Yet Another Value Podcast - Random Ramblings March 2025: the market sell off, relationships with management teams, corp gov

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Welcome to the March 2025 edition of Andrew's Random Ramblings on the Yet Another Value Podcast. Once a month, Andrew will share thoughts on a few topics - this episode includes: the market sell off, relationships with management teams - pros and cons, activism and corporate governance, and where to liveChapters:[0:00] Introduction + Episode sponsor: Daloopa[2:30] The market sell off[15:45] Developing relationships with management teams[22:02] Corporate governance and activism[25:26] Where to live[28:58] Planet MicroCap Showcase: VEGAS 2025 in partnership with MicroCapClubToday's sponsor: DaloopaPost-earnings reports are more than just a data dump—they’re a goldmine of opportunities waiting to be unlocked. And with Daloopa, you can turn those opportunities into actionable insights.Daloopa’s dynamic scenario-building tools integrate updated earnings data, letting you model multiple strategic outcomes, like what happens if a company revises guidance upward. And with automated sensitivity analysis, you can quickly understand the impact of key variables like cost pressures, currency fluctuations, or interest rate changes.This means you’ll deliver more actionable insights for your clients, helping them navigate risks and seize opportunities faster. Ready to enrich your post-earnings narratives? Visit http://daloopa.com/YAV today to get started.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Delupa. Post-earnings reports are more than just a data dump. There are a gold line of opportunities waiting to be unlocked, and with Delupa, you can turn those opportunities into actionable insights. Delupa's dynamic scenario building tools integrate updated earnings data, letting you model multiple strategic outcomes, like what happens if a company revises guidance upwards, and with automated sensitivity analysis, you can quickly understand the impact of key variables, like cost pressures, currency fluctuations, or interest rate changes.

This means you'll deliver more actionable insights for your clients, helping them navigate risks and seize opportunities faster. Ready to enrich your post-earnings narratives, visit dilupa.com-y-a-v today to get started. That's DeL-L-O-O-O-P-A dot com slash Y-A-V or visit the link in the show notes. All right, hello, and welcome to the yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. If you like this podcast, it would mean a lot always if you could rate, subscribe, review, wherever you're watching or listening to it.

You know, I say that all the time, and I realize when you say something for almost 300 episodes in a row, you can start trying it out. But look, the best way to get more of this podcast, improved podcasts, improved guests is to get more listeners. And the best way to get more listeners is word of mouth. And the best way for that is either you telling a friend you like this podcast or rate subscribe review really helps kind of improve us in all the algos and everything. Anyway, that's my ramble. at the start of my ramble because it is, today is March 15th, it is a Saturday

you know, yesterday was March 14th, Pie Day, one of my favorite days of the year normally. Unfortunately I'm doing a diet so I couldn't really dive into pies as heavily as I'd normally like to, but this March 15th is Saturday and I am here to do my random ramblings for the month

of March. Before I get into that, let me just start this podcast with the disclaimer, remind everyone that nothing on this podcast is investing in advice. That is always true, but particularly true today. I'm going to ramble on for 20 to 30 minutes. So just remember, I'm literally just rambling. Please consults financial advisor, not investing advice to you, all your own work, all that sort of stuff. Anyway, it is Saturday, March 15th, and there are four different topics I want to talk to you about. The market sell-off,

then relationships with management teams, pros and cons, and then two quick discussions on activism and corporate governance and then ending thought on kind of where to live. So let's start with the markets off. It is Saturday, March 15th, and the markets have just over the past kind of six weeks have just been absolutely brutal, just straight down, especially the Russell 2000 has just been straight down. I think somebody sent me something that said like kind of since late November. If there's been 15 weeks or so, the Russell's been down like all 15 or maybe 14 to 15. And none of that sounds like much. Look, as I'm taping, I think the Russell is down 10% over the past month. The S&P's down 6 or 7%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but I will tell you

underneath the headlines, especially the S&P, I don't know what's going on with the indices, but I feel like there's just absolute carnage in a lot of the stuff I'm looking at, and it doesn't get reflected in the indices. Like some of these smaller names have just been brutalized for, in my opinion, no particular reasons. And then cyclicals, I've been saying for six months, if you invest in something with cyclicality, it is forecasting an absolute eminent recession. And over the past six weeks,

it's gone from imminent recession to absolute depression. So I wanted to start this podcast off with a few discussions of the market self off. And I will note, I put a post up over the week. I'll include a link in the show notes. It was on markets and turmoil. I say that kind of tongue-in-cheek tariffs and re-balancing your portfolio. And say that kind of tongue-in-cheek, because, look, things can always get worse, right?

Think back to COVID. Think back to the global financial crisis. But I would say sentiment feels pretty bad right now. It can certainly go to worse. We could, you know, slap the tariffs up to 500% or something, but it feels pretty bad right now. So here are the things I wanted to talk about. First, you know, just as an investor, it is your job to remain cool when things are getting going crazy. That is not to say, hey, if you own something that is levered to the gills and is going to be really exposed to tariffs or a recession or something, that is not to say you shouldn't like kind of reassess and sell if something's clearly materially affected.

But we all know stories of the, hey, my grandparents, you know, during the dot-com. bubble. The stocks went down and they sold all of their, they sold all their stock or during the savings of loan crisis of the 90s. They sold all their stock. They stuffed it in their mattress and cash and they never made money because of that. Right. Like your job as just a general investor is stay the course, right? You don't want to be wildly fluctuating, going to cash because things seem scary. Just like, this is just a general, general thing. You need to stay the course, you know, that's just the personal finance stuff that you've always talking about dollar cost waiting, not taking your cash exposure to 100 because the market seems like it's going down.

Like, that was actually probably the time to be being pretty aggressive just based on how bad sentiment is and everything. So that's just one general investing type theme I wanted to talk about. I mentioned, look, the dislocation, and that's one thing I want to dive in here, the dislocation feels much worse than I'm kind of seen in the overall indices. And I'm not sure why the indices don't appear to be reflexing that. Like, the SMP 500, look, a lot of the SMP 500 at this point is Apple, the fangs, the Magnificent Seven or whatever.

They're so big and they take up so much of the indices that they really drive it. But even in the Russell, again, the Russell is down 10% over the past month. And if you ask me, like, gone to my head, I would have guessed at minimum 20% just based on some of the moves and some of the stocks I've seen that have reported good earnings and seen their stocks go down 15, 20 percent. Some of the stocks that haven't reported earnings and have seen their stocks go down 20 percent or more. I'm just surprised. So I think there's a decent bit of dislocation out there. And one thing that I would just, I am pushing myself on and I think you need to do too is you need to look at your portfolio really dispassionately right

now. And you need to be looking at all your names and saying, hey, you should do this all the time. But I think it's particularly true during periods of dislocation and market turmoil. Look at its dispassion and say, hey, I bought this stock for 100. Let's say it's at 95 right now, right? It might have been my best idea last month. But it's gone down 5%. And a lot of other stocks I follow have gone down 20, 30, 40%. You know, you need to look really dispassionately and say,

is this really my best idea right now? You can't be anchoring to I bought this at 100. I need to make money. Like, it's better to swap into the things that are more dislocated. Now, you have to balance this against everything, right? There are some trading costs. If you've got a really low tax basis or something, you've got to consults financial advisor, I'd say, but you know, you've got to consider taxes and everything.

And you also, I'm not saying to do this willy-nilly, you know, like a stock you follow really closely that you bought it 100 goes from 100 to 95. A stock you don't follow at all goes from 100 to 10. I'm not saying to go swap into that $10 stock. But, you know, most investors I know have a group of call it 20 to 50 names that they have a lot of knowledge on, a lot of institutional knowledge. I like to say, you know, there's a lot of companies probably 40 to 50 where I've followed them long enough that, you know, I'm close to them. And if I think there's an opportunity there, I could probably be ready to do something on it in maybe it's 24 hours, maybe it's a week. But, you know, I think of companies where two years ago I did like four expert calls.

I read every conference call. I read multiple transcripts. I built out a model. I studied some of the competitors, you know, unless things have really gone crazy, I could probably be up to speed on that company with 48 to 72 hours of pretty focused work. And, you know, I think most investors have something like that. So you're saying if there's a company that's in your wheelhouse that you've done a lot of work on, like you need to be looking at your portfolio against all those companies.

So let's talk to this location. You know, again, the indexes are down 10, the Russell's down 10% over the past month. I just pulled up some random companies that I followed for a long time. You know, like Shift 4, that's the one I'm going to mention that I have not followed, but I have so many friends who love that company. That's down, as I talk about this, that's down 30%. I mean, look, if you were long, if you've done a lot of work on Shift 4 and you think that's a great company, they almost sold themselves last year, I know that.

down 30% like that's a big move that's a opportunity exponential fitness very controversial stock i've had i've had people on the podcast to talk about it before i think disclosure i might own like a hundred shares that i put into a tracking account or something at some point but that is that now they report a really bad earnings this week but that is down 57% over the past week you want to talk dislocation have a controversial somewhat levered uh company report bad earnings into a down 10% tape. Like, I will tell you, I have a model belt up there. I could probably be up to speed on that. And you can go listen to the podcast I did. I have some questions on the sustainability of some aspects of that business. But, you know, that is a company that is trading very

cheap on the diminished forward expectations, I would say. Down 57%. Oh, report bad earnings, be controversial and have a down market. That's one way to get really dislocated quickly. If you like coal, most of the coal stocks I follow were already pretty cheap. They're down 20, 30, 40 percent over the past few months. Coal markets have been weak. But, you know, I think there's a lot of signs that coal actually, the demand outlook might be somewhat improving. Obviously, you've got to differentiate between metal, metal and thermal.

But I think there's interest in there. SphR, that's the, they own the sphere out in Vegas. That's one I mentioned in the article. That's down like 30% in a month. month, you know, if I was like, hey, what is a business that's not going to be impacted by tariffs that, you know, the near-term outlook shouldn't matter that much? Sphere's probably one I would list. Like, you know, it's a big giant sphere that's built out in the middle of Las Vegas. It's going to be there whether tariffs are 100% or 700%. Now, advertising revenues might change,

the ability to license the sphere, which they've always talking out of and build sphere two and three, that might change. But, you know, that's one where I think you're probably buying the for your below replacement costs, you do have concerns on corporate governance, but there's one that's probably dislocated. Forward Air, the trigger there is FWRD. I mean, that has a huge who of activists in there. They did one of the worst deals of all time. I think last I checked, they were trading below what they did the deal for.

There should be a lot of acquires there that looks pretty cheap versus the assets. Now, obviously, it reported kind of poor earnings. I think there's questions around corporate governance and all that sort of stuff, but that stock is down 35% over the past month or so. So I'm listing some things that are dislocated that could be really interesting. Some of them I've done quite a bit of work on. Some of them I've done little work on. I don't believe I really own any of those.

But just some things that could be interesting, always happy to swap thoughts with people. But look, again, just to wrap this up, there's a lot of dislocation out there. I just listed six stocks that could be quite interesting that are all down somewhere between 20, most of around 35, and some of them approaching 50%. I think if you've got a portfolio and it's held up well, or even if it hasn't held up well, if you're not kind of looking around and saying, hey, are there better opportunities out there? Can I swap into better things?

Your job as an investor is always sway opportunity costs. And in particular, in dislocations, swapping into things that have been beating down, That is one of the ways you can really outperform. You've got to, yes, there's a thousand other things to consider, but I think that should be top of mind right now. In terms of the market environment, look, tariffs suck. I feel like we're kind of, I don't know if anybody's, I don't know. I'll refrain from commenting politically, but, you know, market sentiment feels really, really bad right now. And the one thing, just to come back to the dislocation and the cyclical thing, post-com,

And with the COVID boom, most of these companies, like, there was this huge gusher of cash flow. And I think one of the things that's different today versus, say, 10 years ago, if we're heading into a recession or whatever, most companies used the post-COVID boom and the cash flow gush that they got to reshape their balance sheets. You know, I used to point to U.S. deal. Heading into COVID in the last recessions, they were, they had a decent bit of leverage. they had this huge cash gusher and they basically paid down all their leverage and went net cash. So, you know, in prior recessions, you'd say, oh, my God, U.S. Steel's leverage goes from, it's two times EBDA, their leverage goes to basically infinity because they're not earning anything. And all of a sudden you're like, look, if this recession lasts 18 months instead of six months or

something, U.S. deal might have bankruptcy risk or restructuring risk or something, right? Today, and I haven't looked at U.S. deal a month, but I believe their balance sheet is just completely. transformed. Last time I looked, they had no net debt, basically. They are still in a pure deal with Nippon, if I remember quickly, but, you know, today if they went into a recession, I would say, oh, there's no doubt that U.S. deal is going to come out on the other side. Now, they might burn cash for the next year to three years if things were terrible, but they're going to be able to come out because they have no debt, right? So, yeah, maybe they'll have debt at the end of it if they're burning cash, but I just think these things are completely

transformed and people, you know, people say, oh, U.S. deal drops by 50% in a recession. I'd say, oh, well, yeah, but they were two X levered then. So their stock would drop because people are starting to adjust for bankruptcy risk. And, you know, if they had 800 million of equity and 200 million of debt, the stock would drop 50% because on an EV basis, you know, that was a billion, their stock's kind of only dropping 40% if I'm doing the, their EVs dropping 40% if I'm doing that math in my head, roughly correct, or 33%. You know, if they have no net cash now and their market caps, 800 million. If the stop drops 50%, well, then their AV is actually dropping 50%.

It's like, hey, they should drop less just because they don't have any debt. So you don't have those bankruptcy risks and the EV is all equity supported. So I think a lot of companies are in a much different place today than they were historically. And I think that sets all of them up well to whether any short or mediums terms are. Now, that's not so things could get way worse than I'm talking about, but a garden variety, recession and one-time hit caused by tariffs and stuff, just about every company I follow would be able to weather it. I'm sure you could point to a few different one-offs that they have a lot of leverage for

one reason or another, but most companies I follow have dramatically better balance sheets than I've ever seen them have before. So I think that's one other kind of margin of safety or thing pointing there. Okay. Anyway, speaking of dislocations, one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently, and this is me personally is developing relationships with management teams. And let me back up. I think my biggest flaws as investor is I am, I am slow to rip the band-aid off and cut the cord when a thesis goes against me. And I'm really working to improve on that. But, you know, I buy a stock at 10 and I

say, hey, this company is going to be growing. Earnings are going to be growing. Cash flow is going to be great, great balance sheet. And then they report a bad quarter. And the stock goes to and I say, well, you know, earnings aren't going to be growing anymore, but now it's trading for a really cheap multiple. So now, instead of having this growth story, I'm here for a cheap multiple story, and, you know, on and on and on. And I call that thumb-sucking. And I think that's my worst trade as investor, just not being willing to cut the cord.

And I kind of talked about it a little bit in my book club on advanced portfolio management I did with Bern Hobart, where, you know, I used to laugh at people who use stop losses, right? A stop loss where, hey, if the stock goes down 20 percent, I'm out. And increasingly I see the logic in that where it's like, hey, a stop loss is a way to keep you from thumb-sucking, right? The stock goes down 20%, and you probably want to adjust it from market moves and everything, but the stock goes down 20% is a way to say, okay, my thesis is broken, I'm going to sell, and then if I want to be invested in this company, I need to kind of like actively re-underwrite it and actively buy the stock, reassess my opportunity costs, right? So why did I mention this? I have noticed my track record when I form good relationships with management teams. And, you know, I mean, there were type of relationships where I talk to them, you know,

obviously after every quarter, but, you know, we have each other's phone numbers. We might text about the industry or something. I'm not saying I'm best friends with them. I can't think of any publicly traded companies where I've become like that close to friends. But, you know, the management team who they come to dinner, they come to New York once or twice a year and will, we're going to go grab dinner or we're going to go grab a coffee or something we're talking about and you know when I call them say oh hey like I remember you said this in Q2 of 2023 how's that changed now my history when I look at it kind of dispassionately is when I form a good working

almost friendship relationship with publicly traded management teams my results have been worse than when I'm just kind of dispassionately reading the calls reading the transcripts reading the filings in building my model and maybe thinking for myself. And I wonder if that's, it's very small sample size, right? But I have been wondering and I've been talking to other investors about like, hey, when you form a relationship with management team, how have your investments gone? Have they gone better or worse for you? And I'm wondering if forming a relationship with management teams for me is something that

can contribute to my thumb-sucking tendencies, right? because the company reports about a quarter, stocks down, and I can, I could re-underwrite my thesis, and I try to, obviously, but I can also say, oh, well, you know, I talk to the CEO, and yeah, it was a tough quarter, but this is industry-wide and, you know, X, Y, Z reason, and they replaced the, they replace the head of sales and all this sort of stuff, and it's very easy to start sucking your thumb. You know, I think the most famous example of this is invalidant, Ackman, And when all the fraud allegations come out against Valiant, he sends Mike Pearson, the CEO, Valiant, that famous email, Mike, is there any fraud going on here, right?

And you can't email a CEO and ask if there's any fraud going on. If there's fraud going on, the CEO is never going to tell you. And if there's not fraud going on, well, cool, then he's selling you the truth. But it's kind of a loaded question. But it's the type of thing where you become very good friends with them. And I think it's very easy to outsource your judgment and your due diligence to that friendship and the person versus doing your own. And, you know, one other thing I'd say is CEOs is even founder CEOs,

but CEOs generally become CEOs because they are very good salespeople. And I don't necessarily mean that in terms of the closing deals on the dotted line. But, you know, you become a CEO because you build the internal political capital in some way, shape, or form to get promoted to CEO. And I have found, especially CEOs who have come to know quite well, you know, sometimes they are they understand how to play investors and how to play boards and stuff and they're very good at it and they are very good at telling you what you want to hear and there's a reason they got promoted that right and as a investor your job is a lot more

it's both quantitative and qualitative but most investors are running small funds they're working with a handful of analysts they're working by themselves they're individual investors yeah maybe they're at fidelity but even if you're at a big firm you're working with a handful investors. If you're a CEO, you're working with dozens and dozens of people, five to 10 board members, three to seven direct reports, maybe hundreds of people underneath them. They're probably much better at getting political buy-in and selling than you are. And I think you're, you know, there's the famous quote, how do you beat Michael Jordan, you do it by not playing him at basketball. If you're playing games of salesmanship and friendship against CEOs, I think they're probably

going to be able to win that game. So it's just something I've been debating, like, hey, do I stop trying to form, not that I can't have a good working relationship or discuss companies with CEOs, but I wonder if even that, like Walter Schloss famously just invested from a room, like a cold room, I wonder if that is better and you just kind of say, hey, I will judge the CEO and the company on the actions that they take and the numbers they report. I don't need to get chatter from them about chatter and comment. commentary for them because chatter and commentary can be lies. It can be skewed. What they put

on the paper, yes, it could be lies as well, but that's going to be a lot less biased and you're going to have a lot less, you're going to have to make the interpretation for yourself versus having them spoon-feed it to you in a way that that's probably positive for them. Okay, I've been rambling for a while. Look, my hope is that going from market dislocation to talking about thumb-sucking relationship with management teams, that's a smooth transition. And speaking of relationship, with the management team, hopefully a smooth transition here is just a quick thing on activism and corporate governance. I was talking to a friend the other day, and when you start getting

into corporate governance, it can get a little bit addicting in a few ways. First, you know, there's the Mike from Nogap. There's the famous thing. Once you start seeing the dark arts of corporate governance, how corporations and boards can springload grants to enrich themselves before good news comes out and everything. Once you start seeing the dark arts, it's kind of hard to stop. And I would also say once you start seeing like kind of the dark arts behind

boardroom politics and how these companies manage you entrench their directors and stay in control, it's kind of hard to stop seeing that as well. So I was talking to a friend and we were talking about how once you start looking at these for it starts

it starts to get hard not to look for them. So anyway, I mentioned this because last month I published a podcast on Sage saying, which I disclosure am quite longed that stock, talking about, hey, here's the reasons I think this company needs to engage in a sales process. I believe in good, uh, active ownership. If you own the stock and you agree, you need to, you should send a letter to the board, or if you don't agree, send a letter to the board and tell them that too. And try to lay out my rationale. Uh, one of my goals, I just want to note for this podcast is I increasingly want

to do stuff like that, right? Like, if you are long a company and there's a clear corporate governance problem in some way, shape, or form. I want to use this podcast to shine a light on that. I'm not saying I want to start driving hard activism at every company in the S&P 500, but especially smaller cap companies. You know, when you start doing this work, small cap companies get away with a lot of crazy stuff. These borders of directors often have no stock ownership.

They pay themselves crazy amounts of money for disastrous work. And for many of these companies, I could point to multiple, as an outsider. points of multiple things that I think could be changed or improved, that would improve economics, that would improve economics, improve the share price, all this sort of stuff, which you know what it might do? It might make the director's lives slightly, slightly more uncomfortable, and they're not willing to do that because that slight uncomfort outweighs the millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of value they create. And again, I'm not saying for all of these, though, for many of them they should, I'm not saying for all of these, it's,

hey, you need to sell the company or you need to do a huge cost cutting around. For some of these companies, there are many simple operational things that if you spend two days researching the company, it's clear they are behind in one operational thing or another that they could improve. And because the management team is lazy and unmotivated and because the board isn't willing to look into that, the operational things take much longer or never happen than they should. So increasingly, I want to shine a lot, use the very small platform and the dozens of listeners I have to shine a light on these situations. You know, generally boards who don't own

stock, companies that need to do one thing or the other, sometimes it sells, sometimes it's just cut costs, maybe you've produced the hugely inflated pay of some of these boards and major teams. And I'm not saying all, but many in the small cap world have it. I want to shine a light on those. So, you know, I guess what I'm saying is if you are a informed shareholder and you got a company that fits that bill, you know, reach out. I'd love to chat and find a way to make that work. And it would be nice if this podcast was one way to slightly, slightly improve corporate governance, outcomes, everything there. So keep that in mind if you've, if you're interested or if you have anything else. And then, okay, last thing to ramble on. My wife and I

are thinking about moving from New York for a variety of reasons, taxes and cost of living being a massive one. So we are thinking about that. My friend Artem Fokin is always trying to drag me out to California, and I know he listens to this. So I don't think California is the list because you move from New York for taxes and cost of living, and you go to California. It's kind of like, hey, you know, you went tomato tomato. But I mentioned that just to see if Artem's listening. But one thing I have thought about is where would a young Warren Buffett live? Right?

Warren Buffett, obviously, he lives out in Omaha, loves it there. I think family ties. He grew up there, all that sort of stuff. But if Buffett was 21 and just starting to screw out, I wonder where he would live. I doubt it would be in Omaha for tax reasons and for all sorts of other reasons. I doubt it would be in New York. I mean, maybe. Maybe the financial network in New York is so powerful that, you know, there's a reason a lot of hedge fund managers, everything.

But I wonder for a young Warren Buffett, people might say awesome, people might say in Miami, low taxes, still domestic, Puerto Rico. And I think low taxes would be a consideration. but I do wonder, like, would they go to, one of the tough things as a domestic investor investing internationally is you often don't understand the international landscape. You know, one thing I've hesitated with when I've looked at, there's a lot of Asian and African companies that look crazy cheap to me. But when I do the work, I'm like, I don't really understand the geopolitics there. And I worry that if I invested in it, I would be the sucker at the table.

And, you know, six months from now, somebody would be like, hey, that's a great company invested in, but they've got mob ties. Or, hey, you know, you invest in that company and then the government said, hey, that's a great company. We're changing the rule so that all of their profits become our profits. You know, I worry to be the sucker at the table. I wonder if, like, a young Warren Buffett would say, hey, there are so many inefficiently priced small caps in Asia. I'm going to go live in Singapore. I'm going to go live in Thailand, something like that. And I'm going to really have my boots on the ground. And that's where I'm going to develop my network. And those are the fast-growing economy. So I'm going to develop my network over the...

there and really, really have my foot, the pulse of kind of the economy that, the economies and markets that will be the fastest growing in the future. No, but again, I don't know. I don't know where I'm Buffett, but it's just something I'm not moving to Asia, but it's just something I've thought a lot about of, hey, you know, for me, wherever we move, I want to be optimal for work. So, you know, it's got to have access to airports, finance, markets, all that type of stuff, low taxes and cost of living, obviously, be in consideration.

But if you were young and single and just like infinitely hungry, I don't know if the answer would be to live in the domestically. I wonder if there would be more opportunity to go and live in Asian, like get boots on the grounds in a really unique way and invest in unique markets and build a more unique network. No, I'm just rambling. Anyway, I think I've actually been rambling for 25 or 30 minutes. Maybe my ramblings are getting longer in my older age. So again, March 15th, 2025, I will wrap it up there.

Oh, with one last note. I will try to do a rambling before, but I'm going to plan a microcap in Las Vegas from April, let's call it April 21st, April 24th. I have been two years in a row. It is one of the highlights of my year. I have so much fun. It is a really unique group of people because there aren't a lot of people who invest in microcaps. So if you are going, you should reach out and let me know.

I'm going to plan some fun dinners, all that type of stuff. Just come say hello and I can include you to that. And if you're on the fence about going, I've been trying to push everyone I know to go because the more, it's one of the fun things about events. The more people who go, the better the network, the more fun it is and the better the cycle spends. So if you're on the fence or something, you should come. If you're on the fence, reach out to me and I'll chat with you and we can talk. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Obviously, you need to have some interest in microcap investing or value investing.

Like I'd say the both because even if you say, hey, I don't invest in microcats. I think if you come and you meet like 50 value investors who have interest in microcaps, but maybe you're interested in other stuff. I think you will have a lot of fun. I'll try to make sure of it, but I have a great time every year. And just wanted to mention that reach out to me if you want to chat or if you're going so I can include you. I think that's going to be a ton of fun.

And I mentioned that because I'm not sure if I'm going to do a random ramblings before or after that conference. But there you go. That's my random ramblings for March. It is March 15th. I'm logging off and I will talk to you guys before next month because we've got some great podcasts coming up this week.

But I will talk to you soon. Bye. Today's podcast is brought to you by DeLupa. Post-Sernings reports are more than just a data dump. There are a gold line of opportunities waiting to be unlocked. And with DeLupa, you can turn those opportunities. into actionable insights. DeLUPA's dynamic scenario building tools

integrate updated earnings data, letting you model multiple strategic outcomes, like what happens if a company revises guidance upwards, and with automated sensitivity analysis, you can quickly understand the impact of key variables, like cost pressures, currency fluctuations, or interest rate changes. This means you'll deliver more actionable insights for your clients,

helping them navigate risks and seize opportunities faster. Ready to enrich your post-earnings narratives, visit dilupa.com slash yavie today. to get started. That's the LUPA, D-A-L-O-O-O-P-A-com slash Y-A-V, or visit the link in the show notes. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered an 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.