Montgomery Investment Management

anybody specifically, any specific individual from the ones you're talking about, or any specific company that since Zorah Mamdani became mayor of the city... has left New York City.

At Elliott Capital, Apollo, Apollo manages $3 trillion of capital.

They have descended to pick up and go.

Yeah, there's plenty, and these are just big corporations, but individuals, there's many.

This was another fundamental shift in philosophy for a product that was nearly 14 years old.

In 2020, Jack found himself in the crosshairs of Elliott Management, one of Wall Street's most ruthless activist investors.

Elliott Management demanded that Jack be a full-time CEO or to step down and give the role to someone who would be.

Since his return back to Twitter in 2015, Jack had been working part-time, splitting time between Twitter and Square as CEO of both companies.

While the board could safeguard Jack from any internal threats, there was little they could do about an external threat as big as Elliott Management.

Elliott, in years prior, had successfully forced change at eBay, AT&T, SoftBank, and even in world governments.

Despite Twitter's 2018 and 2019 top-line wins and bottom-line achievements, investors were still not convinced of the company's future.

Coke is growing volume and gaining share, but Pepsi is really in repair mode, specifically in North America.

And that is why Elliott Management's roughly $4 billion activist stake in PepsiCo is so important.

I mentioned this narrative around PepsiCo's strategic direction, do they spin off the soda business or not? If you look at Elliott Management, they've been pushing for lower costs, a simpler portfolio, as you mentioned, and potentially more beverage re-franchising.

You asked the question whether Pepsi's breadth still creates that advantage, or if it's just really an excuse for complexity.

I would give you the other side of this ghost, because if you look at something like Taco Bell, that demonstrates the bull case for strategic engagement by PepsiCo, because there's a brand called Baja Blast, which grew out of that partnership.

Southwest has been changing so much ever since they have had activist investors involved with Elliott.

I think it's called Elliott Investment Management or something like that.

I can't remember the order of the words there, but I wasn't fully surprised to see it.

change because we've seen them make so many changes with Southwest to make Southwest just look like other airlines.

Electricity outages, general equipment failure, labor costs, and energy cost expenses.

And this has necessitated a turnaround, and specifically the catalyst for this is the appearance of a major activist investor, and that's Elliott Management, the well-known activist led by Paul Singer.

They are the world's biggest right now with 16 ongoing activist campaigns, and they're focusing on Northern Star Resources, specifically on the KCGM mining complex.

They're trying to basically improve the amount of ore that they process and lower their production costs.

And they do expect their gold, what's known as all-in sustaining costs, that is the cost that they have to pay and subsequently their profit margins should improve through next year.

They're targeting, by the year 2029, a doubling in the amount of gold that they process at this mine, significantly lower all in sustaining costs and higher profits.

So I think with the addition of Elliott Management, which tends to be successful in their activist campaigns, and also the fact that they do have takeover interest from a another major miner gold fields there's a lot of potentially bullish catalysts there but the main catalyst going forward is gold prices i do see higher gold prices uh in in the sense that not only would the increase in geopolitical activity likely push up the inflation rate but also just off the cuff with ai hyperscaler bond issuance expected to double this year and next year there's a lot of concern about a potential credit bubble forming in the ai space that in turn could cause people to seek higher quality government bonds u.s treasury which would push down treasury yields And that's typically bullish for gold prices as well.

So I see a lot of potential catalysts for higher gold prices and also for a favorable turnaround outcome for Northern Star Resources.

But, you know, the markets are still cautious.

Activist investor Elliott Management is watching this closely.

Which explains why LSEG shares dipped like 5 percent on the news, right?

Right.

Well, that minority stake is going to be up for sale.

Waterstones, which interestingly enough is owned by activist hedge fund, Elliott Management, which I didn't know, is looking to IPO as soon as possible.

And then Poundland, I'm just wrapping this episode up with a bit of Poundland.

Poundland, which was acquired quite wonderfully for £1 by US investment firm Gordon Brothers, is looking for a white knight, i.e. a saviour acquirer, as the firm is heading towards bankruptcy.