Looking for investments to sleep well. Mostly Music, Tech, Financials & Luxury. Musician and engineer. Opinions my own, please see disclaimers on Substack.
I'm back! New piece published.
Rolex is counterintuitively one of the best known brands in the world, but one of the least known businesses. It can teach us what it takes to be a true luxury brand.
This was incredibly fun to research.
I hope you enjoy!
A big part of becoming a better investor is not very intuitive: Studying non-investing related fields like psychology, history, physics, complex adaptive systems, non-linearity, probability and statistics.
Here are my 10 favorite non-investing investing books📚
Thread 🧵👇
Investor type based on the watch you wear:
Seiko: Value
Grand Seiko: GARP
Tudor: Quality
Rolex: Compounder Bro
Casio: Deep value
Apple Watch: just buys tech
Audemars Piguet: 13F copycat
Patek Philippe: never sell
Hublot: Meme stonk
Richard Mille: YOLO
Two years ago from today, I left JPMorgan and emailed Jamie on my last day.
Haters will say it was his secretary responding, but my gut says it’s legit😅
Buffett originally offered $850 for $Y but said he wouldn't pay a dime to Investment Bankers; so the final price subtracts Goldman's $27mm fee (who advised Alleghany) to result in a $848.02 price per share for shareholders.
Sell-Side Equity Research gets its fair share of criticism from investors, but it’s also a good training ground where you can learn about the investment process and become a better investor.
Here are 10 things I learned during my time on the sell-side
👇🧵
Todd Combs mentioned 4 books in The Art of Investing podcast, all seem worthwhile:
-Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
-Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
-Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe
-Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen
Lots of debate around the Labels vs. $SPOT narrative in the last two days with UMG news. Also a lot of misunderstandings.
Long thread with my views and clarifications
Let’s go 💽👇🏽🎶
Why doesn’t YouTube allow all of its users to listen to videos with the app closed/phone locked?
It would instantly become the biggest audio company in the world (2.1B+ users) and change its consumer habits. If they were serious about audio, they would have done this already.
$NFLX 10-K came out and I can finally update this chart.
Produced content assets are now 55% vs 45% last year and 13% 5 yrs ago. This is content where they own the IP.
Licensed includes Netflix Originals made by other studios, which are exclusive but they don’t own, and re-runs
@ParikPatelCFA
The
@mjmauboussin
Papers.
My favorites are:
1) Managing the Man Overboard Moment
2) Calculating ROIC
3) What does Price-to-Earnings mean?
4) Measuring the Moat
5) Reflections on the 10 Attributes of Great Investors
6) Sharpening Your Forecasting Skills
Hello Twitter👋 I deeply believe in the power of this platform so I’m asking for your help
Looking for opportunities on the buyside—here’s my anonymous CV📜
I’d greatly appreciate if you can share or pass along to whoever comes to mind and hopefully I can payback in some way 🙏🏼
This Bezos quote about $AMZN also applies to investing:
“If everything you do needs to work on a 3-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a 7-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people”
One big takeaway of this slide is how weak LVMH’s watch portfolio is, which must be driving Arnault crazy.
Probably the only vertical where they don’t own any real luxury businesses.
I had no idea L'Oreal $OR had a Loyalty Share Program
Shareholders can register shares under their name, hold them for 2 years and get a 10% higher dividend (6.60 vs 6.0) It's supposed to incentivize long-term ownership.
Any other companies that do this?
$GOOG growing top-line 15-20%, high incremental margins and trading close to 20x ’22 EPS is a “don’t try to reinvent the wheel you idiot” idea
And no, I’m not adjusting for cash, SBC, losses in other bets/cloud,etc
Also buybacks are still a joke: share count down <5% since 2018
TCI (Chris Hohn) going activist on $GOOG:
“We are writing to express our view that the cost base of Alphabet is too high and management needs to take aggressive action. The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.”
Letter:
How did he do it? Focused on 5 Key Areas (from
@FoundersPodcast
):
1) Lifelong learning
2) He's rich, but was never in a hurry
3) Took care of his health, eats well and exercises
4) Good relationships, spends time with friends and family
5) Treats life like an adventure, has fun
Finally finished reading the Nick Sleep (Nomad) Letters, which are outstanding in every sense.
219 pages worth reading, 13 year track record – 18.4% net-of-fees CAGR vs. MSCI 6.5%
I also looked up the US holdings of his foundation today, no surprises…
Controversial Tweet of the Day: Berkshire should acquire Netflix.
Solves $BRK huge cash and elephant problem in a sector they understand, while $NFLX can focus on their goal without the quarterly stock market noise/volatility.
Ok logging off now, have a great weekend everybody
A few takeaways from the Morgan Stanley 7th Annual Swiss Watch report:
Polarization continued the Big 4 (Rolex, Patek, AP and Richard Mille) gaining share (+200 bps) and capturing 44% of the market (vs 36.9% in 2019)
Regardless of the view you have on $RH stock, Gary's explanation of why he bought back 17% of their shares in the quarter deserves a lot of credit.
Crazy how 99%+ companies don't think like this.
The story from the Hermès
@AcquiredFM
podcast that they hired some consultants in the 70s and they recommended that they should cut prices, increase the number of SKUs and outsource production is the most consulting thing ever
Any good pieces/podcasts on the history and success of $MNST Monster beverage?
Trying to reverse engineer how something like this happens...29% CAGR over 31 years (2400x)
I included $AAPL and $BRK for comparison, you can barely see them
After 5 years of following the story and understanding the business model, I finally fixed one my biggest thumb-sucking mistakes of omission.
Long $NFLX 📀
A simple yet powerful exercise:
If you own 5 stocks for 20 years and:
a) 1 is wiped out
b) 3 grow at the broad market-rate
c) 1 grows at 2x the market-rate
You outperform by 250bps annually and 58% total. Not very intuitive.
Lesson: long term compounding can hide mistakes.
$AAPL Q1’22—These numbers literally can’t fit in your head
-Products: $104B (+9%)
-Services: $19.5B (+24%)
-Total Rev +11%
-Gross margin 43.7%
-Op margin 33.5% (+3.5%)
-FCF $44.2 (+25%)
-$202B cash+securities,$123B in total debt
-Buybacks $20b (-20%, makes sense given valuation)
So let me get this straight:
Tomorrow at open $NFLX stock will be ~6% higher than it’s pre-pandemic price (Feb-20) but with 33% more subs and 50% higher revenues. Oh, and also *below* 2018 levels.
Mr. Market you’re a manic-depressive nut job.
Interesting recent VIC Writeup on $NTDOY by 08ird (short summary):
"Nintendo has already expanded its operating margin from ~4% in FY15 to ~35% today. Incredibly, its stock has hardly seen any multiple expansion, despite numerous value-unlocking events that have happened."
An interesting exercise, inspired by a convo with
@eboroian
How to break a DCF:
-Operating leverage
-Accelerating revenue growth
-Completely new businesses
-Tons of M&A or buybacks
-Issuing lots of debt
-Long forecast periods
-others?
More importantly: which companies do this?
Highlights from the $CSU Compensation Program, which is rare for a public company.
The objective is attracting highly skilled executives and reward and retain those who create long-term value for shareholders, but the way they do it is quite unique.
1/n
The Polarity Portfolio, according to Nick Sleep (Nomad):
“Several large, simple, high conviction holdings, and a tail of more complicated and less certain ideas (but which may have more upside)”
Top 5 holdings 50% of the portfolio, Top 10 75%, and the remaining tail is 20 names.
It’s been 8 years since $FB bought WhatsApp.
1. Why has the pace of innovation been so slow?
2. Why isn’t it being properly monetized? Can it be?
3. Are messaging apps just too hard to monetize?
4. Any tangible evidence this will change soon?
(DMs open if answer is too long)
Pretty insane that $FB capex for this year is equal to 75% the amount that $TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, will spend… $32B vs. $42B
An industrial that doesn’t get enough attention:
$AME makes electronic instruments and electromechanical devices, serial acquirer
80+ acquisitions since 2000
~100% FCF deployed to acquisitions
23% EBIT margin
19% 10yr CAGR
Net Debt/EBITDA 1.4x
~22x fwd P/FCF
ROIC 16%
ROTCE 100%
What company has (>10 years) compounded FCF per share at a far higher rate than their share price has appreciated?
h/t Locked Account (such an excellent question so I wanted to give it more visibility)
🎼Second article out now👩🏼🎤🎵 ‼️
💿 Everything you always wanted to know about Music Streaming Royalties but were afraid to ask. All in one place, like it’s being explained to a 5-year old🎙
Thank you all! If you enjoy please subscribe and share🙏🏼
One of the most interesting aspects on the online luxury industry is that $AMZN has had close to zero success in breaking in. Probably stays that way too.
One less (potentially huge) competitor.
Sat next to someone on the plane who sold his company to $BRK
Said the process is just as advertised: they leave you alone to do your thing, just send a monthly report to Buffett.
Greg was great, took his time to make sure they were comfortable. Seemed very happy with outcome.
The new $RACE CEO was surprised to learn many employees had never been inside a Ferrari, so he organized a test drive for them.
It helped bring more meaning to their jobs and appreciate all the miniscule details of the job.
One employee apparently cried during the experience.
⚠️New Substack Piece on Investing Conviction⏳
This was a difficult one. It’s such a complex yet fascinating topic that doesn’t get enough attention.
It’s also highly personal but hope you can get something out of it.
Please share if you enjoy!
“I focus on cash flow. It’s positive, and we’re not dependent on investors to fund us,” Ek says with a shrug. “We aren’t profitable yet because we keep investing. We want to keep growing because there is such a big prize at the end of the tunnel.”
$SPOT
$BRK Q3 - Under The Hood
What seems on the surface as a strong report (BRK defined earnings +41%) is weaker under the hood
Entire increase was driven by insurance (underwriting recovery+investment income from higher rates)
All other businesses were weak.
Q3 Organic revenue:
I posted the below in an investment forum where someone asked the differences between $ROP and $CSU. This is a very valid question since both acquire and manage VMS businesses.
I've followed both closely for a few years and quite a few differences come to mind.