The Ledger
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Casey: Adjusted EBITDA is a bogus metric that ignores real stock comp expense
“But it's such a bogus metric. You know, the stock-based compensation, which is ignored in that metric, that's a real expense. And you all know it's a real expense, because if you weren't allowed to use stock-based comp, you'd have to pay cash comp, ok?”
Casey: Mature tech companies should initiate dividends to reward stock-comped staff
“I happen to be one of the heretics who thinks dividends are amazing. Like, I love it when companies initiate dividends, and I think the companies love it when they have dividends, too. It's like giving everybody who has stock comp a raise, right, in cash that …”
Mark Casey predicts no crypto altcoins will succeed long term
“I kind of don't think any of the altcoins are really gonna work long term, whether maybe the architecture isn't decentralized, or maybe Gary Gensler at the SEC will get his way and successfully argue legally that the altcoin is an unregistered security and nee…”
Casey: Alphabet will fix Gemini AI image generation problems and recover
“I bet it's gonna be okay. They have a little time to figure it out and correct the image generation.”
Casey: Hyping stock over-compensates current hires at future employees' expense
“Some companies sort of like hype up their stock, and I feel like that's a mistake because what you do if you have a lot of stock-based comp is you're basically pulling forward the compensation that was going to go to all the people you're about to hire, And yo…”
Casey: Capital Group avoids investing in companies with overly high margins
“There's a lot of companies I won't invest in because they're not investing enough, right? I'm like, your margins are too high. I don't think you're being aggressive enough about future investments. And if you lowered your margins and it showed some progress on…”
Casey regrets not trimming Meta at $380 before it fell to $90
“The twenty-twenty-two period was rough and, you know, I kinda, my big mistake in twenty-twenty-two was not trimming a lot of stocks at the end of twenty-twenty-one. You know, I looked at Netflix at 6:30 then, and Amazon at one 80, and Facebook at three 80, Fac…”
Mark Casey: Only 1.5 billion people globally have ever flown on an airplane
“Only a billion and a half people in the world have even been on an airplane. Like, every year, seventy-five million people get on a jet for the first time”
Capital Group's Mark Casey holds Bitcoin exposure in equity portfolio
“As an equity portfolio manager, there's not too many ways to be involved in Bitcoin in your portfolios, but I have one, and, ah, I'm looking for others.”
Mark Casey: Capital Group is buying AI choke points across chips, clouds, and models
“And then what I'm mostly looking for, where are the choke points right now? And there's a bunch. It's semiconductors and semiconductor capital equipment. There's only a handful of companies that are good at that. There's only three big public clouds. There's o…”
Casey: Study Buffett, Tan, and Howley for capital allocation mastery
“There's three people who I think are just the best. Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, obviously the GOAT, When he took over, ah, Berkshire Hathaway at 19 dollars a share 59 years ago, and now it's 641 thousand dollars a share, and it was all capital alloca…”
Mark Casey: In fintech, evaluate moat width over raw growth
“So in FinTech, I sort of take the growth for granted and spend a lot of time thinking about, ok, is the moat really wide enough for the profits to be there?”
Casey predicts increasing performance dispersion among Magnificent Seven tech stocks
“Now I feel like we're in much more of a stock pickers kind of market where The Magnificent Seven aren't all magnificent this year. One's down a ton, Tesla. One's down a little, Apple. You know, I think there's going to be more separation in the market in gener…”
Casey has held Alphabet stock continuously since its 2004 IPO
“I've held Google since the 2004 IPO.”
Casey admits making disastrous investments by confusing fintech growth with moats
“Can be very straightforward for fintech companies to grow a lot but then if they grow a lot and you pay the price of a growing company, but then at the end of it turns out to be much more competitive than you thought, and profit margins are low, that's sort of…”
Casey: US e-commerce could reach 80% penetration via drone and robot delivery
“Here in the U.S. With drones and robot delivery systems, maybe we can get to 80%. So I think there's a long way to go.”
Capital Group bases its largest bonuses on eight-year rolling performance
“The way it works at Capital is the bonus you get for your results is you get a one-year, three-year, five-year, and eight-year rolling average bonus, but the eight-year is biggest by far”
Casey: Has held Amazon stock continuously since 2010
“So I finally wised up and have been holding Amazon since 2010.”
Casey: 80% of South Korean diaper sales occur via e-commerce
“80% of diaper sales in that country are e-commerce.”
Casey: Capital allocation is a learnable, critical CEO skill
“One of the unheralded skills that CEOs can really study is capital allocation. You know, if you have a 20 PE stock, and you grow your earnings 12 or 13% a year, after a decade, your earnings will add up to 90% of the market cap the day you started as CEO. So t…”