Yet Another Value Podcast - $VEON: a busted EM telecom hiding a 4x? | Samit Umatiya, UIG Funds

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

$VEON trades like a busted emerging-markets telecom, but it owns 84% of Ukraine's Kyivstar and a Pakistani fintech, JazzCash, that already moves 15% of the country's GDP. Samit Umatiya of UIG Funds lays out the sum-of-the-parts case for why the holdco could be worth roughly 4x today's price, and Andrew pushes back hard the whole way: a not-so-storied history of value destruction, a sanctioned 45% shareholder, capital controls, and a long graveyard of telecoms that bungled every growth opportunity they ever had. The result is one long push and pull on whether the upside is real this time.This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with a web terminal plus a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamentals straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Andrew uses it himself. Get 15% off at https://fiscal.ai/yavChapters:00:00 The setup: a sum-of-the-parts EM telecom nobody talks about01:31 Sponsor: Fiscal.ai02:35 Who is Samit Umatiya and what is VEON04:19 Vimpelcom to VEON: the history and the Russia exit08:14 Why is the market asleep on this name?11:31 The sum of the parts: Kyivstar plus four frontier markets13:59 Bridging the EV gap: Andrew's $8B vs the bull's $3B holdco16:36 Valuing a telecom on revenue: the "it's a tech company" case17:54 JazzCash: 15% of Pakistan's GDP, never independently valued21:00 The bridge to ~$1B of free cash flow and a 4x23:40 Organic vs. bolt-on digital growth24:34 Capital controls and getting cash out of the op-cos27:11 What the market is missing: demographics and under-penetration31:09 Starlink: competitor or partner in Ukraine's rebuild?35:31 Digital stickiness and retention37:42 The Kaspi problem: a dominant super app that never re-rated39:25 The AI 1440 strategy and a sovereign-AI moat42:31 Is telecom just structurally bad at capturing growth?45:11 Capital allocation and the next catalyst: a JazzCash spin49:38 The elephant in the room: LetterOne's sanctioned 45% stake54:05 Geopolitical turmoil as a feature, not a flaw55:24 Is that 45% block actually an opportunity?57:09 Founder DNA, CEO Kaan Terzioglu, and the spin-off playbook1:01:56 WrapUIG Funds (Samit Umatiya) - https://uigfunds.comLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.comSee our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimerProduction and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

All right, hello and welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. Today, you're about to listen to my episode with Submit Umataya from UIG Funds. It is a really interesting company, and you're going to hear me struggle with this as we talk to the podcast. The company we're going to talk about is Vion and, you know, not investing advice. You can see the disclaimer at the end of the podcast and the show notes, but the company's VON. And they're really interesting because they are an emerging market telecom company that trades in the U.S. And you kind of get a sum of this part story because they own 85% of KYI.

which is Ukraine's telecom company, and that's publicly traded. It's a D-SPAC. It's listed on the U.S. So you get this interesting some of the parts story between, you know, they've got a emerging market company to control and a lot of things. But then you also have these interesting growth angles where they have a lot of these super apps in Pakistan and Bangladesh and everything. And when you start looking at those and you start thinking, hey, what are these super apps worth? You know, if they were spun out outside of telecom mothership, well, all of a sudden, you know, the sky is the limit. and you started looking at these and you say, oh, my God, I get all these in this little

in this little hold co. But then on the counter side, and we'll discuss these too, you know, it is a company with a not-so-story history, to put it politely, a margin market telecom is a really difficult place to play. And you'll hear it just through my questions, just like the push and pull up, oh, my God, the upside so high, oh, my God, you know, did it work for them? No, but it'll work for me now. Just a really interesting company, really interesting conversation. We're going to get there on one second, but first a word from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.AI. Fiscal.A.I.

is a moderate financial data provider for global equities. In addition to their web-based terminal, Fiscal is one of the leading data connectors for Cloud and ChadGGBT. With their self-serve API, you can connect in real-time fundamental data directly to your LOM. And look, I sent it in a podcast before and I'll say it again. I am. They're not just an advertiser. I've been doing lots of cool stuff with Claude and Co-Rour. in particular, building all sorts of awesome tools,

and I need an API. So guess what? I signed up with my own money, toss my own credit card down and said, hey, fiscal.aI, I need you guys to plug it to my cloud code for me so I can keep building these tools and avatis, that's real-time, fundamental data, and stock prices everything. And that includes more than 20 years of financial statements,

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And there'll be a ranking show notes too. All right. Hello. Welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. And with today, I'm happy to have submit Umatia from UIGPONs. Submit, how's it going? Good, Andrew. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Well, no, go ahead. No, I think it's great that we're finally here. I've been watching, you know, your podcast for some time now. And, you know, thought it would be the right time and opportunity to come hop on and, you know, share a few thoughts. It's super excited for it. Let me just give everyone a disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast investing device. You can see the full disclaimer in the show notes or at the end of the podcast. Always true. But we are talking about a U.S. listed stock today with their hands at a lot of national market. So that obviously comes with, comes with Adiris. So just keep that in mind.

So, submit, I'll just talk to you. The company we're going to talk about is Veon. They trade V-E-O-N on the, I think it's the NYC. I can't remember if it's NYSC or NASDA, but it's domestic. So I'll tell us it over to you. What is V-O-N and why are they so interesting? Yeah, so V-On in a nutshell, is a telecom company. I think when you talk about telecom companies,

there's this, you know, low growth, a low return-on-invested capital stigma around these companies. And so that's why they're normally priced at, you know, low multiples. And then you toss in an emerging frontier market company like Veon. And, you know, just especially with all the AI hype that's going on right now, why would anyone want to take a look? And so I think these are areas that, you know, we like to focus on. I think that's where a lot of the mispricing and undervaluation are. And so for VON, let's just, you know, go over some background history before we dive into the investment basis and, you know, the valuation and all that.

So Vion was formed in 1991 as Vimblecom, and it was founded by this American named Augie Fabella. And so Augie was, you know, born and raised in Chicago. He had multiple, you know, side gigs and jobs in, you know, the telecom space. And so for one of his endeavors, I think he had a sales opportunity in Soviet Russia. I think in 1991, that was the last year rule of Gorbachev, of, Soviet Union before they dissolved. And so he was headed over to Russia for, you know, the sales opportunity. And he came across this scientist, Dr. Dmitri Zemin, I think, if I'm pronouncing that

right. And basically him and Augie got together and kind of formed what is beyond today. And just a little background context. I know everyone has a stigma around Soviet, Russia, of how bad and all the propaganda around it, you know, how bad it used to be. But I think we could all agree that there were human rights abuses and without getting too political. There was suppression of speech, religion, and all that. And so I think what AGI and his whole mentality was that let's create a platform, let's create a company that allows for the circulation of free speech. It allows us to be a

allows, you know, the citizens of Soviet Russia to communicate with each other. And that's where they kind of got the idea of VIMPLCOM, which is now Veon. And so they formed VIMPLCOM in 1991. They took it public in 1995. It was the first, I believe, Russian company to be listed on the NYSE, on the American stock market. And then by 2005, they had expanded into Ukraine. And after 2005, they were in 18 countries by 2011. After 2011, they realized they were too levered. They'd had all these acquisitions that they made in countries like Algeria, Italy, and it was time that they kind of deconsolate and, you know, get rid of, you know, some divestitures in those countries. And after doing so, they landed on six markets, six markets being Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. And until recently, I would say about three years ago, they divested their Russian operations for reasons we can dive into.

I'm pretty sure people can figure out the reasons they had to infest their Russian operations. No, look, that's a great history. I wouldn't have a lot. You know, I am a little surprised because, as you said, the company's been around for a while. And I do know, you know, especially before the Russian invasion, this was a popular, and it's fine, you know, it's beyond now. in its prior form, it was kind of a popular some of the parts pitch among value investors. And it's kind of the arrested development meme of, did it work for them? No, but it might work for us now because people were just getting their heads cut off. Since the Russian invasion,

like I am surprised, maybe I'm just not following the same circles as they used to or something. I just have not heard a lot of people talk about this or pitch this or anything. And I'm particularly surprised because we'll talk about the Ukraine and everything, but they IPO, you know, 85% of their Ukraine subsidiary. So you've got this, some of the parts start. I'm just, I'm surprised by the lack of interest here. And I'll ask you, like, you've got to write up on your, in your fund letter. You know, you've obviously reached yours to talk to it. Do you feel that lack of interest?

Am I just not following the right people? Or have you had a lot of investors kind of nibble on this and say, hey, we're curious in this? So our first exposure of Vion, I want to be transparent and honest right off the bat. It was in a company we just felt, you know, across through a screener. We were kind of, you know, looking into the Ukrainian play when the war started happening. I think it was a very neglected part of the market. And we knew that, you know, once this war kind of ends, it's not a question of, you know, when. It's not a question of if.

It's a question of when. I think there would be a huge tailwind in reconstruction of Ukraine. And so we were kind of going in and out of, you know, contemplating whether we wanted to invest in Ukraine. We came across this letter to management back in, I believe, mid-2020 or mid-2020. And it was written up by Himanchu Shah of Shaw Capital Management based in South Carolina. And basically, I read Shaw's letter and it highlighted kind of these points of how to get these towers monetized and all the asset-heavy infrastructure monetized. so Vion could crystallize value because Vion was lagging. And let's be honest, when you look at the stock price from right before the Ukraine and Russia

war boiled over, it halved, actually in third after. So it was about time that, you know, you figure out how to get these assets monetized. And so Shaw kind of took the lead on that. I think Von now is like 40% of their portfolio. But back then, I believe it was still a good. chunk, I think about 17 to 18 percent when we were tracking it. And so back then, there was not a lot of chatter regarding Vian, not even a lot of chatter regarding Ukrainian assets. I think the war was so fresh that, you know, investors weren't really considering the implications or consequences of,

you know, what was going to happen and just a lot of looming uncertainty around that space. And even to this day, I mean, I was looking on Value Investors Club. Funny enough, I just saw a write-up on Kievstar, their Ukrainian subsidiary. And I think that was the first public, you know, write-up that I read. And so I think in terms of, I would say, equity research or in terms of any, you know, public writing on the name, I haven't really seen much. And I think it has to do with a lot of the complexities regarding Veon and their five, their four, their five different emerging markets. I think it's just really hard to grasp it. I don't really blame anyone, but once you dig deep into it and you do the sum of the parts valuation, as we'll

talk about, it makes sense to you why this is such a gem. No, that's perfect. And I'm with you, like, you know, Kiev, sorry, just maybe it's because I run in the SPAC circles. Like, I know people have off and on talked about that. I've had people talk about like every time it looks like Ukraine's going to make a push or the war's going to end. The first thing I'll hear people mention is KIAF, right? Because it's like this narrow float company, probably rebuild the telecom in Ukraine as this comes. Like you could see a lot of plays there. So it's a really direct play. But I've just never heard anyone talk about it. Well, let's turn to that. So I've got questions on all of the, on some of the different subsidiaries and value and everything. But you mentioned there are kind of

five subs these days because the Russian subs gone. Why don't we just start with the sum of the parts? Maybe you can quickly outline the couple of markets there in, how you think about the value and how you would build up. As we are talking, I think the stock is trading at about $51 per share. So maybe we can just build up to some of the parts with each of the different components. Yeah, sure. I think we could start with the sum of the parts and then dive into it.

But if you kind of start off with what's already in the market, as you see, said yourself, you know, Vion's stake in KivStar is about 84.6%. And so if you take that stake, it's valued approximately at about $2.8 billion. And Vion's EV as of the last few weeks is about $4.9 billion. And so the KivStar stake alone accounts for, you know, more than half of the total market cap. And so every other in the, every other asset in the portfolio, whether that's, you know, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the group's digital platform, the fintech ecosystem, even the enterprise tech business, all of that is currently valued at about 700 million of equity or roughly 2.1 billion of enterprise value after you back out KivStar.

And so when you look at what those four markets actually generate, it's phenomenal. I mean, if you look at 2025 revenues for Pakistan at about 1.6 billion, 816,000. million for Kazakhstan, 460 million at Bangladesh, and 308 million for Uzbekistan. So that totals up to about $3.24 billion for the remaining four groups, excluding KivStar. So these aren't declining assets, as we know. They're growing, you know, mid to high teens. Every asset except Bangladesh for which we can, you know, dive deeper into, has grown in local currency and U.S. dollar terms.

And so when you look at, you know, these four emerging markets and these are growing double digits, like I said, outside of Bangladesh, if you apply a one-time revenue multiple to that, which I think is very, very conservative, that gives you obviously a $3.24 billion of enterprise value. And so at that level before you even apply any other, you know, multiple for growth or, you know, digital platform economics, the four non-Ukraine markets, alone are worth about 66% of Vion's total EV. And so, yeah. Can we just pause there real quick? So I just want to walk through a few different things. So you let's start with, I want to come back to the valuation, the multiple you just threw out there in a second,

but can we start with the EV? So you said 2.7 billion EV a couple times. And when I was prepping for, when I was prepping, my EV came out very different. So I just want to see where I'm kind of missing the ball here. So I've got like seven, 75 million shares outstanding. I hate to do Excel or math on the pod,

but I've got like 75 million shares outstanding at about $50 per share. You know, I think that comes out to just shy of $4 billion of market cap off the top of my head. And then I'm looking at their balance sheet, and this is the end of Q4 balance sheet, but I see $4 billion of non-current debt, $1 billion of current debt,

$1.7 billion of cash. And the cash is actually something I want to talk later, but when I do that, I come out with a much higher EV number, like kind of approaching 8 billion. So can you help me bridge the gap between your 2.7 billion EV and the kind of 8 billion number I had in my notes? Yeah, sure. So when, so this is basically a napkin math that I kind of did.

But if you, if you were going based off, let's say, your quarter four numbers. So the math I did during quarter four was Vion was trading out about 3.4 billion. They had about $1.7 billion in debt. So that gives you about $5.1 billion. When I say debt, I mean net debt of $1.7 billion. So that gave you about $5.1 billion in enterprise value. And you kind of back out out of that, the Vion's percentage in KivStar of about 84%. Back then, it was about 89%.

They did an additional offering, so about 84.6%. And so their percentage of that comes out to be. about $2 billion if you were to calculate in quarter four terms. And if you subtract, you know, the $5.1 billion by the $2.1 billion of Kifstar, the enterprise value, residual enterprise value we got was $3.1 billion. Okay. Okay. So you're just talking about buying the, so you're, you're just talking about the Vian holdco. So you're saying, hey, take the Kiev's stake at value, and we're buying the Vian holdco, the $3 billion, and we're talking about. So actually, Kiyadhsar, we can put off to the side because what you're doing is taking the market price and we can talk about if that's under overvalue.

But you're talking beyond Holdco is about $3 billion of EV, which gets you the PACs. Okay, that makes sense. Let's go to the next thing. You said, you know, in both your write-up and when you were talking, you said Pakistani Telecom, value the Pakistani revenue and some of these subs at 1X revenue. And I followed Telecom for a while. and I haven't really seen people talking about valuing a telecom on a revenue multiple before. So I love you. What is the basis for the revenue multiple and how do you kind of think about that valuation?

Okay. So when you think about like I want to get rid of this like telecom label that we're applying to Vion, I think that's what's causing this perception lag in valuation. Right now, digital mix is about 25% of Vion's total revenues. in the next four years management's guiding about 50%. And so sure, telecom still comprises a majority of the revenue, but I'd still like to move past that and go into what's driving the future growth and majority of the value of Vion.

And so, yes, in your case, I completely agree. When you look at a legacy telecom operator, you're not valuing them based off of revenue multiple. But, I mean, you can value a tech company based off a revenue multiple. And our kind of lens is that we see Veyon as a tech company more so than a telecom company. And so to dive into Pakistan a little, the JASCash angle is really worth isolating here because it kind of shows how distorted the valuation has become. So when you take MTN mobile money, that's their fintech business, MTN, this operates in much

less penetrated market than JASCash does and at very low transaction volumes. And so this has been, you know, valued at, I would say a higher multiple than VONSA JAS subsidiary. When you look at third-party deals, same thing with Airtel Africa and their fintech business. It has attracted strategic investors at substantial premiums compared to its telecom parents implied value. And so when you look at JAS cash, there's two really important, insane details that you need to focus on. First, they're processing about 60 billion in transaction value. That's about 15% of Pakistan's GDP. That's really insane.

I mean, you don't really get that of a telecom company, right? And so that is growing a double-digit rates in it of itself, and it has never been independently valued. And so, in my opinion, it's only fair to properly value and reasonably value a business that not only is processing such high amounts, but it's processing 15% of, GDP, that can't be understated. And so I think management, if you look at their 2024 capital markets transcript, and you read through that management has kind of acknowledged that the company is looking to crystallize that value, whether, you know, it's their, it's that fintech business,

whether through, you know, strategic investor, spin-off IPO, whatever it is, they have stated explicitly that their intent is to crystallize that value. And I think when that happens, you saw it happened with Kifstar, but when you see it happen with Jazz Cash, I think that's when a lot of the misunderstanding, I think that's set up for a huge catalyst. No, look, it's funny you mentioned MTN and Airtel because, you know, I think we mentioned it before we started recording, but when I was doing work on this, I saw the Jazzcast piece, and it is growing wicked fast. I mean, I'm looking at the 20F right here, digital financial services, Pakistan, 156 million in 2023,

277 million in 2024, 377 million in 2002. I mean, this is just why bonkers growth. And that's USC too. So it's not like it's inflated by currency or anything. You think about that and you say, oh my God, if they spend out,

and like, no, Airtel. I think I had a friend on who pitched Airtel about two and a half three years ago. And that was part of thesis. I was like, this sounds too simple. It sounds too good to be true. And they get a mark and the stock is off to the race. So I'm kind of with you.

Like if they sold a piece of jazz cash, like what would this be worth? Not that I've done a crazy deep dive into this, but you see those growth numbers and you think about it. And you're like, oh, my God, this thing could be a cradjole. So I was kind of rambling there. I'll pause there and let you say anything else in JazzCast or Pakistan or anything. Yeah. So, you know, like you said, completely agree. I mean, the growth rate is through the roof.

And if you take that assumption on a, free cash flow basis, you know, the math looks very compelling. So just recently in quarter one, 2026, Vion as a group, generated about 246 million of equity-free cash flow. And obviously, I don't want to do this. I'm not the type to just, you know, take a quarterly number and extrapolate it. But if you were to be conservative, that annualizes to roughly over a billion in a run rate, annual run rate.

If you look at the 2024 capital markets presentation, the management put out, their target was also $900 to $1 billion in equity-free cash flow by 2027. And I really think they're on target to reaching their probably, if not 2027 by 2028. And so I think when you look at even the balance sheet, I think the net debt excluding all leases is about 1.1.1 times evita. I think. And so a clean balance sheet for a business of this size and complexity is unheard of. It's very rare. You usually see businesses that are in complicated emerging frontier markets that are laden with debt. And so just to see Vion at a reasonable, very attractive, you know, leverage ratio is, it's a rare feat. In addition to this, they've initiated a $100 million share buyback. And I think management is owns about 1.7 to 1.8% of the company collectively.

And so they have skin in the game. We can dive more into management in a bit. But I think that setup of itself, you know, with a billion in free cash flow and applying, I think, a reasonable multiple of 15 times free cash flow on that. As we said, if you look past, you know, beyond being a telecom company and you acknowledge it as a digital operator 15 times for a time. tech company is not out of the blue. And so I think that gives you an implied equity value of 15 billion, which is about 4x of, you know, what it's trading at right now. And so you don't have to believe in a perfect outcome, Andrew. I think you just have to believe that the free cash flow trajectory holds. They get to that 50% in digital mix and the secular tailwinds driving each of

these five emerging frontier markets just holds up. And I don't know. That's a tough ask. So again, their digital revenues are growing really quickly, right? But one thing, and again, I just read the Q4 and one conference they're at, so I don't know. But the two things that jumped out to me, they had done some bolt-ons. So, again, the growth is like off the charts, but I was having trouble separating out the kind of organic growth from the total growth. Have they broken out what the organic growth is versus the bolt-on growth? I don't think so. I mean, I haven't seen anything in a 20F yet that has made that distinction clear.

And so I couldn't tell you that. Okay, no problem. One thing that I have, you know, like Liberty Global, kind of apples to oranges, but there is some carryover from the Liberty Global, right? You've got a big telecom with a lot of different subsidiaries and a kind of complicated, kind of complicated cap structure just because here you can. got Kievsar where they own about 85%, but so you can start doing the hold code, opco.

One thing I was thinking about, because Liberty Glovals had this too, you're like Pakistan, to some extent, Ukraine, Kazakhstan for sure, I was kind of thinking, I think they've got pretty big capital controls. So how do you think about kind of when you've got the hold co with a lot of the value in the opcos, but there might be capital controls like getting the cash out or placing a fair value on those types of things. So in terms of capital controls, you kind of saw this trap cash in Ukraine, at least, under martial law, right? Capital control is kind of restriction. Pretty good reason for to have a capital control, right? Like through martial law.

And so I think the limit was about upstreaming about a million dollars per month, which is nothing for a multi-billion dollar company. And so that severely restricts your ability, obviously, to repurchase shares, pay off dividends. And essentially, this was a huge, huge risk when the Ukraine war started because, you know, Vion had much more debt than they does now, much less cash. The digital strategy that the digital mix that they have now was, you know, fraction of what it used to be then. They were kind of implementing, you know, this strategy, this digital operator strategy. And so for a company that was, you know, you know, much more telecom-heavy, telecom-based back then than it is now.

I think it was a huge, huge hit. And I think you kind of saw the share price drop. But now, if you really look at the balance sheet, I mean, they're cash-heavy. They have the ability to do these, you know, share repurchases. And especially in countries like Ukraine, where these capital controls are a time. It's a question of, you know, of when rather than if, of when these capital controls will cease, exist. And I know you mentioned these other countries. I think I would say the same logic applies to these countries as well. I think these capital controls aren't, you know, preventing Von

from, you know, returning capital to shareholders. And so I don't think they should be, you know, a material adverse effect into the valuation of the business. I think what you really need to look at is the growth in the secular tellwind that you have in each of these countries. And I think that overshadows any of the regulatory hurdles that, you know, that you mentioned. That makes sense. That makes sense. Just so look, you're talking about big upside, right? You're saying, hey, and I kind of agree, like, I'm looking at their Q4 debt or is their Q1

death. And, you know, they're talking about, hey, look at jazz cash. Look at what's the other one, mobile link bank. And they've got it's slide 10 in there. And they say, hey, you know, we are, they basically say, we're the Uber. We've got ride healing. We've got entertainment. Like, this is a literal super app that is growing really quickly.

They've got the diversified revenue stream. I guess my overarching question, something I like to ask everyone, you know, the markets are really competitive place. And Beyond Bank, well, it's not, you know, they don't have tons of research on Vic or a lot of the places I've seen. I mean, this is covered, you know, like JP Morgan's had some coverage of them in the past. You go on. I think there's five analysts who are asking questions on this on their Q1 earnings call, New Street Research, which is, you know, that is a complete telecom-focused company who is willing to assign big multiples to telecoms they think have a lot of upside.

So you can say, you've gained out this big upside to kind of the growth case into some of the parts. Why, what is the market missing here? Why is the market asleep at the wheel? Because it is well covered, you know? I think, Andrew, I think there is a really good question. I think the most interesting growth driver here is what's missing. I think that's the missing piece. And when you really apply a first principle lens, I think it makes it much easier.

Yeah, sure, some of these markets have, you know, significant geopolitical turmoil, instability, whatever you want to call it. But when you see where they're headed in the next, you know, five years, 10 years, 15 years, you know, there's no doubt that these emerging markets, you know, whose average population age for, hear me out on this. In Kazakhstan, the average population age is about 29 years old. In Uzbekistan, it's about 27. In Bangladesh, it's about 26.

And Pakistan, it's about 22. So these are really young companies. Compare it to a mature country like America with the average age being 40. I mean, these people are going to move with the prosperity of their own respective countries. And so these markets have incredibly young populations, as it tends to be the feature in emerging markets. And so across this footprint, barely half of the population, or internet users, about 34% above the age of 15 possess even a formal bank account. And only a third of adults have ever sent or received a digital payment in their lives.

And so as the youth become, you know, more educated, there's more prosperity, economic prosperity in these countries. There's more access to education. There's increased access to technology, health care, banking, whatever. You know, there's obviously going to be an improvement in quality of life that you'll see throughout these countries. And so there's no doubt that these will serve as secular tailwinds in the next five or 10 years.

And so in my opinion, I've never been more bullish on a business and never been more bullish on emerging markets like Veyon. And I think- I know that because you and I, you had your letter and I was like, hey, what about this? What about this company? What about this company for the podcast? And you're like, no, Von, Von, Von, Von, Von. I've got a friend just on your demographics thing, you know, he's pitched emerging markets

towers before. And he's like, look, you don't understand the demographics here, right? Like a lot of these, as you said, the population is 19. A third of the population is 13 and under and so. Like, if you believe people are going to go on their devices, this is not the U.S. where, hey, 10 years from now, we're facing a decline. Like, they actually have growing population. That is just mathematically, the demand for data is going to grow.

And he's pitching towers. If you believe, like, towers are going to be how this is delivered, like, you just kind of have a mathematical equation of where the demand has to go up over time. and some of these emerging markets, what you're saying, I think that makes whole sense. Ukraine is obviously a big one here, right? And Ukraine, one of the reasons they've been able to stay in this war is Starlink, right? And you start thinking about Veyon if Ukraine, Russia ends, there's going to be a lot of cap-backs to get rebuilt, the local telecom, all this sort of stuff.

But then you also kind of start thinking, like Starlink is taking some share in the United States domestically. How do you think about Starlink as it relates to a risk to these businesses? So I think when you think about Starlink, especially in the context of Ukraine, I think Elon Musk publicly went out and said, you know, we're going to do all we can to help the government of Ukraine, you know, fight this war against Russia and, you know, obviously closed off all essential services that Starlink provides to Russia. When you think about Ukraine, I think the biggest thing about Ukraine, I think the biggest thing about

Ukraine is the post-war reconstruction in Ukraine. In my opinion, I know we talked about, you know, Pakistan being, you know, with just cash being 15% of the total GDP and 60 billion in total transaction value, but I really think the crown jewel of Vian is Kifstar. I think between 2023 and 26, Vion ended up investing about 1.3 billion. That's 300 million more than they set out to invest in their capital markets, targeting. And so I think with Starlink, they have partnerships with Starlink. I think they are seeking to expand these partnerships with Starlink. And I think that's going to be huge for Ukraine because a lot of the tower infrastructure,

about 5% of the power grid and Ukraine has been destroyed. And a lot of repairs are needed. And I think when this revitalization of infrastructure happens, this reinvestment just comes back into Ukraine. I think that Starlink will be from the lens of a partner rather than a competitor. That's how I personally view it. I could be wrong, but that's what I personally think. Why do you think partner instead of competitor?

Because where I was kind of going is you look at the rebuilding, you say, hey, doesn't make sense to go to one of these smaller towns where the local towers have been destroyed, where the service doesn't make sense to go rebuild it or do you just string up a dish to Starlink? How do you think about that? Because that could really cut into a lot of the rebuild in Ukraine and a lot of profits. Especially, I mean, your worst case scenario

because these are national telecom players, right? Your worst case scenario is, hey, they're required to go build out to the rural. And even though they're required, people are preferring the Starlink service. So you have all the CAPEX and you have none of the associated revenue profits, anything with that. So if I'm understanding your question, you're saying why would people side with KivStar when they could just switch over to their subscriptions into Starlink? Yeah.

So I think with Starlink, what you're seeing is it's a Leo, it's a Leo satellite constellation, basically. And I think with Leo's, I think the best advantage you have is, at least with Ukraine, a lot of the population lives in very rural areas where coverage is, you know, broadband coverage is very weak. And I think Starlink more so than your national telecom operator like KifStar, I think Starlink benefits, you know, those areas more so. And I think when you're already, you know, within, for example, KifStar isn't just, you know, telecom, right? Like we talked about all these digital verticals and I think I forgot to mention them, but you have your, your writing.

hailing services, you have your health care, you have your fintech, you have your entertainment. So KifStar isn't just telecom, right? And so if you're just looking for coverage and you're in the rural areas, yeah, maybe Starlink might be the right fit for you. But if you're already a Kifstar subscriber and you already have, you know, healthy, like the healthcare platform, if you're already signed up on healthy, you're already using Uklon, the basic, the Ukraine Uber. And if you're using, you know, entertainment fintech services, your banking is tied up to Kistar as well. What incentive do you have to switch? And so I think Vion kind of realizes that, you know, we can't really thrive as a legacy telecom operator. You have competitors coming in these markets. You know, Starlink's a really

good example you brought up. You have even regional telecom operators. And so that's just a race to the bottom. And so I think that's where the digital transformation is coming in place. Each four or five of these verticals are kind of creating that stickiness. And if you really look at the retention ratio, if you are a multi-play user compared to a single play user or a voice-only customer, you are 66% more likely to your retention ratio is 66% higher than it would be if you're a voice-only customer. So it's showing up in the numbers as well.

well. Not to mention the ARPOO in a lot of these countries like Ukraine, you have, your ARPOOs about, you know, 3.6 compared to the average in, you know, these countries of about 10. And so that gap, the only way to bridge that gap is cross-selling these digital services like FinTech, entertainment, banking and all that we just talked about. And so I think that's a huge deterrent. And I think that if you started research on a business like this today, I think you wouldn't realize that until you grasp the depth of how sticky, you know, these digital products really are. No, I mean, just to come back to this Harley question, like I don't,

you hit the nail on the head. Like, I think for a lot of the rural places, as we're seeing domestically, as we're seeing across the world, I think the Starlink product makes a lot of difference. But I've done a lot of work on this. And if you're like, hey, a, Starlink just has no chance in the cities. And once you start talking about on a mobile phone, you know, are you going to get the Starlink router, go all the way around? It's just a lot cheaper to use a tower.

So never say never. But the main reason to ask it is, you know, Ukraine does have a lot of rural and it's got so much Starlink right now. Like it is the one place where you say, hey, where's Starlink going to in a post-reconstruction world where they're looking and saying, hey, what do we need to build? What do we not need to build? Starlink's the one playout gift. Let me come back to the digital. Obviously, you are very bullish to the digital. I'm pretty bullish to the digital, though I am a little hesitant on the digital for this

reason. Caspi has been a very popular pitch among small cap growth value investors. This is the Caspi's Kazakhstan, right? Am I remember that correctly? I think it's Kazakhstan. They're the Kazakhstan Super app. Obviously, Vion has a Kazakhstan subsidiary. Caspe is the Kazakhstan super app, and it's growing quickly.

dominates that market. And I've got a lot of smart friends who are in it. And it's kind of done, the stock's done okay, right? It's probably flatish over the past few years. They pay out a dividend. So you do get the dividends. I think most people are kind of up on it. But you know, you've never gotten the multiple boost that I think a lot of bull stock was coming, despite the fact that it's growing pretty, it's still growing quickly. And it's throwing off tons of cash flow and everything, right? So I just wonder when you think about that Caspi example, right, that is a emerging market. market suprat that is completely dominant in Kazakhstan. But despite delivering a lot of what the Bulls thought, you know, I'm just looking at my

Bloomberg, which is not perfect, but it's kind of trading at, I mean, it's growing organically 15 to 25% per year. And it's probably trading at a little over 1x revenue, which to be fair is about what you're targeting when you threw out multiples. But I look at Kasme and say, hey, there was no, to date, there hasn't been a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow for subs. is there really a pot of gold for this controlled Pakistani app or everything? Does that make sense?

Yeah. So on that, I think the pot of gold is still yet to come. And probably the investors in Kaspi are, you know, we've been waiting for so long. You know, I don't know how much longer. But I think if you really look at Vian as a whole, I know I'm going to circle around to the question. And so right now what they're kind of implementing is this, you know, AI-14. 40 strategy. This is kind of built on the premise that in frontier markets, AI kind of acts as a service creator rather than a efficiency or productivity booster like it would in the U.S. or Europe

or any other mature market. Take a professional lawyer or a doctor, for example, AI might make them, you know, 10, 20, even 30 percent more efficient. Whereas in, you know, rural markets where a lot of these frontier markets, a lot of their population lives. You know, for example, a rural farmer who's never had access to a doctor or a loan officer or an agricultural expert, right? Now, they receive these services, you know, for the first time through AI. And so there's infinite marginal utility to this, I think. And I think it's, there's a cultural context.

I think there's a misunderstanding for an investor that's, you know, based in New York or Chicago. that it's hard for you to understand that. And I think what Vion really grasps that, you know, an AT&T or a Vodafone wouldn't really understand is that, you know, you're providing this near infinite increase in productivity and service access to these rural farmers. And for example, Vion is developing, you know, LLMs, like CASLLM, which are, you know, tailored to specific, you know,

linguistic or cultural context. And now they're able to serve, about a million customer journeys per month in rural areas. I mean, you can't do that, right? If you're Vodafone or AT&T, you don't really understand the cross-border cultural context, or linguistic context, if that makes sense. And so in a lot of these markets that you said, you know, in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, whatever country it is, right, about 60% of the population is rural-based. And so I think that really goes to show that if they're servicing about a million customer Germany is now in the early stages of, you know, these local LLMs, then, you know, it's only

upside what's going to happen in the future. And so I think that beyond building the sovereign AI moat that global tech giants, you know, are finding hard to replicate or penetrate is, you know, effectively, I think that's their strongest mode. And so I've kind of seeing this, you know, recurring. And so they kind of started this in, um, um, um, um, uh, so they kind of started this in, in Kazakhstan with KazlLM, and then in Ukraine as well, with, I think, Samoa or something. It means like a smile or something. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I think that's really interesting. I'm excited to see, you know, where the one million customer journeys per month is kind of headed. No, that's really interesting. I certainly agree with that. And like, they are developing their own AI, though. I don't know. Like, I don't think they're signing up for.

massive data center, so I wonder who's, like, what model they're running on and all this sort of stuff. But it does, maybe I'm just too jaded on telecom, right? But it does remind me of, like, AT&T. I mean, they had the exclusive, AT&T had the exclusive on the iPhone here in 2008. And then if you fast forward to, you know, post-COVID, I mean, there was the huge spike of broadband demand post-COVID. But even since then, it's not like data demand has slowed, but basically none of, and again, might be too jaded on telecom, might be too focused domestically, but AT&T didn't work after the iPhone, and none of the cable, fiber, whatever company you want, telecom, whatever companies you want to label, have worked kind of since the post-COVID era.

And I just wonder, like, is there something structurally about telecom where, as you said, whether it's Ukraine, Paxin, wherever, like, there's, the demand for data is going to be going up from all this AI. And by the way, their data is like, they're talking about just launching the 4G and 5G services, right? So they're way behind us in terms of that. But their data demand is going to be going up and their AI demand is going to go up. And these guys have like some local barriers. But then you kind of look at it and you're like, man, it just feels like every telecom company forever has bungled any growth opportunity outside of their core.

We build a tower and we run spectrum through it. And I just, I wonder if they're actually going to be able to capture that opportunity. So I think when you, Andrew, when you look at, you know, local geographies like these frontier markets, on average per month, their usage of data is about seven gigabytes. And when you compare that to, you know, a mature country like America, that's about 20, let's say 21 or 22 about gigabytes per month. And so it's got to be much higher than that. For America?

Oh, yeah. I would say on average, I could be wrong, but let's say, let's take your number. Let's say it's much higher than that. I mean, that gives, that leaves you a significant gap to close. And so based on what you said, when you're a company like AT&T, you know, or Vodafone in Europe, I mean, like there's just not much growth from there. Yes, there will be significant data usage, but the jump from going to seven to 24, 25, or even 30, it's just not going to grow as much.

And so I think that's where a lot of the under penetration serves as a huge tailwind to kind of close that gap. And I think that's a huge tailwind as well. No, that makes it. I mean, I'm trying to find it, but I think Comcast and Chargers disclosed it. I think it's like 800 gigs per month is how much their average. Now that's household, but I'm pretty sure it's extremely high. So, yeah, let's see. So the company, $100 million repurchase that they're executing on,

I mean, this is a $3 billion-ish equity company. So it's not huge, but it's also not small in the context. How do you kind of think about capital allocation going forward? Because it is this interesting push and pull, right, where you've got four to five emerging market subsidiaries. You've got the publicly traded stake in KFSA, which is kind of a sliver, but you still own 85% of that. You've got that public trade stake. You've always got the question, do we spend that out to shareholders? Do we buy that back?

Do we buy our stuff back? Then you've got the four to five businesses with growth app opportunities. And then you've got the traditional telecom business. where, you know, whether it's Ukraine, rebuilding post-war or Pakistan, they just did a, they just bought a bunch of spectrum in Pakistan. So you've got all these capital allocation decisions and all these levers to pull. How do you think about the levers to pull, the capital allocation, and all of that going forward? So I think now that you've done the Kiv's our IPO, I think that was priority one. And now that, you know, that's gone successfully, I think you move on to the second

priority. At midst of all this, you know, they're still doing the smaller tower monetizations. you know, here and there. But I think the next big catalyst unlocking value here is with the Pakistani subsidiary with jazz and jazz cash. You know, like I mentioned to you, they process 60 billion transaction. They're doing 15% of Pakistan's entire GDP, which is insane. Now they're in the middle of applying for a full digital banking license that kind of allows them to, you know, offer wealth management services, unlock even higher value revenue streams like remittances. is if you think about remittances, they account for about 30% of Pakistan's GDP, which is really, it's insane.

And a lot of these are coming from the Gulf countries of Pakistani residents that have moved, you know, abroad into Gulf countries, even in Europe. And so in order to take advantage of that and unlock that opportunity, they've kind of veered off into applying for, you know, a full digital banking license. Before they had this license, they were making, you know, 200,000. nano loans every single day for about, you know, 30, 40, even $50, which is nothing if you really think about it, but that's enough to, you know, feed a family, take care of a family for a week. And so for those that had, you know, tight financial conditions, they were able to apply for

these and they were giving out about 200,000 nano loans. And so just being able to step up from that, you know, requires this banking license. And this wouldn't have been possible without, you know, their long term ties to the country, which is also, I think, a competitive advantage and barrier to entry for competitors. I think, as I mentioned, in the last capital markets call it, 2024, management kind of hinted that they wanted to IPO or do a spin-off or whatever independent monetization for JASCash. And I think recently they've kind of, you know, hammered that down and kind of emphasized that. And I think it's crucial that you start off with JASCash and you kind of work your way throughout each of these emerging frontier markets because it's worked well with KifStar.

If it goes well with JASCash, I mean, you could do the same thing with Bangalink. You could do the same thing with each of your digital verticals. I mean, the ceiling is, there's no sailing to this. You can just go veer off in any, you know, multiple of different ways. And so I think each of those steps to unlocking value kind of gets rid of that conglomerate discount that, you know, investors or the market is placing on Von. And I think that serves out, serves up as a huge catalyst. I think in the next three or four years.

No, look, oh, I'm related. I went through notes. Open Vault from 2023. broadband usage 600 gigs at the customer network. That's broadband, not mobile. You might have been referring to mobile, which I think would be high. But no, look, you hit the nail in it.

I want to turn to elephant in the room, but I've just been so fascinating because, like, I could see it, right? Like, you've got the stock trading for 50. And when you start going through jazz cash, when you start going to all these digitals, like you've got to stock trading like a busted emerging markets telecom. I don't want to say busted,

but trading like an emerging market's telecom company. And then you start looking at, all of these different potential growth subsidiaries. And I have seen this before. It's like, hey, you've got these growth subsidiaries. And, you know, you go from trading for a 10x free cash flow multiple, if that as a telecom to, hey, you know, we've got those gross subsidiary growing 50% per year.

It's going to trade for 10x revenue. Like, that's how you get the stuff where, you know, that's how you get the legendary 20 years from now. How did this guy get rich? Oh, he invested in this thing before it exploded. Like, I'm just so fascinated by that upside. But on the other hand, I followed television. a lot and it's really hit me. Let me turn to the last often in the room. We mentioned the history

here, right? And these guys had to give up their Russian subsidiaries. They are still owned 45% of the stock is owned by individuals who have, I don't know exactly, but they've certainly got Russian ties, right? They're sanctioned by the EU, the U.S. and Ukraine. They own 45%. I don't think they have like involvement with the business. But the first thing anyone's going to look at is they're going to look at this company. They're going to pull it up. They say 45% owner sanctioned by U.S., Ukraine, all this sort of stuff, what's going to happen to that stake? So what's kind of going on there and what do you think plays out there? So I think there's still association stigma.

So just dating back to October 2020, when they kind of divested and had this, you know, total exit from Russia, this kind of, on the financial side, it required a, you know, massive accounting reclassification of to the tune of $3.4 billion in currency translation losses. from, you know, from this exit. And I think what you mentioned about 45.5% of Veyon's shareholders are tied their beneficial owners of letter one. And so, yeah, that certainly does create reputational harm. You know, this association, I think this is one of the risks. If we were to

dive into the risks, I think this would be one of the bigger risks, right? Because this association can make international banks, you know, equipment suppliers, investors were locked into engage, even though Vion itself obviously is not a sanctioned entity. And so I think if you're uncomfortable with that reputational, that harm, then I think Vion might not be for you. Because let's say you were able to get past, you know, the Russian ties. I mean, you still have geopolitical turmoil in, you know, Pakistan with the hyperinflation in Bangladesh recently with, you know, their prime minister being overthrown. And so you're not going to escape it if you're, if you're looking for an answer of how do we

deal with, you know, reputational harm, how do we deal with geopolitical turmoil? You don't. You just have to be comfortable holding a business like beyond throughout that. Because let's be honest, you've seen what's happened in the last five years. They divested their Russian operations. And for especially for Pakistan, right, in the last 15 years, they've rolled through 10 different prime ministers. Veyon still grew, you know, despite all that. Veyon still grew despite all this geopolitical turmoil and, you know, currency debasement. And so I think at this point,

maybe I'm numb to it and I've been holding Veyon for long enough. But I think that's just, it's a feature. It's not a flaw of holding a business like Vion. And if you see all of their, you know, four of their, their frontier markets have grown. in local currency terms, in U.S. dollar terms, the only geography that hasn't grown is Bangladesh, which is, you know, it's not out of the blue. We know what's going on geopolitical wise with the civil unrest, the student protest. We've seen what happened to their currency. And so that's not really a surprise. And like I said, it's a question of when, not if, when this rebounds. And so for me, I don't think any of this will get resolved, you know, in the next two or three years. We've seen how long the Ukraine war has

taken place. And so I'm comfortable holding, you know, a business that is, you know, surrounded by geopolitical turmoil because I know, like I mentioned, we've went through the demographics of these countries. We went through the underpenetration of these countries in terms of technology and banking and education. And so I think what you're seeing beyond right now, they're operating segments, 10 years from now will be a completely different story. And if that's something you're comfortable holding, then I think beyond might be for you. It's just funny because you said Bangladesh has gone through 10 prime ministers in 15 years, and you said that like, that's an emerging market.

Pakistan, sorry. So that it's emerging markets like, well, Britain's gone through what, seven in seven years? And Japan and South Korea, I think have both gone through five and seven years. So like they're, they're run rating below where these allegedly developed markets are run reading. So I just think that's kind of funny. Let me just say this one more time down. I think you talked about the geopolitical risk, but if I was just looking at like the microrisk, that 45% block, that letter 1 is the owner with the Russianized, what happens to that block? That's a good question.

I wish I knew the answer to that. But I think for Vion to kind of get rid of that Russian subsidiary, I think that was step one. I haven't heard anything from IR or management, even consider or talk about letter one. Maybe it's just for optics. I don't know. But even in the one-on-one conversations I've had, I haven't really heard any substance on letter one. And so I wish I had the answer to that. No, it's very strange, right?

Because 45% is a hell of a lot, right? you're 5.1% away from like literally controlling the company just by eat it. And 5.1% I don't know how much money they have, but it's not that much money. And even without that, like at 45%, you can throw some pretty crazy shareholder proposals. And if everyone's not voting, you might be able to pass them. So like, they're close to control. Now, they're sanctioned right now, but you just think like, hey, sanctions come off. Am I all of a sudden looking at a weird company?

Or on the flip side, you know, you saw a lot of people. Nebibus, now Nebius hit like 15 other home runs, but Nebius managed to buy out a lot of their, they had to sell their Russian operations, but they managed to buy back a lot of stock very cheaply from sanctioned individuals, right? So you kind of look at this and you wonder, hey, is that 45% an opportunity? You know, they've got the share repurchase program. They don't want to go over their one X leopard. They don't want to go over 1.5x leopard, but is there a scenario where they do an asset swap and they retire that 45% per song? Or they IPO. cash and they have, you know, 500 million line around and say, hey, we'll take that 45% stake

off. It's kind of worth $1.3 billion. We'll pay you guys $900 million and we'll walk away. You know, those are, it's interesting upside. I think we've covered all over my notes. Again, this is just one where I'm looking in. On one hand, you see a history of value destruction and you see emerging market telecom. And on the other hand, you see all of these great growth assets and the, like, kind of potential hidden gems. So that's just kind of how I'm thinking about it. Anything else we should be talking about our covering? So I think it's very interesting.

I think if you were to pick up the book on Vion today, I think there's one key, key fact that, you know, most people don't realize, and I'm going to be up front with you, I didn't realize it until, you know, I was looking into the recent quarterly updates about a month ago. And so we spoke about Augie Fabella, the founder, and then CEO, who is now the chairman of the company. So basically, Augie's philosophy was he wanted, you know, to bring free speech, open communication

to Russia. And he kind of wanted to bring that to Ukraine and then to each of these emerging frontier markets that they operate in. And I think that's a pattern that they've kind of translated. And so each of these emerging markets where you see, you know, success in, you know, Ukraine with the IPO, I think a lot of that is translatable into these different frontier markets because they have the same underlying demographics. They have the same, you know, similar to secular tailwinds. Majority of their populations are in rural, you know, areas.

And so it's not completely, you can't completely extrapolate and say 100% this is what's going to happen. But for the most part, you kind of get an idea of, okay, if this Kipster IPO went well, then maybe the Jaskatch IPO, you know, there's, there's an opportunity to realize significant value in that. And so I think as these steps kind of unfold, you'll see, you know, pages turn and, you know, some of that value kind of crystallized. And so I think that kind of starts with management themselves right now, you know, CEO Kahn. I think he was, you know, the biggest backer of the AI 1440. 1440 basically means, you know, the 1440 minutes of the day, Vion wants to be relevant

in your lives, right? If you're with a legacy telecom operator, when's the only time you think about them? If your calls drop or something happens, right? That's the only time you're going to think about them. But if you also have, you know, these digital services in FinTech, entertainment, healthcare, ride sharing, you're thinking about, you know, Vion 24-7. And I think that was the idea behind this AI 1440. strategy. And it's not a really, it's not really a new game plan. Con Terziolo, the CEO, he kind of

implemented that similar model at Turkcell, a Turkish telecom company, which he was at before. And so he has a good track record of, you know, materializing and, you know, kind of executing on this plan. And so with his, you know, ownership about a percent, I think he has still a skin in the game. And I think I'm very supportive of what Khan has done. And not to mention, it takes serious, serious discipline, serious muscle to operate in crisis management. I wouldn't call it crisis because this is the normality of these frontier markets. But I mean, to divest in Russia to work through hyperinflation in Pakistan, prime minister being overthrown in Bangladesh. I mean, it takes guts.

And when you're Veon and you've operated in these tumultuous markets over the last, you know, two or and a half, over the last three decades, then, I mean, that's in your DNA. And I think that becomes part of your moat. And it's hard to take down a company when it's, when that's ingrained in the culture. And you mentioned the CEO had done this at a prior role. Where was that that he did it? Turk sell. It's a Turkish company. Was it publicly traded?

I'm not sure if Turks on it too. I don't need to Google it while. I was just wondering because did he spin off the growth assets there? So it's it is a I think it is a public company. Sorry, what was the question? No, you are correct. It is a public company. It's got quite the chart.

Now, I don't know if this is in US or not because the stock is up 5x, but I think Turkey has had a little bit of the inflation bug. yeah, it's not quite up that much in the USDA terms. No, I was, you said he had done this before, and it's fun. I was wondering if he had successfully spun off growth assets, because if he had, that would be very interesting. Because look at it's just got visions of this, like, this is not the perfect example, but, you know, GE five years ago, if you were buying them, it kind of, it's a little

a little bit longer than five years ago. But, you know, when Larry Colpe came in, the whole argument was he's going to break it up and look at these sum of the parts. And I was skeptical. A lot of people were skeptical. I remember people going on and saying, Larry Colp's going to destroy his reputation. this is a disaster, and you look at it and you're like, benefit of hindsight, obviously, but G. Vanova was worth like 5X what the whole company was trading for at that time or something,

you know, or you look at a company like IBT that's always had these successful spins. You look at, like, it's just, it's not lost to me. You've got these really interesting. Now, again, the Caspian, the emerging market status, but you've got these really interesting emerging market assets, growthy assets. And if you're doing these spinouts, my God, can things get crazy? Anyway, we're way over an hour. submit this is an awesome UIG funds i'll include a link to the i'll include a link to the funds you've got

your letters up there in the show notes if you want to check that out some more and we can kind of go from there but submit thank you so much for coming on and we will chat soon thank you a quick disclaimer nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice guests or the host may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast please do your own work and consult a financial advisor hey all's kelly clarkson with wayfair ever order furniture online and wonder what if like what if it doesn't hold up That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair.

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