Frazis Capital Podcast Michael Frazis

Dr. Robert Stretch is a specialist in Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine.

After graduating from Yale School of Medicine in 2014, he completed subspecialty training at BIDMC in Boston and UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

He is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).

This is the audio from an investment update Michael Frazis gave on 23 April 2021. 

Brian Hartzer joins us to talk about his new book 'The Leadership Star', available from Amazon. 

Brian was CEO of Westpac from 2014-2020. For those who don't know Westpac is Australia's second largest bank with over $800 billion of assets. 

Brian discusses his 'Leadership Star' framework and pivotal moments in Australia's banking history. Brian also shares his views on cryptocurrency, neobanks, alternative lenders, the Buy-Now-Pay-Later movement, and the future of financial technology more broadly.  



Timestamps

00:05 – Introducing Brian
03:15 – Brian's new book: ‘The Leadership Star: A Practical Guide to Building Engagement’
06:00 – Shifting from management consulting to running ANZ’s credit card business
08:25 – Brian’s perspective on the evolution of credit cards in Australia
10:25 – The five c’s of leadership: care, context, clarity, clearing the way and celebrate
11:05 – Why the phrase ‘I’m just a teller’ is a sign of bad management
13:00 – Why cleaners are the most important workers at Disney
14:10 – ‘Clearing the way’ - what does this mean?
15:50 – How corporate and leadership culture has changed over Brian’s career
18:46 – How Brian navigated the “biggest bank failure in history”
20:25 – What led to the downfall of RBS
23:37 – Brian’s perspective on the evolution of US corporate culture
24:50 – The state of banking technology in the UK
28:58 – Why more competitors doesn’t necessarily equal better consumer outcomes
29:17 – How the banking landscape helped Australia navigate the GFC
31:35 – Behind the scenes of the Australian banking crisis in 1991/1992
32:58 – Why hybrid bank branches are the way of the future
36:15 – Multi-brand strategies and Westpac
39:30 – Brian’s thoughts on the buy-now-pay-later sector
42:28 – Will the buy-now-pay-later sector will displace credit cards?
44:58 – Views on Bitcoin and why Brian pushed through Westpac's investment in Coinbase
49:20 – The “one and only legitimate” use case for bitcoin
50:50 – The future of neobanks and alternative lenders
54:15 – Predictions on the future of banking technology
55:45 – Brian’s pivot to working as an angel investor
57:50 – The one key takeaway from Brian’s new book

Michael Frazis gives an update on SPACs, rising interest rates, tech valuations and what might happen next.

Timestamps
 1:35 - Quick review of 2021 
 2:30 - Thoughts on Cathie Wood and ARK
 3:59 - Expansions and contractions in software multiples
 7:40 - Snowflake 
 8:47 - SPACs: why we like them and why they're dangerous (hint: the same reason)
12:02 - Why we hope SPACs encourage leading tech firms to list sooner
14:21 - Dodgy forecasts
16:51 - Why we rule out most SPACs in the fund
18:00 - Navigating rising interest rates 
22:33 - The recent sell-off
24:32 - How we look at market rotations
26:46 - Coupang IPO

January 2021 - one of the more amusing weeks of finance. 

0:57 - The short squeeze
2:31 - The reality of Robinhood's 'free' trades
5:08 - The hidden consequences of Hedge Fund strategy
6:51 - How useful is management access?
9:56 - The gamma squeeze
12:15 - How this forced people to rethink how they discuss finance?
13:39 - Is the squeeze squoze?
14:37 - Timing and recovery
15:40 - Our strategy
17:24 - An important dynamic of short interest
19:43 - The true signal of growth
20:32 - How fund managers missed a multidecade trend?
23:00 - A changing guard in allocation decisions

1.40 - Quick review of 2020 

2.35 - How to survive huge market swings like March 2020 and 2008-2009 

3.45 - Discussion on support mechanisms in place in equity markets (central banks, fiscal stimulus, actions by management teams, etc) 

5.45 - Current investment strategy is to stay invested & make sure we are constantly holding winners 

7.35 - Sound fundamental reasons why companies with intense customer love, explosive growth, and market leadership perform so well 

8.15 - Our companies are investing heavily. When revenue comes in they open new offices, hire marketing staff and etc which promises a greater return on investment. Many categorise these investments as costs, which gives the opposite (incorrect) answer 

10.17 - Investment in tech and the "companies of the future" requires long term investment with value creation over 5 - 10 years 

11.50 - Question: Have you invested in Nio? Nio capitalises on the necessity of an electric China. There is demand in the Chinese economy with issues like pollution for electric vehicles and the vast majority of the population will be buying locally made vehicles. Nio is a 100%+ revenue growth company and has proven user base in China 

13.25 - Question: When do we trim? Focus of maintaining diversified portfolio of ultra-high growth companies 

14.25 - Long term goals of the fund 

16.17 - Question: Is there a limit to when printing to support the economy triggers inflation? Austerity weakened the private sector as seen in the UK and saw mass unemployment 17.14 - Comparison with the Australian experience 

18.08 - The Greek experience with austerity, and how growth can be the solution to an economic crisis 20.20 - Worries around debt overhang have been consistently proven wrong for countries like Australia, Japan, UK and USA anyway 

20.50 - Question: How are you investing in the life sciences? 22.23 - Discussion on liquid biopsy and Dermtech's sticker approach to melanoma 24.00 - Question: What do we think about SPACs? 

26.20 - Question: what didn't work in 2020? A few biotechs underperformed, like Avita 

27.40 - Discussion on Moderna now that vaccine is approved 

30.33 - Market outlook: Market is changing with stimulus, vaccines and substantial changes in leadership with low interest rates 

30.45 - At the highs of January 2021 we aim to stay consistent & ensure our portfolio companies are adding users and revenues everyday at the highest possible rates, just as we did in the lows 

33.10 - Question: What do we think of high quality but richly priced companies like Crowdstrike? 

33.23 - 2021 focus on life sciences - the space is independent over the growth space & captures novel explosive growth 

34.10 - Always searching for companies that grow 100% year on year, trading on five-time sales  

34.25 - Why we never bought Spotify 

35.10 - Question: Are we in a tech bubble? 

44.30 - Conclusion: we remain focused on our diversified portfolio of ultra-high growth companies intense customer love, long term