Yet Another Value Podcast

Nicotine pouches might be the best new consumer category in decades: cheap to make, high margin, and sticky once someone gets hooked, the same traits that made Philip Morris a 16.5% a year compounder for close to a century. George Baxter of Saberpoint Capital has owned Turning Point Brands since his fund's first days, and he thinks the market is missing how well TPB is positioned as the third player behind ZYN and Velo, with FRE and the Tucker Carlson backed Alp now almost half of revenue. We get into whether pouch users are really brand loyal or will hop around like energy drink buyers (my straw man, using Haypp and Europe), why C-stores want a third brand on the back bar, how the new PMTA rules shut the door on VC-backed upstarts, and the cost gap from making every can in India and air freighting it here. I push back on the part that worries most people: EBITDA is falling while TPB spends on slotting fees, UFC and influencers, Alp is a 50/50 JV with a celebrity, and the longtime CEO just left with a…

The 10 year has gone from 4.2% at the start of the year to 4.6% in late August to 5.1% today, and the S&P is still basically touching all time highs. Interest rates are financial gravity, but I wonder if gravity works on a lag. Consumers and allocators are slow to move money from stocks to bonds, and corporates termed out a lot of 3.5% debt in 2021 to 2023 that starts rolling in 2028 to 2031. Today's free cash flow is flattered by that spread. Underneath the index there is already real pain in housing, levered small caps and biotech, and my bottom line is the margin of safety in stocks keeps getting skinnier. From there: why merger arb spreads that looked juicy to anyone who came of age in ZIRP are just the time value of money at 5%, and where the crashes and long bear markets went. We have gone from 1929, 1987 and 1972 to 1974 to a nine month GFC, a two month COVID drawdown and a tariff tantrum that lasted weeks. Is that a stronger market, or a more fragile one waiting for one big break? Then a friend's…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

Adam Wyden runs one of the most concentrated books I know, and he came on to make the case for two stocks the market has basically left for dead: Stagwell ($STGW) and Driven Brands ($DRVN). On Stagwell, his pitch is that this is not a dying ad agency but a marketing-services and data business compounding toward $700M of EBITDA by 2028, sitting at a 20%+ free cash flow yield because it came public through a no-fanfare reverse merger and carried a dual-class and TRA overhang that kept institutions out. On Driven, he thinks the sum of the parts (Collision, Autoglass, and a 50-year-old franchise stub around Take Five) is worth far more than a low-teens stock, and he has been loud enough about it that the company started disclosing numbers within 48 hours of one of his letters. I push back on both. On Stagwell I keep coming back to the agency model itself: WPP, IPG and the rest have trailed the S&P for 20 years because the human capital walks out the door every night and takes the economics with it, and AI…

$VEON trades like a busted emerging-markets telecom, but it owns 84% of Ukraine's Kyivstar and a Pakistani fintech, JazzCash, that already moves 15% of the country's GDP. Samit Umatiya of UIG Funds lays out the sum-of-the-parts case for why the holdco could be worth roughly 4x today's price, and Andrew pushes back hard the whole way: a not-so-storied history of value destruction, a sanctioned 45% shareholder, capital controls, and a long graveyard of telecoms that bungled every growth opportunity they ever had. The result is one long push and pull on whether the upside is real this time. This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with a web terminal plus a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamentals straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Andrew uses it himself. Get 15% off at https://fiscal.ai/yav Chapters: 00:00 The setup: a sum-of-the-parts EM telecom nobody talks about 01:31 Sponsor: Fiscal.ai 02:35 Who is Samit Umatiya and what is VEON 04:19…

MSA Safety ($MSA) is the "OG pick and shovel" of worker safety: a century-old, pure-play maker of gas detection and firefighter equipment that the Pershing Square Challenge 2026 finalist team argues is a quality compounder the market is underrating. The bull case has three legs. Portable gas detection is shifting to a recurring, higher-margin subscription model, the "canary" that now sings to the whole worksite instead of just the worker wearing it. A legally mandated SCBA replacement cycle is coming that consensus barely credits. And a 2023 divestiture of product liabilities freed up the roughly 17% of EBIT that used to leave the building every year at a zero return. Base case: a double to about $350 by 2030 from roughly $160 today. EJ Karobath, Craig Larkin and Bob McGrane walk through why MSA's owned-sensor hardware is hard to copy (Blackline got taken private, and its devices break if you drop them), how winning a tier-one fire department like LA or Memphis pulls the surrounding towns along on…

Fox's stock is down about 25% since it agreed to buy Roku for $22 billion, and the market has decided the deal is a blunder. Simeon McMillan of Accrued Interest thinks the market is wrong. His case: Roku controls roughly 44% of how Americans reach streaming on the big screen, about 3x the next platform, so Fox just bought the "front door" to streaming and around 100 million connected TVs in North America. Look under the surface and the deal is closer to 16-17x free cash flow once you account for Roku's barely-tapped ad levers and synergies. We get into the homepage that became the new "Netflix homepage," why Fox keeps making the smartest M&A bets in media, the Tubi sleeper Simeon is most bullish on, why he loves Roku but is bearish on Spotify, and why Google and Meta look like "true value stocks" to him. I push back hard on whether Fox plus Roku is really better than Roku staying neutral Switzerland for every bidder. See Simeon's post on Fox / Roku here:…

SpaceX is buying Cursor for ~$60B, and one of the early backers was SBF. So was a convicted fraudster also the greatest VC of all time? That's where June's random ramblings start. From there: why I've flipped from AI doom toward AI as a force multiplier, whether deep subject-matter expertise gets MORE valuable as the world fills with AI slop, why legacy brands (KPMG, CBS, People) might actually gain power in an AI world, why "my edge is a long time horizon" is usually a tell for underperformance, and the cracks showing up in Polymarket and prediction markets. This episode is sponsored by my upcoming AI webinar with AlphaSense. The AI landscape has never been more crowded or more confusing. Everyone's telling you to adopt AI, but almost nobody's asking the harder question: which tools actually give you an edge? I'm sitting down with Dave Wang of Wall Street Prompt and Ben Collins of AlphaSense to break down the modern AI stack for investors, from horizontal platforms like OpenAI and Claude to agentic…

The market has decided YouGov ($YOU.L) is an AI loser and cut it ~50% in a year. Jonathan Cohen of Zipperline Capital thinks it's an AI winner trading at 6-7x EBITDA, with a 20-year proprietary dataset AI makes more valuable, not less. We spend the first half on the UK as an "emerging market" (corporate governance discounts, why buybacks are finally happening, and why you can never compare UK and US multiples), then go deep on YouGov: the panel, the moat, synthetic data, and why the company is cancelling its dividend to buy back stock. This episode is sponsored by my upcoming AI webinar with AlphaSense. The AI landscape has never been more crowded — or more confusing. Everyone's telling you to adopt AI, but almost nobody's asking the harder question: which tools actually give you an edge? I'm sitting down with Dave Wang of Wall Street Prompt and Ben Collins of AlphaSense to break down the modern AI stack for investors — from horizontal platforms like OpenAI and Claude to agentic workflows and…

Alex Roepers of Atlantic Investment Management lays out two deeply cheap special situations: Dauch (DCH) and Nomad Foods (NOMD). In both, management is sending "dark arts" signals (an aggressive CEO payout struck well above the current price, heavy insider buying) that point to an inflection the market hasn't paid for yet. We dig into the $300M merger synergies at Dauch, the auto-cycle and leverage risk, the governance red flags, the private-label threat to Nomad's frozen-food brands, and whether the European discount on both is real or just doldrums. This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense. Join Andrew, Dave Wang of Wall Street Prompts, and Ben Collins of AlphaSense for a webinar breaking down the modern AI stack for investors: where horizontal platforms, agentic workflows, and finance-specific tools each actually fit in a real research process. Recording June 16, live June 25. Register here:…

Abivax posted maybe the best ulcerative colitis data anyone's seen, then crashed 60% on a cancer signal Adam May argues is statistical noise. We dig into whether $ABVX is now a mispriced takeout: the maintenance efficacy that beat Rinvoq, how the scary "seven cancer cases" collapse to two, the blackbox question, the Crohn's skew, and the part two safety data due within weeks. Then a quick look at Nectar (NKTR), its alopecia areata data, and the Eli Lilly lawsuit. This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense, and specifically Andrew's upcoming AI webinar with them: breaking down the modern AI stack for investors with Dave Wang (Wall Street Prompts) and Ben Collins (AlphaSense). Goes live June 25. Register here. Chapters: 00:00 Intro and disclosure (long ABVX and NKTR) 01:03 Sponsor: AlphaSense AI webinar for investors 02:33 The biotech "GOAT" returns 03:33 Abivax setup: induction vs maintenance, the stakes 06:38 The bar: clinical remission and Rinvoq 10:14 Blowout maintenance data, and endoscopic remission that…

Amadeus $AMS is down roughly 25% because the market lumped it in with the SaaS names AI is supposed to gut. Team Amadeus, Pershing Square Challenge finalists, argue it's the opposite: a deterministic, mission-critical monopoly that AI makes more valuable, not less. We dig into the 50-year-old systems that planes literally can't take off without, why the GDS is the wrong job for an LLM, the Sabre and Constellation Software angle, and what the stock is actually worth. Full pitch deck (~75 pages): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5bwef8mz2kplx2sub598w/PSC_AMS_LONG_vSent.pdf?rlkey=x5g0v7t1qk8hpg00ewix95hn3&st=rq9nzl4h&dl=0 This episode is brought to you by Trata. Trata is two investors who get on an anonymized call and talk through the real issues in a stock, bull-to-bull, bear-to-bear, or just getting up to speed. If you like this podcast, you'll like Trata. Check it out at trata.com Chapters: 00:00 Why Amadeus landed on my radar 01:00 Sponsor: Trata 02:39 Meet Team Amadeus (Pershing Square Challenge finalists)…

A market that refuses to go down, AI coming for the investor's job, and MicroStrategy quietly becoming the entire preferred-equity market. Andrew's monthly ramble across five things he can't stop thinking about: stretched memory valuations, a hyper-concentrated tape, mental flexibility, and the cycle nobody believes can break. This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai. Modern financial data for global equities, with a self-serve API that plugs fundamentals and prices straight into your LLM and updates within minutes of earnings, not days. Get 15% off at https://fiscal.ai/yav Chapters: 00:00 Five things I'm rambling on this month 01:58 Sponsor: Fiscal.ai 03:16 "We'll never have problems again": a market that won't quit 04:56 Energy and oil: the worries the market keeps shrugging off 06:00 AI, space plays, and stretched memory valuations 09:54 Five stocks, half the S&P's gains 10:51 Is AI coming for the investor's job? 13:08 The counterpoint: 200-IQ machines and more fragile markets 16:10 Mental flexibility: why…

Celsius trades at ~20x earnings while growing ~18% a year, cheaper than Monster (~34x) and even Coke (~25x) despite faster growth. The Pershing Square Challenge third-place team makes the long case for $CELH: the market is sleeping on the Alani Nu acquisition, and their 500-person proprietary survey says the brand loyalty is real. Andrew pushes back hard on the Costco/Kirkland private-label threat, the heavy reliance on Pepsi distribution, and whether energy drinks are just the next "protein" fad waiting to be disrupted. CELH pitch deck: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rsyotzf7g2efkj9rfmg23/AHHk4_h_6CU12R-dTrAOtH4?rlkey=664lkpggv77rwkzh3rh78826q&e=2&st=0s4tiwjy&dl=0 This episode is sponsored by Trata. Trata is buy-siders interviewing each other; it is the fastest way I know to ramp up on a name. See a sample here: https://www.trata.com/celh Chapters: 0:00 Why energy drinks (and Celsius) are a passion 1:13 Sponsor: Trata 2:46 Meet team Celsius, third place at the Pershing Square Challenge 4:23 Why they picked…

Team Baker Hughes, the second-place finishers in the 2026 Pershing Square Challenge, discuss their Baker Hughes thesis and why they believe the market hasn't fully appreciated the company's evolution from a cyclical oil field services business. They discuss how the long runway for the IET business, and they back their thesis up with 30+ expert calls, a trip to the Western Turbine Users conference, and a sum-of-the-parts case that leans on growth, not multiple expansion. See the team's full pitch deck here This episode is sponsored by Trata. Check them out at https://www.trata.com Chapters 0:00 Intro and sponsor 2:21 Meet Team Baker Hughes 4:39 Why they backed into Baker Hughes 6:56 Watching the stock run from $45 to $65 mid-pitch 7:21 The differentiated work: 30+ expert calls and the turbine conference 8:27 The two businesses: oil field services vs. industrial energy technology 10:10 What the market is missing on the IET transformation 12:56 Is this just another cycle? The chart hit $65 three times 13:59 Why…

The winners of the Pershing Square Challenge 2026 discuss their Doordash pitch, including why the growth story still has room to run (and the 90 primary research calls they made to back up that call). We get into durable US restaurant growth, why new verticals and international could inflect to profitability earlier than the street models, the underappreciated opex leverage, their proprietary Wolt case study, the Tony Xu bet, and why they think the Citrini AI-agent thesis on DoorDash is overblown. This episode is sponsored by Trata. Check out their DASH transcript at https://www.trata.com/dash Team DASH presentation: ZK's LinkedIn Aaron's LinkedIn Elliot's LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 The Pershing Square Challenge and team DoorDash 01:14 Sponsor: Trata 02:50 Meet the team: ZK, Elliot, and Aaron 05:40 Why they picked DoorDash out of the screen 10:10 The bull case in three parts 11:20 US restaurant growth: still the middle innings? 13:20 Demographics as a tailwind 17:50 Order frequency and the China comp 21:00…

James Elbaor of Marlton makes the case that $PSUS will trade at a premium to NAV instead of the typical closed-end fund discount and that $PS will ultimately trade at a premium multiple to peers like Blackstone, KKR, Apollo and Carlyle given its lean team and advantaged fee structure. We push on every part of that, including whether Ackman's portfolio is just an expensive S&P hug, why London still doesn't fully credit him, and whether Spark gives Pershing a real path into Universal Music Group. Sponsor: Fiscal.ai. Real-time fundamental data for global equities, plus one of the leading data connectors for Claude and ChatGPT. Get 15% off at fiscal.ai/yav Chapters: 0:00 Intro and the divergent thesis 1:05 Sponsor: Fiscal.ai 2:20 Marlton's lens on closed-end funds and UK trusts 5:00 $PSUS: scale, structure, why it's already the largest US equity CEF 7:30 The case for a premium to NAV instead of a 15 to 20% discount 12:30 $PSUS vs $PSH London: who can own what, and why it matters 15:20 The 40-Act book and…

Driven Brands ($DRVN) puked on a February accounting restatement. Kyle Mowery (GrizzlyRock Capital) walks through why Take 5 remains a crown jewel and could be worth the entire EV of the company (making the franchise and autoglass businesses a free option). We also dig into how the April and May 8-Ks took the scary left-tail risks off the table, why Roark Capital (65% owner) might run a sale process later this year, and the bear case (corporate cost bloat, weakness in the non-Take-5 brands). disclaimer: Andrew is long DRVN Kyle's late 2024 DRVN podcast: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/grizzlyrock-capitals-kyle-mowery?utm_source=publication-search [00:00:00] Intro and disclosures [00:03:23] What is Driven Brands today [00:05:14] Why the car wash divestiture sold so cheap [00:09:19] Why Take 5 is the crown jewel [00:11:15] EV risk and the US ICE car park [00:13:21] Franchisee demand and unit growth [00:15:31] Take 5 vs. Valvoline[00:18:13] The addbacks problem [00:20:57] Inside the accounting restatement…

Rich Howe of Stock Spin-Off Investing makes the bull case for Liberty Global ($LBTYK): cheap on a sum-of-the-parts, an upcoming Ziggo spin to crystallize value, and a hidden ventures portfolio. Andrew pushes back hard on Malone, Fries, and Liberty's long history of value that never quite shows up. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Liberty Global thesis 01:44 Sponsor: AlphaSense earnings season 04:49 Rich's bull case for $LBTYK 07:46 Andrew on management credibility 09:05 Why a spin can unlock value 11:57 Buybacks: are they actually working? 15:19 Debt structure and the deleveraging path 17:14 Operational deterioration risk 19:52 Ziggo's subscriber losses 24:09 Malone and Fries: the track record 27:46 The Liberty Global board problem 31:22 The growth investment portfolio 32:59 Why Rich haircuts the portfolio 36:43 Formula E and venture exposure 38:35 The empire-building risk 40:55 Virgin Media O2 restructuring 42:11 Other spin-off setups worth a look 43:40 Ziff Davis sum-of-the-parts 46:52 Andrew on distressed…

Stevanato (STVN) makes the glass vials and pre-filled syringes that GLP-1 drugs ship in. The stock has sold off on fears that oral GLP-1s replace injectables, but Aurelian Research's Leo Trudel argues that's a misread: biologics demand keeps growing, the mix is shifting toward higher-margin "high-value solutions," and switching costs in regulated drug delivery are real. We dig into the bull case, the oral-vs-injectable debate, capacity and oversupply risk, capital allocation, regulatory lock-in, and what would change Leo's view. [00:00:00] Podcast intro and guest welcome [00:03:08] Stevanato's business model: vials, syringes, high-value solutions[ 00:03:51] COVID boom and the destocking cycle [00:06:39] Why the stock sold off and what it implies [00:07:34] Market expectations vs. reality [00:11:55] Margin expansion from mix shift [00:14:40] Oral vs. injectable GLP-1s: the real debate [00:17:30] Why oral and injectable aren't interchangeable [00:19:44] Capacity additions and oversupply risk [00:21:00]…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker speaks with Deiya Pernas of Pernas Research about Sprout Social (SPT) and the broader SaaS selloff. They examine the company’s platform, competitive positioning, and whether the market is mispricing its long-term potential. The discussion covers API complexity, integrations, AI risks, and shifting perceptions across SaaS. They also address valuation, stock-based compensation concerns, and possible catalysts including governance changes or acquisition interest. The conversation closes with a wider look at the so-called SaaS apocalypse and where opportunities may exist. ____________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Introduction and guest overview [00:03:59] Sprout Social business model explained [00:05:38] Market mispricing and SaaS selloff [00:09:53] Fundamentals versus market perception debate [00:12:05] SaaS valuation reset discussion [00:13:45] Platform capabilities and customer usage[00:15:16] API complexity and…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker is joined by returning guest Chad Garcia to discuss LandBridge and the broader Permian Basin ecosystem. Chad outlines how land-based royalty models differ from traditional energy investments, highlighting surface rights, produced water, and infrastructure as key drivers. The conversation covers LandBridge’s growth through pore space expansion, strategic land acquisitions, and its relationship with WaterBridge. They also examine valuation differences versus peers like TPL, the role of data centers in West Texas, and why the market may be underestimating future cash flow. The episode concludes with an update on Secure Energy’s acquisition and its implications for the waste infrastructure thesis. ____________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Introduction and Chad Garcia returns [00:04:07] LandBridge overview and investment thesis [00:05:26] History of land royalty businesses [00:08:57] TPL business model breakdown…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker speaks with Marcelo Lima of Heller House Capital about the "SaaSpocalypse". Marcelo shares his perspective from years of following software companies, arguing that fears around AI disrupting SaaS are overblown. They examine whether AI tools threaten incumbents like Salesforce or instead strengthen them through faster product development. The discussion covers valuation compression, enterprise software moats, customer behavior shifts, and the role of AI as infrastructure. Andrew also raises concerns about disruption risks, insider signals, and workforce changes, leading to a debate on whether this moment represents risk or opportunity. Marcelo's memos on software Memo 1: https://mailchi.mp/hellerhs/opportunities-in-software Memo 2: https://mailchi.mp/hellerhs/opportunities-in-software-part-ii _________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Introduction and SaaS apocalypse topic [00:02:24] Disclaimer and setup discussion…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker speaks with Tolu Bukola from Aganju Capital about DraftKings and the growing threat from prediction markets. Tolu explains DraftKings’ business model, highlighting both sports betting and the expanding iGaming segment. The discussion focuses heavily on regulatory risks, including how prediction markets operate and why they may face legal challenges. They examine potential outcomes if regulation changes, how market share could shift, and what that means for DraftKings’ long-term economics. The episode also covers valuation perspectives and the role of government intervention in shaping the industry’s future. You can see Tolu's DKNG write up here ___________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Podcast introduction and guest overview [00:00:33] DraftKings and prediction markets focus [00:03:21] DraftKings business and history explained [00:05:26] Prediction markets model and mechanics [00:07:33] Market reaction and investor behavior…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker shares his April monthly ramblings, covering a range of investing topics top of mind. He examines the recent selloff in SaaS companies and why they may not be as attractive as they appear. Andrew explores the idea of hedging against AI disruption using large-cap tech options, while also questioning how AI and pattern recognition could reshape investing. He reflects on the balance between experience and laziness in decision-making and closes with a personal discussion on the mental challenges of missing major investment opportunities. Check out fiscal.ai here: fiscal.ai/?via=yav ______________________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Podcast introduction and monthly ramblings [00:01:02] Call for ratings and subscriptions [00:01:37] Sponsor discussion and product usage [00:02:40] Overview of April discussion topics [00:04:35] SaaS selloff and valuation concerns [00:07:10] AI impact on SaaS demand [00:08:03] Software…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker speaks with Jingshu Zhang from Guinea Value about Fiserv (FISV) and the broader payments sector. They examine the recent drawdown across payment companies, addressing concerns around AI disruption, regulation, and macro pressures. Jingshu outlines Fiserv’s business structure across financial institutions and merchant solutions, while detailing the impact of leadership changes and operational missteps under prior management. The discussion highlights the ongoing strategic reset, new executive hires from JPMorgan, and extensive on-the-ground research into Clover’s positioning. They also debate capital allocation, insider alignment, activist involvement, and valuation, exploring whether Fiserv represents a turnaround opportunity or a declining legacy asset. See Shu's substack here: https://jingshu.substack.com/ See Trata's FISV transcript here: https://www.trata.com/fisv ___________________________________________________________ [00:00:00]…

Sean Emory of Avory & Co analyzes Clear Security, a biometric identity platform operating in airports nationwide. They examine the company’s subscription model, competitive positioning against TSA and airlines, and the impact of recent TSA disruptions on demand. The discussion covers Clear’s pricing power, partnerships with credit card providers like Amex, and the durability of its airport footprint. Sean also outlines a developing enterprise identity segment and its potential role in future growth. The conversation addresses valuation, risks, and whether Clear’s moat can sustain long-term returns. ___________________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Andrew introduces Clear Security debate [00:03:54] Clear explained: biometric airport platform [00:07:11] Growth limits and line congestion[ 00:10:00] TSA PreCheck economics and strategy [00:14:04] Competition from TSA and airlines [00:18:15] Airport partnerships and revenue sharing [00:23:12] Market missing enterprise identity…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker is joined by Andy Summers, CIO of Summers Value, to discuss Theravance (TBPH; disclosure: long). Both share their perspectives as shareholders while examining the company’s setup following a failed Phase 3 trial. They break down Theravance’s remaining asset, the COPD drug Yupelri, and its long-term royalty potential. The discussion covers the company’s balance sheet strength, cost reductions, and ongoing strategic review process. Andy outlines valuation assumptions, including U.S. royalties, China opportunity, and tax attributes, while also assessing potential buyers and deal dynamics. They also explore downside scenarios if a sale does not occur and why the situation presents an asymmetric risk-reward profile. ___________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Podcast introduction and sponsor mention [00:02:41] Overview of Theravance business model [00:05:02] Phase three failure stock decline [00:06:56] Activist involvement and…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker is joined by Roderick van Zuylen of Nightwatch to analyze Marex (MRX), a futures commission merchant operating in a consolidated financial infrastructure space. Roderick explains how Marex facilitates derivatives trading for clients like airlines and hedge funds, while benefiting from rising trading volumes and industry consolidation. The discussion covers Marex’s strong returns on equity, acquisition-driven growth strategy, and competitive positioning versus peers like StoneX. They also address risks, including credit exposure, interest rate sensitivity, and a recent short report. The episode highlights why Marex may continue compounding earnings through both organic and inorganic growth. Roderick's twitter: roojoo3 Night Watch's website: NightWatchIM.com ______________________________________________ [00:00:00] Podcast introduction and guest overview [00:03:56] What Marex actually does [00:05:05] Industry consolidation and competitors…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker returns with his monthly solo ramblings covering several themes shaping current markets. He starts by discussing recent volatility and why markets feel inconsistent despite relatively modest index declines. Andrew then explores how long-term tailwinds in software and growth investing may have influenced investor track records over the past decade. He also revisits his three-year rule for evaluating stagnant investments, examining its limitations in cyclical sectors. The episode closes with a discussion on position sizing, emphasizing the need to re-underwrite positions after large price moves and avoid inertia when fundamentals change. ________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Introduction and volatile market overview [00:00:47] Software investing and track record concerns [00:01:40] Three-year rule and exceptions [00:01:56] Position sizing after major moves [00:05:08] Markets feel inconsistent and strange [00:08:04]…

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker speaks with Adam May, a physician, dermatologist, and biotech investor, about how he built an edge in small- and mid-cap biotech. Adam walks through his path from medical school investing to launching a small biotech fund during the 2021 peak, then explains how he sources ideas, studies trial data, and looks for situations where the market is missing something important. The conversation focuses on NKTR and ABVX, including trial design, maintenance data, market skepticism, buyout setups, and how Adam thinks about risk, beta, and asymmetric upside in biotech. __________________________________________________________ [00:00:00] Andrew introduces Adam [00:02:44] Adam’s biotech investing background [00:07:16] Alpha versus biotech beta [00:09:51] Finding edge in biotech [00:17:01] How Adam sources ideas [00:20:49] Handling concentrated biotech positions [00:22:59] Biotech drawdown created opportunities [00:24:49] NKTR thesis and setup [00:27:53]…