$VEON trades like a busted emerging-markets telecom, but it owns 84% of Ukraine's Kyivstar and a Pakistani fintech, JazzCash, that already moves 15% of the country's GDP. Samit Umatiya of UIG Funds lays out the sum-of-the-parts case for why the holdco could be worth roughly 4x today's price, and Andrew pushes back hard the whole way: a not-so-storied history of value destruction, a sanctioned 45% shareholder, capital controls, and a long graveyard of telecoms that bungled every growth opportunity they ever had. The result is one long push and pull on whether the upside is real this time.

This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with a web terminal plus a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamentals straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Andrew uses it himself. Get 15% off at https://fiscal.ai/yav

Chapters:

00:00 The setup: a sum-of-the-parts EM telecom nobody talks about

01:31 Sponsor: Fiscal.ai

02:35 Who is Samit Umatiya and what is VEON

04:19 Vimpelcom to VEON: the history and the Russia exit

08:14 Why is the market asleep on this name?

11:31 The sum of the parts: Kyivstar plus four frontier markets

13:59 Bridging the EV gap: Andrew's $8B vs the bull's $3B holdco

16:36 Valuing a telecom on revenue: the "it's a tech company" case

17:54 JazzCash: 15% of Pakistan's GDP, never independently valued

21:00 The bridge to ~$1B of free cash flow and a 4x

23:40 Organic vs. bolt-on digital growth

24:34 Capital controls and getting cash out of the op-cos

27:11 What the market is missing: demographics and under-penetration

31:09 Starlink: competitor or partner in Ukraine's rebuild?

35:31 Digital stickiness and retention

37:42 The Kaspi problem: a dominant super app that never re-rated

39:25 The AI 1440 strategy and a sovereign-AI moat

42:31 Is telecom just structurally bad at capturing growth?

45:11 Capital allocation and the next catalyst: a JazzCash spin

49:38 The elephant in the room: LetterOne's sanctioned 45% stake

54:05 Geopolitical turmoil as a feature, not a flaw

55:24 Is that 45% block actually an opportunity?

57:09 Founder DNA, CEO Kaan Terzioglu, and the spin-off playbook

1:01:56 Wrap

UIG Funds (Samit Umatiya) - https://uigfunds.com

Links:

Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com

See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

MSA Safety ($MSA) is the "OG pick and shovel" of worker safety: a century-old, pure-play maker of gas detection and firefighter equipment that the Pershing Square Challenge 2026 finalist team argues is a quality compounder the market is underrating. The bull case has three legs. Portable gas detection is shifting to a recurring, higher-margin subscription model, the "canary" that now sings to the whole worksite instead of just the worker wearing it. A legally mandated SCBA replacement cycle is coming that consensus barely credits. And a 2023 divestiture of product liabilities freed up the roughly 17% of EBIT that used to leave the building every year at a zero return. Base case: a double to about $350 by 2030 from roughly $160 today.

EJ Karobath, Craig Larkin and Bob McGrane walk through why MSA's owned-sensor hardware is hard to copy (Blackline got taken private, and its devices break if you drop them), how winning a tier-one fire department like LA or Memphis pulls the surrounding towns along on interoperability, and why 50-plus years of dividend growth and a record $500 million buyback point to real capital-allocation discipline. I push back on the obvious tension: this is a roughly 20x compounder that does not scream alpha, the CFO is guiding mid-single-digit growth, and most of the thesis only pays off in 2028 to 2030. Is the market that inefficient, or is this just a very good business priced about right?

Team MSA's pitch deck is linked here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gv1oj18pawqrmeq7lai4j/MSA-Pershing-Square-Challenge-vYAVP.pdf?rlkey=8l5vkpkr7r26oi0k7wx5fcf0h&st=g4ow2fxo&dl=0

This episode is sponsored by Trata: trata.com. Trata is recorded, anonymized conversations between two buysiders who actually follow the same company, about an hour each, with a full transcript. When you are getting up to speed on a name, there is nothing like hearing two people who research it talk it through. Check them out at trata.com.

Chapters:

00:00 A quality compounder hiding at a market multiple

01:24 Sponsor: Trata

02:47 Meet Team MSA: EJ, Craig and Bob

05:50 Why they picked MSA: an underfollowed, simple business

07:50 What MSA is: the "OG pick and shovel" of worker safety

10:24 The three segments, and why detection leads

11:51 Fixed vs portable gas detection

13:15 The subscription shift: the canary that sings to the whole worksite

16:40 The moat: durability, owned sensors and a long replacement runway

17:21 Market share, and why Blackline got taken private

21:32 Fire safety: the G1 and the mandated SCBA replacement cycle

23:38 Valuation: a double to ~$350 by 2030, and the reverse DCF

25:43 My pushback: a 20x compounder that doesn't scream alpha

27:00 Why management sandbags the connected and SCBA upside

28:46 A stock for the patient: the J-curve and the long horizon

31:47 Primary research: site visits, IR access and r/firefighting

36:18 Becoming a tech company: 40% of engineers now in software

38:10 The tier-one halo: win LA or Memphis, win the region

42:08 Capital allocation: the liability divestiture, dividends and a $500M buyback

44:13 Wrap: where to find the team and the deck

Team MSA (Columbia Business School): pitch deck linked above

Links:

Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com

See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

Fox's stock is down about 25% since it agreed to buy Roku for $22 billion, and the market has decided the deal is a blunder. Simeon McMillan of Accrued Interest thinks the market is wrong. His case: Roku controls roughly 44% of how Americans reach streaming on the big screen, about 3x the next platform, so Fox just bought the "front door" to streaming and around 100 million connected TVs in North America. Look under the surface and the deal is closer to 16-17x free cash flow once you account for Roku's barely-tapped ad levers and synergies.

We get into the homepage that became the new "Netflix homepage," why Fox keeps making the smartest M&A bets in media, the Tubi sleeper Simeon is most bullish on, why he loves Roku but is bearish on Spotify, and why Google and Meta look like "true value stocks" to him. I push back hard on whether Fox plus Roku is really better than Roku staying neutral Switzerland for every bidder.

See Simeon's post on Fox / Roku here: https://www.accruedint.com/p/the-strait-of-roku-how-fox-seized

This episode is sponsored by my upcoming AI webinar with AlphaSense.

The AI landscape has never been more crowded or more confusing. Everyone's telling you to adopt AI, but almost nobody's telling you which tools actually give you an edge. I'm sitting down with Dave Wang of Wall Street Prompt and Ben Collins of AlphaSense to break down the modern AI stack for investors, from horizontal platforms like OpenAI and Claude to agentic workflows and finance-specific intelligence tools, and where each one actually fits in a real research process.

Register here: https://www.alpha-sense.com/resources/webinars/choosing-your-ai-stack-a-framework-for-institutional-investors/?utm_source=pt_YAVP&utm_medium=sponsored&utm_campaign=SWB_DG_06-25-26_IMP-GENAI_CORPFS_YAVP-AI-Solutions

Chapters:

00:00 What's coming: Fox-Roku, plus Spotify, Google and Meta

01:08 Sponsor: my AI webinar with AlphaSense

02:24 Guest intro: Simeon McMillan, Accrued Interest

03:05 The Fox-Roku deal and why Simeon thinks it makes sense

05:30 Roku as the "Strait of Hormuz" of streaming (44% of viewing)

06:25 Why Fox has the smartest M&A team in media

07:55 Buying the "front door": ~100M connected TVs

10:03 The Roku homepage as the new "Netflix homepage"

13:44 The ad-sales levers hiding under the multiple

16:31 Valuation: 22x EBITDA, ~16-17x free cash flow with synergies

18:01 My pushback: Fox down 25%, winner's curse, thin synergies

19:35 The real risk of staying pure-play (Viacom, Paramount)

24:51 Rebundling and why everyone's partnered up by 2028

26:08 Is Fox+Roku actually better, or could anyone have bought this?

28:01 Cord-cutting, YouTube TV, and the Disney bloody nose

32:07 The Fox bet Simeon likes most: Tubi

38:30 Why now? The 50% streaming inflection and a shrinking buyer pool

42:21 Does AI slop break or boost the distribution thesis?

48:06 The gotcha: bullish Roku, bearish Spotify (the Pokemon theory of media)

52:22 Google and Meta as "true value stocks"

56:55 The complexity discount, Meta's enterprise tools, and founder control

59:13 Wrap and where to find Accrued Interest

Simeon McMillan / Accrued Interest: https://accruedinterest.substack.com

Links:

Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com

See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/