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Interviews

Everything our editor has picked under this sector, best first.

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@MultiplesCap

Multiples Capital on X

I recently sat down with @StockJabber at @IdeaBrunchEmail to discuss the strategy behind Multiples Capital's outperformance in 2025. The full interview is behind a paywall, but here are 4 core themes we discussed: 1/ The Multi-Asset Edge While many leaned on the "Magnificent 7," we found alpha in global de-dollarization and the massive electricity demands of AI data centers. This approach delivered a 3.15 Sharpe Ratio—with roughly half the turbulence of the S&P 500. 2/ Garrett Motion ($GTX) Update Since my last feature, $GTX has surged ~170%. We discussed the "perfect storm" of index inclusion and aggressive capital allocation that drove this run, and why the "EV-only" fear proved to be premature. 3/ AI Disruption vs. Mispricing The market is correctly identifying "AI Losers" in SaaS, but it’s applying that same anxiety with broad stroke. We broke down why Expedia ($EXPE) is a prime example of this mispricing, trading at a 12%+ FCF yield despite its essential role in the global travel ecosystem and it's growing B2B setment. 4/ My Favorite "Tokenization" Play We closed with a deep dive into the digitalization of finance. I shared my top idea for playing the tokenization trend, a company currently acting as the "digital infrastructure provider" for institutions and growing it's subscription and service revenues. Read the full deep dive here: https://t.co/kuRyJtSPMh Note: As this is premium content, I cannot share the PDF on a open platform. However, if you’d like to join my quarterly investor letter distribution list to see how we are positioning for the "Broadening Trade" in 2026, please send a DM.
@HaydenCapital 2 clicks

Fred Liu on X

AppLovin - Interview with Xiaochuan (architect of $APP's Axon engine). Thought this was the most in-depth public conversation on AppLovin's business to date. (P.S. Youtube has great subtitle translation) Axon & Technical Philosophy - Axon was built by just 5 people in 3 months - AppLovin was the first to implement models with prediction windows exceeding 7 days - Deliberately avoids developing its own LLMs, preferring to use the best available models on the market — building LLMs in-house wouldn't generate the best ROI E-Commerce Expansion - Decision to enter e-commerce made in May 2024, with the product launching later that year; original team was only 10 people - Entering e-commerce was effectively building a new model from scratch - The gaming and e-commerce algorithms share nothing except infrastructure and accumulated organizational experience Core Competency & Culture - AppLovin's edge isn't industry-specific — it's rooted in how the company approaches problems (the culture itself), which he believes positions them to tackle challenges well beyond gaming and e-commerce - His relish for being called an "underdog" comes through clearly throughout the interview Social Media Ambitions - Already working on building a next-generation social media platform - Strategic logic: Meta started with captive organic traffic and built an ad platform on top; AppLovin is doing the reverse - starting with the ad platform and building toward organic traffic - Owning that organic traffic, if achieved, would be a significant advantage Short Seller Response - When the short reports were published, Xiaochuan personally reviewed the systems and code to assess whether the claims had merit Hiring Philosophy - After 2023, overhauled hiring: moved to paying among the highest salaries in Silicon Valley, and shifted focus away from seasoned veterans toward people with fewer than 2 years of experience - Core belief: experience is overrated, the capacity to learn is underrated; breakthroughs come from willingness to abandon convention - "You can't operate like a large company if you don't have a large company's resources" - Most prominent AI researchers are overpriced — high visibility and intense competition drives salaries beyond their marginal value - Targets talent at the "periphery of the spotlight": technically strong but undervalued by the market, and still carrying the underdog mentality that well-known names often lack (i.e. "Moneyball") - Entire engineering org runs on fewer than 100 people https://t.co/vXaWUZGkZt

Programmatic DSPs

Entravision’s Smadex AdTech unit generated 104% revenue growth and 378% EBIT growth, becoming the main upside driver after Meta ended its…

EVC $606M
The Mikro Kap 1 click
@HaydenCapital 1 click

Fred Liu on X

Loved this interview with Adam at Applovin $APP. Insight into his strategic thinking + the story of building a $100BN firm with almost 0 funding (just $4M total). And his decision of buying back ~25% of shares at rock-bottom prices, contributing to their massive stock performance since 2023. https://t.co/2We2q8sG8n ** My favorite quotes: "We went public in April 21. And if I remember right, by December lockups free from January 22 to December 22, I think our stock went down like 92%. Um, it was red every day. And so that it ends up setting you up for failure. Now we were really fortunate because of how we started. We were always cashflow positive. So I controlled our own destiny. We were generating, I think it was a billion dollars of EBITDA. And at the low point, I think we got to a market cap of $4 billion. And so if you think about like cash yield return, it's over 20%. It's really cheap. You could manage and buy out a company at that level with just debt. And so what we did at the low point was we buckled down, said, we've all been here a long time. Let's build really great products. That's how we're going to recover. no one's going to buy our stock at this point. There's no narrative to sell. Everyone's gone. So let's buy our own shares. And we ended up issuing a lot of stock to the team, putting in a performance equity plan, and then becoming the biggest buyer of our own shares over the next year. And so we went from bottom $9 to peak $522 years later. A large part of that, I would say, probably 20-25% of that appreciation was because we bought back 20-25% of the cap table at very low prices because we could." ** And he refuses to speak to the Pods: "And then you realize I also want to recruit investors who believe in what I'm building over time, not who are betting on the stock for a quarter. And so I ended up changing investor relations and I don't take meetings with anyone who's who's focused on what's happening next quarter in a business as robust as ours. What's happening next quarter is defined by things we did a year ago. What's happening in three to five years is what I'm focused on. And so I only spend time with people who want to align with my vision long term. And that creates a much more engaging perspective on the world and got me to start thinking about the business exactly the same way as I did when we were private. And I still operate it today that way."