The Business Brew

Ben Jenkins, President and Chief Investment Officer at Digital Bridge Group Inc, stops by The Business Brew to have a discussion about professional development, mentorship, and investing in digital infrastructure.  Digital Bridge (NYSE: DBRG) is a leading global alternative asset manager dedicated to investing in digital infrastructure.  The firm has $75Bn of assets under management, 30+ portfolio companies, and over 100 digital infrastructure professionals (see https://ir.digitalbridge.com/static-files/0a038853-b7a3-43c0-93d3-c509ef638005).

Ben's official bio reads as follows:
Ben Jenkins is President and Chief Investment Officer at DigitalBridge. Mr. Jenkins is also the Co-Founder of Digital Bridge Holdings and the former Chairman of Global Tower Partners.

Prior to forming Digital Bridge Holdings, Mr. Jenkins was a Senior Managing Director and head of the Hong Kong office for The Blackstone Group. During his 12 years at Blackstone, Mr. Jenkins led over a dozen private equity investments (including Global Tower Partners) across a range of industries and geographies, including telecommunications deals in developed and emerging markets.

Prior to joining Blackstone, Mr. Jenkins was an associate at Saunders, Karp and Megrue (now Apax) and a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Mr. Jenkins received a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Stanford University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Disclaimer:  Bill is long Digital Bridge and has been since 2020.  This is a long term hold for him.

Sponsor Info: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠is founded by a former hedge fund analyst to bring simplicity into the investment process. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠offers an AI driven single source for all company reported data, and allows for investment teams to

⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠captures data from all company reported sources, including from footnotes, MD&As, and investor presentations. Our data sheets include GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments, guidance, and all company specific KPIs. Each datapoint is auditable to the source for easy verification and accuracy. 

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Excel plugin can also update your existing models for the latest quarter in just a single click. Bulge-bracket banks and major multi-managers are trusting ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠for use in initiating coverage, building and maintaining industry dashboards, and keeping their models up to date.

Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠to create a free account and learn more about how ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠can help increase your team’s speed to differentiated insight.

Craig Moffett has covered the telecommunications industry – first as a management consultant and later as a Wall Street analyst – for more than thirty years. He has been elected to Institutional Investor Magazine’s All-American Research Team in the U.S. Telecom and/or Cable & Satellite sectors on seventeen separate occasions, including nine separate appearances as the #1 analyst in America in either U.S. Telecom and/or Cable & Satellite.

Craig returns to The Business Brew to give an update on his analysis of the US telecommunications ecosystem.  Craig is Co-Founder of MoffettNathanson (see https://www.moffettnathanson.com/), a research driven firm that focuses on sound analysis as opposed to the incentives that drive much of Wall Street Sell Side coverage.  Craig’s most divergent view is that cable companies may end up with an cost advantaged wireless business when compared Verzion, AT&T, and T Mobile’s business.  This is in large part because of postalized rates, which you will learn about in this episode.  We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Please see https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/william-brewster1/episodes/Craig-Moffett---A-True-Expert-e1qqks6/a-a8sd2uv for our conversation in November 2022.

For disclaimers - Bill held both Charter and Liberty Broadband

 A request from The Business Brew – PLEASE fill out the survey on Spotify (assuming you listen there) to indicate whether you are

Sponsor Info: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠⁠ ⁠⁠is founded by a former hedge fund analyst to bring simplicity into the investment process. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠offers an AI driven single source for all company reported data, and allows for investment teams to

Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠captures data from all company reported sources, including from footnotes, MD&As, and investor presentations. Our data sheets include GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments, guidance, and all company specific KPIs. Each datapoint is auditable to the source for easy verification and accuracy. 

⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠Excel plugin can also update your existing models for the latest quarter in just a single click. Bulge-bracket banks and major multi-managers are trusting ⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠for use in initiating coverage, building and maintaining industry dashboards, and keeping their models up to date.

Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to create a free account and learn more about how ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠⁠can help increase your team’s speed to differentiated insight.

Bill Chen, Managing Director at Rhizome Partners, stops by The Business Brew to share his thoughts on why publicly traded REITs are an attractive opportunity. Rhizome Partners is a private partnership targeting deep-value investments with a large margin of safety. In this episode Bill lays out his argument for why publicly traded REITs qualify for consideration now.

We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family. Hopefully this provides some less controversial dinner table discussion!

As always, nothing in this show is investment advice. This show is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Please consult your financial advisor before making investment decisions. And do your own due diligence!!

Andrew McAfee (@amcafee) stops by The Business Brew to discuss his new book The Geek Wayhttps://www.amazon.com/Geek-Way-Radical-Mindset-Extraordinary/dp/B0C1DQW5FC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Andrew+McAfee&qid=1700075448&s=audible&sr=1-1
Andrew is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-founder and co-director of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, and the inaugural Visiting Fellow at the Technology and Society organization at Google. He studies how technological progress changes the world. His previous books includeMore from Less and, with Erik Brynjolfsson, The Second Machine Age.
McAfee has written for publications including Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He's talked about his work on CNN and 60 Minutes, at the World Economic Forum, TED, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, with Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria, and in front of many international and domestic audiences. He’s also advised many of the world’s largest corporations and organizations ranging from the IMF to the Boston Red Sox to the US Intelligence Community.
McAfee and his frequent coauthor Erik Brynjolfsson are only people named to both the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics.

Jeremy Raper returns to The Business Brew to discuss what he has been up to lately.  Jeremy is currently focused on smaller situations and being the catalyst for value realization.  We hope this episode is entertaining and informative.  We also implore you to do your own research and due diligence.
His bio can be found at https://rapercapital.com.  He describes himself as follows:
Australian born and raised, I majored in History at Harvard University (Class of ’08). I have 12+ years of buy- and sell-side experience in a variety of roles, and currently manage my personal account full-time. I tend to view the equity markets through a credit analyst’s lens (‘thinking like a creditor rather than an owner’); I try to consider the whole capital structure of an enterprise when I invest; and I believe sustainable free cash flow is the primary foundation of business value. I have little interest in purported growth stocks (unless on the short side if there is a balance sheet/restructuring angle).

Keith Smith stops by The Business Brew to discuss BDCs, auto dealers, and other ideas he has been looking at. Keith has been looking in areas that are less well covered. 

Ryan O'Connor of Crossroads Capital stops by The Business Brew to discuss Nintendo, inflection investing, and much more.

You can find his piece on Google's potential antitrust risk here:  https://assets.website-files.com/5fdcb736a43f592037fbd4b4/64f927a7f3a8d64b1a40ac64_21st%20Century%20Trust%20Busting%20and%20Tail%20Risks.pdf

Check this out as well!  https://twitter.com/aboveavgodds/status/1701620751210607072?s=46

Sponsor Info:
⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠ ⁠⁠is founded by a former hedge fund analyst to bring simplicity into the investment process. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠offers an AI driven single source for all company reported data, and allows for investment teams to ake the most informed decisions in the shortest amount of time. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠scales the velocity of an investment team’s idea gen. Analysts spend less time locating and manually inputting meaningful disclosures into Excel and more time synthesizing in the minutes after the print. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠captures data from all company reported sources, including from footnotes, MD&As, and investor presentations. Our data sheets include GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments, guidance, and all company specific KPIs. Each datapoint is auditable to the source for easy verification and accuracy. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa’s ⁠⁠⁠Excel plugin can also update your existing models for the latest quarter in just a single click.
Bulge-bracket banks and major multi-managers are trusting ⁠Daloopa ⁠for use in initiating coverage, building and maintaining industry dashboards, and keeping their models up to date.
Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa.com/BusinessBrew⁠⁠⁠⁠ to create a free account and learn more about how ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠can help increase your team’s speed to differentiated insight.

This isn't a typical episode, but it's an important one.  We hope it leads to some important discussions.

Peter Mantas of Logos LP, https://www.logoslp.com/, stops by The Business Brew to discuss the state of the life sciences industry.  Life sciences is an industry that has produced many stocks that generated abnormal returns.  We hope to unpack some of the reasons behind those returns in this discussion.  For more information on how Peter invests, please see https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peter-mantas-logos-lp-portfolio-construction-biotechs/id1492171651?i=1000537962817 on Apple or https://open.spotify.com/episode/6r003LhN4REFSxYxogPWXH?si=7ApTcSdmRzepl5oW44friw on Spotify.  

Sponsor Info:

⁠⁠⁠Daloopa⁠ ⁠⁠is founded by a former hedge fund analyst to bring simplicity into the investment process. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠offers an AI driven single source for all company reported data, and allows for investment teams to ake the most informed decisions in the shortest amount of time. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠scales the velocity of an investment team’s idea gen. Analysts spend less time locating and manually inputting meaningful disclosures into Excel and more time synthesizing in the minutes after the print. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠captures data from all company reported sources, including from footnotes, MD&As, and investor presentations. Our data sheets include GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments, guidance, and all company specific KPIs. Each datapoint is auditable to the source for easy verification and accuracy. ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa’s ⁠⁠⁠Excel plugin can also update your existing models for the latest quarter in just a single click.

Bulge-bracket banks and major multi-managers are trusting ⁠Daloopa ⁠for use in initiating coverage, building and maintaining industry dashboards, and keeping their models up to date.

Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠Daloopa.com/BusinessBrew⁠⁠⁠⁠ to create a free account and learn more about how ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠⁠can help increase your team’s speed to differentiated insight.

Thank you to all the fans.  Looking forward to being back and putting some good content in your ears. 

Andrew Walker, author of Yet Another Value Blog, host of Yet Another Value Podcast, stops by The Business Brew to chat. Andrew hosts one of the best financial podcasts out there, and is a great writer. We both hope you enjoy this conversation!

Sponsor Info:

⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠is founded by a former hedge fund analyst to bring simplicity into the investment process. ⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠offers an AI driven single source for all company reported data, and allows for investment teams to ake the most informed decisions in the shortest amount of time. ⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠scales the velocity of an investment team’s idea gen. Analysts spend less time locating and manually inputting meaningful disclosures into Excel and more time synthesizing in the minutes after the print. ⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠captures data from all company reported sources, including from footnotes, MD&As, and investor presentations. Our data sheets include GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments, guidance, and all company specific KPIs. Each datapoint is auditable to the source for easy verification and accuracy. ⁠⁠Daloopa’s ⁠⁠Excel plugin can also update your existing models for the latest quarter in just a single click.

Bulge-bracket banks and major multi-managers are trusting Daloopa for use in initiating coverage, building and maintaining industry dashboards, and keeping their models up to date.

Visit ⁠⁠⁠Daloopa.com/BusinessBrew⁠⁠⁠ to create a free account and learn more about how ⁠⁠Daloopa ⁠⁠can help increase your team’s speed to differentiated insight.

Detailed Show Notes

14:00 - Quality vs. Price

22:00 - Delek

31:00 - Getting ideas from others

34:30 - What does the telco lead situation potentially mean for cable

39:00 - The potential for any investment to be a zero

43:00 - The bank thesis of May-ish

46:30 - Position sizing

49:30 - What's your edge?

52:00 - Activision and Microsoft

1:01:00 - Media overview

1:10:00 - Holdcos as an investment

1:18:00 - $RIDEQ