Idea Brunch with Maj Soueidan of GeoInvesting
Welcome to Sunday’s Idea Brunch, your interview series with great off-the-beaten-path investors. We are very excited to interview Maj Soueidan!
Maj is the co-founder of GeoInvesting.com, a widely respected small cap focused research platform that brings institutional quality research to individual investors. Maj has been a professional investor for the last thirty years and over his career has invested in hundreds of multi-bagger microcaps. In addition, Maj and GeoInvesting played an early role in highlighting dozens of “China Fraud” stock listings in the early 2010s. Today, Maj lives in Puerto Rico, but also spends time in the Philadelphia suburbs area and in Fort Lauderdale. He also writes the Microcap Investing Cliff Notes substack, and is active @majgeoinvesting on X
Maj, thanks for doing Sunday’s Idea Brunch! Can you please tell readers a little more about your background, your passion for small-cap investing, and why you decided to launch GeoInvesting?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate in your Sunday Idea Brunch interview series. You have had lots of great investors on your program. So, I feel honored to be in good company. I can’t remember the exact moment that I became interested in investing.
However, my dad had a big influence on my full-time investor journey. While in high school (mid-1980s), I routinely watched the nightly business report with him on PBS, hosted by Paul Cangas. I was quite intrigued that you could make money buying and selling ticker symbols. I remember my favorite part of the show was when Paul would interview an Analyst, CEO, or investor. This probably has something to do with why interviewing management is a big part of my investment process today.
The first memory I have of nimbly thinking about investing came during the 11th grade when my economics teacher, Mr. Knight, ran a mock investment contest. I don’t know why I had the Wall Street Journal in my hand that day, but I did. I immediately went to the stock pages and found some random company that had the word technology in it. I literally did no research and asked Mr. Knight if I should buy the stock. He said that’s a great company and that I should buy it.
So, naturally, I took what he said very literally and went all in with my fake hundred thousand dollars. To make a long story short, the name of the company was Storage Technology. One day I couldn’t find the company. I then found out it was going through bankruptcy. So, my first investment was a big fat donut. When I went to Mr. Knight and asked him “what the heck man?” He said, you learned your first lesson… always do your own research. I never forgot that lesson. I’ll come back to Storage Technology later.
When I went to college a year later, I still wasn’t thinking about investing as a career or even about investing at all. Then, during my first year break, my dad gave me “One Up On Wall Street” by Peter Lynch to read. I think I read the book twice over five days. Once I finished reading the book, I instantly knew I wanted to invest for a living one day.
That book couldn’t have come at a better time. Although I did ok going through the motions, I was not a great student and was lucky to even get into college. I had no idea what I was going to do. Naturally, I decided to major in finance and risk management.
But from then on, it was like a snowball. I was consumed about potentially becoming a full-time investor. I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of my college professors preaching the efficient market thesis and that you couldn’t beat the market by holding more than 12 stocks.
It even got to the point that my portfolio manager told me I had no chance in this business. Honestly, I think he was miserable because he couldn’t beat the market.
I’m not saying college wasn’t useful. It gave me discipline I was lacking and introduced me to some basics that are good to know as an investor. But most of my learning came from going beyond the textbook and theory. I’d spend as much time as I could in the college library reading the Value Line.
It was during college that I bought my first stock… you guessed it… Storage Technology, symbol STK. I looked for the company in the Value Line in my college library just for curiosity and saw it was there. It had come out of bankruptcy! I got my revenge and made a quick 60%. Even though it didn’t have the highest Value Line ranking, I anticipated that the rankings would move up. This gave me my first taste of how you can be rewarded by getting ahead of the crowd. Looking back, it was pretty cool that the first stock I made money on was a chapter 11 exit. I would later make a good amount of money in chapter 11 exits, coming out of the telecom bubble. I still look for those set-ups today.
Even though I now spend most of my time investing in microcaps, my early years investing included up to midcaps. But then one day something happened.
My dad used to do all of his research in the basement, the stock cave, if you will. And every so often he would make his way up the stairs and tell me about some company he found that I never heard of. It wasn’t a blue chip or a Dow 30 stock. There was one time where he made so much money in one day, it was like a 3 bagger. When I went to look for the ticker symbol in the Wall Street Journal, I couldn’t find the stock. That’s when my dad showed me an area in the Wall Street Journal all by itself, showing daily price activity of the over-the-counter market.
Remember, this is back in the 1980s and early 90s. We didn’t have the Internet… The Wall Street Journal, The Barons, and the Value Line & mailed in Shareholder letters (after reading the Peter Lynch book), were my primary sources of research during college. That’s when I began to slowly transition to small and micro cap stocks and participating in USA Today investment contests.
Although he’s not around anymore, my dad’s office is still in the basement. Whenever I visit my mom in the Philly burbs, I set up shop in the stock cave.
When I graduated from college in 1992, I worked at Vanguard. I spent the first year and a half working full-time. I could not wait for lunch time to arrive every day. That’s when I would head over to a conference room with my salami sandwich and call management teams from the phone. That is, until I lost that privilege when Mr. Brennan walked in to hold court in “my office.” I then started making calls from the main deck, where phones were scattered between rows of cubbies. Eventually that workaround got shut down.
While at Vanguard, I actually passed the CFA level one and two exams. By the time I got to CFA level three, I realized that Vanguard wasn’t going to be for me. I was making good money in the stock market and also 100% sure I wanted to go the full-time investing route, especially when during one of my reviews I was told I’d have to wait at least 5 to 7 years before I could even think about managing money at the firm. To be honest, the corporate world wasn’t for me, and I knew I wouldn’t excel. I felt I was pretty good at investing, but pretty bad at everything else, so investing had to work.
I would like to think that it was my horrible penmanship that led me to failing the CFA level three exam, but I was really unmotivated once I knew I wasn’t going to be working for a Wall Street firm. I put that in the rearview mirror and fully committed to my full-time investing journey.
At that time, Vanguard had a part-time job, from 4:30 pm to 9 pm, with full benefits. I jumped all over that and got an office about a half hour from Vanguard, where I worked during the day. My goal was to save about $30,000 and then make the full transition to full-time.
I started investing in college with about $3000. By the time I made the transition to part-time, I saved about $15,000. I was also working odd jobs and running an import export business.
Six months into my part-time move, I got to $30,000 and left Vanguard in February 1994. I don’t know if I’m proud of this moment, however, I was so frustrated with work that on the day I put in my two weeks, I actually parked in Brennan’s spot. There was literally a memo on my desk by the time I got up to my cubby hole on the second floor to remove my car. I remember looking outside the window and seeing some of the staff security around my car and then telling my boss: “hey, don’t have anyone touch my car. It’s a classic.”
That beater of a car which I had to start by taking a hammer to my starter died on my last day at Vanguard, so I immediately bought a Mazda MX 6 stick shift which I had no idea how to drive. I then proceeded to get pulled over going to the gym trying to race an undercover cop, took a nice vacation with a bunch of friends to Mt. Killington in Vermont, where I had the worst mushroom trip of my life and doubled my $30,000 in my first month as a full-time investor. The next four years were spent knee-deep in microcap stocks on my way to reaching my goal of hitting seven figures. I’m still waiting to collect on my contest money from winning a work investment contest where I put everything on Acclaim Entertainment call options!
When I started Geoinvesting in 2008, I really didn’t have a specific profit purpose in mind, other than sharing research on some type of platform and seeing where that would lead over time. I really wanted to prove that you could make money in smaller cap stocks, that not all microcaps are low quality and also really wanted to give the everyday investor access to some research.
I had already built an in-house research content management system, so I figured I should just publish all that to the web and start building a network of colleagues and investing buddies. It wasn't until 2014 that GEO began offering a paid subscription program. And to be quite honest, that was the best thing we ever did because it just attracted a different quality of investor.
Then, in February 2024, my team created a substack called Microcap Investing Cliff Notes (MS Cliff Notes) to create the first quality-based microcap multibagger index.
What is the difference between Geoinvesting and your MS Cliff Note Substack (aka: Microcap Investing Cliff Notes)?
In a nutshell, the difference between the two platforms is this: GeoInvesting is more of a bundle of products—morning emails, Sunday wrap-up emails, model portfolios, video interviews with investors, CEOs, and experts, and a monthly open forum event where we recap what happened in our universe over the previous month. It’s designed for those who want to do their own research, but also appreciate direct ideas via model portfolios that are backed by research.
The Substack is more oriented toward those who want to increase their idea flow. Think of it as an earlier look at my full research pipeline. It’s also centered around the goal of creating the first-ever index of high-quality microcap companies and high-probability turnarounds: MS Microcap Quality Index (MSMqi).
M = Momentum in Price
S = Sustainability of business
M = Microcap
Q = Quality
I actually created the index in February 2022 and tested the concept with about 20 subscribers from Geoinvesting. There are currently 115 stocks in the index, and its performance has been pretty spectacular, with 48 multibaggers (so over a 40% hit rate). Each stock added to the index is accompanied by a Cliff Note detailing the reasons we added it to the index, valuation, risks and additional research tasks that we need to accomplish.
The intent is to help those who enjoy doing research sift through all the noise to find the most investable microcaps hitting multibagger markers. We add about 1 to 3 stocks per month to the index.
The Substack team consists of my brother, Zou, and Jan Svenda (Twitter Profile), and other behind-the-scenes researchers.
There is some cross-pollination of ideas between the two platforms. I’ve recently partnered with some quantitative analysts who will rank the MSMqi using a multifactor analysis to help subscribers more easily navigate it.
About 25% of our Geo members also subscribe to the Substack.
GeoInvesting has a reputation for deep fundamental research on microcaps. Could you please share your typical research process when evaluating a microcap stock? How do you source new ideas, and what does your due diligence entail (e.g., speaking with management or visiting operations)? Are you following the same protocol for your MS Cliff Notes Substack?
Whether it’s Geoinvesting or the Substack, my research process is definitely not asset light. I’m extremely obsessed with not missing an opportunity. Although I will say the AI is certainly helping me get things done more quickly.
I’m very focused on understanding the narrative of a story, looking beyond the quantitative factors that any investor can find or screen for.
I think that’s what differentiates investors. We can all look at the numbers and run screens that tell us the same thing. But there’s a decent chance that we’re all going to interpret the qualitative pieces of a story a little differently.
I’ve always thought that combining qualitative and quantitative research delivers the biggest alpha, at least in the microcap universe.
I like to hit the research process from different angles. Partly because it makes it more fun for me and partly because I don’t want to leave any loose ends. However, there are two consistent aspects to my research. I love reading press releases and I like tracking momentum.
Although my strategy bucket includes a plethora of items like buying the dips and special situations, it’s been proven over and over again that momentum investing can provide a great edge when you combine it with fundamental analysis. That’s how I invested during the first 20 years in my career, when I was achieving very strong returns.
Every day starts with scanning press releases through a press release aggregation my team is building, Microcapresearch.com. The tool is currently free, with a big update coming soon. I use the filters in this tool to help me concentrate only on the press releases that I want to read. The tool was originally designed for my internal use, but then we decided why not just put it out there? By the way, it’s also specifically created for small-cap and microcap investors because I just don’t waste time looking for edges in bigger cap stocks. I value my time.
I’m amazed at how many investors don’t use press releases as a primary research source. Most investors I talk to skim them or use them as a secondary research source. I treat them like treasure maps. I’m not just looking at what they say.
I’m looking at how things are said, what’s emphasized, what’s buried, and sentiment changes from quarter to quarter. I guess it stems from the fact that when I started investing I didn’t have many research options. I didn’t realize until 30 years later that building this mental journal would be so useful in helping me find opportunity and avoid risk today. In a world where investor holding periods have gone from six years to six months and where they want to use AI to make the research process easier, I can only imagine that this edge is going to get bigger. That’s why I’m incredibly excited about the press release tool that we built.
However, it’s not just good enough to find a great story or a quality company or an interesting turnaround. It’s important to find these companies at the right time, when multibagger factors are about to catalyze.
Even if you are a long-term investor, let’s face it, we can’t ignore the time value of money, where time can smooth out multibagger returns. There’s enough opportunity among the 10,000 microcaps that trade in North America, where you don’t have to wait 5 years to nab a 5 bagger.
I cross-reference management commentary across press releases, earnings calls, SEC filings, investor presentations and even obscure pages on company websites.
There are times where we have been the only investors showing up to a microcap earnings call. This also gives you a chance to get answers to important questions on the record that you want others to eventually read.
The lag in which publicly available information hiding in microcap press releases and earnings calls makes its way into the price of these stocks gives you an incredible time embargo to take a position before the crowd acts on the information. We call all of this “information arbitrage”—when public info is available, but no one’s connecting the dots.
It allows you to build a position for several days, sometimes weeks on transformational information, just sitting there in an earnings call transcript.
The 3,600% move of MSMqi holding, TSS Inc (NASDAQ: TSSI — $460 million), is a classic case of this information arbitrage. The company performs data center rack integration services. Under a new CEO, TSSI has been doing things to improve its relationship with its main customer to scale operations. This all finally culminated in the Q4 2023 quarter where on the conference call, the CEO mentioned the relationship has been strengthened and that the company scaled production capabilities by 10x. The stock sat at around 60 cents for two weeks. You could’ve bought as much as you wanted.
In general, my favorite types of companies are those that are not going to screen well, where I pick up some information that could be transformational once it catalyzes. Those are the perfect types of companies to call management, especially when trying to determine if a turnaround is going to work. In these cases, a stock that looks very poor right now on paper or a screen, could look very cheap at that same price in a few months or quarters if the turnaround takes hold.
When I am reading press releases, I’m looking for qualitative clues, words, changes and hints that suggest a company is about to benefit from a broader trend or is quietly turning itself around. Most people overlook the boring ones, but I’ve learned that the most exciting opportunities are often hiding behind the least exciting names.
I bucket everything. Here are a few of them:
The obvious immediate buys,
Overvalued stories that are intriguing, where I want to wait for a pullback to potentially buy shares
Stocks that get punished on a bad quarter, but where management is providing hints that the shortfall was a one time occurrence. These can be great short-term trade set ups, based on fundamentals, especially if earnings calls confirm that things are still great moving forward.
I love turnaround stories. So, I’m constantly looking for a high probability turnaround that is either in the very beginning of the process or nearing an inflection point.
Then there are those companies that aren’t quite turnarounds, but are high quality companies that really haven’t done much in a long time. And then all of a sudden you conclude that the company is going to turn on the growth engines or find a way to reinvent itself. These are very high probability multibagger set ups. These are quality companies that have a market presence with customers that already trust them. For example, let’s say you have this company with different product or service segments that decides to start cross selling products and services across these segments that were originally just isolated to selling a particular company product or service to customers. Making wallet share gains, or getting more revenue from current customers is just a freaking no-brainer. When you see it, you should get really excited.
Our team has created a list of 10 quality characteristics and about 10 multibagger factors we look for when searching for microcap and small cap winners. Here’s one of my golden multibagger setups that gives me goosebumps when I find them happening together at one company:
Strategy for wallet share gains (more revenue from current customers). Could include new products/services and/or cross-selling opportunities between company divisions.
Adding recurring revenue or routine maintenance service revenue.
Increasing operating leverage.
Do not sit on this, even if shares are reasonably valued.
By the way, when it comes to our quality factor checklist, we’re not necessarily looking for stocks that meet all the checkmarks on that list, we’re also looking for stocks that aren’t quite there yet, but moving in the right direction. That way, you can beat the crowd to the idea.
Another set-up we like is when a boring company gets reinvented because new industry trends help reinvent it.
You’re seeing this all day long right now in the world of AI. I think we’ll be able to live in that pocket for many years to come… It's pretty amazing. I like this a lot because Buffett value investors often won’t play in sexy industries. But these are quality companies that the crowd may eventually visit.
Power Solutions International (NASDAQ: PSIX — $1.15 billion) is a great case study ($50/share). The company is a boring manufacturer of engines that has a checkered past, including SEC issues involving the past CEO, and had been losing money. In Q1 2024, we noticed they have been paying down some debt, putting up some good numbers. The stock was trading at around $2.20. I had also noticed that they were introducing a new product, enclosures to protect generators in data centers. We eventually highlighted the stock at Geoinvesting and added it to the MSMqi on 27th of September last year at around $12.00. By the way, this proves another lesson. Sure, I would’ve loved to have bought the stock at two dollars, but there are many points in time where you can buy a stock along its multibagger move. You can wait for some confirmation on the real powerful ones.
Interviewing management teams is a big part of my process. Remember, I’m all into the qualitative. So, I really want to understand how management has solved past problems, if they truly understand their industry and their attitude towards the dilution. I particularly want to dive into their sales and marketing strategy, since scaling is one of the top obstacles that smaller companies will face.
Along those lines, I’ve started doing more site visits over the last few years and I’ll keep doing that. I have really enjoyed getting a sense of employee morale and seeing firsthand that microcap companies actually have very legit operations. It’s also just another thing to put in your investing toolbox that adds to your first mover advantage.
I’ll end this section with one of my new favorite things in which to invest—value traps. I love the strategy because these are cheap stocks that even value investors ignore.
The key is to find some shitty company that actually fits one of those boring companies that have been around for a long time that I look for, that finally does things to catalyze growth or maximize shareholder value. Maybe it’s selling assets, reducing debt or using a pile of under utilized cash to buy back stock, do tender offers or expand manufacturing capacity.
Paul Mueller (OTC: MUEL — $287 million), a stock we profiled on Geoinvesting (and now in the MSMqi), is probably a great case study of all of this.
After years of being satisfied with being an average company with a pile of cash, the company finally decided to flip the switch to growth and a shareholder friendly capital allocation strategy.
Since this all started to occur at MUEL in mid 2023, the stock has gone up ~560% To $305.00, amid strong earnings growth, asset sales, shuttering their pension plan, two tender offers and three large capacity expansion spends. I bought shares around $50 and a gain around $250.
I still think the stock is in the early innings of shedding its value trap moniker, at least for now. The price to earnings multiple has expanded from a 4x to 10x, and has lots of upside left if it can get over 15x, where many of its comps trade. Backlog is at record highs. I wouldn’t put the stock reaching $1,000 out of the question.
Please keep in mind that this is a very illiquid stock. By the way, this “OTC” company generates revenue of about $60,000,000 a quarter and is a leader in storage tanks, alloy processing and heat transfer products. More proof that not all microcap OTC companies are pieces of crap.
You and your team were early in highlighting several U.S.-listed Chinese frauds that ultimately went to zero. Could you tell us a little more about that experience? And do you see any other pockets of fraud or hype in the markets today?
We kind of stumbled into the China fraud saga. Back then, around 2010, I wasn’t shorting stocks—I was actually trying to prove the shorts wrong. I actually owned a lot of the stocks that we ended up exposing.
These U.S.-listed China-based companies had actually been going public as far back as 2003ish. However, when the global recession hit and while the rest of the globe was blaming each other for the recession, China was quickly putting stimulus in place. So, 2009 was a year where investors found all these companies at one time.
My bearish view towards US-listed China-based companies began slightly simmering when I started attending microcap conferences and interacting with CEOs of these companies. However, it went into overdrive around June 2010.
I had sent a Geoinvesting follower to China to hook up with an attorney and on the ground team that we were putting together. We compiled a list of 50 companies.
Within about 10 days, he called me and told me to “get the fuck out.” They’re all frauds. At that time, Geoinvesting had a lot of bullish coverage on U.S.-listed China-based companies. After that phone call, I immediately put the entire universe on hold.
That mission quickly evolved as we saw the same red flags repeating—phantom customers, vanishing cash, and auditor bullshit.
Once we exposed a few companies through our investigatory research reports, the dominoes started to fall. It was intense, but also extremely satisfying to bring transparency. We ended up writing full-blown bearish reports on several companies, 12 of which were delisted.
Before this experience, I never dabbled in short selling. Logically, as a microcap investor, this all led me down a path of exposing and writing about U.S. pump and dump schemes. All told, we exposed about 22 of them.
The China Fraud days at Geoinvesting culminated in a documentary called The China Hustle, funded by Mark Cuban, and directed by Jed Rothstein. (Still available on Netflix, by the way)
As for today’s market, the fraud playbook remains. However, what has changed is that regulators are no longer taking action to halt trading and suspend stocks from being listed. They are basically letting the market “take care of it.” Furthermore, the pump and dump game, which used to mainly happen on the over-the-counter market, now mainly occurs on the major exchanges, where scammers take over listed companies. Having that listing is gold.
GeoInvesting spends a lot of time interacting with microcap management teams. What are some of the red flags or positive signs you look for in meetings with management? What are you looking to learn?
It’s great that we all have access to earnings transcripts and press releases with relative ease. This allows us to measure management tone, consistency of messaging and goal attainment over time. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll see a tweet where some investor, maybe a newbie in town, is bullish on a company because of a narrative that they’re giving that was a similar narrative 30 years ago I remember reading about that still hasn’t come true.
For example, there are companies that said they were resolving their customer concentration issues back in 1992 with a bigger customer concentration today, still parroting the same goal, today.
Again, this emphasizes why we should be reading a variety of research sources, to create that mental or written journal.
The tough fine line that young investors will run into is that they don't automatically have this important historical perspective. If they don’t perform the document research task, they are going to be disappointed. The tricky part here is that some of these companies are actually legit companies that just can’t solve a problem or don’t want to. So, it’s easy to believe them.
It’s important not to get lulled into story stocks that look legit without really understanding the path to profitability and the ability of the company to get there without a train wreck of dilution. Right now, we are facing that conundrum with AI and quantum stocks.
I love talking to leaders who intimately know their customers, understand that scaling is important, and can admit what they don’t know.
I want to see alignment, not just lip service. While stocks with high insider ownership don’t guarantee superior returns, I’ll probably bet bigger on a team where the chances are greater that they’ll treat shares like gold before they make a decision, especially when it comes to dilution and capital structure strategy. A team that owns a good amount of shares via real purchases vs. those that keep their ownership through a bunch of free options will think twice about the premium they are being offered when receiving an acquisition proposal.
And please—don’t ask me how many shares I own. I like management teams that place the same importance on the shareholder that owns $1.00 worth of shares the same as the one that owns $1.0 million. What if the one dollar investor has $1 million in his pocket that he/she wants to burn?
So many management teams in microcap land don’t understand that they need the retail investor. A lot of them want to be big boys, but they’re just not there yet, nor have they earned a seat at the big boy’s table.
I look for management that understands that profits matter, not just top-line growth. If they are burning cash, chasing "strategic initiatives" or revenue with no unit economics, we probably won’t get along.
One thing that irks me is management teams that don’t understand that in the end, net income profitability matters. Don’t brag to me about your growing EBITDA if you’re consistently losing money and you measure profitability solely by that factor.
Every time I go to a conference, I’ll run into that cocky management team — that basically tells me I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. Then a year later their stock is a donut.
Too many management teams will nod yes to all your recommendations you might make to them, but in their heads, they’re saying they’re the exception.
For example, many CEOs of quality companies will listen to investment bankers who tell them they should file a shelf to be ready for a “just in case equity raise” opportunity if the stock goes up. The bankers will show them fancy studies showing how a shelf is beneficial. A lot of times, the company is getting this advice while the stock is doing well, so they’re feeling cocky and invincible. Well, it’s some of the worst advice management can receive.
First of all, for most companies, a “lazy” shelf is going to cap your stock price and take several percentage points off of where the stock will trade without it. As investors, we’ve been lied to too many times to believe that even the most trustworthy management teams aren’t going to screw us with that shelf.
Secondly, these investment banks make their primary money off fees and free shares they get as part of their fee.
Finally, I’m amazed at how many management teams don’t understand that there are other ways to raise money without having a forever shelf filed. A great team with a great growth outlook that wants to raise money for a strategic move can easily find other ways to raise that money, or they can file the shelf in conjunction with a catalyst. If you are looking for a great case study that proves this out, just look at the chart of TATT. The company quietly raised money twice through private placements, totaling $20 million (one at $8.70 and the second at $15), before multibagging.
By the way, let me be clear, I’m talking about companies that don’t need to raise money for survival, with strong balance sheets and cash flow. And remember, bankers aren't making money buying stock.
Here’s a list of other things I’m looking at:
I don’t like teams that give wide guidance ranges. It’s basically telling me that the business is tough to forecast.
Are they checking off items on my multibagger factor check list?
Need to raise capital and attitude towards dilution
Deep Industry knowledge. You can also get this information by reading earnings transcripts. RCMT is a great example of a team that does a great job discussing its industry and customers. Full disclosure, I do not own RCMT..
Don’t run the business to get acquired
You want a CEO who’s not afraid to cut senior staff loose that are not performing.
Do they believe in channel partners to help them scale and what are they doing to make that happen? Throughout my years of investing and interviewing management teams, I have found that understanding marketing and sales strategy is a big challenge that many teams face and can’t solve.
Who are some of your favorite small-cap CEOs? And who are other small-cap investors you admire?
I have a soft spot for CEOs who take decisive action. CEOs like Darryll Dewan of TSS Inc (NASDAQ: TSSI) and Abinad Rangesh of Tecogen (NYSE: TGEN — $145 million) come to mind. They both understand that solving the scaling issue is the difference between them being an average company and becoming a great company.
In the case of TSSI, Darryll strengthened the company’s relationship with its biggest customer (Dell) and put the company in a position to scale its production capacity by 10x. DELL is even guaranteeing minimum order levels “in exchange” for TSSI spending capital to move into a new facility. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that. And Darryll did all the inside two years of being appointed CEO. He’s taken the stock from about $0.50 to $20 today. He also put his money where his mouth was by buying stock in the open market when the stock fell to $0.30.
In the case of Abinad (CEO since January 2023), he clearly understood that in order for TGEN to grow its data center natural gas co-generation power and cooling solutions that he needed a channel partner. What did he do? On my site visit to TGEN headquarters in Boston, I learned that the company’s recently inked breakthrough marketing relationship with Vertiv Holdings (NYSE: VRT — $42.3 billion) started with Abinand sending a cold email to the company. “Do you know who we are? Can we help you?” You have to love that.
Here are the investors I admire:
Substackers
Mike, Private Investor
Founder of Multibagger Monitor Substack
Podcast Guest
Toff Cap
Founder of ToffCap Substack
Sebastian Krog, Private Investor
Founder of Treasure Hunting Substack
Podcast Guest
Sam McColgan, Breakout Investors Analyst
Podcast Guest
Kevin Schoovaerts, Private Investor
Founder of 100-Bagger Hunting Substack
Podcast Guest
Mathieu Martin, Portfolio Manager @ Rivemont MicroCap Fund,
Founder of Stocks & Stones Substack
Scott Shuda
Founder of Ahead Of The Curve
Podcast Guest
Brian McCann, Private Investor
Founder of 300 Cinnamon Buns Substack
Podcast Guest
Dan Kunze, Private Investor
Founder of Dan Kunze Substack
First Geoinvesting Intern in 2007
Podcast Guest
Colleague and/or have been a guest on my podcast:
Paul Andreola
Founder of Small Cap Discoveries
Trevor Treweeke
Small Cap Discoveries
Dan Schum
Nanocap Specialist
Noname Stocks Blog
Tobias Carlisle
Founder of the Acquirer’s Multiple
Noah Goldberg
Quant Investor and Blockchain Expert
Quim Abril
CEO of Draco Global Fund
Investing Course
Paul
Private Investor
Sam Namiri
Ridgewood Investments Portfolio Manager
Scott Weis
Private Investor
CEO of Semco Capital
Ryan Telford
Quant Investor
Sean Westropp
Founder of Deep Sail Capital Fund
Tyler Dupont
Private Investor
Founder of Augury Research
Mak Gomes,
Private investor
CEO Pipeline Data, LLC
Egor Romanyuk
Private Investor
Transportation Industry Expert
Rich Howe
Private Investor
Founder of Stock Spinoff Investing
Arham Khan
Founder of Mecca Partners Hedge Fund
Mike Schellinger
Full time stock trader & investor
Kyle Adams
Private Investor
Karl Brewer
Private Investor
Kris Tuttle
Private Investor
Founder of IPO Candy
@kristuttle
Vanck Zhu
Private Investor
Thomas Birnie
Private Investor
Timothy Heitman
Private Investor
Jason Hirschman,
Private Investor
Adam Sather
Private Investor
Ian Cassell
Founder of MicroCapClub
Matt Schofield
Private Investor
Albert Jones
Private Investor
Todd Schuh
Private Investor
Dennis Pannullo
Private Investor
Dennis Bottjen
Private Investor
Michael Markowski
Overbrookcapital
Ed Gilmore
Quant Partnership: Creating a ranking system for our Microcap Quality Index
Andreas Himmelreich - Founder of the Systematic Portfolio Substack, @GFI_Himmelreich
Kurtis Hemmerling - @Quant_Kurtis
Carlos Morales - @EconoMind_
What are some interesting ideas on your radar now?
There’s a theme I’ve been chasing: old, boring companies suddenly becoming critical to sexy industries. Think data centers and electrification. We’re trying to find more stocks that can multi-bag with this theme, like PSIX, TSSI and TGEN did for us.
With that in mind, there is a very interesting company that might fit this mold: