Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Sunday, November 1, 2026

Back to the front page

Altria: Dutiful

Altria raised 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $5.66 to $5.74 and authorized more buybacks, while on! loses share as cigarette margins hold.

MO $130B
Invariant 3 clicks

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.
@marginofdanger 1 click

marginofdanger on X

Ackman's closed end fund $PSUS will begin trading on Wednesday. For every 5 shares of PSUS, IPO investors (only) will get 1 share of $PS (the GP). It sounds like the PSUS offering will be 100mm shares at $50/share or $5 bn. Ackman thought this was going to be a $10 bn offering and he previously was targeting $25 bn or some ridiculous amount. The PSUS IPO investors will end up owning 20mm shares or 5% of PS (based on 400mm pf s/o). I expect that PSUS, like many closed end funds, will settle at a 5-10% discount to NAV, implying a trading price of $45-47.50/share. PS will begin trading as well (via a direct listing) and I anticipate a valuation of $5-10bn, implying that the PSUS IPO investors will get a "bonus" of $250-500mm on the $5 bn IPO or 5-10%. Therefore their loss on the PSUS shares should be mostly offset by the free shares in PS. Given this is a direct listing, I expect WILD price movements in PS stock and would stay far away from that one. I used $10 bn as the high end valuation for PS because that is where investors invested back a year or so ago (predicated upon significant growth in AUM), but I tend to believe that was a high watermark and not realistic given that Ackman can't seem to raise $. In terms of $PSUS, I don't see a compelling reason to own this at 90-95% of NAV. If you put a 15x on the 2% fee, that alone is a 30% drag. Also, Ackman has high volatility and there is no prospect to ever get repaid (and no incentive for Ackman to do so). Like $PSH.LN I would personally only step into $PSUS at a 25-30%+ discount to NAV and probably not in any real size.

Investor Letters

All letters

FTAI 3Q26: Aero margins in focus

FTAI’s Aerospace Products margin rebounded to 31% as CFM56 module output rose, while Power deposits and contracted deliveries fund its 2027…

FTAI $20B
Stock Thoughts 5 clicks

CVX Earnings Review

Chevron’s Q3 revenue rose 35% to $65.2 billion and EBITDA 75% to $20.2 billion, while production trailed guidance and refining margins…

CVX $423B
Cestrian Capital Research 4 clicks

SNY Earnings Review

Sanofi raised FY26 guidance after Q3 sales grew 14.3% at constant currency, led by 34.8% Dupixent growth; vaccines declined 6.6%.

SNY $114B
Cestrian Capital Research 1 click
T · short

At&t INC

AT&T’s stalled deleveraging and share repurchase case has prompted a bearish turn on the telecom stock.

T $149B
Value Investors Club

Microsoft's AI Boom Has A Cost

Microsoft’s Azure grew 48% as AI monetization accelerated, but doubled CapEx, largely for CPUs and GPUs, reduced quarterly free cash flow…

MSFT $4T
Yiannis Zourmpanos 2 clicks

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/30/2026)

Markel spent $315 million repurchasing shares in Q3 as Thrive agreed to buy ADT for $7.6 billion and Hasbro cited rising adult toy demand.

MKL $24B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

AMZN Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Amazon reported $201.9 billion Q3 revenue and 39% AWS growth, while $220 billion in 2026 capex drove trailing free cash flow to a $42.4…

AMZN $2.9T
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 109

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 74 of 275

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

91 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

359 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.