Hated Moats Investor Profile picture
Identifying hated moats | I buy companies when the market panics | Veteran commodity trader turned contrarian investor | Not advice | See my deep dives here 👇
Nov 4, 2025 10 tweets 6 min read
🧵A company owning 1,000+ niche leaders down -30% from ATH.

Market is afraid of AI disruption in Constellation Software $CSU.TO (hi, $ADBE).

Our analysis says moat is intact & stock is mispriced.

Here is why the market is, yet again, wrong and why I bought.👇🧵

Part 1/3. Image 2/ Overview, Positioning and Competitive Moat

The company buys, builds and runs mission critical vertical market software (VMS) that lives deep inside customer workflows.

Think 1,000+ largely autonomous business units across micro niches. Products are specialised and deeply integrated, which creates high switching costs and very sticky customers.

Why this matters

• Recurring revenue around 74%
• Diversified across hundreds of end markets
• Retention and pricing power that show up year after year.

Why sellers pick $CSU.TO

• Buyer of choice reputation among founder led VMS
• Disciplined, IRR driven underwriting
• Decentralised model where acquired businesses keep their own management and customer decisions close to the ground, while HQ sets capital allocation rules and culture.

The Moat

The moat is represented by sticky vertical solutions plus a repeatable capital allocation playbook. The result is a resilient compounding machine that keeps getting a little better and a little bigger every year.Image
Oct 21, 2025 12 tweets 10 min read
Priced for failure, paying 7% to wait. 🧵

Everyone talks about $NVO and $LLY minting money from the GLP-1 boom.

But there’s one player that might be the most mispriced Big Pharma stock today.

Hated Moat: Value trap or comeback story?

Here’s our deep dive on $PFE, Part 1🧵👇 Image 2/ Overview, Positioning and Competitive Moat

So, what is the core $PFE business today?

It's a streamlined, pure-play innovative pharma giant. After spinning off its legacy drugs, the company is now 100% focused on developing and acquiring new, high-margin patented medicines.

Its competitive moat is powerful, resting on three key pillars:

1. A Patent-Protected Portfolio
This grants temporary monopoly pricing on blockbuster drugs, generating the immense cash flow Pfizer is known for.

2. R&D & Acquisition Firepower
With billions in annual R&D spend and the cash to acquire promising biotechs, it has a massive engine for replenishing its pipeline.

3. Unmatched Global Scale
Its worldwide salesforce, manufacturing network, and regulatory relationships create a barrier to entry that smaller competitors simply cannot match.

But every pharma moat has a built-in vulnerability, which is, simply, put, a ticking clock.

This brings us to the infamous "Patent Cliff."

This is the core of the bear thesis. Between ~2027-2029, a wave of its biggest blockbusters (including titans like Eliquis, Ibrance, and Xtandi) will lose their exclusivity and face generic competition.

This looming revenue gap is the single biggest source of investor pessimism and the ultimate test of Pfizer's moat.Image
Oct 2, 2025 13 tweets 10 min read
🧵Deep Dive: PayPal ( $PYPL)

Priced like a melting ice cube. As if growth is over forever.

I just bought.

Here’s why the bear narrative for PayPal is wrong. 👇

A Thread. 🧵 Image 2/ Overview, Positioning and Competitive Moat

PayPal ( $PYPL) is a dominant force in global digital payments, operating a two-sided platform with 438M accounts across 200+ markets.

Its primary competitive moat is built on immense network scale and brand trust, with its iconic "branded" checkout button.

However, this moat is under significant pressure, leading to negative market sentiment. In the "unbranded" processing segment, aggressive competitors like Stripe and Adyen are winning over large enterprises and tech companies with developer-centric APIs and competitive pricing.

Big Tech is encroaching with mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. At the same time, Visa and Mastercard are leveraging their network position to launch their own one-click checkout solutions.

In response, new CEO Alex Chriss is steering PayPal to evolve from a pure payments provider into a comprehensive "commerce platform." This strategy includes integrating services like Venmo and BNPL more deeply, leveraging AI for personalisation and fraud prevention, and launching ambitious projects like "PayPal World" to interconnect global wallets.

Successful execution is critical to fend off these multi-front threats and reinforce its durable, yet challenged, leadership position.Image
Sep 24, 2025 5 tweets 3 min read
Pfizer $PFE joins the obesity drug race.

What does this actually mean for Novo Nordisk $NVO and Eli Lilly $LLY? 🧵👇 Image 2/ The Deal

Pfizer will acquire Metsera for $4.9B cash ($47.50/sh) plus a CVR up to $22.50/sh (total headline up to ~$7.3B), aiming to close Q4 2025.

The portfolio includes MET-097i (ultra-long-acting GLP-1, weekly & monthly, Phase 2), MET-233i (amylin, monthly, Phase 1, including combo with 097i), two oral GLP-1s nearing the clinic, and preclinical hormone programs.Image
Sep 23, 2025 10 tweets 7 min read
How a routine ~$250 fee could cost $NVO a billion-dollar moat.

Novo lost its Canadian semaglutide patent back in 2019 after missing not one, but two chances to pay a basic fee.

An absurd blunder with potentially serious ramifications. So, what happened?

The full story 🧵👇 Image 2/ What actually happened?

Semaglutide’s core Canadian patent was filed in 2006 and (if fully maintained) it would have run to March 20, 2026.

Canada requires annual maintenance fees (c. CAD $250) for this. Miss a year, and you’re given a grace period with a late fee (c. $450) to fix it.

According to the public record timeline, 2019’s fee wasn’t paid, and the grace year also passed. Now, this wasn’t a trial loss, bad results or invalidation. It was a purely administrative issue.

Once the lapse became final, Canada’s no-revival rule slammed shut the door on restoring the patent.Image
Sep 19, 2025 9 tweets 7 min read
🧵 ASML and Peter Lynch style approach.

Why Is $ASML the Greatest Moat on Planet?

I'm a huge fan of Peter Lynch and his "invest in what you understand" approach.

So, let's answer some questions that will make it clearer what $ASML actually does and why it is so special. 👇🧵Image 2/ What Is Lithography (in chip-making)?

Imagine trying to carve tiny, intricate patterns (smaller than a virus!) onto a silicon wafer. These patterns form transistors, the basic building blocks of chips.

Lithography = the “printing press” of chipmaking.

It uses light to "draw" the circuits onto a silicon wafer.

Think of it like projecting blueprints onto a photosensitive surface.

Wherever light hits, chemicals change. This creates microscopic patterns.

Repeat this dozens to over a hundred of times, layer by layer, to build a chip.

So, just like a printing press for books, lithography is a chip factory's central tool. $ASMLImage
Sep 12, 2025 10 tweets 5 min read
I just read all 25 pages of Adobe's ( $ADBE) Q3 FY25 Earnings Call so you don't have to.

The results are a masterclass in how a legacy giant can dominate the AI era.

The narrative that AI startups would kill Adobe is officially dead.

Here are the 8 key takeaways: 🧵👇 Image 2/The Headline

First, the headline numbers. $ADBE crushed it.

Record Revenue: $5.99B (10% YoY)

EPS Beat: $5.31 (14% YoY)

Raised full-year guidance.

They're not just surviving AI. The company is thriving WITH AI. But the "how" is the real story.Image
Sep 3, 2025 14 tweets 9 min read
🧵 Deep Dive: dLocal ( $DLO)

What if a company was attacked by short-sellers and left for dead, yet was still growing 50% YoY with clients like Amazon & Microsoft?

That's the story of dLocal ( $DLO), a company that the market loves to hate.

Here's what the bears are missing. 👇 🧵Image 2/ Overview & Competitive Moat

What does $DLO actually do?

It's the payments infrastructure for global giants like Amazon & Microsoft, providing a single API to operate in 40+ emerging markets across Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

This creates a powerful moat built on network effects, high switching costs for its enterprise clients, and a deep layer of hard-to-replicate local licensing.

Its advantage is its unique focus. $DLO offers deeper hyper-local solutions than the global giants, and broader global coverage than regional specialists, providing one unified platform for all emerging markets.Image
Sep 1, 2025 5 tweets 2 min read
🚨🧵 Novo News

$NVO dropped "breaking" news. As an MD, PhD, I feel the need to dissect this from objective/scientific point of view, cut through the noise & explain why it's not as breaking as it might seem.

Novo's STEER study shows Wegovy slashed the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death by 57% compared to Lilly's tirzepatide.

So, is this the knockout punch for $LLY? Let's look closer in a short thread. 🧵👇Image 2/ The new STEER study is a real-world evidence (RWE) analysis comparing Wegovy and tirzepatide in patients with obesity and established cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Key claims:
• 57% lower MACE risk for on-treatment Wegovy users.
• 29% lower MACE risk for all Wegovy users.

This adds to $NVO's landmark SELECT trial, which gave Wegovy its official CV risk reduction label.
Aug 20, 2025 8 tweets 3 min read
🧵These are several bearish takes on $ASML, albeit in reality, known facts differ.

Let's dissect this, fact-check it and correct it 👇🧵:

1/“ASML is a one-trick pony.”

No, it's not. ASML sells EUV (the "pony" the user most likely meant), and then... a very large DUV portfolio and metrology/inspection systems plus computational-lithography software and a multibillion-euro services/field-options business. For reference, in 2023 ASML shipped 396 DUV systems and recognised €5.6B of service revenue alone. That does not sound like "one-trick pony" to me. 2/ “China invested $40B in EUV alone.”

No, it didn't. That $40–48B figure you refer to is China’s third 'Big Fund' for the entire semiconductor sector, not EUV specifically. The fund’s stated aims include fabs, equipment, materials,... That's broad industry support, not a ring-fenced EUV program.
Aug 19, 2025 12 tweets 9 min read
🧵Deep Dive on the most important company you might have never heard of.

Every iPhone, every NVIDIA GPU, every AI model… they all, in a way, pay a toll to this company.

A Dutch giant with an overwhelming monopoly on the machines that print the world’s most advanced chips.

That company is $ASML.

And after a 33% pullback from its highs, an opportunity for HatedMoats has emerged.

Here we go!🧵👇Image 2/ Overview

The foundation of $ASML's competitive advantage is its technological dominance in photolithography.

It is the sole global provider of EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) systems. These are extraordinarily complex machines required for manufacturing the most advanced logic chips.

The barriers to entry are immense. Each EUV tool costs over $150M and is the result of decades of cumulative R&D and deep integration with critical single-source suppliers like Zeiss for optics.

Competitors like Nikon and Canon basically tried... And gave up. They effectively abandoned the EUV race years ago due to this complexity. This has resulted in a world-class moat, defined by:

• High switching costs for customers
• Network effects from a massive installed base
• A scale and R&D advantage that is nearly impossible to replicateImage
Aug 14, 2025 13 tweets 10 min read
🧵My Deep Dive on $NVO. As viewed by an MD investor.

The most misunderstood mega-cap of 2025. Marked down ~35% after a reset narrative, then left trading at ~14× while its only true rival, $LLY, sits at ~40×. Same secular engine. Similar growth drivers.

Novo became a hated moat. And that's where we pay attention. 🧵

You see, the moat didn’t crack. The story did. 👇Image The Inception of a Hated Moat

For 2 years, Novo was the market darling. A seemingly bulletproof company riding the tailwinds of a true medical game-changer, enjoying a cultural halo and the rare economics of a temporary monopoly.

Then, a perfect storm of negative catalysts hit all at once: a guidance reset, new CEO, persistent U.S. noise around compounded GLP-1s, and a hard-charging competitor tightening the screws. This culminated in a historic ~20% single-day drop in July 2025, the company's worst ever.

For most investors, the party was over. But this is the classic mistake of confusing the end of a single, dramatic episode for the end of the entire series. This is precisely how a beloved company becomes a "hated moat", and where the real story often begins.Image
Jul 30, 2025 10 tweets 3 min read
🚨Yesterday was a day of reckoning for $UNH.

The Q2 earnings report was a full-throated confession of failures, and the stock plunged.

The market sees a disaster. But for long-term investors, is this a moment of peak pessimism and rare opportunity?

🧵A thread (1/10) 👇 Image (2/10)

Let's start with the confession.

CEO Stephen Hemsley didn't spin. He admitted to "pricing and operational mistakes" and set a tone of "change and reform."

This candor is rare on such a big stage, and it was the necessary first step in any real turnaround.