Mars Centurion

posts & retweets ≠ endorsement. not financial advice.

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@BillAckman said the best @Bremont ideas get a watch.

I suggested the Speedmaster play: put one in space. He liked it, which made my week!

Next month, Supernova rides a rover to the moon. Does my comment win??

Like and repost if so. If one shows up, I'll film the unboxing.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

A Watch and Investment Story

I have been a watch enthusiast since my dad got me interested in watches decades ago. About three years ago, I was in London and walked by a watch boutique called @Bremont. I stepped into the store, fell in love with the watches, thought they were fairly priced if not somewhat inexpensive for the quality, and bought a number of them as gifts for friends and one for myself.

As I was completing the purchases, I asked the store manager: ‘Who owns the company?’ He said, “The English brothers” – Nick and Giles English – and then he proceeded to tell me Bremont’s origin story that begins with a tragic plane crash of a 1942 Harvard trainer aircraft (an American plane purchased by the British beginning in 1938) which killed their father and almost Nick.

In their ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger’ new world, Nick and Giles were inspired to pursue their dream of creating and building a British watch company, and Bremont thereafter was born. The manager gave me their contact information and I sent an email congratulating the brothers on the company, the brand, and the watches. I also offered to invest and help the business grow.

Sometime later, I did a Zoom with Nick. He explained that my timing was good, as a long-time investor in the company was looking to sell some of their shares. Within a couple of months, an affiliate of mine invested coinciding with the purchase by a legacy Bremont shareholder of primary shares to provide the company with additional growth capital.

I thereafter bought more shares of stock from other selling shareholders and I invested a substantial amount of additional growth capital in the company just this past week. Affiliates of mine and The Bremont Long Term Trust, a trust I recently established, now own 63% of the company.

Bremont is a luxury British watch company that produces adventure and exploration watches. About one-fourth of Bremont’s sales are to the military, where the company has made custom-designed watches for more than 500 British, U.S., and other American ally squadrons around the world.

While today there are very few British watch companies, the British actually created the watch industry – Rolex, notably, was a British company before it moved to Switzerland – with many of the most important technical innovations and complications of the industry having been invented in England in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

For the watch industry, the Swiss can be thought of like the Japanese of the U.S. auto industry, where in the early days, the Swiss made cheap imitations of British watches, but eventually by the 20th century, came to dominate the industry.

For compliance reasons, I have been limited in my personal investments to private situations, principally startups, real estate, and private equity, directly and through funds. Because of my personal time limitations, I spend very little time on these investments, but through a combination of good luck, investment experience, and a good eye for talent, my collective private investment outcomes have been excellent, with a few huge successes outweighing some disappointments.

I have always viewed my non-Pershing Square investments as an opportunity for learning and insights that I can apply to my day job. For example, I have found that closely following the venture investment world has provided important insights into disruptive technologies and companies that can soon become serious threats to even the largest and best capitalized public companies.

Experiences at small companies also very often apply to big ones, so in my hobby of making personal investments, my returns have been both financial and educational, from my successes and from my failures. Other than tennis, I don’t have any real hobbies, but perhaps my personal investing qualifies as my second passion.

To date, I have been a passive investor in @Bremont, but perhaps the activist in me caused me to step forward, to recently seize the opportunity to materially increase my investment in the company, and become the non-executive chairman of a newly refreshed board.

I don’t expect my chairman role at Bremont to take much of my time as it is a private company of limited scale, but I do expect my experience here will provide some helpful learnings and insights. I also thought it would be fun, interesting, and rewarding to take the @X community along for the ride – at least those that are interested in watches, operations, and investing. I intend to provide periodic updates of the company’s progress on @X, about our successes, our struggles, and our failures – so that we can learn and have some fun together.

Think of my periodic updates as “Drive to Survive,” but for watches on @X. “Time to Succeed”? You can probably come up with a better name for the series, and perhaps then I should reach out to @netflix to see if they are interested (while holding back my tears as I have watched the stock massively appreciate since our exit!).

Bremont can greatly benefit by your feedback so I strongly encourage you to share your insights, critiques, and other ideas about the company and its watches on @X so we can learn and improve. We will periodically award the best ideas with Bremont watches so you can have an opportunity to earn an appropriate in-kind return on your time invested in helping us succeed.

In the modern era, building an independent watch company into a major company, let alone one in the U.K., has rarely if ever occurred. The watch world is littered with many such failed attempts so it is far from guaranteed that we will succeed in building a profitable and sustainable company, let alone a major independent player.

My Investment History to Date with Bremont
Prior to my investment in the company, Nick and Giles had taken Bremont to a reasonable scale for an independently owned watch company at about £21 million in revenues with a modest operating loss, which is an incredible accomplishment for two young men with no watch industry experience.

Nick and Giles accomplishment is particularly significant in an extremely competitive industry characterized by well capitalized incumbents that control many of the top brands, e.g., Richemont, Swatch, LVMH, as well dominant, independently owned companies like Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars and Piguet, and a few others.

Despite their progress, both Nick and Giles and the other shareholders agreed that bringing in an executive with watch industry experience would help to take the company to the next level.

Shortly after I invested, we hired a search firm to identify and ultimately recruit our new CEO, Davide Cerrato, who joined in May of 2023. Davide’s entire career has been spent in the industry at Panerai, Tudor – where he famously created the Black Bay, Montblanc, and with a brief stent at HYT.

Davide in turn hired other industry notables to round out the executive suite, and then the team went to work with the ambitious goal of transforming Bremont into a global industry leader.

Bremont has some important competitive advantages. First and most importantly, the watches are handsome, extremely well designed, and overengineered. Davide’s team has materially upgraded materials (for example, the company now uses 904L steel for all of its steel watches – the same as Rolex – unprecedented for watches at Bremont’s price point), parts, and movements from what was already a good standard to a level comparable to watches at multiples of the price.

The watches are developed, designed, manufactured, and serviced in Henley-on-Thames using principally Swiss movements. While making its own movement is an aspirational goal for Bremont, the Swiss still make the highest quality movements so that is what Bremont uses.

Bremont has a unique brand story and heritage, particularly for a 23-year-old company, with two decades of credibility in war zones and air combat missions with the best war fighters and military pilots in the world.

Bremont also makes a limited number of watches, around 10,000 per year, compared with more than 1.2 million for Rolex and 70,000 for Patek Philippe, and scarcity drives value in luxury goods.

The combination of battlefield credibility, rarity, quality and a fair price make Bremont an extremely attractive alternative to the typical Rolex or Patek, which everyone seems to be wearing in my industry, a ubiquity in my view that loses its luster over time.

Over the past 23 months, Davide and team have redesigned and focused Bremont’s range around three core offerings in Land, Sea, and Air – the Terra Nova, the Supermarine, and the Altitude – while upgrading materials, movements, and quality, updating the logo to reflect the new Land and Sea offerings (Bremont was previously perceived to only be an aviation brand), and dramatically improving manufacturing and service. The company has extended its warranty from three to five years on its new watches reflecting these improvements.

Bremont benefits from having overinvested in its spectacular 35,000 square foot combined headquarters, manufacturing facility, and showroom in Henley-on-Thames, aka “The Wing” (email [email protected] to arrange a superb tour), with the capacity for substantial growth without the requirement for incremental capital investment.

Lastly, Bremont now has a well-capitalized long-term major owner who would like to see Bremont become a big success and achieve its vision of returning watchmaking to the UK, and who is not looking for dividends or a liquidity event in this lifetime.

I have learned over time that permanent capital and a truly long-term orientation are enormous competitive advantages for any business, and they should be very helpful here.

With respect to the product, later this morning in Geneva at Watches and Wonders, the industry’s most important trade show, the company is launching its new Altitude aviation line, which builds from the company’s highly successful Martin Baker offerings.

The company will also be introducing some complicated new watches including two unique, jumping hour models, a 12-piece new tourbillion model (the company's first 30-piece tourbillion watch sold out shortly after its launch last year), and the company’s first perpetual calendar (limited to 50 pieces).

I will be back with further updates as we continue to make progress. In the meantime, please check out https://t.co/2zsK8oeOug and visit the Wing ([email protected] ) and our boutiques in Mayfair and throughout the U.K., on Madison Avenue and 53rd Street, in Hong Kong, and in Melbourne. Pictures don’t do Bremonts justice so you should go in person and tell the store manager that I sent you.

Also, please take a look at our new launch video, and don't forget to let me know what you think.

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

JCal with the call on $HHH! @BillAckman doing some exciting things over there...

[@jason @Jason]

Stocks I own that i believe are undervalued or at generational bottoms:

$TSLA
$uber
$NU
$hood
$dash
$AMZN
$PONY
$WRD
$FIG
$BIDU
$AMZN
$lcid
$xyz
$hhh

Privates:

@zipline
@micro1
@Hello_GoAI
@AskTaxGPT
@goautolane
@Superhuman
@calm

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@grok did @BillAckman sell $GOOG and make a significant allocation to $META and $MSFT in his $PSUS fund at very attractive valuations? As well as a similarly prescient purchase of $V? Seems like he positioned well for the current rotation out of semis?

[Shay Boloor @StockSavvyShay]

$META advertising business is catching up to $GOOGL Search with quarterly revenue now just ~$4B behind.

AI helped Meta serve 14% more ads at 12% higher prices by getting better at predicting what people want before they even search.

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@grok @StockMKTNewz @BillAckman Did he also add $META and $MSFT at favorable valuations and weightings in $PSUS or other funds? Would you call those choices prescient?

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

I am interviewing Saritha @sarithaforny tonight at 5pm ET on X. Please join us.

The single most impactful thing we can do to make NY safer and more livable is to elect a prosecutor who is committed to fighting crime.

The @NYPDPC is great, but they can’t do their job when the criminals are released back on the streets.

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@finkd @Wahndo_ Never deleting this app lol

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@Jason @bot @XMoney 🤔

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@Jason @XMoney To answer your question if I can receive it I'll try to send it to his givesendgo and if I can't get it through, will send it back to you. Never used x money before. I'm in Canada so don't even know if it works for me!

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@Jason @XMoney Understood sorry! Grok tells me his daughter set up a give send go for him at https://t.co/znZmDEn8oI but not x money! Looks like this one's a dead end. Thanks for your generosity!

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@Jason @XMoney This guy please

[New York Post @nypost]

Texas delivery driver Don Johnson, 81, works 14-hour days to help pay wife's medical bills - strangers raise almost $250K https://t.co/ohLzCMp0Nf

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@dhh and these

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Onboard views from Starship and Super Heavy V3, which are equipped with upgraded cameras capable of streaming 4K video through every phase of flight via @Starlink

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@dhh Beautiful stills from flight 5

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Starship on its fifth flight test. Views powered by @Starlink

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@dhh Great chance to support the work of @AJamesMcCarthy; check this out!

[Andrew McCarthy @AJamesMcCarthy]

Being able to get a photo of this feels illegal

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@dhh Really enjoyed your latest @lexfridman interview. Excited to upgrade my Linux Mint (I'm a Linux noob) with @OmarchyLinux!

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

@GregFLX15 @revgalerivs Nice!

[Mars Centurion @dragonstoscale]

Utilitarian elegance.

[Bremont @Bremont]

Introducing the Supermarine Full Ceramic Deep Blue, a striking new 250-piece limited edition inspired by the point where ocean meets ice.

To put it to the test, Bremont Ambassador and former Royal Marine, Aldo Kane took the Deep Blue to Iceland, diving into freezing glacial lakes and crossing vast ice fields.

The latest addition to the Supermarine Ceramic line, available now: https://t.co/p5PbQ1wcWs

#Bremont #Supermarine #SupermarineCeramic

[Thurm @World_21m]

🚨 Bill Ackman with the repost on this about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. IMMINENT. $FNMA $FMCC

[Bremont @Bremont]

Where the ocean meets ice, something special is coming on Thursday 8th October 2pm BST.

Be the first to uncover it: https://t.co/avuK6W20nT

#Bremont #TakeitFurther