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Wednesday, September 16, 2026

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@evantindell

Evan Tindell on X

Finally got a chance to go through the $UMG earnings... Obviously, a disappointment on revenue growth and margins, which saw the stock drop like 20%. Subscription revenue was 6.7% organically, and the street was looking for >9%. So, a big miss. Still, I think things should improve. Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube music have all raised prices this year, and a portion of that will go to UMG. CFO Matt Ellis said on the call that these prices and "better market share to start the third quarter" make them "cautiously optimistic" (really sticking his neck out there!!) that growth will improve in H2 of 2026. Interestingly, Warner Music $WMG managed to grow revenue 12% in CC and adjusted OIBDA by 24%, so clearly this is a UMG-only problem, at least for this quarter. $UMG trades at 14x earnings on a NTM basis now... this seems pretty reasonable if not downright cheap for a company that has grown EBIT from EUR 1b in 2019 to around 2b today (11% organic EBITDA CAGR). We own this through Bollore, which currently has an NAV of just above 11 EUR by my calculation vs a last price of under 4 EUR. Notably, JPM thinks new AI tiers in Spotify and Apple Music will drive ARPU growth of 300 bps per year. Their price target was 48 EUR prior to the recent earnings release...
@orrdavid 1 click

David Orr on X

It's not THAT clear Citadel made a good bet. Probably good. But it could be losing. Three buckets: 1. Citadel brand buying the block creates a lot of buyers short term, letting them get out. A counter to this is: how many other funds/players blew up at the same time, with how much more stock still needing to be sold at any price by brokers? And redemptions. 2. The $SOXX drop was mostly just technical and will keep going up again after this. In which case Citadel will kill it. 3. The $SOXX drop was on real fundamentals, like the market knows the trade is over. In that case, Citadel stands to get slaughtered if the move continues down. Nobody really knows. Memory seems very questionable, though. I follow $TSM well and that seems merely fairly priced here, not a screamin' buy. $NVDA seems hard today, with all this chatter of competing chips / AI getting so powerful the software moat seems like probable junk in a few years.

Investor Letters

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Adobe 3Q26 Update

Adobe’s fiscal 3Q26 revenue grew 13%, while ARR growth slowed to 9.3% excluding Semrush.

ADBE $93B
Speedwell Memos 2 clicks

Alarm.com: False Alarm?

Alarm.com, founded after CEO Steve Trundle’s bad home-security experience, has fallen from $105 in 2020 to about $55, testing whether…

ALRM $2.6B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

Unpolished Thoughts on Stocks #1

Genius Sports aims to turn official sports data into AI-driven, real-time advertising, with media and ads already about 40% of revenue.

GENI $1.6B
Sylence Capital 2 clicks

Lululemon: The 15-Minute Thesis

Lululemon’s North American sales, margins and legging demand are falling as Alo and Vuori gain share, leaving its brand moat and depressed…

LULU $11B
Hated Moats 2 clicks

The Five Deals That Made Apollo

Apollo Global Management’s five defining deals, from Executive Life to Intel, built a $1 trillion asset manager spanning insurance and…

APO $73B
Net Interest 1 click

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