking for examples: conviction builder or sales pitch? (00:34:00) Always ask for the negative example (00:36:00) Making management grade their own execution (00:38:20) Interviewing companies under activist pressure (00:41:30) Buffett's silver bullet question, reframed (00:46:02) Question order: crescendo to the hard stuff (00:48:29) Closing thoughts Ross O'Toole / Breaking the Script: https://amzn.to/4fLg8RO Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • July 27 · 27 min

    July 2026 Random Ramblings

    Investing is a game of arrogance. The base rate when you buy any stock is that it just does the market return, so every position you hold is a bet that you know something the market doesn't. My July ramble is really one question asked five ways: when do you look in the mirror and admit you were wrong? I walk through my three-year rule on a single name (if it has gone nowhere for three years, the problem is probably you, not the market), and the harder version, a value fund that has underperformed for a decade. I use myself as the example. I saw AI inflecting in late 2024 and didn't pull the trigger, because I'm a value and event guy and I didn't see the bet, and a lot of those names then went on a generational run. Was that discipline or a mental block? From there I get into why you're effectively short Nvidia if you don't own it and you're benchmarked to the S&P, the Fundsmith letter walking back its principles as the cautionary tale on both sides, my own April 2025 book (the net-cash biotech and the Nebius trade I sold way too early), and why London increasingly trades like an emerging market: a takeover wave, private value miles above public value, and the frustration of owning cheap names that only move if someone buys the whole company. This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with 20+ years of statements, ratios, filings, segments and KPIs, a web-based terminal, and a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamental data straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Use fiscal.ai/yav for 15% off. Chapters: (0:00) Intro and episode preview (2:50) Sponsor: fiscal.ai (4:16) Investing is a game of arrogance: beating the base rate (6:18) The three-year rule, and when a whole strategy has underperformed (9:19) Missing the AI trade: discipline, mental block, and the Fundsmith letter (14:42) If you don't own Nvidia, you're short it (16:46) My April 2025 book: Nebius, net-cash biotech, and selling winners too early (21:47) Why London trades like an emerging market: takeouts and dead stocks (27:08) Wrap Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • July 24 · 53 min

    $LNW: a slot machine oligopoly at half Aristocrat's multiple | Zack Buckley

    Light & Wonder ($LNW) is one of three companies in the slot machine oligopoly, with 70%+ recurring revenue, and it trades at 7-8x EBITDA while Aristocrat, its closest peer and arguably its slower-growing twin, trades at roughly double that. Zach Buckley thinks the market is wrong on almost every count: the stock has traded like a SaaS chart on AI fears even though slot content has almost no AI exposure, the Street doesn't believe 2028 targets from a management team that already hit the last three-year guide it set, and the soft first half is a game-launch timing story (Aristocrat launched in H1, Light & Wonder's slate lands in H2), not share loss. Zach has sized this the largest he's ever sized anything, and you can hear it. I push back where I can: whether Caesars could ever build its own boxes (Zach: Marriott doesn't build elevators), why management is paying down debt to appease Australian shareholders instead of murdering the share count at these prices, what the Dragon Train settlement really cost them, and SciPlay's genuine AI risk. We also cover the move to a sole Australian listing, the Grover charitable-gaming acquisition at ~7.5x EBITDA, and what would actually break the thesis. This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense: https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Most AI tools are very good at sounding right, but can you trace the answer back to the filing, the transcript, the exact passage that drove it? AlphaSense's AI platform is built for exactly that: over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls, with every answer linked back to an exact, verifiable source. See it for yourself with a free trial at https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Chapters: (00:00:05) Introducing Light & Wonder (00:03:09) Light & Wonder's transformation (00:05:57) Australian listing creates opportunity (00:08:36) Recurring revenue business model (00:09:39) Why game quality matters (00:11:45) Business quality meets valuation (00:13:31) Explaining Aristocrat's valuation premium (00:17:15) AI offers productivity upside (00:19:08) SciPlay faces greater AI risk (00:21:20) Barriers protect game development (00:23:56) Casinos avoid vertical integration (00:29:05) Why Australia made sense (00:30:25) Dragon Train litigation explained (00:32:14) Assessing lingering litigation impact (00:34:11) Why investors doubt targets (00:36:04) Short-termism drives investor skepticism (00:39:41) Balancing buybacks and deleveraging (00:42:39) Grover acquisition adds growth (00:43:55) Electronic pull tabs explained (00:47:14) What could break thesis (00:50:41) AI fears create opportunities (00:52:32) Zach summarizes investment thesis Zach Buckley / Buckley Capital Partners: https://www.buckleycapitalpartners.com/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • July 20 · 1 hr

    $PRKS: SeaWorld, an 8% cash yield, and a possible 80% short squeeze | Hawkins Entrekin

    United Parks ($PRKS) owns SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, trades around 8x EBITDA with an 8%+ unlevered cash yield, and is plowing basically 100% of free cash flow into buybacks while Hill Path sits on roughly 60% of the stock. Adjust for passive holders and effective short interest lands somewhere near 80% of float; Bloomberg's short squeeze score is 93 out of 100. Hawkins Entrekin (Valyte, and the guy who pitched Vornado on this podcast right at the bottom of New York real estate) thinks you're buying irreplaceable hard assets below replacement cost, with a squeeze as the cherry on top. His fair value: low $80s against a stock in the high $40s. It's catnip to me, which is exactly why I push back. EBITDA fell from roughly $700 million to $600 million in an inflationary environment; is that Epic Universe's one-time supply hit, or a sign SeaWorld is the industry's swing capacity? Management has blamed weather in 15 of the last 16 quarters (I counted). And when a 60% owner is pushing every dollar into buybacks while attendance sits 20% below the 2008 peak, you have to ask whether this is being run for long-term operations or just for the spreadsheet. Hawkins' United Parks write-up: https://valyteresearch.substack.com/p/united-parks-and-resorts The Trata call I used to prep: https://www.trata.com/prks This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense: https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Most AI tools are very good at sounding right, but can you trace the answer back to the filing, the transcript, the exact passage that drove it? AlphaSense is the AI platform built for that: over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls, with every answer linked back to an exact, verifiable source. Try a free trial at https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Chapters: (00:00) Intro: everything I love in a stock, and why that scares me (01:34) AlphaSense (sponsor) (02:49) Welcome back Hawkins Entrekin (03:41) What is United Parks? (04:44) The short squeeze setup: ~80% of effective float (05:50) A real estate lens on theme parks (08:36) What are the shorts seeing? (10:32) EBITDA went from $700M to $600M; why? (12:01) Epic Universe and the new-supply explanation (17:27) Weather excuses: 15 of the last 16 quarters (19:44) Capex and the asset-stripping check (24:08) The real estate angles (and OpCo/PropCo cold water) (28:19) What's the excess land worth? (30:34) Can you comp a theme park on NOI? (32:13) Valuation: low-$80s fair value vs a high-$40s stock (34:33) Why 8x when Blackstone paid 12-14x? Plus replacement cost (40:45) Hill Path at 60%: squeeze, take-private, or sale? (46:05) Attendance is down 20% from the 2008 peak (48:47) The bulls have been early for three years (56:58) What is Valyte? (58:28) Seritage, Elme, and a hard stop Hawkins Entrekin / Valyte: https://www.valytedata.com/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

  • July 14 · 58 min

    $CBZ: stop the buybacks and restart the M&A flywheel? | Reference Equity

    Ryan Bunn (Reference Equity) has a public proposal for CBIZ ($CBZ): stop buying back stock at 9x earnings and restart the M&A flywheel that compounded revenue at 13%/year and took EBIT margins from 9% to 14% over the last decade. For someone like me who has always been a sucker for share buybacks, "stop the buybacks and issue equity" lands like a knife right in the gut, so I make him defend every piece of it. We get into whether the $2.3B Marcum deal (the largest accounting acquisition ever, with the stock down ~70% since) deserves a mulligan, whether the multiple got crushed by 3.4x leverage or by AI headline fear, whether AI lets the Big Four come downmarket and eat CBIZ's middle-market lunch (or lets superstar producers hang their own flag), and whether long-term investors would really put primary equity onto the balance sheet at no discount. Ryan's math: the market prices credit risk, small 6-9x EBITDA bolt-ons restart the compounding machine, and a delevered, re-rated CBIZ has 100%+ upside. Ryan's Restarting the Flywheel site (proposal + deck): https://cbizflywheel.com/ This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense. Most AI tools are very good at sounding right; the summary is clean, but can you trace it back to the filing, the transcript, the exact passage that drove the answer? AlphaSense owns the content (over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls) and the retrieval layer on top of it, so every answer links back to an exact, verifiable source. Try a free trial at https://alpha-sense.com/yavp Chapters: (0:00) Intro: an activist pitch to STOP the buybacks (1:15) AlphaSense (2:31) What is CBIZ ($CBZ)? (5:01) Ryan's proposal: restart the M&A flywheel (7:44) Buybacks at 9x earnings vs. getting back to M&A (10:38) Post-Marcum, are there even deals left to do? (12:52) The AI risk: offshoring and the Big Four coming downmarket (19:24) Does AI let superstar accountants hang their own flag? (23:41) The Marcum deal: mulligan or strategic masterstroke? (28:59) Private equity competition and winner's curse (31:38) Valuation: 9x free cash flow at 3.4x leverage (40:00) Does delevering actually re-rate the stock? (45:47) Management, the board, and alignment (49:58) Why issue equity now? The FMC example (56:57) Ryan's real ask: end the muddled capital allocation (57:38) Wrap Ryan Bunn / Reference Equity: https://cbizflywheel.com/ Links: Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

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