Investment Pitches

Pitch Summary:
Vestas Wind Systems (VWSB_GR): Vestas is a poster child of wind energy; it is the largest and oldest among currently active companies. All major wind energy markets across the globe, except for China, are served by Vestas. Its revenue and asset base are colossal for the clean energy sector. The company is contracted for 5 years ahead, 27GW of projects in the pipeline, and 37 billion EUR of service contracts. The problem with a thin Profit margin that overshadowed this company previously are gone now. In 2024, the company achieved record sales, kept a healthy balance sheet, and improved adjusted FCF closer to 1 billion (Net Income 500 mio). Our average price is 17EUR. Vestas is a long play, God willing, for several years if they continue keeping its financial health & dominant market position. Our pessimistic model indicated a fair value between 19 and 25 EUR.

BSD Analysis:
Vestas is the high-conviction, pure-play leader in wind energy, poised for a massive financial inflection as the global wind power market exits its temporary commodity and supply-chain slump. The core thesis is a return to sustainable profitability driven by aggressive pricing discipline on new orders and the successful ramp-up of its V172 turbine. The company's Service segment (with >80% gross margins) provides an invaluable, sticky foundation, securing recurring revenue that offsets the cyclicality of turbine manufacturing. The current market environment is favorable, with record-high order backlogs and governments globally reinforcing renewable energy commitments (e.g., in the EU and US). Vestas's stock is a leveraged bet on the inevitability of the energy transition, trading at a trough valuation before its operational cleanup and massive backlog convert to soaring profitability.

Pitch Summary:
The Steppe Eagle benefited from the positive moves in several different sectors: a) the top contributor was solar equipment company Nextracker (NXT), which grew +59% since December 31; b) gold & silver grew approximately by +30% and together took the second place of most successful positions in portfolio, they doubled since we invested in 2022, however this time we prefer to gradually ease the exposure to precious metals due to presence of other promising assets.

BSD Analysis:
NexTracker is the undisputed, high-growth global leader in solar tracking technology, offering a high-quality, pure-play on the non-cyclical, structural growth of large-scale renewable energy projects. The core moat is its technological leadership in smart solar trackers and its unique, capital-light business model, which allows it to maintain superior margins compared to hardware peers. The company is aggressively capitalizing on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and global energy transition spending, which is driving a massive, highly visible $3.1 billion backlog. Crucially, NexTracker is expanding its moat by deploying advanced control software and battery storage solutions, driving higher margins and locking in customers. This exceptional revenue visibility, coupled with strong execution and a dominant market position, positions the stock for continued double-digit growth and a justified premium multiple.

Pitch Summary:
Zalando SE (ZAL_GR): Is a 10.3 billion EUR in sales European e-commerce clothing retailer with a stiff grip over the EU market. Financially healthy but with a thin profit margin, this clothing retailer is a leader that could bring stable double-digit growth for the portfolio over the years. The least exciting part about this business - it is less green than we previously thought because Fast-fashion is not green, even with conscious execution. We believe the company is undervalued, and we shall see its recovery. In 2024 alone its EV/Sales ratio climbed up from 0.4 to 0.8, the way to a 10-year median level of 1.5 stays unconquered. The revenue grew for the last 5 years with compounded annualized growth rate of CAGR at 9.8% rate, and earnings per share with rate 14+%, these metrics look depressed due to slower pace in 2023-2024. In the next 5-7 years we expect further recovery of this business towards more robust numbers and growth.

BSD Analysis:
Zalando is the dominant European e-commerce fashion platform, poised for a massive re-rating as it successfully pivots from pure retail to a high-margin, logistics-and-advertising services model. The core thesis is an inventory arbitrage—the company is shifting risk onto its partners (brands) while leveraging its vast logistics network and data to generate high-margin revenue from advertising and fulfillment services. This strategy is designed to deliver a sustained 6% to 8% Adjusted EBIT Margin. Zalando’s 50 million active customers and massive market share provide an unassailable moat, forcing brands to rely on its platform for growth. The stock is trading at a significant discount, penalized by the post-pandemic normalization of e-commerce; however, the successful pivot to a platform model will unlock substantial profitability and drive the valuation multiple back toward normalized levels.

Pitch Summary:
Zoom Video Communications (ZM): We consider Zoom as a business with a great product and a talented team that learns from mistakes and develops more and better future products. It came from a Zoom call to Zoom workplace; it is so much more now than just a video-conference software company. Today it is a sustainable, profitable business with a bright idea, which was an exceptional pearl even before COVID-19. The debt level is low, the revenue stream continues to come above $4.5 billion a year, the business has a 30+% free cash flow margin, has little debt, and its product canceled millions of unnecessary business travel, which is very green. Zoom has some difficulties growing again at a double-digit pace, but when it fell to below $60, it was an opportunity to step heavily in. Now, the company is trading.

BSD Analysis:
Zoom is a deeply discounted, high-quality software company whose stock price fundamentally misrepresents its successful pivot from a single-product tool to an integrated AI-powered communications platform. The core moat is its massive, ubiquitous installed base, which is now being monetized through higher-value offerings like Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center. The company has embraced AI as a structural growth driver, with AI Companion being rolled out to drive adoption and increase ARPU across the entire platform. Despite the narrative of post-pandemic collapse, Zoom still generates superior, 68% Adjusted Operating Margins and robust Free Cash Flow (FCF), demonstrating strong operational discipline. The stock is a classic value-with-a-catalyst scenario: investors are buying the FCF engine at a trough multiple, ahead of the inevitable re-rating as the market realizes the success of the new product suite and the sticky nature of its enterprise subscription model.

Pitch Summary:
These positions pulled the portfolio back in the half-year: a) Salesforce (CRM) that fell by -18% from its Dec31 peak of $334, and due to the third heaviest weight in the portfolio it carved out so much out of overall result; b) Fluence Energy (FLNC) a backed by Siemens and AES battery company fell -61%, despite its modest 2.8%-weight it dragged us down mighty; c) Puma SE (PUM_GR) lost -48%, very suddenly for us the business stopped performing as good as before.

BSD Analysis:
Salesforce is the undisputed titan of the CRM market, aggressively pivoting to become the dominant Enterprise AI Platform, correcting a historically undervalued stock. The core thesis is the successful monetization of AI Cloud, which allows clients to embed secure, generative AI into every customer and sales workflow using their proprietary data. This strategy leverages Salesforce's unassailable moat—holding the world's most critical customer data—to drive massive ARPU expansion across its entire installed base. The stock is now priced attractively after years of market cynicism regarding its M&A strategy; however, management has successfully executed a $20 billion share repurchase program and shifted focus to operational efficiency. This disciplined execution, combined with strong free cash flow generation and the AI Cloud monetization, positions the stock for a significant re-rating as its high-margin revenue accelerates.

Pitch Summary:
Apple was the portfolio’s top detractor for the quarter. Shares declined as investors reacted to softer iPhone demand in certain markets and increasing competitive pressure from Android vendors. Concerns around regulatory actions and potential changes to app store economics also weighed on sentiment. Despite these headwinds, the company continued to demonstrate strong performance in its Services and Wearables segments, which provided some offset to hardware volatility. We believe Apple’s ecosystem, installed base, and growing services revenue support a durable long-term growth profile despite cyclical hardware pressures.

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 is now managing maturity, not building momentum, with the hardware cycle clearly maturing. The shift toward higher-margin Services (App Store, iCloud, subscriptions) quietly lifts Apple's overall profitability over time, a strategy that requires minimal reinvestment to expand due to its unmatched brand and customer loyalty. The biggest long-term opportunity is the expansion of Services, alongside new bets like Vision Pro and AI-powered features.

Pitch Summary:
Netflix was another key contributor in Q2 as the company delivered strong subscriber and revenue growth. Paid net additions exceeded expectations, driven by successful paid-sharing initiatives and solid engagement with new content. Revenue growth accelerated and margins improved, reflecting pricing actions and better cost discipline. Management reiterated its focus on expanding its content slate while maintaining a disciplined approach to spending. We remain positive on Netflix’s ability to leverage its scale, data, and global distribution to drive long-term earnings growth.

BSD Analysis:
Netflix is the dominant, high-margin streaming pure-play whose stock is poised for massive earnings leverage from its non-discretionary monetization efforts. The core thesis is driven by the structural transition of audience from linear television to streaming, where Netflix holds an 8.3% share of total TV viewing in the U.S.. The company's crackdown on password sharing and its successful rollout of the ad-tier plan are set to bolster revenue growth and drive high-margin incremental revenue. Despite broad disagreement on the stock's future value among analysts, the core thesis rests on its ability to maintain global subscriber engagement and monetize hit franchises.

Pitch Summary:
Microsoft was a strong contributor to performance in Q2 as the company continued to execute well across its cloud and AI initiatives. Azure growth remained robust, with accelerating demand tied to AI workloads and broader cloud adoption among enterprise customers. The company reported better-than-expected earnings, highlighting operating leverage in its commercial business and strong free cash flow generation. Management emphasized the early but growing impact of Copilot and other AI-enhanced products across the Microsoft ecosystem. We believe Microsoft is uniquely positioned to monetize AI across infrastructure, platforms, and applications, reinforcing its role as a core holding in the portfolio.

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 "Great Re-Integration" where enterprises are abandoning fragmented architectures and paying a premium for Microsoft's integrated platform to dominate the "Cockpit"—the security, identity, and compliance layer essential for safe AI deployment. The company is funding this transformation with an extraordinary $35 billion quarterly CapEx, entirely self-financed through $45 billion in operating cash flow. This "Control Premium" has become Microsoft's deepest moat, driving a $392 billion backlog and signaling a structural shift in enterprise computing.

Pitch Summary:
NVIDIA was the portfolio’s top contributor during the second quarter of 2025. The company reported another quarter of exceptional growth in its data center business, driven by surging demand for AI accelerators and networking products. Revenue and earnings once again exceeded consensus expectations, and management raised guidance as hyperscale and enterprise customers continued to expand AI infrastructure spending. Investors responded positively to signs that demand is broadening beyond a handful of mega-cap cloud providers, supporting a more durable growth outlook. We continue to believe NVIDIA remains the clear leader in AI hardware and software, with a deep ecosystem that reinforces its competitive moat.

BSD Analysis:
NVIDIA is the unassailable, high-margin kingmaker of the AI revolution, converting its technological dominance into a grotesque amount of cash flow. Its true moat is the CUDA software ecosystem, which locks in every hyperscaler and AI lab with high switching costs that are virtually unbreachable. The company is deepening its ties with major cloud service providers and has pervasive influence across industries. The next technological leap is the Blackwell architecture in 2025, which will enable trillion-parameter models to run up to 10 times faster than predecessors. The stock is a core holding that is paying a justified premium for its systemic, indispensable role in AI adoption worldwide.

Pitch Summary:
Buffett Pitches Bitcoin Warren Buffett, the most staunch believer in investing in America, showed caution on US fiscal policy at the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Buffett began: “Obviously we don’t want to own anything in a currency that is going to hell. That’s the big thing we worry about with the United States currency.” He elaborated on it further: “Fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States…and it’s not limited to the United States, it’s all over the world. They devalue at rates that are breathtaking. In the end, if you have people that control the currency, you can issue paper money and you will. It’s human nature. The natural course of government is to make the currency worth less over time. And it’s very hard to build checks and balances into the system to keep that from happening. We don’t have any great system for beating that” Buffett says there's no great system to stop devaluation but he hasn't looked closely enough. The solution already exists: Bitcoin. The Counterintuitive Math Of Investment Returns Studies by J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Professor Hendrik Bessembinder from Arizona State University show the surprising concentration of equity returns: ● 40% of stocks lose 70% or more of their value and never recover ● 4% of all listed companies generated the entire net gain of the U.S. stock market above Treasury bills from 1926-2016 This data resembles more of what investors expect out of a venture capital portfolio versus the broad market indices. Even in the stock market, returns are highly concentrated and power laws apply. Importantly, the concentration of returns has increased over time. In the 1950s, 87% of stocks outperformed Treasuries. That number steadily declined until 1977 when the median stock underperformed Treasury bills. We see it today with the "Magnificent Seven”. These seven companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla) comprise 1.4% of S&P 500 components and contributed 62% of the index’s total return in 2023. Crypto Returns Are Even More Concentrated To put the concentration of stock and crypto returns into perspective, let’s compare the top 10 tokens to the top 10 stocks by market capitalization. Bitcoin makes up 75% of the top 10 total market cap, while Nvidia makes up just 17%. Bitcoin is 7x larger than the second largest token, Ethereum, while Nvidia is only 4% larger than Microsoft. What are the dynamics that are unique to crypto that have led to such a high concentration of returns? Bitcoin compounds relentlessly while other tokens flame out. Compounding & Expanding Moats There are two ingredients for compounding wealth: rate of return and time. It’s simple, but hard. Sustaining a high rate of return is difficult because profits attract competitors, which compete away profits. The rare exceptions share a common trait: an expanding moat that grows stronger over time. As they get bigger, they become harder to compete against. Take Google for example: the more searches it handles, the more competitive keyword auctions become, boosting ad prices, fueling distribution, and strengthening its advantage. Similarly, as Costco expands, it leverages scale for better prices from suppliers, passes those savings to members, and gains greater negotiating power with suppliers in a self-reinforcing cycle. Bitcoin’s moat also expands with scale. As bitcoin grows, the better it is as a store of value, pulling in more users and capital in a self-reinforcing loop. When your wealth is at stake, you choose the most trusted option with the deepest liquidity, you don’t take a chance on the second best. Despite thousands of attempts to compete, Bitcoin still dominates 99.6% of the digital store-of-value market. Each failed competitor reinforces Bitcoin’s supremacy, deterring further challengers. Brittle Moats Ethereum pioneered smart contract blockchains, initially capturing 100% market share. But success attracted competition. Ironically, the traits that make Ethereum useful also undermine its moat: ● Open Source: Decentralized software is easily copied and improved ● Composable: Easy communication between blockchains eliminates switching costs ● Permissionless: Removes barriers to entry These inherent blockchain traits create intense competition. Users prioritize speed, cost and convenience over loyalty, making sustainable moats nearly impossible. Even worse, smart contract blockchains and applications face constant pressure to upgrade and innovate just to stay relevant. Higher Returns, Lower Risk “The whole secret of investment is to find places where it is safe and wise not to diversify” - Charlie Munger Crypto is that place. While it’s not popular for investment managers to admit, the evidence has become undeniable: Bitcoin is the “fat pitch”, while altcoins deliver lower returns and introduce more risk. Fifteen years in, everything else in crypto is structurally competitive and cutthroat —yet Bitcoin continues to quietly compound at breathtaking rates. The "diversified" crypto approach of adding altcoins to a portfolio requires constant rotation and perfect timing to keep up with Bitcoin. It's a game that makes token creators and brokers rich at the expense of investors. History shows you're almost certain to underperform. Why trade a nearly certain extraordinary result for the hope of catching lightning in a bottle? Bitcoin gets stronger as it gets bigger. Altcoins are stuck in a never-ending cycle of cannibalizing each other. The crypto market is young, Bitcoin is dominant, and there are no points for difficulty. When you find a truly wonderful investment, the mistake isn’t owning too much—the mistake is not owning enough.

BSD Analysis:
Bitcoin's pitch rests on its uniquely durable monetary moat, unmatched network security, and compounding dominance amid extreme competitive attrition in crypto. Unlike altcoins with brittle moats, Bitcoin’s scale, liquidity, brand trust, and Lindy effect create near-impenetrable barriers. Its supply schedule is fixed, adoption continues rising, and hash rate trends confirm growing economic security. Bitcoin’s macro tailwinds—including fiscal deterioration, debt monetization, and devaluation risk—reinforce its case as a sovereign-resistant store of value. Relative to other digital assets, Bitcoin offers lower technological risk and far higher long-term return persistence. Valuation frameworks (stock-to-flow, energy-adjusted models, adoption curves) suggest substantial upside across cycles.

Pitch Summary:
Ford, like other auto OEMs, has long been considered a structurally poor business due to high fixed costs, unions, dysfunctional supply chains, poor capital allocation, and regulatory headwinds. However, the author argues that under Trump’s tariffs and policy changes, Ford is uniquely positioned to benefit since ~80% of its U.S. sales and 100% of its truck sales are domestically assembled. Key tailwinds include tariff protection, tax incentives (such as 100% first-year depreciation), and lower financing costs as interest rates fall. Most importantly, the “OBBB” legislation and EPA regulatory rollback are expected to remove the burden of CAFE and GHG compliance, which has historically forced Ford into a loss-making EV division and expensive credit purchases. Without these constraints, Ford could focus on its profitable ICE vehicles, lower prices, expand throughput, and materially improve EBIT. The pitch suggests Ford can quickly eliminate much of its $5.1B in EV losses, expand margins, and potentially double or triple EBIT over 3–5 years. The valuation case is built on Ford trading at just 6–8x earnings with significant upside from a sector inflection. The author views this as a “bad business becoming mediocre” but with meaningful upside from regulatory change, tariffs, and consumer preference for ICE trucks and SUVs.

BSD Analysis:
Ford has historically been weighed down by EV losses and regulatory costs, obscuring the profitability of its ICE business. With GHG and CAFE standards expected to be rolled back under the Trump/Zeldin EPA, Ford could rapidly cut losses, improve ICE margins, and gain share under tariff protection. The upside lies in throughput expansion in a high fixed-cost model, with reflexive benefits as lower prices drive volume. Risks remain around execution and industry cyclicality, but the asymmetric setup offers favorable risk/reward.

Pitch Summary:
TAT Technologies, an Israeli aerospace MRO provider, has transformed from a 3rd party shop to an exclusive Honeywell-authorized partner for key APUs. New contracts covering 757/767, 777, and especially 737/A320 narrowbodies should triple EBITDA from $18M FY24 to $55M FY28. Management is targeting $150M incremental revenue and $30M EBITDA from Honeywell work alone. Market conditions are favorable with aging fleets, OEM capacity constraints, and growing flight hours. Risks include scaling capacity and competition from larger authorized partners, but TAT’s low base share makes growth achievable. Valuation appears rich at 22x LTM EBITDA but cheap on forward as earnings compound. Fair value is estimated at $58/share (80% upside). Lack of US coverage and past PE overhang keep stock mispriced.

BSD Analysis:
BSD case: Market underestimates transformative Honeywell partnerships and structural MRO tailwinds. EBITDA could triple, driving major re-rating despite optically high current multiple.

Pitch Summary:
CSX Corporation is a well-established railroad company with a significant competitive moat due to its extensive rail network and the high barriers to entry for new competitors. Despite its historical performance and the critical role it plays in the supply chain, the current market conditions and lack of a clear catalyst for change make it an unattractive investment at this time.

BSD Analysis:
CSX Corporation benefits from a duopoly in many of its operating regions, sharing the market with Norfolk Southern Railway. This duopoly, combined with the historical difficulty of establishing new rail lines, provides CSX with a substantial competitive advantage. The company's performance has been consistent over the years, and it has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last decade, partly due to accelerated share buybacks. However, recent declines in free cash flow have negatively impacted its share price. While CSX could be a strong investment during market downturns, the current lack of growth catalysts and the unpredictable nature of its earnings growth make it less appealing at this moment.

Pitch Summary:
Vertex Pharmaceuticals, founded in 1989, is a global biopharmaceutical company with deep expertise in protein and genetic science and a focus on specialty markets. The company is the leader in creating therapies for patients suffering from cystic fibrosis (CF), with five currently approved CF treatments, and the company is building out its capabilities to address related diseases that lever its core expertise in biology and medicinal chemistry. A fund holding since June 2021, Vertex reported quarterly results that were fundamentally solid but below consensus expectation for revenues and profitability. Sales were negatively impacted by counterfeiting in Russia estimated to lower sales by $100 million in the period. The company paused a trial for CF patients not producing CFTR proteins, but other pipeline programs continue to advance positively. Quarterly revenue of $2.5 billion rose 3% year over year, driven by penetration of Trikafta and early contributions from Alyftrek, its newest CF therapy. Alyftrek, approved in December 2024, improves cell function, requires once-daily dosing, and extends patent protection beyond 2040. New launches like Casgevy (gene therapy for sickle cell) and Journavx (non-opioid pain therapy) are progressing well. Elevated investment compresses margins, but the long-term model remains strong. Vertex’s dominant CF franchise is expected to grow mid-single digits, while pipeline advancements in gene-editing, pain, kidney disease, and type-1 diabetes support low-double-digit revenue growth long term. We believe the shares underestimate the defensibility of the CF portfolio and the long-term value of the pipeline, trading at a significant discount to intrinsic value.

BSD Analysis:
Vertex sits in the enviable position of owning the cystic fibrosis space while building multiple new pillars in gene editing, pain, and metabolic disease. The CF franchise is recurring, high-margin, and still expanding geographically, which funds an aggressive but disciplined R&D budget. Vertex’s culture is unusually focused on de-risked, high-value assets rather than spraying capital across dozens of low-probability projects. The recent gene-editing successes show it can step into new modalities without losing that discipline. The bear case is concentration, but each new approval outside CF chips away at that narrative. Cash on the balance sheet gives it essentially no funding risk. It’s one of the best combinations of growth, profitability, and scientific credibility you can find in large-cap biotech.

Pitch Summary:
Yum China is the largest restaurant company in China, operating over 16,000 restaurants primarily under the KFC and Pizza Hut brands. A fund holding since the fourth quarter of 2016, Yum China reported solid quarterly financial results that were better than expected for same-store-sales growth and restaurant margins and again reflected record net new store openings. Economic conditions remained challenging, with consumers becoming more value-conscious, but the company demonstrated strong operational execution. At KFC, reported system sales rose 3%. Same-store sales were flat as 4% transaction growth was offset by lower ticket prices. The company opened 295 net new KFC units, with cash payback periods of roughly two years. Pizza Hut also saw improving traction, with transaction growth of 17% and strong reception for its value-oriented Wow model. Across both major brands, the company shows continued strong unit growth potential, with penetration still low versus developed markets. Loyalty programs exceeded 540 million members, accounting for 66% of sales. Margins improved 100 basis points QoQ to 18.6% from efficiency gains. The company continues to expand store formats, invest in new concepts like Lavazza, and increase growth in lower-tier cities. We believe the company remains undervalued relative to long-term unit growth potential, margin expansion, and rising restaurant demand in China.

BSD Analysis:
Yum China is the China-localized engine behind KFC, Pizza Hut, and other concepts, with a footprint that looks more like a utility than a restaurant chain at this point. It’s a leveraged play on Chinese middle-class consumption, snacking, and delivery culture across both big cities and lower-tier markets. The business has proven remarkably resilient through waves of lockdowns, food-safety cycles, and macro noise. The real story is margin management and digital: delivery, mobile ordering, and loyalty all give Yum China a data-driven edge. Franchise and store economics are solid, but currency and policy will always add volatility. If you can stomach that, you’re getting a high-ROIC consumer platform that still has runway to densify. It’s one of the cleaner ways to own Chinese consumption without betting on a single category fad.

Pitch Summary:
China-based Trip.com (TCOM), formerly known as Ctrip, is the world’s largest global travel platforms. Founded in 1999, the company offers a comprehensive, integrated platform on which travelers can make arrangements for lodging, transportation, packaged tours and other related services, including online advertising and financial services, as well as providing corporate travel management services. China-related travel accounts for over 85% of revenue, but Trip.com is available in 24 languages and 35 local currencies while Skyscanner is available in over 50 countries and over 35 languages. A holding in the fund since the first quarter of 2020, Trip.com reported quarterly financial results that were fundamentally strong and above consensus expectations for revenue, adjusted operating profit, and earnings per share. Year-over-year revenue growth of 16% reflected continued recovery of the China travel market, increased demand for international travel, and strong performance of the company’s global brands. Cross-border flight capacity recovered to 83% of pre-pandemic levels, with expectations to reach 90% by year-end. Travel booking on the company’s international OTA platform rose 60% year over year, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. The company increased sales and marketing investment by 30% to support expansion of global brands, causing margin compression, but EBITDA margins of 31% still exceeded expectations. Trip.com maintains a strong balance sheet with $17.9 billion in cash and investments versus $2.8 billion in debt. We believe the company is well positioned to benefit from secular growth in China travel and international tourism recovery. We believe shares trade at a significant discount to intrinsic value given conservative market expectations for revenue and cash flow.

BSD Analysis:
Trip.com is the backbone of Chinese and outbound Asian travel, owning brands like Ctrip and Skyscanner with deep relationships across airlines and hotels. The China travel recovery is messy and policy-dependent, but structurally the desire to travel is not going back in the box. Trip’s scale gives it bargaining power and data advantages in a market where smaller OTAs have been squeezed. International diversification via Skyscanner and overseas partnerships gives it more levers than a purely domestic player. Regulatory and macro risk in China will always cast a shadow, and that’s exactly why the stock can get mispriced. If you believe in the long-term normalization of travel flows, Trip is the central tollbooth. You just have to be comfortable holding something that headlines will regularly try to scare you out of.

Pitch Summary:
Oracle is a leader in the enterprise software market with a strong market position in database, infrastructure and application software, and cloud-based software and services. We believe the company’s competitive advantages include its large and experienced direct sales force, a founder-driven management team that reinvests relentlessly to maintain a leading intellectual property (IP) portfolio and differentiated product suite, and a large installed base of clients with high switching costs where it consistently achieves renewal and retention rates in the mid-90% range. We believe Oracle is well positioned to benefit from the continuing growth in data storage and enterprise application software, as well as the shift to cloud-based solutions. A fund holding since inception, Oracle reported strong quarterly financial results that were above management guidance and consensus expectations on most measures, including remaining performance obligation (RPO) bookings. As a result, the company expects revenue growth to accelerate and raised its guidance to at least 16% revenue growth in its 2026 fiscal year, driven by cloud growth in excess of 40%. Oracle is the world leader in its largest business segment, enterprise database software used in customer on-premise IT environments. However, the company continues to focus on transitioning its business from a traditional on-premise, up-front software licensing and maintenance revenue model to a cloud computing subscription-based model where software revenue is recognized over the life of the client’s contract. During the period, Oracle grew its cloud revenues, now representing a low-40s percentage of total revenues, 27% year over year and saw total revenue growth inflect upward, consistent with long-term expectations. Adjusted EBIT of $5 billion rose 4% year over year and was above consensus despite a decline in margins. Operating cash flow of $20.8 billion represented 36% of revenues, though free cash flow was negative for the quarter due to elevated capex for cloud infrastructure. We believe Oracle remains a structurally attractive business trading below intrinsic value as subscription mix increases and cloud scale drives further margin expansion.

BSD Analysis:
Oracle is the enterprise software cockroach that refuses to die—and, lately, refuses to stop growing. The legacy database and maintenance business still throws off huge cash, but the cloud business is finally hitting scale with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Fusion apps. Cerner gives it a big anchor in healthcare data, which is strategically valuable as digital health and AI workloads expand. Oracle’s cloud pitch isn’t “we’re biggest”; it’s “we run your heavy, mission-critical workloads better and cheaper,” and that’s resonating with certain customers. The company’s AI partnerships and database integration give it surprising relevance in a market that once wrote it off as legacy. Debt is chunky but manageable given cash generation. This is a classic re-rating story where perception as a dinosaur lags reality of a business that’s quietly found a second act.

Pitch Summary:
MercadoLibre is the largest online commerce platform in Latin America. The company offers its users an ecosystem of six integrated e-commerce services that include its marketplace, payment and fintech solutions, shipping and logistics, advertising, classified listings, and merchant web services. In its most recent fiscal year, commerce and related services accounted for approximately 59% of net revenue, while payments and fintech solutions accounted for approximately 41%. The company operates in 18 countries representing the vast majority of Latin American GDP, and its 218 million active users, last disclosed in 2023, represented over 45% of the region’s estimated 480 million total internet users. We believe MercadoLibre benefits from strong and sustainable competitive advantages that include its network and ecosystem, brand, and understanding of local markets that collectively contribute to its leadership position in each market it serves. With continued growth in internet access, increasing availability of credit, and the company’s continuing investments to improve the ease and convenience of transacting online, we believe MercadoLibre remains well positioned for sustained growth over the next decade, driven by the secular growth of e-commerce across Latin America. A fund holding since inception, MercadoLibre reported strong quarterly financial results that were above consensus expectations for gross merchandise volume (GMV), revenue, operating income, and earnings per share. The company continues to execute well and gained market share in e-commerce, payments, and financial services. Despite remaining in a period of elevated investment spending, the company also showed improvements in operating profits that were materially above consensus expectations. Since 2019, the company’s GMV has increased by approximately 3.5 times, reflecting the high value proposition to consumers, and the company continues to invest in providing better selection, price, and service. For the quarter, net revenue of $5.9 billion grew by 64% year over year in constant currency. Commerce revenue of $3.3 billion rose 57% year over year. GMV of $13.3 billion rose approximately 40% year over year on a constant currency basis, driven by strong growth in Brazil and Mexico and improving performance in Argentina. Commerce revenue also benefited from continued growth in its advertising business, which grew 50% year over year in constant currency. Fintech revenue of $2.6 billion grew 73% in constant currency, driven by strong growth in merchant acquiring and credit services. Total platform payment volumes increased by 72% to $58 billion. The company also reported that its emerging asset management business now has $11.2 billion in assets under management, which grew 103% year over year. We believe MercadoLibre continues to have an attractive financial model which has been impacted by elevated investment cycles intended to strengthen the company’s ecosystem and long-term competitive positioning. Reported operating margins of 13% rose 70 basis points year-over-year and have improved materially over the past few years from the low-to-mid single digits. Margins benefited from operating leverage in sales, marketing, and product development. Management has demonstrated its long-term focus and commitment to investing everywhere needed to add value for users, including greater selection, frictionless payment options, and reduced cost and increased speed of delivery. In its commerce business, the company opened six new fulfilment centers in the latter half of 2024 and anticipates opening more by 2025. We believe current market price embeds expectations for revenue and cash flow growth well below our long-term assumptions. As a result, shares trade at a significant discount to intrinsic value and represent a compelling reward-to-risk opportunity.

BSD Analysis:
MELI is the operating system of Latin American e-commerce and fintech, with marketplace, payments, credit, and logistics all feeding each other in a virtuous loop. Mercado Pago has outgrown its origins as a checkout button and is now a proper financial super-app in many markets. The logistics network gives MELI Amazon-style control over delivery times, which is gold in countries where infrastructure is anything but smooth. Macro volatility is a feature of the region, but MELI keeps compounding through currency noise and political drama. Competition is real, yet nobody matches MELI’s full-stack approach from payments to fulfillment. Margins are rising even as they reinvest heavily, which is not something you often see in emerging-market platforms. This is one of the very few EM names you can genuinely call a long-term compounder.

Pitch Summary:
Founded in 1997, Netflix is one of the world’s leading internet entertainment platforms and a pioneer of subscription video on demand (SVOD), which it first launched in 2007. Today the company is a global leader with over 300 million paid subscribers, out of what we estimate is a total addressable market of one billion households outside of China, who access TV series, movies, mobile games, and other entertainment content across a wide variety of genres, languages, and devices. The company has subscribers in over 190 countries, with an estimated global audience in excess of 700 million, and generates almost 60% of its revenue from outside of North America. We believe Netflix’s strong and sustainable competitive advantages include its focus, scale, brand, and a large installed base of clients that are protected by high barriers to entry. As a pioneer in SVOD, Netflix has amassed a subscriber base that we estimate to represent just under 40% of all SVOD subscribers globally and approximately 50% of the industry revenue share of the leading global providers. The company’s strong brand is reflected in both its premium pricing versus peers and mid-single-digit growth in average revenue per user over the past five years. Over the past decade, Netflix has invested over $120 billion in content and amassed an estimated over 14,000 hours of original content, which is estimated to represent just under two times the next five largest streaming competitors combined. Of course, it is not just the quantity, but quality of the content that matters. Over this same period, Netflix received over 1000 Emmy nominations and had 218 wins. The company has captured the first or second spot in total Emmy Awards during the past six years, which we believe reflects the quality of its content. We believe the ability to create and acquire high quality content, based on cumulative knowledge and insights attained from its large installed base of subscribers, has contributed to very high barriers to entry. A fund holding since the first quarter of 2022, Netflix reported quarterly financial results that were strong and above management guidance and consensus expectations for revenue, operating margins, free cash flow, and earnings per share. The company also provided guidance for the current quarter that was above consensus expectations, but maintained its full-year outlook for key metrics. Quarterly revenue of $10.5 billion rose 16% in constant currency, driven by higher subscription and ad revenue, both of which benefited from membership growth and pricing gains. The company recently increased prices in the US, UK, and Argentina, and announced it would be increasing prices in France. The company also successfully rolled out an internal ad tech platform in the US and transitioned off a partner platform. The company anticipates rolling out this platform to all its ad markets over the next several months, which is expected to contribute to better measurement and targeting, as well as enabling new ad formats and expanded programmatic capabilities. While the company stopped reporting subscriber numbers beginning in 2025, it did highlight its regionally specific approach to growing user engagement and market share. Citing the UK as emblematic of its approach, it reported that its share of UK TV time rose to 9% from 8% in the prior-year quarter, behind only local media providers BBC and ITV, whose share includes both linear and streaming programing. The company believes that paid sharing and its ad-supported pricing plan, which was initially rolled out in 12 markets in November 2022, will further broaden its addressable subscriber base and has contributed to accelerating revenue growth and greater monetization per user. The company previously commented that the paid-sharing initiative was resulting in better-than-expected retention and conversion of borrowing households into full paying members. We believe Netflix has an attractive and improving financial model. Operating income of $3.3 billion rose 27% year over year on margins of 32% that expanded by 400 basis points over the prior-year quarter. Free cash flow of $2.7 billion rose 29% from the prior-year quarter and represented 26% of total revenue. Long-term debt to equity of 58% declined from 62% in the prior-year period. The company’s balance sheet continues to improve, with long-term debt to equity declining from over 200% in 2019. We believe SVOD will continue to benefit from a secular shift from linear television to streaming entertainment due to growing global penetration of broadband internet connections, the proliferation of internet-connected devices, and consumers’ desire for on-demand personalized entertainment at prices that are generally significantly below paid TV. As a leading provider of SVOD, we believe Netflix will take its share of global consumer entertainment spending from about 3% today to approximately 5% over our long-term investment horizon, contributing to low-double-digit growth in revenue. We expect substantial recent investments in content will moderate, and we believe the company will benefit from higher gross margins as its content library is leveraged over a growing global subscriber base. We recently increased our longer-term projected operating margins for Netflix, driven by our expectation of greater scale benefits, and we now expect Netflix to generate longer-term operating margins in the mid-30% range, up from approximately 30%, previously. As a result, we expect both operating profits and free cash flow will grow faster than revenues, in the mid-teens. We believe current market expectations substantially underestimate the strength of Netflix’s business model and its ability to generate sustainable growth in free cash flow over our long-term investment horizon. As a result, we believe the shares trade at a significant discount to our estimate of intrinsic value and can offer a compelling reward-to-risk opportunity.

BSD Analysis:
Netflix has fully graduated from “subscriber growth story” to “global media cash machine” with an ad tier and password crackdown that both hit the P&L in a good way. Its real edge isn’t just content; it’s the data loop that tells Netflix what to make, where, and for whom, across 190+ countries. Rivals are still bleeding or restructuring, while Netflix is already in margin-max mode. Ads open up a whole new pool of price-sensitive users and ARPU expansion without blowing up the user experience. The risk is always that content spend gets undisciplined or that the arms race escalates, but Netflix has been surprisingly sober compared to legacy studios. This is now the de facto global TV network with better economics than almost any media peer. You’re paying for both scale and discipline—and right now, they’re delivering both.

Pitch Summary:
Redox was another detractor for the period, delivering mixed results amid a challenging operating backdrop. Encouragingly, volumes grew 13% in the first half despite softer macroeconomic conditions, reflecting continued market share gains. That said, profitability came under pressure due to higher employee and transport costs, while the US operations -- still in their early phase -- remain somewhat uneven, with larger customer orders contributing to lumpiness. The founding family-led management continues to execute well, strengthening supplier relationships with the likes of Dow and Viva Energy, while selectively pursuing bolt-on acquisitions, such as Molekulis, to broaden its addressable market. Looking forward, we believe Redox is well positioned following what we view as a one-off cost reset. With a clearer view of the full-year cost base, we expect operating leverage to improve over time. Importantly, the pricing environment has stabilised, providing a better platform for volume growth to drive top-line momentum. At 14.3x forward earnings and with 10% of its market capitalisation in net cash, the valuation is undemanding. With expectations now more balanced, we’ve taken the opportunity to modestly increase our holding.

BSD Analysis:
Redox is a chemicals and ingredients distributor—an unsexy business that can still be very profitable when scale and relationships are right. The company benefits from deep supplier ties, broad customer coverage, and logistics capability across Australia and beyond. Distribution can look commoditized, but service quality, reliability, and technical support create stickiness, especially in regulated end markets. Margin risk shows up when competition intensifies or when inventory and FX dynamics move against you. The upside comes from operational leverage and category expansion into higher-value specialty products. If Redox continues professionalizing and scaling, it can compound steadily. It’s a “boring but cash-flow” story with execution as the main driver.