Avantor is like Thermo Fisher in some respects. It distributes lab products and sells bioprocessing tools. It, too, was built through transformative M&A. It even has an analog to PPI – the kaizen-based continuous improvement framework Thermo Fisher adopted from Danaher – in the form of the Avantor Business System. But sadly, these surface similarities […]

Hi everyone – on Monday, I’ll share some thoughts on Avantor in my final post of the year. Immense gratitude for all your support. As rewarding as 2025 was from both a business and content perspective, I think 2026 is going to be even better. The research pipeline is in great shape. Writeups on LTL carriers (ODFL, XPO, SAIA), Watsco, Pool, Thermo Fisher, and Danaher are all in progress and will be published in the first few months of the new year.

Here are the results from a survey I recently sent to paid subscribers:

I recently launched scuttlebits: short-form commentary, mostly related to notable developments on companies I’ve already covered, published every 7 to 10 days or so. What do you think?

(134 responses)

How would you describe yourself?

(136 responses)

Have you listened to more than a few episodes of the Never Sell podcast?

(136 responses)

For those who selected “what’s that?”, Never Sell is a monthly podcast where MBI ^[4] and I discuss various investing-related topics (Spotify ^[5], Apple ^[6], YouTube ^[7])

Do you regularly use AI tools in your research process?

(135 responses)

When will AI put me out of a newsletter writing job?

(135 responses)

Thank you to the more than 100 of you who sent in stock pitches! Lots of interesting ideas in the mix, many of which I’ve added to my research pipeline.

Finally, on a personal note, I’d like to draw your attention to a GoFundMe ^[8] that I set up last year for Boulder Crest Retreat ^[8], a non-profit that helps veterans, servicemembers, and first responders heal from trauma. As many of you know, my brother was a combat vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and took his own life in 2024 after battling PTSD. Thank you to everyone who has donated. If you haven’t yet, I hope you consider doing so!

It is a joy and privilege to write for you all. Have a safe and happy holiday season, David

Last week, a reader and Shift4 shareholder messaged me, raising questions about the company’s organic growth methodology. After speaking to IR, he learned that Shift4’s 3q25 organic growth calculation excluded revenue from Revel and Vectron, which were acquired in 2q24, from the year-ago base even as it included all the revenue synergies related to those […]

I left Part 1 with the observation that, starting in earnest around a decade ago, the federal government began encouraging procurement through a smaller set of omnibus vehicles that bundled a wide range of services – previously sourced piecemeal – under a single, flexible framework, tilting the playing field toward scaled contractors who could cover […]

MBI and I recorded an episode of Never Sell recently (Serial Acquirer ROIC, Fiserv Debacle and Management Credibility, Wise and Stablecoins) (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, RSS feed) correction: in Fiserv’s October Massacre, I made the incorrect assertion that in the most recent 3q25 earnings call management failed to call out past reporting error regarding Argentina’s contribution to organic growth. What I failed […]

TREX is down nearly 60% since I first profiled the company last August. You’d think the business encountered an irreparably devastating setback, but no. At 34x earnings, Trex was priced for perfection back then and when perfect didn’t happen the stock careened, to a valuation that now strikes me as cheap-to-reasonable for the first time in at […]

MBI and I recorded an episode of Never Sell recently (The Big Tech Capex Debate, Amazon Retail, Align’s Pricing Challenge) (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, RSS feed) What are scuttlebits? h/t @taobanker I’ll keep this brief as nothing material has changed since my March ‘25 update and a number of adherents of the growing Shift4 cult have recently tweeted/blogged quarterly commentary that I […]

What are scuttlebits? On the heels of my Global Payments post, another boomer payments stock has cratered. Source: FT You’ll recall that, through a series of mammoth-sized transactions, Global Payments morphed into an unwieldy issuer processor/merchant acquirer hybrid, only to reverse course and return to being just an unwieldy merchant acquirer. Fiserv, meanwhile, has committed […]