John

CPA, Value Investor. Tweets are not investment or tax advice. Just my personal thoughts/opinions.

[John @john_morgs]

Is staying at a Disney $DIS hotel that much better than "non Disney"? Disney hotels are 4-6x the price of Airbnbs about 10 minutes away

[John @john_morgs]

Here is a good article on Hyrox: https://t.co/LggMKORj4q

Some interesting quotes:
"Most fitness brands pay between $100 and $300 to acquire a single paying customer through digital advertising. Hyrox’s affiliated gyms and its own participants market the brand organically: a competitor who finishes a race and posts their time is, functionally, an unpaid marketing channel, and the sheer volume of people doing this at scale is what produces both the unusual revenue growth and the unusually clean margin profile."

"Fitness is fragmenting away from the generic, all-purpose gym membership and toward narrow, identity-driven, competitive or performance-tracked formats that give a specific demographic a specific, comparable, shareable outcome. The generic gym sells access to equipment. The new wave of fitness businesses sells a result you can post, compare against your own history, and repeat."

[John @john_morgs]

Would you rather own Hyrox at its most recent valuation of $1 billion or Whoop at $10 billion or Peloton $PTON at $3 billion?

The best estimate for Hyrox revenue for 2026 was between $228 to $300 million

The best estimate for Whoop revenue is $1 billion

[John @john_morgs]

Another positive... inventory at 3/31/26 was $176 million. This is down from the peak at 12/31/21 of $1.5 billion...

[John @john_morgs]

Is Peloton $PTON attractive here?

GAAP profitable 9 months into their fiscal year.

Free Cash Flow going to be around $350 million, but includes at least $156 million in stock based comp.

They have cash of $1.1 billion and debt of $1.3 billion.

A negative... Gross profit of only 11% on the equipment. Compare this to before COVID, gross profit on the equipment was in the 40ish%.

The business has stabilized for now... but How will they grow subscribers? I feel like they'd be more profitable if they keep shrinking and just appeal to hardcore users.

I'd raise prices on equipment, pay off debt, build an "in person" type product (maybe instructors travel to commercial gyms outside of NYC and host classes for users who have certain milestones) keep coming out with new programs for people to follow, etc. Try and be the premium fitness brand.

[John @john_morgs]

Brown & Brown $BRO is an acquisition machine...

Goodwill on 3/31/26 was at $15 billion. It spiked with a big $9.825 billion purchase in 2025.

Stock is currently down big. The market cap as of July 9, 2026, is $23 billion.

[John @john_morgs]

Winmark $WINA is great but why does it trade at 35ish P/E?

How many more Plato’s closet’s can there be?

https://t.co/ZS4Bx3u9br

[John @john_morgs]

Great @_inpractise interview with Tom Gayner

The interviewer hits on a key point early on, that Markel $MKL is more concentrated in insurance than Berkshire ever was, limiting what Markel can invest in.

https://t.co/8uqPmPmKR4

[John @john_morgs]

Some interesting stats on Markel $MKL Ventures:

The Industrial segment ROE:
2025=12.7%
2024=13.5%

(using operating income)

This segment includes businesses like Buckner, Cottrell, AMF Bakery, Lansing Building Products, VSC Fire and Security.

The Consumer Segment ROE:
2025=12.4%
2024=13.2%

(using operating income)

This segment includes businesses like Costa Farms and Brahmin.

Comparing this to Berkshire's $BRK early days...
Berkshire bought See's Candy in 1972 for $25 million. In 1984, See's operating income was $27 million.

In 1983, Berkshire paid ~$60 million for 90% of NFM. In 1984 NFM operating income was $12 million.

I think Ventures is doing fine, but is missing that slam dunk business, like Berkshire had with Sees or Nebraska Furniture Mart.

[John @john_morgs]

Will this be true in 10 years?

"Ultimately, customers buy confidence, not code, which is why they spend at least 7 times more on accounting and tax experts than on software alone. "

From Intuit's Q3 2026 call

$INTU

[John @john_morgs]

Intuit $INTU is really focusing on doing more of the work for customers like taxes and bookkeeping. TurboTax assisted (where you just pay one of their preparers to do the return) grew 36% this year. This is great but doesn’t it alienate all of the accounting professionals that refer their products to clients?

[John @john_morgs]

Why does Intuit $INTU call the Quickbooks segment “Global Business Solutions “? Why not just “Business Solutions”? Or better yet “Quickbooks”?

[John @john_morgs]

Some companies that IPO'd between 1969 and 1975:

Applied Materials
National Semiconductor
Advanced Micro Devices
Intel
Scientific Data Systems (made computers for Science focused projects..acquired quickly by Xerox)
Walmart
Casio Computer (Calculators and watches were a hit in schools/homes)
Disney
Hewlett Packard

[John @john_morgs]

Reece Duca's story is insane.

During his time at Stanford Business School, he turned $7k to $75k. Business school is what? Two years? That's a 227% CAGR!

Then, instead of getting a traditional job out of school, he decides he's going to just keep investing his own capital. Who can blame him after those results? This was the seed capital for his investment company, Investment Group of Santa Barbara (IGSB). The next 5 years, he turns the $75k into $2 million! 93% CAGR! (For context, I believe this was around 1969)

What was he investing in??? He talks about focusing on companies that were newly public or that were about to go public, but I can't find any specific examples.

On a practical note, how do you live as a private investor? Did he just sell investments for groceries? Did he keep cash aside for living expenses?

The interview @BobCasey did with him is fantastic.

[John @john_morgs]

Reece Duca's story is insane.

During his time at Stanford Business School, he turned $7k to $75k. Business school is what? Two years? That's a 227% CAGR!

Then, instead of getting a traditional job out of school, he decides he's going to just keep investing his own capital. Who can blame him after those results? This was the seed capital for his investment company, Investment Group of Santa Barbara (IGSB). The next 5 years, he turns the $75k into $2 million! 93% CAGR! (For context, I believe this was around 1969)

What was he investing in??? He talks about focusing on companies that were newly public or that were about to go public, but I can't find any specific examples.

On a practical note, how do you live as a private investor? Did he just sell investments for groceries? Did he keep cash aside for living expenses?

The interview @BobCasey did with him is fantastic.

[John @john_morgs]

I just finished “The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing.” Overall, it was a really interesting book. Chuck loved business and was one of the founders of Duty Free Shoppers. Duty Free owns retail outlets at various locations. The stores allow travelers to purchase goods exempt from certain taxes and duties. Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) was a cash flow machine, paying its owners millions of dollars every year in dividends.

What did I learn?

Know your customers - The DFS retail operations were fanatical about knowing their customers.

The biggest customers at their stores were Japanese. Their whole system was designed around knowing what they wanted. They hired local Japanese workers who fed them information on what was popular in Japan so DFS could properly stock their stores. Their sales force was Japanese. Their marketing was for Japanese. They picked locations based on the Japanese consumer, like when they expanded to Guam. They knew the Japanese would start traveling there because of the beaches and location to Japan, so they built out stores and other infrastructure. There are many more detailed examples in the book.

Avoid competition- DFS business did this with the duty-free licenses. These gave them exclusive access to customers in airports, for example, and also gave them pricing advantages. This wasn't necessarily a permanent advantage, but it helped jump-start the business. There are good stories about the “game” of bidding on these licenses. DFS also was very secretive about the business. They didn’t want competitors to know how well they were doing.

Have good accounting- early on, the business almost crumbled. One reason why, was they had no idea how all of their businesses were doing. They thought they were doing fine until they finally fixed the accounting system. Once they had good records, they found out they were close to being bankrupt. This allowed them to make business adjustments and save the business.

Enjoy who you go into business with. The 4 owners had an interesting relationship. They didn't end up being that close, and it didn't derail the business, but Chuck would seemingly have preferred to be the sole owner, as he spent a lot of time on other businesses he owned 100%, some of which competed with DFS. The relationship between the four founders wasn’t crucial to this story, probably because everyone was content with all of the cash that was made, but a good reminder to think carefully about who you do business with. I found it interesting just how much time Chuck spent on these other ventures. He told one of the partners something along the lines of....You are giving this business 100% of your all but you are only getting 2% of the rewards (that was that owners ownership %).

A big part of the story was his focus on charity. He loved giving his money away as much as he loved making it. His desire to keep it all a secret adds an interesting dynamic. I didn’t focus as much on this part of the
story, but an interesting note, Chuck did a lot of the research on the donees himself.

Overall, a really great read. Highly recommend.

[John @john_morgs]

@quinnslcm @patrick_oshag @davidsenra Great quote. Check out an interview from him here https://t.co/jQsaZDT9Jo

[John @john_morgs]

https://t.co/NrdYOYQDgL

[John @john_morgs]

Before Tyler Tech $TYL provided software to governments, it was in completely different businesses. In 1996, they owned Forest City Auto Parts Company, an auto parts supplier, and Institutional Financing Services, which assisted schools in fundraising by arranging for students to sell company-supplied items. (Odd I know)

How were the economics of these businesses? Not great. Before a goodwill impairment charge (which made the loss worse), they lost about $12 million in 1996.

In 1998, they switched to providing software to governments. That first year, they made $5 million in operating income.

What types of software did they start with? Utility billing, property appraisal automation, courtroom technology (judges could review cases, calendars, and scanned documents within a web browser)

Now in 2025, still providing software to governments, their operating income was $357 million. 17% CAGR!

PS Somehow, they sold the fundraising supplies business for $8.4 million.