Chitown Desi Critic

Asian Indian, Fiercely Independent, Opinionated & Knowledge Junkie. Passionate about Investing, Plant based diet & Classic Liberalism.

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@PeterBerezinBCA Why should a market neutral hedge fund with a near zero beta be expected to outperform the S&P 500?

[Peter Berezin @PeterBerezinBCA]

High-income workers are fleeing Europe.

Economic theory tells us that the more
mobile a factor of production becomes,
the lower its optimal tax rate. This is why taxes on capital, which is relatively mobile, tend to be lower than taxes on labor, which historically has been less mobile.

However, as the chart below shows, as elite human capital has become more footloose, high taxes have become increasingly counterproductive.

This is a huge existential problem for European welfare states, which have traditionally relied on heavily taxing their most productive workers.

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@arjundivecha @japan_nobunaga Cc @Apple to stop fleecing its customers

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@AlbertBridgeCap Nice! Had that luck with SLIDE very recently

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@arjundivecha @moiiikaaa Was Russia one of your overweights? Also recall your mention of Balassa-Samuelson effect indicating rupee will likely strengthen on Indian TV eons ago

[Vivek Goyal @Goyal_Vivek]

Framework to think about disruption risk/ companies who stand to benefit from the rise of personal assistants..

key parameters-

- Supply-Side Differentiation
- Purchase Consideration Level
- Fulfillment / Delivery Moat
- Direct Traffic vs. Organic/Referral Traffic and Frequency of use

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@verdadcap anecdote supporting your research piece this week

[AltayCap @AltayCapital]

Had 10 plates of Kura sushi in the U.S. today, came out to $42. The same 10 plates are about $9-$10 in Tokyo. Yen seems undervalued, but macro/fx is impossible to predict. Can't imagine how crazy the prices must feel to Japanese on holiday to U.S.

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@RBAdvisors What about EAFE Small & MidCap?

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@RobinhoodApp @vladtenev @BaijuBhatt @altcap Writing for a 3yr widowed friend. She can’t get in touch with $HOOD despite trying to call umpteen times & can’t successfully open the statement sent by estate team (reply after 6 months!). So much for being cloud native & efficiency!!

[Richard Bernstein Advisors @RBAdvisors]

A stroll down memory lane: The last time #JPY was this weak I was working as a junior analyst at EF Hutton!!!

[GoIndiaStocks.com @goindiastocks]

Jio's IPO may not create the biggest opportunity in Reliance.

Ironically, it may create it in Bharti Airtel. 💵

Jio Platforms has filed for what could be the biggest IPO in India's history. It's being sold as a tech story — AI, cloud, satellite, data centres — wrapped around a record FY26 EBITDA of ₹76,255 cr, 524 million customers, and a valuation premium to every telecom peer at home and abroad. 🧑‍💻

The fine print says something quieter. Jio's revenue is still overwhelmingly connectivity. And most of the IPO cash isn't funding the AI dream — the DRHP earmarks it to repay RJIL's debt. You're being asked to pay a platform multiple for a company whose cash engine is still, today, a telco. ☎️

Watch the trick in how it's framed. Almost every number selling this IPO grades Jio against its own past — ARPU up from ₹181.7 to ₹214, EBITDA at a record, leverage down. A business racing only itself always looks like it's winning.

Put it on the same field as Airtel — same country, same regulator — and the records turn into gaps. On the metrics that actually decide what a telco is worth,

- Airtel wins nearly every line. ARPU ₹257 vs ₹214 — a gap that survives the tariff repair.

- A ~7.8% postpaid mix against Jio's low single digits: stickier, higher-value customers.

- And cleaner cash — Airtel India operating FCF of ₹53,543 cr (₹73,746 cr consolidated) vs Jio's EBITDA-less-capex of ₹42,071 cr.

Jio's one clean lead is scale — and even that's shrinking. The subscriber gap narrowed to ~18.4 million by April 2026, ~13 million on active users. Despite roughly 150 million more broadband customers, Jio's FY26 revenue (₹1.47 lakh cr) still trails Airtel India (₹1.55 lakh cr).

So, make the optionality literal. Put Jio's ₹76,255 cr EBITDA on Airtel's ~11x benchmark and the telecom business is worth ~₹8.4 lakh cr. The remaining ~₹3 lakh cr — a quarter of the ~₹11.5 lakh cr valuation being floated — is the price of AI, cloud, satellite and commerce. That bet can pay off. It should also be named as the bet it is, not smuggled in as a telecom valuation. 🖖

Here's the irony the DRHP won't mention. Today Jio's value sits locked inside Reliance at a holding-company discount. The moment it lists, Indian telecom-platform exposure finally gets a visible price tag — and a benchmark Airtel can be measured against.

If Jio prints 14–16x EV/EBITDA against Airtel's 11–12x, that gap stops being trivia and becomes a re-rating argument for Airtel — as long as Airtel keeps delivering the superior ARPU, margins, returns and cash conversion it already does. The money that wants the theme but chokes on Jio's premium, thin float and debt-heavy use of proceeds has an obvious cheaper, higher-return proxy sitting right there. Close the multiple gap to 13x and that's ~14% upside; to 14x, ~23% — before a rupee of earnings growth.

The biggest IPO in Indian history may not just value Jio. It may end uplifting it's competitor. 🤷‍♂️

#ipo #investing #jio #airtel

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Informational only. Not investment advice. Investments subject to market risk. GoIndia Advisors LLP | SEBI Registered Research Analyst | Reg. No. INH000020040 | SEBI (RA) Regulations, 2014.

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[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

Yum!

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@PeterBerezinBCA right in your alley.

[James Chanos @RealJimChanos]

The accounting mismatch in capex booms highlighted. It’s material in the tech space right now.

[Brad Gerstner @altcap]

Correct. We don’t need more taxes. And I dont trust a slush fund that future administrations can seize at their pleasure for whatever their political agenda. I strongly encourage voluntary contributions of shares directly to citizen owned accounts or similar trust fund. 🇺🇸🤍

[John Cochrane @JohnHCochrane]

Short version of many great points. If you redistribute wealth in order to support consumption, you get no wealth -- no savings, investment, factories, etc. Poor people will not leave 99% of their new wealth invested in productive capital as billionaires do.

[Peter Berezin @PeterBerezinBCA]

Perhaps it is fitting that this happened on the same day as the SpaceX IPO, but my model just sent an “emergency sell” signal. I’m not as bearish as my model, but I will still be increasing hedges Monday morning.

Clients can read the whole note here:

https://t.co/396t84ASUg

[Roland @Roland_investor]

@BernoulliDefect Bad comparison, generally agree with this principal however Gates is the exception. Unlike anlmost all other billionaires has actually done incredible good with philanthropy, work on malaria, vaccines, nuclear etc.

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@byersblake I don’t think Khosla Venture returns are outstanding by any means. He got into alternate energy at the absolute peak. Khosla Ventures is the true yardstick for his acumen rather than Kleiner Perkins

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@sajithpai @davideoks @oliverwkim Spot on. This video expounds on the reasons: https://t.co/T4v0YJwNfS

[Chitown Desi Critic @ChiDesiCritic]

@tbpn @ericries But alas:

Amazon has no problem ruining the shopping experience for its customers by leaning heavily into advertising which also diminishes its image as a neutral actor @JeffBezos .

Costco also has sizable staff trying to sell its credit card even when checkout lines are long!