Daniel D. Hicks

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Our U.S. duopoly will ruin the country if we let it.

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

https://t.co/vLmiBKTtX3

[Shehbaz Sharif @CMShehbaz]

Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.

The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.

We would like to thank the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran for their commitment to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict. We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in this mediation effort, the great leadership of State of Qatar, for their support in reaching this agreement. I would also especially thank the visionary leadership of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Republic of Türkiye for their immense contributions in this regard.

With the agreement now in place, mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week. These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.

@realDonaldTrump
@JDVance
@SecRubio
@SteveWitkoff
@SEPeaceMissions
@drpezeshkian
@mb_ghalibaf
@araghchi

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Mine the richness of your own life.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

https://t.co/7l73dIDmvj

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

https://t.co/7l73dIDmvj

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Good morning @SacherHotels

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Last night was stunning. #Eurovisión2026

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

As two of the largest forces in equity markets -- growing index ownership and increasing amounts of capital controlled by extremely short-term-oriented, leveraged, volatility-intolerant investors -- converge, we have found occasional opportunities to acquire some of the most dominant long-term compounding franchises at attractive valuations.

For example, we acquired Alphabet $GOOG when the stock declined substantially on the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Amazon $AMZN in the weeks following Liberation Day, and $META more recently on the market's response to the company's unexpectedly large cap ex guidance and expenditures.

In our 13F which we will file later today, we will disclose a new position in Microsoft, a company we have followed for many years now offered at a highly compelling valuation. While $PSUS will not be filing a 13F tomorrow, it has also recently made $MFST a core holding.

Microsoft operates two of the most valuable franchises in enterprise technology, which account for approximately 70% of the company's overall profits: M365 and Azure.

M365, the company's productivity suite, is the dominant operating platform for knowledge work, with over 450 million workers using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams on a daily basis.

Azure is the world's second-largest hyperscaler cloud platform and, like AWS in our Amazon investment, is a direct beneficiary of the multi-decade migration of enterprise IT workloads to the cloud, which is now further accelerated by surging demand for AI inference workloads.

Both M365 and Azure are underpinned by Microsoft's unparalleled enterprise distribution and the security, compliance, and identity infrastructure it has built and refined over decades.

Beyond these core franchises, Microsoft also owns a portfolio of other leading businesses, including LinkedIn (the world's largest professional network with 1.3 billion members), its gaming platform (Xbox and Activision Blizzard), and search and news advertising (Bing and the Edge browser).

We began building our position in MSFT in February following a meaningful share price decline after the company reported its fiscal Q2 2026 results. We were able to establish our position at a valuation of 21 times forward earnings, broadly in line with the market multiple and well below Microsoft's trading average over the last few years.

Notably, MSFT's headline multiple does not reflect the value of Microsoft's approximately 27% economic interest in OpenAI, which would represent approximately $200 billion, or 7% of Microsoft's market capitalization, at OpenAI's most recent funding round valuation.

We believe Microsoft's recent share price decline has been principally driven by investor concerns around two key issues: i) the competitive positioning of M365 against increasingly capable AI lab offerings (notably Anthropic's Claude Cowork), and ii) the durability of Azure's growth, especially in light of Microsoft's evolving relationship with OpenAI.

In our view, investors underestimate the resilience of the M365 franchise given its deeply embedded role across enterprises and highly attractive price-value proposition. Unlike point software solutions, which may be vulnerable to disintermediation by better-performing AI alternatives, M365 is tightly integrated into the daily workflow of nearly every large enterprise and is supported by Microsoft's identity, security, compliance, and data governance infrastructure, which would be nearly impossible to replicate.

Attractive bundle economics further reinforce Microsoft's advantage, with monthly average revenue per user on the M365 suite at approximately $20, less than half of what customers would pay to purchase the underlying applications individually from different vendors.

Moreover, we are encouraged to see Microsoft prioritizing its R&D efforts and investment in Copilot, its own AI agent embedded across M365, with direct involvement from CEO Satya Nadella. We believe these efforts will translate into improved product velocity and greater customer adoption over time.

Alongside Copilot's rollout, the company has also begun shifting its pricing model from pure per-seat licensing to a hybrid model of seats plus metered consumption, which helps expand the company’s revenue opportunity as AI agents drive incremental usage that a seat-only structure would not capture. These initiatives should help sustain M365’s strong underlying growth momentum, which was already evident in the business unit’s 15% revenue growth (in constant currency) last quarter.

We believe concerns regarding Azure's growth trajectory are similarly misplaced, particularly in light of the franchise's exceptional recent performance. Azure revenue grew 39% in constant currency last quarter, with company guiding to modest acceleration through the second half of the year.

We view Microsoft's recent decision to restructure its OpenAI partnership not as a concession but as part of a deliberate pivot toward a more open, multi-model architecture that better serves enterprise customers, who increasingly seek optionality across model providers.

Microsoft recently disclosed that over 10,000 enterprise customers have used more than one model on Azure Foundry, the company’s modular AI model marketplace. This model-agnostic approach also strengthens Copilot, which can auto-route queries across multiple models to deliver the optimal output for a given task.

To support Azure's rapid growth amid persistent supply constraints, Microsoft has raised its calendar year 2026 capex budget to approximately $190 billion. Consistent with what we have observed at hyperscaler peers Amazon and Google, we view this spend as growth capex that should drive future revenue generation. This is particularly true for Microsoft, given that roughly two-thirds of its capex budget is allocated to server and networking equipment that correlates directly with near-term revenue.

Like our purchases of $GOOG, $AMZN, and $META, we believe that $MSFT offers analogous and compelling long-term value at today's valuation.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Funny how they never attack my policy ideas. They can only try to assassinate your character. They don’t wanna talk about my debate masterclass a week ago, they wanna talk about a reality show from a lifetime ago. That’s because they want the continued decline of the city. They are locked in an ideological death spiral and can’t shake it. Come at my policies or go sit back down on the back bench. I’m in the arena, son.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr]

Senior's Day, Gold's Gym in Venice.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Discourse around the Save America Act is very insightful. You have establishment politicians protecting a status quo of corrupt practices instead of allowing an honest reckoning of our election system so that Americans have renewed faith in transparent government.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

🚀 cc @InterMiamiCF

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

People on either extreme of the political spectrum generally think that they are infallible or have all of the answers. The only thing that we know for sure is that they are mired in dualism.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Agree with those who want a bit of control over when and how the angel of death makes the final call. We are moving toward our own ascension and return to stardust. Right now.

[Fernando Mendoza @fernandomendoza]

Let’s get to work Raider Nation! 🏴‍☠️

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Given AI disruption, college students face the impact of unsustainable industrial policy that stymied job innovation for years. Jettison the academic research mission of American universities subsidized by global parents, U.S. patients and taxpayers, as well as pro athletes.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

To meet the needs of the modern American workforce, U.S. universities of the next century will spin off their academic foundations into research parks. The growth opportunity is to double down on health care and athletics while integrating the missions of education and service.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Since when did the U.S. reportedly start electing Somali pirates to its lower house? Social media's real legacy will be what it's doing to the political landscape as traditional economic opportunities dry up for youth after 30 years of duopoly competitiveness and globalization.

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

The U.S. Department of Justice said it would move quickly to reclassify marijuana as less dangerous, in one of the biggest changes to U.S. drug policy in decades. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States and the world. (Reuters)

[Daniel D. Hicks @dandhicks]

Apart from AI disruption, college students face the impact of unsustainable industrial policy that stymied domestic job innovation for 30 years. The traditional mission of U.S. research universities subsidized by American parents, taxpayers, and athletes has failed to evolve too.