QAV America (free feed)

PUMP AND DUMP – QAV America #52

QAV AM 52 [https://qavamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/QAV-America-52-art-optimised-scaled.jpg] On this episode we run through the dummy portfolio , which is crushing the S&P at 125% time-weighted return, and dig into this week’s Pulled Pork: TriMas (TRS), a Michigan-based maker of hand pumps, dispensers, and packaging components that’s been quietly dumping divisions and sitting on a billion dollars in cash. The numbers look great on paper until Cameron and Tony notice the operating cash flow figures in Stockopedia are wildly inflated by the aerospace divestiture proceeds; the classic data quality trap. They also cover market news, Michael Burry’s doom outlook, the Nacho trade, and wind down with Red Dragon, paintball, and the Rolling Stones. This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@qavinvesting]. Or visit our homepage [https://qavamerica.com/home/] to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives [/listen/] TRANSCRIPTION QAV America 52 CLUB VIDEO [00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome to QAV America, Tony. Episode 52, the 12th of May 2026. The title of this episode, Tony, Pump and Dump. Tony Kynaston: You keep titling these episodes before you’ve even spoken yet. So Cameron: It’s ’cause I’ve Tony Kynaston: title Cameron: my– Uh, we could swap it out, but Tony Kynaston: okay. Cameron: the working title of this episode, let’s say that. Tony Kynaston: You put a thumbtack in Cameron: Mm, mm. The Pump and Dump, Tony Kynaston: Pumping Cameron: which will become clear later on. Um, big week in, uh, news, Tony. Um, surprising to everyone. Tony Kynaston: we can use in the US? Cameron: You heard of the Nacho trade? Tony Kynaston: I have, but I’m just struggling to remember what it stands for. Cameron: I just read about it in the Fin just a minute ago. No, it’s not a chance of Hormuz opening, is the Nacho trade. There was an article in the Financial Review this [00:01:00] morning, uh, Michael, Michael Burry from The Big Short, basically talking about how the US market is headed for a massive disaster, but they also had somebody mentioning the Nacho trade. Not a chance of Hormuz opening. Trump, Trump says Iran’s offer is totally unacceptable. That was yesterday, and today he said, “The Iran ceasefire is on life support.” For weeks, all I’ve heard from him is, “Oh, they, they can’t wait to do a deal. They’re begging to do a deal. They wanna, they’d love to do a deal. They’re desperate to do a deal.” Apparently, they’re not so desperate to do a deal. Tony Kynaston: H- you name one war the US has gotten into in the last 100 years that hasn’t lasted for, like, at least five or six Cameron: Yes. Yes, uh, Gulf War one. Tony Kynaston: Ooh, that lasted a while though, didn’t it? Cameron: Nah, it was over in, like, two weeks, but [00:02:00] just went in, surprise attack, massive overwhelming force, signed a, signed a deal with Saddam, and got out. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a rare one. But, you know, as I’ve talked about on my other shows many times, you and I have talked about off air, you know, the US is driven by military Keynesianism. The US economy survives on military Keynesianism. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: it is now, $1 trillion Pentagon budget he’s got it at, uh, people don’t realize how much the US economy relies on that and how campaign financing for senators and congressmen and women rely on that, how it’s, uh, uh, the centerpiece of the US– uh, how the US economy works. Doesn’t get talked about much, but when you drill down into it. And you can’t justify that kind of a budget endlessly unless you’ve got a [00:03:00] big war at least every five to 10 years. Tony Kynaston: No, that’s all true. But my point is that every time US, uh, exceptionalism thinks they’ll get in and out of a war within a week, it generally lasts Cameron: But they don’t think that. That’s what they say publicly. They don’t really think that. I mean, the planners I don’t think, think that because there’s no profit in a quick war. I mean, okay, you do 24,000 missile strikes and you need to go and rebuy all those missiles, but there is some profit in it. But there’s a way more profit in a long drawn out war for everybody involved militarily. Not for the people who die, but for the people who make the money on the back end of the military industrial complex, that’s where the profit is, right? Tony Kynaston: Uh, yes, but I don’t think Trump saw things that way. I think he saw a way of stamping his authority and, Cameron: Oh, yeah, “ Tony Kynaston: I’m a Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: than anybody else, and I’m a better deal-doer than anybody else,” and he’s just proving that he’s not. Cameron: Well, I [00:04:00] don’t think Trump knows what he’s getting into most of the time. He just… Yeah. Uh, so anyway. Tony Kynaston: in the shoes and goes, “Ooh, what have I gotten into now? Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Look at Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Best shoes Cameron: mean, and a lot of it I do believe, like there’s also the element of distraction of the day, so deals are getting done on the back end and building hotels in Gaza and, uh, probably in Venezuela and the Epstein file distraction and all that kind of stuff. Tony Kynaston: Yep, definitely. Cameron: Uh, uh, I’ll just cut, I’ll just cut and paste all the news in later. Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: Tony, there’s been a lot of news in my US news report that I run a couple of times a week. Uh, too much really to go through. These are stocks that we’ve, that we own in our portfolios or we talk about. I’ll get into those in a minute. Before we do that, let me just talk about our portfolio performance in the US. Our, uh, dummy portfolio, which as you know, has been running since [00:05:00] September 2023, is currently tracking at 125% time-weighted return versus the S&P 500, 66% over that period. So doing double market on that one. The QAV America Light portfolio, which has been running since the end of last year, s- December 22nd, is currently at 7% versus 7% for the S&P. So we’re neck and neck. We have come back quite a bit. Uh, we were doing way better than it a week ago. What’s fallen in the last week? Hmm, couple of things. Hmm, PAGSEGURO Digital has dropped. But a lot of s- a lot of, uh, stocks have had a rough week with oil prices and all this kind of nonsense going on. The Nacho trade or the Nacho [00:06:00] market, whatever we wanna call it. But that said, um, a lot of our stocks are doing very well. Uh, let me, let’s run through some highlights from the dummy portfolio. Uh, uh, let me, listed by that. Number one performing stock in our dummy portfolio is still Willis Lease Finance, and I’ve got some news from them in the news section. They’re up 350% since we bought them. Enova International is up 183%. Euro Seas is up 156%. SASCO Energy Navigation, TEN, is up 148%. Banco Latinoamericano BLX, Blaze, uh, Blade, Blade, BladeX, I think. It’s up 115%. StealthGas is up 98.8. But you know when I always say invest in mass, not gas? They’re the exception, um, StealthGas. They’re up 100%, 98.8% since we bought them. The others are all doing well, too. The one that’s not doing [00:07:00] well o- out of our portfolio is Korea Electric Power, KP. They’re down 11.8%. In the light portfolio, Cord Energy, they’re also in my news today, is up 46.6%. Pitney Bowes is up 46.4. Commercial Vehicle is up 46.3. Tony Kynaston: That’s amazing. How does, how does Pitney Bowes go up forty-six percent? Cameron: I’ll tell you ’cause they’re in my news, uh, today. Kodak was up 80%. It’s now only up 35. Tony Kynaston: Oh, that’s volatile, isn’t it? Cameron: That is volatile. I mean, I’m s- I’m not complaining about being up 35% in a month, but still. Nabors Industry is up 28. Uh, all the rest are up, too, except for a few. Shi- Shinhan Financial is down four and a half. Opportune Financial, OPRT, is down seven, and PAGSEGURO is down 8.7. Not coincidentally, they’re all not American-based companies. They’re all f- you know, foreign, [00:08:00] um, entities. But so is, uh, I think GeoPark, uh, so is Danaos. They’re all doing well. Ecopetrol is up now 4%. Deutsche Bank that we did last week is up 2%. But, uh, everything’s doing quite well. Um, the other stocks that we’ve talked about on the show, Pulled Pork’s, that aren’t in our portfolios but stack ranking them in terms of how well they’ve done since, uh, we talked about them. At the top of the list is Zepp Health Corporation, the, uh, digital watch manufacturer. They’re up 278% since July 25. Sasol is up 166%. Chemex is up 134. Precision Drilling is up 92. POSCO’s up 82. ORIX Corporation is up 75. Long, long list of stocks doing very well. [00:09:00] On the not so good side of things, uh, Cal-Maine Foods is down 20. Controladora Vuela Compania de Avion is down 20. Bausch Health are also in the news. No, not Bausch, it’s Dausch that’s up. They’re down 15. AMC is down 14. They still haven’t worked out how to sell Mad Men. Um, couple of others. But yeah, generally speaking, yeah, most of them are doing really well. So I’m gonna, uh, too much news to go through in detail. I wanna get to my Pulled Pork, but, uh, just some quick highlights. Kodak shares fell. They came out with their quarterlies. Uh, US commercial print and chemicals maker rose 7%. Revenue rose 7% year on year. Operational EBITDA jumped to 15 million from two million, driven by improved pricing. But net loss widened to 16 million from seven million a year earlier. So the share price dropped, but as I said, we’re still up 35% from [00:10:00] when we bought them a little over a month ago, so I’m not complaining. Jackson Financial, a stock that we’ve, hold. They’re an annuity provider. Q1 retail annuity sales rose 31% year over year. Adjusted operating EPS from Q1 rose slightly, $5.15 from $5.10 a year ago. But the company posted wider net loss due to less favorable hedging and higher volatility. So their shares took a little bit of a hit as well. Um, Willis Lease Finance, I mentioned, Q1 revenue rises 23% on higher lease and maintenance income. UBS, who we hold, climbs after a stellar Q1. Uh, ro- went up 4.5% after profits beat market expectations. Net profit attributable to shareholders rose 80, rose 80% to $3 billion, [00:11:00] beating an average analyst estimate of 37%. Uh, RenaissanceRe, based in Bermuda, good Q1 operating income. Gray Media, the, uh, television company that we’ve, uh, held for a while, their performance was good, driven by core advertising exceeding guidance and political revenue reaching the high end of expectations. Good old midterm spending. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Dowsch reports first quarter results, they were good. Callaway Golf Company announced their results. First quarter, I know you like this one. First quarter net sales up 9%, net income from continuing operations up 18%, adjusted EBITDA up 31%. Q1 non-GAAP net income from continuing operations increased 96%. Sounds good. [00:12:00] Pitney Bowes released their results. Uh, management attributed strong Q1 results to a broad-based recovery, specifically noting that SendTech is nearing a sales inflection point while Presort builds momentum towards a return to growth. S- these are the guys that do all of the Tony Kynaston: Franking. Cameron: mail franking, yeah. And Cord Energy, that we also hold, came out with their results. Delivered oil volumes above the high end of guidance despite adverse weather and midstream constraints, supported by solid cost control and the Strait of Hormuz being closed. So thank you very much for that. So, um, good results all around, but as I said, market’s sort of up and down like a bride’s nightie over there at the moment, so you never know what’s going on. But generally speaking, the market is still going bonkers. As I said earlier, Michael Burry is saying it’s massively [00:13:00] overpriced and, uh, he’s expecting a disaster, uh, to come. But, you know, we don’t try and predict the future, we just play it day by day. Tony Kynaston: Well, I hope it doesn’t come to pass ’cause that will impact us, but we’ll deal with it when it does, if it does. Uh, interesting though that Willis Lease Finance is doing well. I wondered whether they would come off because aviation worldwide is, is coming off. It’s slowing down. I think Qantas recently said they were down twenty percent internationally in capacity maybe. So, uh, you know, sometimes the first thing they do is to and save costs and extend their current fleet rather than lease new engines or whatever they do with Willis. But, uh, seems not to be the case. Cameron: Well, Willis lease commercial aircraft and aircraft engines, but I imagine they have long-term contracts. I can’t remember from when we did the deep [00:14:00] dive on them, but I think they have long-term contracts in place, so they’re probably a little bit hedged against short-term fluctuations in demand. Don’t know. But anyway, they’re doing okay, apparently. Tony Kynaston: Mm. Cameron: So let me get into my deep dive today, Tony. TRS, not the Reject Shop as it would be in Australia. I don’t even think they’re listed anymore, are they? Tony Kynaston: No, they were taken over. Cameron: we did well out of them for a while during COVID. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: This is TriMas. TriMas, T-R-I-M-A-S. Never heard of them, and for good reason. Oh, well, yeah. They’re, they’re like… This is an interesting one, as I said to you earlier. Like, they’re in some ways a classic QAV stock. Uh, a company that makes bits and bobs that you’ve never heard of because they’re behind the scenes. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: a, uh, slimming down exercise, [00:15:00] refocusing activist investors that are forcing them, well, not forcing them, but pushing them to sell off bits of the business that don’t really fit with their main goal. But their numbers are a little bit screwy. So, um, I didn’t buy them because I wanted to run it past you first. Uh, like you put the kibosh on Milrose, MRP a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see what you think of this one. But it did come up pretty high on my buy list this week. QAV score of 0.4, quality score was 9 out of 13, stock rank of 99, quality rank of 93, F score of 8. So on paper, pretty good, about as good as you get. Manual, the, the PropCaf came in at 1.88. But as you’ll find out, the operating cash as it appears in Stockopedia is, is, um, [00:16:00] maybe not to be believed, not to be taken at face value. Tony Kynaston: okay. Cameron: Um, but we’ll get to that. So market cap’s about 1.53 billion. Shares are trading around about 43 bucks. So what do they do? Tony, got a question for you. Do you like to be clean, Tony? Do you like to wash your hands? Yeah. Do you like to smell nice? Tony Kynaston: Hmm. guess so. Better than smelling bad, but go out of my way. Cameron: Do you like your wife to smell nice? Tony Kynaston: Y– Uh, same thing. Yeah, as long as she smells clean. Cameron: Post-COVID, do you like to keep your hands clean? Do you like to squirt stuff? Okay. Well then, you, you are the end customer for TriMas. Tony Kynaston: Oh, all right. Cameron: time you pump hand soap or spritz some perfume, if you lived in America, which you don’t, but if you did, you’d probably be a customer of TriMas. Um, all the little squirty bits in [00:17:00] bottles, somebody has to make those. The little, the pumps, Tony Kynaston: Dispensers, Cameron: dispensers, these guys make that. Um, been doing it since 19… Oh, nice. Yes. Good job. Boom, boom. Is that what you’re doing so much? Is that your, is that your, is that your suggestion for a title? Indispensable Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: Been doing this since 1986. They’re based out of Michigan. Uh, not a household name, don’t need to be. Their website says, “TriMas designs, manufactures, and supplies a broad range of innovative and high quality products for the consumer packaging, life sciences, and industrial markets through its TriMas Packaging and Specialty Products Group. With approximately 2,500 employees in 12 countries, TriMas is committed to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Get into the divisions a little bit more in a minute. They were spun out of a company called Masco, [00:18:00] M-A-S-C-O. They’re a big building products giant in the Detroit area. They make plumbing and decorative architectural products, things like kitchen faucets. They’ve been around since 1929 and they spun TriMas out in 1986. Mas from Masco. Tri because there were three business segments that they’ve rolled out into this thing. So Barry and Stan, who came up with the name for this, easy day. Easy day at the, easy day at the office. Tony Kynaston: I guess you don’t need a marketing executive in the company if you manage– if you’re marketing dispensers. Cameron: Yeah, not really. No. They got taken in private in 2002, then re-IPO’d in 2007, originally on the New York Stock Exchange, later moved to the Nasdaq. Tony Kynaston: ‘Cause it’s a high-tech company. Cameron: high tech. You wouldn’t believe how high tech. Actually, yeah, as we’ll see, they actually do have some high tech factories now in China. At least one, you know. [00:19:00] Um, Tony Kynaston: So Cameron: so yes. Well, yes. Yes. Well, some, you know, I drilled down into that a bit. Some of the tariffs were hit on the head by SCOTUS, other ones not. So there are tariffs that are still maybe legit, although they are being challenged. It’s complicated. No one knows. This is, uh, you know, Trump 101. Keep them guessing. Tony Kynaston: yeah. Cameron: So, uh, as I mentioned earlier, a bit of activist investor activity that’s caused them to slim down the business a bit. So, uh, I like that. So a couple of things already that I like. They, they manufacture things you’ve never heard of them, but they’ve been around a long time. They make money and they’re tightening their belt, streamlining, all that kind of stuff. Classic, classic value investing, Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: in January of 2025, a guy, [00:20:00] well, a firm called Barrington Capital, run by a guy called James Mitarotonda, took a relatively small stake, 1.5%, but sent a very public letter to the chairman Guy called Herbert Parker saying, “Hey, you’ve got a CEO transition coming up. The timing is perfect. Let’s think about strategic allocations…” Sorry, “… strategic directions for the business.” And it was well received because Herbert Parker himself was originally put in on the board by another activist investor, a guy, a company by the f- name of En- Engaged Capital, nearly said Enraged Capital, which is a pretty good name for an activist investor. Engaged Capital back in 2015. So you’ve got activist on activist action, Tony, and there’s nothing much sexier for a value investor than activist on activist action. Sexy activists. Tony Kynaston: of value [00:21:00] investing camp. Cameron: Yeah. It’s like a shake and bake in, uh, Talladega Nights. Activists building on activists. So Parker’s now the chairman. So this was in January of 2025, um, and around about this time they, uh, were already onto this a little bit with the previous C-suite. They sold a division called Arrow Engine. It was a natural gas engine maker for the oil and gas pumping industry, so didn’t really fit with pumps. So they dumped it. This is where I got the pumps and dumps from, right? Tony Kynaston: It, was, a really big dispenser of gas. Like you had to find a really big… Had to get Hulk Hogan in to push the dispenser there. Cameron: They were like, “The gas pumping industry, we make pumps. Perfect fit.” Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Yeah. So they offloaded that. Um, then in February last year, they announced they were gonna review all of their portfolio and then at the end of the year, November 25, after they had swapped [00:22:00] CFO and CEO, they made a deal to sell an aerospace segment for $1.45 billion. It was made up of things like fasteners, blind bolts, and machined parts for Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed, and the defense supply chain. Had been part of TriMas for decades and was actually its highest margin segment, but was capital intensive, not many customers and, you know, had to deal with commercial aerospace cycles. Didn’t really fit with, you know, uh, uh, hand pumps. So… And they decided they could get a good price for it, and they did. New management decided to dump it. Previous CEO had apparently done a good job- Making it a good business is, you know, making it very profitable. They flipped it, uh, to a company I think called PenAero. Um, [00:23:00] sold it at 20 to 22 times earnings. So good deal. Yeah, did really well out of it. So new CEO or the old CEO was a guy called Thomas Amato, he’d been there since 2016. He was replaced by a guy called Thomas Schneider June of last year. He came from a company called Silgan Holdings. They’re a major US metal and plastic container manufacturer. He was the president of Silgan Containers. Tony Kynaston: It seem– Is it just me or does US corporate, the US Cameron: S- Tony Kynaston: dose of Barry and Stan? Cameron: Ah, wouldn’t Barry and Stan love this? What do you make? Uh, containers. What do you generate them out of? Silicon. Well, Silgan Containers, that’s your name. Oh, that’s brilliant. Tony Kynaston: Uh. Cameron: who Barry and Stan are, it’s a, it’s an old joke. I- inside joke. So, um, he was the president of Silgan, so [00:24:00] they basically hired a packag- packaging industry veteran to run what is now a packaging pure play, huh? They also got a new CFO. Old CFO left last year as well, replaced by a new guy, Paul Swart, in December 2025. So 2025 was a big year. They sold off a couple of divisions, new C-suite, um, new focus. They’re Six Sigma-ing the business, which I only know of because of “30 Rock.” Did you ever watch “30 Rock”? Tony Kynaston: No, not really. Cameron: Oh. Tony Kynaston: be around a lot of people who put a lot of s- emphasis on Six Sigma. Um, especially when I did some deals with GE, they were right into it. Cameron: Well, “30 Rock” is about GE, um, ’cause it’s… Right, it’s about… You’ve never seen “30 Rock”? So Tina Fey… Tony Kynaston: here and Cameron: Oh, right. Tony Kynaston: Didn’t really get that Cameron: Really? Oh, it’s brilliantly written. Really great. Yeah, yeah, it’s really great. But Tina Fey runs, like, a “Saturday Night Live”-type [00:25:00] show, 30 Rockefeller. It’s owned by GE. And, and Alec Baldwin is, like, the head of the television part of the business. He’s, and he’s all about Six Sigma. He’s always, like, tr- trying to Six Sigma up, you know? Turn the entertainment business into Six Si- He’s always talking about Six Sigma this and Six Sigma that. It’s a really good show, and he was really good. Surprisingly very funny in it. Um, never thought of him doing comedy, but he was good. And then he went and killed someone. But, you know, what are you gonna do? No, not allegedly. He fired the gun that killed Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: or not he was culpable for it, you know, you know Whoo. So, um, big year. Um, so what can I tell you about these guys? So they got these, uh, three divisions. Packaging is pretty much 84% of revenue, growing at about 9% year over year.[00:26:00] Like, um, apparently packaging is a good business. Making hand pumps and sunscreen bottles or perfume samples or caps on buckets of paint, all of that kind of stuff they do. And apparently it’s a pretty sticky business as well. So when … no pun intended. When you get a customer and you build a mold for their Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cameron: it’s quite expensive to build a machine and a mold and all of that kind of stuff. So once you get ’em, you apparently get ’em for a long time. They’ve also got a life sciences division, which is interesting. They design and manufacture precision, pr- pr- why can’t I say that? Precision injection molded components and assemblies for applications in the life sciences market. Includes prototype production models, molds, production… I can’t talk, and custom [00:27:00] medical related components such as consumable vascular delivery, patient monitoring, and diagnostic test components, which reminds me, I have to go get a 24-hour blood pressure monitor installed. I should be… Hey, Siri, remind me tomorrow to get a blood monitor installed, blood pressure monitor installed. Keep putting that off. Surgical devices and pharmaceutical closures, that’s sort of the growth end of the business, but it’s not a big part of the business right now. Operating margins are 10% to 13%. Not bad. Not terrible. And then they’ve got… Oh, they built a, a tw- 225,000 square foot beauty packaging facility in China, which is all clean room, robotics, all that kind of stuff. So it is high tech, despite you making fun of them. Tony Kynaston: I Cameron: Then, Tony Kynaston: fun of them. Cameron: edge technology, you’re saying. It’s all AI. They’re gonna change their name to TRSA, or TriMas AI, Tony. That’s where, that’s the big [00:28:00] bucks are. May I, may AI. Yeah, yeah. And then, uh, they’ve got this thing called Norris Cylinder. High pressure steel and aluminum cylinders for industrial gases, oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, propane and propa- propane and propane accessories. Do you ever watch King of the Hill? Tony Kynaston: No. Cameron: Uh, Chris is a huge King of the Hill fan. Propane and propane accessories, that’s what he deals in. And refrigerants, that’s, uh, the third part of their business. Steady, low growth, mature market, not gonna move the needle much. Okay, but here’s the thing Cash hoard distortion. So they sold the aerospace business for $1.45 billion. Tony Kynaston: Right. Cameron: And if you look at Stockopedia year-on-year operating cash, in 2025 it was 2.88. Their TTM is [00:29:00] 22.7, which is a big jump. Tony Kynaston: I can see it now. Yep. So that’s interesting. So you’re saying the sale of the aerospace division went through operating cash flow? Cameron: In Stockopedia. Now, Tony Kynaston: Right. Cameron: not how the company’s reporting it. Tony Kynaston: No. Cameron: business disposal proceeds go in investing activities, not operating, which they did correctly in their cash flow statement. I pulled up their report. Their actual Q1 2026 operating cash flow from continuing operations is negative 19 million. Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: Their TTM operating cash flow is roughly 125 to 130 million, but it’s not 890 million like Stockopedia’s reporting. By the way, Claude, I got it to read the annual report and it said, “Look, the negative 19 million is just sort of messy accounting.” It said, “They’ve got [00:30:00] discontinued operations from these two divisions they sold. It’s just gonna be messy GAAP accounting numbers for at least a few quarters while stuff flows through from the divestitures, special items, charges, et cetera, et cetera.” But Stockopedia’s operating cash flow numbers are wonky. For some reason, they’re showing this up as operating cash flow when it’s not really, and that’s not how the company’s reporting it either. Anyway, total debt’s about 396, uh, million, but they’re sitting on a billion dollars in cash, so they could pay that off if they wanted to. They’re not going to. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: gonna use the cash for strategic acquisitions in consumable, consumer packaging stuff. Tony Kynaston: I think they’re also– Aren’t they also doing some buybacks and other Cameron: But, Tony Kynaston: initiatives? Yeah. Cameron: hmm, they have done that. Tony Kynaston: [00:31:00] Yep. Cameron: they’ve done… Well, they’ve approved a big buyback. They’re about a third of the way through it. Share price is at an all-time high at the moment, up around 42, 43 bucks, so some of that is flowing through to it. Also, the market has liked the fact that they’ve offloaded this stuff. Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: But- The 2025 annual report cites about $117 million of cash flow from operating activities, but that includes aerospace, which they’ve just sold off. So if you strip that out, it’s about 40 million. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: with something like 70 to 80 million. So the OpCaf per share would be around about two bucks. Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: Share price is 42 bucks. Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: So the Pr/OpCaf, if you were basing on that, would be like 20 times. Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: We have a cutoff of seven, so this would be an immediate fail, Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: uh, on our checklist if we were using those numbers. But as I said to you, um, I think in the last [00:32:00] show, we normally don’t drill down into this level of financials. So it showed up on the buy list. I would’ve bought it if I hadn’t have done the Pulled Pork on it, just looking at the, the scoring. But in terms of the business, like I like the business. I like what they do. I like the management. They, they, you know, they seem to be slimming it down. They’re focused. They brought in this guy who knows, seems to know what he’s doing, comes from packaging. They’re sitting on a massive amount of cash that they can use for acquisitions. Um, mm, you know, it’s a good story, but if I backed all of that stuff out, it wouldn’t be on our buy list, Tony Kynaston: No. Cameron: on merit. Tony Kynaston: I wonder why Stockopedia is reporting the operating cash flow to include investments. That’s just very strange. Cameron: Claude said, look, they get their data feed from whoever they get it from these days. Um, who was that company that you [00:33:00] used to have a subscription with? Tony Kynaston: Was it Reuters? Cameron: No, it was some, it began with an R. Um, re- reinvest. Refinitiv, Tony Kynaston: yep. Cameron: who I think changed their name or got bought or something there, not that. But yeah, something to do with their data feeder. Like we see this with stock, uh, Stock Doctor all the time in Australia, right? We have dodgy numbers that come through, so data feeds do things for various reasons and screw up sometimes for various reasons. Um, so, Tony Kynaston: at the, the, company when you sent through the, the notes this morning, it was, me, my, my sort of top line summary was it’s great when good management gets a, um, a cash injection. Cameron: right. Tony Kynaston: a good lump, lump of cash often means good results. Cameron: Right. Tony Kynaston: at this stage, you’re right, you should back out that windfall and look at the underlying business, I think, until they invest it and see what they’ve bought. Cameron: Yeah. That was my concern with it. Like, everything looks [00:34:00] good, but that number doesn’t really Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: You know, pass the sniff test if we’re gonna break it down. The rest of the numbers are good. As I said, they pass all of the Stockopedia stuff. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: than book plus 30. Book plus 30 is $52.61. Price is $42.72. Doesn’t pass, uh, price, uh, less than book. Um, book value growth is positive, um, over the last three years. Good sentiment, uh, et cetera, et cetera. IV1 is actually negative because of a trailing 12-month EPS loss. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: is 17, well below the price. The yield is only 0.37%, so that’s, they’re not gonna score for that. But, you know, everything else scores well, Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: but, uh, doesn’t really, we can’t really honestly score them for Tony Kynaston: No. That’s Cameron: PropCaf. Tony Kynaston: a coffee shop which is doing well because I sold the, [00:35:00] sold the land. like, Cameron: No. Tony Kynaston: It’s not… It’s… Cameron: Although Tony Kynaston: not– Cameron: they Tony Kynaston: the, you can’t add the land income to the, uh, operating cash flow of the business and then make an assumption about the worth of the business based on that. Cameron: do have Tony Kynaston: Yep. Cameron: a lot of cash, but that’s, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s operating, tr- gonna translate into operating cash flow, right? Mm-hmm. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: So another one, you put the ca- the, the TK kibosh on. Tony Kynaston: Well, it’s interesting, we talked on the last Australian show about whether Pulled Pork’s a, for show or whether they’re actually worth the analysis, but I think this is another case of where they’re worth the analysis. Cameron: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Um, and whether or not, you know, this is interesting ’cause as, as, as I said a couple of times, normally we don’t do this level of analysis and these things would sneak through. But, [00:36:00] you know, it’s my AI analysis that, um, pulls these things out. You know, I have a script that Claude runs, and the first thing that it said when it, I said, “Go do a deep dive on this for me,” was it raised this as a red flag immediately. The, the first thing I have it do before it does the pulled pork is look for anything that looks, um, screwy. It’s called phase zero of the analysis. Phase zero is check for anything that doesn’t pass the sniff test, and it did that on Millrose, and it did it on this too. It went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This operating, this price to operating cash flow is dodgy,” right? Tony Kynaston: I thought Cameron: Mm-hmm. actually Ah, yeah, well, I’m smart enough to use Claude. Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. So what are you doing? You like comparing Stockopedia to the balance sheet on the, on the annual report or something. You’re looking for discrepancies. Cameron: Yeah, I have it, uh, I have it pull the recent, most recent financial report, read it and, you know, do some analysis on that and compare that [00:37:00] with my scoring. Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: Yeah. It’s the bullshit filter mechanism on it. Tony Kynaston: good. Yeah. Cameron: it sneaks through sometimes, like with Millrose, right? You know. Tony Kynaston: And I Cameron: Okay. Tony Kynaston: something, I don’t run Claude over it, but I do have a look at it and see if, Cameron: Yes. Tony Kynaston: if there’s something a bit wonky about it. Why is it throwing up such a high Pr/OpCaf, or anything else about it? High dividend yield or whatever. Cameron: Right. Tony Kynaston: the pub test. Yeah. Cameron: Yeah. And I’m not sure I would’ve picked … Like, I’ll normally look at the revenue line and the operating profit line in Stockopedia, net profit, see if they all look above board. I normally wouldn’t drill down seven or eight layers to look at the operating cash flow per share history, but, you know, this one, it goes 2.92, 3.1, 1.71, 2.11, 1.58, 2.88, 22.7! Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Hmm. Okay. Tony Kynaston: done. Okay. Cameron: there’s another one [00:38:00] that’s two in three weeks that you’ve said no to. Um, I, uh Tony Kynaston: Well, I think you’re saying no to them as well, aren’t Cameron: my gut feeling as soon as I was like, “Hmm, look, I like it, I like it, but, um, I don’t think that’s, uh, you know, apples with apples.” Tony Kynaston: It’s interesting that your… You know, my first response would be there’s something different in the US accounting standards compared to Australian companies, putting those lump sum windfall numbers through operating cash flow. But if you’ve checked that out against the balance sheet, then that doesn’t seem to be the case. to be a problem with the data provision. Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, no, the, um, the company reported it, um, appropriately. Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Okay Cameron: Okay. Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna buy this week then. I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and see something else. But I think in future when [00:39:00] I, uh, find something like this that has a dodgy flag, I won’t bother doing a pulled pork on it. I might just, Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: um, run it, run it past you via an email and pick something else. Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Yeah, cause there’s plenty of other stocks on the, on the buy list, so Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: But it is interesting to sort of see these anomalies, Tony Kynaston: Yeah, Cameron: the buy list and, you know, we don’t see this happen in Australia, right? Where there’s … I can’t remember a single time we’ve had a stock on the… Well, yes, we have, News Corp. Yeah. Tony Kynaston: number of shares Cameron: Yes Yeah, we have had data quality issues, ’cause that’s really what these things are, they’re sort of data quality issues. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Hmm. Tony Kynaston: and far between, but they do happen. Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Mm. Cameron: Okay. Well, Tony Kynaston: All right. Cameron: What have you got for after-hours, TK? Quick one. Tony Kynaston: Yeah, not a whole lot [00:40:00] today. I probably, um, wanna focus on Red Dragon. Have you seen that? You probably have. It’s like 40 years old or something, Cameron: That’s one of the sequels to “Silence of the Lambs.” Tony Kynaston: that’s the interesting thing. So I, I hadn’t seen it before, and it came up on, um, one of the streams. Jenny and I watched it, Jenny said, “Oh, this is a sequel to Silence of the Lambs.” No, it’s the original. The Silence of the Lambs is a sequel to Red Dragon. Cameron: Right. Tony Kynaston: interesting to see that the, um, Anthony Hopkins character was fully formed and his backstory, uh, that, um, the FBI agent this time was played by, um, his name? Ed, uh, Norton. Cameron: Right. Tony Kynaston: of role to the one that Jodie Foster played in Silence of the Lambs. But, um, yeah, it was just– It was– I always thought Silence of the Lambs was so original and a breakthrough and interesting, but it was, it was a sequel to Red Dragon. Cameron: But “Red Dragon” is a prequel. Tony Kynaston: [00:41:00] No, I think Red Dragon came out first. Cameron: No. No way. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: No. So “Red Dragon” came out in 2002. “Silence of the Lambs” came out in 1991. Tony Kynaston: Oh, really? I got that wrong, have I? Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Okay. Sorry. Cameron: Yeah, it was a prequel, um, that, um, Brett Ratner made. Yeah. Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Oh, well that, that makes sense then. I thought it was the first one that came out. Now, is there an earlier version of Red Dragon? ‘Cause I seem to recall it was out first. Cameron: So Michael Mann, Heat, made a film called Manhunter in 1986, which is based on Hannibal Lecter Tony Kynaston: Okay, maybe that’s what I was thinking of. Cameron: and Will Graham. Brian Cox was in it. Um, who else? Uh, looking at the thing here. No one. Joan Allen. Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Um, [00:42:00] but actually Hannibal Lecter’s– Does it say Hannibal Lecter’s in this? But it’s kind of loosely based on the– that story. never seen it. I’ve always tried to track it down to see it. Um, but yeah, Silence of the Lambs then was made. And you know, I, I’ve told you the story about meeting Anthony Hopkins, right? Remember that one Tony Kynaston: one of the reasons for raising it today. Cameron: Mm-hmm. Uh, great actor. Great actor. I, I remember see- I did see Red Dragon. I don’t remember it being great. Did you? Yeah. Tony Kynaston: just the acting. It fa- a lot of famous, uh, people are in the show. Um, Fiennes plays the bad guy. Hannibal Lecter was played by Anthony Hopkins. Ed Norton’s in it. Yeah. Cameron: Harvey Keitel, Mary-Louise Parker. Tony Kynaston: Parker. Yeah. So Cameron: Philip Seymour Hoffman. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: Yeah. There was another one that they made too, [00:43:00] with, uh, what’s his face in it, Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: there’s another sequel, I think. Try- scrolling through IMDb, trying to find out who that was, but it was, it was really bad. Anyway, hmm. Oh, Hannibal, it was called. Yeah. 2001. Gary Oldman. Ray Liotta, that’s who I was thinking of. Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta. Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Oh, I do recall seeing that one. Yeah, that’s a sequel. Cameron: Yeah. Um, Julianne Moore played Clarice Starling in that one. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: What else? Tony Kynaston: Uh, have you seen the movie called “The Hunt” from two th- two, uh, from 2020, I think it is? So the, uh, series that’s out, I think on Apple TV, called “The Hunt.” It’s not that. is on Netflix and [00:44:00] it’s a movie. And, uh, I watched it last night. Um, I really kind of enjoyed it. Uh, the only sort of actor in the cast is Hilary Swank, and she plays a small part in it. Um, and it’s a sort of… I, I was c- I was looking at The Hunt and trying to work out whether I wanted to watch it, the TV series on Apple, and then I saw the short for the movie and I thought, “That looks much more interesting.” Even though it’s a, it’s kind of a cliché trope of having a secret place to take humans to hunt for sport. Cameron: Oh, yeah. Tony Kynaston: this movie is like a black comedy and it turns the whole trope on its head, one of the, one of the people they’ve kidnapped is the wrong person, and she runs amok and kills all the billionaires. a spoiler alert, but, um, it’s actually really, really good. Cameron: The, the new series that’s got, um, what’s her face in it from the thing. Mad Ma- the [00:45:00] Mad Max, uh, sequel. Tony Kynaston: Charlie’s? Cameron: Charlize Theron. Yeah, yeah. Is it the one with Charlize Theron in? Tony Kynaston: No, no, that’s a different one again. I think it’s called Apex. Cameron: Oh, she’s getting hunted in that one, isn’t she? That’s Tony Kynaston: a Cameron: a different Tony Kynaston: but, Cameron: thing. Tony Kynaston: thought it was quite good. Cameron: Right. Uh, no, I haven’t heard of it. Sounds good. Tony Kynaston: I hadn’t heard of it either, so Cameron: I like– I, I totally like the idea of hunting rich people. Oh, no, it’s the other way around. It’s rich people hunting poor people. Yeah, Tony Kynaston: goes and Cameron: yeah. Tony Kynaston: so it’s, Cameron: Hey, listen, maybe that’s the next season of QAV. You and I will hunt each other in Cape Schanck. Just with paint- paintball guns. Nothing, nothing lethal. Just give us, uh, each a paintball gun and then, you know, it’s like capture the flag. We, we, we, uh, hunt each other across the golf course. Have you ever played paintball? Tony Kynaston: I haven’t Cameron: Ah. Tony Kynaston: not Cameron: Should get you into a paintball course Tony Kynaston: [00:46:00] Uh, Cameron: and the, me and the boys. It’s, uh… We used to do that on their birthday every year. It was fun. Tony Kynaston: Speaking of that, like last night there was a, someone lit off a flare down the street and I was like, sit like– ’cause at home here at Cape Schanck it’s just quiet and dark. see this blue flare, couple hundred meters away go, go across it was just, you know, really eerie. Couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, just this flare. So one of the local kids I suppose is having fun on the golf course. But Cameron: Oh. Tony Kynaston: really eerie.” Cameron: Hmm. Well, I don’t have much to report this week. I did watch Waiting for Guffman on Mother’s Day with Chrissy. You ever seen that? Tony Kynaston: Oh, I think I saw 10 minutes of it and turned it off. Cameron: Not your… Tony Kynaston: guys. Cameron: No? Okay. Yeah, that’s right. You said you weren’t a big fan of Catherine O’Hara, so that tracks. Tony Kynaston: No, or any of those, um, mockumentary best in shows and all those. Cameron: [00:47:00] Hmm, Christopher Guest films? Hmm. Tony Kynaston: And didn’t they remake, uh, um, what’s the Australian show? Um, with Kath & Kim. I think they remade them as well, and they were terrible Cameron: He did that? Tony Kynaston: Well, I don’t know if it was him, but certainly some of the actors from all those mockumentaries are in Cameron: Oh, okay. Yeah. Tony Kynaston: style of, Cameron: Right. Tony Kynaston: just hammy overacting from, you know… don’t know if they’re trying to make fun of people who are American and don’t have much of a brain, but yeah, it’s just I don’t, I don’t find it funny. Cameron: Uh, okay. Um, let me, uh, tell you about a book that I heard about s- Tony Kynaston: You can recommend Welcome to Gomorrah if it, if it Cameron: No, no, no. It’s, it’s fine. We’ll move right along. Um, you know, uh, well, maybe you don’t know, but Elon’s big data centers that he builds for his AI operations, he [00:48:00] calls, um, uh… What does he call them? Colossus. Tony Kynaston: From the Forbin Project. Cameron: Yes! Right. So you do know it. Tony Kynaston: No, I know the movie. I don’t know about Elon’s data centers. Cameron: Oh, okay. Well, um, I had never heard of, um, Forbin and or the, or the movie. I didn’t even know there was a movie until you just mentioned Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: based on books Tony Kynaston: Oh, okay. Cameron: which I started reading the first one, uh, this week, you know, uh, knowing that you’re a science fiction fan, I wondered if you had read it. Tony Kynaston: Haven’t Cameron: read it? Tony Kynaston: the movie. The movie came out when I was a kid Cameron: 1970, I just looked it up. Tony Kynaston: that, uh, imprisons a man to study him. think he was the inventor of the AI from memory. Cameron: Right. So the original book was written in 1966 by a guy called D.F. Jones, Dennis Feltham Jones. Wrote Colossus: The [00:49:00] Fall of Colossus, and Colossus and the Crab. Um, so yeah, I’m sort of… Uh, I, I, I’m enjoying the first one. It’s, it’s kind of hilarious to read, you know, AI books from that period. The AI when it gets turned on, um, you know, it’s communicating with the humans via, uh, ticker tape that’s coming out of the side of the machine. We were visionary enough to imagine artificial intelligence, but not visionary enough to imagine a world without ticker tape machines. was talking in natural English like our computers do. The AIs do talk to us like that today, so at least those guys got it somewhat right. Had lots of flashing lights, which we don’t seem to need on our computers these days. I do love a, I do love a sci-fi [00:50:00] film with lots of flashing lights on the supercomputers. Kind of miss that, to be honest. Kind of wish my computers did have, like, flashing lights and spinning tape reels and everything. It was so much more aesthetically pleasing than just a- Nondescript black box. Tony Kynaston: It’s better for movies, isn’t it? When you can see things actually Cameron: Yeah, it’s cooler. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Like in Star Wars or Star Trek where there are all these lights that just flash. Cameron: Yes, give me lights that flash and beep. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: what have I been listening to that I can share with you? Um, nothing comes to mind. Tony Kynaston: issue of The Aints which was really good. Cameron: The Aints. Tony Kynaston: Ed Kuepper Cameron: Saints without that S. I’ve never heard of that. Tony Kynaston: style of music. It’s good. Cameron: Well, good. Uh, do you see The Stones have got a new album coming out? Tony Kynaston: I, [00:51:00] I’ve been seeing it on my streams. Yeah. The Cameron: I listened to the first track that they’ve released, uh, off of that. It’s not bad. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s all right. Cameron: And, uh, I’ve been listening to a lot of Yes this week. Do you like Yes? Tony Kynaston: Oh, not– I haven’t heard a whole lot of them. I did a lot when I was a kid, but I can’t remember much of it. Cameron: Hmm. I like. Tony Kynaston: from Cameron: Wow. Tony Kynaston: people who were still in Yes of about 10 years ago. Cameron: Wow. Why? Tony Kynaston: one of my Canadian friends got it for me for a birthday present. Cameron: Because they thought you were a big Yes fan or just… Tony Kynaston: I think he’d been to, like, some kind of corporate gig with Cameron: Oh, Tony Kynaston: where they were playing. Cameron: right. Jon Anderson are those guys. Tony Kynaston: No, I got no idea. Cameron: Thanks TK. Have a good week. Tony Kynaston: you next week. You too. PREVIOUS PULLED PORKS Here’s the performance of the “pulled porks [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16WHwMalQodhxUO9h1T-7suVtfwjrXq057fFHhcLXFWk/edit?gid=0#gid=0]” (eg deep dives) we’ve done on the show in the past.

13. maj 2026 - 24 min

Subprime Time: Lending to America’s Underbanked at 36% APR – QAV America #49

QAV AM 49 [https://qavamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/QAV-America-49-art-optimised.jpg] On this episode we run through our latest portfolio numbers — the QAV dummy portfolio is up 115% since inception versus the S&P’s 60%, and some individual picks like Kodak and Scripps are going absolutely bananas. We dig into the week’s big news including the Iran war’s economic ripple effects, the tariff refund mess, and the Cal-Maine antitrust saga. Then Cameron does a full Pulled Pork on Oportun Financial (OPRT) — a subprime FinTech lender to underserved Latino communities that’s dirt cheap, freshly activist-investor-cleaned, and either a turnaround gem or a cautionary tale. This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@qavinvesting]. Or visit our homepage [https://qavamerica.com/home/] to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives [/listen/] TRANSCRIPTION QAV America 49 Club Cameron Reilly: [00:00:00] Welcome to QAV America TK. It’s the 21st of April, 2026. Before we get into the news of the week, TK, I just thought I’d do a quick update on our portfolios ’cause it’s a crazy time in the markets at the moment. The QAV dummy portfolio, uh, all time, which is September 23, is currently up 115%. Over that period of time versus the S&P 500, which is up about 60%. So that’s, uh, September two and a two and a half years, not gonna lie. The S&P being up 60% in two and a half years TK: it’s good. Cameron Reilly: is not a bad, not a bad couple of years. Um, we are doing pretty much double that, so, yeah. Crazy, crazy time over there. Uh, at the moment, for the last 30 [00:01:00] days, our portfolio is up 14% versus the S&P up nine. Our QAV light portfolio, which we started in December last year. Is up 6% over that period of time versus the S&P up 3%. So again, sort of double market, but it’s only over a few months. Um, I did mention to you on our last show that some of the stocks that have been doing well, we’ll talk about Topgolf in a minute, but our, our friends at Kodak. Um, that we talked about a few weeks ago are now up Conex up 65% in our light portfolio. Um, in a matter of, TK: bid or something for them? Cameron Reilly: I dunno, it didn’t come up in my news search. Yeah, we added them on the 23rd of March, which is a month ago, less than a month ago, but almost a month ago. It’s up 65%. No idea why [00:02:00] Scripps is up 48.7% since we added them, uh, on the 25th of February, two months ago. TK: Well, of course it’s, uh, corporate reporting season over there now, so they could be putting out some good Cameron Reilly: It’s always corporate reporting season. They do it every three months. I did see that Scripps announced some sort of deal came up in my news. Well, it didn’t seem like that big a deal, some sort of a thing that they did. But yeah, I mean the market is just absolutely bonkers. you know, we’re gonna start a new segment on this show this week, which is, uh, Tony reads the Bible uh, that’s what Donald Trump’s doing this week. Uh, America reads the Bible. Have you heard about that? TK: No. Cameron Reilly: He’s doing a televised session where he reads from the Bible. I’m not sure if it’s a daily thing or a weekly thing. I’m not sure when he is gonna learn to read, but that’s TK: picture book? Oh, look at that. That’s a very ugly guy. There he is. Got terrible clothes, bad hair, Cameron Reilly: very low IQ TK: [00:03:00] straggly beard. Yeah. Cameron Reilly: Very low IQ loser. Yeah. I prefer my TK: that’s Jesus. Cameron Reilly: killed. Yeah. TK: Look at that. He’s not to a cross. It’s a very basic cross. Not even the gold cross. Well, I see. He’s obviously doing penance for the AI post of him being Jesus. He’s trying to get back into good books with the Americans. Yeah, the Christians. Mm. Cameron Reilly: Well, uh, Tony, crazy week, uh, as has become the norm. Um, York Times article in front of me. White House shrugs off shaky economy as war exceeds Trump’s timeline. Stocks may be soaring again, but the war in Iran has started to pinch the finances of many Americans. Uh, TK: Was that White House or Wall Street did you misquote there? Cameron Reilly: no, says White House. TK: Really well, of course they’re gonna shrug it off. It’s bad news. Cameron Reilly: roughly seven weeks into the war with Iran, investors have shrugged off the [00:04:00] sky high price of oil, sending the S&P 500 this week to a fresh record high. This is dated April TK: Yeah, so that’s Wall Cameron Reilly: old. TK: Street shrugging off the wall. Cameron Reilly: exuberance on Wall Street has offered a sharp contrast with the hardships facing many Americans who are feeling the financial blowback of a conflict that President Trump once promised would be brief, but seems to have no end in sight TK: You once promised there wouldn’t be any foreign wars too. Forget about it being brief. That’s like, Cameron Reilly: Oh, TK: that’s like a, an excuse you give when you didn’t do your homework. Well, I’ll be brief. It was brief anyway. Cameron Reilly: so. 2024. Thinking of you Tony, have changed with high gas prices cutting deeply into many families’ budgets. The US economy is under increasing strain, raising the odds that inflation will worsen, unemployment will rise, and growth will slow. This year TK: All completely correct, but look, Americans are whinging bitches. I, uh, [00:05:00] I compare the cost of, um, petrol in the US or gas as they put it to Australia. And uh, the $4 a gallon is equivalent to a dollar 50. Even taking into account the currency changes exchanges. Dollar 50 per liter, which is half what I’m paying at the moment at the bowser. So, you know, get over yourselves. Americans Cameron Reilly: $3 TK: pony up. Yeah. For diesel. Absolutely. Cameron Reilly: got a diesel car. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: I was surprised. I filled up our car yesterday or the day before and it was only, I think two bucks. TK: Okay. Cameron Reilly: It was like TK: That’s good. Cameron Reilly: a few days earlier or a week earlier. Um, whinging bitches. I guess that’s the new, um, title for the episode. Uh, so yeah, like as we’ve said before, I think week after week after week after week, the stock market doesn’t seem to care. Uh, Washington Post article, here’s what the, uh, it wants me to pay for it. God damnit. TK: Stop shouting at [00:06:00] clouds. Cameron Reilly: Okay. Hold on a second here. Uh, let TK: Yeah. You sent me, you said listen to this. Cameron sends me all these links to the behind paywalls and I don’t get to see them. Cameron Reilly: you’ve TK: Alright. Cameron Reilly: Post subscription. I know it’s Wall TK: No. Cameron Reilly: You’ve got, yeah. TK: I do find a way to get around them, but yeah. Cameron Reilly: Here’s what the stock market might’ve gotten wrong about the Iran war. surge in optimism contrasts starkly with continued energy supply, challenges that threaten long lasting economic harm, and a market reckoning as stocks soared. This week in oil prices dropped amid an apparent cooling of tensions between the United States and Iran. It may have left the impression that the energy shock that rattled the world is quickly fading along with the risk of sending the global economy into a recession. But beneath that surface, a starkly different reality is unfolding. It is defined by disrupted supply lines and damaged infrastructure, sparking increased [00:07:00] concern among the people who produce, transport, and depend on energy. The people closest to the industry are far more concerned about these disruptions and recognize the length of time it will take for things to return to normal. If they ever do, said Jerry Morton oil and gas co-chair at the law firm, Baker Botts. The further away you get from actually being involved in producing oil, the less you seem to be concerned about the physical reality and problems that are there. is the thing that gets me, Tony, is like, there’s just this sense of exuberance and optimism in the markets. That makes absolutely no sense to me. TK: It, it doesn’t, and unfortunately, I, yeah, I don’t like to predict, but it, it’ll catch up with us, with us at some stage and the market will retrace dramatically, I think. Um, not just, so a couple of points on what you just reported. Uh, I [00:08:00] can’t see the oil majors relying on the Straits of Hormuz if they can avoid it going forward, because even if, even if they have to, in the short term, they’re possibly gonna have to pay a toll. To use it, whether that’s a toll on Iran’s permission or whether that’s some kind of support for the US keeping the straits open. Um, there has been plans to build a pipeline down the western side of the Strait so that oil can get through without having to worry about intervention. That’s a. Big, big cost, but I, I’m sure that that is being dusted off and they’re having a look at that, or they’ll find some other way to, to get the oil out, which will be more expensive. Um, so that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that the Straits of Hormuz aren’t the only narrowing in the supply chain for oil. There’s also other places like the Straits of Malacca, which um, could be shut down by China in a sort of similar way that [00:09:00] Iran’s controlling supply chain, uh, the supply chain. And given China’s moving away from its dependency on oil and gas, it’d be a really neat trick to go for the electric and then close down the Straits of Malacca, which would stop oil from getting to Southeast Asia and possibly to us as well. So it’s, it’s not just one choke point. I, I would think that the oil industry’s looking at all the chokepoints and building plans and they, the problem is not gonna be the lowest cost plans. They’re gonna be the risk free plans and not cost money. And it’s not just oil. It’s gonna flow through to plastics, chemicals, fertilizers. Almost every part of the supply chain has a cost increase because of this. Cameron Reilly: I was reading a little bit about the idea of building a pipeline across, well, what a cartel or Oman or whatever is down on that other side of it. And yeah, it doesn’t sound like a weekend project. TK: No it doesn’t. Cameron Reilly: go to Bunnings, get some pipe, throw it down. there’s some pretty big mountain [00:10:00] ranges through there, so TK: right. Cameron Reilly: I read like hundreds of billions of dollars and decades to build a pipeline through there. TK: Really. Cameron Reilly: yeah, It’s not a, not a short term solution. TK: Right. Cameron Reilly: Elon can just fly rockets, some rockets there. Rockets can come up and come down on the other side. Reusable rockets. TK: Yeah, he’s, he’s pretty good at finding economies and infrastructure, isn’t he? In government? Government departments? Cameron Reilly: Well, TK: think I’ll be relying on Elon, but I mean, they might do something like put it on rail, for example, rather than ship it in in big tankers, which should be, again, costlier, but less risk. So I think that’s gonna be the, there’s gonna be solutions like that until more permanent ones are found, but they’re gonna be costly. Cameron Reilly: Hmm. Well, speaking of government departments dealing with money, uh, New York Times today, uh, Trump administration takes steps to refund $166 billion in tariffs. [00:11:00] The government debuted a system to repay importers. Two months after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs at the heart of the President’s trade policy. Uh, but guess who’s not getting any money back is the people who paid their money. Um, the consumers, American consumers. They’re not getting refunds. TK: Yet, you gotta expect there to be class actions, wouldn’t you? Cameron Reilly: wow. Yeah. I mean, lawyers have gotta make a buck, somehow. Gotta feel sad for the lawyers. Um, TK: of the American economy. The lawyer? Cameron Reilly: Um, yes. Like just what, what a debacle like, uh, complete, complete and utter debacle. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: guy has done TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: and utter mess any who [00:12:00] in a sign of the expected demand. More than 3000 businesses, including FedEx and Costco, have already sued the Trump administration in a bid to secure their refunds before the application website launched, with some cases filed even predating the Supreme Court’s ruling, but only the entities that officially paid the tariffs are eligible to recover that money. That means that the fuller universe of people affected by Mr. Trump’s policies, including millions of Americans who paid higher prices for the products they bought, are not able to apply for direct relief. You’re tired of the winning yet America. TK: Well, it’s, that’s an interesting point as well. ’cause if, if, uh, there is a precedent set that the end user gets to pay for a, a government acting illegally, in this case it’s tariffs, then it must apply to oil as well. So it’s like governments acted illegally, Congress hasn’t approved this incursion to the Straits of war, whatever you wanna call it, and it’s pushed up all the prices for Americans. [00:13:00] There’s another set of. Legal actions pending, I would’ve thought, Cameron Reilly: Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right. Well, moving closer to home. Um, big article in the financial review about Hamish Douglass, formerly of TK: sorry. Be, can I make one more point? I was gonna, Cameron Reilly: Hmm. TK: in my notes talk a little bit about the fact that in the earning season that’s happening in the US I saw an article reporting on that for the banking sector. And the headline was something like, volatility is our friend. And so the banks have been making huge money out of buys and sell during this period of volatility. Um, so someone’s winning out of it, and if someone’s winning out of it, it’s probably not gonna stop soon. Cameron Reilly: Yeah, well, not to mention the people that, playing arbitrage with the TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: uh, you know, who obviously have a bit of an inside track, I imagine. TK: Mm-hmm. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. It’s just a, like, it’s just such a huge grift. [00:14:00] Um, I was talking to one of my American, uh, TPN listeners, uh, on chat there, actually. You, you, you, you met him, uh, Tim in the, uh, Vegas days. I think you were there years ago. Tim Henning, back when Markum and Ray and all of us were in Vegas, Tim was there. He was checking in and he was saying like, the whole thing is just a pyramid scheme. Like it’s just the guys at the top making all the money from the people down the bottom. And yeah, it’s just, he’s disgusted with the whole thing. TK: Well, but we’ve seen this before with the US elections. They put a useful idiot in, they make lots of money. The useful idiot can make a bit of money as well themselves, and Cameron Reilly: Hmm, TK: the machine just keeps grinding on. Cameron Reilly: . Uh, one of the stocks that we’ve talked about, uh, Cal-Maine Foods are in a bit of hot water. The US Justice Department is preparing an antitrust suit against a few major egg producers, including Cal-Maine Foods and Versova. Over [00:15:00] alleged price coordination. The Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter matter shares of Cal-Maine Foods, were down nearly 5% in extended trading. Following the news. Now call me crazy, call me stupid. But, uh, I, I do think there’s a little bit of a political angle in this because you remember when Donald Trump was campaigning. He was very big on talking about the price of eggs and how the price of eggs were gonna plummet. Immediately he became president and then they didn’t. And, uh, so I think the Justice Department is going after the egg companies for making the president, uh, look bad. Would, what do you think would he, would he be that petty? TK: Who can say I’m, I’m just, I’m just struggling to think of a promise he made that’s been kept [00:16:00] after two years or nearly two years. Uh, no foreign wars. Cameron Reilly: Yeah, TK: a war. It’s gonna finish soon. Cameron Reilly: the tariffs are gonna be great for America. Oh, we’re gonna pay them all back. It was actually illegal, uh, doing that. Yeah. Um, I’m just asking, uh, Gemini, what’s happened to the price of eggs? The price of eggs in the United States over the last two years, April, 2024 to April, 2026, has been a study in extreme volatility. As of March, 2026, the average retail price for a dozen grade, a large eggs is approximately $2 35. This represents a dramatic decline from the historic highs. Seen exactly one year ago. TK: Well done, Donald. Cameron Reilly: So, TK: Does that mean the case has dropped? Cameron Reilly: uh, December, 2024. They were $4 15, March, 2025, $6 23. August 25, $3 59. March [00:17:00] 26, $2 35, so TK: Oh, I must see a reelection campaign right there. Cam. Winning the War against Eggs Cameron Reilly: yeah. TK: winning Cameron Reilly: Yeah. TK: the war against Cameron Reilly: Yeah, so, uh, what drove up the prices before that was the, uh, avian flu, apparently, the HPAI highly pathogenic avian influenza began in 2022. An outbreak, particularly lethal wave hit in late 2024. Then the greed, deflation debate. Anyway, I don’t know what the prices have come down. No. TK: What drove the prices up was Sleepy Joe. Cameron Reilly: Sleepy Joe. Yeah, he TK: Joe. Cameron Reilly: loved his eggs. Um, also in the news, American Airlines rejects United CEO’s merger proposition. Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the CEO of United Airlines, uh, suggested to President Trump that, uh, [00:18:00] would be a really great idea if they merged the two largest US carriers. Industry officials have said such a merger would create significant antitrust concerns and likely face pushback from consumers, lawmakers, and state attorneys general. United and American overlap on hundreds of routes, including at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where they’ve been locked in a fierce battle for terminal gates and passengers. Analysts said any merger would likely require significant divestitures. And apparently, uh, American Airlines not all about this idea. They’ve said no. We did, um, cover American Airlines on the show a while ago, the share price. We, we talked about them in October last year. Share prices down 11% since then. TK: Yeah, of course. Mainly due to oil prices, Cameron Reilly: Uh, I would imagine there’s, there was also some [00:19:00] problem with, uh, engines I seem to recall, and, you know, problems with, uh, some engines. Somebody who’s done much better since we talked about them. Uh, is Topgolf, Tony. Callaway, one of your favorite stocks that we’ve talked about? I had mentioned in recent shows that since we talked about them, their share price had gone bonkers. We, we covered them on the 12th of November, 2025. Share price is up 43% since then, and I didn’t really look into it. They did pop up yesterday and something else I was looking at, um, there was an article that came out six days after we did our show, Topgolf, to be acquired by private equity firm, Leonard Green and Partners, the long awaited spinoff deal has finally been announced. Parent Topgolf Callaway Brands plans to drop Topgolf from its name when the $1.1 billion deal is completed in early 2026. And remember, they did. [00:20:00] Change their, uh, ticker code to CALY from TOPG, I think it was. TK: Mm-hmm. Cameron Reilly: And that’s why. And the share price. The TK: well. Cameron Reilly: market loved it. So the share price has done well, not as well as easement. Code Act 70, 60. So 66%. Remember Pitney Bowes we talked about at the, uh. Uh, it says 30th of April here. That’s not right. It’s the 30th of March. We talked about Pitney Bowes. They’re up 21%, uh, commercial vehicle groups up 16% since we talked about ’em on the 16th of April. PagSeguro we talked about last week, is up 6% since then. Just we can’t do anything wrong. Tony, apart from American Airlines, apparently everything’s going bonkers. TK: if you’re a CEO out there, send us a brown paper bag and we’ll talk about you on the stock on the. Cameron Reilly: Either I’m a complete genius when I pick these stocks or, uh, the [00:21:00] US market. It makes absolutely no sense. Right now. You decide. I report the facts, people you decide. So my stock this week, Tony, is an interesting one. I think you’re gonna like this one. Um, Oportun Financial Corp, OPRT is the ticker code. They’re on the, uh, NASDAQ. Look ’em up. OPRT. I’m gonna do this quickly ’cause I need to go jumpstart a car with a dead battery, uh, and then go to kung fu. But Oportun is a financial services company according to Stockopedia, the company offers access to a suite of financial products offered either directly or through partners, including lending and savings, powered by artificial intelligence. TK: Important to say that these days Cameron Reilly: You know, it’s good. TK: it’s worth a Cameron Reilly: it’s good. TK: in your stock Cameron Reilly: Yeah. Maybe that’s what Kodak did. Maybe they turned themselves into an AI company, code ai. Put [00:22:00] an I in the brand name. The company’s credit products include unsecured and secured personal loans. Its unsecured personal loan is a fully amortizing installment loan with fixed payments throughout the life of the loan. Its secured personal loan is a personal installment loan product secured by an automobile. It also offers automated savings through its set and save platform. Its set and save product is designed to understand a member’s cash flows and save the right amount on a regular basis, quote unquote. Using AI, it reaches incremental members through its lending as a service lead generation program, it allows consumers to become members and access its products through the Oportun mobile app and the oportun.com website. Which serves as its primary platforms for onboarding and providing member services. So, uh, interesting business that’s had a bit of a rough run as [00:23:00] most of the companies that we talk about here have for one reason or another. Not a lot of dead people, but, uh, a lot of, a lot of sued people. Um. TK: Oh. Cameron Reilly: There’s the story here. Company goes back 20 years. Co-founded in 2005 in California by James Gutierrez. He was a student at Stanford Graduate School of Business and his co-founder, Gabrielle Manez, the original name of the business was Progreso Financiero. Financial progress, I guess, in Spanish, rebranded to Oportun in 2015. It, it basically started off as a, a social enterprise to try and provide credit to people in America that didn’t have access to credit. Basically, unbanked and underbanked Latino population, primarily in California and Texas. These are people that couldn’t get credit under the. [00:24:00] Typical banking system in the us, undocumented immigrants or people that just struggled to get enough of a credit score, high enough credit score for the traditional banks to look at them. TK: Mm-hmm. Cameron Reilly: The company’s original mission was to help its customers build credit in the United States, and gain access to better lives and mainstream financial services. And over the years it grew and grew and developed a reputation for being one of the most litigious debt collectors targeting Latinos, TK: that’s, um. Cameron Reilly: particularly during COVID TK: it doesn’t matter how much marketing you do, you do, it’s going Cameron Reilly: one. TK: negate it pretty quickly. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. Well, um, and yesterday they got a new CEO. ’cause the CEO that they’ve had for the last 14 years got rolled by an activist investor. TK: was repossessed? No. Oh. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. He was [00:25:00] evicted from the premises by the sheriff, uh, which is the interesting part of the story. We’ll get to Fin. They’re an activist investor group that basically took a 10% stake in the business and then. Sort of got rid of the board, uh, and, uh, or some of the board anyway, and the CEO. So they went, uh, Oportun, went public on the NASDAQ in 2019 at $15 a share. Currently trading around $5.88. So big decline. And, uh, the outgoing CEO has been blamed for a lot of that, not only by this activist investor, Mr. Finn, but also by the founder or the co-founder I mentioned before, Mr. Uh, Gutierrez. I read a letter that he wrote basically saying, yeah, the, these, the current management has screwed the business, screwed the pooch, and we need to get back to basics. So, um, first thing to know [00:26:00] in terms of their core business is they’re what you would call a subprime and near prime consumer lender. They lend small amounts of money, typically two to $10,000, to people who can’t easily get a personal loan from a mainstream bank because they have a thin credit file, no credit file or damaged credit history. They pay the loan back in fixed monthly installments over two to four years at a fixed interest rate. For those people who dunno what subprime means, it means borrowers whose credit scores are below the threshold that you would, uh, normally. Need for mainstream banks, which is called prime credit. Near prime, you sit one tier above subprime. Their typical borrower’s a Latino working age income, roughly 45 to $55,000 a year in a service sector job. Um, and quite often a first time formal credit user. And they’ve got a number of products, as I said, but the main [00:27:00] one is this fully amortizing personal loan. Now in July, 2020, they publicly committed to capping their annual percentage rate APR at 36%, which seems high. TK: That’s generous of them. They capped it at 36%. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. Now, uh, I did some sort of analysis between that and what the caps are in Australia, the caps in Australia are, uh, a bit higher, but in the US it’s kind of crazy. Uh, it, in Australia, our rates are capped federally TK: Mm-hmm. Cameron Reilly: the US they do it state by state. And some states, I think about 16, have got caps in place, others don’t, and you could be paying six, 700% TK: mm. Cameron Reilly: APR, uh, in some places. So it’s. Kind of typically [00:28:00] American outrageous. Yeah. I was mentioned in the last show our, um, the guy that was with us in Vegas, I don’t know, 10 years ago, whenever it was, Tim told me that he just had a, an ultra, he’s 74. He just had an ultrasound done on his heart. Cost him $19,000. TK: For an ultrasound, Cameron Reilly: Yeah, I said I had my stress test and ultrasound and echo done a few months ago. TK: equipment? Cameron Reilly: I had mine done a few months ago and it cost me, I think six or 700, maybe $800, and I was kind of pissed that it cost me that much. TK: I was gonna say, Cameron Reilly: Yeah, TK: yeah, I have a Cameron Reilly: I TK: CT scan done recently on my sinuses, and it was free. It was bulk billed. Cameron Reilly: right. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. So anyway, that’s America for you. Um, now the 36% is apparently what the Military Lending Act, which is a federal law in [00:29:00] 2006, uh, that’s the limit that they set for interest rates for the military. It’s considered the, the good rate, 36%. Um, so anyway, and they did that. They voluntarily did that. Because they got outed by ProPublica and the Guardian as being one of the most litigious, TK: Oh dear. Cameron Reilly: uh, lenders to Latinos. And then a few days later came out and said that they were dismissing a lot of their lawsuits and capping it at 36%. So they got shamed into it. Basically, the CEO at the time said, I had no idea that, I’m shocked, shocked to hear that there’s gambling going on in this establishment officer. So, yeah. So how they make money, uh, breaking it down. TK: I think it’s pretty obvious how they Cameron Reilly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re gonna break down the business, TK: don’t Cameron Reilly: divisions. TK: you’re talking about [00:30:00] this. Cameron Reilly: Uh, they’re what’s called a monoline lender. So they have a single product line as opposed, as opposed to a diversified bank. So personal loans, unsecured, as I said, that’s, that’s the historic core of the business and the bulk of their loan book secured personal loans, which is a relatively new product, which is where you pledge your car as collateral. You get lower loss rates, or they get lower loss rates as part of that. Uh, credit cards. They have a smaller card product. It’s pretty modest, but they do offer a card and then they got the saving. App, but this is kind of a bit of a dud. In 2021, they acquired a company called Digit. It was a FinTech app that automatically took money from your bank account and saved it for you, but that’s largely been wound down. It was a bit of a disaster. TK: Mm. Cameron Reilly: But the way that they raise money, and this is part of the risk of businesses like this, is they raise money via what’s known as [00:31:00] warehouse lines and securitization. Tony’s nodding sagely because he knows what that is. I didn’t, I had to look it up TK: Uh. Cameron Reilly: and I’ll get into it in a minute. For people who don’t know how that works, so they borrow, it costs ’em about three to 7%, uh, to access the funds, and then they loan it out for. 36% or more as we said. Uh, and the difference is the net interest margin or the NIM, the NIM, and that’s what they live on. Obviously risky for a bunch of reasons, as we discovered in 2008 with the subprime mortgage disaster, which I’ll talk about more in a second. But the thing that these people call their moat is their, their, uh, machine learning model, their proprietary machine learning underwriting model is what they call it. They’re currently on V 12 of that. And that’s the credit decision system, which they say is their [00:32:00] magic. And I’ll get into, you know, how realistically much of a moat that is. A little bit later on. But lemme talk about the subprime thing. ’cause that was my first reaction. I was, oh, subprime, um, alarm bells went off. So subprime is obviously risky for obvious reasons. These people, um, are doing it tough and when things go tits up, the, these people that have subprime mortgages are probably gonna be the first people that can’t pay back their loans. In 2008, uh, we had subprime mortgages that were layered into collateralized debt structures. That were sold then to other parties and they didn’t have a lot of visibility in what was inside of those. I remember in the, um, whatever that film was, Big Short, I remember, um, TK: Margot Cameron Reilly: no, I was thinking about, um, uh, [00:33:00] the chef whose books I’ve read and now I can’t remember his name. TK: Bourdain. Cameron Reilly: Bourdain. Thank you. Talking about. Like weak old fish heads that you then put into a bouillabaisse stew or something. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: it all up as the analogy. TK: I just, can I pull you up there? I just ask the question, is Oportun actually offering mortgages or is it just loans? Cameron Reilly: No, no mortgages. Just personal loans. Yeah. Um, so back in 2008, what happened was these mortgages were, you know, people were buying mortgages on. Speculating on price appreciation for the property, and they were being loaned out on that basis. Then the real estate market collapsed and the mortgages collapsed and they, they had been funneled up and off on, sold to other banks, and then all that collapsed and it was this systemic. Contagion that spread through the financial system. Oportun makes small [00:34:00] personal loans, as I said before, two and a half to $10,000. They get paid back over two to four years. So no securitization daisy chain really, although they do securitize them, which I’ll get into. But it’s a, it’s, it’s very different. Um, I think to the, the mortgage level risk that we saw in 2008. Although you would expect that when things go tits up, and as we said earlier, all of the economists who, and in Australia we were talking about the fact that the banks here are starting to prepare for, TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: higher losses. They’re upping their bad debt buffers, the bad debt, Warren Buffer, as you said. Um. So big businesses and economists and the banks here are all assuming that it’s gonna be a rough trot thanks to, uh, President Trump’s, uh, adventures in Iran, among other things. TK: Well, certainly in Australia and there’s, there’s been two rate cuts here. I don’t think there has been in [00:35:00] the US so it might be a little bit different or delayed in the us but uh, yeah, it’s not gonna be as sunny as it was before the war. Cameron Reilly: yeah, not according to the articles we read earlier. I mean, you know. I think every, all, all of the economists in the US are thinking that this is not gonna end well. TK: The thing about subprime no camp, from my experience and I had a bit of experience running store cards or not running store cards, being involved with the running of store cards past careers, which are unsecured, and a line of credit to allow someone to shop in a department store, for example. as long as it’s all transparent and it’s priced properly, it doesn’t matter if things go tits up. Right. You’ve baked that into the price, the high interest rate you’re charging, and also into the provisions for losses that you’re, you’re making. if you are warehousing and getting funding from someone else, as long as they’ve got transparency of the who’s who the borrower is, then they can price it appropriately as well. The difference with the, with the GFC was that that [00:36:00] stuff was rolled up into, Cameron Reilly: Yeah. TK: CDOs and then rated as if it was all Prime Plus when it wasn’t Cameron Reilly: Yeah. TK: heads? Yeah. Cameron Reilly: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So I mean, it, it, it’s not going to lead hopefully to, uh, a huge market disaster. But it could be bad for the business. I mean, they could lose money in the, in the process. Right. So from an investor’s perspective, yeah. TK: yeah. Cameron Reilly: So the, the flip side, the contrarian angle to that is when you look at the share price for this, the market is already overpricing tail risk into their business model and at their current prices. And as you’ll see, when we get to the, uh, price to book and the price to operating cash flow, it’s, it’s insanely cheap. Um, so there’s, there’s potential upside here as well as potential risk as there always is. Also this borrower base, the, um, Latino immigrants without credit [00:37:00] scores is underserved by FinTech and banks in the US as far as I can tell. And it’s a pretty large total addressable market. Although once ICE is finished, it is shrinking. Yeah. TK: Is it literally going south? Cameron Reilly: Yeah. What happens when your customers get, uh, picked up and deported? I’m not exactly sure what your out is for that. Let me quickly talk about warehousing and securitization. So let’s say Oportun wants to lend out a billion dollars to borrowers and they don’t have a billion dollars sitting in the vault. They have to borrow the money. So they go to a big bank and they borrow money and they get it short term. So. Citi or Goldman might say, listen, we’ll lend you $200 million short term. Go make loans with it. Use those loans as collateral. So Oportun goes and makes 80,000 small loans to borrowers. Those loans are now sitting in a metaphorical warehouse. They’re real assets. People owe them money. The problem is that those [00:38:00] warehouse lines are expensive and short term. They can’t just sit there, so they then roll those up. Once they have a big enough pool of them, they bundle them together into a package and sell bonds. As a package to investors, typically pension funds, hedge funds, et cetera, and they buy the bonds because they’re gonna receive the monthly loan repayments from Oportun borrowers. So they, the Oportun then gets a lump sum of cash from selling the bonds. They use it to pay back the warehouse line and the cycle resets. So it’s a, it’s a interesting business model. Uh, it’s, you know, particularly risky during hard economic times because it depends on the banks being willing to give them warehouse lines and investors being willing to buy the bonds that, uh, they’re trying to package up and sell that. Hit a wall, obviously not only just in 2008, but also during COVID 2020. TK: Right. Cameron Reilly: And if you can’t make new [00:39:00] loans, you can’t borrow money, you know it, your, your whole business model can go up in smoke pretty quickly for an unknown period of time. So anyway, that is how that side of it works. Now, the, the other, the dirty part of the story is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 in response to the 2008 financial crisis. And based on a proposition, I think made by Elizabeth Montgomery when she was in Bewitched, um, no, Elizabeth Warren, the other Elizabeth, when she was, uh, at Harvard. TK: Bail witch. Cameron Reilly: Regulates consumer financial products and they open an investigation into Oportun in March, 2021, focused on their collection practices over 2019 and 2021. In March of [00:40:00] 2023, though the CFPB notified Oportun that its enforcement staff had concluded they would not recommend any enforcement action. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re innocent. It just, it could mean all sorts of things. Like, we don’t have any money to do this. We don’t have enough staff, we’re too busy. Um, you know, we’re just, for whatever reason, it’s not being cleared of wrongdoing. It’s just that we’re not enforcing this for whatever reason. TK: Elon saving money in. Cameron Reilly: I think DOGE was around in 2023, but yeah, could have been all sorts of reasons. Then in August of 2020, as I mentioned, ProPublica, uh, and the Texas Tribune and the Guardian, uh, published an investigation showing that Oportun had filed nearly 10,000 debt collection lawsuits year to date. Against lower income Texans and Latino concentrated geographies during the COVID-19 pandemic.[00:41:00] Uh, instead of going, Hey, listen, it’s, you know, this is a tough time for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. And whilst governments were handing out money hand over fist to businesses, I’m not exactly sure if Oportun got any government handouts. As part of that, I know a lot of American businesses did, and Australian businesses, many of whom did not pay it back when things recovered six months later. Uh, but within days of this article coming out, these articles coming out, Oportun suspended new collection lawsuits, pledged the 36% all in APR cap, filed an application for a national bank charter with the OCC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Which they ultimately withdrew in 2022, and then they were the subject of the CFPB investigation, which went nowhere. But, uh, the Center for Responsible [00:42:00] Lending, which is another US consumer advocacy nonprofit, published a follow up report of March, 2021, titled Suing to Intimidate That Explain their Practices. So. You know, reputational risk that these guys have. Also, the failed Digit acquisition that I mentioned before, they paid roughly $213 million, a mix of cash and stock for Digit. Supposed to get them into the neobank territory, couldn’t cross sell it. Integration was difficult. Uh, they took a large impairment charge on it, effectively wrote the whole thing off. And, you know, this was also when they were suing their customer base. It’s like, Hey, we’re suing you, but, uh, let us help you save money. So I mentioned earlier on too that the CEO from the last 14 years, Raul Vasquez had just got rolled. He’d been around since I think [00:43:00] 2012, something like that. It was kind of a big deal. He fought for his life for six months, um, uh, but didn’t survive, and he copped a lot of the blame for a lot of the mishaps that they’ve had over the last. Five or six years. He actually announced his departure on January 21st. Stepped down April 4th and the new CEO was named on April 16th, and he took over effective April 20th, literally today in the US. We’re recording this in April 20th American time. His name is Doug Bland. You know, if you have a flashy CEO you wanna get rid of, you know, you bring in Doug Bland. Doug Bland has 30 years in consumer finance, senior roles at PayPal. Speaking of Elon, Bank of America, Swift Financial, [00:44:00] they’ve also had three CFOs in five months, TK: Wow, that’s caught my attention. Cameron Reilly: Yeah, but this is when everyone’s being rolled and, uh, you know, largely the work of Fin Capital Management. TK: Mm-hmm. Cameron Reilly: them earlier on, but as I said, even the founder, James Gutierrez, or the co-founder weighed in against Vasquez in an open letter that he posted on LinkedIn saying, yeah, this guy needs to go. We need to get back to. Our core business anyway, so this guy, Brian Finn, runs Fin Capital Management. They’re an activist hedge fund, watched a podcast interview that he did with an Aussie, actually, uh, who runs an investing podcast. It was interesting, and, and he was pretty straight up saying, listen, this is a good business. It, it should be doing much better than it is. It’s a great market, great opportunity, great upside, but it’s being run very poorly. They’ve trashed shareholder value. [00:45:00] Um, management. He basically accused Vasquez of running it like an imperial court. Had a whole bunch of directors that have independent directors that have been there a long time, and, uh, so replaced a couple of those, replaced the CEO, CFO’s been replaced as well. So, uh, yeah, uh, that’s gone on. So basically you’re in a situation now with new management, activist investor. That could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, but, uh, you know, I guess we won’t know until the dust settles. But if you look at how the markets responded to the. News, its share price at the end of March was $4.37. It’s now $5.82. Share price’s gone up 70, 80% in the last, uh, [00:46:00] month, three weeks really as a result of these things going on, as far as I can tell. So the market has responded to it, uh, very positively. It was responding to the situation very positively anyway. I’m gonna quickly run through the numbers, Tony, and, um, couple of things I wanna highlight. First of all, QAV score is 1.09. One of the highest I’ve ever seen. The price to operating cash flow is 0.65, TK: Less than one Cameron Reilly: less than one. Six months payback on TK: Wow. Cameron Reilly: this. Yeah. So it’s pretty good. And the price to book is 0.67. So they’re the key numbers that you need to know. Now, interesting thing though, if you look at Stockopedia revenue, um, it, TK: Edia. Cameron Reilly: sorry, Stockopedia’s, uh, numbers, [00:47:00] the first thing I noticed is, um. The revenue 2020 335 million 2021, 530 2022. 641. Then 2023 281, 2024, 295, 2025, 406. That was their most recent reporting season 2026. Estimate Stockopedia has as 944. I was like, oh my God, it’s gonna more than double what? How no. So it turns out that there’s a couple of different ways of reporting this with all the GAAP and all of this kind of business over there. So with, without getting into the weeds, um, Stockopedia is. Number for 2025. The 406 million is normalized revenue. It strips out non-cash fair value decrease on the loan book. [00:48:00] The 944 million for 2026 is the raw GAAP number, which Oportun use, which has all of this fair value, decrease, blah, blah, blah. Stuff factored in so. Yeah, I mean, both numbers are legitimate in their own way, but, and it makes little difference to us and price to operating cash flow and that kind of stuff. But just if you’re looking at those raw numbers and you go, what the hell’s going on? It’s not an apples to oranges. Uh, well it is an apples to oranges, uh, display glitch, not real growth. So, um, their revenue is. Actually probably gonna decrease a little bit next year based on reading through the financials and the, the. Um, analyst forecasts, but they have had a turnaround. This is real. They swung from a $78.7 million loss in 2024 to a 25.2 [00:49:00] million net income in 2025. Uh, so they were bleeding badly for, uh, a long time, but they’ve managed to turn around for the last five consecutive quarters. And this apparently is in connection with. Replacement of some of the directors on the board, new independent directors coming in. Bit of a change in their focus, writing off the bad FinTech purchase, et cetera, et cetera. The. TK: though. It could also be just better credit policies because if you are writing less loans and your revenue’s going down, but your profit’s going up, you, you might be just getting rid of bad business. Cameron Reilly: Could be. Could be, yeah. Um, I did see delinquencies ticking up though. Um, 4.9% on 30 plus days. They’re up, um, up 13 basis points. So they have tightened their opex costs. Opex is down 12%. Customer acquisition [00:50:00] costs fell from $125 to $117. Debt to equity ratio improved from 7.9 times to 7.2 times. So they’ve been tightening up different parts of the business. Delinquencies are going in the wrong way. Not necessarily completely alarming, but not a, not a good direction for it to head in. Um. But that’s basically it. That’s sort of my bottom line. It’s, uh, a business that’s generating good cash now. Big sort of a turnaround story, but, um, the future, who knows what holds. TK: A couple couple of things I’d like to highlight. So they did have a credit card business, which they sold recently, so that could also be helping their bottom line. Um, the repayment plan for this company is typically biweekly every two weeks rather than monthly, so that, that may be helping them. [00:51:00] I, when I went to the website for this company, it reminded me a heck of a lot of companies we have in Australia. If you look at the website, MoneyMe, Harmoney, Cameron Reilly: Mm-hmm. TK: um, yeah, basically, payday to payday lenders or unsecured lenders, that kind of thing. Credit Corp, I guess, falls into that category as well. And, and I had some slightly different numbers to you, but I compared those companies with, their delinquency rates compared to Oportun and it seemed like they were lower in Australia. So I dunno if we’re doing an apples to apples comparison or not. But, Harmoney, which is probably the best comparator is at 6.4%. And I know you mentioned. I think six at the moment. But when I asked Gemini, I was getting 11.9% for 2026 as the charge off rate. So I’m not sure what we’re comparing there, but I just wondered whether, um, there was the, [00:52:00] which number was right and whether they were, um, writing off more than what they do in Australia and what that meant. Cameron Reilly: Well, Australian banks are probably not loaning to, um, undocumented, illegal TK: workers. Cameron Reilly: Mexican immigrants. TK: Yeah. And again, not a big issue. As long as the pricing of the loans reflects the higher delinquency rate, that’s fine. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. Charge off rate 12.65% for Q1 2026. Hmm. TK: And, and again, going back to my experience with um, you know, I was partner with GE to issue the Shell MasterCard, for example. Um. Cameron Reilly: Hmm. TK: A long time ago, but you know, the sort of provisions were no more than 4% for unsecured credit at that stage in Australia. So it’s different and a different customer base, but that’s a big difference between 4% and 12%. Cameron Reilly: Yeah, but it’s their business model, right? So as long as they know how to make money with that business model, then [00:53:00] that’s on them. TK: Yeah. No, I, accept that. Cameron Reilly: I think the real. You know, the reason it scores so well for us is low price to operating cash flow, right? Low price to book, uh, as well, and just running through the scoring. Um. The price is higher than IV1, but lower than IV2. Lower than book value, lower than book value plus 30. PropCaf is lower than seven. Um, no yield, uh, yield. Uh, so we couldn’t score ’em for PE. Yes. And the yield greater than the benchmark rate. Don’t have positive book value growth. Don’t have a new three point upturn. Did score for Piotroski F-score. They get a five and we score for over four and a half. Couldn’t score them for quality rank, stock rank or growth over PE being greater than 1.5. But so they’re cheap, TK: You’re right. Cameron Reilly: basically. TK: Yeah. Yeah. Cameron Reilly: They’re cheap and they seem to be turning around TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: the, share price has nearly doubled, as I said in the last three or four weeks.[00:54:00] So the market’s responding well to the management changes, I assume. Um, and the fact that they’re turning around and making money after a period of not making money. So. I added them to the portfolio this week and we will, uh, see how they go. Tony, OPRT. TK: Yeah, no, very good. And these kind of companies often do come onto a value buy list. I mean, there’s four or five we’ve had on our list in Australia the years. Um, so can be seen. I think people get blinded by. The fact it’s subprime and, and don’t really pay attention to, if subprime is priced properly, you can make a lot of money. Um, so they can be good investments, these types of companies. Cameron Reilly: Well, time will tell. Alright, after hours. Tony, what you got? TK: Uh, a couple of things. So, uh, Jenny and I started watching a new, I think it’s a new, it’s actually season two, so it’s not new, um, a new season of, uh, Patience. [00:55:00] So we’re actually going back to the first season, which is on the iView platform. I think it’s actually dropping season two on the ABC on Sunday nights as well, which we’re enjoying. Another twist on the, um, the Sherlock Holmes theme. This time it’s a autistic lady from the, um, criminal records division of the York Police that keeps finding patterns in the data and helping the police solve crimes. And it’s kind of fun ’cause they, they’re basically ransacking all the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes stories and dressing them up in modern guise and they’re dropping little, uh, you know, um, Easter eggs so you can work out what it is, uh, according to characters’ names or whatever, or, so the, the database that this lady works on is called the HOLMES Database, which is the name, the acronym for the criminal records database in the UK. So yeah, it’s fun, it’s pretty light, but we’re enjoying it. Cameron Reilly: Nice. TK: that was [00:56:00] good. Jenny was away for part of last week and I happened to rewatch the Entourage movie. I think it’s from 2015. Have you ever seen that? You probably have. Cameron Reilly: I did when it came out. I remember it not being great. TK: I, I, I did too. But the rewatch was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. ’cause it, um, it’s just wall to wall cameo basically. Cameron Reilly: Yeah. TK: um, which is probably my criticism at the time, but now it’s just fun, Cameron Reilly: Right. TK: you know, watching, watching Kelsey Grammer coming out of a family, uh, marriage counseling session as Ari’s going in and just ranting and raving. It’s, it’s kind of fun. Warren Buffett makes a cameo in it at one stage, um, which is good. And what I hadn’t noticed from last time, um, was, uh, the quote at the end of the movie when, uh, when Ari. I mean, spoiler alert Ari was a studio head. Ari Gold, who was the agent for Vincent Chase, became the studio head, um, left the studio head. It [00:57:00] looks like he resigned before he was fired and took his severance pay and put it into Vince’s movie that was running over budget, which got him fired in the first place. And then at the end, it, it turns out to be a fantastic hit and he makes lots of money out of the investment. And Ari Gold’s quote is, Warren Buffett’s going to be blowing us for investment advice in the future, which I thought was a great quote. Another title for the show. And lastly, after hours, um, I’m wearing my Harbour Town golf shirt ’cause the PGA Tour was in Hilton Head this weekend. And it brings back happy memories from me from three years ago when I was over there. As part of my 60th birthday travels, and one of my mates rung up and said, Hey, we were standing there three years ago on that day, and coincidentally the same person won the tournament. Um, that was one when we were there, so, uh, brought back some happy memories. Cameron Reilly: from last week’s show. TK: That [00:58:00] was Rory McIlroy. That was from the Masters. So Hilton Head follows a week after the Masters. Cameron Reilly: Uh, TK: It’s only about a three or four hour drive from Augusta down to Hilton Head, an Englishman called Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Reilly: Right? TK: which is kind of good because they’ve got this tradition, like in, in Augusta, they give you a green jacket. When you win Hilton Head give you a, what they call a plaid jacket. It’s a red tartan jacket. So looks better on Matt Fitzpatrick than it does on one of the US recipients. Normally it’s very loud and I, I couldn’t, I’m wearing my QAV hat today, but I actually have a, um, a, a cap from Hilton Head, which is in red plaid. I was trying to find it, but it’s in storage in Sydney. Cameron Reilly: Right. Very good. Well, I’ve watched a few good things. Uh, this week, the Gauntlet, 1977, Clint Eastwood directed, uh, starring him and Sondra Locke, TK: His, his partner? Yeah. Cameron Reilly: his [00:59:00] partner, and I think they had been together on Outlaw Josey Wales before this. And then it looks like he directed this basically as a vehicle for her, I think. TK: Correct. Yeah. Cameron Reilly: And, um, I read up on the story of her and the two of them and all of that kind of stuff, which was interesting. But not a, not a terrific film, but the couple of, have you seen it recently? TK: No, I have seen him a couple of times, but not recently. Cameron Reilly: The couple of things that stood out for me, and number one is she’s great. Like, she, like for the people who haven’t seen it, he’s a, he’s a grizzled cop who gets sent by his new police commissioner to, he’s, he’s in Phoenix. He, he’s sent to Vegas to get this hooker and bring her back for some nothing trial. She’s a nothing witness of a nothing trial. His new uptight police captain or commissioner, whatever it says. Um, he goes to get her Sondra Locke in prison and she starts screaming that she’s gonna get killed. And if he takes her, they’re gonna [01:00:00] kill him too. He, he slaps her back into the corner of a thing. It’s the usual sort of mid seventies Clint, you know, sort of misogynistic violence against women thing. But as it plays out, he’s sort of a dumb cop who can’t see the plays and she’s the smart college educated. Hooker who sees all the angles and all the plays, and is telling him what’s gonna happen and who’s betraying him. And, so, and she does a great job. But, um, the other thing that jumps out is the, the shootouts are insane, 80,000 bullets firing into houses that then end up collapsing and buses. And it’s just like over the top TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: Rambo esque, like late eighties Rambo esque violence. Not First Blood Rambo, but like crazy Rambo. So he kind of went all [01:01:00] out with this level of Sam Peckinpah kind of shootout stuff that’s just insane. And they go on for like seven minutes, these shootouts. But as, um, somebody I read a review pointed out Clint, and this is after Dirty Harry and all of the, the spaghetti westerns. He only fires his gun twice and it’s never to shoot somebody. He shoots a lock off a door once and shoots something else like a petrol tank or something. But it’s, you know, he’s not the guy, he’s the guy getting fired. Shot at, not the guy shooting in this one. Anyway, TK: There supposed to be a moral dimension to it. Is there Cameron Reilly: I, I dunno about that, but I think it was, um, it was just, he sort of did a 180 on it. He’s not, he’s, he is sort of the hard, tough guy in the end, but, um, not really the typical Clint hero [01:02:00] in it. He’s, uh, TK: He’s the patsy, isn’t he? Yeah. Cameron Reilly: kind of, yeah, he’s the patsy who’s, uh, bosses, uh, betraying him. Which is obvious for the first time you see the boss, you go, oh yeah, he’s a bad guy. But she was great. I really, really thought she did a, a tremendous job. I also watched the Liam Neeson Naked Gun reboot. TK: terrible. Cameron Reilly: Thoroughly TK: Oh. Cameron Reilly: it. TK: Oh, I hated it. I thought it was shocking. Cameron Reilly: not as good as Leslie Nielsen. No one can ever do Leslie TK: No, Cameron Reilly: level good. But I, I thought it was fantastic and I TK: really Cameron Reilly: the TK: hated it. Cameron Reilly: Liam Neeson, with all of you know, the acting credits and the history he’s got, was prepared to do something that absolutely ridiculous at his age as Leslie Nielsen, uh, did before him. No, TK: Play against type. Yeah. I thought it was awful. Cameron Reilly: Uh, we started watching Knight of the Seven Kingdoms after you recommended it, and, uh, we’re only three or four episodes into it. Just got the, I dunno, one of the early spoilers anyway, who the young kid is. We [01:03:00] saw that, that was the last episode we saw. was great. I’m enjoying that. Very different pacing to Game of Thrones, but I’m enjoying it. And I’m reading, um, Galileo, uh, I, uh, I downloaded like a collection of his writings and I’m reading his first one at the moment, the Sidereal Messenger where he’s writing to Cosimo de’ Medici about, oh yeah, I’m the first guy that’s ever seen the moon. I looked at the moon. How’d you do it? Oh, I built a telescope. You built a telescope? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Built a telescope. Spent a TK: Wow. Cameron Reilly: built myself a telescope I think it was 60 times magnification, TK: Wow. Cameron Reilly: uh, built his own thing, ground his own lenses, then, uh, the first human being to see the moon. He goes, you know what? It’s not smooth. Everyone apparently thought the moon was. Smo, they thought all of the spheres were [01:04:00] smooth like crystals. And he is like, nah, this thing has got mountains and craters and valleys. And I’ve TK: Wow. Cameron Reilly: Imagine that. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: I was particularly in light of the recent Artemis, uh, mission and the TK: Just Cameron Reilly: that we got. TK: saw a great cartoon of the astronauts bearing the Epstein files in the dark of the moon. Cameron Reilly: Oh, did you see the video of Trump today? a presser and somebody started asking him about the Epstein files and he just started ranting and raving about we are building the greatest ships, the biggest ships, uh, the greatest ships the world has ever seen. And you know, the Democrats wanna distract you with the Epstein files. It’s a nothing story. The fact that you campaigned on it and said, and all of your people said that it was the most important thing that we all needed to find out about. Um, anyway. Yeah. [01:05:00] Galileo amazing. I mean, just being the first person to see the moon. TK: Wow. Cameron Reilly: Amazing stuff. Anyway. Enjoying it. Uh, well that’s it Tony. TK: All right. Cameron Reilly: Thanks Cam. Have a good week. TK: Have a good week. You too. PREVIOUS PULLED PORKS Here’s the performance of the “pulled porks [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16WHwMalQodhxUO9h1T-7suVtfwjrXq057fFHhcLXFWk/edit?gid=0#gid=0]” (eg deep dives) we’ve done on the show in the past.

23. apr. 2026 - 34 min