Yet Another Value Podcast - Boyar Research's Jon Boyar on 2026's Forgotten 40 $UBER $BATRA

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Jon Boyar of Boyar Research for an (almost) annual discussion on the “Forgotten 40” — a curated list of 40 overlooked, value-oriented stocks. Jon outlines major 2025 themes including SMID caps and financials, before diving into deep valuations and sale potential for the Atlanta Braves, plus long-term positioning of Uber in an autonomous future. They also touch on media exposure, structural incentives, and the potential for corporate activism to unlock value in overlooked names.__________________________________________________[00:00:00] Intro to podcast and guest[00:02:53] History and aim of Forgotten 40[00:04:14] Turnover and name selection for 2025[00:05:13] Key 2025 themes: SMID & financials[00:06:42] Financials overweight rationale explained[00:08:07] Braves ownership, real estate, and thesis[00:10:59] Tax code change and sale incentive[00:12:09] Valuation math for Atlanta Braves[00:15:13] Media rights and sale timing risk[00:18:00] Malone incentives and sale complications[00:22:27] MLB work stoppage risk and reward[00:25:50] Baseball trends and geographic pull[00:26:15] MSGS ownership, family dynamics[00:29:53] Generational control and liquidity questions[00:30:54] Mark Cuban sale as precedent[00:33:36] Media names: fewer included this year[00:35:11] Uber thesis: misunderstood and evolving[00:37:25] AV risk vs strategic opportunity[00:39:03] Valuation vs zero-risk scenario[00:41:01] Eats vs Dash vs Instacart[00:41:56] Consumer pushback and price sensitivity[00:45:50] Waymo or Tesla acquisition logic[00:49:17] Bonus pick: UniFirst & Cintas pursuit[00:52:05] Activism, family dynamics, and valuation[00:53:11] Wrap-up and links to Forgotten 40Links:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimerProduction and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

You're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Look, if you like this podcast, it would mean a lot if you could rate, subscribe with you, wherever you're watching or listening to it. That's how you get more of these podcasts. So please do that if you enjoy this podcast. And if you don't enjoy this podcast, please don't bother. But today's episode, I think you're going to enjoy this one. It is with my friend John Boyar from Boyar Research.

He is coming on for, I believe this is like the fourth time in fifth years. Every year they publish the Forgotten 40. It's 40 more larger caps, mid-cap, stocks. but, you know, pretty liquid, pretty big. 40 stocks that have a nice blend of value and maybe a little bit of catalyzed for the upcoming year. So he's going to come on. We're going to talk a little bit about forgotten 40 themes that he seemed to

forgotten 40. And then we're going to dive decently deep into, particularly the Atlanta Braves and a decent bit into Uber as well. So I think you're going to enjoy it. We're going to get there in one second. But first, a word from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.aI. Fiscal.a.I is a modern data terminal built for investors

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That's fiscal. a. I slash yav for two weeks free plus 15% off any of their paid plans. That's fiscal. a. a.m. All right. Hello, and welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. I'm just springing the recording on my friend,

to talk about the Forgotten 40, my friend, John, how's it going? Doing great. Thanks for having me. Hey, I've got the, well, I've got my background blur so the video can't show up, but I've got my copy of the Forgotten 40 right here. Happy to have you on to talk about it. I think this is almost an annual tradition

because I think we've done like four of the past five years. Before we hop into a few names and everything, quick disclaimer remind everyone. Nothing on this podcast investing advice. Always true, maybe particularly true today because we're going to hop through. I've got two stocks lined up, but we'll probably hop through a few more on the forgotten 40. So 40 potential stocks to talk about. Let's start here, John. Now, disclaimer out the way. Let's start here. Look, you published the forgotten 40, 40 list of 40 stocks, but I'd love to just start with a little overview. You know, what's kind of the purpose of the list and why you guys publish this every year?

Yeah, no. So we've been doing this for over three decades now, obviously. Almost 40 years. You're almost at 40 for 40. Yeah, exactly. We can do a lot with that. So we have, we know, we're known for being long-term patient investors. We take three to five-year time horizon for everything we do, even though we're catalyst focused on all of them. But, you know, some of our subscribers aren't quite as patient. So what we do is every year we come out with our forgotten 40, and do one-paid snapshots on the 40 ideas that we've thoroughly researched before.

So it's not us sitting around the table and saying, hey, Intel looks cheap. Let's write it up. It's names that we follow, that we have conviction on, and let our subscribers know to start the year, which stocks we like. And it's probably our most popular product. People love it. It's fun. It served as a great reference guide throughout the year. So it's really cool.

And so just for 40, I mean, again, I think this, we've done this four over the past five years, and obviously there's some over the lot. How many names, you know, because this is more like a year long. It's actually like mid-December to mid-December, but you're looking at year-long things. How many names kind of repeat from one year to the next? It varies. I mean, it definitely does. This year, for example, I think it's 23, 24 names that are new that we're not on last year's list. So we're cognizant, we don't want to keep doing the recycling the same ideas, but sometimes

those ideas that you have conviction on in their compounds, there's like, for example, Uber. It's a name we love. It was on last year's list, it was up at 30, 40%, 40%. So on this year's list, too, we think there's a lot of reasons to like it. So you don't want that to draw, you don't want new ideas to kind of drive, you know, the process. It's really just what stocks we think will do best going forward. Gotcha. And then just in terms of, you know, I like that the.

the start of the Forgotten 40, for those who haven't looked or don't know, it starts with that, hey, here were the themes we were talking about in 2024, and here's kind of our report card on how we did. You know, for 2025, what are the key themes or what are, you know, even if I just took out the macro of the key themes, what are kind of the key themes in the forgotten 40 stocks that you are looking at? Yeah, there are a couple. I mean, in terms of like the macro, like most people, we say we try and ignore it the best we can, but I think that that's almost impossible to do. But in terms of the two, we really have two key themes going in there. We think this could be the year for Smid, you know, because of a potential increase in M&A.

That's a big deal for us. We think there's going to be, or there could be a fair amount of deals this year. And I think it's roughly 10 or 11, 10 of the names are under $10 billion, something to that effect. And also the other theme was financials. We're really bullish on financials and kind of diversified lists too. We have some insurance companies in there. We have some regional banks. We have AmeriPrize. So it kind of runs the gamut. So we took a significant overweight position, at least relative to the S&P 500 on financials. And, you know, Smith is an area that we're looking at. So financials, let's just poke at that a little bit. You're overweight financials.

What's driving the overweight of financials right now? Because financials have, to my mind, had a pretty good run. I mean, for especially the large caps, a great run, I would say, since kind of the doom days of First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank. But what's kind of driving the overweight and bullishness and financials right now? Well, one, they're cheap. Two, I think the deregulatory environment is, you know, isn't fully appropriate. I mean, it's been reported, obviously, but I think these, there's going to be a lot of M&A in, especially in the regionals. You know, we have two or three regional banks on the list, you know, like Colin Frost, so you're really kind of interesting, you know, somewhat off the radar, radar bank, you know, the insurance companies are still, you know, inexpensive and, you know, something like a Markell, you know, it's a kind of a quasi-financial.

Obviously, it's an insurance company, but it has ventures as a stock portfolio. The same was like a Lowe's. Those are companies that, you know, there's lots of things to like about them. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, let's go into the actually, you kind of recommended them, but I think these were the two most interesting names. I mean, there might be one or two more. I'd go over Uber, but let's go into the two names.

I kind of wanted to talk to you about Foli on this name. And the first one would be Atlanta Braves. It used to be Liberty Braves. I still call it Liberty Braves in my head, but now it's the Atlanta Braves. ticker there is Batra. It's supposed to be a play on Bataroff, I think. But I know, but I never know how to say it.

But it's B-A-T-R-A. This is the Atlanta Braves. John Malone is still a controlling shareholder. I don't want to go. Why don't you just quickly go over the thesis for the Atlanta Braves, and then I can help him with some questions? Sure. You know, we've been big fans of John Malone,

and we've observed him pretty closely. And first, you know, the Atlanta Braves holdings just to, you know, paint the picture. It owns the team. and also owns some valuable real estate surrounding the park. Malone has been simplifying his empire. You see what's going on with discovery, what happened with Charter, what happened with Sirius.

He's making things simple for his heirs. But what's notable is, I believe, the only stock that he has to file on that he purchased in 2025 was the Braves. So I think that's, you know, somewhat, somewhat telling. And he's, I think he's a seller of assets. He's not owning this for like emotional reasons, even though, you know, if you read his book, he really likes Ted Turner. I don't think he's keeping it around just, you know, for Ted to be happy.

But there's a tax law change that really isn't being, you know, given a lot of press. It's not from the one big beautiful bill. it's from the, you know, the 20, I think 21 tax law change, where currently, or going forward, the top five employees, not just officers, employees of a company, there, anything above a million dollars can't be deducted for income tax purposes. For most companies, that doesn't matter. It's not like a significant, you know, percentage. But for publicly traded sports teams, that's a really, really big deal.

I mean, I don't have to off top of my head what the top five players on the Braves make, but it's a significant portion of income. And remember, it's just for public companies. Private companies, basically all of their competition except for Rogers, which owns Toronto, doesn't have to abide by the same rules. So they're in a huge, huge competitive disadvantage. Plus, John Malone is known for doing. everything humanly possible to lawfully avoid paying taxes. He spun out, Atlanta Braves,

you know, about two, two and a half years ago, so there's no tax implications there. I think he puts this thing up for sale sooner rather than later. You know, the market for sports teams, extremely hot, you know, well, not necessarily for baseball teams as much. They're still getting big, big numbers. And, you know, currently it's trading roughly $40 a share. You know, we, you know, utilizing what I think are conservative valuations for the real estate that they own, we get to $60 a share easily. So I think it's one of those stocks, especially in an expensive market that I don't think has a ton of downside, but has a fair amount of upside.

So this is great. And I got to just to start, I had not put two and two together on the tax code change. So kudos to you for figuring that out, I'm putting that out. I mean, it just, it makes all the sense in the world. You've got the man who, you read his memoir, I read his memoir, I did a podcast on his memoir. You've got the man who might be the, I mean, the one through line of his memoir is, oh, my God, I will not pay taxes, you know, like sometimes to my detriment. You think he wants to have this in a publicly traded rapper when if it just goes private,

he doesn't have to pay taxes. Like, there are not him, but the company, no effing way he's going to do that. So I just think that's great. But let me lob in a few questions. you know, oh, one correction. He did, there was one other publicly traded stock he bought. He bought Glibba, the JCI spin-off. He bought that both on the open market and through the backstop slash doing the rights

offering. So that would be the only correction there. Let's go through a few things. I guess the first. You mentioned $60 per share or the stock trades at $40 per share. Can you just help me come up with how you come up with those valuations, particularly on the sport side, but they do own the battery too. So maybe a little bit of that as well.

Yeah. I mean, basically, and I know it sounds kind of a glib way of doing it, but it's actually, when you look at some of these deals, people look at the Forbes value. And they usually trade at, you know, a significant premium to it. I think we do it at, you know, a 15% premium, I believe off top of my head. Plus, you know, very conservative valuation for the battery. You know, most of these deals have occurred significantly higher than a 15%. premium, so we think we're being conservative. And it's also worth noting that the Braves are kind of different than most majorly baseball

teams. You know, growing up, you know, I remember on TNT, TBS, because it was owned by Ted Turner, these games were broadcast nationwide. And they have a much larger fan base than most teams do. So you have a lot of people who would covet this if it ever really came up for sale. It's also worth noting that Atlanta, for whatever reason, has a significant amount of billionaires for whatever reason living in that area. So it's kind of an interesting situation there. Yeah, look, you're spot on with this team pulls kind of like the Cowboys doing football, you know, their America's team.

This team pulls way above their weight in terms of the fan base. And even if it wasn't for that history of, you know, the 90s Braves and TBS and stuff, just if you look at the southeast in baseball, it is so, void of teams around the Atlanta Braves. You know, I know they used to always say this with their RSNs. They were like, our RSN is so much bigger than everyone else because of this unique geography we have that, that it's just, it really outpoles its weight in terms of that. But let me ask a few questions. I have owned this in the past.

I've thought about owning this right now all the time. I'll tell you my one holdup that I've had. So you're familiar. In February 2025, ESPN, which is paying the MLB 550 million per year and rights. can't opts out. Now, in November, they opt back in for $550 million again, but their opt-in is, I mean, they get a lot for opting back in, right? They take six of the RSNs.

They take a lot of others. They get MLB.tv, I believe they get the rights to that. So I had a lot of worry, you know, if I think about where the world is going, NFL, the sports right, are just to infinity. But I do worry that sports rights have gotten as the cable bundle online, sports rights have gotten really top tier. And, you know, MLB, the thing is it's such a long season and it's such a regional play. I worry that these big national contracts are at risk. So my worry, what I'm driving to is I worry that there's a reset coming for MLB. So I toss a whole

lot to you there. I just want to toss that over to you. Like how comfortable will you feel with the kind of sports rights and everything going forward one year, three or five years, especially as RSN bundle, which is where a lot of the baseball money was coming, it's kind of unwinding. Yeah, it's certainly a risk. It's certainly unknown what's going to happen. There may be a reason why they're renegotiate, Major League Baseball is putting all these things in, I think, making it a lot of the stuff expire 2028, 2029. There could be a reason for that. There could be a strategy behind it. But I would say, I view these things, whether it's Atlanta Braves or Madison Square Garden Sports, which owns the Knicks and the Rangers.

as publicly trade collectibles. You know, these are, if you believe in billionaires and billionaires with egos, this is, you know, you're bullish on these names. It's like a diversifier in a portfolio. I don't think the prestige of those are going away. Obviously, the economics are certainly important, but I think they probably will continue to get better.

But what you've identified is definitely a risk. And it's worth monitoring. But I think if this team came up, for sale, there would be a lot of bidders. Yeah. No, look, I mean, all you have to do is look at the Mets, right? And I think the Mets, the offseason and the way last season ended has been a little small twist, but I believe I heard quotes from Steve Cohen saying, owning the Mets is the

most fun I've ever had, right? And these billionaires, you know, you're a billionaire, you are the, you are literally one of the rulers of the world's, yes, but once you buy the sports team, it's just a different league in terms of the media coverage, in terms of your poll, in terms of how well you're you become a celebrity, you know, and I think there is something to that. And you buy the Atlanta Braves. As you said, behind the Yankees, it's the team that everyone kind of knows in baseball. You're a hero in Atlanta, or he might be a villain sometimes.

But, yeah, I do think it really carries ego. Let me, another question here, you know, the other interesting thing, I don't know if you know this. In I believe it was August, 2024, Malone, when he was kind of getting his whole empire in play, he set up a, he gave the CEO of the Atlanta Braves, what's it, Terry McGirk. He gave him the rights to his class B stock. And as part of it, he said, hey, almost a million shares. If you can sell the company for greater than $50 per share, you get the rights to that. And I always thought that was interesting. Now, obviously the stocks at 40, you sold up for $50 per share tomorrow. I'd love it. But I did have worries about that on, hey, is Terry incentivized to

drag a sale out? Right. If you think about time value, money. If you push a sale, let's just say three years from now, then you get 10% more each year, well, that's great if you've just got the call option on that 50. Might not be great if, let's just, let's change it from 10 to 5%. If it's 5% more per year and you push it out three years, well, now it's below our cost of capital. So did you think there was anything weird to that structure or anything, or was I kind of too much in my head about it? I mean, I think Malone, you know, for better or for worse, you know, really let's his employer. or his leaders of his companies do whatever,

whatever they want and gives them free reign. In the case of Warner Brothers discovery, I don't think that was like the greatest thing. He also overcompensates them significantly. I mean, it's a poster child. I'm very involved in, I'm quite long Warner Brothers discovery right now with the Biddymore, but I would just say like you look at Zazlov making a billion dollars for selling this company and he put it together at prices way higher.

You look at where the buybacks were happening. Liberty Global, Lila, all these things, what Greg Maffa was making the last few years. And Malone is the guy who's supposed to be, hey, we eat our own cooking, equity, equity, and equity upside. It just feels to me these guys, I mean, they're the most, I'm just blown away that it came to this. I don't know what was happening. And you read Malone's biography. I mean, the most glowing praise he has for it is for Mike Freeze at Liberty Global.

And Liberty Global, I mean, it might be the stock that has ruined the most hedge fund's lives. and it is the biggest underperformer. And it's just, I don't know if he's getting the wool pulled over his eyes or if this is a case of, hey, it was such a bad neighborhood. If you didn't have such a great manager, these thing would have been way, way worse. But I don't know the answer, but, yeah, it's a long winding way on Malone's compensation.

Anything you have on that? Yeah, no, I disagree with it. Listen, I want to incentivize people, but I think he goes, you know, above the, beyond the pale for it. But in terms of the $50 a share list, I think if he can get $60 a share for this thing, move on for his life. And what you pointed out happening in 2029 is also, you know, that's a risk with the, you know, the baseball, you know, sports media rights. So maybe he's hedging his bed a little bit. But I think, you know, Malone is going to drive this thing.

You know, he's certainly very active, I'm sure, behind the behind the scenes. and he's not going to want to pay, not to be able to deduct his biggest expense from income. On the sale, another worry I always had was Malone famously averse to taxes, right? And he loves to sell things, not for cash, but for stock. And a Liberty Braves team or Atlanta Braves team, it's a tough one to find a stock buyer, right? Like, I know for years the rumor was one of the Home Depot original crew would buy this with some Home Depot stock, and that would make sense. But, you know, it's a sports team, so there's no synergies.

Obviously, they can't be a public company buyer for, you know, the reason you listed and a thousand others. You know, if I was long a company that announced they were buying a sports team, I would have my ditch wards out pretty quickly. But, you know, how do you think about Malone's aversion to a sale when his tax base is going to be pretty darn low on this, I would imagine? And, you know, there's not a stock buyer. So do you think he's willing to eat that bullet even with the,

even with the income tax changes coming? Well, I mean, the WBD discovered, the Netflix sale is what, that's a fair amount of cash there. No longer controlled by Malone though, right? Yeah, he's chairman emeritus on the board, but I think he has a lot of control over Zassel. True, but every offer that they were getting was for cash. And I also think at that point you're looking and you're saying, hey, our standalone value, is 12 and we're getting 27 plus a spinoff for Netflix and maybe 30 from Paramount, you know, at that point, it's like, cool, I've got to pay a lot of taxes, but I'm making

more after tax than I'd ever dream of. So yeah, just on Braves, you know, it's just one of those things where I think he will sell, but if the offer is 60 and he says, hey, this is standalone 40 is a public company. I wonder if it's like, oh, let's just keep waiting and keep pushing those taxes off. I don't know the answer. No, I mean, I think he's a pragmatist. He's a realist. I mean, I think he also realizes that, at least for now, the days of big corporations buying these baseball or basketball teams are over. It's, you know, essentially, you know, wealthy people slash private equity, or at least for states in them. So I think, you know, that's the only way he's ever really going to truly realize value. It's not like these are huge income-producing assets. Work stoppage in MLB. Lots of questions. Lots of remains. that there's going to be a work stoppage, I believe, next year and the MLB. How do you think about that on the Braves where, you know, the 90s work stoppage, it took 10 years for the MLB to come back.

A work stoppage can be a death knell for the sport. On the other hand, you could say, hey, maybe Malone wants to sell now and get out before the work stoppage. Maybe that's a real incentive to get out now. On the other hand, hey, sometimes work stoppage is the players, the players always have less power than the owners. And if the owners are willing to lose a season, the players, I mean, that's a. disaster for them. You can get a lot of resets on the economics. And, you know, for baseball, putting this all, you could imagine a lot of ways where it could get a lot more profitable, a lot more quickly. So I just listed very high lows and very high highs. How do you think about

a work stoppage when it comes to this? I think both, all of your points are well taken. I think you can make a really good argument for pretty much everything, what you said. I would say, I look back in history. Look, look what happened with the NBA. I forgot what year was. It was, 2015, I could be off by a couple of years. 2010, 2011. A couple of years. 2010, 2011, the teams post that, the team's values have gone. Skyrocketed.

So I think you can't really view it. It's impossible to handicap. This is a risk-reward scenario to me. As I said earlier, in an expensive market, I'm able to buy. kind of this collectible that I think will at least hold its value, probably will increase in value and have a chance to monetize it significantly above the current price. So this is, yeah, kind of an interesting play. No, look, I completely agree. I mean, this in MSGS. Now, MSGS, I thought, if I thought five years ago, the Dolans were ready to sell it, now that the Knicks

are competitive, I don't think they're ever going to sell. But, you know, the nice thing here is things, everything gets sold eventually, right? And I just, I'm with you. These are a billionaires delight. You buy these things. And the other thing with baseball, the last thing we can wrap up, you know, I think baseball, two or three years ago, they changed the pitch clock. I mean, baseball was dead before the pitch clock.

It took too long in the modern world. No one cared. I think the pitch clock has made the games more exciting. I mean, my daughter's too young, so really know what's happening. But you go, the games are crisp. There's a lot more action. You know, you don't have to commit four hours to a normal game. A lot more action.

And, you know, baseball, it used to be just the U.S. in some Latium countries. I mean, the influx of the Japanese money with Shohayatani. And, you know, speaking of Shoha Tani, one thing, interesting thing about the Braves is the Dodgers payroll and the Mets. I think they might push their payroll so high. Now, maybe the work stoppage resets this. But the luxury tax payments these guys are going to be making, you know, you might be talking about the Braves. A buyer could, there could be some real dividends coming. from the Lugger Taxman.

So I threw a thousand things at you, but I think baseball's in a better spot than it's been in a long, long time. And, you know, I am a little worried about the media rights, but it's it, I do think it's in a better spot than it was even 12 months ago.

So through a lot out of you, I'll give you kind of last word on all that. Yeah, no, I agree with what you said. You'd mention something about the, and it's my favorite subject, you know, talking about the Dolans, that, you know, they're doing great this year. The Dolans might not sell.

Who knows? They're not necessarily, I think Malone's a rational actor. You know, Dolan, not so much. There are a couple of things going on this year. You know, Charles passed away about a year or so ago. I was actually about to ask you now that we started talking about. Please continue.

Yeah, he's the patriarch of the family. I mean, he was a genius. I mean, started HBO or was one of the founders of HBO, had cable vision, had the foresight to buy, you know, for, you know, a few hundred million dollars, I think, Madison Square Garden, which included the Knicks and the Rangers. I mean, a really, really bright guy. He passed away at 95, 96 years old. Dolan controls it now.

You know, he loves what he's, you know, he loves being the owner of that team. I would, you know, I do think it's interesting that he has huge relationships in Abu Dhabi. They're a big sponsor of the Knicks. They also are doing stuff, I believe, with the Spear as well. Allegedly, Speer 2 is going to be over there. Yeah. Does, do they take a minority stake in the team? I wouldn't, wouldn't shock me.

I mean, there's a lot of money on the table there. So I think a lot of things could happen. We wrote a public letter, you know, six months ago saying what I think they really should do. Because right now, the enterprise value is roughly $6 billion for both the Knicks and the Rangers. The NICS went for, I mean, the L.A. Lakers went for 10. billion, so essentially you're getting the Rangers for free, is to split up both teams into two publicly traded companies. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And because right now you're getting zero credit for it. I think there's lots of ways to win there, too. So I'm long professional sports. I think it's an interesting place to be, but I just wanted to bring that out. Yeah. The other thing about the Knicks is, You know, the league has said they're going to make a decision on expansion this year from 30 to 32.

And I think expansion would be generally good for them. There's just like so much talent in the league. And if you're a league, I understand the national media rights are where it's at. But, you know, developing the fan base and having the locality. And I think if they put a team, it sounds like Vegas and Seattle, but I think they should put a team in Mexico City, you know, like it should start capturing one more country. But either way, if they get those two teams and you're talking about, you know, three billion of expansion. fees for both of those, you're going to be talking about three to 500 million of expansion fees coming directly through to the Knicks. And then what do they do with that cash?

You know, and for everything you can say about Dolan, I think he's awful. You know, him and Al Davis, I love these guys who their dads bought teams and these guys think they were hit a grand slam, even though they were literally born at home plate. But, you know, I think he's going to return that money to shareholders. And you were charged 500 million bucks on a six billion market. things get really interesting. You mentioned Charles Dolan passed away at the end of 2024, I believe. We're now into 2006. You know, are there any these guys estate, a state, a state playing like crazy?

But, you know, have there been any, do you think there's any tax reasons or anything that these guys, as the state kind of evolves? They might say, oh, we need to sell this or was it kind of bundled up in all the trusts and everything? I'm not sure on that, but I would say that, you know, they did sell Cablevision for a lot of money. for cash. So who knows what people's individual liquidity needs are, but I don't see that being necessarily a huge deal. More of a kind of an emotional thing. The patriarch is now gone.

Is there less emotional attachment on the next generation? I don't know. Again, with James Dolan, it's a wild card. James Zoller also, like, you know, I think about him. And maybe this is because I'll pause it. But, you know, he does the music stuff and everything. I think about him and he's the son of Charles. So I think younger, I mean, he's 70 now.

So even when we talk about the patriarch dying, like, at some point he's going to pass away or he's going to have to start thinking. And I don't know. I mean, the MSG, the whole payroll is loaded left and right with Dolans. But, you know, when he passes away, all of this is in trust, right? And you go from having, I think he's got four brothers and sisters. You go from having kind of five-controlled. The next generation is 10, 15, 20. Like, at some point, it breaks apart.

And I have to, you saw this with the Lakers, right? Jeannie and her two brothers take it over. But as more and more mouths get to feed, and these things, they're worth so much money. And also, you've got to pay a lot of money. I mean, the Yankees, the Steinbrenners, you know? They're willing to spend. But when they go up against the Steve Cohen, like, they lose every time.

And you kind of need to have the depots. Anyway, rambled a lot on that. Any last thoughts on the Braes, Knicks, anything publicly sports? I would say, you know, the argument that either Malone or Dolan won't sell, one thing I would always push back on, too, is I was shocked when I saw Mark Cuban sold, The Mavericks. I can't think of someone else's whose identity is so wrapped up in a team more than he has been, or he was.

So I think really anything is possible when it comes to that. So, I mean, I would just leave that. But, you know, I think I went through it, you know, relatively in depth. But I think it's certainly an interesting situation. Look, I know we got a big price for the Mavs. But I would love to know more about the real reasons why he sold because he's got plenty of money that was, you know, that is a brand. And once you sell this and all these guys realize it, you know, Cuban. I followed basketball very closely. He had an agreement that he was going to, you know, be an operating, be involved in operations going forward. The moment you sell it, you know, a month later, they say, hey, actually, yeah, you're out of the operations. And for the Mabs, the Luka trade happens. And I think they kind of brought him back in for a little bit just because the Luca trade set their fans of revolt. But all these guys say, why does, who's the head of S&L? Michael. I can't remember his name. He's been there.

Yes, yes, Lorne Michaels. Lorne Michaels, he has a saying if you follow anything. He's like, look, the moment you leave, they stop returning your calls. You lose the spotlight. And his whole thing was, I'm never going to have SNL pulled. I'm going to stay here because I stay in the moment you leave the sports teams, the moment you sell, and I think Cuban probably saw this, your calls get returned a little bit less. Now, Cuban still has, you know, he's got some celebrity and everything, but you're just not quite the same player once you sell.

And I think, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's turn to the other. one that I wanted to talk about. I mean, I did think about, actually, before we turn, I want to pause one second to ask one other question. And when I think about the last years and the Forgotten 40, a lot of media companies, right? Comcast, I think, was a frequent player in there. I can't remember if Charter ever made it, but a lot of media companies, when I look this year at the Forgotten 40, unless I'm doing a too fast look, only two. Disney and Newscore. So Nintendo would be loosely a media company, but that's more gaming, more brands. There's some things that go looser, but I just want to ask you, it's been a rough, rough time for media. When we see only two media companies, you know, is that just because, hey, it has gotten so bad out there, like, these are uninvestable or just better opportunities? Like, why if the media company's kind of fallen off at this point?

Well, WBD would be a hard one to put in because, you know, it's kind of hard to predict the future there and the deal. had already been kind of announced at that point. Comcasts, you know, we have a lot of internal debates on that. It's certainly statistically cheap. There's lots of arguments you can make on it. We just saw better opportunities. You know, media has been a really, really tough place to be in, you know, companies, you know, Nintendo really is kind of a media company,

which, and actually could be bought by Comcast at some point in that. time wouldn't shock me. It's, but yeah, no, I mean, there's no, we didn't make a conscious effort. It just was kind of the opportunity set. You know, I think five years ago, I know people who've talked to higher-ups at Comcasts, and they would joke, hey, if you guys want to buy Nintendo, that's the one acquisition. We'd just be behind. And, you know, I think Comcast would always be like, look, it takes two to Tantgo.

Here's the issue. Comcast is pulling so hard. I don't know if they could afford Nintendo anymore. And they probably could raise the debt. But, you know, the opportunity costs of buying their stock at six times EBITDA versus, you know, buying something and merging into MBCU? It's an interesting question. There would be a lot of synergies there, though, but yeah. Let's turn to Uber.

The other one, the other Forgotten 40 stock I wanted to pull up was Uber. And, you know, everybody knows Uber, but I'll just have you, you know, what's the high level for why Uber makes the forgotten 40 after a pretty nice run since the 2020, you know, heading into 2025 recommendation? Yeah, it's, you know, we've been. been writing about this since the low 40s. We really like the name. We think it's still misunderstood on Wall Street before. People never thought that they would make a profit. Now they're obviously extremely profitable and, you know, guzzling out cash. Now the bare case on it is autonomous driving. And, you know, there was a probably close to a 20% drawdown towards the end of the year in the stock, which, you know, kind of pushed it over the top to be on the list and gave us

kind of gave us an opportunity. We really think they're a beneficiary, not a victim of autonomous vehicles. You know, for a variety of reasons, you know, you look at the, listen, Waymo has a great product, etc., but still $150,000 per car or whatever it is. I know that I realize that those costs will be coming down,

but it'll never be economically, or at least in the foreseeable future, for them to be able to launch a product that can satisfy peak demand. And they're going to need a kind of a hybrid system with Uber or a company like Uber in order to compete. I think in our opinion, the only way that we're wrong, or at least that we can think of us being wrong on this thesis, is if there's only one winner in the autonomous vehicle race

and they can create their own app. I think it's going to be like cars, a fragmented market with multiple players. And, you know, they're also experimenting with Lucid and, you know, doing their own fleet as well. So, and it's a global company. You know, you have both the delivery and you have the ride sharing part of the business. There's really a lot to like. And Dara has done a really good job. I, you know, he really turned this into a cash burning company into a real business.

My bit, my other fear is he makes a stupid acquisition, which, you know, I hope he doesn't do. There were rumors a year or two ago that he would buy Expedia. I don't know if that's true. I mean, he obviously was involved with Expedia before. That's also, I guess, a risk to the stock. So let me, so you think the Uber opportunity is the market is just, particularly at the end of year when the stock has the big drawdown,

the market is just too pessimistic on how the AV future plays out here. Yes. I think so I think that's right. I've had a lot of discussions with that a lot recently, but I've had discussion with my friend Mara Sobeli. I've thought, but I can't claim to be an expert, but let me just try to push back because I would probably agree, but I'll try to push back. You know, if I look at LTM free cash flow here, it's about $8.5 billion, and that ignores about $2 billion of stock comp, right? The market cap is about $181 billion. So, you know, you're paying 20x plus for

the company here. Now, that makes sense because it's a dominant growing franchise. You know, it's growing kind of high teams to 20%. There's decent operating leverage here. But when I look at those numbers and I say, hey, Uber is the one example. It's the example I used to most of, hey, a company that has true zero risk, right? I don't know what the true zero risk is, what the odds of it, but if you told me in five years, autonomous vehicles have eaten Uber's lunch and Uber is gone, I can't say the odds of that are absolutely zero. So I would like kind of push back on you and say, hey, we're paying 20 to 25 times for a 20% car.

That's cheapish. But if you assign anything over zero percent odds, like, is there real kind of risk adjusted alpha here? It feels like you're almost, you're fairly compensated for the risk you're taking. Yeah. I mean, I think you are being fairly compensated for the risk you're taking. I get under your scenario. Yes, that's true. I just think it's a highly unlikely thing to happen. I mean, there's lots of things that could happen to any company. And that's a risk of, you know, investing. And that's why we generally stay away from technology companies because there is that risk of, you know, being totally obsolete. Does this become Polaroid? Does it become Kodak? Whatever, whatever your example, Xerox is not, you know, some of those were zeros. Others weren't, but we're, you know, pretty close to it. But, you know, you know, Yeah, it's a risk that it happens.

I just think it's highly unlikely. No, I get, I think fairly compensated. I guess when I invest, I want to be unfairly compensated for the risk. Yeah, no. I think more than more than fairly compensated for the risk, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, you know, 20 times for a company that's growing that quickly. This is, is pretty rare. So where would you put fair value up here? I think we have like 100.

We do it at about a 20 times multiple, and we get $132 a share. But I think this is the company that it will, and I hate using the word compounders. So I think this will, this stock is not only good for the year ahead. I think this will be a stock that you want to own for many, many years and just kind of watch it, watch it grow on a tax-free basis. So they've got two segments, right? When you say Uber, everyone thinks mobility, but they also have delivery that Uber eats and everything. And that has, you know, I think a few years ago, people were skeptical if this was ever going to be, you know, it is a competitive business, DoorDash, Instacart, all this sort of stuff. I think people were skeptical. I think it's emerged as the winner. How do you look at Uber Eats, Uber delivery versus DoorDash Instacart? Like, are they a secular winner? Am I think about that correctly? Or, you know, that's a space that's still evolving. Do you have any worries there?

I think what it is, what it helps with is the dominance it has over Lyft. Why would you become a lift driver when you could do both for Uber, having both and also having a larger customer base that has, you know, both the rides and also the delivery part of the business. I think they're certainly one of the, you know, dominant players in the food delivery. I think it's just a big arsenal, a big tool quiver in their arrow to have that. But yeah, I was, and the market was skeptical coming out of the pandemic are people really going to pay kind of somewhat of an inflated price for the convenience of having food delivery. I think the market kind of has spoken.

But then again, we've been in pretty good, you know, economic times for the people who can afford to use their service. So how it handles in a real recession, that's another, that's a whole other problem. Did you see the Reddit thing that went viral about the guy who said he worked for one of the delivery services, and they had just all the worst pricing mechanisms you could think of? No, no, what would happen. Okay, so it was this Reddit post that went viral, and a guy said, hey, I'm a software engineer. I work for, he didn't say which one it was, but reporters contact him later, and he claimed it was Uber Eats. And he was like, our algorithms are so specific that, you know, we have our delivery drivers,

and we can tell if this is a person like down on their luck or not. And if it's a person that's down under luck, we know they'll take any job we throw their way. So we automatically throw them the low value jobs. And then for you at home, you know, we know your sensitivity and how hungry you are and everything so deeply that will adjust the pricing. You know, if it's a $20 pizza,

but we know you order from this place a lot, it'll be $30 for you and it'll be $40 for the next guy. So it was like really evil stuff, especially on the driver's side. And a bunch of you, journalists investigated it and it was just a guy making it up but it was just a really interesting story because it was like front page of Reddit Uber Eats and DoorDash were responding like this is not our employee we don't do any of that I mean it was like it was the type of evil stuff that would be

like the the plot to a B level bond villain or something I guess it wouldn't be a bond villain because they're just overcharging people for pizza but it went really viral but I do think it kind of speaks to people's frustration like I know I never do delivery I always pick up I'm a hero I know, I know. But, you know, the level of fees, and when I go to a restaurant, I'm like, oh, I paid $12 for this burger. But if I called the rush up directly in order to be 10, I mean, I do think there is some type of crackdown or pushback on just the fees and the pricing or anything? Well, I think, yeah, I think there's a crackdown on like a tip culture in general where you go to a restaurant, you know, to pick up food. and, you know, people want, you know, they put on the keypad 10, 15, 20 percent, you know, it's, it gets a little bit ridiculous, but people really do pay for convenience in the,

in the sense of, you know, the Uber eats part of the world. But I think what's interesting is I don't know if this is true, but I, I heard that if you have both Uber and Lyft installed on your, on your phone, you do get different prices. for you. Luckily, I've got both of them. On the tips, that's another one that the viral blog post that was debunked, it mentioned. It was like, hey, you think you're tipping the driver, but our things are so sophisticated

that, you know, if you offer a $5 tip, then we'll drop how much we're going to pay them by $5 when we offer them the job. So, like, we can, effectively, we take 100% of the tips that wouldn't borrow. But I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Yeah. Last question I'm new, you know. I think of Uber is interesting because if you think of Waymo, Tesla, anyone who wants to

participate here, right? If you think long term and they're investing into the fleet, the heavy asset fleet, like, if Uber is the operating system, right? If Uber is how everybody gets access to that, that is a strategically disadvantaged place for anyone who does this. Tesla has a trillion-dollar market cap. Waymo, probably if they raised, I don't know if they've raised recently, but Waymo would be way over a $200 billion market cap for sure.

if they raised. Do you think a Waymo, a Tesla look at this and say, hey, we need to own in my model, the operating system? And do you think there would be any synergies to an acquisition there or any strategic logic or the counter would be, hey, if you think the operating system needs to work with everyone, you know, there's a, I'm sure IBM wishes they had acquired Microsoft, but if the operating system needs to work with everyone and Waymo buys Uber,

well, then boom, Lyft is the default player for everyone else, and Uber kind of loses all the streak of danger. So do you think there's any acquisition rationale there? I mean, I think there's an acquisition rationale, but I think, you know, Alphabet is, you know, is kind of going to be a rational actor. Musk has said that he doesn't need them, but Musk does say a lot of things that, you know,

he ends up contradicting himself. I do think in this regulatory world that just wouldn't pass muster there. But, you know, as an Uber shareholder, holder, I wouldn't object if they pay the decision. Why wouldn't it pass muster in regulatory? You know, they would have to make some sort of concession, I think, that they have this opened up for other people that can access the network.

I just think it would be big tech mergers would be pretty difficult. But, you know, maybe I don't know. I'm not an antitrust expert. So I don't just like, I'm sure the COJ would not love it and there would be a lot of political blowback. But if you went to court, right, what market are you increasing your market share in? Like, define the market because if Waymo buys Uber, well, Uber is ride share. Waymo has zero ride share. Waymo is. You're going to wait three years to find out or be proven correct? I mean, 18D did that. Or they wait a couple of years to, you know, and drag it through court and, you know, prove that one.

Yeah. It would have better if they just walked away for them. on a whole host level. But I think the argument would be, again, if you're Waymo and you think, like, this is the OS, we need to control the customer experience. We need to. It's strategically important. You buy it. And the DOJ, yes, the big get bigger, but I don't know what the market is that they would

suit a block on. No, you're correct. My point is I don't think they would want to wait two or three years to find out. And then potentially, by the time that happens, you have a different presidential administration that, you know, it could be much more left-leaning and, you know, have problems there. I just think it probably won't happen, but I think there is a strategic fit in there, and it would be an advantage for a Waymo to own it. I think it's really interesting in Waymo's being smart in not using Uber in a lot of the markets,

and every time they do that, they announce they're going to X-City. I think it was recently Minneapolis. I could be wrong. and then Uber stock goes down. The same thing happened a few years ago. People were worried about Tesla. Now they don't even react to that. Waymo seems to be the real competition or perceived competition.

But Amazon's in the game. There's lots of well-funded players. Have you rode in a autonomous car yet? Not the full self-driving type of one. I need to get myself to San Francisco or Phoenix or wherever. I heard it's amazing. I haven't either. I do, like, you get used to it, right?

People used to take elevators and be scared when there wasn't an elevator operator there. And now it would be weird if you had an elevator operator. But I do wonder the first time I hop did and there was no one in the front seat, how I would feel. And, you know, I'm sure within the third ride, I'd be sleeping in the back seat, but that first ride would be, whoa. This has been great. Look, there's 40 other stocks, and we've talked about two of them. Just one quick hit on one more you think is interesting before we wrap this up. Sure.

Universe. Do another you. Oh, my gosh. You and I have spoken offline on this. So super interesting situation. Should I just give a 30 second? Yeah, yeah, please, please. The uniform kind of rental distribution company, competitor is Sintas.

Sintas has tried to buy them now I think it's four times. It's a family control company. They have 70% of the vote. But this time could be different. In about a month, you know, there's been an activist campaign engine capital. When is, you know, is pushing for a sale of the company. One of their board, one of their nominees that they selected to the board, he was defeated, was the grandson of the founder.

So there's real dissension in the family. And, you know, a couple weeks ago, as we were, you know, right after we came to press, with a forgotten 40. Sintas went in and did another bid for $275 a share. The stock was trading at, you know, 160 or so. The synergies are enormous. Sintas would pay well, well, over $300 a share for this company. It is an extremely mismanaged business.

They have a turnaround plan to put things, you know, to make things better. But even under the best case turnaround plan, they don't get to two-seventh-a-old. 75 anywhere anytime soon. I think the board realizes this. I think they're in a really tough situation. But I think, you know, it's, I think they're eventually, they're going to sell this thing. And right now it's trading for $200. I think it's going to happen well in excess of $300 a share. And we'll see what happens. Fingers. Look, I would co-sign everything you said, and I would just add one more thing. I loosely, I don't think I'm breaking your rules. I loosely know the guys at Engine Capital.

And I thought that was the most creative and best activist campaign I saw in 2025. You know, you had a company that was controlled, and every shareholder knows that the company would be better under Sintas's control than, you know, for 15 years, they've tried to turn this thing around. And margins, growth, everything, they're just losing across every metric. And it would be better to just sell to Sintas and take the huge premium walk away in the sunset. But for some reason, most of the family wants to stay in control, even though none of them really work there anymore. I don't get it, but I just thought.

I don't think it's most of the family from at least what I understand. I think it's one or two people, unfortunately the ones who control it, the trust, who want it. I mean, the family's wealthy on paper, but they pay a minuscule dividend, and I think the younger generation wants liquidity, which makes a heck of a lot of sense. And as you mentioned, you know, work significantly in the business. So there's no real attachment. The guy who Engine was going to put on the board, the grandson, he was the last once worked there. And he retired, if I remember correctly, two or three years before. So, yeah, I just thought it was the most creative campaign because they found a controlled company.

And they found, obviously, they did not win the proxy fight, but they embarrassed the heck out of the board. And they found a way to, you know, what better way than say, hey, the last family member who was working there, the grandson of the founder, he's on our side. He thinks you should sell, like, get up. I just thought it was a fantastically creative campaign. And yeah, I can't think of a company that needs to be. I can think of companies that probably needs to be sold more, but it's just so obvious. And the buyer is right there like, hey, here's the checkbook.

Here's a huge premium. It's just crazy a deal hasn't happened. Yeah. Hopefully this will be the year. Hopefully we'll know sooner rather than later. And the board, I cannot think of any reason why this. they would not, you know, accept the family just rejecting it, but any rational reason why they wouldn't suck.

Yeah. Cool. All right. Hey, let's wrap it up there. Jumbra, I'll include a lead to the Forgotten 40 in the show notes for anyone. We did 2.25 of the names, I would say. So anyone who wants to check out the other 37.75, you can go there. And this has been great.

I'm looking forward to having you on for, we'll make it five out of six years in 2020. No, that sounds good. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate it. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial advisor.

Thanks.