There are some very smart Apollo longs on this site. I am not one of them. I am fascinated by the business though. Rare ingredients:

Founding CEO Black leaves under dark cloud re. Epstein. Co-founder Rowan takes over and merges APO with Athene

(1/x) Athene is an annuity business that Apollo created in 2009, was public but controlled until 01/2022 when it merged into APO

Now APO is a (1) pure-plays alts business focused on credit (2) an annuity business, Athene (3) and a capital markets business...

I collected my thoughts on Couche-Tard, unpacking their M&A activity as a whole, a few of their big deals as well as a few significant KPIs / financial metrics

The result wasn't as rosy I expected,

(1/10) You can't overstate how impressive Couche-Tard's M&A program has been over the past decade and change

over 12,000 stores bought across over 100 deals, across three continents, all paid for in cash

(2/10)

My favorite way to measure a business: divide incremental CFO by investments over long periods. Shows cash on cash return.

I'm a year behind with ATD, haven't updated to their most recently ended FY. If a business uses shares to fund their investments, then that cost must be reflected as well.

Below, I show DND's CFROIIC from FY19 - FY22, excluding $155mm spent on TM Group.

I 'dilute' the return by the inverse of 1.8x, the amount DND grew their share count to fund acq.

Something I've been tinkering with for a few months,

A Better Combined Ratio - Thoughts on Owning Constellation Software

(1/6)

bizalmanac.substack.com/p/a-better-com… I can feel the boos coming in now. Not another Constellation write-up! Not another Mark Leonard fanboi!

I agree.

The world doesn’t need another Constellation write-up nor does Leonard need or want mine or anyone’s adoration. He wants his stock price to go down

(2/6)

I’m signing off for a while, friends 👋

The #Fintwit gods are good are presented me with an opportunity that deserves my full attention 🤓

Feel free to email me, bizalmanac@gmail.com 📥

Y’all know I love it here, and probably too much. Some thoughts on #Fintwit below 💜

(1/6) This website is dripping with ideas. Value, growth, quality, international, special sits, microcap, REPE, REITs, technical analysis, crypto, energy, SAAS, SMIDs, dividend growth, income 💧

What used to happen on VIC, G&D, Sumzero and idea dinners now happens here

(2/6)

Not a lot of business with right-side skew like this

$BUR go BRRR, from their 2H 2021 Report

95% ROIC, $845 / $893, and 30% IRRs since inception on their own money Some highlights from Burford's 11/2/2021 Investor Day:

burfordcapital.com/media/2376/inv…

I'm leaving a partially completed $PX write-up on the cutting room floor as I found a better subject for my next blog post

PX high-quality and young business I recently built a position in

I am happy to share one section, In Defense of Funds of Funds, below. Unlike many alternative asset managers who invest directly into operating businesses; 2/3 of P10’s investment vehicles are fund-of-funds, investing their LPs capital into private equity funds in the case of RCP and venture capital funds in the case of TrueBridge.

(1/14)

Winning the Lottery, Losing it All, Starting Again

A quick tour of my 10 years working in the investment industry

It ends with me quitting my dream job and resetting my career and life about 1 year ago

Just writing off the dome, hope you enjoy

(1/x) I graduated college in 2010 with no idea about investing, but a knack for numbers and degrees in math, history and business

I applied to about 100 jobs loosely related to investing, had a handful of interviews, many of which I had no idea what they were talking about

(2/x)

Here's an updated watchlist with some context and commentary;

The initial inspiration came a few jobs (and lifetimes) ago when I was an allocator and one of our managers explained their idea funnel:

Investable universe → Watchlist → Portfolio

(1/12)

https://twitter.com/bizalmanac/status/1329455092219654146

It's simple but there is beauty in simplicity

Each step forces tough decisions;

Initially, do I look internationally? do I have size constraints? etc.

Next, what are qualities I seek in businesses?

These are static for years and thus good candidates for watchlist

(2/12)

Inspired by @bluff_capital, here's about 50% of my portfolio:

- $AMZN - Customer for 22 years, The Everything Store opened my eyes to it, invested right after Brexit

- $LBRDA, h/t to #Fintwit, esp. @FrancoOlivera and @willis_cap

- $PGR, h/t @FocusedCompound, $GEOFF

(1/x) - $ODFL, stumbled into on my own, love @vanckzhu explanation

- $CNSWF, invested after reading ML's President Letter's in my mid-20s, still have my $TOITF dividend, haven't added, but expect to over the years

- $PAR, I know Brink from having owned / operated restaurants,

(2/x)

Thinking of bidding on Doximity, $DOCS, shares at IPO, a first for me

DOCS monetizes a network of doctors and medical providers by selling

- Marketing services to pharma companies
- Hiring services to health system
- Telemedicine to providers

(1/5)

prnewswire.com/news-releases/… Some stats:

- 200 >$100k customers, +41.8% y/y and 77.0% total over 2Yrs.
- Net revenue retention rates: 136%, 130%, 153% in FY19, 20 and 21 respectively (FY ends in March😡)
- Revenue growth of 77% y/y, 55% 2Yr. CAGR
- FCF margins of 16%, 19% and 38% in FY19, 20 and 21

(2/5)

Thomas Barrack, Jr. formed Colony Capital in 1990 as a 43 year with a diverse curriculum vitae. After graduating law school in 1972, Barrack joined the law firm of Herbert M. Kalmbach, then President Nixon’s personal attorney. (1/13) Two months into his time working for Kalmbach, Barrack travelled to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the firm and its client, the construction company, Flour. (2/13)

1/ Highlights and takeaways from Spotify, $SPOT, presentation's at the Bank of America Conference, 9/10/2010, below

The Company is led by founder, Daniel Ek, whose interview on @InvestLikeBest provides background on his vision

open.spotify.com/episode/3eGF6p… 2/ Paul Vogel was promoted to CFO in late 2019, succeeding Barry McCarthy, who joined SPOT from Netflix, $NFLX, and spearheaded The Company's direct listing

During its first two years as a public company, SPOT developed credibility from their investors

https://twitter.com/bizalmanac/status/1303516456215343104?s=20

1/ Highlights and Takeaways from TMO's Analyst Day, 9/10/2020, below

https://twitter.com/bizalmanac/status/1295391385672196097?s=20

2/TMO expects to generate $4.5B of Covid-19 related revenues in FY2020, 17.6% of their FY2019 revenues

The Company is guiding to 13-16% y/y revenue growth in FY2020,

more than double their estimate of 5-7% organic revenue growth in the medium term

1/ Dr. Matthew Walker claims, “…evidence that makes clear all of the dangers…when sleep becomes short have not been telegraphed to the public. It is the most glaring omission in the contemporary health conversation” in his 2017 book, Why We Sleep

amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-M… 2/ 2-9% of adults in the U.S. suffer from abnormal breathing during sleep, known as Obstructive Sleep Apnea (“OSA”). Heart attacks, strokes and other chronic conditions are highly correlated with OSA. Resmed, $RMD, is the leading provider of Sleep Apnea care products globally

1/ In their 2019 paper, Complexity Investing, NZS suggests that, “products, services…can be optimized for RESILIENCE…cash generative businesses that...fund a series of OPTIONAL investments…”

Thermo Fisher, $TMO, epitomizes this strategy

static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca38f3…

@bradsling 2/ TMO uses cash generated from their resilient businesses, laboratory equipment, supplies and services as well as diagnostic instruments, and through a systemic M&A program, buys high optionality businesses serving the pharmaceutical industry

mckinsey.com/business-funct…

1/ Cadence creates applications used to design semiconductors and other electronic systems, referred to as Electronic Design Automation, EDA

EDA acts like a tax on the semiconductor industry’s R&D spend

Needham Conference, 8/13/2020, highlights:

https://twitter.com/bizalmanac/status/1267543120910188544?s=20

2/ Cadence is the second largest EDA business behind Synopsys with $2.4B and $3.3B of TTM sales respectively

Together, they represent ~60% of EDA revenues globally

The mission critical nature of their products allow them to not compete on price

1/ Mark Leonard introduced me to vertical market software (VMS) in his yearly letters to Constellation Software’s shareholders. In his 2017 letter, he references an apex predator, Roper, $ROP, whose lineage @walshgb unpacks below

csisoftware.com/category/pres-…

https://twitter.com/walshgb/status/1284198716686176257?s=20

2/ Roper reports across four segments, two that provide VMS and contribute ~65% of earnings power and the other two offering industrial and medical devices. Over the next four tweets, I pair a thumbnail of each segment’s financial profile, with its description from ROP’s 2019 10K

1/ Software swami @ericvishria offered, “There are a lot of really interesting SaaS and marketplace crossovers where you can…take elements of both business models to reinforce each other..." on ILTB #183, a great description of SPS Commerce,

https://twitter.com/InvestLikeBest/status/1286707971645480961?s=20

2/ SPSC is a cloud-hosted EDI software used by retailers, their suppliers and logistics providers. EDI, Electronic Data Interchange, is a set of common syntax that allow regular business transaction to be processed automatically, see details below

truecommerce.com/sites/default/…

1/ Revisiting my Lockheed Martin, $LMT, long thesis after they reported 2020 Q2 earnings this morning. I was introduced to the U.S. defense industry and LMT through Ben Rich's memoir, Skunkworks, one of my favorites 'business biographies'

amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Pe… 2/ Beyond the ingenious feats of engineering, the book clarifies the almost captive relationship U.S. defense contractors have with their largest customer, the Department of Defense (DoD) in the name of national security and more broadly encompassing the safety of allied nations

9 Years ago, Marc Andreesen theorized that "...software companies are poised to take over large swaths of the economy". Boy was he right! (1/14)

a16z.com/2011/08/20/why… Since Andreesen’s prophetic essay, enterprise software sales have nearly doubled, growing from $245mm in 2010 to $456mm in 2019, a CAGR of 7.1% according to Gartner. In January 2020, Gartner projected increased growth of 10.5% for the industry through 2021 (2/14)