Investment Pitches

Pitch Summary:
Sweetgreen, Inc. operates a chain of fast-casual restaurants across the U.S., focused on fresh, healthy food. The company continues to invest in automation through its "Infinite Kitchen" technology, which has demonstrated early promise in reducing labor costs, improving order accuracy, and increasing throughput. While the financial benefits are currently evident in only a small subset of stores, we believe broader adoption will yield meaningful improvements over the next two years. The stock underperformed during the quarter as weak traffic and sales in several core legacy markets… drove negative sales trends overall. We reduced our position during the period but remain optimistic about the long-term value creation potential of the Infinite Kitchen initiative.

BSD Analysis:
Sweetgreen’s automation strategy introduces a credible path to margin expansion in an industry plagued by labor inflation. Infinite Kitchen reduces throughput bottlenecks and could lift store-level EBITDA meaningfully as adoption scales. Traffic softness appears cyclical rather than structural, with urban recovery and menu innovation offering catalysts. Shares remain volatile but offer upside if automation ROI materializes and unit growth accelerates.

Pitch Summary:
Navitas Semiconductor Corp. designs and manufactures highly efficient power semiconductors, leading the way in Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology, which enables superior energy efficiency and charging speeds compared to traditional silicon. Handling GaN is challenging, and Navitas has a significant competitive advantage with its technology. We initially invested in early 2023 after the stock fell due to weakness in the highly cyclical mobile phone market. The stock performed well during the period on news of technology partnerships with high-profile potential customers, including Nvidia. We remain confident in the long-term secular outlook for energy-efficient semiconductors and Navitas’ continued technological leadership. Navitas remains confident… We trimmed the position during the quarter, selling into strength as part of our risk management process.

BSD Analysis:
Navitas offers pure-play exposure to the fast-growing GaN/SiC power semiconductor market, benefiting from structural electrification and AI-driven data center efficiency needs. Its partnership pipeline with tier-one customers (including Nvidia) underscores the viability of its IP and supports multi-year revenue acceleration. Shares trade at elevated growth multiples, but justified by strong gross margin expansion potential and differentiated technology. Catalysts include design wins in EVs, data centers, and fast-charging consumer devices.

Pitch Summary:
BWX Technologies, Inc. manufactures and services power generation and nuclear components for U.S. government, industrial, and utility customers. We invested in 2023 amid price weakness that resulted from declining earnings tied to the company’s cash-intensive investments in capacity. Our investment was based on the company’s well-established position in the nuclear value chain, including technologies that support the life extension of existing plants, new large-scale reactors, and small modular reactors. The stock performed well during the quarter as global growth prospects improved for nuclear power, reinforcing our long-held thesis. We added to our position early in the quarter, which contributed positively to performance.

BSD Analysis:
BWXT is a strategically critical supplier with quasi-monopolistic positioning in U.S. naval reactors and defense nuclear programs, supporting durable multi-year revenue visibility. Its expansion capex cycle is beginning to normalize, unlocking margin expansion and free cash flow acceleration. The company stands to benefit from rising demand for small modular reactors (SMRs) and upgrades to existing nuclear fleets. Trading at a discount to its historical EV/EBITDA range, BWXT offers defensive growth with embedded government-backed contracts. Key catalysts include backlog expansion, SMR commercialization, and improving operating leverage.

Pitch Summary:
Cameco Corp. is a global leader in the mining, fabrication, and refinement of uranium products for nuclear power plants around the world. The company also has exposure to the construction of new nuclear power capacity through its Westinghouse unit. We view Cameco as a best-in-class operator with world-leading reserves, a low-cost production profile, and reliable, proven technology. After years of being out of favor following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Cameco became increasingly attractive as global uranium production fell below demand. We invested in 2020 based on the belief… that uranium prices would recover and that interest in nuclear power would reaccelerate, providing upside optionality. While not without volatility, this thesis has played out largely as we envisioned and has since gained broader investor acceptance. Despite the growing interest in the theme, we believe Cameco remains in the early stages of a long-term structural turnaround.

BSD Analysis:
The nuclear renaissance continues to strengthen Cameco’s pricing power and long-term contract visibility. Supply constraints, aging reactor fleets, and geopolitical shifts have tightened the uranium market, supporting sustained price momentum. Cameco’s low-cost tier-one assets and integrated fuel capabilities position it to capture outsized margin expansion as demand accelerates. Its ownership in Westinghouse enhances vertical integration and optionality in reactor services. Shares still trade below peak-cycle valuation despite improving fundamentals, with catalysts including contract repricing, new reactor builds, and potential supply disruptions from competitors.

Pitch Summary:
We also sold what had become a small (for us) 3.5% position in THG following the mild recovery in THG’s share price in June. Our sale was driven by me no longer having a high degree of confidence in two key aspects of my investment thesis: 1. Management have begun to act in a way which I fear is not necessarily in the interests of all shareholders – this was becoming apparent through the structure of the THG Ingenuity spin-off in December (timed to justify a very low EV for Ingenuity with management taking a large stake in the NewCo), but I think runs deeper still. Matt Moulding is exactly the type of founder that we look to partner with, but ‘partner’ is an important word here. I worry that Matt’s experience of public markets has made him see monsters around every corner and every public market investor (certainly institutional) as part of the problem. That switch in mentality means that, in his mind at least, we are not on the same side; an untenable position for a minority public investor to be in. 2. The MyProtein rebrand has exposed that Nutrition’s market position is weaker than I thought. Earlier this year we conducted a range of interviews with former members of the THG Nutrition’s team with the goal of determining whether the company’s narrative around the MyProtein rebrand was fair. I concluded that there had indeed been issues with the rebrand that were ‘self-made’ rather than run of the mill for a DTC brand repositioning itself. But the conversations also revealed that many customers, including high LTV and high frequency customers, had abandoned MyProtein following the rebrand, even though it remained at price parity or cheaper than competitors. The whey protein business (and sports nutrition more widely) is a business that in my view is best understood through commodity-type behaviour patterns. If you’re after 1kg of whey isolate, you want the best deal, and it shouldn’t really matter to you what the packaging looks like. That’s why there’s so much promotional activity in the sector; after the glitzy new brand launch wears off, price should be the only way to sustainably take custom away from another brand. The fact that MyProtein is losing long-term customers for non-price driven reasons is therefore particularly worrying. Management believe that the rebrand will lead to a new profile of customer that they did not have before. But they have not been transparent that these customers are coming at the expense of many of the customers they built their business on, and we expect better from our management teams.

BSD Analysis:
THG plc (THG.L) THG is a highly volatile, conglomerate-discounted e-commerce and technology platform whose valuation hinges on the separation and re-rating of its core divisions: Beauty, Nutrition, and the THG Ingenuity platform. The "edgy" thesis is that the Ingenuity platform, which provides end-to-end e-commerce solutions for third-party brands, is a massive, high-margin, under-monetized SaaS asset that is obscured by the volatility of its retail units. The critical catalyst is the rumored spin-off or strategic sale of Ingenuity, which would unlock significant shareholder value and force the market to price the remaining retail units more accurately, ultimately serving as a sum-of-the-parts re-valuation play.

Pitch Summary:
7 years after first buying shares in NAHL Group, we sold our entire position in June. My investment thesis throughout our holding period remained consistent: NAHL would use the growing cashflow from its critical care division to fund the development of a vertically integrated claims generation and processing business. Once that business reached cashflow neutrality, the critical care business would be sold leaving the personal injury business to either be sold or run independently. We have been in the endgame for our investment for the last 12 months, with the group confirming in April 2024 that the critical care business was for sale. Despite over a dozen expressions of interest and more than 4 offers being tabled at various points, the group failed to obtain a price they felt provided fair value to shareholders and issued a sale process cessation notice in mid-June. Without this catalyst in place, the range of possible outcomes widened beyond my comfort zone, including a significant risk of a delisting, so I made the decision to fully exit our position in the days following the announcement. Over the past 12 months, I have spent a significant amount of time reflecting on what I have learned from holding NAHL for 7 years. We made a calculated bet with what I considered to be skewed risk/reward dynamics (c.65%+ chance of 100%+ gain with a c.30% chance of a 25% downside) and the outcome went against us. I’m trying not to be guilty of ‘resulting’, but there are a couple of lessons that I will carry forward as inputs into future decisions that are worth laying out: 1. Small scale M&A is an unreliable catalyst – many sub scale businesses have too much execution risk and not a big enough pool of potential buyers to have a high degree of confidence in a deal being completed. 2. Liquidity really matters – once our position was set, the nearly total lack of trading volume meant we were never able to exit it without causing a collapse in the share price by starting to do so. In the end, our sale was a negotiated one with another major holder; an opportunity that only presented as they are pushing for a delisting to occur and want to increase their position size and voting power. In terms of what will change from here because of this experience, the frank answer is not very much, as it has already changed. I have already backed away from this type of deal-catalyst driven investing and we no longer make new investments in very illiquid shares. It is of course possible that I got my probabilities wrong and that NAHL Group was therefore an investment mistake. But either way, it’s not a situation of the kind we are likely to be involved in again. Instead, as reflected by our current portfolio, we will look for similar probabilities of success and failure, but where success depends only on management keeping doing what they’re doing, rather than doing something they’ve not done before.

BSD Analysis:
NAHL Group plc (NAH.L) NAHL is a specialized legal services consolidator in the UK, operating through a high-leverage business model that centralizes marketing and client acquisition for fragmented personal injury (PI) and critical care law firms. The investment is a pure play on regulatory reform and market share gain in the structurally sticky PI claims market. The key edge is its ability to operate a high-volume, low-cost client funnel, essentially acting as a legal fintech lead generator. NAHL offers an aggressive bet on successful cost base management and a re-rating as its core business shifts from volatile credit to predictable, fee-based revenue streams.

Pitch Summary:
We purchased shares in Macfarlane Group in the first quarter of the year, 18 months after first commencing research. We were rewarded for our patience with an average price of 100p/share. Macfarlane is the second distributor to join our portfolio after Midwich. It is the UK’s leading provider of specialist protective packaging, with a focus on complex, high-value industrial goods. It has an attractive combination of high returns on capital/low capital intensity, a long-standing and competent management team, and a valuation that we believe materially understated the quality of the business. We paid less than 10x run-rate free cash flow for a business that has compounded EBIT at c.15% per annum for a decade. Macfarlane is almost completely overlooked in UK public markets. It has fairly low trading volume, with no real broker coverage, and limited investor relations outreach. Incentives throughout the group are built around profitability and decentralised accountability. Each regional distribution centre has its own P&L and EBIT-based bonus structure, and the salesforce is paid on gross profit, not revenue. That focus on profitability is rare, and it’s visible in the culture. Growth has come organically and via bolt-on acquisitions made at sensible prices. Management is currently exploring a European expansion, which is a sensible long-term ambition, but we have not built any significant impact from this into our base case expectations. If successful, it opens up a much longer runway. If not, the downside is modest. Macfarlane has three key attributes that make it unusually resilient: high customer switching costs, disciplined internal incentives, and a recurring, not particularly cyclical revenue base without significant customer concentration. Most of Macfarlane’s customers spend over £100k per year and rely on the company not just for standard packaging solutions, but for bespoke design, just-in-time logistics, and materials procurement. For most customers, replacing Macfarlane would require internalising a host of non-core capabilities such as sourcing, warehousing, supplier management, which few of their customers want to do. Despite this, I spent a fair amount of time during the research process on the probability and implications of customers (particularly large customers) going direct to manufacturers, as that is one of the more significant risks to the business specifically and for any distribution business generally. My conclusion after speaking to both suppliers and customers is that while this is a risk to the business, particularly during periods when suppliers have excess capacity (such as now), it affects mainly higher volume lower margin SKUs, and the customers more likely to go direct to suppliers are those which do not utilise Macfarlane’s high margin value-add services. As one former salesperson put it, “sometimes a customer just outgrows us, but we’ve always had plenty more coming through to take their place.” Another point to make regarding investing in distributors is that these businesses are largely hostages to the near-term prospects of their end markets. As Midwich cannot control the ebbs and flow of the audio-visual market, Macfarlane cannot do much to influence the end demand for paper and packaging. What these businesses can do, and in my view are doing, is further strengthen their position in their markets during periods of weaker demand. If I am right about this, then management should come out of the current period of difficult trading ready to continue their impressive record of growth and we should do very well as a result. If growth does not return to previous levels, or it takes longer than expected, we will still enjoy the effects of a 10% FCF yield being deployed into buybacks. This outcome skew is a good example of why we are so excited by current market opportunities.

BSD Analysis:
Macfarlane Group plc (MACF.L) Macfarlane is a defensive industrial packaging consolidator in the fragmented UK and European markets, benefiting from the structural, non-cyclical growth of the e-commerce and industrial supply chains. The investment thesis is a high-margin, predictable business model driven by a consistent strategy of accretive acquisitions of smaller rivals, which immediately enhances operating leverage and market dominance. Its focus on specialized, protective packaging and long-term contracts provides a durable moat. MACF is a reliable cash compounder that delivers a superior dividend yield and is protected by its necessity in the modern logistics economy.

Pitch Summary:
Our hero of the day, China YuHua Education Group, was hit right across the nose, with their extensive K-9 offering. Overnight, YuHua Edu seized being profitable and it would continue to lose -95% of it's share value in the next three years. ... After its transformation, China YuHua Education has become a company with a limited private formal high school education segment (grade 10 to 12) (<5% of revenue), and a substantial university and vocational college education segment (vocational education: schooling aimed at specific occupations such as skilled trades, software developer, accountancy, etc.), operating nine schools in mainland China. ... After borrowing overseas, YuHua faced an issue unique to Chinese companies: while having enough cash on hand within China, it was not able to get this money out of China to pay back bond owners. ... By threatening bankruptcy proceedings under Chinese law, YuHua was able to force a debt-for-equity swap valuing stocks over 100% above the price it was trading at. ... Currently trading at 5x earnings, this multiple is set to compress to just 2.5 on projected 2025 earnings - reflecting exceptional value potential. With the debt swap behind us, debt levels have also become very manageable. ... China YuHua Education's stock is down over -90% since the 'Double Reduction' act, all the while remaining profitable and with profits set to return to pre-2022 levels. Clearly there is an extreme fear for the sector. The complete nationalization of the sector seems all but priced in, leaving extraordinary upside for those who dare to bet on any other outcome.

BSD Analysis:
China YuHua Education is a deep-value, post-regulatory clean-up play whose stock is an asymmetric recovery bet on its successful strategic pivot to the high-margin vocational training sector. The core thesis is driven by the fact that its recent financial rebound, with full-year profit soaring 133%, is a result of margin expansion and a successful acquisition strategy that is structurally improving earnings power. The company’s focus on vocational training and degree programs aligns perfectly with Chinese government policy and market demand. Trading at a deeply discounted 0.2x Price/Book despite a strong financial cleanup, the stock is a conviction bet on the long-term, structural need for post-secondary and vocational education in China.

Pitch Summary:
Caesars Entertainment ($CZR) is positioned as a compelling value opportunity driven by the potential spin-off of its fast-growing digital business. Caesars Digital is growing revenues north of 20%, with 2025 EBITDA estimated at $300–350m and a clear path to $500m+ in 2026 as sports betting and iGaming adoption expands across additional U.S. states. At a 10–12× EBITDA multiple, the digital unit alone could be worth $5–6bn, implying $24–29 per share of value. Credit documentation appears to allow the digital business to be moved into an unrestricted subsidiary, enabling a tax-efficient spin, potentially with modest leverage to accelerate debt paydown at the core business. The pitch argues that ongoing Las Vegas weakness obscures this embedded value. With buybacks and a potential spin in 2H 2026, upside to $50+ per share is viewed as achievable.

BSD Analysis:
The U.S. gaming industry is bifurcating between capital-intensive, cyclical physical assets and asset-light, structurally growing digital platforms. Caesars’ digital segment has reached sufficient scale and profitability to warrant standalone valuation, benefiting from secular legalization tailwinds and strong brand leverage from the physical network. Strategically, separation would clarify capital allocation, reduce conglomerate discount, and accelerate deleveraging—key constraints on equity valuation today. The primary risk is regulatory pacing and competitive intensity in digital, where promotional discipline will determine margin durability. Execution risk also remains around timing, leverage transfer, and tax structuring of a spin. However, the current stock price appears to value the digital option at a steep discount while assigning little credit to normalized cash flow from the core business. If management delivers on buybacks and crystallizes digital value, multiple expansion could be material. In that scenario, CZR transitions from a levered recovery story to a sum-of-the-parts rerating driven by structural growth.

Actual Post Content:
The potential spin of $CZR's digital business is making $CZR look compelling. The digital business is growing revenues over 20% with EBITDA likely in the $300-$350mm range in 2025 with a line of sight to $500mm+ in 2026. Given the tailwinds in sports betting and iGaming with new states likely to approve over the coming years (especially in iGaming where only 7 states have approved), this business could easily trade 10-12x EBITDA and be worth $5-$6B or $24-$29 per $CZR share. The credit agreements and indentures seem to allow for this spin by permitting the digital business to be moved into an unrestricted subsidiary, so they could spin this to shareholders without any debt on it and then you would be getting the bricks & mortar business for free. Now I would expect some debt to be placed on the digital business to help pay down debt at the bricks & mortar business, but I think this exercise speaks to the value imbedded in the stock despite Las Vegas weakness keeping a lid on the shares. $CZR stock could easily be worth $50+ per share if they execute they buy back stock aggressively in 2025 and early 2026 and then spin the digital business in 2H 2026.

URL: https://x.com/cparyse86296/status/1950977897709060250

Pitch Summary:
Calavo Growers ($CVGW) is framed as an emerging merger-arbitrage opportunity with ~20% upside to a non-binding $32/share cash-and-stock offer. After years of operational missteps under prior management, the company’s founder returned as CEO in 2023, exited the low-margin RFG business, paid down debt, refocused on core avocado operations, and authorized a buyback. In June 2025, CVGW received an unsolicited bid from an undisclosed buyer, now under review, with downside estimated at <10% given strong insider buying and historical price support around $24. The founder/CEO has personally purchased over $7m of stock and is heavily incentivized through equity options, while his limited-term contract (ending March 2026) makes a sale a logical succession outcome. At ~12x 2024 EBITDA, the pitch suggests room for either deal completion or a higher bid.

BSD Analysis:
The fresh produce distribution industry is structurally low-margin and operationally complex, favoring scale, sourcing relationships, and execution discipline over growth narratives. Calavo’s competitive position has stabilized since the founder’s return, with a simplified portfolio and improving cost structure reducing execution risk. Industry conditions in avocados appear to be normalizing after volatility, supporting incremental EBITDA recovery. Governance dynamics materially improve deal odds: concentrated insider alignment, a credible turnaround leader nearing succession, and clear shareholder dissatisfaction with the status quo. The key risk is deal fatigue—non-binding offers can dissipate if buyers reassess commodity exposure or margin durability. However, insider buying near current levels creates a credible downside anchor, limiting asymmetry. Valuation does not appear stretched for a strategic buyer seeking supply-chain integration or scale. In this context, the equity offers a favorable risk/reward skew, with optionality for either a completed transaction or continued operational recovery under aligned leadership.

Actual Post Content:
Interesting Early Merger Arb Setup Developing at $CVGW — 20%+ Upside Potential CVGW is one of the largest distributors of avocados in the U.S. The company has faced multiple challenges in recent years, particularly after its founder and long-time CEO retired in 2019. The new management mishandled operations, leading to industry share loss and packaged segment underperformance, ultimately forcing the founder with a strong track record to come out of retirement in 2023. Since returning, he has sold the low-margin RFG (Renaissance Food Group) business, paid down debt, refocused on improving core avocado operations, and announced a buyback in March 2025. In June, the company received a non-binding, unsolicited offer, which is currently being reviewed. The offer is for $32/share in cash and stock, but the buyer remains undisclosed. Negotiations are ongoing, and the spread to the indicated bid is currently around 21%, with downside at less than 10%. The stock has rarely traded below $24 since the founder’s return. More importantly, the CEO has purchased over $7m worth of stock at prices between $24–30/share, with his most recent purchase exceeding $2m in April at prices between $23.70 and $24.60, so $24/share should be a good downside indicator here. The stock trades at approximately 12x 2024 EBITDA, with potential for further EBITDA improvement as the avocado market stabilizes. At current levels, a sale does not seem unlikely — especially considering the CEO/founder was forced out of retirement to turn the business around. He is now in his mid-80s and has a limited-term contract (ends in March 2026), so a sale would be a logical succession path. Importantly, he is well-incentivized: his annual base salary is just $64K, exceptionally low for a U.S.-listed company CEO, with most of his compensation tied to stock options that vest at $50–70/share. While that range may not reflect fair value in the near term, it underscores the CEO’s confidence in the value of the stock. Given his historical track record, it’s possible that fair value exceeds the proposed $32/share offer, and there is room for an increased offer. Overall, this appears to be an interesting setup with a favorable risk/reward profile. Looking forward to your thoughts.

URL: https://x.com/investspecial/status/1950839877496451373

Pitch Summary:
TrueBlue is a distressed industrial staffing provider currently in a "fix-it-or-sell-it" governance battle. After rejecting multiple unsolicited bids from HireQuest (HQI)—including a February 2025 offer of $12.30 per share and a May 2025 bid of $7.50—the board adopted a poison pill, drawing the ire of an activist shareholder base. The thesis suggests that TrueBlue's bloated corporate structure and underperforming branches would be worth significantly more if re-franchised under an owner-operator model.

BSD Analysis:
TrueBlue screens as a governance problem masquerading as a cyclical staffing downturn. The business has seen a decade-Bull "downward spiral," with annual revenue dropping from $2.8 billion in 2016 to $1.57 billion in 2024 (a 17.8% YoY decline). Despite these headwinds, the HireQuest bid provides a credible floor for the valuation. HQI’s franchise model is structurally superior, by converting TrueBlue’s corporate-owned PeopleReady offices into independently owned businesses, a buyer could slash overhead and restore branch-level accountability. The board’s rejection of a 76% premium offer (at the time of the $7.50 bid) has essentially "trapped" management into delivering an immediate turnaround. While the stock has traded as low as $4.65, the constant presence of a strategic bidder creates an asymmetric setup. Either management executes a structural reset via its JobStack digital platform, or the board will eventually be forced to capitulate to a sale.

Pitch Summary:
We recently added CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited) to our China basket. CATL is the largest EV battery producer with 40% of the global EV battery market. CATL is also the second largest manufacturer of utility-scale batteries or Energy Storage Systems used for managing power generation. CATL is at the epicenter of the energy transition megatrend that includes the electrification of transportation, grid storage, and supporting these supply chains. Along with Tesla, CATL is positioned to capture an outsized share of this transition. More specifically, CATL is a leader in developing the battery technology infrastructure used by OEMs and utilities. With an already deep integration into EV OEMs and a growing presence in utility-scale energy storage in and outside China, CATL is the proven go-to supplier for next-gen battery technology. Although the stock is up over 18x since IPO in 2018, its valuation on the ChiNext exchange of about $150 billion USD is still only 10x our estimate of 2026 operating earnings. Looking out to 2030, operating earnings could be closer to $25+ billion with IP licensing driving higher margins and better returns on capital. The stock's low valuation is compelling even if a portion of current revenue in China may be at risk without ongoing EV subsidies. Given the trajectory of CATL's battery technology and what it means for EV adoption, the stock could be a multibagger opportunity over the next several years.

BSD Analysis:
CATL is the heavyweight champion of EV batteries, supplying a huge share of global automakers with lithium-ion packs and increasingly more advanced chemistries. Scale matters enormously in batteries, and CATL has it—from raw-material sourcing relationships to manufacturing know-how. The company is pushing into higher-nickel, LFP, and sodium-ion technologies, hedging chemistry risk while driving down cost per kWh. Policy support for EVs and storage in China and abroad keeps demand structurally strong, even if individual markets wobble. Geopolitics and trade barriers are obvious risks, but they also underscore how strategically important CATL has become. If the world electrifies on schedule, CATL will be at the center of the value chain. It’s a pure-play on the energy storage backbone.

Pitch Summary:
Beyond near-term earnings, large Chinese tech companies often hold substantial stakes in other leading tech companies that they once funded. Alibaba (BABA), for instance, trades at a ~$270 billion market cap but holds ~$85 billion in equity investments on its balance sheet. This includes a 33% stake in Ant Group, regarded as China’s dominant fintech platform and often compared to a combination of Amazon, Visa, and PayPal. If Ant were to IPO at the roughly $200+ billion estimated valuation, Alibaba’s stake would be worth ~$60 billion, or about 25% of its current market capitalization. While Alibaba’s core e-commerce growth is under pressure, the balance sheet holdings are attractive enough to help justify a doubling of BABA over a reasonable period of time.

BSD Analysis:
Alibaba is no longer the invincible Chinese internet giant it once was, but its core assets remain powerful and deeply embedded in China’s digital economy. Taobao and Tmall still command enormous traffic and cash flow, even as competition from Pinduoduo and Douyin heats up. The restructuring — breaking Alibaba into more autonomous business units — has forced sharper execution and better cost discipline across the entire organization. Cloud remains a strategic wildcard: it hasn’t scaled as rapidly as hoped, but it still holds meaningful potential if management stabilizes leadership and product focus. Regulatory pressure and geopolitics permanently compress the stock’s valuation, but they haven’t erased the company’s infrastructure-like position in commerce and logistics. Alibaba’s international platforms and logistics network add long-term optionality outside China, where competition is less intense. For investors willing to stomach volatility, Alibaba offers dominant digital assets at a valuation that implies stagnation, not renewed execution.

Pitch Summary:
Spotify – SPOT continues to be our largest position and has been the largest contributor to fund performance for the past two years. The stock was up 71.5% in the first half. After enduring 4 years of underperformance SPOT has delivered a 5.7x return or 27.5% annualized since we initiated the position 6.5 years ago. The core of our Spotify thesis is that the spoken word (including music) is the most undervalued form of communication on the web, by a country mile. Spotify's business model is to deliver an exceptional search and discovery user experience in exchange for ownership of your real-time behavioral data and a monthly fee for an ad-free Premium Tier. Similar to YouTube and Meta, Spotify continues to demonstrate that owning consumer attention at scale can be more valuable than owning the content being consumed. While other platforms have been ultra successful at monetizing video, unlocking the value of audio has historically required a different approach. Spotify has made enormous progress in closing the monetization gap between audio and video but we are still very early on this journey. Spotify recently got an important boost to future earnings power after winning its years-long fight with Apple. Spotify can now directly communicate and bill its U.S. and EU consumers for any Spotify service without the friction that existed before. With Spotify’s user base projected to surpass 1 billion within the next 18 months, the runway for scaled advertising monetization is substantial. At roughly 30x our estimate of 2026 EBITDA Spotify's valuation is optically expensive, as it has been the entire time we've owned it. However, looking out over the next few years, SPOT'S $145 billion valuation today will look cheap if management can even get close to achieving their goal of €20 billion of operating earnings with minimal incremental capital invested.

BSD Analysis:
Spotify has become the global operating system for audio, and its pivot toward profitability is finally showing up in the numbers. The company’s scale in user data, discovery algorithms, and daily engagement is a real moat that competitors still struggle to dent. Podcasts and audiobooks deepen the ecosystem and expand gross margin, even if those categories were messy to scale early on. The ad business remains an underappreciated lever — once fully built out, it can meaningfully lift ARPU without raising subscription prices. Artist tools, marketplace features, and direct-fan monetization give Spotify optionality to improve economics in a business long dominated by labels. Cost discipline has also helped shift the narrative from “great product, weak profits” to a maturing platform with operating leverage. If Spotify continues executing on margin expansion while growing engagement, it has a clear path to becoming an audio powerhouse with real platform economics.

Pitch Summary:
Merck & Co (Health Care, Pharmaceuticals) has a high Corporate Resilience score, and is contributing to a more robust and sustainable health care system through its leading drug and vaccine discovery efforts. The stock’s weakness in Q2 was driven by a combination of concerns about its drug pipeline, particularly the competition from generics and biosimilars to future versions of Keytruda, and weaker market sentiment around Health Care stocks.

BSD Analysis:
Merck remains anchored by Keytruda, one of the most successful cancer drugs ever, which continues expanding into new indications and earlier lines of treatment. That alone gives the company a multi-year growth engine with staggering durability. But Merck has also built a quieter pipeline in vaccines, cardiology, and oncology-adjacent therapies that should cushion Keytruda’s eventual patent expiry. Its balance sheet is clean, allowing aggressive investment and strategic acquisitions. While the market fixates on Keytruda concentration, Merck keeps broadening the base beneath it. The company’s execution in clinical development is consistently strong. Merck is a defensive growth machine with a world-class asset still hitting its stride.

Pitch Summary:
Nvidia (Information Technology, Semiconductors) has one of the highest Corporate Resilience scores in the US universe and is playing a critical role in the AI economy by providing material energy and compute efficiency. The stock hit an all-time high in the quarter despite facing sales restrictions in China. The company reported strong year-over-year growth driven by high chip demand. Nvidia's growth in AI infrastructure remains robust, with new opportunities in robotics, autonomous systems and a strong ecosystem. Revenue is expected to remain solid due to ongoing supply constraints in graphics processing units (GPUs) and increasing adoption by ‘hyperscale’ cloud service providers.

BSD Analysis:
NVIDIA remains the gravitational center of the AI arms race, with unmatched GPU performance, an entrenched CUDA ecosystem, and a developer base that behaves like a locked-in operating system. Hyperscalers are still scrambling for supply even as NVIDIA expands into new product categories like networking, systems, and AI software. Its moat is widening, not narrowing, because AI workloads demand integrated compute stacks, exactly what NVIDIA sells. Competitors try to undercut on price or promote custom silicon, but they’re fighting a flywheel that’s already spinning at escape velocity. Margins remain extraordinary due to system-level control and software attach. Even if growth moderates, NVIDIA’s dominance in AI compute is nowhere near mature. This is the rare case where “expensive” keeps being cheap in hindsight.

Pitch Summary:
Broadcom (Information Technology, Semiconductors) offers energy-efficient data center compute solutions which, in addition to requiring less energy, facilitate broader economic participation by making connectivity more equitable. Stock returns in Q2 were driven by a combination of strong earnings, high demand for AI data centers, market share gains in the custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip market, and positive market sentiment.

BSD Analysis:
Broadcom is the semiconductor and software empire that keeps compounding through disciplined M&A, ruthless cost control, and exposure to markets with real staying power. Its networking and custom ASIC businesses put it directly in the AI data-center upgrade cycle, where demand remains structurally tight. The VMware acquisition adds a massive recurring software layer, boosting margins and diversifying revenue. Broadcom’s strategy is simple: buy mission-critical assets, run them better, and extract enormous cash flow. Critics focus on concentration risk, but customers simply can’t unwind Broadcom’s integrations. The result is a company that feels more like an infrastructure utility than a cyclic semiconductor vendor. The business earns its premium because the numbers just keep delivering.

Pitch Summary:
Oracle (Information Technology, Systems Software), which is held due to its high Corporate Resilience score and exposure to the ‘enhancing productivity’ theme through software and resource efficiency and optimization, reported earnings and revenue growth exceeding analysts' expectations. Customer commitments are projected to double next year, contributing to a significant backlog in calendar year 2026. Additionally, the company announced plans to purchase US$40bn-worth of Nvidia chips for collaboration with OpenAI on US data center capacity.

BSD Analysis:
Oracle is a deeply entrenched enterprise software giant executing a powerful, successful pivot to the high-growth Cloud infrastructure and applications market that is driving significant earnings leverage. The core thesis is anchored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform, which is seeing massive adoption driven by its superior price-performance and key strategic partnerships (e.g., with Microsoft and NVIDIA). OCI is positioning itself as a leader in sovereign cloud and AI workloads, which are non-discretionary spending areas. Crucially, the company’s vast, sticky installed base for its core database and applications provides a stable, recurring foundation that funds the aggressive cloud CapEx. The stock is a leveraged bet on the AI infrastructure buildout, with the OCI segment providing the hyper-growth catalyst required to justify a premium multiple and amplify returns alongside its massive, consistent share repurchase program.

Pitch Summary:
Outset Medical is a company that we made a large position when it fell below $1.00/share due to dilution from a very constructive financing with several high-quality healthcare investors, which essentially prevented a liquidity crisis for the company. Outset provides dialysis equipment and consumables for healthcare facilities and the home. We believe the company is reasonably well positioned with a recurring revenue model and good growth prospects. Our ability to purchase the stock at highly attractive valuations was due to several technical inefficiencies endemic to the micro-cap cap market, which is what we love about the space. The choppy trading of shares after the stock fell below $1.00 cumulated when they announced a reverse stock split via a press-release in March, which sent the stock down over 30% in the pre-market that day, even though the company had already announced its intention to authorize a reverse stock split on its 4Q24 earnings call in February. Due to our liquid asset base and belief in the company’s long-term prospects, we were able to buy aggressively in the pre-market and the stock has more than tripled since then. Yet again, this is a classic case of us gaining confidence in an early-stage growth company through our fundamental research, which allowed us to rapidly take advantage of a temporary and unusually attractive entry point due to a trading dislocation in the micro-cap market.

BSD Analysis:
Outset is trying to reinvent dialysis with its Tablo system — a more flexible, user-friendly platform designed to shift care away from traditional clinics. The thesis is attractive: decentralize dialysis, improve patient quality of life, and cut system-level costs. But medical-device adoption is slow, and reimbursement complexity creates friction. Execution has been uneven, with regulatory setbacks and slower-than-hoped uptake in home dialysis. If Outset can demonstrate consistent safety, reliability, and economic value to providers, the upside is enormous. If not, the burn rate and capital intensity become overwhelming. This is a binary medtech disruptor with real clinical promise but a tough scaling curve.

Pitch Summary:
Legacy Education is a relatively recent IPO that is a for-profit education company focused on the healthcare vertical. The company is poised to capitalize on a large supply/demand gap of trained healthcare workers over the next decade, which we believe provides a long-duration growth opportunity for Legacy. The company maintains very strong incremental returns on capital as it builds new campuses, expands programs across its growing campus base, and makes selective acquisitions. Furthermore, due to the unique regulatory nature of the education vertical, it is one of the few industries that has seen little competition from private-equity backed companies. Regulatory dynamics also slow the pace of expansion for existing competitors. We believe the combination of these dynamics should extend the duration of this growth opportunity beyond what you would normally see in most industries experiencing a supply/demand gap and attractive economics for supply expansion. These positive industry dynamics are not unrecognized by the stock market, as larger peers Universal Technical Institute (UTI), Lincoln Educational Services (LINC) and Adtalem (ATGE) have performed very well. However, with a market cap of around $150mm and current revenue base of around $65mm, we believe LGCY will benefit from being able to grow off a much smaller base. It is also trading at a substantial multiple discount to its larger peers. We view LGCY as a classic core growth holding.

BSD Analysis:
Legacy Education is a micro-cap education and training platform that has been stuck in restructuring mode for years, trying to stabilize operations and modernize a dated business model. The company lives in the niche world of adult financial education and training — a category with volatile demand and reputational overhang. The real question is whether Legacy can pivot into digital-first delivery with a cost structure that matches its scale. Capital constraints and governance noise linger, limiting strategic optionality. Still, even small operational improvements or asset monetization can move a micro-cap like this meaningfully. This is a speculative turnaround story more about cleanup than growth. Only for investors comfortable with deep special-situations risk.