Please read, like, and share my latest letter to $TWTR leadership:🧵👇
Find a business with a... long-lasting moat around it … protecting a terrific economic castle w/ an honest lord in charge of the castle.
-Warren Buffett 1/x getrevue.co/profile/compou…
The Moat:
Twitter’s job is to help Users find Creators, serving as a User acquisition vehicle for Creators. When done well, this happens within the platform and builds lock-in for both parties, as the challenge of recreating that connection elsewhere is not worth the switch.
2/x
Twitter's moat lives in the space and tools that strengthen the loop between Creators and Users. These one-to-one connections aggregate into many-to-many communities that feel personalized. The resultant network effect is Twitter’s core moat.
3/x
The Castle:
Owners have been patient as the platform and the team have improved. That patience is being tested - owners fronted the cost but are yet to receive commensurate benefits. Twitter is amongst the least well valued companies in its ecosystem. 4/x
Lord of the Castle:
In my last letter, I said that “intensity is the price of excellence” and asked if leadership is ready to make the hard choices that sustained excellence requires. Twitter's culture must embrace leaner, stronger, and more urgent. This requires full buy-in.
5/x
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I’ve been blessed to spend time with many of the world’s great investors.
20 years ago, I made a point to hunt down the best. Many are now popular on Fintwit - Nick Sleep, Li Lu, Chuck Akre. Others should be - Chris Hohn, Larry Robbins, and more.
For🎄: 12 lessons I learned🧵👇
1. Know Thyself
Mr. Market wants to break you.
The greats’ portfolios reflect their emotional flaws.
If you:
• Lose sleep trailing by 30 points: avoid L/S
• Can’t handle 50% drawdowns: avoid active L/O
• Succumb to self-doubt under duress: go passive
Play to your strengths.
2. Philosophize
What do you stand for?
• Chris Hohn hunts monopolies
• Chuck Akre seeks companies he never has to sell
• Julian sought to own the world’s 50 best companies and short the 50 worst
To crush it, winners narrow their focus, becoming expert at something repeatable.
A HUGE portion of the would-be “owners” of the Constitution didn’t understand they actually were would-be “donors” to an LLC - owned by 2 people - which would defacto own the artifact.
One might argue @ConstitutionDAO willfully nurtured this misunderstanding.🤔
Go read old Tweets from the promoters.
Rare was a Tweet that invited “gifts to get a governance token with no economic rights.”
Common was the “you can join us in buying the US Constitution - a once in a lifetime opportunity!”
These vague, incomplete tweets roped in massive $:
I suspect it began as a PR stunt but took on a life of its own. It’s not clear to me the organizers wanted to win - it was a terrible design to win at auction. But inertia was massive. Once $$ poured in, they had to “try.”
And at what cost: “want your $ back? Ooh - the gas fees”
Digital Bridge is finalizing a huge transformation from a stale legacy real estate biz to the best owner of digital infrastructure assets this side of $BYTE Index.
$DBRG = combo of Private Equity + Directly Held Digital Infra: data centers, fiber, towers, & more.
Led by Marc Ganzi and Ben Jenkins, $DBRG is poised to grow assets for years.
They built DBRG as an independent biz, then merged it into Colony Capital - taking over the combinedco. They sold all of CLNY's legacy real estate, positioning DBRG as THE pureplay dig infra holdco.
2/
At its core, $DBRG is a Private Equity biz, raising large PE funds that target dig infra. Key holdings incl Zayo & Vantage Data Centers. It also uses co-invest funds and bal sheet capital for large takeouts. It is expanding into other alternative investments (eg, credit & HF). 3/
Operating 214k cell towers (43k US + Canada), $AMT is the world's largest tower owner. Its revenue has grown w/ mobile data usage. As this trend persists, & w/ 5G on the horizon, AMT may grow for years to come, like other $BYTE Index members.
1/x🧵👇👇
$AMT exhibits:
• Global scale
• Stable growth
• Durable, strong cash flow
• Levered capital returns
These attractive features, coupled with secular growth trends around mobile data consumption, have helped drive a 22% CAGR over the past ten years!! (7.3x your $)
2/
Secular growth trends remain.
Recent organic rev growth has been mid-single digits and AFFO (cash flow) closer to 10%.
Rev. is primarily from LONG-term leases w/ huge mobile cos (eg, AT&T). These have inflation escalators and only a modest portion face renewal risk each yr.
With 4.1 mm unique subs (incl 3.75 mm broadband), Megacable is Mexico's #2 cableco. It's an example of a non-US $BYTE Index holding in last-mile connectivity.
High-Single Digits % Sub Growth + A Few % Price = Secular Growth near 10% p.a.
🧵👇
EBITDA margins for non-US cablecos are often higher than in the US, as the cost pressure of video is less acute.
OTOH, ongoing capital intensity also tends to be higher, esp. for EM-based cos actively doing new-builds.
Mega:
50% EBITDA Margins and 30%+ CapEx as % Revenue.
2/
Given "EM risk" & higher capital intensity, Mega trades at a large discount to US comps:
<4.5x 2021E EV/EBITDA.
US cablecos are 8-12x and often carry 4-5x in debt! Compare to Mega's Net Debt/EBITDA @ 0.6x.
When Mega slows its growth CapEx phase, might its FCF margin expand?
3/
#CotD - $EQIX
I'm writing about 5 digital infra cos in 5 days.
1: Equinix is a global Data Center leader. It epitomizes the compelling nature of digital infra, like those in the $BYTE Index.
• Huge Growing TAM
• Global
• High-Quality Assets
• Growth & Profitablty
🧵👇👇 1/x
Huge Growing TAM:
Using data requires either internet access (off-premises) or local storage (your device, local server).
Off-premises data comes from Data Centers (video, SaaS, cloud, social). EQIX is a huge Data Center owner, selling into the inexorable digitization trend. 2/
Global:
$EQIX is one of the largest Data Center cos, w/ 230 DCs globally.
It's a "1 stop shop" for enterprises that want to deploy cloud anywhere. Other DCs may focus on "hyperscale" cloud providers (FAANG). EQIX has HCPs but also a broader enterprise focus, w/ >10k clients.