ANALYZE VALUATION

“The FHFA, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, officially approved Vantage Score 4 as an alternative scoring model for those government-backed loans. And Vantage Score is owned jointly by the three major credit bureaus. This broke FICO's exclusive mandate for the first time in the company's history. So it was a big deal.”

“For the first time in Nintendo's history, a new console didn't mean that Nintendo had to rebuild its customer base. The Switch 2 is the first console that embraced an ecosystem-like approach. And so one major difference being backward compatibility, which means that a new console could play games from older console generations. That is just a huge value add and really simplifies things.”

“They're only guiding for minimal revenue growth in 2026, under 5%, no margin expansion. This, they say, is temporary. They're doing model changeovers, but look, the Ferrari model is you got a huge waiting list. Just sell the cars, just jack up prices. I don't get why it's working. I think I still like this company, but it's still trading at more than 30 times expected earnings.”

“Once you own the rights to a song, you essentially own a perpetual royalty stream with almost zero marginal cost of production. You don't need to manufacture anything. You don't need to run servers. You don't need to reprint the music every single time that somebody plays it. And that's why their free cash flow conversion is so astronomically high—north of 80% of operating profit converts to cash flow.”

“One of the craziest changes when looking at Reddit has just been the inflection and the margins of the business. Net income margins in 2024 were negative 37%, and by 2025, a year later, they were 24% in the positive direction. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a margin turnaround for a company in one year or two years, even if some of that negative 2024 number is distorted by one-time IPO costs.”

“For the first time in Nintendo's history, a new console didn't mean that Nintendo had to rebuild its customer base. The Switch 2 is the first console that embraced an ecosystem-like approach. And so one major difference being backward compatibility, which means that a new console could play games from older console generations. That is just a huge value add and really simplifies things.”

“I saw operating margin for the quarter 15.5%. That's versus 11.2% a year ago. And so I think we had some questions really early on in the Spotify story as to exactly how quickly they could get to profitability and how profitable the company could be given the nature of the relationships with publishers and just the music business in general. You know, Travis, I just realized they passed a $2 price increase on the family plan... I'm happily, happily paying.”

“The market cap of Exor itself is only 13 billion euros. So that means you're buying those assets at a 60% discount to what they're actually worth on paper in the public markets. And then everything else—CNH, Stellantis, Phillips, they also have stakes in Juventus, the football club, and Christian Louboutin, as well as the business magazine, The Economist—you get all of those for free more or less.”

“The language we had been talking, we've been using over the last couple of years with Cloudflare, and with a number of enterprise software type companies, the elongated sales cycle, sort of the trepidation of their customers to commit to spending, those days seemed to be well past us. It was another very solid report. They grew revenue 34% for the quarter, well exceeding their own guidance, guiding for another tremendous year, 28% revenue growth.”

“Every time a major city announced restrictions, which for example happened in New York City, but also in Barcelona, it kind of reminded investors that Airbnb's supply is ultimately dependent on regulatory tolerance. And that basically creates this uncertainty premium that a business like booking.com, which aggregate hotels that are obviously already legally operating, just doesn't carry to the same degree.”

“Every time a major city announced restrictions, which for example happened in New York City, but also in Barcelona, it kind of reminded investors that Airbnb's supply is ultimately dependent on regulatory tolerance. And that basically creates this uncertainty premium that a business like booking.com, which aggregate hotels that are obviously already legally operating, just doesn't carry to the same degree.”

“Trade Desk on the other hand has zero inventory. So they exclusively represent the buyer, which means that their incentive is entirely aligned with getting the advertiser the best possible outcome. And that neutrality is only much a structural advantage that the walled gardens, which is a term for these closed ad ecosystems like Google, like Amazon or Meta, generally can't replicate without actually dismantling their own business models.”

“The market cap of Exor itself is only 13 billion euros. So that means you're buying those assets at a 60% discount to what they're actually worth on paper in the public markets. And then everything else—CNH, Stellantis, Phillips, they also have stakes in Juventus, the football club, and Christian Louboutin, as well as the business magazine, The Economist—you get all of those for free more or less.”

“Once you own the rights to a song, you essentially own a perpetual royalty stream with almost zero marginal cost of production. You don't need to manufacture anything. You don't need to run servers. You don't need to reprint the music every single time that somebody plays it. And that's why their free cash flow conversion is so astronomically high—north of 80% of operating profit converts to cash flow.”

“One of the craziest changes when looking at Reddit has just been the inflection and the margins of the business. Net income margins in 2024 were negative 37%, and by 2025, a year later, they were 24% in the positive direction. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a margin turnaround for a company in one year or two years, even if some of that negative 2024 number is distorted by one-time IPO costs.”

“The FHFA, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, officially approved Vantage Score 4 as an alternative scoring model for those government-backed loans. And Vantage Score is owned jointly by the three major credit bureaus. This broke FICO's exclusive mandate for the first time in the company's history. So it was a big deal.”

“I think one of the question marks I have with Shopify, it's not really specific to their business, but we just hear more and more talk about this agentic commerce, right? And exactly what that means. And so I think we're going to see how that opportunity and agentic commerce shapes up over the coming quarters and years. They certainly discussed their AI investments on the call. They're very excited with the opportunities, the efficiencies, helping their merchants run better businesses.”

“I call them a conglomerate of 100 small monopolies because what they do is they require businesses in the aerospace industry. The FAA or its international equivalents, they certify specific parts from specific manufacturers, and then once your part is on that design, it has to stay on that design. You cannot substitute it out even if a competitor builds something functionally identical.”

“I call them a conglomerate of 100 small monopolies because what they do is they require businesses in the aerospace industry. The FAA or its international equivalents, they certify specific parts from specific manufacturers, and then once your part is on that design, it has to stay on that design. You cannot substitute it out even if a competitor builds something functionally identical.”

“Trade Desk on the other hand has zero inventory. So they exclusively represent the buyer, which means that their incentive is entirely aligned with getting the advertiser the best possible outcome. And that neutrality is only much a structural advantage that the walled gardens, which is a term for these closed ad ecosystems like Google, like Amazon or Meta, generally can't replicate without actually dismantling their own business models.”

“Increasingly, when I look at Airbnb, I see Marriott. I see a mature lodging business, asset light, that can outperform but is not going to be a high-growth stock. I've kind of given up on experiences as kind of a new rocket ship. I think now we're just kind of waking up to this is more of a lodging company than it is a tech company, maybe?”