Art of Boring

Private equity is opening up to individual investors, and the line between public and private markets is blurring. In this episode, private investments portfolio manager Peter Lieu and institutional portfolio manager Kevin Minas break down secondaries and continuation vehicles, the difference between IRR and distributions, and how Mawer built institutional-quality private equity access through fund commitments, co-investments, and vintage-year diversification, including a new mutual fund trust for registered accounts like RRSPs and TFSAs. 0:00 - Introduction: Private Equity Beyond Endowments and Pensions 1:30 - A Brief History of Private Equity Allocations: Yale to the Maple 8 2:58 - Public-Private Convergence: Why Companies Stay Private Longer 6:17 - Secondaries and Continuation Vehicles Explained 9:40 - IRR vs. Distributions: The Delayed-Exit Debate 13:45 - Bringing Private Equity to Retail: Institutional-Quality Access 15:14 - Co-Investments and 50 Years of Business-Model Analysis 18:25 - Why a Mutual Fund Trust for RRSPs and TFSAs 20:22 - Liquidity and Redemption Windows in a Semi-Liquid Structure 22:21 - Private Equity Returns in a Higher-Rate World 26:06 - What's Next: Sports, Live Entertainment, and Democratization 32:13 - Outro & Subscribe   -The line between public and private markets is blurring. Companies are staying private longer, more financing is available without an IPO, and public companies are increasingly being taken private, so accessing value early in a company's life increasingly depends on having private equity exposure.   -Continuation vehicles are the modern version of the secondary buyout, not a new idea. They let a manager hold a strong business for longer, and roughly 90% of LPs who can roll into the new vehicle choose to take liquidity instead, which creates both a conundrum for investors and an opportunity for disciplined buyers.   -Distributions matter as much as IRR. IRR assumes capital is reinvested at the same rate and can look healthy even when little cash has been returned, so the team evaluates managers on money multiples and cash back, not IRR alone.   -Mawer built its access the way large institutions do. The program pairs fund commitments for diversification across companies, geographies, sectors, and vintage years with no-fee, no-carry co-investments, where the firm applies 50 years of business-model analysis to a single company decision.   -Registered accounts and private equity are naturally aligned. A new mutual fund trust extends the strategy to RRSPs, LIRAs, and TFSAs, where long time horizons and capital that is already locked up match the illiquidity of the asset class.   -Recent returns have been weaker as higher rates pressured valuations and exits slowed while public markets outperformed, but the long-term value drivers remain in place, and a staggered deployment that began in 2022 positioned the strategy for a constructive backdrop.   Companies and Assets Mentioned: SpaceX, Amazon, Alpine F1 team, University of Utah Athletics, RedBird Capital, Otro.   Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Mawer Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Mawer Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Peter Lieu, CFA, Mawer Portfolio Manager, Private Investments   This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts. Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore. Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/

AI CapEx is on track to reach roughly $700 billion at the four largest hyperscalers this year, and equity analyst Irena Petkovic breaks down where all that money is going and what has to be true for it to earn a return. She explains how data centers turned from cost centers into revenue-producing AI factories, the four ways hyperscalers monetize compute, and how the token economy actually works. She then weighs the early evidence of returns against the risks around token pricing, debt financing, and public backlash, and describes how the team positions the portfolio around it. 0:00 - Introduction: The $700 Billion AI CapEx Question 1:29 - How Big Is the Spend? Apollo, Telecom, and Railroads 4:11 - Data Centers as AI Factories: From Cost Center to Revenue 5:53 - Four Ways Hyperscalers Monetize Compute 7:10 - The Token Economy Explained 11:26 - Early Evidence of Returns on AI Investment 14:39 - The Bear Case: Token Prices, Debt, and Backlash 18:49 - Positioning the Portfolio Around AI 20:35 - Outro & Subscribe   Highlights: Hyperscaler AI CapEx of about $700 billion this year is a scale rivaled historically only by the railroads. Capital intensity at Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon has jumped from 5-10% of revenue to upwards of 45%. A high return on invested capital justifies spending down free cash flow rather than protecting it. The data center is now a revenue-producing AI factory that turns electricity and chips into sellable tokens. Compute is monetized four ways: GPU rental, productivity products, enhancing own businesses, and selling tokens. Early returns look encouraging, with sub-three-year hardware payback cited and demand exceeding supply. Risks to watch are token prices falling faster than volumes and a shift toward debt-funded build outs.   Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Mawer Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Irena Petkovic, CFA, Mawer Equity Analyst   This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts. Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore. Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/

How do you value a memory semiconductor stock like SK Hynix when no one can predict DRAM prices? Equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo walks through the team's Monte Carlo valuation framework: a discounted cash flow run through thousands of scenarios that prices the business on a distribution of returns rather than a single forecast. He also explains how two-times leveraged single-stock ETFs have been amplifying SK Hynix's daily price swings, why regulators and Korean brokers are responding to retail leverage, and why flow-driven volatility can be a gift for long-term investors. The through-line: memory can be cyclical, structurally growing, and wealth-creating all at once. 0:00 - Introduction & Disclaimer 0:21 - How Do You Value a Memory Stock Amid Huge Uncertainty? 0:54 - Monte Carlo Valuation: Pricing SK Hynix on a Distribution of Outcomes 5:27 - Day-to-Day Volatility: Fundamentals or Flows? 6:17 - How 2x Leveraged Single-Stock ETFs Amplify SK Hynix Price Swings 9:40 - What Investors Underappreciate About the Memory Industry 10:21 - Closing Thoughts & Subscribe Key Takeaways Key uncertain variables (DRAM prices, supply response, China risk) are modelled as ranges and run through thousands of scenarios; the output is a distribution of returns, treated stochastically. SK Hynix scenarios: bull (prices hold through the decade), realistic (decline from 2028 as supply arrives), bear (accelerated decline on over-investment and Chinese supply). The test is being paid adequately across the whole distribution, not picking the right scenario; the distribution centred around 12% with positive skew. New data points (LTAs signed, capacity expansion) update the distributions; position sizing follows the shape, and the team trimmed as the shares ran. Two-times leveraged ETFs rebalance by buying after rises and selling after falls, amplifying 10 to 15% daily moves in SK Hynix. Flow-driven volatility widens the gap between price and value, which long-term investors can use. Memory can be cyclical, structurally growing, and wealth-creating at the same time. Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Shan Rui Yeo, CFA, Equity Analyst This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts. Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore. Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/ #ArtOfBoring #MawerInvestmentManagement #MawerInvestment #Podcast #Finance #Investing #semiconductor #tech #techexplained #memory #skhynix

Memory has been one of the strongest corners of the semiconductor industry, and strong returns invite hard questions. In the second part of this series, equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo examines the main risks to the memory thesis: rising competition from China's CXMT and YMTC, the technologies that could reduce AI's appetite for memory, and the wave of capacity investment that could eventually tip the industry back into oversupply. He weighs each risk against the constraints holding it back, from equipment export controls to limited EUV supply, and notes that memory companies already trade at three to five times forward earnings. The conversation closes on a working principle: treat the terminal value as a distribution, not a fixed number. Key Takeaways China's CXMT is expanding DRAM capacity aggressively, but export controls on sub-18 nanometre equipment and EUV keep its effective supply share (about 10%) below its capacity share (about 15%). YMTC is the more credible technological threat: NAND density comes from stacking layers, and its Xtacking hybrid bonding architecture is proprietary. Efficiency gains may grow memory consumption rather than reduce it; cheaper tokens get spent on larger context windows (the Jevons paradox). The deepest risk is architectural: if large language models are not the path to AGI, the next paradigm may not be memory hungry, so terminal value is a distribution, not a fixed number. Announced capex is enormous but back-loaded into the 2030s, and EUV and equipment capacity are the bottleneck to bringing it online. Memory companies trade at three to five times forward earnings; the market is not assuming supernormal profits forever, and the NAND supply outlook is better in the near term. Companies Mentioned: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, CXMT (ChangXin Memory), YMTC (Yangtze Memory), Apple, NVIDIA, Google, ASML, Applied Materials, KLA, Lam Research, TSMC, Intel, Kioxia Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Shan Rui Yeo, CFA, Equity Analyst   This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts.   Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore.    Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/

One of the defining market stories of the past 12 months has not been AI chips that compute, but the chips that remember. Equity analyst Shan Rui Yeo explains how memory works, from DRAM and NAND to high bandwidth memory, and how an industry that destroyed wealth for four decades became disciplined after consolidating to three players in 2013. He then walks through what changed: AI inference has made memory the key bottleneck, memory content is climbing with each new generation of GPUs, and new supply takes three to four years to build. With prices up sharply and customers signing long-term agreements, Part 1 of this three-part conversation lands on a commodity industry whose business model is changing in real time.   Key Takeaways Memory is a commodity with a three-to-four-year supply lag, which is why the cycle has always been difficult. Consolidation to three players in 2013 turned four decades of wealth destruction into at least 15% returns on capital through the cycles. In AI inference, memory bandwidth sets the speed of token generation, making memory the key bottleneck. NVIDIA's Rubin GPU carries 384 GB of DRAM, the equivalent of 32 iPhones per GPU, or 160 million iPhones across five million GPUs. HBM consumes three times the wafer capacity of standard DRAM (four times with HBM4) and is forecast to absorb 30% of DRAM wafers by 2027. DRAM contract prices are up roughly 200% year to date and 400 to 500% year over year, and price increases are reaching phones, laptops, and consoles. Customers are signing three-to-five-year agreements with prepayments, which could support a re-rating of memory companies.   Companies Mentioned: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron, NVIDIA, Intel, Texas Instruments, Apple, Nintendo   Host: Rob Campbell, CFA, Institutional Portfolio Manager Guest: Shan Rui Yeo, CFA, Equity Analyst   This episode is available for download anywhere you get your podcasts.   Founded in 1974, Mawer Investment Management Ltd. (pronounced "more") is a privately owned independent investment firm managing assets for institutional and individual investors. Mawer employs over 250 people in Canada, U.S., and Singapore.   Visit us at: https://www.youtube.com/@MawerInvestment https://www.mawer.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/mawer-investment-management/ https://www.instagram.com/mawerinvestmentmanagement/ #ArtOfBoring #MawerInvestmentManagement #MawerInvestment #Podcasts