Ben Brostoff

My book is free for Prime Day! amazon.com/dp/B0F94JLN76 . Trials is a sports fiction novel / financial thriller you can read in one sitting, perfect for the beach or plane. If you want to "trial" it, I excerpted it in replies. Completely free until July 11th!

Would $CELH not be very accretive to $PEP here? They trade at about the same forward multiple. For the last decade, Pepsi has grown EPS 6%.

So Ability requiring as much equity as it has is concerning to me; some of it I get is wanting to do new business and we will see SRE long-term from investment, but part of it also is legacy LTC and needing capital. They do have a higher risk-based capital ratio v. last year (500% now versus 325%). FRE at $9m was lower than $12-14m guide from TURN deck, I get that some of that was moving pieces and 2026 we will get a clearer picture on FRE & SRE. YieldStreet seems great if you are paying $5m in cash and stock to acquire $2m+ of FRE. That is ~2.5x and EV/FRE they trade about 12x trailing, so very accretive if you believe the FRE projection. If they can keep doing deals like this, I like the trajectory of FRE long term. I would like to see some good "normalized" quarters in 2026. It's hard right now to get a pulse on what the long-term earnings power is and how much capital Ability needs. The $37.2m incremental into Ability in 2025 is a lot of capital relative to the market cap.

@bmb21 Heard your question on MLCI earnings call! Is your long thesis still intact? What do you make of the Yieldstreet move?

Filed under "if you like the product, buy the stock": $GRMN over last decade has grown EPS 244% and dividend 69% per ValueLine. Add in multiple expansion and total 10yr return is 500%+ (~20% IRR). During this time, I owned two different VivoActive watches 😂

Bobby (@BobbyKKraft) and his family have been instrumental bringing awareness and capital to unappreciated small-cap companies for a long time. It was awesome to have the opportunity to join him on his @PlanetMicroCap podcast.

Really enjoyed the Greg Padilla chapter in Stock Market Maestros - thank you @iancassel for the recommendation. Greg walks through both selling a winner in $PYPL when the original thesis was invalidated and holding $LEN for 14 years and three 50%+ drawdowns.

$TWLO interesting at ~18x forward FCF. 50% of FCF going to buybacks and share count down 20% since 23'. Messaging revenue accelerated this year and IMO AI agents will long-term increase the amount of messages apps send. Voice also nice shot on goal as talking AI becomes norm.

The Apollo mandatory converts ( $APO.PA ) also are yielding 6%+ right now and you get more common in July if $APO goes below $98.97 (capped out <$82.48 at 0.602 of common per convert). Another interesting way to get paid to eventually be long the stock.

$APO seems cheap on forward EPS and I sold $90 puts due April for $2.46 (~3% un-ann. yield). Ahead of Investor Day targets from 24' and back then were projecting $15 of adj. earnings, just grew AUM 25%. 97% of premium from Athene is in IG bonds. Given they blew whistle on First Brands and track record, my contrarian side says they are better insulated from credit crisis than most and will take advantage of depressed prices from SaaS and private credit fears.

@mkt_inefficient That changes things a little for me. I could be convinced this has advantages over CLO equity and nice to know the ~75% CLO debt goal isn't impacted.

@bmb21 While I don't love the style drift, it appears the "other credit asset classes" were a replacement for CLO equity positions that they sold down (based on read through from $ECC call).

On $EIC, I can't say I love the fact they're deploying capital outside BB CLOs. I signed up for a vanilla debt CLO fund... I got "infrastructure capital" and "regulatory capital relief transactions" instead.

Between new Target distribution deal and greatest moment for American hockey in 46 years, hoping we see a little lift for official hydration sponsor for USA $CZZL.NE $CZZLF

@ValleyFallsRI Yep you're right just saw the release; 12% decline on the low-end for 26' is not what I was expecting.

@bmb21 Fiverr not guiding for growth

On $UPWK and $FVRR - you would think the impact of AI would be largest in software-freelancer marketplaces. Yet, both companies had record years and are guiding to growth in 26.

You can now get @CwenchHydration at @Target Read the full press release - cizzlebrands.com/news/cizzle-br…

This was a blast and thank you so much @majgeoinvesting for the opportunity to come on!

Sunday Weekly Wrap-Up Excerpt: Last week, we held our monthly Open Forum, where we delved into the hot topic of the last two weeks: what to make of software stocks getting pummeled because of advancements in AI. We took a quick, cursory glance at four buckets investors should consider to understand where the risk is and where the opportunity lies. On that note, we dug deep into our 1,500+ microcap stock archives to resurface an old Geoinvesting software MultiBagger that we think actually benefits from what’s going on with AI and fits squarely in between the third and fourth buckets we discussed. It’s a software stock selling at a P/E of 5x that just grew EPS over 50%, where industry changes should strengthen its already leading position in its market. We think it has reached a point where the discussion of the stock being positioned to have MultiBagger status again can begin… after three years of doing nothing.  By the way, If you’re into following this topic, you’re also going to enjoy a conversation I had with Ben Brostoff (@bmb21), author of the StockTalk Newsletter Substack. His software background and the insights from our conversation are going to help us become more informed investors on this topic. The discussion addressed how changes in software pricing, usage-based models, and automation may affect long-term margins and competitive positioning. The chat about software stocks during the open forum naturally transitioned into a discussion about another stock we’re tracking that might ironically also benefit from the impact AI is having on the software industry. It’s actually a debt restructuring play. We’re waiting for a catalyst to materialize that should immediately re-rate the stock 50% to 100% if it occurs. We were extremely appreciative that John Cormier accepted our invitation to attend the open forum to help us break down the story that our new Analyst, Diego La Torre (@Diego_La_Torre_), had already analyzed. John has years of investment experience, especially in dealing with complex special situations. That’s why John’s positive assessment of the set-up strengthened our comfort level with this new idea. I originally connected with John via an introduction from Mark Gomes ( @MoneyMarkStocks ). The bullish thesis on both of these stocks has been published on Geoinvesting geoinvesting.com/two-stocks-to-…

Did not expect to see a buyout so quickly by GA. $5.80 all cash maybe cheap relative to what you could DCF it to but still a nice return from October purchase.

Tender was 3.5x oversubscribed and 40% of shares participated, so I think some of the selling pressure is those remaining shares selling (IMO likely former TURN shareholders). At $6 it's <$60 of book ($10.26 of book as of 9/30/25). Management said they would do $10m more of tenders/buybacks in two years after merger close so I think at a certain price they have to move. But we really have to see a good set of quarters / some indication FRE will grow based on acquisitions or AUM expanding.

@bmb21 Ben - thoughts on the post-tender beatdown?

$MLCI announced today it's tendering ~1.6m shares on ~13m o/s (12%+) at $9.43 (trading at $8.20 now). Anything above the 1.6 will be tendered pro-rata, and all shares up to the 2/2/26 5PM deadline are eligible. Management (3.5% owners) not participating. 15% upside right now.

Just like code, expecting it to one-shot everything I think is ridiculous. We are going to always see huge mistakes. But no doubt reviewing, fixing, improving prompts feedback loop to me is faster than old way of inputting all the data yourself for 10+ year history.

On Claude for Excel, in a few hours of use I saw: - Not accounting for 5:1 share split for $NOW - Making up SG&A for $COUR bc no 10-K filed yet Fixing as simple as prompting. Yes, it can't do a full DCF on its own. But takes away pain of going SEC filings -> model.