Professor JoshUA Landis

Charles and Colvard’s CEO , Suzanne Miglucci, joins The Stock Podcast to discuss moissanite gemstones, e-commerce, digital marketing, direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling and her vision for the company. Charles & Colvard (Nasdaq: CTHR) is the original and leading source of moissanite, the world’s most brilliant gemstone. CTHR manufactures, markets, and distributes moissanite gemstones as well as jewelry that incorporates the gemstones.

Mike Rothman is the President and Founder of Cornerstone Analytics, an independent research firm that provides macro energy research. Mike is an industry veteran, having covered the oil market sector since 1984. He started his career at Merrill Lynch, built the energy research platform at ISI, and has attended OPEC meetings since 1986. Mike joins The Stock Podcast to discuss the global oil market, capacity reserves, and supply following the recent attack on the Abqaiq oil processing facility. On Sept. 14, 2019, the world awoke to the news that numerous drones and scud missiles hit Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing facility. The attack resulted in 5.7 million barrels of oil production capacity going offline, which equates to about 6% of global oil production. The event was the single largest loss of Saudi oil production in history. 

Steve Fleishman is a Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research. Steve and his team cover the utilities, power, renewables, and midstream sectors at Wolfe Research. Steve has been Wall Street’s top-ranked utility analyst 14 times, so it’s an enormous honor to have him on the podcast! Tune in to hear Steve provide a great utility primer including a brief history of utilities, trends he and his team are following, and some of his thoughts on utility valuations today.

Steve agreed to come onto the program to give listeners of The Stock Podcast a utility primer. So, if you have an interest in utility investing, or you just like to gain an understanding of how utility investors think about the sector, this episode may be what you’re looking for.

You may recall from the Chris Sighinolfi interview that sector specialists like Steve know their industries forward and backward and Steve is a prime example of this. Steve has a reputation for being an extremely thoughtful analyst. If you listen to an earnings call with any of the big utilities, you’ll hear why. He asks questions that, in and of themselves, have a lot of meaning.

Apart from being one of the best analysts on Wall Street, Steve is one of the nicest guys I’ve met in the industry. He’s genuinely concerned about people, as well as their stock-picking performance. He was also one of a handful of Wall Street analysts that actually reached out to me after I quit my job to start this podcast. I consider myself fortunate to be able to call Steve a friend and he’s doing me and my listeners a big honor by coming onto the podcast.

The Stock Podcast is super excited to have Gabriel Weinberg on the program. Gabriel is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine. And if you’re like me, when you heard the name DuckDuckGo, you probably did a double take. It’s a strange name, but so was Google. Yeah, I’m comparing this company to Google because it makes sense. That’s because DuckDuckGo is one of Google’s biggest competitors. You might be scratching your head at that statement because, well you probably didn’t think Google had any competitors.

That, in an of itself is a strange concept. I’ll wager that even the most die-hard free market capitalist uses Google for search, but doesn’t realize that they’re supporting a monopoly by using Google. Approximately 90% of internet search queries go through Google. Think about that for a moment…

Across the globe, the majority of us use Google almost exclusively for online discovery. Assume for a moment that your search results aren’t exactly what you actually searched for, but rather tailored by your search history and your location. Well, DDG doesn’t do any of that. You’re completely anonymous on DDG. You’ll hear a lot more about this from Gabriel, who is possibly one of the greatest intellects I’ve had the honor of interviewing. Just as a summary, the interview covers a lot of different topics like data privacy, the history of search, how Google became the behemoth that it is, Gabriel’s background and a bit about DuckDuckGo. But before getting to these topics, we spend about 45 minutes discussing Gabriel’s new book, Super Thinking – The Big Book Of Mental Models, which Gabriel wrote with his wife Lauren McCann. The book is truly fantastic and I encourage anyone who desires to be a better decision-maker to give it a read.

Kris Kelley is the founder and managing partner of Legacy Ridge Capital Management, a private investment firm that Kris started in 2018, shortly after he left Janus Henderson Investors. Kris has some strong views when it comes to the money management industry, views I personally agree with and ones I think every investor should hear. Kris is a value-focused, contrarian investor who believes the best way for active managers to serve their investors is through highly concentrated portfolios.

Now, if you were to ask a hundred value investors who had the greatest impact on their investment philosophy and principles, I’m sure you’d hear a lot of the same names – Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Ben Graham, Seth Klarman, and Stanley Drukenmiller. These investors have most certainly had an impact on me, but Kris has hands-down had the greatest impact on my investing philosophy….and that’s because Kris was my mentor during my six years at Janus. He’s one of, if not the greatest investors I know personally, he lives and breaths value-investing, and the perspectives he shares in this interview should open everyone’s eyes to a flawed industry.

Steve Newby is the Founder and CEO of Summit Midstream Partners (SMLP). Tune in to hear Steve discuss Summit’s operations, his view on industry fundamentals, and what Steve and his team are doing to grow the business and improve cash flow stability. It’s a great interview that highlights the disconnect between a positive outlook and a seemingly mispriced security!

Lynn Mueller is the Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Sharc Energy Systems (SHRC / INTWF). Sharc Energy has a patented system of recovering thermal energy from wastewater. Tune in to The Stock Podcast to hear Lynn describe one of the most interesting heat recovery and energy recycling systems around today. It’s a truly fascinating interview about a company and a technology that could alter the course of natural gas demand going forward.

Professor Joshua Landis is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at The University of Oklahoma. Prof. Landis joins The Stock Podcast to discuss the recent Saudi oil attack. On Sept. 14, 2019, the world awoke to the news that numerous drones and scud missiles hit Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing facility. The attack resulted in 5.7 million barrels of oil production capacity going offline, which equates to about 6% of global oil production. The event was the single largest loss of Saudi oil production in history. Immediately after the attack, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi’s claimed responsibility. However, Prof. Landis is convinced that Iran is ultimately responsible, and the country with the most to gain from an attack on Saudi oil infrastructure. 

The CEO and co-founder of Sandstorm Gold Royalties (SAND), Nolan Watson, joins The Stock Podcast to talk about his company and a truly compelling investment story. Sandstorm Gold is a precious metals royalty company. Sandstorm helps finance mining operations in exchange for a royalty interest in the precious metals that a mining company produces. It’s a really interesting business model, and Nolan does a phenomenal job describing a company that screens as quite undervalued.

The interview really is truly fantastic, in my opinion. One of the reasons I like it so much is because Nolan has a deep understanding of how the investing landscape has changed, and he does a great job describing those changes. With the growth in passive investing, mining companies have been starved of capital. The end result is that it’s become very challenging for mining companies to grow. However, situations like these present opportunities and Sandstorm and Nolan are capitalizing and profiting from these opportunities.

Chris Sighinolfi rejoins The Stock Podcast for a follow-up interview where he talks about the current state of midstream. Tune in to hear Chris talk about investor sentiment, the role of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) mandates in the midstream space, and his perspectives on distribution cuts in the sector.

Barry Davis is the CEO of EnLink Midstream, LLC (NYSE: ENLC), an integrated midstream company serving the oil and gas industry. ENLC operates gathering, processing, compression, transportation, and fractionation assets. Tune in to hear Barry describe ENLC’s operations and to hear him talk about current investor sentiment in the oil and gas space, the benefits of the c-corp structure for midstream, and his thoughts around the distribution.

NRG Energy’s CFO Kirk Andrews rejoins The Stock Podcast to provide a business update. Tune in to hear Kirk describe NRG’s path to investment grade and what that could mean for the equity value of the company.

NRG is an integrated power producer. The company owns generation assets that primarily sell power at wholesale prices. NRG also operates a large portfolio of retail electricity companies. The integrated nature of NRG’s asset portfolio provides investors with stable cashflows. When power prices are high, the generation business benefits. When power prices are low, the retail business benefits. It’s an impressive mousetrap with high barriers to entry.  

Vistra Energy’s CEO rejoins The Stock Podcast to provide an update on the VST stock thesis. It’s always a pleasure to have Curt on the program to talk about his company and provide updates on the investment story. VST is one of my personal favorite investment ideas and Curt does a fantastic job of highlighting the key elements of the investment thesis. If you’d like to tune in to the first interview with Curt, click here!