If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q3 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 83 letters have been added so far. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

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Exclusive stock pitches by fund managers →

#144 - Jack Pailing (Colebrooke Partners) 📗

#143 - Orlando Muyshondt (Elena Partners) 📗

#142 - Christian Putz (ARR Investment Partners) 📗

#141 - Dylan Marrello (Marrello Capital) 📗

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Flashlight Capital on Orion 🇰🇷

Orion is Korea’s largest confectioner, with about 22% snack-market share and sales in more than 60 countries. Roughly two-thirds of revenue comes from overseas, yet the stock trades at a large discount to global peers.

The problem is not Orion’s operating business, but how the controlling family and board manage cash, compensation, and acquisitions.

A potential 3x upside if Orion improves governance and deploys cash more effectively.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Exclusive stock pitches by fund managers →

#144 - Jack Pailing (Colebrooke Partners) 📗

#143 - Orlando Muyshondt (Elena Partners) 📗

#142 - Christian Putz (ARR Investment Partners) 📗

#141 - Dylan Marrello (Marrello Capital) 📗

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Minot Light Capital Partners on Elutia 🇺🇸

A smaller and more speculative MedTech company we believe also presents an attractive risk/reward opportunity. ELUT

ELUT manufactures drug-eluting matrices to deliver antibiotics directly to the surgical site following breast surgery or reconstruction to help reduce the normal 15%-20% post-operative infection rate.

The breast market TAM alone is in excess of $1B. A reasonable penetration of $100M sales for ELUT at a normal multiple for a high-growth MedTech company would lead to a $10.00 stock price, which represents substantial upside from the current price of $0.75/share.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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Colebrooke Partners are quality-led value investors in UK-listed businesses.

(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview.

Can you please tell readers about your background, and how you got involved in investing?

Sure. Firstly though, thank you for the opportunity to share our story and what we do. It’s a privilege to be asked.

I grew up in Blackpool, a faded seaside town in the north of England. It regularly tops poverty indicator league tables and so is not somewhere people often discuss investing, but it’s entrepreneurial in its own scrappy way, and I was thinking about businesses a lot from a young age.

I did well at school and managed to get a place at Oxford to study History, which really changed the course of my life. After university I became a lawyer because it seemed the obvious thing to do and I thought it would be interesting. It wasn’t.

While practising law I started to get interested in investing as a hobby. I have a mind that when I get interested in something I get really interested in it.

Before long, I was spending every evening and weekend teaching myself everything I could about what we might call ‘value investing’ and managing my own small portfolio.

I then had a sliding doors moment when the law firm I worked at went into insolvency, which law firms shouldn’t really do. Rather than go with my team to a different firm, I decided to take an 80% pay cut and start my own firm, which became Colebrooke Partners.

Can you provide readers with a brief overview of Colebrooke Partners?

I have managed money ‘professionally’ since 2018, when I quit my job as a lawyer, but the firm as it is now really started in January 2023, when we switched to focus exclusively on UK-listed businesses.

We launched our Cayman-domiciled fund in September 2024, which is also when my business partner Sam joined the firm. I do everything related to investing and he does everything else.

Currently, all our partners are entrepreneurs, but we are looking to partner with institutions for the first time, as our portfolio has become more liquid as we’ve naturally gravitated towards larger companies and we now have capacity to take larger investments.

Our style is that of quality-led value investors. We look for companies that are hard to compete with, have predictable cash flows, and are run by good people. We buy them when they are available at significant discounts and then hold them for a long time. As I said above, we focus on businesses that are headquartered or listed in the UK.

I often think our strategy is best defined by what we don’t invest in. We don’t invest in banks or lending businesses, anything where deep academic subject knowledge is an advantage such as biotech or pharma, or minerals and exploration.

We look for fairly simple businesses that we can understand, by which I mean we think we have a reasonable chance of knowing what they look like in 5 years.

It’s perhaps an overused phrase, but we apply the mindset of a private investor acquiring a large stake in a business, or indeed the whole business.

That means we spend a lot of time talking to customers, former employees, suppliers and studying the business and management team.

As an historian and lawyer, that’s the only way I know how to make probabilistic decisions; have a very wide information funnel and then ruthlessly sift for what really matters and what you need to form an opinion on.

I believe at present you have 8 positions in the fund.

Is it part of the strategy to be this concentrated, or will the fund become more diversified as opportunities present themselves?

Yes, very much part of the strategy!

We have a high bar for investments, and I believe strongly that long-term shareholders should behave like owners, which takes up time and headspace (for example I chair the board of one of our holdings that is undergoing a transformation).

That combination means we’re fortunate to have 8 businesses that we want to own at one time. I could see us owning 10, maybe 12 at the very most, but not more than that.

At present there are many decent public companies in the UK that are trading at attractive valuations - and we see many companies being snapped up on the cheap by private equity.

Why is the UK so neglected at the moment, and what could reverse this?

Good question.

I don’t spend very much time thinking about what markets are doing, but I do think there’s a reflexivity to these things and prevailing narratives get reinforced, until they reverse.

There are good reasons why the UK is cheap versus say the US or to invert it, that the cost of equity capital is higher here.

For example, we have a lower societal tolerance to personal bankruptcy and corporate insolvency. We also have a much lower share of the population that own equities.

Capitalism is a small part of the UK’s history, built on top of centuries of feudal government without a revolution to break the line, while it’s nearly all the US’s. That mindset and narrative then gets reinforced by the divergence in performance and capital flows.

The UK has been cheap for a long time and throughout that time, at a market/passive ETF level, you’d have been much better off investing in the US.

In terms of what reverses it, I don’t know. But I do think that drawing attention to the value of some of our quality businesses and away from the market can help.

I’m trying to do that in my own small way with The Shareholders Board, a platform which I built to be the best place to discuss UK stocks.

If I had to bet, given people tend to make decisions relatively, what will reverse the dynamic is a break in the US market and the cessation of the reflexive narrative loop I mention above.

Can you discuss two of the companies in your fund and what your thesis was for investing?

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It’s exactly what it says on the tin - a curation of quarterly letters from a variety of fund managers, especially emerging fund managers.

Not every Q3 letter is released in the first 14 days of October. However, below are 54 letters to get stuck into right away.

Visit the Quarterly Letters page on the website to see the latest letters as we continually add them.

To access all the content consider becoming a premium subscriber.

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Exclusive stock pitches by fund managers →

#143 - Orlando Muyshondt (Elena Partners) 📗

#142 - Christian Putz (ARR Investment Partners) 📗

#141 - Dylan Marrello (Marrello Capital) 📗

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

2026 YTD Performances rounded-up (measured in USD on 30th September 2026).

S&P 500: 11.99%
Gold Oz: -3.3%
Bitcoin: -2.86%

Fund average so far: 1.72%

A round-up of the most interesting Q3 2026 fund letters published so far…

Read more

To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Exclusive stock pitches by fund managers →

#143 - Orlando Muyshondt (Elena Partners) 📗

#142 - Christian Putz (ARR Investment Partners) 📗

#141 - Dylan Marrello (Marrello Capital) 📗

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Baumann Capital on Dassault Aviation 🇫🇷

Specializes in the design, manufacture and sale of combat aircrafts and executive jets.

Dassault also owns 26.6% of Thales, the French defense and aerospace heavyweight, which it effectively co-controls with the French state. 

Thales contributes roughly half (!) of Dassault's net income. More on Thales later, because it deserves its own chapter, whether you like it or not.

What really stands out is Dassault's order book: €45 billion of orders against €7.4 billion of sales. That's around six years of work, already contracted with governments and backed by substantial down-payments, waiting for its turn on the assembly line. 

I don't know of many defense peers that come close.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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Elena Partners aims to deliver attractive returns over an investment cycle by investing in undervalued equities globally.

The approach is fundamental, bottom-up, contrarian, and long-term oriented.

(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview Orlando.

Can you please tell readers about your background, and how you got involved in investing?

I have been investing professionally for more than 30 years, primarily in publicly traded equities and mostly internationally.

I was born in El Salvador, which gave me an early appreciation for macro and political risk. In 1980, there was a “coup,” and the new government implemented a major wealth-redistribution program that brought major industries under state control.

My family was involved in several agro-industrial businesses, and most of its assets were expropriated. We emigrated to the United States as a ten-year civil war erupted.

After university, my first job was at KPMG Consulting, where I worked on internal audits for large multinationals, mostly of their Latin American operations.

Seeing how the “sausages are made” has proven very useful over the years.

When I analyze a company, I want to understand not only whether the accounting reflects the underlying economics of the business, but also whether the corporate culture at all levels and the leadership are conducive to value creation and success. Businesses are living organisms.

After graduating from Columbia Business School, I joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, now part of BlackRock, where I researched publicly traded companies across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia and later managed the Merrill Lynch Latin America Equity Fund.

It was a remarkable time to begin investing in public markets. I joined in 1994, just as the Fed was tightening monetary policy and a series of severe financial crises began: Mexico in 1994, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea in 1997–98, Brazil in 1999, and Argentina in 2001.

These episodes included banking and balance-of-payments crises, sovereign defaults, major devaluations, and deep economic contractions. Equity markets suffered peak-to-trough declines of 50–95% in U.S. dollar terms.

One of the most important lessons from that period was the power of capital flows. As George Soros describes through his “theory of reflexivity,” flows can affect not only valuations but also fundamentals.

Strong returns attract capital, which can push both valuations and the fundamentals upon which those valuations are based above trend. Eventually, the process works in reverse.

I also learned the importance of combining deep local knowledge with emotional distance. You need good contacts to assess the capability, integrity, and motivations of the people who run and control businesses. But being too close can also be a disadvantage.

I have rarely found local investors particularly bullish in the middle of a crisis or bearish in the middle of a bubble. When you live through the headlines every day, it can be difficult to remain objective.

It happened to me a couple of years ago in El Salvador. I remain connected to the country and sit on the board of a local conglomerate.

Yet when a Venezuelan friend asked me a few years ago whether he should buy Salvadoran sovereign bonds trading at roughly forty cents on the dollar, I told him to stay away.

The bonds subsequently traded at par. In retrospect, my views were influenced more by the difficult dialogue between the IMF and the government than by the underlying fundamentals.

El Salvador faced a maturity wall and an uncertain refinancing path, but even in a default scenario, the country’s debt burden and tax revenues suggested a recovery value well above forty cents.

That experience reinforced my view that it is best to invest in places where you are well informed but not overwhelmed by the local narrative.

In 2002, I joined an event-driven multi-strategy fund where I worked for eight years, ultimately becoming a partner and head of equity research.

I was the only person in the organization investing internationally at a time when many of the markets I had covered in my prior job, as well as Europe, were emerging from prolonged bear markets.

The firm’s founder, Dan Nir, had been one of the original partners at Gotham Capital alongside Joel Greenblatt, and the firm’s DNA was strongly oriented toward special situations. I was predisposed to this style of investing, but by then I was fully committed to it.

In 2009, I co-founded Tyrian Investments, which Julian Robertson of Tiger Management seeded.

The BRIC boom was beginning to crack, and we launched with a substantial short book. We ran net short on a beta-adjusted basis, which was an enormously valuable experience.

Spending years looking for deteriorating businesses, accounting problems, poor industry structures, and value traps made me a better long investor.

We had four very strong years, followed by three difficult ones. Many of our original shorts had played out, while the next generation - including several Chinese property developers that eventually went bankrupt - took years to work.

We produced three years of negative low-to-mid-single-digit returns during a strong bull market.

Because four institutions represented a large portion of our capital, redemptions eventually became self-reinforcing, and we were forced to return capital and close the business as we also began to lose our employees.

If you manage money long enough, markets eventually expose your weaknesses. I took two major lessons from that experience.

First, running a structurally net-short equity strategy is extremely difficult for a single manager; it suits a multi-manager framework with leverage and strict risk controls.

Second, a concentrated investor base and an excessive cost structure can quickly undermine an asset management business during a period of underperformance.

That matters because even very successful long-term active investors experience extended periods of underperformance when their style is out of favor. The investment process, and the business around it, must be built to survive those periods.

Can you provide readers with an overview of the Elena Partners Fund?

Elena Partners is a global, special situations, value-oriented long/short equity fund.

I began managing the strategy that became Elena Partners in 2020 through a separately managed account and launched the Fund in January 2024.

In many ways, Elena is the culmination of what I have learned over my career.

We are a team of three investment professionals, an investor relations manager, an operations manager, and a CFO.

Our philosophy is rooted in value and fundamentals. We believe opportunities migrate over time across markets, sectors, and geographies. A flexible mandate, combined with patience, allows us to pursue opportunities wherever they are.

We seek to profit from misperception and dislocation. Although our mandate is global, the types of situations we pursue are specific.

They include orphaned securities such as spin-offs and broken IPOs; overreactions to earnings disappointments or temporary execution problems; cyclical businesses near a trough; turnarounds under new management; misunderstood restructurings; and occasionally very good businesses or industries that have simply fallen out of favor.

In addition to a very attractive valuation, other non-negotiables for all investments are capable and honest management, controlling shareholders whose interests are aligned with ours, and a credible path to value realization.

We manage the Fund with a 50% net long exposure and 150% gross exposure on average.

The long portfolio is concentrated, typically around 20 positions, and it is complemented by a diversified portfolio of individual shorts and indices.

We plan to launch a Fund that captures the long-only version of the strategy in the first quarter of 2027.

We are fortunate to have a stable capital base and a meaningful amount of our own money invested alongside our investors.

That lets us tolerate volatility when we believe the underlying thesis remains intact - and take advantage of opportunities others can’t.

Where are you finding compelling ideas and opportunities at the moment - is there any particular country, region, or industry, that stands out?

Today, more than 80% of our long book is invested internationally, primarily in Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. But geography itself is not the thesis.

We are looking for the same phenomenon across geographies: good assets where expectations are low, capital has left, valuations are depressed, and we see an attractive risk-reward profile and a path to value realization.

Today, in these geographies, we are finding businesses with long operating histories, strong balance sheets, good management, and good governance, trading at significant discounts to comparable U.S. listed companies.

Oddly, a couple of our European-listed holdings generate most of their profits in the United States yet trade at substantial discounts to U.S.-listed peers.

This illustrates an important market inefficiency. In theory, comparable assets should trade at comparable valuations, on a risk-adjusted basis, regardless of listing location.

In practice, capital is allocated to a specific geography, sector, or benchmark, and once committed, it cannot migrate beyond its mandate, even if the valuation argument is incredibly compelling.

I think that segmentation has become more pronounced over my 30-year career - and, for us, more interesting.

Can you share a stock you’re really bullish on at that moment - what was the thesis for investing?

Read more

We last spoke with Christian in September 2022, where we discussed his background, Russian bear markets, and his investing style/strategy. You can listen to the episode here.

(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Christian, the last time we spoke was about four years ago. How has the business grown since then, and has the strategy changed?

Quite a lot has happened.

When we last spoke, ARR was a founder-led business running the strategy through separately managed accounts, and 2022 turned out to be our best year so far: while most equity books were hit by the Russia-Ukraine war and the simultaneous equity and bond sell-off, we had our best year ever being up high double digit returns. That year put us on the radar of a very different type of investor.

Since then, the business has grown organically both in terms of AUM and number of clients. The investor base has matured from single-family offices and high-net-worth individuals towards multi-family offices and institutional allocators.

We have also been selected by several multi-strategy funds and alpha-capture programmes, won the HFM Performance Award for Global Equity under $500m in 2024, and were featured in The Hedge Fund Journal’s Tomorrow’s Titans.

The biggest milestone was launching our first commingled vehicle, the ARR Global Long/Short Equity Fund, a Cayman master-feeder, on 2 February 2026. Institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds and endowments, had been telling us they needed a fund structure to invest with us.

The majority of our existing SMA investors moved across and a number of new investors joined. We have since won several new institutional mandates. SMAs remain available alongside the fund.

We have also built out the team. Mitchell Waters joined as COO, we have a quantitative research team with Amir Dehkordi and Yuting Li, Yves Bowonnaowarux in investor relations, and Anthony Yadgaroff, founder of Apex Investment Advisers, sits on our Advisory Board. We are currently recruiting a senior business development manager.

The core strategy hasn’t changed: a global, sector-agnostic, quantamental long/short equity strategy that looks for extreme, asymmetric opportunities in four buckets (long stock rebounds, long dynamic profit growth, short bubbles and short structural losers) and aims to do well when markets crash.

What has changed is the discipline around it.

After a difficult 2021 we reviewed everything and made four changes that have shaped the strategy since 2022: progressive exposure management (build a profit buffer first, cut gross and net exposure quickly after losses); a more concentrated book of 20-40 high-conviction positions; tighter entry criteria, where fundamentals and technicals must both line up before we commit capital; and much greater use of index futures and ETFs to adjust net exposure within minutes.

On the long side we have also shifted the emphasis from deep-value rebounds towards dynamic profit growth, using deep value mainly when there is a clear catalyst.

How has PARIS evolved over the past four years, is still working well at finding opportunities? And has AI become part of your investment process?

PARIS (our Portfolio And Risk Investment System) is still the backbone of the process, and it has changed more over the past two years than in the previous 6 years.

Originally it was a set of Python scripts, Excel templates and a Windows GUI.

In 2025 we rebuilt it as a modular, cloud-based web platform with automated daily data updates, more sophisticated screening and market monitor, a live portfolio monitor, and post-trade and contribution analysis.

Because it is modular, we can improve one part without breaking the rest. We also have built our inhouse OMS and PMS system.

Is it still working? Yes. This year PARIS flagged many of the top performing stocks and bubble stocks early on.

AI has become a meaningful part of how we work, but as a tool, not as the decision maker.

We use it to go through analyst notes, expert-call transcripts, industry deep-dives and financial statements much faster, and to challenge or confirm the conclusions from our own work.

We also use it on the operations side. PARIS gives us breadth and consistency, AI makes the fundamental work more efficient, and the final call on every position, including sizing and risk, remains mine.

I expect that edge to compound over time for a lean, technology-driven firm like ours.

Where are you finding opportunities at the moment - is there any particular theme, country, or industry that stands out both on the long and the short side?

The theme running through our book this year is dispersion: markets have been headline-driven, but under the surface there are big gaps between winners and losers, which is where a global, unconstrained strategy can thrive.

On the long side, three areas stand out.

First, Central Asian and Caucasus financials, such as Kaspi and Bank of Georgia: high-quality, fast-growing businesses at discounted valuations that benefit from strengthening currencies, higher oil prices and falling local interest rates.

These are exactly the kind of idiosyncratic drivers we want when the macro backdrop is uncertain.

Second, refiners are among the clearest winners of today’s energy backdrop. Hormuz disruption and US-Iran tensions have pushed refining margins well above normal while crude stays high.

Integrated players like Repsol benefit on both fronts: Q2 adjusted net income more than tripled year on year and the buyback was raised. On undemanding valuations, they offer earnings growth that doesn’t depend on the wider market.

Third, selectively, the AI and compute build-out, including semiconductors and photonics, where earnings growth is still accelerating and neocloud and memory companies’ results keep confirming the strength of compute demand.

On the short side, our two highest-conviction themes are both in Europe and both driven by rates. The first is European construction materials companies.

Rising yields are pushing up mortgage and project financing costs, which weighs on housebuilding and infrastructure activity just as these energy-intensive businesses face elevated input costs. That squeezes them from both the demand side and the margin side.

The second is European banks. After a strong run, a flattening yield curve erodes the gap between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits, which threatens the net interest income that has driven their recent earnings.

A stagflationary backdrop also raises the risk of higher loan losses. More broadly, Europe’s dependence on energy imports leaves it particularly exposed to the current mix of high oil prices and rising borrowing costs

How are you dealing with all the macro events such as rising bond yields, political tensions, conflict in the middle east - is any of this changing how you’re positioning the portfolio?

The macro backdrop has definitely become harder. Our answer is exposure management and a focus on idiosyncratic opportunities which meet our criteria of our four investment buckets.

This year we ran very low gross and net exposure for much of Q1 because of the US-Iran conflict, elevated oil and European gas prices and the stagflation risk; moved net long after the April ceasefire as US earnings came through strongly; and de-risked substantially again in June.

Today we are more selective and positioned more defensively, while still trading around tactical opportunities.

On positioning, higher yields and sticky inflation are a headwind for long-duration and highly leveraged businesses, which is where we have focused our new shorts.

On the long side we favour companies with strong, self-driven earnings growth and pricing power.

Periods like this, with elevated volatility and regime shifts, are where our strategy has historically added the most value.

This year reminds me of 2021: a strong bull market that was followed by a sharp bear market in 2022, which was our best year.

Can you share a stock you’re really bullish on at the moment?

Read more

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Latest interviews with fund managers sharing exclusive stock pitches…

#141 - Dylan Marrello (Marrello Capital) 📗

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Bossert Capital on Old Market Capital 🇺🇸

Old Market Capital is an idiosyncratic, off-the-beaten-path situation: a delisted holding company whose single operating asset is a rural fiber network. 

Institutional selling after the delisting has, in our view, left a growing, structurally advantaged, utility-like broadband business trading at a wide discount to what comparable networks change hands for.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview.

Can you please tell readers about your background, and how you got involved in investing?

I started investing during my undergrad days with reasonable success, although time would soon humble me.

My investing hobby got pushed to the side when I went to law school and set my sights on a legal career.

After law school, I clerked at an appellate court and later practiced as a commercial litigator for a few years at a white-shoe law firm in New York City.

I became disillusioned with that path effectively the instant I walked through the doors and turned back to investing with the sole intent of bolstering my financial position to facilitate an exit from law – at no point did I have any ambitions of making a career out of it.

Due to the nature of the clients my old firm represents (i.e. many of the largest public companies in America), I was restricted from trading the most recognizable companies in the market.

This turned out to be fortuitous as it limited me mostly to small and micro-cap issues, opening a world that I had no previous awareness of.

Once I discovered this treasure trove of opportunities, I dedicated as much time as I could to turning over rocks and honing my analytical skills. Fair to say I was not a stalwart employee.

Eventually, I developed a repeatable process that worked for me and found success meaningful enough to see a path to gaining freedom from my job.

Later, I started publishing long-form analysis on investment ideas online and commenting extensively on Twitter, through what was at the time an anonymous account.

I was fortunate to build a meaningful audience relatively quickly, probably due in part to the success of the first few ideas I shared, as well as a somewhat differentiated writing style and perspective attributable to having never worked within the financial industry, which may have made my content more accessible to others without a formal finance background.

The traction my public commentary received was the final piece I needed to quit my job.

Still, at this point, I did not have a clear sense of what I would do next, but I thought, at minimum, I might be able to monetize the newsletter I had built and earn some income to bridge me through to the next chapter.

Ultimately, I never ended up monetizing it because a new door quickly opened as a number of individuals contacted me about taking on outside capital.

And so I thought, why not?

Can you provide readers with an overview of Marello Capital?

Marrello Capital launched in the middle of January 2025.

The strategy is quite vanilla: long-only, 15-20 positions at a time with concentration at the top (i.e. the top 5 holdings currently comprise over 50% of the book).

I tend to focus on equities with market capitalizations between $500m and $2B, but there are no concrete rules there: currently, our smallest position has a market cap of $35m while our largest sits at around $100B.

Warren Buffett once said that in his early years his strategy was “85% Benjamin Graham and 15% Phil Fisher” and that later in life it shifted somewhere closer to 50/50.

One could frame this dichotomy in many ways, but the way I see it is that Graham, on the one hand, wanted to find a dollar trading for 50 cents, whereas Fisher, on the other, wanted to find a dollar that would turn into many dollars over time.

A fusion of these two styles might be framed as the application of the value investing toolkit in search of power-law outcomes.

Earlier on in my journey, I was concerned exclusively with buying 50 cent dollars.

The problem with this approach, from my view, is that you need a high win rate and in today’s market that apparent 50 cent discount often proves to be an illusion and the returns are more underwhelming than you hoped.

By contrast, you only need to find a dollar that grows into $10 a few times in life to render the rest of your decisions, however faulty, moot.

Here, the problem is that if you’re sizing these opportunities sufficiently to make a difference, you’re liable to strike out before you ever get that big win if you’re not insisting on a margin of safety.

So my approach is to look for those rare circumstances where power laws attach to situations with real margins of safety. These tend to arise under a few conditions.

One is in the aftermath of a vicious cyclical downturn spurred by overinvestment in industries where the assets nevertheless play a critical role in servicing sustainable demand; in such cases, the industry tends to rationalize through the downcycle and emerges on the other end with elevated earnings power and share prices that might have a lot of catching up to do.

This is the capital cycle theory popularized by the book Capital Returns.

To give an example of just how extreme these dislocations can be, I’d point to my investment in the Canadian cannabis company Cronos Group.

Sentiment got so bad that I was able to buy into the company as a net-net less than two years ago.

Today, its growth and unit economics resemble those of a tech company and its robust competitive advantages should position it for a very bright future.

Another fruitful angle is what I would deem free optionality.

Examples include buying an unexciting company at a discount to its assets or core business that also has a small, non-core segment no one is paying attention to with the potential to radically transform the company. Our largest winner this year Entravision Communications is a case study in this dynamic.

Another approach is to simply discover something few others have – an opportunity uniquely available in the microcap space.

And finally, I find tend to find these opportunities when, for one reason or another, investors have developed psychological hurdles that impede them from being able to reason objectively about a company’s prospects.

The first company I’ll discuss today sits in that bucket.

What two stocks are you really bullish on at the moment?

Read more

There’s plenty of interesting ideas in this issue, from critical minerals to IT consulting, from hyper-growth to deep value.

A reminder for regular readers…

Over 2,000 stocks are now listed in the Company Index. Everything is in alphabetical order from country to company. This is an excellent resource when starting your research.

To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Latest interviews with fund managers sharing their best ideas…

#140 - Dean and Deiya (Pernas Capital) 📗

#139 - Sébastien Lagarde (Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund on FACC AG 🇦🇹

Aerostructures manufacturer — cabin interiors, aerostructures, engines and nacelles — supplying practically every major aircraft and engine maker - Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, COMAC and the leading engine manufacturers.

In absolute terms the stock trades on roughly 9–10x next-twelve-months earnings, falling toward 9x for FY2 — cheap for a business riding both a multi-year aviation up-cycle and an emerging defense/drone angle.

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(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview.

Can you please tell readers about your backgrounds, and how you got involved in investing?

I’m a chemical engineer by training. I went to UC Davis and spent the first part of my career working at Procter & Gamble, Schlumberger, and eventually Monsanto, which became Bayer.

At Monsanto/Bayer, I was a lead production engineer working on three-phase reactors and nonlinear systems.

At the same time, I had also been investing with my business partner and brother, Deiya who is a former professional poker player.

There are concepts from engineering that carry over to investing.

You learn to think analytically, understand systems, identify the variables that actually matter, and work through problems from first principles.

But in a lot of ways engineering is a much more static field. The physical laws don’t change. If you understand the system and the inputs, there is usually a right answer you are working toward.

Investing is completely different in that respect.

The system is constantly changing, and there are fewer laws or first principles to draw from, so you rely much more heavily on inductive reasoning, especially when building projections about a company’s future or understanding its competitive position.

Inductive reasoning is particularly susceptible to new information because your conclusions are probabilistic rather than certain.

You have to be very good at updating your beliefs as new data comes in, which is naturally difficult for humans. Companies change, competitors react, and technologies evolve.

The first challenge is figuring out what new information is signal and what is noise. The second is knowing how much that signal should change your view.

Sometimes the quietest bit of information can drastically change your view, while the loudest news can turn out to mean nothing.

That dynamic aspect of investing caught my interest much more than engineering ever did.

I found myself spending more and more of my free time researching companies, reading filings, studying industries, and talking about investments with my brother, who by then was already working professionally in investment management.

By 2020, I decided to leave engineering and invest full-time. A few years later, we launched Pernas Research.

Can you provide readers with an overview of Pernas Capital?

We launched Pernas Capital in 2026 to manage outside capital using the same fundamental equity strategy we had been running privately for years.

The strategy is concentrated, primarily long-only, and benchmarked against the S&P 500. We own 15–25 companies and our objective is to compound capital at a higher rate than the S&P 500 over time.

Our investment philosophy is built around what we call Motor Investing. The basic idea is that active investing is the predictions business.

Reported financials tell you what a company has been, but the job of an investor is to develop a forward-looking view of what the company is becoming. We focus on the health of what generates the financials, not just the financials themselves.

A company can have strong reported numbers while the underlying business is weakening, or mediocre current numbers while the business is quietly getting stronger.

So we care a lot about trajectory over backward-looking quality metrics. We look for businesses where the underlying “motor” is strengthening and where we have a variant view relative to the market.

That can mean a bad business becoming okay, an okay business becoming good, a good business becoming great, or a great business becoming even better.

The common denominator is an inflection in the underlying trajectory of the business that has not yet fully shown up in reported financials or been reflected in the stock price.

We are officially all-cap investors but tend to find many of our opportunities in the small- and mid-cap universe, where businesses are often less efficiently followed.

Geographically, the portfolio is typically around 70% U.S. and 30% other developed markets, with an obvious preference for countries where rule of law and market structure allow value to accrue to minority shareholders.

What two stocks are you bullish on at the moment?

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(Disclaimer: This interview is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned).

Can you please tell readers about your background, and how you got involved in investing?

I studied at École Polytechnique and then at ENSAE — the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Économique, France’s national school of statistics and economic administration — where I specialised in finance.

I grew up in the Lorraine region, and our local newspaper, L’Est Républicain, devoted half a page every single day to the Paris stock market prices. As a kid, that fascinated me, and I always knew I wanted to work in finance.

I spent most of my career at AXA Investment Managers and then at Mandarine Gestion, always on the equity management side.

In 2021, together with my two partners Thierry and Yassine, we founded Alphajet Fair Investors, and today we manage four equity funds.

Can you provide readers with an overview of the Alphajet Europe Microcap Fund?

Alphajet Europe Microcap is a UCITS fund which invests in the smallest listed companies in Europe.

We define a microcap as a company with a market capitalisation below €750 million at the time it enters the portfolio. It’s a pure equity fund, and our objective is to outperform the MSCI Europe ex-UK Microcap index.

Delivering on that requires stock selection, of course, but just as important — and something people tend to underestimate — is portfolio construction, which we use to manage the issues that are inherent to this investment universe: low liquidity, high idiosyncratic risk on every individual position, and the sheer size of the universe itself, which makes it very hard to have deep fundamental knowledge of every company in it.

Our edge at Alphajet is what we call a ‘quantamental’ approach. We build a quantitative score that combines factors on companies’ growth, valuation, price momentum, quality (financial solidity) and market sentiment.

It’s from that composite score — which we call Adalpha — that we form our financial view on each company in the universe.

We try not to carry a strong structural bias relative to our investment universe, but it’s worth noting that the universe itself skews toward growth: many of these companies are still start-up-like in nature, and because they attract relatively little investor attention, they are often mispriced by the market.

You have a universe of around 3000 public companies. How do you drill down to around 150 to put inside the fund?

We work through a funnel. The first step is a liquidity filter, which addresses the low-liquidity problem in this universe and narrows it down to a bit over 1,000 companies.

Next come our extra-financial filters: the fund falls under Article 8 of the SFDR regulation, so these are exclusion filters — for example, we don’t invest in companies that produce coal, tobacco or palm oil. That leaves us with an eligible investment universe of roughly 1,000 companies.

On that universe of around 1,000 names, we run our Adalpha scoring process every month, which produces what we call a buy list of roughly 250 to 300 companies — those with the best scores, or scores that are improving fastest. From that buy list, we build a highly diversified portfolio of at least 160 companies, without a marked geographic or sector bias.

Is there any particular European country or sector where you’re finding a lot of value at the moment?

I notice you have a sizable allocation to both Sweden and industrials.

That’s true, the fund is heavily weighted toward Sweden and toward industrials — but that largely reflects the shape of the investment universe itself rather than a deliberate top-down call.

Scandinavia represents almost 50% of our universe. Sweden in particular is a very dynamic market for smaller-company listings: there were close to 30 microcap IPOs in Sweden alone last year.

Beyond that structural point, we do lean into certain themes depending on the macro and geopolitical backdrop.

The advantage of microcaps is that, given the sheer breadth of the universe, we can almost always find companies exposed to a given theme — and because these companies are so small, they tend to be highly specialised.

That makes them genuine pure plays, which lets us express a theme in a very clean way.

What are some of the companies in the fund that you’re most excited about?

Before I give you two names, I should say that the whole point of my approach is diversification — that’s precisely how we manage the idiosyncratic risk that comes with investing in this universe.

So I try to keep position sizes reasonable, and I’m always a little reluctant to boil down a portfolio of more than 160 companies to just one or two names, since that isn’t really representative of what we offer our clients. But I’ll play along — though, to hedge my own reluctance a little, I’ll give you three examples rather than two.

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Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting) 📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

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Deep Value Insights on TSH Corporation Limited

Singapore nanocap. Operates a chain of pubs and bars, and also imports/distributes spirits and wines. A net-net at 5x earnings. 77% of NCAV. Insiders buying.

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This edition features some absolutely cracking stock pitches - from microcap special situations in the US to ship building companies in Japan that are trading well below their NAV.

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Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting) 📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Arborator Capital Research on Po Valley Energy 🇦🇺

Po Valley Energy is a profitable Italian gas producer that sells all of its production with no hedging, so Europe’s current gas squeeze goes straight into its bank account: at today’s prices, a single well generates ~17% FCF yield on the market cap annually. 

Meanwhile, management is permitting four new wells that could lift production 4–5x by 2030, funded from the company’s own cash and tied into infrastructure that already exists. On top of that, the market gives no value to a huge offshore field PVE owns, or to a new 3D seismic survey with results due in the coming months. 

The CEO owns a quarter of the company, takes a modest salary, has no options, and has told us his plan is to de-risk the assets, sell them and return the money to shareholders.

European gas is up about 150% from a year ago. The stock has barely reacted. We think 5x+ upside is possible in the bull case.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q2 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 185 letters have been added. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

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Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing exclusive ideas not found anywhere else.

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting) 📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Tactile Fund on SigmaRoc 🇬🇧

European producer of lime and limestone products. Employs a buy and build strategy to acquire the unwanted quarries and kilns of larger companies, becoming ever more efficient and integral to the industrial workings of the continent.

The company is a prime operator of scarce assets (limestone quarries may not be especially rare, but just try building a new one) with strong geographic moats and healthy pricing power, the output of which is essential in countless industrial processes that enable civilization.

Trades at less than 7x estimated forward EBITDA.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting) 📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Dismissed & Asset-Backed on Graines Voltz 🇫🇷

A French distributor of seeds and young plants for professional horticulture and market gardening. Trading below book value.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q2 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 164 letters have been added so far. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

Some interesting stats from the letters…

• Average YTD return +6.84%

• Best performing fund +66%

• Worst performing fund -28%

Most mentioned stocks -

TSMC, Constellation Software, Halma, Games Workshop, Cerillion, ASML, Netflix, Marex, Petrobras, Topicus, Warrior Met Coal, Vistance Networks.

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Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting)📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Emeth Value Capital on Shift4 Payments 🇺🇸

Shift4 Payments is a vertically integrated payments company with leading positions across restaurants, hotels, stadiums, entertainment venues, and luxury retail. In particular, Shift4 owns the second-largest restaurant POS platform in the US, behind only Toast. 

162% upside to intrinsic value.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

North America

Emeth Value Capital on Shift4 Payments 🇺🇸

A vertically integrated payments company.

Rijnberk InvestInsights on S&P Global 🇺🇸

AI disruption fears are wildly overblown, creating a great investment opportunity for long-term-oriented investors.

Six Sigma Capital on Cerebras Systems 🇺🇸

AI infrastructure company that designs and manufactures an AI compute platform comprised of proprietary systems and software.

Max Dividends on Alliant Energy 🇺🇸

Utility holding company supplying electricity and natural gas to customers across Iowa and Wisconsin.

Sylence Capital on Transoceanic Investments 🇺🇸

A holdco trading at a third of NAV.

Hated Moats on AppLovin 🇺🇸

An advertising tech company, now powered by AI.

Aurelion Research on Boston Scientific 🇺🇸

Developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices that are used in a range of interventional medical specialties.

White Willow Research on Miami International 🇺🇸

Operating leverage in full swing as fixed-cost tollbooth economics deliver record revenue, expanding EBITDA margins, and a structural runway in financial futures.

Andvari Associates on Rollins 🇺🇸

A 125-year-old pest control business with generations of runway still left.

Hidden Rock Capital on Entravision 🇺🇸

Dying legacy radio & TV company hiding an ad tech business growing at 100%+ per year.

Open Insights on Planet Fitness 🇺🇸

Franchisor and operator of fitness centers in the world.

Fundamental Value on Legacy Education 🇺🇸

California-focused for-profit post-secondary education company that has quietly assembled a network of nationally accredited campuses specializing in allied healthcare, nursing, and related vocational programs.

Dirt Cheap Stocks on Mobility Global 🇺🇸 🔒

A recent spin off of S&P Global Inc. It’s a business that is reminiscent of Moody’s or FICO. I believe it’s for sale at the wrong price.

The Oak Bloke on Norwegian Cruise Line 🇺🇸

A global cruise company.

Fugazi Research on Aeva Technologies 🇺🇸

Short thesis. Spent nearly a decade announcing lidar partnerships, hemorrhaging capital, and selling stock; the latest hyperscaler optics narrative does not change the maths.

Undiscovered Compounders on Innovative Solutions and Support 🇺🇸 🔒

A $50M contract, a customer whose order book is 83% non-binding, and a pro forma table that doesn’t add up.

RedFlagHunter on Capricor Therapeutics 🇺🇸

The FDA did not approve Deramiocel. Instead, this comes after an FDA advisory committee voted 9–3 against the effectiveness evidence supporting the drug.

Capitalist Letters on META 🇺🇸

Meta is now underperforming S&P 500 and other Mag7. Is it an opportunity?

The Curious Compounder on Intercontinental Exchange 🇺🇸

How liquidity, regulation and technology have driven 25 years of compounding.

Guardian Research on Applied Aerospace & Defense 🇺🇸

Small-cap defense manufacturer just lost a fifth of its value on a charge that cost the company nothing.

Lewistown Capital on Veeva Systems 🇺🇸

Evaluating Veeva’s AI vision, compass opportunity and valuation.

The Oak Bloke on Verra Mobility 🇺🇸

Operates what looks, at first glance, like a remarkably dull collection of tolling, traffic-enforcement and parking businesses.

Triple S Special Situations on Jumia 🇺🇸

A 7x return bet on African e-Commerce.

Kairos Research on ContextLogic 🇺🇸

ContextLogic is building a portfolio of high quality niche businesses and there is a good case to be made that this is just the first inning of a long game.

Deep Value Insights on Table Trac 🇺🇸

Their main product is a “casino management system” called CasinoTrac. It’s installed in more than 300 casinos and helps them track their money flows. 8.2x earnings. 4.7x EV/EBIT. No debt.

The International Investor on Ralph Lauren 🇺🇸

Design, marketing, and distribution of luxury lifestyle products, including apparel, footwear and accessories, home, fragrances and hospitality.

Nugget Capital Partner on GO Residential 🇨🇦

The Lantower spinout into the portfolio creates a powerhouse of a REIT.

Sylence Capital on Summit Royalties 🇨🇦

Fast growing royalty company trading near half of NAV.

Underlying Value on Parex Resources 🇨🇦 🔒

Colombian oil producer of onshore barrels that recently announced a farm-in deal with Ecopetrol and bought the assets of Frontera, a mature producer.

Europe

Real Assets Real Value on Alternative Income REIT 🇬🇧

Inside the takeover fight with an interesting spread.

Corfe Capital on Henderson Far East Income 🇬🇧

Eighteen years of rising dividends, a near 10% yield, and a discount that has quietly turned into a premium.

Wizard's Winners on Andrada Mining 🇬🇧

Critical raw materials producer with mining and exploration assets in Namibia.

Compound with René on Ashtead Technology 🇬🇧 🔒

Subsea technology solutions provider to the global offshore energy sector.

Crack The Market on Siltronic 🇩🇪

Only five companies on earth make the wafers beneath every AI chip, and Siltronic is the cheapest.

Arar Fund on Deutsche Rohstoff AG 🇩🇪

Production of crude oil and natural gas in the USA, and mining and exploration of metals such as lithium and tungsten.

Calm Capital on CEWE Stiftung & Co KGaA 🇩🇪

The European market leader in photofinishing. They sell photo books, calendars and other customized photo products.

Value & Opportunity on Fielmann Group 🇩🇪

Manufacturer of glasses, contact lenses and related eyewear products.

Business Model Mastery on Marimekko Oyj 🇫🇮

Engaged in the textile and clothing sector.

Dual Edge Invest on Dino Polska 🇵🇱

Revisiting a former finfluencer favorite, and the difference between scaling a footprint and compounding value.

Thank You Mr Market on Asseco South Eastern Europe 🇵🇱

A textbook quarter exemplifying management’s focus on profits and cash generation over revenue growth, with significant identified improvement potential yet untapped.

Goldman Won’t Cover This on Nova Ljubljanska Banka 🇸🇮

Slovenian bank, offers a wide range of financial services, including retail banking, commercial banking, investment banking, private banking, asset management, and insurance.

Asia

JPARCVUE on Hirata Corporation 🇯🇵

Since its founding in 1951, the company has designed, manufactured, and installed custom production equipment across three business segments.

Overlooked Alpha on Thecoo 🇯🇵 🔒

Engages in digital marketing services and the operation of a fan community platform in Japan called Fanicon. Profits just grew 642% and the stock still looks cheap.

ROE The Boat on Temairazu 🇯🇵 🔒

A quality microcap whose software assists hotels with bookings.

Terton Capital on Golfzon Holdings 🇰🇷

A second letter to the board regarding the extremely low tender offer.

Global Equities on Nice Information Service Co 🇰🇷

The top credit bureau in South Korea.

Fairlight Alpha Fund LP on Dong A Eltek 🇰🇷

A manufacturer of the equipment that deposits organic molecules on OLED and OLEDoS screens. Even for a Korean holding company discount this is extreme.

Demystified Value on Cuckoo Holdings 🇰🇷

A blue chip rice cooker duopoly at a discount. 5.7x P/E, 6% dividend for a growing business with 70% Korean market share and excellent brand power.

Price to Tangible Bruce on JW Life Science 🇰🇷

A manufacturer of essential IV fluids and nutrition.

Tailwind Holdings on Baguio Green Group 🇭🇰

The government’s garbage man trades for 3.9x earnings. 0.78x tangible book, 23% ROIC, a 7.5% dividend.

Asia Century Stocks on Trip. com 🇭🇰

China's largest online travel agent, now expanding internationally.

Australasia

Raper Capital on Ausgold Limited 🇦🇺

A letter to the board about the recent offer which undervalues the company.

Thanks for reading.

Come say hello on X and LinkedIn

Disclaimer

This article is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be seen as investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any company mentioned.

If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q2 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 146 letters have been added so far. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting)📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Ennismore European Smaller Companies Fund on Bravida Holding 

Europe's AI infrastructure buildout is creating a multi-year opportunity for contractors with the technical capability to deliver hyperscale data centres. 

We believe Bravida is emerging as one of the Nordic beneficiaries, yet the market continues to value it as a conventional contractor.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

Read more

If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q2 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 136 letters have been added so far. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting)📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

Gator Financial Partners on Navient 🇺🇸

Navient trades at roughly 40% of tangible book value as investors continue to view it as a runoff portfolio of legacy student loans, in other words, a melting ice cube. 

We believe that Navient is becoming a growth lender again, and investor perception will shift in time. 

The private student lending market is entering its first meaningful expansion in more than fifteen years, an activist investor has completed a major restructuring of the company, and early evidence suggests Navient’s loan portfolio may be returning to growth for the first time in years.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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If you’ve not done so already make sure to check out the Q2 2026 Fund Letters Round-Up - 134 letters have been added so far. It’s a treasure trove of insights and ideas.

To enjoy all the content we publish in full consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Latest interviews with fund managers/private investors sharing their best ideas…

#138 - Seb Krog (Treasure Hunting)📗

#137 - Colin King (Value Don’t Lie) 📗

#136 - Dan Rupp (Parkway Capital) 📗

BEST IDEA AWARD FOR THIS ISSUE 🏆

BAVARIA Industries Group AG on The Property Franchise Group 🇬🇧

Rather than owning large networks of company-operated branches, TPFG mainly acts as a franchisor. The local offices are independently owned by franchisees, while TPFG provides branding, technology, support systems, training, compliance assistance, and referral networks in exchange for recurring royalty fees.

The underlying economics are also impressive. The business generates EBITDA margins of roughly 45%, converts more than 100% of earnings into free cash flow, and earns after-tax returns on invested capital above 20%.

Despite the quality of the business, TPFG still trades at roughly 12x expected 2025 free cash flow, with very modest leverage of around 0.3x net debt to EBITDA. For a business with recurring revenue, high cash conversion, and long-term organic growth, that valuation does not strike me as demanding.

Our own expectation is that TPFG could compound earnings per share at roughly 13–15% annually over the next several years through a mix of organic growth, operational improvements, acquisitions, and ongoing share count discipline.

A round-up of the best ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches…

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