Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Back to today

From X

@marginofdanger 2 clicks

marginofdanger on X

I pasted two screenshots from $PS's 424B4. If you look at fee paying AUM, it's $16 bn excl HHH which has a de minimis mgmt fee/carry. Add in $PSUS and you are at $21 bn of fee paying AUM. $PS discloses pro forma mgmt fees of $238 mm but that is net of $91 mm of non-cash amort related to the IPO. So I'm going to give them credit for $329 mm of mgmt fees. Assuming a 65% operating margin and a 20% tax rate, that gives me effective fee paying earnings of $171 mm. $PSH.LN has a 16% incentive fee and $PS is entitled to the performance fees on the first 5% (the team gets beyond that). On $15 bn, this is $15 bn * 5% * 16% = $120 mm or $96 mm after tax. Add up the mgmt fee and performance fee share, and I get $267 mm of expected earnings or $0.67/share. Implies $PS is trading at around ~50x EPS vs. $KKR at 17x, $ARES at 20x, $BX at 21x. Of course you can layer in some minor $HHH economics and it takes down the multiple a couple of turns. But you could also layer in a few years of sub 5% returns and that takes away the performance fee too. Certainly a 50x EPS valuation is pretty common for a fast growing higher ROIC biz. But it's by no means cheap. The question is, how will Ackman raise any money from here? $PSH.LN is at a discount to NAV, $PSUS is at a discount to NAV and $HHH is at a discount to NAV. One thing that will allow $PS to grow into its valuation is great results as that will 1) scale up the earnings (as it's based on % of AUM) and 2) facilitate new investors. Another way to contextualize the valuation is to simply look at fee paying AUM of $21 bn and compare that to the equity value of $13 bn. That is pretty unprecedented in the land of asset managers but reflects in part the permanent capital and the limited float (I think its just the 20mm shares given in the IPO). Could easily see a lot of price pressure once the 380mm non-IPO related investors are free to sell.

Investor Letters

All letters

40 Stock Pitches (3rd-9th August)

Navient trades near 40% of tangible book as Gator Financial Partners argues private student-loan growth and restructuring can reverse its…

NAVI $855M
Capital Employed 9 clicks

DEC-laration of independence

Diversified Energy cut $233 million of debt in 1H26, repurchased $93 million of stock and sold $273 million of land and assets while…

DEC $983M
The Oak Bloke 7 clicks

Floor & Decor: 2Q26 Business Update

Floor & Decor’s same-store sales improved to minus 2%, while $45 million of tariff refunds lifted second-quarter gross profit and operating…

FND $5B
Speedwell Memos 8 clicks

Vistance Networks (NASDAQ: VISN)

Vistance Networks plans a large post-Ruckus-sale dividend, leaving Aurora Networks valued below 4x guided EBITDA after $1.88 billion of…

VISN $1.5B
Triple S Special Situations Investing 7 clicks

[OTCM] Listings for the rest of us

OTC Markets gives smaller, distressed, and lightly disclosed companies a trading venue outside NYSE and Nasdaq, with lower listing barriers…

OTCM $653M
scuttleblurb 3 clicks
TDC · short

Teradata CORP

Teradata is a short as its on-premises analytics business declines while enterprises shift workloads to cloud-native platforms.

TDC $2.7B
Value Investors Club

Clear the DEC?

Diversified Energy (DEC) has paid $21.84 per share in dividends since June 2017 and trades at $13.35 amid a bullish U.S.

DEC $983M
The Oak Bloke 3 clicks

Matan on Stitch Fix

Stitch Fix’s rushed Freestyle pivot cannibalized its profitable Fix business, driving active clients below 3.4 million, quarterly revenue…

SFIX $376M
MBI Deep Dives 2 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

108 publications

Newsletters 91

YouTube 4

Blogs 12

Seeking Alpha 29 of 161

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

69 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

78 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.