The Alphies 2.0 - Behind The Idea's Best Of 2019 (Podcast Transcript)

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Editors' Note: This is the transcript of Wednesday's Behind the Idea podcast. We hope you enjoy it.

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Daniel Shvartsman: Welcome to Behind The Idea. I am Daniel Shvartsman.

Mike Taylor: And I'm Mike Taylor.

DS: Welcome to the last episode of our Special Gone Till November Series. The four episodes we've been doing this month are a little bit of a change from our normal approach, taking an article or book or an activist letter, and talking about the analysis contained.

So far, we've each pitched longer ideas in separate episodes. I have to say Mike is doing better so far, but we're long-term investors, so that doesn't really matter. And then we reviewed some of our worst investing decisions on the previous episode. In the final episode of the series, we're looking back at lessons learned, and we're doing so by pulling out a format we developed last year. It's the Alphies. We had in our inaugural Alphies, naming our best of the best from 2018 Behind The Idea episodes last December.

We're bringing them in early this year for reasons we'll discuss at the end of the podcast. But we're going to break down our favorite guests, favorite ideas, the best performers and anything else we think is worth remembering from the stories we covered this year before we wrap up 2019. And by the way, it's our hundredth episode, so there's an excuse in and of itself.

MT: An excuse in and of itself.

DS: You just need a peg.

MT: Yeah why not. We just need a peg, just give us a peg, we will do the rest.

DS: Before we begin, as you may know, Behind The Idea is the podcast that looks at what makes great investment analysis work. We take articles from the Seeking Alpha ecosystem, or Joel Greenblatt books, or activist letters, or even our own portfolios and try to break them down to understand the approach and how this can apply to our investing. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as investment advice of any sort.

MT: And Daniel, I have one more thing to add.

DS: What is that?

MT: Which is -- it is, that Behind The Idea is brought to you by the two of us, certainly, but also quite importantly, our sponsors Seeking Alpha PRO Plus. PRO Plus gives you exclusive access to Seeking Alpha's top ideas as well as real time alerts on some of our best articles. It helps you find the best of Seeking Alpha quickly and easily so you can spend more time breaking down the analysis behind that best of Seeking Alpha.

To try PRO Plus, go to seeking alpha.com/proplus, where you can sign up for a monthly subscription or try an annual subscription with a 30 day money back guarantee, 30 days money back with Seeking Alpha's guarantee. Check it out at seekingalpha.com/p-r-o-p-l-u-s, seekingalpha.com/proplus.

Daniel, Alphies?

DS: The Alphies, the Alphies, we can -- we've -- Alphies have been dreamed up for a long time. Last year was the first time anybody ever did the Alphies. And now we're doing it again 2.0. We…

MT: Alphies 2.0, yeah.

DS: We covered last year our categories and I don't see any reason to change them unless you do. The favorite guests that we had among our guests this year, the favorite story, the most interesting idea, the most surprising stock performance, the least surprising stock performance. And then call it the best performers and any listener awards at it at the end. So those are our categories unless you'd like to throw something else into the mix.

MT: I might adlib a category or two, but for now, I think that'll be fine Daniel, let's go with these.

DS: Okay, so let's start with favorite guest. We had over 10 guests this year looks like close to 20 guests this year. I didn't -- I should have counted but we had a good number of guests, we had a few topics that we went deep on this year. We went deep on and we'll get into the topics more but Boeing, we went deep on DaVita, we went deep on PG&E, KMI, Kinder Morgan. But we had a lot of great guests this year. Who stands out for you among the guests that we had.

MT: So a couple of nominees, I would be remiss not to mention, my good friend, Matt the pilot who provided such scintillating detail from the pilot's perspective on what was going on with Boeing, and the 737 Max. And I'm really proud of that conversation, the reader and listener response was really good. It was, I think, this podcast can be its best when we talk to non-investors who can bring some outside perspective to the process. And Matt was great.

And in addition, you know, I had a daughter this year and Matt is very good with babies. And so he's -- when we've been seeing each other socially and stuff he's very eager to hang out with my family and supportive. And so as a person, I think, Matt, the pilot probably has to be my favorite guest. Okay, but as a guest…

DS: Does he fly your daughter in airplanes, like does he do the…

MT: Not yet, but interesting. So here's a good, Matt the Pilot story, Matt the Pilot and I are in a running club together. And we every year we go to the coast there's a race that we run on the coast all together as a club. Another member of the run club, his girlfriend wanted to attend but was at a local university that's nearby but pretty inconvenient to get to the coast. Matt, the pilot, offered to fly our other friend's girlfriend out to the race on the coast from school and flew and picked her up and then flew to the nearest airfield, which was only about 20 minutes from the beach. So that's how good a guy Matt the pilot is.

He, without thinking, someone he didn't know very well, he used his aviation skills to great effect, and it was great to have our friend's girlfriend join us at the beach. So I'm sure that once she's old enough, Matt will gladly bring her up in the sky.

DS: Okay. Who else is on your list, you said you had a few nominations.

MT: So my second nomination and I have two, and I think a heavy favorite for me is Kirk Spano. For entertainment and insight combined, he was one of my favorite guests. And that's mainly because he called us little girls on the podcast. And I just think that we have not had very many adversarial guests on Behind The Idea and I thought that was it was fun. It was -- I mean, we're not little girls, Daniel, we're relatively big men. And so that was just fun, I think he did a good job poking fun at us and we certainly try not to take ourselves too seriously and it was just good to have someone who could give us -- throw a couple jabs at us and so I did greatly enjoy our repartee with Kirk.

How about you? Who are your nominees?

DS: Yeah,I had Matt the Pilot on my list as well. I thought that was a degree both the reader response and the degree of added information that he could bring from a different angle just like you said, I think was really well done. So kudos to you for getting him on and for having that interview.

From the KMI well, I thought Dividend Streamer. It was enjoyable to have him on somebody who had been following the stock for a long time where I thought there was a really thorough conversation, clear that he had done his own work and we could go back and forth without -- it wasn't adversarial, but we could kind of push each other and get a fuller picture of KMI. KMI will come up again, I think on the podcast but so I would cite him.

I would cite both of our PG&E guests. Alexandra Scaggs of Barron's and Wyco Researcher, both brought a lot of insight and knowledge to what has been a kind of crazy story and was crazy at the time and has kind of continued to be crazy. And that was just, I thought we got -- I got some good insights there.

MT: I think Scaggs was a great land for us. I think her star has only continued to rise. She was a pretty big deal when we talked to her but I think she's only risen in prominence and the PG&E story has only sort of compounded in its importance over the year and so yeah, I think that she deserves a special shout out and of course. Wyco Researcher's, from a character perspective, just a really wonderful man. So…

DS: With great expertise in the bankruptcies area, which is yeah, it's just good to have that. And the last one, I'll just say Thomas Lott is one of my favorite authors on Seeking Alpha and has been basically since I started working at the site as an editor. And so it was really nice to have him on sort of, not to the idea that he discussed in a minute, but I thought that, that was a good conversation and just somebody who lives and breathes value investing, which is just kind of without being arrogant about it without being annoying.

MT: Not a big boy.

DS: Yeah, just open, honest conversation, so forthright, I guess better than honest. But yeah. So yeah, those were the my notable guests for the year. Who do -- who we have as a winner, Mike.

MT: I mean, I think it's clear we both voted Matt the Pilot. So I think we got to give it to Matt the Pilot. Stand up, dude, great guest, great insights and really entertaining. He took me up in the plane. So I don't know. That was really biased, but I'll let you have the final say, but that's my final push.

DS: That, that is my vote. That's who I would have gone with. I think one of our biggest failures now that you say it was not recording a segment in the plane as you were flying.

MT: Oh, true.

DS: That would have been above the idea, as in…

MT: Boom. Nice one. It's the Alphies. You're like Billy Crystal hosting the award show. So funny, so clever, good job.

DS: So favorite guests. Congratulations to Matt the Pilot for your discussion on Boeing. I should mention I enjoyed -- you kind of led the way on the Boeing stuff, but I also enjoyed your conversation with Madhu Unnikrishnan of Airline Weekly. Yeah, that was a story.

Well, that's sort of a segue. The next category is favorite story of the year, which we have a different category called, Most Interesting Idea. So I don't remember how we distinguished this last year. I think a favorite story as the import of the stock discussion what it means for the market or what it means for broader society or whatever else. That's how I'm sort of looking at what is the most interesting idea I'm looking more at from investing perspective, what was most interesting or what was most intriguing to cover?

So I don't know if you're thinking about it the same way, but what are your thoughts on favorite story, just to start.

MT: Yeah, I thought about favorite story the same way. I thought it was sort of the big, in some ways, just the biggest story, I think, is another way of calling some, like, the most interesting idea might be the most interesting piece of investment analysis, but my favorite story would be one that I think belongs, like on the front page of the New York Times sort of transcends business and transcends -- goes farther. And I think so we're talking about the same thing there. And I think for that reason, we probably will have a similar list of nominees. Do you want to go first and list your nominees?

DS: Yeah. And I think it's yeah, the theme I have, as far as my nominees is that sort of intersection between investing and markets, regulation and broader impact, and I just think it's interesting. I could go on a soapbox in a second about big picture thoughts I'm having, but I don't think we need to do that right now.

MT: I thought…

DS: PG&E, and just what's going on with that, and the just, and I have blackouts in California, one of the richest states in the country, just lots of crazy stuff going on there and just how that would develop to that level and then how they're still, we'll get to the stock performance later, but just the stock and what it's done since we recorded and then it -- all this stuff. So that's been kind of a crazy story that I think has a lot of twists and turns.

Boeing, I even as we're recording this now on Friday, November 22, the top story on Seeking Alpha is titled Sweet Victory for Boeing. That stock has been in the news and the revelations around the 737 Max development. And honestly, I don't want to keep singing the guy's praises, but I just thought the way that Matt, the Pilot explained the distinction between Airbus and Boeing has stayed with me as I followed this whole story. And I thought that was really interesting.

And so I think just sort of regulatory capture and just all of the other things. And meanwhile, you have a stock that trades at something like a 20 time PE, and it is this -- it is this major, we've talked about a few Garp plays and major winners and Being to some degree has a super strong moat and everything else, something we talked about, but still there's a lot to unpack from that. So I think that's really fascinating story.

And DaVita is a smaller version of that to some degree where they have the strange charity things going on. They have -- that they do dialysis is viewed as a good by a lot of people in need. That was something that Michael Knipp, the bullish guests we had on discuss, but at the same time, there's a lot of price inflation in there. There's a lot weird, the healthcare system and how the incentives are and how the payments pricing is set, et cetera is very twisted. And I felt like DaVita spelled that out quite nicely. And we did get Jim Chanos to respond to one of our tweets about DaVita, so that yeah, that's something.

MT: It really is. Yeah.

DS: Shout out to Jim Chanos, who we've talked about quite a bit in through the course of this year, if not even the whole podcast.

MT: Yeah. Big fans. We're big fans. Daniel, I had the exact same nominees.

DS: Okay.

MT: For a lot of the same reasons. Yeah, it's great. Clearly, we've been doing this too often together. I think we're in -- this year has been a year where we've thought a lot about sort of the role that corporations play in our lives and the impact that they have. It's funny that we don't really have a social media nominee because I think that social media, Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies, Google and Amazon have also sort of come under a new level of scrutiny, really, as kind of stories continue to unfold about these companies conduct and how they sort of grapple with these questions of profitability versus their responsibility to the larger society.

I don't think that story is going away. I think the ones we picked up, it's kind of interesting that they're a little bit more industrial or service focused. But I think they fit into this larger sort of questions that in the coming election, I think is going to be a real U.S. Presidential election, going to be real issues.

What role do these giant, powerful companies, what role should they play in our lives, and I think that these three ideas, Boeing, what is a company's responsibility to people that use these products; and DaVita, when your customers need something so deeply, and you're protected by regulation as much as subject to it, what's your responsibility there.

Of course, PG&E has a sort of huge big picture, questions about climate change and what the public private relationship is when you -- there's a service provider that everyone basically needs and uses. So those are what, I just think that those I don't know whether listeners care about that. They may just want the analysis and but we never got a real stick to sports moment from anybody. So hopefully, and I think that these were well engaged stories, so I think those are that's when I'm most happy with what we're doing is when we get to sort of have things spill out into other areas that we're also interested in.

DS: Yeah, I -- my big picture that I'll say very quickly, because we're not this sort of podcast, but it just occurred to me, if you think about the 2000s as an era where trust in experts was greatly eroded for a variety of reasons, whether the decisions they took the financial crisis, the Iraq war, and the -- and then the rise of the Internet and the sort of distribution of input or whatever this decade might be looked at as -- I'm not quite sure how I would need to write this out and think it through fully but people who have assumed power, not -- I don't want to say unjustly but sort of who've kind of backed into power one way or another or into responsibility, and then discovering that they really are not suitable for it. They're not really there's nothing -- there's no reason that they should be in such a powerful position except that they backed into this technology and then they developed it well, or whatever the case may be.

And so it's just -- I think a lot about with what's going on with media. I know you and I have talked a lot about one of our favorite sites, Deadspin and what happened to that, but then just in general, I think, I mean Mark Zuckerberg is our age, went to -- he went to a high school similar to mine and he's a bright guy and has been very successful, but for him to have sort of super majority voting rights and all the power he has at any age, let alone our age. It just -- it doesn't match. And so that's something that is interesting. And that plays out with Boeing where they have such -- they are in an oligopoly and as much as we tried to think about could China come in, not ignoring the issues with that, but could a Chinese company come in or could another competitor come in and it's like, it's not really possible. You are kind of stuck with Boeing and we need planes as much as you know, we both like to look at. So…

MT: Right, yeah, the era of being able to be a billionaire and have this sort of universal high approval rating, I think is more or less over. I guess there are a couple of people who are still kind of close to threading that needle, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, maybe, but even they -- the sort of Steve Jobs Halo of being a sort of captain of industry, God among men, is pretty much done at this point, whereas it used to be -- Steve Jobs may have been the sort of peak of that, like last decade, and then now we're in a different situation where there's a lot more, I think probably it's healthier to be a lot more skeptical of these people.

But I also agree that people, like individual greatness is just obviously bumping against this ceiling, that once you're shouldered with enough responsibility or enough power, you just like, individual people are incapable in some ways of handling that and we're just seeing people, whether they're good or bad is sort of a separate question. It's just kind of you can't -- there's -- if your power is just so concentrated, then you're just the impact to your decisions is too great for you to sort of be able to handle and I think we see a lot of spillover effects from that.

DS: Yes.

MT: So yeah, I'm with you. Nice decade cut. That's a paradigm shift, bro.

DS: Paradigm shift is coming. All right, so what do you got. What would you -- we may -- I don't know if we're going to agree on this, but what is -- what would your favorite story be of those three?

MT: I hate that. I mean, I got to go Boeing because it's life and death. I think it did mark this kind of shift that we're talking about really plainly. I think Boeing had not -- it took a long time for the public to kind of piece after piece and report after report came out, like, no, they messed this up. It's Boeing's fault.

And like over and over again, the evidence kept resurfacing, new people took on the task over and over again. And I think it just showed how -- it just took me even -- a person who's not particularly enamored with giant companies a long time to kind of come around that Boeing really, I think it's fairly clear now that or the public perception at least is pretty solidly that Boeing bears a lot of responsibility and deserves a lot of skepticism and scrutiny. And I think watching that take place it's like watching the sort of a small part of this bigger story we're talking about unfold before our eyes and watching people's mind's change was really fascinating to me.

DS: Okay, I'm going to give this a split decision, only because it I don't want -- I think we did the best job on Boeing. I think DaVita to me is just a really -- it's -- I think that's like it's a quieter company. I know it was on the [Indiscernible] of the show. It's not like it's totally obscure, the story here but I just thought that was a really for us to go three episodes in DaVita. And that one is also the weirdest one in terms of the stock price to in some sense and that the stock has kind of continued to do pretty well defying the skepticism that I think we had and that obviously Ethan Watkins, whose article we took and who joined us in the podcast had. So yeah, so that's sort of…

MT: Yeah.

DS: Might win it.

MT: I would say, looking contemporaneously, I think Boeing is the stronger candidate, but I think overall longer term and into the future, DaVita is going to be more emblematic of the kinds of discussions that we're having. You know, I mean, healthcare is obviously a center point on the Democratic side of the Presidential ticket. I think the discussions around healthcare are only going to get more heated, and companies like DaVita are only going to come under more scrutiny. So I'm with you that DaVita is a gigantic story, that is not fully, I think, doesn't have the same mainstream appreciation of Boeing at this point. But I would bet that within the next five years DaVita, and similar companies are going to get a lot more attention.

And so I think it may be in the long-term DaVita is a bigger deal. Boeing made one. Boeing had in some ways is a sort of isolated incident and DaVita just has a much more system wide implication, I think.

DS: Right. I hear what you're saying. Okay. That's a good way to split the -- to parse this. Will send don't worry, Boeing and DaVita we will still send you a golden Alphie trophy. Each of you we've got a couple of extras if they…

MT: We’re going to send them to the companies, congratulations.

DS: It's just an Alpha symbol with you know Alphie 2019. So we've got a few sitting around in the office. So yeah, we're going to be generous with them. Congratulations.

MT: They are imaginary trophies. But yes, yes, they do exist in our imaginations. I want us to be factually rigorous. I don't want to have to take a correction on the podcast, so to speak.

DS: Thank you, the next category, Most Interesting Idea. And so I again I sort of describe this as idea that sounds most investible. I don't know if you're thinking the same way. I guess we should -- if we do think of it that way, we should probably disqualify the long ideas that we pitched earlier this month. Because, by definition, we each think that our own idea is, I would assume interesting, so I don't think that…

MT: I don't know. I don't know if I do. Let's just say most interesting idea. And I mean, for me it's analytical insight is probably what I'm looking for here. But let's just talk --let's just give our nominees and people'll figure it out. I gravitated towards short ideas throughout the year, especially short ideas around large cap blue chip, highly successful companies, at least historically. And I think the reason for that is because, in my experience, a lot of the short ideas we get are sort of more with struggling smaller companies or companies that are promotional or maybe don't really have a real business model.

And so seeing successful profitable companies in the eyes of short sellers is just sort of another level of sophistication that I don't know that I'm capable of myself. And nowhere did I find this to be more of the case then with Michael Boyd's short idea on 3M, which has played out beautifully and it's just was so surprising to me. I think we discussed this a lot on the podcast, just I think of 3M is being this completely excellent company with a great solid culture and a great corporate strategy and it just hasn't mattered. They've been unable to execute and meet Wall Street's expectations and Boyd did a great job of sort of showing how that was in the cards and it's just has worked out really nicely.

So I think that's my sole nominee. I would give some additional mentions to a short idea about Starbucks by I think Atlas Research that would be my other sort of candidate. How about you, Daniel?

DS: Yeah, it's interesting. I also gravitate towards the large caps and I'm looking -- we had a decent mix, but I thought the -- so one large cap I -- Thomas Watts case for Dell, I actually am now long Dell. I found it compelling, these I invested later on, but I found it a reasonably compelling large cap thesis that I can see how that would play out over the next couple years. So just as an obvious disclosure that one was interesting to me. I think there were a lot of interesting themes whether it's Trupanion and how to think about that or cars.com, I thought…

MT: Aah, I messed it up, cars.com.

DS: Do you want to update listeners and how you're feeling about cars.com, since they might not be aware of what you mean by messed it up.

MT: All you need to know is that I want -- I thought cars.com looked good at various times in the past and it has continue to rise. So this is like the dumbest -- it's like a poker player when they say like, I know you're bluffing, I know you're bluffing and then they fold. So it's like didn't matter that you could say that. I knew Cars were cheap. I knew Cars was cheap and then I didn't buy it. And I'm really my missed trade opportunity cost, bells are going off. I can't get them shut down. It's like a broken car alarm.

Every day I wake up and I see cars.com going up even more. Had a great day yesterday, I think up 6% or 7%. And I'm just sitting here going, Mike, you're so dumb. You are so dumb. And I think the analysis on cars has been really interesting. I'm not bullish on the company overall, but I think it did get too cheap. And then I didn't. I mixed my -- I crossed my beams my good business beam with my value beam. And that was bad.

DS: To your credit, we covered the company before -- when there were some sales talks. There was an activist going on, and the stock has -- it didn't play out and the stock has been down really big. On the longer term it has rebounded and that's what listeners -- that's what Mike's talking about missing. But it was -- you could have done worse. You could have invested at the higher price and then regretted that. So you can always be worse, Mike.

MT: It can always be worse and it often does get worse. So we'll see. I'll probably -- there's plenty of time for me to still screw up cars.com in many intriguing ways. We'll see. Anyway, well, that's kind of a digression. Shall we got back on track?

DS: Yeah, let me bring one last one that I thought was interesting, I think Safety in Value who joined us for Bluegreens, I thought that's a -- that's a really interesting idea. There's a very -- I haven't done more work on it. All the pieces don't quite it feels too easy. I don't quite get all the pieces but I think I respect Safety in Value as an author and an analyst quite a bit. So the stock is down a little bit since both when we covered it and then when we spoke with him on the podcast. But that's a really interesting idea.

That is a small cap play. But as a reminder that the sort of parent company had a bid to buy them back out, but then they dropped it after a lawsuit. So but the lawsuit has been resolved. And yet the stock has languished. It's a timeshare operator, which has been viewed as an unsavory business, but which Mike really likes, apparently as a business model.

MT: I love it as a business model. I never bought those timeshares that were available on eBay for $1.50. And I figured out why not to. Although I think that a business with a lot of travelers to New York should look at it if it's still out there. Yeah, I loved Bluegreen as an idea. That's all I have to say about it. It was great. It was a lot of fun.

DS: Okay, so that's -- yeah, I wanted to throw that in. But it is true that we did a lot of large caps and had some interesting analysis around them this year. And so with that said, Mike, what's your winner for Most Interesting Idea of the Year?

MT: Let's go with Dell. I'm going to give you one.

DS: Okay. I'll take it. I was -- that's a surprise winner, but sometimes simple.

MT: Sometimes moonlight wins. Forrest Gump. We're having a Forrest Gump moment.

DS: I think yeah, I think Forrest Gump. Look it's an idea where you have some sum of the parts but then you have some -- the fact that you have VMware, which is a really strong company. And then at the same time you have the whole Michael Dell legacy, for better and for worse as far as it as a manager of people's money or whatever the right term is steward of Capital. That's the word I was looking for a phrase I was looking for.

MT: Steward of capital.

DS: So, okay, all right. So Dell is our Most Interesting Idea.

MT: Unbelievable. I feel like we somehow -- if Dell is the most interesting idea, somehow we screwed up the category, but let's move on.

DS: That's where we get into something interesting. So this is a little bit, Most Surprising Stock Performance. And I'll start with my nominees for this. But by this, we have opinions even if we're very common to say we don't have a conclusion or to be cautious. But I think we express -- we have viewpoints that come out more or less clearly on the podcast for a given idea even if we don't come to a final actionable. We think this is a buy or a short or whatever. But still we get surprised quite a bit.

And so I'm going to share my nominees for most surprising stock forms. Or what I'm going to say is, number one for me is PG&E just what's goneon with that stock. We recorded when it was a more or less the price it is now. But then by the time we released our first podcast, it had basically doubled. So we bottomed ticked it. And I need to pull up that stock chart, but that has been on a wild ride this year for a company that declared -- filed for bankruptcy relatively early on process.

And look, our guest, we both esteem both of our guests quite highly, but they're not the final authority. But at the same time you think about what PG&E has facing it in terms of challenges and in terms of all the wildfire claims, the likelihood that there could be another wildfire. Like it's just hard to see how there has remained meaningful equity value. We're at about $4 billion in market cap and it got as high as triple that over this year. So that to me is sort of the wildest individual story.

The other -- just to get my other nomination, it's a sort of general one. We had a lot of stocks we covered that didn't move much at all. Boeing didn't move very much, GLD which we talked about paradigm shifts is down a little bit. Range Resources is sort of flat, AT&T Trupanion kind of did the opposite of PG&E. It dropped a lot and then recovered. We've just kind of --I don't know, our curse this year has been the stocks -- Walgreen is only up because there's now buyout rumors around it. But there's a lot of stocks we covered that -- I mean, we only had five force -- no three stocks we covered that move more than 20% from when we covered it to the present day on the positive side, or on the long side, I guess.

We had more -- four that dropped that much. But yeah, just seemed like in a year where the market went up, has gone up pretty strongly as a recovery from last Q4. Just kind of interesting that we kind of picked a lot of steady.

MT: It was a lot of. Yeah, we're still waiting for the paradigm shift. Yeah, the GLD is just sitting there in my portfolio. It's fine. But it's sitting there kind of like a rock, which I guess is what it will ultimately be.

I have PG&E. I think when you have a bankruptcy filing, a stock doesn't approach zero, and then that rises in the ensuing trading, that's just astonishing to me. Maybe I'm not familiar enough with bankruptcy, but normally what you value doesn't do that, I think. What a ride for PG&E.

And the headlines just keep -- seemed to get -- they just got worse and worse. And yet the stocks is not like not getting hammered the way you might think when you're hearing about, the blackouts, the sort of on purpose blackouts that they're doing where they have to suspend service and also just like a start -- and then the sort of mess that it is. Again doesn't seem the stock markets not quite picking up on that the way I thought.

So I think, I think we just have to go with PG&E for most surprising stock performance.

DS: Yeah, I think --

MT: It seems like an obvious candidate.

DS: This is a runaway winner. I want to say that in a way that doesn't sound like I'm referring to the fires. Let me just read the…

MT: This is -- it's Lord of the Rings. PG&E is Lord of the Rings.

DS: This is a dominant play.

MT: Yeah, this is an obvious. Yeah.

DS: Let me go the last four headlines, just from this week, dating back to Sunday, November 17. I'm going reverse chronologically. PG&E begins cutting power to 150,000 customers over fire risk. That was Wednesday. On Tuesday, PG&E nears $1.7 billion settlement tied to 2017 California wildfires according to Bloomberg. The day before that, PG&E loses half of financial backing for bankruptcy plan.

And then lastly, and this was the first in the series, weary Californians warned of new power shut offs this week. It's like -- there's obviously a lot of complexity here. But like, that's not a great sign.

MT: It's not a great week. Not a great week. I feel yeah-- I don't know. It's good. They're going to like run out of wild stuff to burn before PG&E goes to zero.

DS: Apparently, yeah, I don't it's just…

MT: No more flammable material in California. And PG&E it will still be about $4 billion equity value, my stars.

DS: Okay, so PG&E, congratulations on winning the Alphie for most surprising stock performance.

MT: Congratulations to PG&E. Yeah, good job by you.

DS: Our least surprising stock performance. I only have one nominee here. And if anybody who listened to those podcasts, they were somewhat controversial, but I don't know that we will. I'm not going to say we called this, but the fact that we're looking at Kinder Morgan, which we were kind of skeptical about their accounting and thought that they were kind of more or less repeating what they were doing in 2015. And we -- I'm not diminishing all the nuance that Kirk and Dividend Streamer added to the discussion. But the stock is at $20.19 a share as I write, and that's compared to $20.08 when we first covered it and released the podcast.

So you're getting a 5% dividend in there somewhere. So it's not -- I'm not calculating total return, but that's basically is. It's basically your dividend. And so that to me, like yeah, it's a fine company. It's unclear.

MT: A little cheesy, management it's a little cheesy. I think that's fair to say. Yeah, we didn't like it. And it underperformed I suppose.

DS: I mean, it didn't too poorly. And I don't think we said -- I don't think we meant to say this is literally the same thing that happened in 2015. But just in terms of not a lot of movement, not a lot of -- yeah, just as sort of a steady -- it's stock chart is pretty flat. I mean, that's fine. But it's I think, has been built as something a little bit more than that. And I'm not terribly surprised to find us at more or less the same juncture, stock price. We're not -- we have not done the research to see how it's performing as a business. We're kind of giving the market credit for valuing it relative to that.

MT: Why not? Because the market agrees with us. There we go. Easy. It's so easy. I had a similar -- I'll give mine. I had a similar one in that as a dividend growth investor favorite that has not really done all that great. And I think I'm mostly just proud to have been sort of skeptical on this. I'm proud I'm going to brag. I'm proud of this. I'm proud. Simon Property Group. I think this was the podcast I had the most fun recording. Malls are funny.

Simon Property Group malls are especially funny to me. And we have a lot of well-respected popular and solid, long term dude and focused authors on Seeking Alpha who love Simon Property Group. And have loved it all year. And I feel proud that I went a different way. And I am not surprised that it has not done very much in the ensuing time. I believe I'm right. Do you think I'm right?

DS: I think what I like about Simon Property in our discussion there that we got. We got two where -- the sometimes staying away from a long idea doesn't have to vote everything's going wrong. But that it's not all that plausible to see what's going to be a really bright future. And that's something that that was sort of what I got to when I was explaining why towards the end, I should have cut my Uniti Group shares when I talked last week and I didn't. When I sort of realized there wasn't this great upside, but I kind of held on for inertia.

I thought we kind of hit that theme nicely with Simon Property Group where -- look, the market isn't so dumb to think that malls in their current format are not likely to persist super strongly. And so one way or another, there's going to be some changes ahead. And that's not going to be cheap or easy or something that you can put a super low discount rate on. And so yeah, I hear what you're saying in that -- that would be something that I would add in.

MT: Down 10% since we talked about it. Boom. Not a surprise to this guy.

DS: Mike is sitting there pointing two thumbs at himself now.

MT: Yeah, guys, I'm terrible at this. Don't listen to me. It's so bad. But I doubt it felt nice for me. Felt nice. Okay, so what do you think wins? I think we're in the -- it's sort of the same story.

DS: Yeah, let's give it to Simon Property,

MT: Dividend favorite not playing out.

DS: Let's give it to Simon Property. No Mall REIT action.

MT: Unsurprising.

DS: Not surprised what happened there. Okay, so this category is pretty straightforward because it's just the numbers. The Best Performers, I think I pulled the numbers together again not including dividends just share price performance. In the two winners' case, there were no dividends involved and nobody else was close enough that a dividend would have made up for it.

Our two winners basically, one on the long side, one on the short side. One was the first article that we covered this year Match Group which…

MT: Had the most time.

DS: Had the most time, that's true. But it's interesting when you think about it. We covered Match Group in light of rumors that Facebook might be rolling out a dating app. And the stock is sold off. And I don't think we came out as -- we came out as we usually do. Good company, not sure if we'd invest. But it's a good play or looked like it at the time I guess. I'm not taking credit for that. But that sort of was the thesis and the article.

Stock is up 56% and that is after it's sold off pretty heavily in the last few weeks. I don't remember if that's because they had a bad report. There's their parent IAC Group is planning some spin off action there that I think is kind of caused…

MT: Let's get on that, that will be fun.

DS: So it's well off its highs, but has had a very strong year. So Match Group on the long side. On the short side, I'm not going to count PG&E, PCG, because we recorded it -- it's like round trip to where we recorded it. It happens to have spiked in between when we first recorded it and then released the podcast. It's kind of cheating to say. And I think we were bearish about it. But I don't think that's really appropriate to include.

PagerDuty, which Akram's Razor been on it and pitched this summer, has been, the SaaS bubble has popped to a certain degree. And PagerDuty, Akram made the case for why it's on alert system was unlikely to grow at the pace everybody expected, let alone the valuation. That stock is down 42% since we first released their podcast. So that is a big short move.

MT: That's a big one. That's a big one. PagerDuty not doing its job.

DS: They did not get an alert ping about the stock price.

MT: Listener Awards. Let's move on.

DS: Listener Awards, last category. And nearest and dearest you might say, our Listener Awards. Mike, anybody who stands out to you as Best Listener or Listeners of 2019 Behind the Idea?

MT: Yes. My two nominees are Bram de Haas and Ian Bezek. They're two Seeking Alpha authors that I think we both respect and admire. And they have just consistently engaged with the podcast in a way that I think most symbolizes, represents what we're trying to accomplish here. The comments that they bring are engaging. They engage with the analysis, they don't try and be big boys or tell us that we're stupid, even if they might not always agree with our thought processes or respect to what we're saying.

They are looking for opportunities to learn, grow and share. And I think that's very clear. I think they're in the true spirit of Seeking Alpha and they're in the true spirit of this podcast. I have to give them a shout out, and kind of a sportsmanship award. I'm morphing this listener award into good sportsmanship. I think they've both shown great sportsmanship in engaging with us. So bear in mind, two nominees. How about you, Daniel?

DS: So I'm going to go slightly different way with this. Michael Knipp is what I'm going to nominate. He contacted me. I don't think he commented on our initial DaVita Podcast, but he contacted me about and we went back and forth and then he agreed to come on the podcast, which I don't think we've had comp mentors, reach out to us, and then join the podcast before. So that was exciting. And to his credit for all that we've talked about DaVita, his analysis, he's being rewarded by the market. So credit to him for that.

I actually liked our criticism. I do. Listeners note that I did grumble to Mike about the criticism we got on the Range Resources' comment stream, but on the Kinder Morgan's comment stream, I appreciate it. Even though it was sometimes not in full appreciation of what we did. We got comments. I think that came from people very close to Kinder Morgan as well as regular followers of the podcasts and the stock.

MT: We're in a position to know some things about Kinder Morgan.

DS: And so I appreciate that. And yeah, and look, we are not -- this podcast is we don't really disclose this way. But it's for entertainment purposes, we enjoy the stock market, we enjoy talking about it learning. And Kinder Morgan remains an interesting story. And I appreciate that people cared enough to react even if they didn't agree with us. And even if sometimes they called those things.

MT: They thought we were wrong. And we waded in without knowing very much. And I think people correctly identified that. And I don't have a problem with that. I think it was good that people did that. We weren't perfect on it. And I think that was good for them to say it. They weren't always nice about it. And that's unfortunate, but it's also fair. People get emotional -- we forget -- we think we don't always remember that these are people's investments and their money. And their well-being is at stake. And so they care very deeply. And it's fair to be a little bit passionate.

I think we try and be dispassionate and have fun with it. And I think that's appropriate because I don't think the stock market is the same as like, the battlefield or whatever. But I get it. I get why people would respond that way. And I do think that you made a great point that comments are coming on the podcast shows a great deal of generosity in a way.

DS: Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, it's just -- that is the philosophy of Behind the Idea. It's that we are relatively informed of how the stock market works, whether or not we're good investors, we're not. And the good news for people who disagree with us is that we're often wrong, if not always wrong. So you don't have to worry about if we say something bad, but we do…

MT: You really don't.

DS: We do enjoy talking about stocks. And we appreciate you coming along with us especially when you don't agree with us. So that that's why I wanted to cite those things.

MT: It's like all our listeners deserve this award in a way.

DS: Yeah, I think they do. I think I think our listeners -- anybody who is stuck with us anybody who is listening to this point of the Alphies 2.0 deserves an award. Because we appreciate your support and the time you spent with us going through some of our favorite things which we presume are your favorite things the stock market. So…

MT: I hope that you do that for -- that's like a Time magazine did the Person of the Year and they put the mirror on the cover. They should do that for best picture. That would be really fun. They are like this year's best picture award goes to everyone. You all, everyone who seen a movie. You deserve this. It's purely so mad.

DS: I think they would do.

MT: Scorsese like flips over some tables.

DS: Well, what they would do is they put an asterisk, everyone except Netflix, and anybody watching the Netflix. They would be upset with Netflix.

MT: Well, we got to this kind of saccharin place, this emotional place, Daniel. And I think that that's perhaps a good opportunity for us to give a little programming note for what's coming next for Behind the Idea.

DS: Yeah, I think we -- this will also explain why the Alphies happened right before Thanksgiving instead of right before Christmas this year

MT: Comes earlier every year.

DS: It's commercial pressure. You are allowed to say Happy Alphies to anybody you see. Don't worry about that.

MT: I have my Alphie, I have it on the all the multicolored lights, my Alphies reindeers out there. Yeah.

DS: So Mike, do you want to break -- explain what's going on? Or would you like me to take the honor? How would you?

MT: I'll say some things and then you'll probably have to clean up behind me as is our general modus operandi here. Listeners, I will be going on parental leave from my duties at Seeking Alpha in -- and that's inclusive of the Behind the Idea podcast. And my plan is to return at the end of April 2020. And during that time, the podcast will be on hiatus. Daniel, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to think that he can do this without me even though I think the evidence strongly suggests that he can. But we also want to take it in seriousness as a little bit of an opportunity to step back and see what else this podcast could be, and what's what makes it the most successful going forward?

We also hit our 100th episode. That's the one you're listening to now. And so it seemed like a good time to pause, reflect. And also for me to take my newborn daughter up in an airplane with Matt pilot, potentially.

DS: Which we expect a recording. We expect a recording, please.

MT: Episode 101 is going to have all sorts of really amazing stuff in it. So yeah, that's what's happening. We're going on pause. We're very grateful to everyone who's come along with us thus far. And yeah, keep the -- stay subscribe to the feed. We're not completely going away. But you can expect us to be on break until spring of next year, at the very least.

DS: Yeah, what you can -- on the feed we may be posting cross posting some of the episodes from some of our other channels that we think are relevant to Behind the Idea listeners. We have a few other shows. Behind the Idea was the first podcast we've launched on Seeking Alpha. We now have eight different channels and nine different shows. So we may post some over here, as if we think they're relevant to you. Don't worry, we're not going to spam you.

And there's a chance we might do a special series at some point. If we do that, we will make sure to get the word out. But yeah, otherwise the sort of week in week out programming is going to go on pause for the next five months. And in the meantime, if you have ideas, suggestions, requests, you can contact us at btipod at seekingalpha.com, we'll still be getting those emails.

MT: Yeah. You will.

DS: Well, Mike is probably -- Mike's not going to look but I will.

MT: I will be getting them but I won't check.

DS: I will forward that to -- man I can't even think of what your inbox is going to look like.

MT: I'm going to log into it every week and I'm just going to select all and mark as read on a weekly basis until I come back. Yeah. And I plan to mark as read to be clear without reading. I'm going to lie to our email service provider. Marked -- I guess it says marked as read, they kind of have a built in thing where like they know that you're not actually…

DS: Yeah, that's it. That's a nice new feature that our email, our customized email part of…

MT: Our unnamed email provider, whoever they are, whoever provides email.

DS: Plucky little company that provides this.

MT: Plucky little email provider.

DS: Email service. So I will say like that, whether or not I could do Behind the Idea without you for a regular period, I would not want to. So I wish you a pleasant leave. And I look forward to resuming this investigation and exploration of the world of stocks with you in 2020.

MT: Wonderful, what kind words and likewise Daniel. I absolutely certainly would not do Beyond the Idea without you. I barely do it with you.

DS: I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not but I will see it as one.

MT: It is. You're the force or the force that brings -- keeps bringing me back so appreciate you.

DS: Likewise buddy. Okay, let's not get too drippy here. Thank you everybody for sticking with us. And if you have favorite episodes, guests, stocks stories from this year, let us know as well. We've got our takes, but we are open to others. We always have been, always will be. So let us know.

MT: See you in 2020.

DS: And since it's -- see you in 2020, but also have a Happy Thanksgiving. If you are in the U.S. celebrating or anywhere celebrating Thanksgiving. It's a lovely little holiday. So…

MT: Thanksgiving, thanksgiving Daniel.

DS: Okay. Thanks Mike.

MT: Thanksgiving Daniel. Okay, bye.

DS: Bye.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: Daniel is long SFIX and DELL. Mike is long VAR. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as investing advice.