3/ My own development and understanding of this - was heavily inspired by the folks at Third Point.
Back in Q2’18 – they took a $800M position in PayPal which traded at >30x forward P/E – a measure traditionally viewed as “expensive”.
4/ They wrote about PYPL in their quarterly letter, which my PM at DE Shaw then forwarded to me to have me consider.
At the time, I shied away from these "expensive" companies.
But I have huge respect Third Point - and that letter pushed me to expand my mindset.
5/ Their letter talked about how PayPal had a fantastic, predictable franchise.
While the headline multiple was expensive, the company was growing earnings ~25% annually, resulting in quite reasonable valuations looking 2 or 3 years out.
“We have also discussed with investors the insight that stocks with unprecedented growth rates have defensible valuations when one extends earnings out two to three years."
7/ cont'd... – "In a world of increasing disruption in virtually every industry, we recognize that we must continuously evolve our framework or risk being disrupted too.”
8/ Exceptional investors recognize being overly focused on 1 year forward multiples is short sighted.
Instead you must take into account current growth rate, durability of that growth, business quality, long-term structural margins, management quality, and adjacent TAMs.
9/ Grateful for mentors along the way that helped me understand these concepts and become a better investor 🙏
The letters from Buffett, Third Point, Oaktree are a treasure trove and hugely valuable - tons of gratitude and respect for what they share.
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Many investors believe they need some type of highly differentiated insight to generate great returns in the market.
This can be a source of returns, but in my view doesn’t have to be. More below 👇
1/ There are two types of key bets that growth investors make –
A) New product adoption or inflection
B) Growth durability
2/ Correctly calling new product adoption or inflection is hard. There are exceptional investors that do this well. But this often requires decades of experience and pattern matching.
Fortunately, growth durability is a (relatively) easier bet one can make. Some examples:
@CashApp has been one of the most remarkable companies in fintech and often underfollowed. Currently worth $30B+ in value, with $1.5B+ run-rate revenue. Read more below 👇
1/ Cash App launched in 2013. The service was free with virtually no monetization.
Most investors (including myself) didn’t understand what Jack Dorsey was building then.
2/ Jack saw an opportunity to democratize financial services for the underbanked. Cash App used free P2P as the flywheel to bring on consumers. They were savvy with marketing through social media, influencers, and music artists to gain virality in the early days.
@stripe is building the @amazon of payments. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture 🧐
1/ Both addressing all of commerce spend, one of the largest TAMs in the world. Levered to secular ecom growth horizontally and neither take on single vertical risk.
2/ Started by focusing on SMB merchants in a targeted way and doing this 5-10x better vs incumbents.
My thoughts on the rise of fintech giants and payment infrastructure, a thread 👇
1/ Many investors look at the $1Tn+ of value created by fintech giants – @Visa ($400B), @Mastercard ($300B), @PayPal ($200B), @Square ($65B), @stripe ($60B) and @Adyen ($55B) – and think they’ve missed the boat. In fact, the best decade is yet ahead.
2/ There are few other industries tackling at $30Tn+ global TAM with the scale, ecosystem, and network effects these businesses have. Card payments remain <50% penetrated globally, and ecom is only ~15% of spend (even post-covid).