Speedwell Research

Starting at GS research and migrating to the buy-side was a first hand experience in how lacking 3rd party research is. Speedwell just released a short piece on how we differ. speedwellsnippets.substack.com/p/speedwell-re…

Former head of M&A at $CSU on price increases "Constellation certainly does use the fact that its solutions are mission-critical and sticky to their favor by increasing prices aggressively, knowing that even if the price increases are quite hefty, customers might have a tricky time switching over to competitor just because of how embedded Constellation solutions are into their workflows." @AlphaSenseInc

As an investor, the need for business reinvestment is byproduct of the price you pay. The higher the valuation, the more time it takes for the investor’s return to converge to the business’s ROIC.

I commonly get asked why bother to learn so much of a business's history? What can it possible have to do with the present day? One example. I would venture to say that Copart's $5 billion in cash is a vestige of their founder having grown up poor. He observed farmers go broke who went into debt, so no surprise, they don't have debt. Despite the fact that Willis Johnson stepped down as CEO in 2010 and they now generate ~$1.5 billion in free cash flow, the conservatism from childhood persist.

Why Waymo could make Uber a worse business

Former Head of M&A at $CSU on organic growth "AI and organic growth are only starting to be taken more seriously as of late. It's always been about inorganic growth. Now, organic growth has become more of a priority because as Constellation grows, it's becoming more and more difficult to make acquisitions that actually move the needle." @AlphaSenseInc

I’ve been saying since approx $30b market cap (more than a decade), that one of $NFLX biggest competitive advantages is its lowest content cost per subscriber. Drew says monthly content cost per subscriber: $NFLX: ~$5 $WBD + $PARA: ~$12 $PARA standalone: ~$18 With more than 325 million subscribers, every dollar they spend on content is spread across an enormous customer base. That translates into higher margins, greater pricing power, better returns on investment, and significantly stronger free cash flow. And remember, $NFLX is already a free cash flow machine. If they eventually reach the 40% OM like Drew suggests, free cash flow will accelerate dramatically (from here), and really go gangbusters. That’s the real power of scale... 🌹

Former head of M&A at $CSU on attrition "On average, for Constellation's wider portfolio, I would say that gross attrition lies under 10%. If you're looking at an acquisition and that acquisition has attrition of low double digit percentages, there's a different lay of approval that's required." @AlphaSenseInc

“If you don’t have permanent capital, you can’t have a permanent strategy”

Researching $TEAM and this is the first SaaS company I've come across that I am worried about. My first instinct is that their collection of apps would be most at risk of replacement--if not directly, then because the workflows move to layer above their apps. I get that employees become used to certain software and don't want to switch, but the idea of being a collection of apps that "can be easily added... or removed within a larger platform" seems to be very susceptible to larger software incumbents like ServiceNow or SalesForce to intermediate them. Now I don't think this means anything changes overnight. Atlassian's Jira still has workflow data, user habits, integrations, custom fields, dashboards, automations, permissions, Marketplace apps, and historical context across millions of projects and teams. But if we are looking to future of how workflows can change and Agentic AI is increasingly an interface, it seems disruptive to me as the agentic layer sits above their apps. I am still researching, so please feel free to push back!

Quote by @Alphasense alpha-sense.com/speedwell/

Former Senior Lead at $ABNB thinks that it will be hard for Airbnb to replicate or match the loyalty reward programs of competitors like $BKNG and $MAR

If you ever thought of starting a fund… You really should read this

Quote by @AlphaSenseInc alpha-sense.com/speedwell/

Former Senior Lead at $ABNB on why hotels like Hilton and Marriott are not a threat to Airbnb in terms of competition "I don't see the hotel chains as a threat. Internally, I think they [Airbnb] were more focused on similar platforms like Booking, for instance, rather than the hotel chains, which were considered a Tier two competition."

Listened to a good @Speedwell_LLC / Synopsis podcast recently where Uber was discussed. I figured I would put together some counter-arguments to some of the points made during the discussion. Give it a listen if interested! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Thanks for sharing One thing I don't think we discussed as much is what individual AV ownership could do for the demand spiking problem An indiviudal could lease out their AV just at peak times during higher fares. Unclear whose network they would do that on (if it's Waymo or Tesla technology they will likely try to lock it on their own)

Thoughts on why Jay Adair is coming back as CEO of $CPRT