Dylan Hunt

[American Express GBT @amexgbt]

Today, American Express Global Business Travel completed its acquisition by @llmh and is now a privately held company. Read the full announcement: https://t.co/LGeUqAx3JE

[Alexander Taubman @alextaubman]

Today, Long Lake completed our $6.3B acquisition of Amex GBT.

Long Lake acquires and transforms generational businesses with AI across the American services economy.

Amex GBT is the travel partner for 17,500 businesses in 140 countries. Last year, Amex GBT booked 35 million trips for 10 million travelers.

This marks Long Lake’s 40th acquisition, and our family of companies now employs nearly 30,000 people.

We founded Long Lake three years ago with the thesis that AI is going to change every company, but there’s a large overhang between AI capabilities and how most businesses leverage AI tools.

We partner with strong, profitable, and growing businesses to help them deploy AI and improve their customer service.

Our first cohort of companies has doubled their EBITDA in less than two years through topline and productivity growth, all while increasing headcount. (We’re proud to say that we’ve never conducted a layoff.)

We’re excited to share a bit more about what we’ve been up to.

[Dylan Hunt @_DylanHunt]

@ArmadaFi @solana 🚢🚢🚢🚢

[Brandon Beylo @marketplunger1]

Bruce Greenwald invited Li Lu to speak to his class on value investing.

The result is a 90 minute masterclass on how to be a value investor.

If you haven't watched the video, do it now.

If you have, it's worth re-watching.

Here is a list of my favorite quotes from Li Lu 👇

PERSONALITY OF A VALUE INVESTOR

• "Understand who you are as an investor, because you will be tested. You will have to ask yourself if you truly are a value investor."

• "Value investing goes against our evolution of following the crowds to survive."

• "You will spend most of your time as an investigative journalist. To have insatiable curiosity."

• "You almost have to be curious about everything. Because you never know where you'll get that one major insight."

INVESTOR CRITERIA

• Is it cheap?

• Is it a good business?

• Why is this opportunity available to me?

"Once you answer those questions, you really have to go for it."

INVESTMENT CASE STUDY 1: TIMBERLAND

• "The first thing I check in a company is it's valuation."

• "If you're an investor you don't care where it traded before."

• "What matters isn't the price-to-book ratio itself, but what's in the book value."

• "You want to compare the capital invested in the business to how much pre-tax cash flow the business generates using that capital."

• "So Timberland generated $100M on $200M in capital invested. So why does the opportunity exist?"

- Nike, Reebok, all the shoe brands fell off a cliff during the Asian Financial Crisis.

- Founder owns 40% of the stock

- Company was profitable and didn't need financial markets (no sell-side)

- Tons of shareholder lawsuits

• "What would be your conclusion if you were a normal mutual fund hearing this information? That management is milking the company for their own gain."

What does Li Lu do next?

• "I download every file of the shareholder court cases. That's the investigative journalist part."

• "The result was that the founder withdrew guidance and shareholders didn't like it. That was it."

How do you determine if management are decent people?

• "You've got to be an investigative journalist and find the trail of evidence. Go to their community. Introduce yourself to their friends/family/neighbors."

Total Time Commitment: "A couple of weeks of diligent/obsessive work"

• "Investing is intensive work for short bursts of time."

HOW MUCH TO BUY?

• "If you go join a fund, they'll tell you not to risk anything more than 25-50bps."

• "Think about how much effort you put in to this work. You have no downside and its trading at 5x profits."

• "So, I put a shitload of money into Timberland. Over the next 10 years it went up 7x. It was never more than 15x earnings."

• "If you're not a good analyst, you'll NEVER be a good investor."

• "When it goes up, you don't have to do a damn thing. You just sit on it and ride with it."

INVESTMENT CASE STUDY 2: KOREAN COMPANY

• "Don't think about per-share numbers. Think of yourself as an owner."

• "$236M in book value, $60M market cap, $25M net earnings."

How do you know it's cheap?

• "You must confirm that the earnings are there, and that the book value is real, liquid, and tangible."

• "They're trading at the cash value in the bank with no debt. They have hotels and department stores that they own outright. They're making $30M+ in pre-tax earnings. And insiders own 50%."

The result: Went up 5-6x

VALUE INVESTING IS NOT NATURAL

• "There's a lot of money in value investing. But it's still unnatural to most people."

• "One thing you have to do, is you have to do the work. You have to do the reps. You can make a ton of money if you really do this stuff."

• "I benefited by listening AND THEN DOING my own work. Making my own investments and mistakes."

WHAT MAKES A GREAT ANALYST

• "You must provide accurate and complete information. If you can't succeed on that, you can't succeed in this business."

• "If you're not confident about your prediction and what you know, you can't put any money when the stock's in free fall."

WHAT PROVIDES THE BIGGEST RETURNS

• "Your biggest returns will come from no more than ten tremendous insights. That's it."

• "The only way to build those insights is intense curiosity, intense study."

INVESTING MISTAKES

• "The biggest mistakes come when you buy before you've done all the work."

• "My biggest mistakes aren't buying and losing money. It's not buying and missing out on 50-60x returns."

HOW MANY COMPANIES SHOULD YOU BUY

• "I don't have any set rules on how many stocks or companies I buy. Opportunities are sporadic and it depends on the environment."

• "I usually have 3-4 big ideas. If the market is exciting, I have more opportunities. Or if the market is boring, I have fewer."

HOW LI LU ALLOCATES TIME

• "Most of the time I spend reading and studying about everything. Learning new companies and industries."

• "If I find an idea that captivates me. I stop everything and obsess over that idea."

• "Besides that, I spend a lot of time with my kid and my wife."

TL;DR:

• Be an investigative journalist.

• Work obsessively in short bursts and spend the rest. of your time learning.

• When you've done the work and have conviction, buy a shitload to make it worth it.

• Before you invest $1, make sure you can answer the three big questions: Is it cheap, is the management team good, and why does the opportunity exist.

• Never stop learning.

• Become a curiosity machine.

[Dylan Hunt @_DylanHunt]

@NFTtaylor Idk what this is but I like it

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Finally, the truth that carbs are amazing can be said on this platform!
#FreeSpeech

[Dylan Hunt @_DylanHunt]

@tomjohn1028 @NFTtaylor @phantom Woo! Twitter gurus!

[Taylor Johnson ⓧ @NFTtaylor]

This is a pretty important paradigm shift that takes those new to crypto a long time to grasp.

Speculation on resources drives the building of the network and community around the resource

[Naval @naval]

Living a life of integrity pays off, but it takes a very long time.

[Naval @naval]

Work as hard as you can. Even though what you work on and who you work with are more important.

Knowledge workers train, sprint, rest, and re-assess.

Inspiration is perishable - act on it immediately.

Be impatient with actions but patient with results.

[Naval @naval]

Ten simple truths:

[Dylan Hunt @_DylanHunt]

“@GeisCube: “@JonnyFootbalI: Inspiring.”@_DylanHunt” couldn't say it better myself 😎

[Dylan Hunt @_DylanHunt]

Casually strolling by Matthew McConaughey in NYC

[Men's Thoughts @Males_Thoughts]

Morning motivation