Last week, a reader and Shift4 shareholder messaged me, raising questions about the company’s organic growth methodology. After speaking to IR, he learned that Shift4’s 3q25 organic growth calculation excluded revenue from Revel and Vectron, which were acquired in 2q24, from the year-ago base even as it included all the revenue synergies related to those […]
I left Part 1 with the observation that, starting in earnest around a decade ago, the federal government began encouraging procurement through a smaller set of omnibus vehicles that bundled a wide range of services – previously sourced piecemeal – under a single, flexible framework, tilting the playing field toward scaled contractors who could cover […]
MBI and I recorded an episode of Never Sell recently (Serial Acquirer ROIC, Fiserv Debacle and Management Credibility, Wise and Stablecoins) (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, RSS feed) correction: in Fiserv’s October Massacre, I made the incorrect assertion that in the most recent 3q25 earnings call management failed to call out past reporting error regarding Argentina’s contribution to organic growth. What I failed […]
TREX is down nearly 60% since I first profiled the company last August. You’d think the business encountered an irreparably devastating setback, but no. At 34x earnings, Trex was priced for perfection back then and when perfect didn’t happen the stock careened, to a valuation that now strikes me as cheap-to-reasonable for the first time in at […]
MBI and I recorded an episode of Never Sell recently (The Big Tech Capex Debate, Amazon Retail, Align’s Pricing Challenge) (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, RSS feed) What are scuttlebits? h/t @taobanker I’ll keep this brief as nothing material has changed since my March ‘25 update and a number of adherents of the growing Shift4 cult have recently tweeted/blogged quarterly commentary that I […]
What are scuttlebits? On the heels of my Global Payments post, another boomer payments stock has cratered. Source: FT You’ll recall that, through a series of mammoth-sized transactions, Global Payments morphed into an unwieldy issuer processor/merchant acquirer hybrid, only to reverse course and return to being just an unwieldy merchant acquirer. Fiserv, meanwhile, has committed […]
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In last summer’s building materials series, I explained how branded manufacturers, like James Hardie in siding and Trex in composite decking, are protected by significant moats in the form of trusted relationships they’ve secured downstream with dealers and contractors, as well as the brand equity they’ve cultivated with homeowners: Homeowner mindshare is a relevant consideration. […]
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What are scuttlebits? Nowhere is the insurance industry’s notorious resistance to change more evident than in how they fiercely it clings to antiquated IT architectures. Carriers adopted mainframes in the ‘80s, built policy and claims engines on top, then lagged years behind just about every other commercial enterprise in embracing client-server computing, then cloud computing. […]
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