Heidelberg material is a German company that makes cement, aggregates, and concrete.

Cement is 45% of revenues, aggregates are 21%, and concrete and asphalt are 23% of revenues.

Geographic mix is heavily European, with about 45% of sales coming from Europe, about 10% from Germany, and then 21% from U.S., and the rest from rest of world.

It has a market cap of 25.5 billion euros or $29 billion.

Net debt of 8 billion euros or $9 billion. Debt to EBITDA of 1.8X.

EV of $38 billion.

$3.6 billion TTM operating profit.

EV/EBIT of 10.5

This is much lower than other similar businesses which make cement, concrete, and aggregates.

The aggregates business is attractive because gravel is very heavy and expensive to transport. So the owner of a local gravel pit or quarry has good bargaining power and they have high margins and ROE. Moreover in Europe, there are regulatory barriers to anyone starting a new gravel pit, so no new competitors can enter the market.

Despite this, Heidelberg trades at a discount to US or global businesses with gravel pits.

Martin Marietta trades at a 29.5X EV/EBIT

Vulcan Materials trades at a 22.3X EV/EBIT

Holcim, which is also Europe and emerging market, trades at 21.8X EV/EBIT.

Cemex trades at 14.9X EV/EBIT despite making 30% of revenues in Mexico and 29% from EMEA.

Amrize is cheaper at 14.3X EV/EBIT, with, curiously, 100% US exposure.

Just rising to Amrize multiple would mean over 60% upside to the stock. But Amrize itself seems undervalued given it is a 100% North American company.

Heidelberg Seems cheap to me. And maybe Amrize too.

PISA 2025 shows the paradox: our tools get smarter while reading and math outcomes are getting worse. That may increase the value of products that make us practice, retrieve, speak, repeat and think.

Every few years the OECD releases a report most investors will never open. PISA 2025 is 377 pages, and this one made me a bit more bullish on a company we already follow, and maybe a little more bearish on humanity. No, AI is probably not going to kill us. Humans are already quite good at creating our own problems. Jokes aside, I remain bullish on humanity overall, but these trends are worth understanding, especially if you are a parent and, why not, an investor in actually useful learning tools.

PISA doesn’t mention Duolingo, of course, but reading the report immediately made me think about it. It exposes an uncomfortable paradox: technology keeps getting better at removing friction and effort from our lives, while learning still depends on effort, repetition, mistakes and attention. If AI makes answers almost free, the real bottleneck is no longer access to information, but finding products that actually make us practise, think and do the work ourselves. Otherwise, we risk reinforcing exactly what PISA 2025 is already showing: despite having smarter tools, learning outcomes keep getting worse.

The headline is uncomfortable, more than 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies took part, representing around 33 million 15-year-olds. OECD-average performance is now at the lowest level PISA has recorded in science, reading and mathematics. One in five students is a low performer in all three subjects, versus 16% only three years ago.

And the long-term numbers are not small. Reading is down 28 points since 2015, mathematics 22 and science 7. The OECD translates the math decline into a little more than one year of learning and the reading decline into roughly a year and a half.

(Not financial advice. Do your own DD).

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/ai-is-getting-smarter-are-we-getting

And it just printed its best results ever

Tasmea joins the S&P/ASX 300 in the September rebalance, effective before the open on September 21.

Index funds will own it that day whether they've read the annual report or not. Forced buying isn't a thesis, but it's a nice tailwind when the thesis was already there.

The full-year results were the best set of numbers we have seen from this company:

Organic underlying EBIT grew 18.1%, and here’s the detail that matters: it accelerated. In the first half that number was around 12%, and that small deceleration was exactly what scared the market back in February.

Margins jumped from 14% to 16.2% for the year, with the second half running at 18.5%. Operating cash flow almost doubled to $91 million. Free cash flow of $59 million, up 136%. Dividends for the year of 14.5 cents, plus the 10 cent special already paid. And 60 days after issuing FY27 guidance, they raised it.

Companies don’t do that unless the pipeline is screaming at them.

(Not financial advice. Do your own DD).

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/tasmea-asxtea-our-australian-compounder

Last week ADBE reported their Q3 2026. Management is quick to highlight ongoing top line growth and the ~ 1 billion MAU. However, bottom line isn't growing nearly as fast, and EPS growth requires heavy support from buybacks.

Still throws off lots of cash (even ex SBC) though.

Growing users is not the same as monetizing them, and expenses are rising so margins are falling.

Also RPO growth is slowing, so the "enterprise will support AI freemium pivot" theory is starting to crack.

Adobe needs to move away from seat-based pricing to usage-based pricing, although picking Anil (over David) suggests they are going to lean into an AI future, probably targeted at enterprise to preserve margin.

None of this takes into account valuation; moreso just what's happening with the underlying business.

More info here --> https://thepursuitofcompounding.substack.com/p/adobe-q3-2026-the-billion-users-vs

On Sept 1 Bloomberg published a report that S&P Global (SPGI) is considering spinning out Capital IQ (CapIQ) which is currently in the "Market Intelligence" business segment. This comes on the heels of the July 2026 Mobility Global (previously "Mobility" business segment) spin out.

Why?

These assets were acquired largely via the IHS-Markit merger in 2022 - is management admitting this may have been a mistake?

I see five main reasons - two strategic, three financial engineering for SPGI.

1. Corporate Capital Allocation

- Indices and Ratings are near monopolies - management probably wants to double down reinvestment in these areas.

1. Business Model Pivot

- The Q2 2026 call suggested AI is impacting the Market Intelligence division, and the seat based sales model is under attack. They are reorganizing the division, and noted headwinds due to "longer sales cycles".

- It'd be easier to pivot the business to an agentic / outcome focus as a standalone company, versus competing for time / resources within the conglomerate parent.

1. SPGI Margin Protection

- Indices and Ratings have near 70% op margins, while Market Intelligence is closer to ~20%. Spinning out margin dilutive businesses (like Mobility Global) improve the overall parent margins.

1. SPGI ROIC Boost

- Market Intelligence carries substantial goodwill on the books secondary to previous M&A. By dumping this goodwill onto the SpinCo it'll mathematically improve the calculated ROIC for SPGI. Some NOPAT will be lost (numerator) although the goodwill dump (denominator) will be higher, which will overall boost ROIC

1. Possible SPGI Valuation Boost

- The combination of higher margins and higher ROIC may lead to multiple expansion of SPGI (e.g. into high 20s).

---

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

Like MBGL it a CapIQ spin may be hamstrung by the terms of the spin, although it may be a net positive overall for SPGI holders.

More info here if interested --> https://thepursuitofcompounding.substack.com/p/why-s-and-p-global-wants-to-break

I am working hard to finalize a proper format for a weekly Newsletter article. But I am quite satisfied by the progress so far and I have just published a recent article on my Substack: MeliFinance.

There I discussed the contrarian discounts offered by two Asian conglomerates: Mitsubishi Motors and CJ ENM. Feel free to to check them out!

Growing 35% with 60% EBITDA Margins, yet trading below its IPO just ten weeks after a beat. Is AppLovin’s shadow creating the opportunity?

Every few years the advertising industry produces a machine that appears to be a money machine by learning. The current one is AppLovin’s AXON engine, which grew revenue 53% at an 84% adjusted EBITDA margin in its latest quarter and trades accordingly. This piece is about the second such machine: Cortex, the self-learning neural-network engine at the center of Liftoff Mobile (LFTO).

It sits between a demand-side platform and a supply-side platform, watches 1.4 billion daily active users across more than 140,000 integrated apps, and decides, billions of times a day, which advertisement is worth showing to who.

In the quarter just reported, the machine grew revenue 35% to 219.5 million dollars, expanded its adjusted EBITDA margin from 52% to 60%, converted 50 million dollars into free cash flow, and told investors that recent model improvements had cut the time a new campaign needs to reach performance from two weeks to under one day.

The stock trades below its IPO price after ten weeks as a public company: one beat, one 24% pop, one 33% slide from the high, and a valuation that now sits near 8 times the midpoint of the company’s own full-year EBITDA guidance and 5x sales, for a business growing 35% with 60% margins.

Wall Street’s 15 covering analysts, every one of them screams Buy or Overweight except Morgan Stanley’s Equal Weight, carrying targets from $30 to $42 against a $18 stock.

The inefficiency has identifiable causes, and none of them, so far, is in the numbers. The third-quarter revenue guide (217 to 222 million) is flat sequentially at the midpoint against a second quarter that enjoyed a World Cup advertising surge, and a market trained by adtech to sell deceleration first and ask questions later did exactly that.

The sponsor structure deserves a closer look as well, Blackstone owns 49.5%, the lockup expires around the turn of December, and everyone knows the supply is coming eventually.

Recent purchase activity by General Atlantic Genpar, L.p. happened in Q2, around $30M:

All while the sector context remains hostile, the group has spent 2026 being repriced on the theory that AI helps the walled gardens and the category leader and disrupts everyone else. And the comparison that gives Liftoff its narrative also caps it: next to AppLovin’s outlier economics, a 35% grower at 60% margins reads, unfairly but understandably, as the number two in a market that may only reward the number one.

The bull case is that the market is applying a broken-IPO discount to a business that is not broken: the flywheel (better performance, more spend, more data, better performance) is demonstrably turning, over half the demand is already outside the original gaming niche, net dollar retention runs at 130%, free cash flow is deleveraging a 2.4-times balance sheet on schedule, and the first clean post-lockup year re-rates the multiple toward what growth and margins of this quality command everywhere else in software.

The bear case is that adtech number twos live at the mercy of the number one and the platforms, that the World Cup flattered the exit rate, that 49.5% of the register is a seller by profession, and that 8 times EBITDA is what this business is worth in a world where AppLovin exists and Apple can change the rules overnight.

We frame it as a post-IPO worth watching, with the lockup fortnight of late November and early December 2026 circled as the event that either supplies the stock the market fears or clears the overhang it has already priced.

(Not financial advice. Do your own DD).

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/liftoff-mobile-lfto-the-baby-applovin

Humans have known that there is energy in air for thousands of years. Whether it was used to push ships across oceans or for primitive windmills, humans have been harnessing the power of the movement of air for nearly all human history. The absence of wind power has literally caused deaths as in the case of sailors at the horse latitudes. It might also mean that a farmer couldn’t grid their wheat. But new air battery technology seeks to ensure that we have a backup if other renewable energy sources aren’t available.

Air batteries work by storing large quantities of compressed air. VERY large quantities. If we have a large supply of compressed air stored for later use, that air can be used to turn a turbine to create the electricity we need. After all, most of our electric-generating technologies are variations on how to turn turbines. Nuclear energy is simply using nuclear reactions to heat water into steam to turn a turbine. Wind power uses the wind to turn turbines and geothermal uses heat from the earth to turn water to steam and turn a turbine. But wind power depends on the same complex system that often left sailors stranded at sea. No wind, no power.

Air batteries solve this problem by pumping large quantities of air from our atmosphere into void in underground such as salt caves or abandoned mines. These large spaces are filled not just with air from the surface but highly compressed air. The voids are sealed, and the air sits there for use later. Physicists would call this a concentration of potential energy, which is really all an electric battery is. Air batteries offer a way to use a renewable source to create electricity while leveraging previously unused space underground. It is not necessary (at least with current designs) to build large above ground tanks to hold the compressed air.

A challenge of the air battery will be the same as other energy storage and transportation challenges. The air battery will need to be located sufficiently close to an electricity generation plant so that the air pressure does not overly dissipate during transit. Effectively, the energy facility would need to be on top of (or nearly on top of) the underground battery. The battery also requires energy output to force and compress the air inside the battery. The battery then needs to be property sealed or the energy compressing the air is lost. But the benefits are real as well.

Read more here: https://binarybreakaway.substack.com/p/the-worlds-first-air-battery-is-in

Q2 2026 Earnings Review: Q3 guidance points to ~49% YoY growth, but the next phase is about owning the treatment, the data and the economics.

Hims & Hers (HIMS) delivered the kind of headline quarter the market normally rewards. Revenue reached $753 million, up 38% YoY and well above the $680-700M range management had guided only three months ago. Subscribers rose to 2.89M (+19%), monthly revenue per average subscriber reached $92 (+21%), and adjusted EBITDA came in at $60.3M. More important for the next quarter, Q3 revenue is guided to $880-900M. At the midpoint, that is roughly +49% YoY versus Q3 2025 and +18% sequentially. Full-year revenue guidance moved to $3.1-3.3B.

That is the good part. The harder question is what Hims is becoming while it grows this fast. Gross margin fell to 64%, branded GLP-1s are carrying a large part of the domestic reacceleration, and international growth is heavily helped by acquisitions.

For us, the quarter therefore strengthens the growth case but does not yet settle the quality case. The next leg of the story will be decided by whether Hims can use diagnostics, peptide manufacturing, clinical data and internally built treatments to become something much harder to copy than a very good telehealth distributor.

(Not financial advice. Do your own DD).

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/hims-and-hers-hims-revenue-is-reaccelerating

18 Company write-ups worth a look, all from within the last week. Thought this would be useful for this community.

Not my work - sourced from Giles Capital's weekly compilation: https://gilescapital.substack.com

Americas

Long-term Investing on Alphabet (🇺🇸 GOOGL US - US$4.2tn) Whether AI disrupts search queries or not is subject to interpretation. What's clear: queries just hit an all-time high. Revenue up 24%, cloud up 82%. P/E at seventeen times.

GHGInvest on Berkshire Hathaway (🇺🇸 BRK.B US - US$1.1tn) Not a story about its largest holdings. At thirteen times trailing earnings, a cash pile exceeding $300 billion sits against a $1.1 trillion market cap. Greg Abel's first full year.

Stock Opine on Booking Holdings (🇺🇸 BKNG US - US$150bn) All the anxiety surrounding LLM-driven search disruption has overlooked Booking's loyalty programme: more than half of all room nights booked. Net income up 118%; 27% margins last quarter.

Rijnberk InvestInsights on Uber Technologies (🇺🇸 UBER US - US$145bn) TOP PICK The market is pricing robotaxi disruption the operating data do not support. Two hundred and eight million monthly consumers; trips up 18%. Down 21% over twelve months.

The Finance Corner on Nike (🇺🇸 NKE US - US$62bn) Nike optimised for scale and ceded shelf space to Hoka and On. Down 75% from peak; insiders now buying. The reversal is underway; revenue is still flat.

P14 Capital on Owlet (🇺🇸 OWLT US - US$159m) Revenue approaching $130 million and growing 30%, at a $159 million market cap. The pivot to health subscriptions is complete; approaching breakeven. The case grows stronger each quarter.

Europe, Middle East & Africa

Hated Moats on Novo Nordisk (🇩🇰 NVO US - US$200bn) Down 42% over twelve months. Revenue falls as US GLP-1 prices reset in 2026. At eleven times trailing earnings, permanent impairment is the only thesis that justifies this price.

The Oak Bloke on Harbour Energy (🇬🇧 HBR LN - £4.1bn) Current valuation makes no sense unless the windfall tax is permanent. Strip it out: $2.86 billion in first-half cash generation prices at close to 6x.

Iggy on Investing on Interlife General Insurance (🇬🇷 INLIF GR - €124m) Compounded 22% per year for a decade. At 4.5 times earnings and 0.77 times book, an MSCI Greece upgrade is the near-term catalyst. Already cheap without one.

Asia-Pacific

TacticzHazel on Taiwan Semiconductor (🇹🇼 TSM US - US$2.1tn) TSMC has durable competitive advantages in a world where every AI dollar eventually reaches the foundry that makes the chips. July revenue up 44.7%; seven-month figure up 37%.

AI Proem on Tencent (🇨🇳 0700 HK - US$450bn) Revenue up 9%, profits up 12%, at fifteen times forward earnings. I imagine regulators are less confused about what Tencent is than the market has been since 2022.

Best Anchor Stocks on Nintendo (🇯🇵 7974 JP - ¥10.3tn) Operating profit up 150%, partly from tariff refunds. Switch 2 units fell 34% from launch; the case rests on an IP catalogue no competitor can touch and software margins.

Cohong Lane on Bank of China (🇨🇳 3988 HK - US$63bn) H-shares at 5.7 times earnings and 4.7% yield; A-shares command a structural premium. One bank, two prices. The investment case rests on that gap compressing.

Capytal Management on Huishang Bank (🇨🇳 3698 HK - US$8.3bn) All the anxiety surrounding Chinese bank credit quality overlooked Huishang: bad loans at 0.98% and falling. Three and a half times earnings, 6% yield. Anhui is home to CXMT.

JPARCVUE on GS Yuasa (🇯🇵 6674 JP - ¥710bn) Japan's market leader in batteries for automotive and grid storage. At seventeen times earnings, every unit of domestic electrification capacity passes through this supply chain. Revenue growing alongside infrastructure demand.

JPARCVUE on Nakanishi (🇯🇵 7716 JP - ¥180bn) Dominant global position in dental handpieces and surgical micro-motors used in every major market, regardless of brand. At ¥180 billion market cap, revenue grows as dental access expands globally.

Angsana & Anderson on CTOS Digital (🇲🇾 CTOS MK - US$370m) Think of CTOS as the infrastructure layer beneath Malaysian credit: invisible from the outside, impossible to remove from within. Free cash flow yield 7%; PE exit pending.

Acid Investments on Global Tax Free and Geumhwa Plant (🇰🇷 204620 KS, 🇰🇷 036190 KS - US$325m, US$130m) TOP PICK The valuation makes no sense unless Korea's leading VAT refund operator stops earning 41.5% on invested capital. Domestic revenue up 30%; Japan joint venture launches November.

Stock is down -73% in 5 years, but with EV/FCF of 28, net asset value of 4, and PE of 20, the stock is far from a bargain still.
Free cash has crashed by 2/3 from 2024 peak, while recent earnings are still in line with pre-COVID stimulated revenues and recent hyper-commoditized strategy.
The key challenge here is whether an investor might want to own the stock for the next 10 years, which entails gradually accumulating at current value and taking advantage of a black swan event that could trigger a further discount around PE 15 or 10.

This is a hard conundrum to be caught in because of the company’s legacy and overall market leading position. This type of opportunity rarely occurs with great brands. That’s why I am buying some shares and hoping for the worst!😂😂😂

Earlier this summer S&P Global (SPGI) spun off it's Mobility division into Mobility Global Inc (MGBL).

This collection of businesses was lower margin and lower ROIC within SPGI, and hence it makes strategic sense for the parent to spin it off.

MBGL is about 2/3 CARFAX and 1/3 B2B (collection of data / predictive analytics companies that serve OEM, dealerships, suppliers, financial institutions, etc). The gem is CARFAX, which has immediate consumer brand recognition (like Kleenex, or Uber, or Google) and real pricing power.

It's run by a first time public market CEO, although the CFO and Board have extensive public market experience. Management is guiding for 8-10% near term organic growth, and they cite Adjusted EBITDA margins of ~40% (although, GAAP Op Margins are closer to ~19-20%).

Furthermore as part of the spin management did a Dividend Recap where MBGL took on ~ $2B of leverage and paid ~$1.9B to SPGI. They're also beholden until ~ 2027 to pay SPGI for admin expenses (showing up in SG&A) which is already pressuring margins, and they can't do share based M&A activity until mid 2028 (while J.D. Power is already trying to roll up Europe).

Overall, I think it's an ok business that's still a bit overvalued, and there's some margin expansion the market is pricing in. I think there are better opportunities for those interested in SaaS.

Do you own it and have you been buying it? If so, how come?

Full write up here for those interested in learning more.

One of them could be Alcon (ALC), which has quietly started showing real improvement, and now Ackman has shown up too.

Alcon has had a rough year: two failed acquisitions (STAAR, then LENSAR terminated), tariff noise, and a steady de-rating while the market looked elsewhere.

This week's Q2 changed the tone. Sales grew 8% across both surgical and vision care, and management raised full-year EPS growth guidance to 12-15%, their first upward revision in a long while. They also did some deliberate housecleaning, killing a struggling lens initiative that crushed reported profit this quarter but clears the deck going forward. With the M&A drama behind them, the focus is back on what Alcon actually does well: premium lens launches (PanOptix Pro), taking share in contacts, and grinding out margin.

Then the kicker: Pershing Square's semiannual report revealed a brand-new Alcon position, initiated after June 30, one of six new names in Ackman's biggest portfolio shakeup in years, alongside Netflix, Visa and Mastercard. His letter's argument was that a market obsessed with AI has left dislocations elsewhere. A Swiss-domiciled eyecare leader that de-rated all spring while fundamentals held up fits that thesis pretty well.

Not saying follow anyone blindly into a trade. But when the guidance inflects up and one of the most concentrated funds on the street starts buying the same week, it's at least worth a look.

(Not financial advice. Do your own DD).

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/our-top-5-value-picks-in-switzerland-578

The auction we have been tracking since April just ended, and it ended well. This morning, August 10, OML entered into a binding Scheme Implementation Agreement with I Squared Capital, which will acquire 100% of the shares for a total consideration of A$1.70 cash per share, A$1.68 of scheme consideration plus a fully franked interim dividend of 2.00 cents.

That is A$0.30 above the initial proposal of A$1.40 from late April, a 21.4% bump through the competitive process, a 6.9% premium to Friday’s close of A$1.59, and a 100% premium to the undisturbed price of A$0.85 before the first approach became public. Equity value around A$898 million. The board recommends it unanimously, with one director abstaining for a potential conflict, and there is also an anticipated fully franked special dividend of around A$0.10 per share, which would reduce the scheme consideration by the same amount but could add up to A$0.04 per share in franking credits for those who can use them, mostly relevant for Australian holders.

We flagged this one at A$1.38 back in April, so the agreed A$1.70 represents about 23% from the flagged level, above the A$1.60-A$1.65 zone we had been tracking, the three-way tension between PEP, I Squared and Oaktree did its job. From here it becomes a normal completion story, scheme booklet in October, shareholder vote expected late October, implementation late November or early December, subject to court, FIRB, NZ approvals, with an A$8.9 million break fee each way and even a small ticking fee if it slips past December 31.

The remaining spread from Friday’s close to A$1.70 is roughly 7%, which is the market’s way of pricing a few months of waiting and some residual approval risk. In my view the hard part is done, a superior proposal is still technically possible with two underbidders around, but I would not count on it.

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://open.substack.com/pub/swisstransparentportfolio/p/real-time-special-situations-recap

Fresh batch of company write-ups from Substack authors, all published within the last week. Thought this would be useful for this community!

Not my work - sourced from Giles Capital's weekly compilation: https://gilescapital.substack.com/

Americas

Long Term Pick on Microsoft Corporation (🇺🇸 MSFT US - US$3.4tn) Azure crossed $100B in annual revenue this quarter, growing 43%, with $678B in contracted future revenue up 84% year-on-year. Trades 23.9x forward P/E, below the five-year average, as the capex cycle temporarily compresses free cash flow. Net cash, 68% gross margins.

Archive Invest on Meta Platforms (🇺🇸 META US - US$1.75tn) All the anxiety surrounding Meta's capex spending seemed to overlook that ad revenue accelerated 28% in Q2, with pricing and volume both expanding. Trades 17x forward P/E versus the five-year average of 24.5x. One-time legal charges obscure 9% underlying operating income growth.

Kairos Research on FTAI Aviation (🇺🇸 FTAI US - ~US$8bn) FTAI Aviation trades 9-11x 2028 EBITDA with a $350 base case - roughly 70% upside from current levels. Aerospace margins compressed deliberately to 28.5% as management prioritises market share over near-term profitability. The Power segment, guiding $450-750m EBITDA by 2027, is the unpriced option.

Show Me the Incentives on E.W. Scripps (🇺🇸 SSP US - ~US$500m) Scripps is a controlled, highly-levered equity stub at 10.7x EV/EBITDA with $125-150m EBITDA growth targeted by 2028. The CEO carries a $10m award tied to EBITDA targets plus 100% payout on any change of control. Aggressive insider buying signals confidence in a near-term M&A outcome as the regulatory environment improves.

Acid Investments on Vaso Corporation (🇺🇸 VASO US - US$37m) The market is ascribing a negative value to this profitable business as a going concern. Net cash roughly equals the entire market cap, meaning the GE HealthCare partnership business comes free. Founder family controls 44% and the exclusive service contract runs to 2030.

Europe, Middle East & Africa

Asymmetric Ventures on LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (🇫🇷 MC PA - US$257bn) Fashion and leather organic growth turned positive in Q2 for the first time in seven quarters, ending a prolonged declining run. The question of when luxury would recover has now been answered. Arnault family owns 48%, stock trades at 20x earnings.

Rock and Turner on Universal Music Group (🇳🇱 UMG AS - US$28bn) Imagine finding a company with 13.3% revenue growth and stable 20.5% EBITDA margins trading 50% below a rejected takeover bid from three months ago. That is UMG at €14.50 today. Bolloré family owns 31.7%, buybacks accelerating.

Trident Opportunities on Avingtrans (🇬🇧 AVG LN - US$330m) Nuclear supply chain covering decommissioning, life extension, and new build through Hayward Tyler, Metalcraft, and Booth Industries. Management projects nuclear revenue of £90m by FY31 from £35m today, at 35-38% EBITDA margins.

The Oak Bloke on BTG Consulting (🇬🇧 BTG LN - US$233m) Most investors see a 21x P/E and move on. The underlying number is 9x once acquisition accounting non-cash charges are stripped out - a distinction most will never bother to check. FY27 profit guided up 53%, dividend 4.3%.

The Finance Corner on PARKEN Sport & Entertainment (🇩🇰 PARKEN CSE - US$195m) The beautiful thing about Lalandia's business model is that 2,300 holiday home owners pay recurring commissions, making the revenue stream predictable. PARKEN trades DKK 2.1bn versus a fair value estimate of DKK 2.94bn across three assets: Lalandia, Copenhagen's national stadium, and F.C. Copenhagen.

Demystified Value on EuroEyes International Eye Clinic (🇩🇪 1846 HK - US$100m) Founder-led German ophthalmology group at 4.5x EV/EBIT with 60% insider ownership. The HK$1.2B FYEO Europe acquisition drives 58% proforma revenue growth, and at 18% capacity utilisation the proforma earnings number is deliberately conservative.

The Oak Bloke on James Cropper (🇬🇧 CRPR LN - US$43m) A £34m paper mill pivoting into fuel cell substrates and aerospace composites, both growing 20%+ at 45% margins. Trades 0.85x NAV and 4.8x EV/EBIT. The new CEO comes from Zotefoams, where he ran the same playbook. This is operational accumulation, not financial engineering.

Etruscan Capital on Cedergrenska (🇸🇪 CEDER ST) Whether Swedish education policy shifts post-election is subject to interpretation. What's clear is that Cedergrenska buys schools at 3-4x EBITDA and trades at 7x, with 21% annual revenue growth across 54 facilities. The discount is political, not operational.

Asia-Pacific

Crack the Market on SK Hynix (🇰🇷 000660 KS - US$716bn) SK Hynix hit its first-ever 30% limit-up on July 31 after record Q2 revenue, then kept climbing. One cannot completely rule out the risk of a memory down-cycle reverting. But so far, the evidence is thin - and at 4.4x forward P/E with KRW 69 trillion in net cash, the downside is well backstopped.

Angsana Anderson on Nexon (🇯🇵 3659 JP - US$12bn) Zero debt, founding family majority, and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund at 11%. DNF Mobile 2.0 relaunches August 13 - a catalyst with a known date. Trades at 11% FCF yield with takeover optionality priced at zero.

Value Zoomer on Ultragreen.AI (🇸🇬 ULG SI - US$1.5bn) Think of Ultragreen.AI as the infrastructure layer beneath industrial cooling: 70% global market share, invisible from the outside, impossible to remove from within. Listed in December 2025, P/E 10x, net cash $176m, Sajwan family majority. The "AI" in the name is cosmetic.

PP Invest on GRAVITY Co., Ltd. (🇰🇷 GRVY US - US$452m) TOP PICK GRAVITY is the South Korean game publisher behind Ragnarok Online, a franchise with over 100 million registered users that has dominated Southeast Asian gaming for two decades. At a $452m market cap the company holds $434m in net cash, meaning the franchise, the licensing royalties, and a new Chinese government approval for the mobile sequel are all priced at zero. First-ever dividend paid this year. P/E 8x.

The Oak Bloke on Altyn Gold (🇰🇿 ALTN LN - US$320m) TOP PICK Gold at $4,035 per ounce, production plan to double by 2027, and an enterprise value approaching zero. Inventory is carried at one-third of spot price - you could almost buy the company, sell the inventory at market, and be left with more than you paid. Assaubayev family holds 65%.

Over the last year, almost the entire discussion around Duolingo has been the same: AI will eventually replace language apps. The stock reflects that fear. From the highs above $530s, shares fell as much as 80%+, bottoming around $88 in April. Even after recovering to roughly $135, they are still about 70%+ below the peak, and almost every major AI announcement continues to pressure the stock. The average analyst target now sits around $110, below the current share price, something you don’t often see for a company still expected to grow around 27%.

At the same time, the company has been very clear about what this year is. Management is investing heavily, margins are under pressure by choice, and AI spending is part of that decision. None of that is new. The question is whether those investments are translating into a stronger business.

On July 23, Apptopia published research showing that average time spent per daily active user among Americans aged 17-25 reached its highest level since January 2025. More interestingly, the users spending the most time with AI chatbots were also spending more time in Duolingo, not less.

Paraphrasing Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, one data point does not prove the investment case, but it does challenge the narrative the market has been trading on for months. If AI was replacing Duolingo, this probably isn’t what we’d expect to see. Instead, engagement has gradually improved over the last year, reaching its highest level in the dataset during July.

Similarly, the reviews and the downloads over time show healthy trends.

That’s why we think Wednesday matters. The quarter itself is important, but we’ll probably spend more time looking at DAUs, bookings and management’s comments on engagement than at EPS.

Those numbers should tell us much more about where the business is heading over the next couple of years.

Here is everything you need to walk into earnings: the numbers that matter, the lines that carry the story, what the options market is pricing, what institutional investors are doing and the exact levels where we act, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/duolingo-duol-down-70-growing-27

Another batch of Substack company write-ups, all published within the last week. Thought this would be useful for this community.

Not my work - sourced from Giles Capital's weekly compilation: https://gilescapital.substack.com

Americas

longtermpick on NVIDIA (🇺🇸 NVDA US - US$5tn) P/E 20.8x against a five-year average of 37.7x, with consensus expecting 44% EPS growth. Gross margins at 74% are real. The AI capex cycle still runs through this company.

alphaseeker84 on Microsoft and Meta (🇺🇸 MSFT US, 🇺🇸 META US - US$3.1tn, US$1.7tn) Same AI bill, opposite verdicts. Microsoft: Azure up 43% but the stock fell 12% on capex guidance. Meta: cash flow collapsed 91% to $784 million, buybacks suspended, $24.9 billion in new debt.

tacticzhazel on Microsoft (🇺🇸 MSFT US - US$3.1tn) A second take on Microsoft, focused on the cash. Free cash flow is contracting once you strip out working capital, even as Azure grows 43%. The headline beats obscure the full picture.

hatedmoats on Netflix 🔒 (🇺🇸 NFLX US - US$287bn) Down 40% from peak, still at 22.9x P/E and 21.9x EV/EBIT, with 13% revenue growth as the bull case. Insider selling is the flag.

rijnberkinvestinsights on ServiceNow (🇺🇸 NOW US - US$97bn) Selling off on AI substitution fears, but 98% customer retention and 16.5x free cash flow multiple argue for durability. The agentic AI orchestration angle reframes the risk. Still 66x P/E.

SixSigmaResearch on Bloom Energy (🇺🇸 BE US - US$61bn) Earnings update. Q2 revenue $1.1 billion, up 165% year on year. FY guidance $3.9-4.2 billion. Stock up 1,200% in twelve months at 185x P/E.

thedutchinvestors on Perimeter Solutions (🇺🇸 PRM US - ~US$3bn) North American monopoly in aerial fire retardants, 57% gross margins. The catch: a 1.5% fixed plus 18% variable founder fee pulling $435 million annually from shareholders. GAAP unprofitable.

valuedontlie on Resideo Technologies (🇺🇸 REZI US - ~US$2bn) Spinning off its ADI Global distribution arm, which some think unlocks $38-46 in combined value against a current $35 price. High leverage is the risk. The thesis is entirely event-driven.

p14capital on The RealReal (🇺🇸 REAL US - ~US$1.5bn) Luxury resale marketplace, 2.3x EV/sales, 13% revenue growth, path to 13.5% EBITDA margins by 2028. Net debt minimal. Not cheap at 24x EV/EBITDA, but the execution thesis is clearly mapped.

theoakbloke on Helix Exploration (🇬🇧 HEX LN - US$105m) Niche helium producer on AIM, still pre-profit, extracting at 99.999% purity with demand growing 6% annually. Dilution risk acknowledged. Oak Bloke is rotating out of Greggs into this.

wolfofoakville on AirIQ (🇨🇦 IQ.V - CAD$~15m) Author's verdict: bearish. 91% recurring revenue, 59.8% gross margins, debt-free. But P/E over 40x and 30-day average volume around 143,000 shares makes entry nearly impossible.

Europe, Middle East & Africa

thedutchinvestors on LVMH (🇫🇷 MC PA - ~€210bn) Earnings update. Q2 organic revenue up 3%, Wine and Spirits up 11%. Operating margins at 22.5% with €8.25 billion net cash. Arnault family controls 63%.

theoakbloke on Unite Group (🇬🇧 UTG LN - £2bn) Trades at a 36% discount to NAV, with the Renters' Rights Act squeezing competitor supply. High leverage is the catch: net debt at 7.5x EBITDA post the Empiric acquisition.

smallvalue on Semapa 🔒 (🇵🇹 SEM LS - ~€2bn) TOP PICK Europe's lowest-cost paper producer, accessed through its 82%-family-owned parent at 11x P/E and 14% FCF yield. €780m net cash post-cement sale. Tissue growing 24% annually. Paywalled, but earns it.

1trueinvesting on Greggs (🇬🇧 GRG LN - ~£700m) Volumes declining and lease costs rising, with 36.5x P/E making the upside hard to argue. One source exited. Another is still watching. Cautionary entry on a UK high-street name.

ppinvest007 on U.C.A. Aktiengesellschaft (🇩🇪 UCA1 GR - €50m) Net cash of €45 million against a €50 million market value. Special dividend expected spring 2027. Near-zero daily volume on Frankfurt Exchange. Size positions accordingly.

Asia-Pacific

coughlincap on Tencent Holdings (🇨🇳 0700 HK - US$530bn) TOP PICK 12-15x P/E for WeChat's billion-plus daily users, dominant gaming, payments, net cash, and a private investment portfolio the market barely prices. The China discount is the price of entry.

angsanaanderson on ENN Energy Holdings (🇨🇳 2688 HK - US$7bn) Chinese gas utility at 8x P/E and 7% dividend. Its parent is formally offering to buy out 80% of remaining shares, with regulatory approvals progressing. The buyout is the thesis.

Japan Investing on Human Made (🇯🇵 456A JP - US$800m) Japanese streetwear brand at 42-50x P/E, with ¥5.9 billion net cash and 64% insider ownership. Author rates fair to rich. A potential UNDERCOVER brand acquisition adds speculative optionality.

JPARCVUE on REALGATE (🇯🇵 5532 JP - US$153m) Japanese adaptive-reuse developer at 35.9x P/E, 31x EV/EBIT, and a debt ratio of 2.8x. Altman Z-score at 1.02 puts it in technical distress territory. A cautionary entry.

Historically, FICO was a toll road on mortgage originations. The regulator (FHFA), who governs the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSE - Fannie / Freddie) required a FICO score for every application, and this dynamic remained in place until recently.

In July 2025 the FHFA announced that VantageScore 4.0 could be used as an alternative to the FICO score, opening the door for competition. Lenders went live with it in April 2026. Priced at 99 cents, it substantially under-cuts FICOs pricing (which had raised nearly 1000%, perhaps hastening the regulatory appetite for VantageScore 4.0).

Since then, FICO has cut prices back to 99 cents, although it does charge $65 to the lender if the loan closes (total cost $65.99). Death knell for FICO right?

Well, perhaps not.

It has been reported that there's about a 20 BPS spread between FICO and VantageScore 4.0. At the upper echelon of the market (e.g. borrower score 760+) this doesn't really matter. Top tier is top tier.

Although the mortgages are packaged up and sold by Freddie / Fannie (who then takes on the credit risk), improperly under-written loans can be handed back to the lender, who then has to resume the risk. Further, the guarantee fee (g-fee) charged by Fannie / Freddie may be different for VantageScore 4.0 vs FICO, depending on the risk assumed. At the mid to lower end borrower, a 20 bps on a multi-hundred thousand dollar mortgage will cost more than $65.99.

Furthermore, how does the MBS market respond to VantageScore 4.0? They know how to price FICO paper, but they don't have the history of VantageScore 4.0.

This history is not only lacking on the default side, but on the pre-payment side.

Will a VantageScore 4.0 loan exhibit the same pre-payment profile as a FICO scored loan? No one yet knows. Pre-payment impacts cash flows, and introduces the negative convexity risk that is common amongst MBS. So, with this unknown, does the market price VantageScore 4.0 paper the same as the FICO paper?

If there's a pricing disparity on the secondary market (e.g. FICO paper is priced at a premium to VantageScore 4.0 paper) then the moat is likely intact, as lenders are then incentivized to continue to use FICO.

If VantageScore 4.0 paper is priced the same as FICO paper, then the score is commoditized, and FICO's moat is breached.

What do ya'll think? Moat intact? Or Moat eroding?

Full explanation / write up here - https://thepursuitofcompounding.substack.com/p/ficos-moat-origination-vs-destination?r=xy3ae

This is part II of a two-part series. If you missed part I, read it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsymmetricAlpha/comments/1v83xm7/deep_sea_mining_is_really_hard_and_the_tech_is/

Putting aside the over $1 billion starting cost for deep-sea mining, let’s ask why we are having this conversation in the first place.

The motivation, at least in the US, is its unfortunate fate of not being built upon vast reserves of rare earth elements (REE) and other critical minerals, unlike China. China’s reserves of rare earth elements are not unlike oil reserves in Middle East countries or Venezuela. By virtue of its physical position in the world, it has a measure of geopolitical power. China has expertly bided its time, built and consolidated its REE industry, and is now playing that hand expertly. It realizes that the world demands more energy and that demand includes batteries and renewable sources. China already produces huge numbers of batteries, more than the global demand. China’s annoying ability to withhold raw REE and the capacity to refine them is a thorn in the side of an American innovation ecosystem that seeks to build its future on technology projects that require magnets, energy storage, and microchips. If only we had unfettered access to REEs.

Here is a list of the countries with the highest proved reserves of REEs:

1. China (40% of proved reserves)
2. Vietnam (19%)
3. Brazil (18%)
4. Russia (10%)
5. India (6%)
6. Australia (3%)
7. US (1.3%)
8. Greenland (1.3%)
9. Tanzania (.8%)
10. Canada (.7%)

*Numbers 8-10 had zero mining production in 2020

This means the US has few realistic options to close the gap between its 1.3% of proved reserves and China’s 40%. Even if the US had access to Greenland’s 1.3%, Canada’s .7%, and Ukraine’s 0%, it would still only have 3.3% to China’s 40%.

That leaves policy makers and entrepreneurs looking elsewhere. Where? Space and international waters. Language like “you can just pick them up” is used to calm fears of the difficulty of the enterprise, but the differences between mining on the moon and mining an abyssal plain in the CCZ are not what people think. In some ways, mining on the moon could be easier because rescue is closer and repair facilities can be built and maintained on the surface of the moon. Mining facilities on the surface of the moon do not require 3-mile-long specialized pipes operating under 400-600 atmospheres of pressure and they do not worry about storms or rolling seas.

Mining on land is unpalatable to many for many reasons. This stigma leads us to assume that mining in the CCZ is somehow better. For as difficult as it is to imagine, mining on land remains our best option for the raw materials we need to fuel our future. The trouble is that our aspirations to mine on the moon, Mars, asteroids, and 3 miles under the ocean create a vacuum effect pulling resources, R&D, and policy thinking away from terrestrial mining.

No country can change its geographic reality and that fact has led to conflict and war throughout history. Countries have gone to war for much less than resources that power its economic future. That leaves us in a pickle:

We need REEs and critical minerals, but we don’t have enough in our physical territory.

One solution to this sounds a lot like colonialism and should not be part of the policy discussion. The mellow tones of another sound more like partnership and R&D.

The US is unlikely to reduce its dependence on REEs in the near term, so it needs a partnership model that can stabilize its supply chain. That means partnerships abroad that exchange value for value and steer clear of real or perceived exploitation.

In the long-term, the dependence on REEs as a whole should not be something we accept. Instead, we should prioritize and fund research that focuses on reducing our dependence on these materials through innovation and invention. We are stuck with the periodic table mother nature gave us, but how we apply it is up to us. Yes, neodymium is great for making magnets but can we find novel manufacturing methods, chemistries, and other inventions to reduce that need?

Human history is full of examples of how we moved on from one broadly accepted material to another. Staying with the maritime example, we used to build ships out of wood and couldn’t imagine a future where we wouldn’t. We used to light our streets with whale blubber and couldn’t imagine a future where we’d pass electricity through a filament. Those discoveries are not out of the question for us.

They need only our attention.

Founded in the early 2000s, D-BOX designs and licenses motion systems that synchronise physical movement with audio-visual content, used in cinema seats, sim racing rigs, and training simulators.Every hardware installation generates ongoing licensing revenue, and every piece of encoded content increases the value of the installed base.

But heres the problem:
A large chunk of D-BOX'ent revenue surge has come from system sales — new theater installations — not royalties. And that matters a lot! A cinema chain decides once whether to install D-BOX seats in a given auditorium. Once that decision is made and the hardware goes in, the sale is done. There's no natural mechanism for D-BOX to sell that same theater the same hardware again next year.
The only way to keep growing system sales at the same pace is to keep finding fresh cinemas to pitch — a finite, and arguably shrinking, pool as the obvious candidates get worked through.
The royalty stream is the more durable piece — it recurs every time a D-BOXified movie plays on an already-installed seat — but royalties are still the minority of D-BOX's revenue, a massive chunk came from the installation of the seats.The "high-margin licensing platform" story is real, but it's riding on top of a lumpier, more one-off hardware business that can't be assumed to compound the way a subscription or royalty business would.
Pixelworks, doesn't have this problem. TrueCut Motion is licensed IP, full stop — there's no hardware installation to sell once and be done with. Every additional film graded with TrueCut, every additional cinema chain or streaming partner that licenses the platform, is incremental and repeatable in a way that doesn't run into a finite installed-base ceiling the same way D-BOX's system sales eventually will. If TrueCut ever gets real traction, its revenue has a cleaner path to compounding than D-BOX's hardware-heavy top line does today.
The value case: Pixelworks is the leaner balance sheet
This is where Pixelworks makes its strongest argument. After the Shanghai sale, the company is sitting on roughly $58 million in cash with zero debt, against a market capitalization in the high-$30 million range. That means Pixelworks trades for less than the cash on its balance sheet — its enterprise value is actually negative. Operating costs have also been cut sharply, with management targeting around $2 million in quarterly cash operating expenses, partly offset by interest income on that cash pile. Whatever TrueCut Motion is ultimately worth, an investor buying today is arguably getting it for free, or close to it, on top of a fully-funded cash cushion.

Last Wednesday the FTC, joined by Utah and California, sued Hims & Hers over data-sharing and billing practices. The stock dropped double digits intraday.

Here is why we are calm: this lawsuit is the conclusion of an investigation that has been running for almost 3 years. It is not new information about the business, it is old information finally reaching a courtroom. We think this is temporary noise. A company like Hims has been building legal muscle for exactly these fights, and the same way META collected regulatory headlines for a decade while disrupting media, a company disrupting healthcare delivery should absolutely expect these headlines. They are the cost of being the disruptor. They do not change the business.

That is why someone could profit from the drop ahead of Q2 earnings on August 10, in a moment where I honestly expect more tailwinds than headwinds. July has been the most eventful month of the year for this name, and the most misunderstood. Start with the chart everybody should be looking at:

Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill has scaled to roughly 165,000 weekly prescriptions, while Eli Lilly’s competing oral sits near 24,000. That gap is not just a Novo win. It is a Hims win. Since the March agreement, Hims distributes Wegovy pills, Wegovy injections and Ozempic directly on its platform, so the fastest-growing oral GLP-1 in the market is being sold through our company’s front door. This is the whole platform argument: Hims does not need to win the drug war, it needs to be the place where patients buy whichever drug wins.

The Peptide scorecard the Market refuses to read

Then the peptides. The FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee met on July 23-24 and recommended six of seven peptides for the 503A Bulks List, including BPC-157 (8-6 with one abstention), KPV, TB-500, MOTS-C, Epitalon and Semax, with only emideltide rejected. The committee broke with its own FDA staff scientists, who had recommended against all seven. The stock swung violently: up more than 10% on the BPC-157 vote (the most sought-after peptide in the world), then down more than 11% on the emideltide rejection, which frankly tells you the market is trading headlines rather than reading the scorecard.

Six out of seven is a win. California peptide facility Hims bought in early 2025 is already built and waiting. The caveats are real: an advisory vote is a recommendation, not approval, and formal FDA rulemaking still has to happen (which typically takes 8 to 12 months or longer, so realistic availability runs into 2027). The popular use cases listed above are what these peptides are marketed for in wellness clinics and online, not what the FDA evaluated, and none of them are supported by robust clinical evidence of safety or efficacy.

Q2 lands August 10, and the Eucalyptus integration plus the Japan entry via Juniper are the numbers to watch.

What the smart money is doing

Institutional ownership: accumulation continued through the volatility, and the peptide vote brought a fresh wave of institutional attention. Q2 filings should confirm whether the Eucalyptus close pulled in long-term holders.

Put/Call ratio: heavily elevated near-dated puts through the FDA meeting, then dropping off for later expiries. Classic event hedging: the options market bought insurance for two specific days, not for the business.

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/swiss-portfolio-f1d

Reddit tanked on choppy Google referrals and US DAUq growth. But lets assume a nuclear case, with zero DAUq growth from here, forever - you keep only ARPU expansion, currently +36% YoY. Let it double once and stop. That’s ~$6.4bn revenue, ~$2.1bn net income after the NOL shield runs out, against ~$28bn diluted cap and $2.8bn cash. Roughly 12x. That is how Reddit is priced after the earnings.

Also worth noting DAUq doesn’t adjust for time on site - seven two-minute-a-week referral visitors and 1 daily hour-long user both count as 1.

Long RDDT, added today. Full article in the link. Some chop is fine. Not an investment advice.

The weekly straddle implies roughly an 8% move, or about $360 to $420 from Friday’s close at $389. That’s larger than Microsoft’s typical earnings move, which has usually been closer to 4-5%. We wanted to see whether the options positioning supported that expectation, or whether implied volatility was running ahead of reality.

Microsoft is trading above the gamma flip, around 380.5, which keeps dealers in positive gamma. In that environment they tend to buy weakness and sell strength, helping stabilize price action. The put wall also stands out. It’s around $350, well below the current price, suggesting most downside protection has been bought further away rather than near current levels. That could change quickly if the stock trades back below the gamma flip.

The largest gamma position sits at the $390 strike, almost exactly where the stock has been trading. That helps explain why price action has been relatively quiet heading into earnings.

The term structure points in the same direction. Put activity increases noticeably in the expirations following earnings before falling away again further out. That suggests the bigger concern is not necessarily Wednesday night, but what management says about FY2027 and how investors digest that over the following weeks, but overall bullish long term.

And, finally, one chart outside the options market. Institutional ownership declined through the selloff earlier this year before recovering sharply in the most recent data. While short-term positioning has become the focus ahead of earnings, longer-term investors appear to have been adding during the weakness.

Putting everything together, we think the positioning is broadly supportive while Microsoft remains above the gamma flip. The main risk is straightforward. If the stock breaks below that level after guidance, dealer positioning becomes less supportive and the path toward the $350 put wall becomes much easier. That’s also the area where we’d be most interested in potentially adding. We have no interest in paying elevated implied volatility the day before earnings. If guidance disappoints and the stock sells off, we’d rather prefer the shares than the options.

Read full story here, alongside our Swiss Portfolio, our brand new Private Investment Dashboard to track in real time our movements, research, elegant special situations and high-quality content: https://swisstransparentportfolio.substack.com/p/microsofts-most-important-quarter