Stanley Druckenmiller graduated from Bowdoin in 1975 and joined the research department of Pittsburgh National Bank in 1976. In 1978 his mentor there, Speros Drelles, made him director of research, and the bank later made him chief investment officer. In February 1981 he started Duquesne Capital Management. In 1988 he joined Soros Fund Management to run the Quantum Fund, while still running Duquesne, and left in 2000. His letter of August 18, 2010, told Duquesne’s clients he was retiring from managing their money. In January 2026 he was still running his own capital.

He argues that liquidity moves markets, and that an investor judges a company by where its situation will stand a year and a half out, not by what it earns now. Both came from Drelles in 1978. He reads the economy from the bottom up, starting with what companies report about their businesses. In November 2024, on the podcast of Norges Bank Investment Management, he gave the rule: “I have found it’s very important never to invest in the present. Always try and envision the situation as you see it in 18 to 24 months.”

Liquidity first is a game he set his staff at the end of 2003, with fed funds at 1 percent. He asked where the rate would be if they had just come down from Mars and seen only the data. The lowest guess was 3 percent. The big bet is the pound in September 1992, which by his 2022 account cost 50 basis points if Britain did not devalue and paid 2,000 if it did, 40 to 1. The nerve to reverse is January 2000, when he sold every technology stock he held while the market was still rising. He said in November 2016 that he had never used a stop loss in 40 years, but that he exits when the reason he bought starts to change.

The program opens in the summer of 1992, with a call from London about houses and a trade that cost half a percent to put on. It goes back to Pittsburgh, where a mentor promoted him in 1978 because he was young enough to charge, and to the oil and defense list of 1979. It follows Duquesne’s first bet in 1981 and the rocky start at Soros before the Berlin Wall fell. It gives what Soros taught him about size, in baseball terms. It has the technology trade of 1999 and 2000 and the summer he spent away from every price. It ends with the letter of August 18, 2010, and the advice he gives himself in a drawdown.

The program quotes him from his own talks and interviews, and from one letter. He told the story of the pound in November 2024 and gave the short version at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in September 2022. He spoke about Pittsburgh to his neighbors at the Lost Tree Club in North Palm Beach, Florida, in January 2015. He explained the Federal Reserve’s bond buying to the Economic Club of New York in May 2020. His USC Marshall keynote of May 2023 and Bloomberg’s investment conference of June 2023 are in it. Morgan Stanley recorded the latest conversation, Hard Lessons, in Grand Central Terminal on January 30, 2026.

The complete program runs sixty minutes.

Transcript

The transcript is available for download to members only.

Highlights of the Latticework Monday Morning Briefing:

Ideas from our member newsletter

We highlight a few stock write-ups from the latest Weekly Inspiration:

CEWE (Xetra: CWC) sells more than 6 million photobooks a year, Europe’s most popular, through 20,000 retail partners, and does so with high-teens ROCE, net cash and 16 consecutive years of dividend increases. Photofinishing brought €745.5M of the €864.5M 2025 turnover at a low double-digit margin; WhiteWall, Pixum and Cheerz sit behind the CEWE name, and the company builds full photobook ordering into retailers’ own websites rather than merely placing terminals in stores. Kevin Durkin of Ballina Capital, which bought in 2025, argues the market filed CEWE under consumer cyclicals and punished it with the sector while earnings held up, and that the weak Commercial Online Printing segment (€89.6M of sales, little pricing power) obscured the core. That segment went to Cimpress in July at a gain; without it, the 2025 EBIT margin rises from 10.2% to 11.2% and ROCE from 17.6% to 19.6%. In August CEWE agreed its largest acquisition, Kodak Moments, carved out of Kodak Alaris for an €88M EV on €200M of revenue, adding 37,000 photo stations, a plant in Colorado and the US, Mexico, Canada and Australia, where CEWE has virtually no presence. Closing is expected in mid-2027; management plans 24 months of synergies before omnichannel photobook expansion, and long-term incentives are tied to ROCE. At about €114 the stock yields 2.7%; five-year average multiples imply €126-132, peers €152 and a DCF at an 8.5% WACC €216. He expects €140 within two years plus dividends, then a rerating toward 8-10x EBITDA. The risks are three quarters of small accounting losses before a decisive Q4, the integration, AI agents, shipping costs and very low liquidity; the Neumüller family holds roughly 27%.

Disney (NYSE: DIS) still earns money from Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, all released between 1937 and 1942, and trades at 14x FY27 consensus EPS against a 21x median P/E since 1980. The moat is the flywheel Walt Disney sketched in 1957: a hit film creates characters that sell toys and fill parks, and animated characters outlive any actor. Disney took $6.6bn at the 2025 box office against $4.3bn for Warner Bros., leads licensed retail sales at $63bn, and runs eight of the ten most-visited parks. Experiences (parks, cruises, products) earned $10.0bn of FY25’s $17.6bn segment profit from roughly 40% of revenue at a ~30% margin, double the FY15 figure; a Disneyland ticket has gone from $1 in 1955 to $224, 8% a year compounded. Samuel Ziff of Oldfield Partners argues Disney rebuilds its revenue mix whenever distribution changes: TV money funded Disneyland, the $19bn Capital Cities/ABC deal lifted Media Networks profit from $1.7bn to $7.8bn by FY16, and streaming went from a $4.0bn loss in FY22 to breakeven in FY24 and a 13% margin in Q3 FY26 after price rises, a password-sharing crackdown and folding in Hulu. Free cash flow runs at 90-95% of earnings and buybacks have cut the share count about 5% from its post-Fox peak. He does not state a position. At $105, his base case of 20x on $7.50 gives $150; a recession case of 12x on $6.50 gives $78, a drop he sees as temporary. His risks are the parks cycle, no original $1bn film since Zootopia, sports costs, ROIC near 9% since Fox, and an untested new CEO in Josh D’Amaro.

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An executive summary of this week’s selections:

11 Articles We Are Reading This Week

1. AI trade - Aswath Damodaran

2. Bank deposits - John Cronin

3. Fraud is everywhere - Francine McKenna

4. Claude as second brain - Sebastian Krog

5. Most intelligence is search - Tomas Pueyo

6. Larry David’s many failures - Blake Harris

7. Measuring the swarm economy - Gavin Morrison

8. Hardware specialization is back - Zain Asgar

9. Which software firms survive AI - Reimar Scholz

10. AI and the hunger for connection - Eric Markowitz

11. AI, short-termism and price discovery - Drew Dickson

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This year’s ideas share a common thread: businesses that have absorbed several hard years, at prices that still assume the worst. The hard years took three forms. Some companies sit at the bottom of a cycle the market is pricing as permanent. Others have just been through an acquisition, disposal or separation the market has yet to credit. And some are durable franchises discounted for reasons that lie mostly outside the business. The case for Europe as a whole starts with the numbers.

The value case for Europe

European deep-value stocks are priced for a repeat of 2022 that Europe’s energy system is better prepared to absorb. Brian Chingono of Verdad finds the broader European market re-rated to 1.85x book, within 4% of its 30-year average, while deep-value stocks still trade at 0.66x, and the spread between the two has rarely been wider. When it was wider than its median, deep value outperformed the market by 7% annualized over the following three years. Verdad’s return bridge points to a 17.2% five-year expected return for deep value, against 13.2% for the market. Watch Brian’s full case for European deep value, including his example, Delfingen.

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Thesis summary:

S&U is a small British specialist lender, founded in 1938 and listed in London since 1961, with two franchises built organically: Advantage Finance (1999), which provides used-car hire purchase to borrowers poorly served by banks, and Aspen Bridging (2017), which makes short-term property-backed loans. The group holds £541m of net receivables, funded by £251m of equity and £285m of net borrowings. Daniel, whose fund has owned the shares for about nine years, sees a double inflection point.

Demand is not the constraint. Advantage received about 200,000 loan requests last year, 100,000 of them serious, and granted fewer than 20,000, mostly sourced through brokers in a segment large banks abandoned as too labor-intensive. FY2026 new loans averaged £9,935 over about 56 months. Aspen’s loans average £795,000 over 16 months at roughly 1% a month, repaid from property sales or refinancing, with low realized losses so far. Daniel watches collections more closely than loan growth.

The first inflection is operating. Pre-tax profit fell from £47.0m in FY2022 to £24.0m in FY2025 amid a review of forbearance and collections practices and the motor-finance commission controversy, then recovered 32.7% to £31.8m. In the latest half, Advantage advances rose 48.7% to £105.0m, net receivables rose 22.2% to £341.1m, and repayments reached 92% of amounts due. Group pre-tax profit rose only 0.8%, as cost of sales and finance costs absorbed higher revenue, and Aspen’s collections slowed.

The second inflection is funding. Securitization warehouses for Advantage and Aspen, expected to sign in October 2026, would lift total facilities from £337m to about £650m. S&U keeps subordinated interests and the credit risk, so it remains a lender. In Daniel’s illustration, funding a £100m pool with 25% equity instead of 50% lifts its ROE from 10.5% to 16.5%. The Coombs family holds 40.6% with its vehicle Grevayne, pays out about half of earnings and rejects buybacks to preserve liquidity.

At £18.80, S&U trades at 9.6x reported earnings, 0.91x book and a 6.1% dividend yield. Consensus, which excludes securitization, sees EPS rising from £1.95 to £3.00 by FY2029 and ROE reaching 11.4%. Applying 1.22x to FY2029 book value of £24.72 gives £30.16; adding £3.89 of dividends yields a total return of about 81%, roughly 30% annualized. Risks include new-vintage credit quality, slow Aspen exits, funding terms, conduct liabilities, and growth that fails to lift returns.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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We are delighted to share the seventh report in our Industry Primers series, this one on natural resources royalty and streaming. The series exists to help fundamental, long-term investors expand and deepen their circle of competence, one industry at a time, and your feedback on what was useful and on which industries to cover next shapes what we produce. Two podcast episodes complement the report, the first telling the industry’s story and the second digging deeper into the fundamentals from an investor’s standpoint. The companion slide deck (free to access) and the full research report (members only) follow below.

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The program runs from a railroad land grant put in trust in 1888 to a $4.3 billion purchase of silver in 2026, and from Salt Lake City, Toronto and the gold mines of Nevada to Mexico, Brazil, Panama and the Permian Basin of West Texas. Its people are the builders of the industry’s largest companies: Pierre Lassonde and Seymour Schulich, who founded Franco-Nevada in 1982, and David Harquail, who ran it from 2007 to 2020; Ian Telfer and Randy Smallwood, who created the stream and built Wheaton Precious Metals; and Murray Stahl and Tyler Glover, the investor and the chief executive behind Texas Pacific Land. It follows how each of them paid cash once for a fixed share of mines and wells that other companies paid to find, build and run, and what that share earned.

Part One stands on its own. It tells how the business took its present shape, from the trustees of 1888 and the first gold royalty of 1986 to the first stream of 2004 and the water business of the Permian. The economics of the contracts, and the companies as investments, are the subject of Part Two and of the written primer. The records it gives are total returns with dividends reinvested, each stated with its window and its benchmark.

The program runs in nineteen sections:

1. Anything Less Than Two Million. In 1986 a geologist working for Franco-Nevada finds a box ad for a royalty on Nevada’s Carlin Trend, and in Salt Lake City Pierre Lassonde learns that the seller owes his bank $2 million with 90 days to pay, so he doubles the $1 million he and Seymour Schulich had agreed the royalty was worth, spending all the money in the company’s treasury.

2. Shares of One Hundred Dollars Each. In 1887 the bondholders of the bankrupt Texas and Pacific Railway take its Texas land in exchange for their claim, and the declaration of trust of February 1, 1888 lets the trustees pay out rents, land sales and “royalties for coal and minerals”, or spend it retiring certificates of $100 each and canceling them.

3. That Delaware Position. Oil comes in on the trust’s land in 1920, as the company tells it, and at the state university’s Santa Rita No. 1 in 1923; Certificate No. 390, worth $1,800 in 1888, is worth $1,280,000 by 1952; and in 1954 the trustees spin off the mineral estate but keep a royalty of one-sixteenth under the Delaware Basin.

4. The Biggest Dummies. Pierre Lassonde, trained in electrical engineering in Montreal, and Seymour Schulich, who ran the oil and gas investments at Beutel Goodman, start Franco-Nevada on the side in 1982 on a handshake, see its Nevada gold prospects “all turned to dust”, and ask whether mining has royalties the way oil and gas do.

5. The Discovery of Three Lifetimes. Barrick buys the Goldstrike mine under the new royalty for $62 million, its deep drilling finds what Franco-Nevada calls “a 50 million ounce orebody”, and the day before the founders were to sign Franco-Nevada away, Brian Meikle’s verdict on the deposit persuades the founders to build the company instead.

6. Banker of Last Resort. David Harquail joins Lassonde in 1987, the partners acquire royalties in gold camps from Nevada and Ontario to Kalgoorlie, advance $2 million for a 2 percent royalty on Detour that pays its first check 15 years later, and in 1997, after the Bre-X fraud, Schulich describes Franco-Nevada and its sister company Euro-Nevada, with about $500 million of cash between them, as a banker of last resort to the industry.

7. A Meeting Set for September Eleventh. A meeting with Newmont set for September 11, 2001 does not take place because of the attacks, on November 14 Newmont agrees to acquire Franco-Nevada for its own shares in a year when gold averaged $271 an ounce, and at the closing in February 2002 Franco-Nevada is valued at close to US$3 billion.

8. Schmuck Insurance. Inside Newmont the royalty book grows because Newmont keeps a royalty on everything it sells, a habit Harquail calls “our schmuck insurance”; in December 2007 it returns to the market as a new Franco-Nevada at C$15.20 a share and buys the portfolio for about $1.2 billion, and in 2008 its shares rise 17 percent while the gold miners’ fund falls 26 percent.

9. I Had No Salary. Ian Telfer, a chartered accountant who had sold his house after his dot-com company went broke, becomes chairman and chief executive of Wheaton River on September 28, 2001, with gold at $283 an ounce, and asks Randy Smallwood, an auctioneer’s son turned geological engineer, to stay and “keep me away from the bad mines” before Wheaton River buys Luismin in Mexico in 2002.

10. A New Company That Owns Nothing. After a failed swap of copper for gold with the operator of Alumbrera, Telfer proposes “a new company that owns nothing”, and on October 15, 2004 Silver Wheaton signs the first stream, paying about US$36.7 million and 108 million shares for Luismin’s silver at the lesser of $3.90 an ounce and the market price.

11. Over and Over Again. Under Peter Barnes, Silver Wheaton repeats its model “over and over again”, Goldcorp sells its whole stake for C$1,566 million on February 14, 2008, and from April 2006 to April 2011 the shares return 33 percent a year in US dollars, while Nolan Watson and David Awram leave to found Sandstorm.

12. The Only Ones Who Can Write a Check. Harquail keeps Franco-Nevada’s cash through the boom so that it can be “the only ones that can write a check on the next downturn”, and from August 2011 to December 2015 its shares gain 12 percent while the miners’ fund loses 77 percent; over his tenure as chief executive, to May 2020, they return about 15 times in Canadian dollars, 24.6 percent a year.

13. For Generations to Come. Randy Smallwood, chief executive from April 2011, pays no more than the long-term price for a metal, buys the gold of Vale’s Salobo copper mine in Brazil in three purchases from 2013 to 2016, and by the end of 2025 Wheaton has received $3,519.8 million in cash against $3,573.4 million paid, on a mine planned to about 2052.

14. Thirty-Eight Days. In 2023 Panama’s Supreme Court strikes down the law renewing Cobre Panama’s contract 38 days after it passed, and Franco-Nevada writes its stream down to nil, a charge of $1,169.2 million, a loss the company absorbs with hundreds of other assets, no debt and $1.4 billion of cash.

15. Some People Sold Shares Back Then. Murray Stahl’s Horizon Kinetics becomes the largest outside holder of the Texas Pacific Land Trust, the trustees retire about half the trust’s shares between 1994 and January 2020, and its oil and gas royalties grow from $8.7 million in 2009 to $154.7 million in 2019 on wells it never paid to drill.

16. Really Water Wells. Tyler Glover, who grew up in Midland and became the trust’s chief executive in November 2016, forms Texas Pacific Water Resources in June 2017, and in 2025 water sales and produced-water royalties make up 36.8 percent of TPL’s revenue of $798.2 million.

17. Everyone, That Is, Except Murray. A proxy fight in 2019 leads to the trust’s conversion into a corporation, a Delaware court ties its new shares to a stock split, Stahl dies on April 7, 2026, and under Glover TPL returns 13.45 times with dividends reinvested to October 16, 2026, against 4.28 times for the S&P 500.

18. The Largest Mining Company in the World. On February 16, 2026 Wheaton Precious Metals agrees to pay BHP $4.3 billion for its share of Antamina’s silver without issuing shares, and Randy Smallwood hands over to Haytham Hodaly after 15 years as chief executive that returned 3.59 times, ahead of gold and the gold miners’ fund and behind the S&P 500.

19. A Checkbook on the Doorstep. Lassonde learns that when the seller of 1986 got back to his office the operator was waiting with his checkbook for the royalty, Goldstrike produces 42.8 million ounces from 1987 to the end of 2016, and from December 3, 2007 to October 16, 2026 Franco-Nevada’s shares grow 19.6 times in US dollars with dividends reinvested.

The program runs 1 hour 30 minutes (1:30:28). The written primer and its companion deck are on the Latticework Substack at the Industry Primer on natural resources royalty and streaming. Part Two, the deep dive for professional investors, is a separate episode, available to members of Latticework: Industry Primers Podcast: Natural Resources Royalty & Streaming, Part Two: The Deep Dive.

This audio program is published by MOI Global for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation, and no security mentioned herein is recommended for purchase or sale. The publisher and contributors may hold positions in securities discussed. Figures are believed accurate as of the dates stated but are not warranted; listeners should verify all data against primary sources before relying on it. Nothing herein constitutes legal, tax, or accounting advice.

Transcript

The transcript is available for download to members only.

Thesis summary:

Savills is a UK real estate adviser founded in 1855, known for luxury UK residential, commercial tenant representation and recurring fee-based services that provide about half of revenue. Adam first researched it in 2014, when it entered the US by buying Studley, and a call with a senior Eastdil Secured banker introduced him to the firm. Savills closed its acquisition of Eastdil on July 31, 2026, a deal Adam sees as a good franchise buying a great one that the market has yet to appreciate.

Founded by Ben Lambert in 1967, Eastdil invented real estate investment banking and is the #1 US adviser on $100m+ transactions, with $3.0tn of volume in 2011-2025, FY25 revenue of $633m (£470m) and an 18% average EBITDA margin. It has never had an unprofitable year, and a single bonus pool keeps the culture collegial. Combined 2021-2025 volumes of $251bn make the group #2 globally, up from #7 for Savills alone, and transaction advisory rises from 38% to 48% of revenue.

Savills paid £685m in equity value (£827m EV), or 9.9x EBITDA, funded by a £553m bridge loan at 5.5-6% and £274m of new shares. Eastdil adds 20% to revenue but lifts North America from 13% to 23% of the group. Adam expects cross-selling both ways: property management on Eastdil’s pitches, and Savills’ relationships in Europe and Asia for Eastdil. Volumes remain below pre-COVID levels, while about $2.6tn of US and EU commercial real estate debt nears maturity.

Incentives look aligned: 85 Eastdil employees will own about 6.3% of Savills shares under four-to-six-year lockups, and a $195m retention pool runs through 2030. The deal is expected to bring low/mid-teens EPS accretion in 2027 and high-teens group ROCE by 2028, before synergies. Since 2005, Savills has generated over £2bn of free cash flow, about its EV today, paying £627m of dividends and £263m of net buybacks. Pro forma net debt of £594m is about 2x EBITDA, against a target below 1x.

At £10.50, Savills has a £1,825m market cap and £2,419m EV, or 9.3x pro forma LTM EBITDA of £261m, in line with its long-term median and toward the low end of the peer range of 8-14x. Adam’s base case (6% revenue growth, 9% EBITDA margin, 10x) yields £14.47, or 38% upside; his bull case gives £26.84 (+156%) and his bear case £5.59 (-47%). Risks include a prolonged downturn, rate volatility, talent departures and refinancing the bridge.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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For those who couldn’t join us, here is a synthesis of the key insights and thesis highlights shared by our community of intelligent investors.

This post summarizes views expressed by participants on an MOI Global member call and is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing here is investment advice, nor a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Speakers may hold positions in the securities discussed, and figures cited were stated on the call and have not been independently verified. Please do your own research and consult a qualified adviser before making any investment decision.

AECOM: a sound engineering franchise working through a legacy issue

Pedro Zuloaga described AECOM (US: ACM) as a sound business working through a temporary legacy issue, and a cannibal that has reduced its share count since 2019. On AI risk, he noted that a bridge still needs a professional engineer to sign and seal the design, and that governments award major projects to firms with long records. Those moats look intact, and AI may even help by reducing the hours a job requires. On normalized earnings of six to seven dollars per share at 12 to 13 times, he sees value in the 90s, against a share price just below 60. Asked by Bill Coleman, Pedro said AECOM is primarily a US business, and suggested focusing on net service revenue, since reported revenue includes pass-through costs.

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Japan’s household rotation and the chip equipment makers

Daniel Gladiš sees one macro shift positively: after a generation of near-zero rates, Japanese households are moving out of cash into bonds that now yield something and into equities, and new interest income should support consumption.

Huy Nguyen, joining us for the first time, focuses on the Japanese equipment makers behind AI, such as Tokyo Electron (Japan: 8035) and Disco (Japan: 6146), which supply every foundry regardless of who designs the chips. Disco, which Huy visited two months ago and considers one of Japan’s best-run companies, holds more than half the market for the precision dicing saws that cut finished wafers into individual chips. Long too expensive for him, it now trades at around 40 times this year’s earnings and in the mid-30s on his 2027 and 2028 estimates.

Adi Shyamsundar cautioned that little in AI and semiconductors looks cheap by value-investor standards, and suggested tracking what TSMC, Intel and Samsung say in case the cycle turns.

Samsara, four months on

Adi revisited Samsara (US: IOT), which he pitched in Zurich in June with the shares in the mid-30s. They now trade in the low 40s, and he remains constructive. Samsara keeps extending its devices and edge AI to anything that moves, most recently putting a device on the puck for the Canadian Hockey League. He sees a large market and competition that exists but is weak.

S&U: a UK consumer lender at an inflection point

Daniel previewed his European Investing Summit session on S&U (UK: SUS), which goes live on Friday, October 23. The family-run lender is a thinly traded UK small cap, away from passive flows. Two or three years of regulatory headwinds and tax increases are behind it, and a shift from bank borrowing to securitization, with two tranches secured, should let it grow faster with much less capital, toward a plan to double the business in about five years. The shares trade at a single-digit multiple and below book value.

Germany, broken compounders, and out-of-favor sectors

Max Busch acknowledged the disillusionment many German investors feel toward their home market, but recalled how well Petrobras worked out when every Brazilian hated it. Vonovia (Germany: VNA) is on his list to revisit, and an AI-assisted screen for derated quality companies surfaced Fielmann (Germany: FIE), a good if boring business at a reasonable price. He thinks broken compounders could get interesting while everyone focuses on AI. Nike (US: NKE) trades at perhaps 12 times normalized earnings, and he has a hard time seeing the brand fail to recover.

Gas turbines and the long tail of service revenue

Barton Hooper sees an underappreciated story in gas turbines at Siemens Energy (Germany: ENR) and GE Vernova (US: GEV). After the overbuild of the early 2000s, turbine capacity at both remains well below late-1990s levels despite surging demand. Europe can no longer switch to coal when gas gets expensive, and in the US, solar and wind have replaced much of the dispatchable reserve margin coal once provided, straining grid reliability in regions such as PJM. AI demand pulled forward a crunch that had been expected around 2027 or 2028. Margins on new turbines have gone from roughly zero to around 30%, which Barton views as unsustainable, so he is waiting for pricing to ease. What should prove durable is the long tail of service margins.

Asked by Adi about Vertiv (US: VRT), Barton noted that data center suppliers carry open debates, such as liquid cooling or 800-volt DC power, where a case can be made either way. His broader lesson: when managers you greatly admire, such as Dave Cote and Larry Culp, take on difficult assets, pay attention.

CEWE: a defensive photo book leader with a cleaner portfolio

Kevin Durkin recapped his European Investing Summit presentation on CEWE Stiftung (Germany: CWC), Europe’s leader in photo books, with a market value a little under 900 million euros. Management focuses on return on capital, and demand tied to gifting, travel and family has proven resilient. Kevin does not see a multi-bagger, but at under six times EBITDA the stock is cheap and defensive.

Two transactions mark an inflection point. CEWE sold its struggling commercial online printing business to Cimpress at a gain, and is acquiring the Kodak Moments retail photo station business, which adds some 200 million euros of lower-margin sales, room for synergies, and a presence in North America and Australia. The dividend has risen for 17 consecutive years. The shares have gone nowhere for six or seven years, trade thinly, and depend heavily on the holiday quarter.

Playing defense in a melt-up

Wyatt Sparks described an extreme market: the IGV software index fell some 30% in the first four to five months of the year, then rose some 45%. Citing Michael Fritzell, he suggested writing down today’s heuristics, since those of five or ten years ago aged quickly. Fighting a melt-up is futile while the retail, buyback and pod-shop bids remain in place, and washouts tend to run longer than expected: Vonovia is some 20% cheaper than a month ago. Activist campaigns have gone public at quality businesses such as Solstice Advanced Materials (US: SOLS) and Flowserve (US: FLS), which Wyatt presented in Prague. Everyone, he observed, is playing their own form of defense.

How might the AI spending cycle unwind?

Adi then asked how the AI build-out might unwind over the next one to two years, and whether a break at a weak link such as OpenAI or Anthropic would mark the beginning of the end.

One view discussed: the internet proved enormously important and AI may prove more so, yet the internet still went through a severe bust, and with spending and borrowing on today’s scale a similar shakeout seems hard to avoid. After 2000, many genuine value stocks rose, so defensive holdings might later be rotated into AI beneficiaries at much lower valuations. Huy agreed but has yet to identify clear beneficiaries, and expects large language models to become a commodity, as DeepSeek and Moonshot suggest.

Barton pointed to a twist: in the dot-com bubble, investors thought the P was outrageous; today, many think the E is. Nvidia would not have traded at 14 times next year’s earnings in 1999. Debt-financed spending above late-1990s levels as a share of GDP reminds him of the shale boom: shortages until marginal demand stopped, then a slow collapse in prices.

Pedro observed that customers seem less locked in than the providers would like; he switched to Gemini late last year and to Claude this year. If that is widespread, the build-out could prove a prisoner’s dilemma. Daniel cited 2028 consensus net income of 62 billion dollars for SpaceX against a research note projecting 371 billion, for a company with perhaps 50 billion of revenue this year. Add up bottom-up forecasts for the largest companies, he argued, and there is not enough money around.

Using AI in the investment process

Pedro asked how members use AI in their investment process, a topic we may explore further on our next call. Adi’s advice: keep at it, use several platforms, ask each tool how it can help with your specific work, and instruct it to debate you. He refines five analytical lenses every three weeks. Another suggestion from the discussion: state the goal rather than asking what the model can do, then challenge the output by asking what a world-class version would look like.

We closed with Bill complimenting Daniel on his recent essay on the golden age of active investing, which Bill has shared widely since it led our latest Weekly Inspiration.

I found the call incredibly valuable and hope this summary provides a few worthwhile insights for your own capital allocation process.

Our next live call will be on December 15 at 2:00 pm ET. No formal registration is needed; simply click the following link at the scheduled time to join.

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This is the eighteenth issue of This Week in Special Situations, our curated survey of actionable ideas. We do not attempt to profile every special situation. The universe of activist campaigns, buybacks, insider purchases, strategic reviews, and merger arbitrage spreads is vast, and most of it is noise. We filter for situations with a misaligned price or a noteworthy structural reason for market inefficiency.

Over time we will likely narrow this list further. That is where you come in. Please tell us which situations added value to your process and, just as importantly, which were of no consequence. Brutally honest feedback is the most valuable input we can receive. It will shape what we keep and what we cut. Our goal is to make this survey progressively more useful to you.

This week’s report (available as a slide deck) profiles 34 situations across four buckets: activist campaigns, capital return and insider conviction, M&A, and strategic alternatives. Below we highlight the handful that stand out on catalyst clarity, valuation, and asymmetry, followed by thesis summaries covering a broad cross-section of the report.

This publication is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The information is based on publicly available data and regulatory filings. Errors are not only possible but likely. Readers should conduct their own research.

The Situations That Stand Out

Solstice Advanced Materials (US: SOLS) has Starboard Value arguing that Nuclear and three smaller units are worth ~$7.6B of the ~$11B enterprise value it calculated on October 16, which by its math leaves the rest, mostly refrigerants, at 4.3x 2027E EBITDA. Starboard CEO Jeff Smith unveiled the position on October 20, nearly eight weeks after Solstice and Element Solutions called off their merger and the board authorized a $500M buyback, about 5% of the market cap. Starboard values Nuclear, owner of the only US uranium conversion plant, at ~$3.9B and three other units at ~$3.7B, and it wants at least $100M of overhead cut, about 20% of SG&A. The stake size is undisclosed and no 13D is on file, though the FT puts Starboard among the top ten holders; nominations for the 2027 meeting run January 22 to February 21.

Albertsons Companies (US: ACI) had buyback authority at September 12 worth 27% of its ~$6.3B market cap, trades at about 4x EV/adjusted EBITDA with a 5% dividend yield, and three executives, CEO Susan Morris among them, bought ~$2.5M of stock near $11.50 in late July. Albertsons has repurchased 26M shares this fiscal year, ~12.6M of them at an average ~$12.70 in the 12 weeks to September 12, and the diluted count is down 13% year on year. On October 13 management launched a comprehensive review of banners, markets, assets and capital allocation and withdrew its fiscal 2026 outlook. Funding is the constraint: 28-week FCF of ~$310M covered just over half of dividends and buybacks, the ABL balance nearly doubled since February to ~$830M, and net debt runs 2.4x adjusted EBITDA. Cerberus’s last reported ~152M shares equal 32% of today’s count.

Brockhaus Technologies (Germany: BKHT) trades at ~€17, 18% below roughly €20 a share of pro forma net cash after minorities, having retired 34% of its shares at €25.00, and the board still has about €90M of a ~€180M capital return goal to deliver. The 2.2x-oversubscribed tender bought ~3.6M shares for ~€90M, and their cancellation on October 19 left a ~€114M market cap. Pro forma net cash is ~€153M, or ~€140M net of ~€13M of June 30 minority interests, and the stock trades at 0.6x pro forma book of ~€29 a share. The August AGM approved moving ~€183M into free reserves, which the company says leaves room for acquisitions and possible further capital returns in 2027. The remaining business, IHSE plus the holding, guides to roughly breakeven adjusted EBITDA on €30-32M of revenue, and the CEO’s team holds about 24%.

General Motors (US: GM) authorized a new $20B buyback, about 31% of its ~$64B market cap, after raising 2026 adjusted automotive FCF guidance to $11.5-12.5B, a roughly 19% yield at the midpoint, and an 8% two-session drop leaves the stock at under 6x the midpoint of adjusted EPS guidance. The authorization has no expiration date and came with third-quarter results after GM used up its prior $6.3B program. GM bought back 65M shares for ~$5.3B in the first nine months, ~30M of them in the third quarter at ~$85, so new purchases run ~11% below that cost. Adjusted EPS guidance is $12.75-13.75, and automotive cash and securities of ~$23B exceed ~$16B of automotive debt. Insiders are sellers: CEO Mary Barra sold ~1.0M shares for ~$87M between May and July, and no Form 4 in six months shows an open-market purchase.

FMC (US: FMC) trades at ~$5, 62% below the $13.30 a share Tessenderlo paid four weeks ago to reach 20% of the company, and Tessenderlo CEO Luc Tack joined the board on October 21, with the Belgian group’s standstill falling away if FMC signs a change-of-control deal. On October 15 FMC cut third-quarter revenue guidance to $65-125M from $840-900M and guided to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $510-565M, absorbing $625-675M of charges to cut prices on channel-held product in the Americas; the stock fell 30% that day. Pro forma net debt is ~$3.4B against a ~$780M market cap, the leverage covenant is capped at 6.75x through 2027, and FMC plans to discuss further covenant changes with its banks over the next year. Tessenderlo is locked up until September 2029 and votes with the board except on change-of-control matters.

Quick Thesis Summaries

Other timely situations profiled in this week’s report include:

• Big Yellow Group (UK: BYG) — Ancora, which holds 4+%, and Irenic, put at ~4% by the FT, are pressing Big Yellow to sell itself at 31% below EPRA NTA. The board, which turned Blackstone away as too low last December, now says it continually evaluates all options.

• BlackRock TCP Capital (US: TCPC) — Saba Capital has taken 5.11% of this BDC and put liquidation timing on the table, with the stock 31% below pro forma NAV of $5.90 and a 17% dividend yield. A ~$520M loan sale cut leverage to about 0.4x, and KBW is weighing options up to an orderly realization of the assets.

• Hilltop Holdings (US: HTH) — Former chairman Gerald Ford, a 27% holder, is pressing the board to take the chair from his son, CEO Jeremy Ford, and may seek board or management changes. The bank holding company trades just under 1.0x book with an 18% CET1 ratio.

• MDA Space (US: MDA) — Czechoslovak Group paid ~C$660M for 9.5% of MDA Space to become its largest holder, under a 13D that reserves talks with potential acquirers and proposals up to a sale of the company. The stock sits 5% below CSG’s cost and 19% below July’s $35.60 equity offering.

• Strata Critical Medical (US: SRTA) — Third Point has switched to a 13D and wants a banker-run sale, with the stock below Dan Loeb’s $4.77 average cost at 12x guided 2026 adjusted EBITDA. Cash and Joby receivables of ~$64M sit against a ~$420M market cap.

• Vail Resorts (US: MTN) — Oasis Management has 9.6% and four board nominees, former Disney CEO Robert Chapek among them, after Vail’s lenders dropped the board-turnover change-of-control trigger on October 16. The stock trades at 10x the midpoint of fiscal 2027 EBITDA guidance after a 50% five-year shareholder loss.

• Xponential Fitness (US: XPOF) — Fund 1 Investments lifted its exposure to 19.86% with swaps added after the October 12 poison pill and backs a Jefferies-run sale review. The franchisor trades at 7.4x trailing adjusted EBITDA, with the stock 31% below the fund’s $6.20 average share cost.

• Yamada Holdings (Japan: 9831) — The Murakami group lifted its stake to just over 9% of issued shares, about 14% ex-treasury and above the founder’s holding company, and says it may add more than 5 points within three months. Its agenda includes buybacks, asset sales and an MBO, while the EDION merger share ratio stays open until mid-2027.

• Ellington Credit Company (US: EARN) — A new $20M buyback authorization covers about 14% of the market cap at a 13% discount to estimated NAV. Spending it in full at the $3.50 close would add about 2% to NAV per share.

• High Templar Tech (US: HTT) — The former Qudian trades at ~$2, 37% below the $3.20 it paid for 40M ADSs in June, with ~$970M of net cash, roughly $8.40 a share, against a ~$230M market cap. About $92M of buyback authorization, 39% of the cap, remains unspent.

• Host Digital (US: HOST) — A $15M buyback covers 11% of the ~$140M market cap, with the stock 64% below September’s $8.00 offering. Against it sits a signed 15-year take-or-pay lease at its Oklahoma Site I that starts at $67M of year-one rent and totals $1.25B.

• Las Vegas Sands (US: LVS) — Las Vegas Sands bought back $950M of stock in the third quarter at ~$45 and still has ~$5.1B authorized, 22% of its market cap. It raised the 2027 dividend 20% to $1.44, a nearly 4% yield, with the stock 17% below what the company just paid.

• MAAS Group Holdings (Australia: MGH) — After closing the A$1.7B sale of its construction materials arm to Heidelberg, MAAS bought back about 2% of its shares in the first four sessions of a ~70M-share program. It still has ~62M shares, ~A$240M or 19.7% of its market cap, left to buy.

• NSI (Netherlands: NSI) — NSI is retiring up to 5% of its shares at 0.54x EPRA NTA, and its 29.98% holder First Sponsor Group sells pro rata alongside to stay below 30%, so the float shrinks without handing it control. The stock yields about 9% and trades at 9.4x the low end of 2026 EPRA EPS guidance.

• Pegasystems (US: PEGA) — Pegasystems still has ~$810M of buyback authority, 14% of its market cap, and the stock trades 12% below the ~$40 average it paid for ~11M shares this year. Its enterprise value is about 12x trailing FCF.

• Reliance, Inc. (US: RS) — Reliance raised its open-ended buyback authorization to $2.5B, 12% of its ~$22B market cap, after record third-quarter sales of ~$5.2B lifted non-GAAP EPS 120% to $8.02. Net debt sits at 0.8x EBITDA.

• S-1 (Korea: 012750) — S-1 is spending KRW 450B, 14% of its market cap and about half its cash and short-term deposits, to buy about 13% of its shares at KRW 99,000, 2% above the close. Cancelling them along with its treasury stock cuts the issued count 23%.

• SEI Investments (US: SEIC) — SEI added $800M to its buyback, lifting capacity to ~$930M, 7% of its ~$13B market cap, after a quarter in which adjusted EPS rose 24% and it retired 2M shares at ~$105.

• SNDL (US: SNDL) — SNDL’s board has directed management to pursue a substantial issuer bid of up to C$50M, 11% of its market cap, at up to C$1.92 a share, 7% above the close. The stock trades at 0.51x tangible book with no borrowings.

• Vistance Networks (US: VISN) — Vistance pays a $1.50 special distribution on November 6, about a quarter of its $6.11 share price, leaving a $4.61 stub for a debt-free Aurora Networks business guided to $200-225M of 2026 adjusted EBITDA. Buyback authority of $250M equals 18% of the market cap.

• Ingenia Communities Group (Australia: INA) — Warburg Pincus now has comprehensive due diligence access on its best-and-final A$5.25 cash proposal, 14.6% above the October 21 close, and both sides are seeking to sign a process deed by October 23.

• Mobico Group (UK: MCG) — The 26% holder CMC Group has teamed with Asterion on a 46p cash proposal the independent directors are minded to recommend, 17% above the 39p close, with a firm offer due by November 18.

• ShaMaran Petroleum (Norway: SNM) — Gulf Keystone’s fixed-ratio share merger values ShaMaran 19% above its Oslo close, or 9% after stripping GKP’s $50M special dividend, with the Lundin family’s 26% stake backing the deal and votes due around December 22.

• Steyr Motors (Germany: 4X0) — Red Cat’s €39.00 all-cash tender, backed by a signed business combination agreement and B&C Holding’s commitment to tender its ~15%, sits 9.6% above the ~€36 close, about 14% annualized to the June 30, 2027 clearance target.

• Aegon (US: AEG) — Aegon’s largest shareholder swapped its Common Shares B for ordinary stock on October 15, ending its 33% Special Cause vote and clearing the way to a 2028 Delaware redomiciliation and NYSE primary listing. The stock trades at 0.8x valuation equity with a nearly 6% trailing dividend yield.

• Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance (US: ARI) — A buyer at $6.34 collects the $4.10 liquidating distribution on October 29 and keeps a $2.24 stub against $3.65-4.40 per fully diluted share of further estimated payouts, 63-96% above the stub.

• International Paper (US: IP) — IP is in talks with bidders for its EMEA Packaging business, the former DS Smith, alongside a London spin-off, opening a possible cash exit from a unit that posted a $131M segment operating loss in the first half. Third-quarter results come October 28 and the unit’s capital markets day November 3.

• Myriad Genetics (US: MYGN) — Myriad is selling its Prenatal Health unit to Labcorp for $210M in cash, 39% of its ~$530M market cap, which would turn its June balance sheet to ~$200M of net cash. That leaves the cancer and mental-health lines at ~$330M of EV against ~$310M of first-half revenue.

• Reliance Industries (India: RELIANCE) — Jio Platforms’ all-primary IPO values Reliance’s 64% post-issue stake at up to ₹6.6T, 41% of Reliance’s ~₹16T market cap, without Reliance selling a share. The new shares are due to start trading on or about October 28.

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This is the third issue of Latticework Business Intelligence, the series of in-depth coverage initiations from Latticework by MOI Global, and it covers The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MOS), formed in 2004 from IMC Global and Cargill’s fertilizer business. As with Nike and Lennar, we are releasing the whole package at once so that each reader can choose where to start: the report, the Excel model, our transcripts of twelve Mosaic earnings calls, a companion slide deck, and two podcast episodes, the first on the story and the second a deep dive for investors. The companion deck and the first episode are free; the report, the model, the transcripts and the second episode are for members. We welcome your feedback on all of it.

This initiation builds on our Industry Primer on Fertilizers.

Scroll down for the free-to-read summary slide deck on Mosaic.

Initiating coverage on Mosaic

We initiate coverage of The Mosaic Company’s common stock (MOS) at Long-Term Overweight against the S&P 500 over three to five years.

Mosaic owns two sets of deposits a rival cannot replace at today’s prices, and it has the balance sheet to keep them. Potash earns the cash through this downturn; the recovery depends on the phosphate plants. At a fixed 10% required return we value a Mosaic share at $19.61 to $32.87, with a median of $26.13, against a reference price of $17.68 as of October 21, 2026. At the base margin and at 10%, the operating business is worth well more than its debt and other claims.

The question is whether Mosaic has the staying power to come through this downcycle with its cost position and balance sheet intact, and what its three businesses earn over the next three to five years. Adjusted EBITDA fell from $6.22bn in 2022 to $2.42bn in 2025, and the first half of 2026 brought $823m, against $1,110m a year earlier. The gross margin of that half, 7.7% of net sales, was the lowest in the record since fiscal 2005. We judge that Mosaic can meet its cash calls for two years and arguably three from its balance sheet and its potash, as a seller of non-core assets and, from late 2027, of Ma’aden shares rather than a buyer.

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Thesis summary:

DSV became the world’s largest freight forwarder with its €14.3bn acquisition of DB Schenker, which closed in April 2025 and doubled revenue and staff. Founded in 1976 by Danish hauliers, it has about 147,000 employees in 90 countries and moves 2m tonnes of air and 3.7m TEU of sea freight without owning ships. Ole argues the market is distracted by integration hiccups: the stock is down 40% from its peak despite record EBIT.

The industry is highly fragmented: DSV holds about 6% of the market and the top 20 players about 40%. Ole credits a proven M&A playbook, from DFDS in 2000 through Frans Maas, ABX, UTi, Panalpina and Agility: sell the physical assets, lease them back, and move every client onto one process and one system. Air & Sea brings 52% of sales and 63% of EBIT, Road 31% and 14%, Contract Logistics 17% and 23%. Since 2006 DSV is up 12x, peers 2-4x.

Schenker should deliver DKK 9bn of annual synergies, 29% realized by Q2 2026 and all by end-2027, with group EBIT heading toward about DKK 38bn by 2030. Road is where the pain sits: Ole’s own shipment of garden stones took DSV and Schenker four weeks to move the last seven kilometers. Excluding property gains, Road earned a 2.5% EBIT margin in Q3 against a 4-5% goal, though September improved markedly. Ole sees Air & Sea heading toward a 10%-plus margin.

Acquisitions, often paid partly in shares, are followed by buybacks and cancellations; Ole expects the share count to fall year after year. Buybacks paused with net debt at 2.7x EBITDA, but the Q3 report brought a DKK 1.5bn program three months early, and the CEO bought DKK 25m of shares; the stock jumped 12%. What held Ole back is governance: the abrupt 2024 exit of star CEO Jens Bjørn Andersen, replaced by the CFO, a board revolt, and a little-known next management layer.

At about DKK 1,300, a market cap near DKK 293bn (€39bn), DSV trades at 15.5x 2027E earnings, against 24.3x for Kuehne + Nagel, and 9.7x 2027E EV/EBITDA, with a three-year EPS CAGR of 23% versus 11%. Ole sees DKK 2,000-plus as realistic a few years out, about 15% a year over three to four years, helped by bigger buybacks once gearing falls below 2x. Risks include a Road turnaround dragging into 2027, customer churn, the freight cycle and AI-driven pricing transparency.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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The program runs from 1881 to October 2026, and from the Peace River in central Florida, Tennessee and Germany to Saskatchewan, Chicago, Minneapolis, Louisiana, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Its people include the engineers and geologists of International Minerals & Chemical, known as IMC, who sank a shaft through water-bearing sand to the potash at Esterhazy. They include the founders of the business in Tennessee, Thomas Meadows and Oscar Dortch, and their partner Waldemar Schmidtmann, whose family controlled one of Germany’s largest potash mines, and Allan Blakeney, the Saskatchewan premier who brought in the bill that let the province buy potash mines. Four chief executives carry Mosaic’s own years: Fritz Corrigan, who launched it; Jim Prokopanko, who ran it through the boom of 2008; Joc O’Rourke, the mining engineer hired from Barrick Gold; and Bruce Bodine, who grew up near the Florida mines. Greg Page of Cargill negotiated Cargill’s departure, with the trusts of Margaret A. Cargill at the table. The program follows how the phosphate rock of Florida and the potash ore of Saskatchewan, laid down by ancient seas, passed from owner to owner until they came to Mosaic.

Part One stands on its own. It tells how Mosaic took its present shape, from the first Florida phosphate miners of the 1880s to October 2026, and it carries no valuation. The economics of the business, and the company as an investment, are the subject of Part Two and of the written report.

The program runs in fifteen sections:

1. The Frozen Shaft. In 1955 IMC leases more than 500,000 acres around Esterhazy, a Saskatchewan farm town, above a bed of potash that lies beneath the Blairmore, a layer of loose, water-soaked sand. It freezes the ground around the line of its K1 shaft with chilled brine, and on June 8, 1962 the shaft reaches the potash.

2. Bone Valley. In 1881 an Army engineer surveying the Peace River finds phosphate pebbles south of Fort Meade, and in 1897 Thomas Meadows and Oscar Dortch start the business in Tennessee. Their partner, Waldemar Schmidtmann, contracts in 1909 to sell potash to American buyers below the German syndicate’s prices, and a reference history of the company records that “By 1939 IAC was the largest producer of phosphate rock in the world.”

3. Ten Mines in Saskatchewan. Five of the seventeen potash shafts begun in the province meet major inflows of water, and between 1966 and 1970 twelve companies open ten mines while the price falls by nearly half. Premier Allan Blakeney introduces the bill to buy potash mines on November 19, 1975, and from January 1978 part of the ore inside IMC’s mine at Esterhazy belongs to the province.

4. Two Companies in a Slump. Cargill, the Minneapolis grain merchant, agrees in 1985 to buy most of Gardinier, a phosphate company in Chapter 11, and its Riverview plant on Tampa Bay becomes Cargill’s first venture in phosphate fertilizers. IMC’s fertilizer business, floated in 1988, comes to run every Saskatchewan mine Mosaic runs in 2026 and carries more than $3 billion of long-term debt by the end of 1998. On August 15, 2003 Cargill proposes to take about 70 percent of a combined company.

5. Three Thousand Names. Cargill and IMC Global announce their combination on January 27, 2004, and pick the name Mosaic from more than 3,000 candidates. The deal closes on October 22, 2004, with Cargill taking two-thirds of the new company for no cash. Seven weeks later Fritz Corrigan, the founding chief executive, stops production at the Green Bay plant, saying phosphate margins are low in part because ammonia prices are near record highs.

6. The Boom of 2008. Under Jim Prokopanko, Mosaic repays $1 billion of long-term debt early in eight months of 2007, and on June 9, 2008 Fitch and Standard & Poor’s raise its debt to investment grade. In the year to May 2008 it earns about $2.1 billion, five times the year before.

7. Margaret Cargill’s Trusts. After Margaret A. Cargill’s death in 2006, Cargill seeks to pass its two-thirds of Mosaic to its own shareholders, chiefly her trusts. A special committee of Mosaic’s independent directors raises the fee Cargill would owe for walking away from $25 million to $200 million. The split-off closes on May 25, 2011, approved by more than 98 percent of the votes cast by Mosaic’s other shareholders.

8. Buying in the Trough. After Uralkali leaves its export agency with Belaruskali in July 2013, Mosaic’s potash price falls by about a quarter, and Mosaic answers by buying. It agrees on August 5, 2013 to build a phosphate complex in Saudi Arabia with Ma’aden and SABIC and buys CF Industries’ Florida phosphate business for about $1.17 billion of cash. In 2014 it spends about $2.76 billion on its own shares, most of them from Margaret Cargill’s trusts.

9. Thirty-Six Years of Water. From December 29, 1985 brine flows into the K2 mine at Esterhazy, and IMC and then Mosaic seal and pump it for 36 years while mining goes on. Mosaic builds K3, a third mine with shafts of its own, and on June 4, 2021 stops mining at K1 and K2 about nine months ahead of plan.

10. The Gypsum Stacks. Making phosphoric acid leaves phosphogypsum, piled in stacks 100 to 200 feet high, and sinkholes open under stacks at New Wales in 1994 and 2016. Under consent decrees announced on October 1, 2015, Mosaic puts $630 million into trusts in August 2016 to pay for closing its stacks and caring for them afterward.

11. Brazil. In 2004 Cargill brings Mosaic a Brazilian blending and distribution business that Fritz Corrigan calls “a steadier business.” Mosaic sells its Fosfertil interest to Vale in 2010 for about $1.0 billion of cash, and in January 2018 buys Vale Fertilizantes for $1.08 billion of cash and about 34 million new shares. In 2025 Mosaic Fertilizantes earns $567 million of adjusted EBITDA, its best year since the boom of 2021 and 2022.

12. The Mining Engineer. Joc O’Rourke, hired from Barrick Gold in 2008, becomes chief executive on August 5, 2015, the first not to have come up through Cargill. He sees the Vale purchase through and moves the head office to the Tampa area in 2018. In 2022 Mosaic’s operating earnings, about $4.8 billion, exceed those of the seven years from 2014 to 2020 together.

13. The Boy in the Station Wagon. Bruce Bodine, who looked for the draglines from the back of his family’s station wagon on drives through Mulberry, works inside IMC as a contract engineer before it hires him in 1999. He runs Four Corners, Esterhazy and the potash business and becomes chief executive on January 1, 2024. After the storms of 2024, repairs and long maintenance shutdowns keep the phosphate plants to about 6.3 million tonnes in 2025, though in August they reach their target rate and hold it for several consecutive weeks.

14. Sulfur. After the Strait of Hormuz closes to most traffic on March 2, 2026, sulfur in Mosaic’s costs reaches $522 a long ton, against $138 two years earlier. Mosaic idles Faustina’s phosphate production, runs Bartow at 40 percent of its targeted rate and sells $2.0 billion of new notes, so that no bond falls due before 2029. On October 5 a notice says South Fort Meade, one of its three active Florida rock mines, will idle from December 8, giving the supply of sulfur as the reason.

15. What Mosaic Owns. In October 2026 Mosaic holds about 96 million tonnes of Florida phosphate reserves and four phosphate plants that made about 72 percent of North America’s concentrated phosphates in 2025. Its three Saskatchewan potash mines have about an eighth of the world’s potash capacity, and one of them, Belle Plaine, made a record 3 million tonnes in 2025. Ore cut at K3 travels on an enclosed belt to the K1 mill, built for the frozen shaft of 1962.

The program runs 1 hour 26 minutes (1:26:59). The full research report, its companion slide deck, the Excel model and our transcripts of Mosaic’s earnings calls are on the Latticework Substack under the title Mosaic: Cash from Potash Now, a Recovery in Phosphates Later. The companion slide deck is free; the report, the model and the transcripts are available to members of Latticework. Part Two, the deep dive for investors, is a separate episode, available to members of Latticework: Mosaic, Part Two: The Deep Dive. For the industry behind this story, read our Industry Primer on Fertilizers and listen to its two episodes.

This audio program is published in Switzerland as Latticework by MOI Global. It carries no valuation and is not investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation. Neither MOI Global nor John Mihaljevic holds Mosaic shares. Figures are believed accurate as of the dates stated but are not warranted; listeners should verify all data against primary sources before relying on it. Nothing herein constitutes legal, tax, or accounting advice. Full disclosures are free at https://www.latticework.com/p/disclosures.

Transcript

The transcript is available for download to members only.

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Thesis summary:

Craneware is a Scotland-headquartered, London-listed provider of mission-critical US healthcare SaaS, with all of its customers in the US. Founded in 1999 and listed in 2006, it is still run by its founder-CEO, who owns about 9.5%; insiders hold 31%. Its Trisus platform helps hospitals document, code and bill against complex Medicare, Medicaid and private payer rules. After a 2021 acquisition, it serves more than 12,000 hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, about 40% of the US hospital market.

James calls Craneware a capital-light compounder with about 90% gross margins, over 90% recurring revenue and net cash. The company estimates that hospitals save $5 for every $1 spent, so the software’s net cost is negative, and stopping it costs more than keeping it. Its ten largest customers have stayed an average of 21 years, yet the largest accounts for under 8% of ARR. Net revenue retention hovers near 100%, reaching 107% in FY25, and cash conversion rose from 94% to 98%.

The shares fell about 60% in a year in a perfect storm: 340B drug-rebate litigation that held back platform revenue, the SaaS apocalypse narrative, AIM capital flight after UK tax-relief cuts shrank the index from £75bn to £41bn, a summer 2026 cyber hack, and a first-ever guidance cut, from about $205m of revenue to $185m for FY27. James sees none of it damaging the franchise: 340B resolution should release deferred demand, and revenue is 100% US-based.

The 2021 Sentry/Agilum deal cost $400m, or 17.4x EBITDA, adding over $405m of goodwill and intangibles, so ROIC now screens in the mid-single digits versus the mid-20s before. James calls this an accounting illusion: adjusted, returns exceed 20% and the owner-earnings multiple is near the mid-teens. Management has repaid the acquisition debt, is cutting headcount by up to 20%, paused M&A, bought back $25m of stock in FY26 and kept a 32p dividend, returning $98.2m over five years.

At about 1,050p, Craneware has a $459m market cap and $448m EV, close to the $400m paid for Sentry/Agilum alone, against Bain Capital’s 2,650p approach in 2025, which management rejected without due diligence. An analyst model shows revenue growing at a 7.9% CAGR over FY27-FY29 and net profit at 37.5% as acquisition amortization halves to $11m. Catalysts include 340B resolution, 30%+ EBITDA margins and a possible US listing. Risks include the unquantified cyber liability, which James would provision at $50m, and founder succession.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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Thesis summary:

Trigano is Europe’s leading recreational vehicle maker, with about 30% of the European motorhome market, 40% in France and 50% in Spain. Motorhomes are 75% of revenues, alongside accessories, mobile homes, trailers and caravans, and the French Feuillet family controls the company. Juan sees a cyclical but very cheap stock: a €2,400m market cap, €500m of net cash expected by fiscal year-end, an 18% FCF yield on Cobas’s next-year estimates, 3.5x EV/EBITDA and 5.5x P/FCF.

Juan cites economies of scale and brand recognition. The chassis, mostly from Fiat Professional, is half a motorhome’s cost, and he suspects Trigano’s scale, about 55,000 motorhomes a year, earns rebates up to 10% better than small rivals get. Assembly is artisanal: labor is only 10% of cost, so automation offers no return. Customers buy three to four vehicles in a lifetime, stay loyal to brands and sleep 77 nights a year in them. ROCE has hovered near 25%.

The opportunity stems from macro worries in Germany and France, Europe’s two largest markets, higher rates, fears that chassis OEMs will enter, and dealer destocking after over-ordering in 2023, which Juan considers resolved. Trigano’s European motorhome share dipped to 31% in 2025 from 35%. Europe’s population over 45 rose from 120 million (28%) in 2005 to 160 million (36%) and approaches 40% by 2035. Trigano integrates acquired brands financially but lets them compete; its EBIT margin has topped Thor Industries’ every year since 2017.

Net cash equals 21% of the market cap. Trigano pays a 3% dividend yield (€76m) and bought back €60m, or 2.5%, with more promised while the discount persists; the share count has been flat for 15 years. Book value per share rose from €19 in 2014 to €108 in 2025. François Feuillet, CEO from 1981 to 2020, chairs the supervisory board, and the family owns 58%. Executive Chairman Stéphane Gigou spent his career at Renault and Fiat Professional, which supplies 80-90% of Trigano’s chassis.

Juan withholds a target price but notes that Thor Industries trades at 14x 2027e P/E while Trigano trades at 5-6x 2027e P/FCF. Applying 13x normalized FCF and adding net cash and minor adjustments yields 100% upside. Catalysts include resilient European motorhome volumes, organic share gains in Germany, where Trigano holds 15-20% against a 30% ambition as Knaus Tabbert struggles, and better investor relations. Risks include European macro headwinds, Chinese competition, which Juan discounts, and regulation such as French parking limits.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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Thesis summary:

Veolia is the world’s leading environmental services group and the only one with a substantial international footprint. Founded in 1853 under Napoleon III as Compagnie Générale des Eaux, it built its business on French water concessions, diversified into media and telecom, and was broken up after the 2000 bubble into Veolia, Vinci and Vivendi. Jean-Pascal, Paribas’ French equity strategist in the late 1990s, has followed the company for 35 years.

Veolia runs three balanced divisions, Water (41% of sales), Waste (32%) and Energy (27%), for local authorities (57%) and industrial clients (43%) in 56 countries, with France only 20% of operating profit. Jean-Pascal sees three barriers to entry: financial, with capital intensity at 8% of sales; technical, with more than 550 proprietary water treatment technologies; and contractual and reputational, since concessions of 7 to 40 years demand spotless execution. Its 2025 ROCE of 6.6% exceeds a 2.8% WACC.

Water markets should grow 7% a year through 2030 and waste 5%, on stricter regulation and water scarcity. Indexation clauses protect margins when energy prices fall, even as revenue dips, as in 2025. Jean-Pascal forecasts sales rising from €44.4bn in 2025 to €50.0bn in 2028e and EBITDA from €7.1bn to €8.3bn, with EBITA margin edging up from 15.9% to 16.6%. He sees 6% to 7% annual EBITDA growth through 2030: 5% from revenue, 1% from acquisitions and 1% from Suez synergies.

Former CEO Antoine Frérot sold public transport, cut the footprint from 100 countries to 56, reduced capital intensity and bought most of rival Suez’s assets in 2022 for €18.7bn. Jean-Pascal calls his successor, Estelle Brachlianoff, tough, disciplined and financially minded. After a €3bn US hazardous waste acquisition last year lifted net debt/EBITDA to 3.2x for 2026e, her priority is to reduce leverage below 3x, toward 2.5x. Jean-Pascal would also sell the water chemicals business inherited from Suez.

Near €31 a share, Veolia trades at 5.9x 2027e EBITDA and 1.1x revenue, with a 5.6% dividend yield; Jean-Pascal believes it deserves 10x EBITDA. He blames the discount on a lack of peers, complex concession accounting, few international holders and its French listing. Without any re-rating, he expects returns near 10% a year from 6% EBITDA growth plus the dividend. Risks include France’s bond turmoil, which hit the shares this summer, high gearing, FX, and large contract renewals.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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Thesis summary:

Gerresheimer, founded as a glass manufacturer in 1864, makes drug containment and delivery solutions for the pharma industry, with about €2.3 billion in revenue and a historic EBITDA margin averaging around 20%. Nils calls it a once super-stable compounder knocked off course by aggressive management, a misstep in the €800 million Bormioli Pharma acquisition and a BaFin investigation. Like his NORMA Group pitch, up 61% in nine months, he sees a special situation and targets at least 1.6x his money within 15 months.

Gerresheimer sells mission-critical C-components: vials for €0.045, ready-to-fill syringes for €0.25 and auto-injectors for a couple of euros. Packaging is designed into the FDA approval, so switching suppliers means recertification, not worth doing to save a few cents. Product lifecycles exceed seven years, Gerresheimer is often one of only two suppliers, and contracts carry annual price step-ups tied to energy costs or CPI. Plastics & Devices is 55% of revenue and Primary Packaging Glass 45%, with contract manufacturing the key growth area.

Under CEO Dietmar Siemssen, the shares climbed to about €120 on GLP-1 enthusiasm, then slid; a KKR and Warburg Pincus consortium bid close to €90 in March 2025. Bill-and-hold deals pulled forward roughly €36 million of revenue, under 2% of sales, yet led to a restatement, delayed reports, MDAX exclusion and leverage near 5x. Gerresheimer sold Centor (€205 million in sales, 36.6% EBITDA margin) and Primary Packaging Plastics to Apax for €1.5 billion, cutting net debt to around €600 million.

CFO Wolf Lehmann, formerly of Befesa, and Achim Schalk now run the company, while Reiner Beaujean, CFO during the record-margin years of 2012-2019, chairs the audit committee and Klaus Röhrig of Active Ownership joins him on the supervisory board. Active Ownership owns 18.1%, Nationale-Nederlanden controls 16% including options, and over 3% of shares are sold short. Nils expects front-loaded catalysts: early-November Q3 results, guidance met, MDAX re-entry once reports are filed, and renewed interest from Stevanato, West or private equity.

At €32.70 a share, the remaining company trades at an EV of €1.7 billion, 6.1x EBITDA and 0.9x sales, versus 28.1x EBITDA at West and 16.1x at Stevanato. Nils expects molded glass, with roughly €80 million of run-rate EBITDA, to sell at about 6x by end-2027, leaving a nearly debt-free new Gerresheimer with 5-10% growth and 18-20% margin potential. At 9x EBITDA, he values it at €48.87 per share, with €55-60 possible in 2028. Risks include refinancing at EURIBOR plus 3.5% and the CEO search.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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Thesis summary:

CEWE Stiftung is Europe’s photofinishing leader, selling personalized photobooks, calendars, wall art and greeting cards in 21 countries, with 2025 turnover of €864.5M. Kevin looks for small European companies with founding family ownership, and the Neumüller family owns roughly 27% of the shares. The stock, at a market cap of €814M, has gone nowhere for six to seven years, but Kevin sees an inflection point as one disposal and the largest acquisition in the company’s history reshape the group.

Photofinishing, €745.5M of 2025 turnover, earns a low double-digit margin. The CEWE Photobook is Europe’s most popular, selling over 6 million copies a year, within a house of brands that includes WhiteWall, Pixum and Cheerz. CEWE reaches consumers through 20,000 retail partners in Europe, building full photobook ordering into retailers’ own websites rather than merely placing terminals in their stores. Kevin calls the business defensive, with high-teens ROCE, net cash and 16 consecutive years of dividend increases.

Kevin argues investors punished CEWE as a consumer cyclical amid poor EU consumer sentiment, though its earnings held up. The weak Commercial Online Printing segment (€89.6M of sales, little pricing power) obscured progress in photofinishing; its sale to Cimpress closed in July at a reported gain. Without it, the 2025 EBIT margin rises from 10.2% to 11.2% and ROCE from 17.6% to 19.6%. Value-added features, an extra €3 at little cost to the customer, lift margins further.

In August, CEWE agreed to buy Kodak Moments, carved out of Kodak Alaris, for an EV of €88M on €200M of revenue. The deal adds 500 employees, 37,000 photo stations, a production site in Windsor, Colorado, and the US, Mexico, Canada and Australia, where CEWE has virtually no presence. Closing is expected in mid-2027. Management plans 24 months of synergies before omnichannel photobook expansion, targeting group ROCE above 20% by year five, with Kodak Moments higher still. Long-term incentives are tied to ROCE.

At about €114, near the top of its €89.1-114.6 52-week range, the stock yields 2.7%. Five-year average multiples imply €131.8 (0.9x EV/sales) and €125.9 (8.3x EV/EBIT); peers at 10.1x EV/EBIT imply €151.6, transactions at 1.11x EV/sales €160.8, and a DCF at an 8.5% WACC €216.5. Kevin expects €140 within two years plus dividends, then a rerating toward 8-10x EBITDA. Risks include extreme fourth-quarter seasonality, the Kodak Moments integration, AI agents, cost inflation and very low liquidity.

Disclaimer

European Investing Summit 2026 was held from October 20-23, 2026. The content of this website is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The content is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to sell or buy any security or other investment, or undertake any investment strategy. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or results obtained from any information set forth on this website. BeyondProxy’s officers, directors, employees, and/or contributing authors may have positions in and may, from time to time, make purchases or sales of the securities or other investments discussed or evaluated herein.

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