Yet Another Value Podcast

Paul Cerro was long Hims & Hers in 2024, short it through the compounded GLP-1 unwind, and covered when the stock broke $14 after Q1. He's long again, and his thesis has almost nothing to do with peptides, testosterone, or the international launches everyone else is excited about. Those, he says, are table stakes. Hims has never had a problem acquiring customers. It has a problem keeping them, and subscriber counts have barely moved in three quarters. His argument is that labs and patient data are what push retention and LTV up, and that is the part the market isn't paying for.
I push back in three places. The data play doesn't look unique to me: Whoop and Oura own a wearable and a daily interaction, Hims owns commoditized blood work, and if Hims does unlock it, Apple or Amazon can walk in on top of them. The 2030 targets ask you to double trust management, once on 4x-ing EBITDA and again on a very heavily adjusted EBITDA number, from a CEO Paul says he wouldn't trust to walk his dog. And when peptides go legal, I think a hundred Instagram churn-and-burn startups compete away the customer acquisition edge. Paul's answers are worth the hour, especially the balance-sheet argument for a price war and the Ro story. We close on what to watch in the August 10 print.
Paul's Hims & Hers write-up: https://www.cedargroveresearch.com/p/hims-whoever-controls-the-data-controls-the-industry
This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://trata.com/hims. Trata is two investors who hop on and talk about a stock they're both in, sometimes one long and one short, sometimes both on the same side, but always about what actually drives the stock up or down. Trata now has an MCP, so you can point your AI agent at a company and pull the transcript, which is one of the first things I do when I start looking at a name. They have four HIMS calls, all less than a year old and one about a month old, and if you follow the link you can get their most recent HIMS coverage as a free trial.
Chapters:
(00:00) Long it, shorted it, now long again
(02:57) Paul on the setup right now
(04:17) What he learned building Ro
(05:19) How cash-pay healthcare actually works
(11:54) The original 2024 Hims thesis
(13:26) The compounding loophole and its expiration date
(15:58) Covering the short and going long again
(18:54) Acquisition was never the problem, retention is
(20:35) Why the money in healthcare is chasing data
(22:33) My pushback: what is unique about Hims' data?
(26:32) Hims versus Whoop, Oura and the Apple Watch
(29:21) Valuation: 30x 2026 EBITDA, 6x 2030
(32:56) Why international makes the targets conservative
(34:12) Double trusting a heavily adjusted number
(36:16) Icarus, Napoleon and the Teflon Don
(40:05) On putting too much faith in regulators
(43:49) Peptides and the market nobody has priced
(45:36) Chinese peptides and what is in the vial
(50:12) Can a hundred Instagram startups undercut Hims?
(54:40) Why the balance sheet decides a price war
(56:13) What to watch in the August 10 print
(57:40) CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Amazon
(1:00:49) Closing thoughts
Paul Cerro / Cedar Grove: https://www.cedargroveresearch.com
Links:
Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com
See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer
Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

Strategy filed an 8K this morning: they sold $300 million of stock, sold $100 million of bitcoin, and put the proceeds into buying back roughly $80 million of their own preferred at a discount. So you have a company trading over NAV, diluting shareholders, and selling the one asset it exists to hold, and it is still trading at a premium. Management is presenting the move from "one-way capital issuer" to "multi-way capital issuer" like it is a financial engineering breakthrough. It is just normal capital allocation, and it took them five years to get there.
That is the through line for this whole ramble: selling. Strategy made a genuinely good call in 2020 and then never sold a thing. Situational Awareness made a generational call, long AI winners and short AI losers, went up something like 10x on it, never rebalanced, kept pressing a trade that naturally degrosses, and blew up when software went from 20 back to 30 and semis went from 400 back to 370. I do a miniature version of the same thing every time I decide in advance that I will start trimming at 15 a stock I bought at 10, and I am not sure that plan is as smart as it feels. I also get into why thematic trades are so hard to sell when there is no price to anchor to, whether the crossover funds actually had an AI information edge or just conviction, why I cannot make the memory valuations work under any assumption I am willing to make, and where I think the real opportunity is: the beaten-up AI power names Situational owned in size, several of which are not trading far above the DCF of the contracts they already have.
Situational Awareness, crossover funds, and the AI edge: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/crossover-funds-ai-edge-situational-awareness
This episode is sponsored by Trata: https://www.trata.com/glxy. Trata is two buysiders hopping on a call and talking through a stock they are actually working on, which is the fastest way I know to get up to speed on a name. They also have an MCP now that connects to Claude and ChatGPT, so the first thing I do on a new name is run the Trata search and see what buysiders are really saying. That link is a preview of the Galaxy call I mention on the episode.
Chapters:
(00:00) Cold open: three things on my mind
(02:11) Sponsor: Trata
(03:55) Why I am recording a bonus ramble
(04:49) Strategy's new 8K: sell stock, sell bitcoin, buy back the preferred
(06:05) "Multi-way capital issuer" is just normal capital allocation
(06:58) A great call in 2020, and then they never sold
(08:21) Investors are good at buying and bad at selling
(09:37) Is my own sell plan its own trap?
(11:37) The Situational Awareness blowup
(13:19) The trouble with thematics: there is no price
(14:44) Micro versus macro, and the software buy signal I missed
(16:22) Do the crossover funds have an AI information edge?
(18:41) Why I cannot get to the memory valuations
(19:04) The opportunity in the beaten-up AI power names
(22:05) Wrapping up
Links:
Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com
See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer
Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/
Disclosures: I am short $MSTR and long $GLXY. Nothing on this podcast is investment advice. Please do your own work.

Management interviews might be the most underdeveloped skill in fundamental investing. Ross O'Toole has been investing for 25 years and read over 500 investment books, and he couldn't find a single one on how to actually conduct an investor-management interview.... so he wrote Breaking the Script, a field guide to getting management teams off their rehearsed talking points. We get into why "what" questions beat "why" questions, whether you should grade a plastic surgery CEO and a coal company CEO on the same curve, the case for recording your management meetings, and why asking for examples is one of the biggest double edged swords in investing.
I push back with my standing worry: management teams are really, really good salesmen, and I always walk out of these meetings wondering if I'm the patsy at the poker table. Ross's answers (build a longitudinal baseline over repeat interviews, ask for the negative example every time you get a positive one, and save the hard questions for the crescendo) are why this book went straight to the top of my "hand it to an intern" list.
Grab Ross's book, Breaking the Script: https://amzn.to/4fLg8RO
This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data platform for global equities. In addition to their web-based terminal, they offer API access to real-time fundamental data: 20+ years of financial statements, ratios, segments, and KPIs, with data updating within minutes of earnings reports, not days. I'm not just an advertiser; I signed up with my own money to plug their API into the AI tools I've been building. Use my link, fiscal.ai/yav, for 15% off.
Chapters:
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:02:00) Why management interviews are a double edged sword
(00:03:47) Why Ross wrote Breaking the Script
(00:07:15) Are we deluding ourselves? Testing management credibility
(00:11:53) Should you grade CEOs on a curve across industries?
(00:14:44) "What" vs "why": framing contentious questions
(00:18:27) Are interviews actually an alpha source?
(00:19:39) Where management matters most: deep value vs tech
(00:22:32) Would interviewing 2008 Zuckerberg have helped?
(00:25:14) Preparation and repeat interviews
(00:29:20) Should you record management meetings?
(00:31:54) Asking for examples: conviction builder or sales pitch?
(00:34:00) Always ask for the negative example
(00:36:00) Making management grade their own execution
(00:38:20) Interviewing companies under activist pressure
(00:41:30) Buffett's silver bullet question, reframed
(00:46:02) Question order: crescendo to the hard stuff
(00:48:29) Closing thoughts
Ross O'Toole / Breaking the Script: https://amzn.to/4fLg8RO
Links:
Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com
See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer
Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

Investing is a game of arrogance. The base rate when you buy any stock is that it just does the market return, so every position you hold is a bet that you know something the market doesn't. My July ramble is really one question asked five ways: when do you look in the mirror and admit you were wrong? I walk through my three-year rule on a single name (if it has gone nowhere for three years, the problem is probably you, not the market), and the harder version, a value fund that has underperformed for a decade.
I use myself as the example. I saw AI inflecting in late 2024 and didn't pull the trigger, because I'm a value and event guy and I didn't see the bet, and a lot of those names then went on a generational run. Was that discipline or a mental block? From there I get into why you're effectively short Nvidia if you don't own it and you're benchmarked to the S&P, the Fundsmith letter walking back its principles as the cautionary tale on both sides, my own April 2025 book (the net-cash biotech and the Nebius trade I sold way too early), and why London increasingly trades like an emerging market: a takeover wave, private value miles above public value, and the frustration of owning cheap names that only move if someone buys the whole company.
This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with 20+ years of statements, ratios, filings, segments and KPIs, a web-based terminal, and a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamental data straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Use fiscal.ai/yav for 15% off.
Chapters:
(0:00) Intro and episode preview
(2:50) Sponsor: fiscal.ai
(4:16) Investing is a game of arrogance: beating the base rate
(6:18) The three-year rule, and when a whole strategy has underperformed
(9:19) Missing the AI trade: discipline, mental block, and the Fundsmith letter
(14:42) If you don't own Nvidia, you're short it
(16:46) My April 2025 book: Nebius, net-cash biotech, and selling winners too early
(21:47) Why London trades like an emerging market: takeouts and dead stocks
(27:08) Wrap
Links:
Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com
See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer
Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

Light & Wonder ($LNW) is one of three companies in the slot machine oligopoly, with 70%+ recurring revenue, and it trades at 7-8x EBITDA while Aristocrat, its closest peer and arguably its slower-growing twin, trades at roughly double that. Zach Buckley thinks the market is wrong on almost every count: the stock has traded like a SaaS chart on AI fears even though slot content has almost no AI exposure, the Street doesn't believe 2028 targets from a management team that already hit the last three-year guide it set, and the soft first half is a game-launch timing story (Aristocrat launched in H1, Light & Wonder's slate lands in H2), not share loss. Zach has sized this the largest he's ever sized anything, and you can hear it.
I push back where I can: whether Caesars could ever build its own boxes (Zach: Marriott doesn't build elevators), why management is paying down debt to appease Australian shareholders instead of murdering the share count at these prices, what the Dragon Train settlement really cost them, and SciPlay's genuine AI risk. We also cover the move to a sole Australian listing, the Grover charitable-gaming acquisition at ~7.5x EBITDA, and what would actually break the thesis.
This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense: https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Most AI tools are very good at sounding right, but can you trace the answer back to the filing, the transcript, the exact passage that drove it? AlphaSense's AI platform is built for exactly that: over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls, with every answer linked back to an exact, verifiable source. See it for yourself with a free trial at https://alpha-sense.com/yavp.
Chapters:
(00:00:05) Introducing Light & Wonder
(00:03:09) Light & Wonder's transformation
(00:05:57) Australian listing creates opportunity
(00:08:36) Recurring revenue business model
(00:09:39) Why game quality matters
(00:11:45) Business quality meets valuation
(00:13:31) Explaining Aristocrat's valuation premium
(00:17:15) AI offers productivity upside
(00:19:08) SciPlay faces greater AI risk
(00:21:20) Barriers protect game development
(00:23:56) Casinos avoid vertical integration
(00:29:05) Why Australia made sense
(00:30:25) Dragon Train litigation explained
(00:32:14) Assessing lingering litigation impact
(00:34:11) Why investors doubt targets
(00:36:04) Short-termism drives investor skepticism
(00:39:41) Balancing buybacks and deleveraging
(00:42:39) Grover acquisition adds growth
(00:43:55) Electronic pull tabs explained
(00:47:14) What could break thesis
(00:50:41) AI fears create opportunities
(00:52:32) Zach summarizes investment thesis
Zach Buckley / Buckley Capital Partners: https://www.buckleycapitalpartners.com/
Links:
Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com
See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer
Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/