Investment Pitches

Pitch Summary:
UnitedHealth Group withdrew full-year guidance, announced a CEO change, and reported earnings below expectations due primarily to Medicare Advantage funding cuts and higher-than-expected medical costs. The former CEO returned, purchasing $25 million in shares, signaling confidence. Analysts expect Medicare Advantage profitability to recover over the next year as funding improves and cost trends stabilize.

BSD Analysis:
UnitedHealth Group is a high-quality healthcare titan whose unique, integrated model provides an unbreakable moat and delivers predictable, above-market growth. The core thesis is centered on the Optum segment—the company's tech, pharmacy, and care delivery arm—which is the true compounding engine. Optum’s ability to use proprietary data and technology to optimize costs and improve outcomes is the structural driver of margin expansion and superior efficiency. The stock offers a defensive, double-digit growth profile, combining the stability of a payer with the high-growth optionality of a tech-enabled health services provider.

Pitch Summary:
Eli Lilly’s stock faced pressure due to uncertainty around potential pricing impacts, GLP-1 revenue expectations, and maintained guidance. Despite this, management reaffirmed confidence in its diabetes and obesity franchises. Further clinical readouts from its oral obesity pill are expected later in the year and may serve as positive catalysts.

BSD Analysis:
Eli Lilly is a generational growth story in the pharmaceutical sector, utterly dominant in the multi-hundred-billion-dollar GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes megatrend. The core thesis is driven by the company's successful navigation of regulatory and policy risks, securing a $6.5 billion investment to build a new U.S. manufacturing facility. This domestic expansion strengthens its supply chain and provides favorable policy positioning. The company's Return on Equity stands at an impressive 87.91%, justifying its high valuation. Lilly's expanding portfolio is poised to capture substantial market share and provide long-term growth momentum.

Pitch Summary:
Progressive delivered record performance following a standout 2024, adding 4.25 million personal auto policies and growing net premium revenue by 21%. Profitability reached 12%, well above historical averages. While growth is expected to moderate, profitability is forecast to remain above long-term targets due to strong underwriting discipline and data-driven pricing advantages.

BSD Analysis:
Progressive is the undisputed, high-growth leader in personal lines insurance whose stock is a conviction bet on its superior technological and pricing moat. The core thesis is driven by its proprietary "snapshot" telematics program and its superior, granular risk segmentation, which allows it to price risk more accurately than competitors. This technological edge enables Progressive to maintain higher profitability and capitalize on the current hard market cycle. The stock is a high-quality compounder leveraging data science and operational efficiency to capture market share and deliver industry-leading Combined Ratios.

Pitch Summary:
Danaher reported mixed organic growth with flat overall revenue, but its Biotechnology segment delivered 7% organic growth, marking a strong recovery from prior declines. Life Sciences and Diagnostics segments remained pressured by weaker instrument demand and procurement changes in China. The company expects low-single-digit revenue growth for the full year and believes it can largely offset tariff impacts.

BSD Analysis:
Danaher is a high-quality, R&D-driven life science tools behemoth whose stock is a conviction bet on the long-term, non-cyclical growth of bioprocessing and diagnostics. The core moat is the Danaher Business System (DBS), a culture and operating model of continuous improvement that ensures superior margin expansion and integration of acquired assets. The company is successfully executing its strategy of concentrating capital on high-growth areas like bioprocessing and gene editing. Danaher is an indispensable, high-quality compounder whose stability and operational excellence justify its premium valuation.

Pitch Summary:
NextEra Energy’s shares dipped late in the quarter due to concerns over a potential tax on wind and solar projects, which was ultimately excluded from legislation. Florida Power & Light delivered 12% EPS growth driven by regulatory capital expansion, while NextEra Energy Resources reported 10% adjusted EPS growth and expanded its backlog to 28 GW. The company projects high-single-digit EPS growth through 2027 and dividend growth of at least 10% annually through 2026.

BSD Analysis:
NextEra Energy is the unassailable, high-growth utility oligopolist whose stock is a conviction bet on the multi-trillion-dollar energy transition. The core moat is its dual-engine model: Florida Power & Light (FPL) provides stable, regulated utility earnings, while NextEra Energy Resources (NEER) is the world's largest producer of wind and solar power. The stock is penalized by high leverage used to fund its massive renewable buildout, but this debt finances contracted revenue that remains stable and supportive of long-term growth. NEE is a high-quality compounder, leveraging its dominant position to deliver predictable growth and ESG mathbfleadership}.

Pitch Summary:
TE Connectivity exceeded expectations in its fiscal second quarter, reporting organic revenue growth of 5.3%, accelerating from the prior three quarters. Growth was driven by double-digit performance in the Industrial Solutions segment, with adjusted operating margins expanding by 90 basis points. Industrial Solutions margins expanded 260 basis points, driving a 13% year-over-year increase in earnings per share.

BSD Analysis:
TE Connectivity is an indispensable, high-growth interconnect solutions oligopolist whose premium valuation is justified by its exposure to two massive structural megatrends: electrification and AI data center buildout. The core thesis is driven by the company's specialized products that connect and protect power, signal, and data in harsh environments. Its AI-related revenue hit $1.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to more than double by 2027. The company is delivering superior financial velocity, with record adjusted EPS of $8.76 and a 20% adjusted operating margin in FY2025.

Pitch Summary:
JPMorgan shares rallied due to strong first-quarter results, an impressive analyst day update, and discussions around reducing banking regulations. Debit and credit card volumes rose 7% year-over-year, while investment banking and markets revenue increased 12% and 21%, respectively. The company opened 500,000 net new checking accounts and reported $90 billion in asset management inflows. JPMorgan also announced a 12% dividend increase and repurchased $7 billion in shares.

BSD Analysis:
JPMorgan Chase is the undisputed, high-quality U.S. banking oligopolist whose stock is a conviction bet on its fortress balance sheet and its indispensable role in global capital markets. The core moat is its massive scale, diversified revenue streams across consumer, commercial, and investment banking, and its superior risk management. The company is a key beneficiary of the AI-driven capital expenditure cycle and strong corporate profit margins. In a world of elevated policy uncertainty and inflation risks, JPM is viewed as the safe-haven bank, leveraged to secular tailwinds while providing shock absorption against market volatility.

Pitch Summary:
Microsoft reported its fiscal third quarter with 15% constant currency revenue growth, exceeding expectations and accelerating from the prior quarter. Growth was driven by 35% growth in Azure and Cloud Services revenue, with similar growth expected next quarter. The Productivity and Business Processes segment grew 13%, while the Intelligent Cloud segment grew 22%. Microsoft now has two revenue segments each exceeding $100 billion annually driving strong double-digit revenue and earnings growth.

BSD Analysis:
Microsoft is the unassailable AI infrastructure provider and enterprise monetization king, leveraging its colossal cloud footprint to extract cash across the entire technology stack. The core thesis is the successful monetization of Azure and Copilot, driven by the "Great Re-Integration" where enterprises pay a premium for Microsoft's integrated platform. The company is funding this transformation with an extraordinary CapEx, entirely self-financed through superior operating cash flow. Management is committed to investing $4 billion in cash and AI cloud technology to accelerate AI skilling and development globally. The stock is a high-quality compounder whose strategic direction is entirely tied to the success of its aggressive AI adoption strategy.

Pitch Summary:
Apple shares dropped by over 9% in the second quarter, driven initially by escalating tariffs on China where the majority of Apple’s iPhone supply chain is located. The stock later recovered as tensions with China de-escalated. Apple’s fiscal second-quarter report showed iPhone sales up 2% and Services revenue up 12%, but management did not provide guidance for the Services segment due to macroeconomic uncertainty and potential regulatory impacts on the App Store business.

BSD Analysis:
Apple is the ultimate technology platform oligopolist, whose stock is a conviction bet on the durability of its ecosystem moat and the accelerating monetization of its high-margin Services segment. The company posted Q4 2025 quarterly revenue of $102.5 billion (up 8% YoY) and diluted EPS of $1.85 (up 13% YoY). Services revenue consistently acts as the primary, high-margin growth engine, insulated by the company's sticky, integrated platform. The massive, predictable cash flow and the aggressive pace of its share repurchase program provide a structural safety net against any near-term hardware volatility.

Pitch Summary:
Oracle exceeded expectations in its mid-June report of fiscal fourth-quarter and annual results. The company’s outlook for fiscal 2026 was also better than anticipated. Although a late entrant to the cloud business compared to incumbent hyperscalers, Oracle offered a differentiated value proposition: its cloud architecture provided superior performance at a better value. This strategy has resulted in market share gains, securing contracts with leaders in Artificial Intelligence like OpenAI, and even competitors such as Microsoft. Oracle stands out as the only large-cap software company delivering accelerating revenue growth in the current uneven IT budget environment. Fourth-quarter revenues rose by 11% in constant currency to $15.9 billion. The company projects 16% revenue growth in fiscal 2026, with total cloud revenue increasing by 40% and Remaining Performance Obligations growing by over 100%.

BSD Analysis:
Oracle is the ruthless, deeply leveraged AI infrastructure pure-play whose stock is trading at a massive discount, creating a volatile but high-conviction entry point. The core thesis is a structural pivot to the Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business, which is fueled by its massive commitments to AI. The critical signal is the 359% surge in its contract backlog (RPO) to $455 billion in Q1 FY2026, which signals durable, long-term commitment from corporate clients. The high financial leverage is the cost of securing a generational, trillion-dollar market through aggressive CapEx. The company is converting its legacy software dominance into the physical infrastructure required to win the American AI race.

Pitch Summary:
Argent is a vertically integrated industrial conglomerate operating across South Africa, the UK, and the US. The group comprises more than 20 subsidiaries in sectors ranging from steel fabrication to the manufacture of security barriers, specialty equipment, branded consumer and industrial goods, and fuel-storage and refueling systems. The market tends to dismiss Argent as a “SA Inc.” cyclical, but under the hood, the story is far more compelling. Since the arrival of a new strategic shareholder and capital allocator in 2019, Argent has undergone a transformation. Low-return assets were jettisoned, working capital was tightened, cash conversion prioritized, and capital was recycled into higher-return growth avenues and significant share buybacks at deep discounts. Although its origins and listing domicile are South African, Argent is anything but a domestic-only story: in fiscal 2025, just 22% of earnings were generated in South Africa, while 78% came from developed markets such as the UK and US. EPS was up 12.5% and does not yet fully reflect the first full-year contribution from the Mersey Containers modular spaces acquisition. Over the past six years, EPS has compounded at 30% per annum. We see another year of strong EPS growth ahead, driven by organic expansion on the back of robust order books, disposal of a low-return non-core division, resumed share buybacks, and the full-year inclusion of recent acquisitions. The company remains an example of astute, shareholder-oriented capital allocation. Over the past nine years, Argent has repurchased about 43% of its shares at deep discounts. Buybacks were paused last year to accommodate acquisitions, but thanks to strong cash generation and an ungeared balance sheet with surplus cash, management has indicated that repurchases will resume. With Argent trading on an ex-cash P/E of below 4×, such buybacks are hugely accretive to shareholders. Management is incentivized and remains focused on improving returns on capital. ROE is trending up and to the right (the flattening in 2024 and 2025 is a result of surplus cash in the denominator; adjusted for cash, ROE is higher and still rising). Cash conversion exceeds 100%, so the company is not only returning profits to shareholders via buybacks – it has also reinstated a dividend after several years without one. We expect dividends to grow sustainably from the current base, which should place Argent on the radar of additional market participants. Argent is one of the largest holdings in the Desert Lion Capital Fund. We have high conviction that a long runway of significant growth lies ahead. Efficient execution and smart capital allocation have already delivered impressive outcomes: EPS has compounded at over 30% per year, the business is debt-free with surplus cash, and return on equity continues to trend upward. Yet the market assigns it a P/E of under 6×. This is a textbook mispricing of a high-quality, globally diversified, cash-generating company with excellent capital allocation driving returns – a classic case of a global business trading at South African discounts. We believe the discount won’t last forever, and until it closes, we are content to collect outsized earnings yields.

BSD Analysis:
Argent represents a deeply mispriced industrial compounder benefiting from disciplined capital allocation, high cash conversion, and substantial non-South African earnings diversification. The business has compounded EPS at ~30% annually while operating debt-free, creating powerful optionality for continued buybacks and selective acquisitions. Trading below 4× ex-cash earnings, Argent offers a rare combination of growth, quality, and extreme value. Its ability to generate >100% cash conversion and monetize non-core assets supports both dividends and aggressive repurchases. Key catalysts include resumed buybacks, stronger developed-market contributions, and continued ROE expansion.

Pitch Summary:
ENDI Corp (otc: ENDI) – we profiled ENDI in our 2024 first quarter letter when the share price was around $6.50 per share. The share price rose during the second quarter from $12.00 per share to $15.65 per share. ENDI owns CrossingBridge Advisors which manages fixed income mutual funds and a few managed accounts. Assets under management (AUM) for CrossingBridge grew over 30% in 2024, from $2.6 billion at the beginning of 2024, adjusted for the acquisition of the RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund, to $3.4 billion at the end of 2024. According to their website, as of the end of June 2025, AUM was in excess of $4.0 billion, an increase of over 16% in the first half alone. We think the current interest rate environment is attractive for short term bonds. ENDI’s operating margins in each of the last three quarters were 32% but that is misleading. ENDI incurs significant amortization charges related to its acquisition of CrossingBridge and other investment management contracts. Adjusted operating margin was 46 to 48%. First quarter cash earnings were $0.39 per share, or $1.56 per share annualized. Net cash and investments at the end of the first quarter of 2025 were approximately $3.00 per share, meaning the stock was trading at roughly eight times earnings, net of cash, at quarter end. Our fair value estimate just keeps rising as the company continues to execute. We wrote in our 2024 yearend letter that, based on their recent growth, a valuation of 12 to 15 times cash earnings plus net cash seems more reasonable. Using 12 to 15 times the current run rate of cash earnings plus net cash would result in a value between $21.85 and $26.50 per share versus the current $16 share price.

BSD Analysis:
ENDI is a classic micro-cap conglomerate arbitrage opportunity, trading on the low-liquidity OTC market and consistently mispriced by virtue of its complexity and obscurity. The true value driver is the high-growth CrossingBridge Advisors asset management segment, which is scaling its corporate credit AUM ($4.2 billion+)—a pure fee-based revenue stream—that is structurally undervalued by the market cap. Past failures in real estate and other ventures have been largely scrubbed, making this a cleaner holding company now focused on capital deployment and opportunistic M&A in the financial and consumer sectors. The investment is a bet that the concentrated insider ownership and activist management team will successfully realize the intrinsic value of its profitable advisory business through either a conventional listing upgrade or a private market transaction. Buying ENDI is a high-alpha strategy that exploits the immense illiquidity discount and favorable ownership structure common in underfollowed holding companies.

Pitch Summary:
Propel Media (expert: PROM) – has not publicly reported financials since 2019. We are completely left on our own to figure out revenue and profitability. We do know that there are 252 million shares outstanding. We also know that in 2022 they had agreed to be acquired by IQVIA Holdings (nyse: IQV) for between $700 and $800 million ($2.75 to $3.15 per share); however, in early 2024 the deal was blocked by the FTC and both Propel and IQVIA decided to walk away rather than fight. In June 2023, prior to the deal being blocked, we were able to purchase shares for $0.24 per share after becoming aware of the deal in published reports. The fund’s valuation increased from $0.85 per share to $0.90 per share in the quarter. We purchased the stock in hopes of the deal going through. If it did, we expected a ridiculous 10-12x return. If it didn’t, we believed we were still likely getting a bargain. We doubted that the next best liquidity event would value the company at 1/10 of the potential merger price with IQVIA. We still believe that and are willing to wait. Unexpectedly, Propel began paying a quarterly dividend in August 2023. In April of this year we received a dividend of just over $0.01 per share, much earlier than the normal 90 day interval. In total we have received over $0.086 per share in dividends, or 35% of our purchase price in two years. It has now been almost 100 days since the last dividend. Since Propel is a black box we do not know why the delay, but are not overly concerned about it.

BSD Analysis:
Propel Media operates in the messy but lucrative world of performance marketing, where attribution, targeting, and traffic arbitrage determine who makes money and who gets squeezed. The company focuses on intent-driven advertising, which tends to hold up better during downturns because clients only pay when campaigns convert. Its walled-garden distribution and proprietary traffic sources give Propel a defensible niche in an ecosystem dominated by giants. Privacy regulation and signal loss are real risks, but they also create opportunities for players who can deliver measurable results when larger platforms struggle. Propel has been quietly improving margins through tighter optimization and smarter inventory management. The business is volatile, but when performance marketing tightens, specialists like Propel often gain share. If the company keeps sharpening execution, it can carve out a durable, cash-generating niche.

Pitch Summary:
We sold Zoetis, as concerns continue to grow about competitive entrants in the dermatology and parasiticides animal health marketplace. While the company has continued to execute well in the face of new entrants, we believe that this will continue to be an overhang on the stock in the near to medium term. Given the premium valuation versus other areas in health care, we believe there is more upside eLondon Stock Exchangewhere and are exiting our position in the stock.

BSD Analysis:
Zoetis is the undisputed king of animal health, and the tailwinds behind it are powerful: rising pet ownership, humanization of pets, and growth in protein demand globally. Its product portfolio spans companion animals and livestock with vaccines, anti-infectives, dermatology, and diagnostics — all high-margin, high-loyalty categories. Vet practices trust Zoetis brands and don’t like switching, which makes revenue resilient and pricing power very real. R&D productivity has been strong, with multiple new product launches driving incremental growth on top of a sticky base. The business behaves like a pharma franchise with less patent-drama and better demand visibility. Zoetis is one of the cleanest long-term compounders in healthcare — and still not fully priced like it.

Pitch Summary:
We sold Expedia Group due to a higher risk of a recession following the significant increase in global tariffs, which can be expected to reduce overall levels of economic activity. In addition, the negative impact on the wealth effect due to potentially declining equity markets will likely impact demand for retail travel. Travel is among the most discretionary spend categories within the consumer discretionary sector.

BSD Analysis:
Expedia sits in an awkward middle ground between pure tech platform and messy travel operator, but under the hood it has quietly become much more efficient. The tech stack overhaul, brand consolidation, and loyalty-unification push are finally showing up in margins and conversion rates. Travel demand remains robust, and Expedia’s mix of OTA, Vrbo, and B2B partnerships spreads risk across segments. It will never be as clean a story as a pure marketplace, but the cash generation is real and improving. If management keeps their foot on the cost discipline pedal, Expedia can be a structurally better business than its volatile stock suggests. You’re getting a discounted play on durable global travel demand with improving fundamentals.

Pitch Summary:
Chubb detracted from performance in the second quarter, primarily due to a market rotation out of defensive names amid a broader market rally led by technology and other cyclical sectors. The company’s first quarter earnings report showed slowing growth in P&C net written premiums, raising concerns about potentially softening pricing trends in its commercial insurance business following several years of strong performance.

BSD Analysis:
Chubb is the global P&C insurer that wins by being aggressively conservative — tight underwriting, disciplined pricing, and a refusal to chase trashy business. In a world of rising nat-cat volatility and social inflation, Chubb has repeatedly shown it can still produce excellent combined ratios. Its high-net-worth and commercial books give it access to clients and risk pools that smaller competitors never see. Global diversification, especially in high-growth markets, gives it a long runway without sacrificing underwriting discipline. The balance sheet is fortress-level, and capital return is both predictable and generous. If you want a long-duration, high-quality insurance compounder, this is the template.

Pitch Summary:
Becton Dickinson detracted from relative performance in the second quarter following a worse-than-expected fiscal quarter earnings report in which the company felt the impact of cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and uncertainty around future cuts. Furthermore, forward earnings and revenue guidance were reduced to reflect the continued weakness in funding for biosciences R&D and the expected impact of tariffs.

BSD Analysis:
BD sits in the “too important to cut” bucket of hospital spending — syringes, catheters, diagnostics, infusion pumps, and lab systems that are embedded in standard of care globally. After years of integration work, the portfolio is now streamlined enough that operating leverage is starting to show through. Procedure volumes are normalizing, infection-prevention spend is structurally higher, and BD’s recurring consumables base makes revenue highly predictable. The company is also leaning into higher-tech growth adjacencies like molecular diagnostics and advanced drug delivery. Debt is manageable, innovation is picking up, and management is clearly more focused on margins than empire-building. This is a medtech workhorse that throws off steady compounder returns.

Pitch Summary:
Broadcom contributed to performance in the second quarter, as the company reported strong quarterly results for its AI compute and networking business, as well as its VMware segment. The company also provided positive commentary on the setup for the AI-related silicon business units for the rest of 2025, and also for 2026, as strong customer demand for AI silicon for training and inference continues.

BSD Analysis:
Broadcom is what happens when a technically elite chip designer meets a private-equity mindset: ruthless focus, giant margins, and zero sentimentality. The company owns critical franchises in networking, custom accelerators, and RF — all increasingly levered to AI and cloud data centers. VMware turned the software side into a serious margin and FCF engine, and management is already squeezing out synergies with its usual efficiency. The portfolio is built around chokepoint technologies where customers have more to lose than Broadcom does. You’re not buying a cyclical semi — you’re buying a toll collector on high-end connectivity and compute. The market is finally waking up to that, but the story still isn’t fully priced.

Pitch Summary:
Oracle contributed to performance in the second quarter, as the company reported strong quarterly results that highlighted continued strong demand for the company’s OCI infrastructure, sustained growth in the company’s SaaS apps business, and accelerating growth trends in the cloud database segment. Management highlighted RPO growth of over 100%, which speaks to continuing demand for Oracle’s infrastructure and software products over a multi-year period.

BSD Analysis:
Oracle has managed to turn “legacy enterprise vendor” into “quiet AI arms dealer” faster than most skeptics can update their models. OCI’s architecture is actually well-suited to GPU-heavy AI workloads, and multi-year infrastructure deals with hyperscalers and big enterprises are starting to show up in the numbers. At the same time, the core database franchise remains one of the most entrenched moats in software — ripping Oracle out is still career-ending behavior in many IT shops. The free cash flow profile is excellent, capex is high but targeted, and buybacks are steadily shrinking the float. Oracle doesn’t need to be the coolest name in AI; it just needs to remain the most embedded. Right now, it’s doing exactly that.

Pitch Summary:
Quest Diagnostics is a leading U.S. diagnostic health information provider, serving about 50% of hospitals and physicians, 33% of adults, and over 90% of insured lives. With $9.9B revenue and $1.9B EBITDA in 2024, it is expected to grow to $11.2B revenue, $2.3B EBITDA, and $1.2B FCF by 2026. The business benefits from a duopolistic industry structure with LabCorp, giving it significant pricing power and growing outsourcing from hospitals. Its recurring, habitual testing creates sticky customer relationships and reliable revenues, reinforced by network effects. Secular tailwinds include worsening U.S. population health, rising demand for chronic disease monitoring, and heightened societal awareness of diagnostic testing post-COVID. The company’s services are cost-effective relative to downstream interventions, making it well positioned as payers push for cost savings. Quest also pays a 1.8% dividend and repurchases shares opportunistically. The author argues the market underappreciates Quest’s durable growth profile, estimating EPS of $10.50+ in 2026 and $11.50+ in 2027, supporting a valuation of 20x EPS, or $230/share. Quest is framed as a “great business at a cheap price with unfortunate tailwinds,” suitable as a long-term compounder.

BSD Analysis:
BSD view: Quest Diagnostics is a high-quality, defensive compounder trading below intrinsic value, supported by structural duopoly, secular tailwinds in testing demand, and strong recurring revenues. Risks remain in reimbursement and regulatory shifts, but its scale, network, and cost-effectiveness make it an advantaged long-term hold. Current valuation offers upside with limited downside given cash flows and dividend support.