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Cameron: Welcome to QAV America. Welcome back to QAV America, Tony, episode 18. Uh, we are recording this on the 12th of August, 2025. Well, Tony, it’s, it’s been a big week in America. Markets are kind of booming, kind of crazy, just, uh, the regular going on over there.

Any US news stories that, uh, pique your interest this week?

Tony Kynaston: Uh, a lot of us news stories picked my interest this week, not the least of which was the gold price movements on Friday afternoon, US time when, uh, Switzerland, which has had lots of tariffs put on it. Um. Somehow I, I’m not sure of the full detail of this, but somehow gold bars being transferred from Switzerland to the US attracted a tariff and that threw the gold market into a tier.

And the government came out and said they didn’t mean that to happen. And so it’s all up in the air at the moment. But yeah, the gold price [00:01:00] vacillated quite a bit on Friday, and since then, um, settled down little bit. Um. But, uh, yeah, just a lot of on the fly decision making going on. So it’s, it’s dynamic, entrepreneurial it’s, it’s, uh, causing a few splashes here and there as well.

Cameron: Yes. Lots of craziness. Well, I am gonna do a deep dive on another company that I think you’re gonna like today. This is, uh, Titan Machinery Inc. TITN is the ticker. And we’ll get into that in a little bit. Before we get into that, for new listeners welcome. I wanna explain what you’re listening to. Uh, yes. We are two Australian value investors.

We’ve been doing a podcast, uh, on value investing for five or six years. Tony’s been a value investor for. 25, 30 years, and he built a system that we call QAV Quality add value buying shares in quality companies when you can get them at the right [00:02:00] discount to their intrinsic valuation. And we’ve developed a methodology, or Tony’s developed a methodology for doing that.

It’s a spreadsheet checklist that we run companies through. We teach how to do that on this podcast. We’ve got. Big membership in Australia that we teach, uh, the system to every week. And a few months ago, we decided to start looking at the US market and applying QAV to that. And it’s been going quite well.

In fact, we’ve got a US portfolio that I started using our system in September of 23. No, September. Yeah, September 23. Uh, over that period of time, coming up two years, it’s up 63, nearly 64% since then versus the s and p 500, which we use as a benchmark, which is up about [00:03:00] 43% over the same period of time. So it’s outperforming the s and p, and that’s kind of what we look at as our benchmark.

Uh, and in the last, um, week. It is had some interesting results. GTN uh, TV stock that I talked about on our show last week. I did a deep dive on GTN and I actually had added it to our portfolio because I had to sell something and replace it. It’s up 23% today, Tony, today.

Tony Kynaston: Okay. I can’t explain that. I was gonna mention that, um, their quarterly results were out, uh, and that revenue was down 7%, but it was above analyst expectations they had paid, I think it was 170 million to buy another network. Um, but those announcements were last week, so I’m not sure why that’s fuelling today’s stock [00:04:00] price rise.

Cameron: I don’t know either, but it’s only up about 8% net since I added to the portfolio. ’cause it dropped a little bit after I added it. But I guess it’s probably, um, our episode coming out, which is probably responsible for, you know, we, I. Did talk about it on Reddit. I posted it to the value investing subreddit, and I’m sure everyone on that, uh, took my words of wisdom and, and jumped into the market.

So I’ll say that’s the QAV factor unless people prove me wrong.

Tony Kynaston: Well done.

Cameron: Yeah, it’s the, the burden of proof is on people to prove me wrong. Uh, one of the stocks that I did a pulled pork on about a month ago, Chinese smartwatch manufacturer, Zep, ZE double P, is now up 964% since I talked about it a month ago. Again, I’m putting that down to the QAV factor. Um, that’s [00:05:00] pretty crazy stuff.

Tony. 964% in a month

Tony Kynaston: out there want us to

Cameron: I.

Tony Kynaston: pulled pork or want you to do a pulled pork on their company, they know where to contact you.

Cameron: That’s right. I did a, I did the, uh, deep dive the Paul Pork on the 11th of July. Uh, it was at trading at $2 98. It’s now trading at $31 80. And there haven’t really been any announcements, uh, come out since then. So I do. I think it’s, uh, maybe an acquisition target. It might be what’s going on. But, um, anyway, that’s been a, and unfortunately I didn’t add it to our portfolio at the time because we were full.

We didn’t have any room in the portfolio. We were fully invested. Damn shame that, uh, looking, looking through some of the other stocks that I’ve done deep dives on over the last, uh, few months. [00:06:00] Uh, Cemex CX is up 53% since we talked about it at the end of March. Uh, IHS holdings is up 25% since we talked about it at the end of May.

Orix Corporation is up 20% since we talked about it in the middle of June. Yeah, most things have been doing really well. Poco is up 13%. Precision Drilling Corporation is up 14%. Jackson Financial, which I just added to our portfolio by the way, that’s up 10%. So I did wanna mention that I have done some trading in our portfolio since, uh, our last episode.

I had to sell OPHC Optimum Bank Holdings on the 8th of August, the top. The stock tanked roughly 10 to 11% in a single day, became a three point trend line sell, but it, we sold it at a 2320 3% profit over the 18 months that we held it from November, 2023. So [00:07:00] that’s okay. Basically, they came out with results.

Earnings quality were decent, but there was dilution per share decline in the EPS despite strong profit growth. So I think they’ve been issuing stock or converting preferred shares or something is going on to dilute the EPS. And also they reported loan book shrinkage. In a, an environment when interest rates are still high, so not really sure what’s going on there.

Bottom line is I had to let them go and replace them with Jackson Financial, which was my pulled pork on episode nine. They’re the seventh largest US life insurance company for memory based outta Michigan, I think Jackson, Michigan, something like that. Where they got their start. Anyway, so the US market is booming, our portfolio is booming, but nothing like zep a th You ever seen a thousand percent increase in a QAV stock [00:08:00] in 30 days?

Tony? A 10 bagger?

Tony Kynaston: And I wonder whether there was

Cameron: No.

Tony Kynaston: kind of stock split. on that may have accounted for it, but I couldn’t see it in the announcements.

Cameron: Yeah, me either.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. And the other one that, um, you haven’t mentioned that you did a pulled pork on was forward. And I, I’ll just, uh, bring you back down to worth a bit, even though the share price hasn’t, uh. Gone too bad. I don’t know what the numbers are like since he did the pool port, but their quarter, to profit was pretty much wiped out by the US tariffs that have come in. Um, and they a lot of importing of aluminum in particular, which is retracting high tariffs. I.

Cameron: Yeah, I covered them on episode six. On the 21st of May, they were trading at $10 80. At the time, they were trading at $11, 14 as of last close. So they’re up 3% since then. So, you know, not shooting the lights out, but they haven’t gone the wrong way either. The only one that’s really gone backwards since I talked about it was, uh, who I mentioned last [00:09:00] week, INEL Chile, ENIC.

They’re down 18% since I covered them in episode five on the 14th of May, but everything else is done reasonably well,

Tony Kynaston: Again, I wonder if that’s

Cameron: so.

Tony Kynaston: driven too, if they’re exporting from Chile into the US perhaps.

Cameron: Yeah. Dunno. So what else? Donald Trump signed an order extending China tariffs. Uh, truce, the tariff truce by 90 days. Today, the new order prevents us tariffs on Chinese goods from shooting up to 145%. While Chinese tariffs on US goods were set to hit 125% rates that would’ve resulted in a virtual trade embargo between the two countries.

It locks in place, at least for now, a 30% tariff on Chinese imports with Chinese duties on US imports at 10%. So another 90 day delay by President Tar Trump.

Tony Kynaston: Clemency. [00:10:00] He’s a compassionate man.

Cameron: Uh, other news I saw this morning, July’s consumer inflation report is due on Tuesday and investors anticipate that the Fed will lower borrowing costs by about 60 basis points by December. According to data compiled by LSEG, the inflation data is starting to embody the more direct tariff impacts on the consumer raising concern that inflation will remain sticky.

S Eric Teal, chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management.. So, um, I’m sure if the inflation report is bad, Trump will make sure that whoever prepared it gets fired and, uh, replaced with somebody who gets the right numbers. That’s the way it seems to work these days. I,

Tony Kynaston: Well, I’m, I’m laughing as well ’cause um, as you know, uh, economists have been turning themselves in not trying to predict what the Reserve Bank is gonna do on interest rates in Australia. And, uh, they were blindsided last month and we’re waiting to see what happens this month. So. a bit of a fool’s game trying to predict moves in the Fed, I [00:11:00] think just like it is in Australia.

Cameron: Uh, just on that, for our Australian listeners, the Reserve Bank has delivered its third interest rate cut of 2025 with a 0.0 0.25 percentage point reduction at its August board meeting, so you successfully, incorrectly, deliberately predicted it.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah, you predicted a cut last month and they didn’t, so this time you predicted No cut.

Just so they would do it to spite you.

Tony Kynaston: it’s,

Cameron: Outta spite.

Tony Kynaston: hard to find a friend who gets things a hundred percent right. But it’s still equally as valuable to find someone who gets things a hundred percent wrong. They, they’re usually easier to find.

Cameron: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Why are you looking at me when you say that?

Tony Kynaston: I have

Cameron: Um.

Tony Kynaston: on the screen.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so unless you have other news, I’m gonna get into my Paul Pork, my deep dive for today, right.

Tony Kynaston: I.

Cameron: As I said, um, you know, the last couple of [00:12:00] weeks I’ve been deliberately sort of scrolling through the buy list, looking for sorts of companies that we haven’t talked about before, and particularly anything that I think is Berkshire worthy, that Warren Buffett would like.

And this is another one I think. We’ll see what you think by the end of it. Titan Mac Machinery, as I said, TITN, they’re listed on the Nasdaq there, there are Josephine at the moment, just, uh, for new listeners, Josephine is what we call a stock that is a buy, but the share prices in a, in a decline from where it was at the end of last month.

And usually we would treat that as a whole wait and see in case we can buy it cheaper next week. But it’s worth keeping an eye on because it is a buy and its numbers are good. To give you, um, just a sense of how much of a Josephine it is last month’s close. So the end of July was $19 32. It’s currently trading at a, I closed at $18 98 last night, so it’s down 34 cents, which [00:13:00] is in a great amount at 1920 bucks.

But yeah, could be, could bounce back very quickly and become a buyer again. So, uh, this company is one of the largest dealers of agricultural and construction equipment in the us. They have a hundred dealerships throughout the world, including 16 locations in Australia. Tony, they claim to be the largest dealer for CNH industrial brands who are an Italian American corporation with global headquarters in the United Kingdom.

And I mentioned Titan is listed on the Nasdaq. Now. Last week on the show we were talking about, um, no, the week before that s. ENEA, Seneca Foods that are listed on the Nasdaq. And he said, why the Nasdaq? I thought they were tech companies. And I looked into that this week. So as we talked about in our Australian show, there looks like there’s gonna be government of approval for another, uh, trading, share, trading, um, platform [00:14:00] in Australia.

Nasdaq started in 1971 as an electronic quotation system. Uh, which was faster and cheaper to list on than the New York Stock Exchange. Didn’t have the old school in-person trading floor structure. It was all electronic and then it, because of that, it became the sort of exchange of choice for tech companies because it was faster and cheaper.

And so we tend to associate it these days with tech listings, but that’s not the only re, I mean, that’s not the only company. So these days it’s home to PepsiCo, Costco, Hasbro. Every company that ends with an o uh, has to, by policy, be listed on the NASDAQ apparently and Titan Machinery.

Tony Kynaston: Oh.

Cameron: And Seneca Foods o Seneca.

1. Yeah. So Titan uh, was born in 1980 in North Dakota, a place called Wahpeton. The founders [00:15:00] of Titan had a farm store, turned it into a dealership, started buying other dealerships, and one of the founders is still involved with the company. I will talk about him a little bit later on day iPod in 2007, uh, started buying up dealerships for basically farm equipment, farm machinery around the globe, and that’s pretty much what they do today.

The revenue comes mostly from sales of equipment. About 75 to 80% comes from selling new equipment. Parts is about 15%, and service is about five to 10%. Parts and service, obviously that sort of 20 to 30% is good ongoing revenue that helps spread out bumpy sales. And the reason they’re on our buy list in a looking cheap at the moment is because it’s been a pretty bumpy period for selling new equipment to farmers, particularly in the US in the last couple of [00:16:00] years.

So it still. It generates a lot of cash despite some recent losses. Total revenue has grown from 1.3 billion in 2020 to 2.7 billion in 2025, doubled its revenue in that five year period, which is. Not too shabby, but here’s the rub. It’s been losing money recently. Margins have collapsed. Now, this is because there’s been a collapse in the US ag market, and I’ll talk about the wise and wherefores of that in a minute because I don’t know how much you know about the US Ag market.

Uh, we just talked about chicken farming in Australia. I don’t. And how they’re innovating the chickens. Uh, I didn’t know anything about this, so I had to drill down into it. But, um, to give you an example, their FY 2024 net profit was 112 million. Their FY 2025 was a $37 [00:17:00] million net loss. And that’s because basically the bottom fell out of the new equipment, uh, market in the us.

And they’ve also got, uh, net losses forecast for the next couple of years, although they are forecasted to decline to a $9 million loss in 2027. Gross margins created from 19.3% in 2024 to 13.7% for trailing 12 months. So basically they had to just cut their margins to get stuff out the door. They were sitting on a bunch of inventory.

And sales collapsed and they’ve been just doing whatever they can to get the stuff out the door. So why the ag equipment demand collapsed? There’s a couple of factors in it, but US farmers have come through a couple of brutal years. Incomes fell about 20% in 2023, and then another 4% in [00:18:00] 2024, even though they were producing bumper crops.

Why? Well, their costs shot through the roof. Um, a few years ago, COVID, Ukraine, invasion, trade wars, all these sorts of things were going on. And, um, prices went up, like, uh, crop prices went up, corn, maize, that kind of thing. Bumper years. The underlying costs went up alongside it. Fertilizer, seed, diesel equipment, prices all went up, but then the prices all collapsed again.

The, the crop prices collapsed. Corn dropped more than 20%, soybeans about 12%, but the underlying costs didn’t come down with them for a variety of reasons. So the farmers, um, borrowed a lot of money. At, at higher rates, uh, [00:19:00] bought a lot of staff on contracts at higher rates, then the prices that they can get dropped and they’re, they’re getting squeezed on their cash flow.

They’re loaded with debt and the first thing you cut is big ticket spending like tractors and combines, they’re holding off on big spends. These farmers, they’re getting squeezed by the finances, the banks, et cetera too. So new equipment sales have been plummeting. Then you’ve got trade tensions, tariff fears.

And that’s throwing another spanner into the works with anyone being able to predict what’s gonna happen tomorrow, let alone a month from now or a year from now. So dealers like Titan are sitting on this inventory backlog. They can’t sell fast enough. They’re slashing prices, pushing service and parts sales to try and make up for it, but that hits their margins too.

So grain and oil [00:20:00] seed markets went nuts in 20 21, 20 22 because of the pandemic disruptions, droughts, and the invasion of Ukraine. Coin corn and soybean prices spike. So farmers bought more fertilizer, more seed, more equipment, thinking the boom would last, but then global production caught up. Ex Ukraine got some export markets moving again.

Brazil had record harvests and demand from China softened, which led to the prices crashing back down, but the farmers were still paying boom time prices for their inputs. Fertilizer, diesel and machinery parts all rose 30 to a hundred percent in price during the boom. And then, as I said, suppliers didn’t drop prices when commodities fell because markets were still tight, fertilizer plants was slow to ramp back up, and manufacturers had locked in expensive raw material contracts themselves.

So. Operating costs stay high while the selling [00:21:00] prices drop and the margins imploded. Most US farms finance their operating costs seasonally short-term loans for seed, fertilizer, fuel, and then pay them off after harvest, with rates going from 3% to seven to 9% in a couple of years. Debt servicing costs doubled or tripled, and big capital buys like $500,000 for a new combine are suddenly.

A lot more scary. Then there’s this uncertainty going on about the US Farm Bill. The Farm bill is this big catchall law that they renew every five years or so, and apparently it decides how everything in US farming runs. Everything from crop subsidies to crop insurance, conservation payments, food stamps gets renewed every five years, but instead of passing a new one.

Late last year as they were due to Congress, extended it out until September [00:22:00] 30th, 2025, which is only seven weeks away. And then, uh, the one big, beautiful bill. That passed a couple of months ago, rewrote big chunks of the ag commodity programs that normally live inside the farm Bill. So that means when the farm bill gets hammered out, supposedly in the next seven weeks, if it doesn’t get extended again, there’s gonna be less certainty and fewer supports for certain crops.

So no one really knows or apparently, from what I can tell, what’s going on with that, how that’s gonna land. As we know, the entire Trump administration is sort of fly by the seat of your pants. No one knows who’s up, who, and who hasn’t paid. It’s, uh, whatever bright idea President Trump has when he sitting on the toilet in the morning on Twitter, um, or truth social now.

So no one knows what’s going on. And tariffs don’t hit Titan directly ’cause they don’t [00:23:00] manufacture the equipment, but they suffer upstream. Higher equipment costs from manufacturers who are dealing with the tariffs, steel and aluminum inputs. Global trade tensions get passed down to Titan. So they’re getting squeezed both sides, right.

Some of the big manufacturers like John Deere and Caterpillar are flagging the tariff impacts now. So that’s sort of the, sort of the background on these guys. Uh, good, been around a long time. Good operators, um, big network of dealerships, but they’re having a cash squeeze. That said, they’re currently sitting on $21 million in cash.

The F score is a five, so not terrible, not great, but we score anything over a four and a half, so they get a score for us on the F score. Financial health is strong ish, but their net debt increase from 300 million in [00:24:00] 2023 to 960 million today, tripled in the last couple of years, so they’ve gotta figure out what to do about that.

But from a numbers perspective, the price is $18 98, uh, $18 96. It closed at last night, operating cash flow. Per share. TTM is $4 81, so price to operating cash flow is just four times. Um, it’s pretty, pretty solid from our perspective. Not the best we’ve seen, like we’ve seen much, much lower than that and some of the shows that I’ve done recently, but it’s pretty good.

Um, for us, what you will like is the price to book. The latest price to book is 0.7225 means it’s trading at 72% of equity value on the book. So if you shut the company down, paid off the [00:25:00] debts, you’d at least get back what’s. On the book. So it’s very, very cheap from a price to book perspective. Book value’s been growing too.

Did take a small dip in 2025, but CAG a 12% for book value over the last five years. So the growing the business doing a great job. We don’t have either of our intrinsic values, IV one or IV two because their EPS. And their forecast, EPS are both negative, so we can’t give them a score on either of those.

But I’ll get into the full scoring in a minute. Margins are down, but from my perspective, the the dealers, the parts and the service revenue creates a safety net equipment revenue slid. Four to 13% depending on segment or quarter, but the parts are steady and service is up 14.5% for the full year. So they are, obviously, [00:26:00] people aren’t replacing their combine harvesters and their tractors, so they’re having to spend more on parts and service.

So they’re kind of ameliorate at a little bit. They’re cheap, I guess, because no one can see what’s happening and it could go belly up or it could go bad. If the economy doesn’t improve for farmers, maybe people know what something we don’t know about the future of farming in the us. But just looking at the numbers and the scoring for me, it looks good.

I’ll get into the full scoring. Um. From a stock Edia perspective, quality score is 64%. We give them a score for anything over 60. Value is 91%, momentum is 86%, and stock rank is 96. We will score anything, uh, equal to or over 90. So, uh. Average daily trade is a little [00:27:00] over $4 million, so relatively large. Last financials I’m working on are from April, 2025.

Price to operating cash flow, as I said, is a four, so we score ’em for that. We scored ’em for quality rank, for stock rank for F score. Not for the IVs. They do score for price less than book. They also, of course score for price less than book plus 30. They have obviously a three point uptrend. Um, despite the Josephine, I didn’t, they didn’t get a score for new three point upturn, but looking at it, they probably should have.

They, they became, um, a new three point upturn. So for new listeners, that’s when their three point trend line goes above our byline. We score them for that. If they come out after their most recent financials, it happened just before their most recent financials like March, and their financials came out in April.

Like, so somebody got ahead of the game and the share price went above it. So I didn’t score them for that technically, [00:28:00] but they probably would’ve got a score if I’d done it manually. They don’t get a score for growth over PE being greater than 1.5. Um, book Val, I, the, the system did score them for book value growth being positive.

Even though I said they’re slightly down in their last one. I’m not sure why the score is wrong. I’m gonna have to look at my code for that. But it sort of counterpoints of new three point upturn, so I don’t care too much. PE is not less than the yield, um, because they don’t have a. Earnings. Um, yield is not greater than bank debt.

Uh, forecast IV is, uh, time is not greater than twice the price. ’cause they don’t have a forecast IV ’cause they don’t have a forecast. EPS we did score them for Pr/OpCaf being less than seven. As I said, so they got, um, 10 out of 11 actually for the scores, a quality score of 91% and a QAV score of 0.23. By the way, one of the founders, David Meyer, [00:29:00] holds 8.44% according to Stockopedia

not above the 10% that we normally score them on, but it’s, you know, that’s sort of a, the 10% is sort of a. Slick your finger and draw a line for Worthy. It’s a lot he owns. He’s got a lot of skin in the game as the owner founder too, so maybe I’d give him a half a point for that if I was manually scoring them.

So anyway, the bottom line is, um, they do, they’ve had a tough year and they’ll have a tough year. They had a tough year last year. They’ll have a tough year this year, maybe a tough year next year, depending on what happens to new equipment sales and tariffs and, uh, pricing in the ag game in the us. Lot of farmers voted for Donald Trump, so, uh, I’m sure he’s gonna look after them.

He’s that kind of guy. He looks after his people. I’m sure it’s gonna be beautiful. So it’s gonna be the most beautiful agriculture market you’ve ever seen [00:30:00] in the next, uh, little while, but old school dealership. Good business just with a tough time and therefore they’re cheap, but they score well for us.

That’s Titan Machinery. Tony, what do you think?

Tony Kynaston: look, I like them. It’s a, a

Cameron: I.

Tony Kynaston: buying opportunity, isn’t it? we can buy them for, um, steep on in terms of their operating cash flow, which is always good to see. Um, if their debt debt is increasing, then um, they’ve probably got the cash to work through that. by the numbers you’ve just mentioned. Uh, interestingly enough, their equity per share is still pretty good. So if they, oftentimes if you see a company dramatically increased debt, then the equity suffers, but doesn’t seem to be too much of a drag for this company. So that’s still a good thing. Um, look, negative EPS. Forecasters of the forecast, they’re going through tough [00:31:00] times.

Um, like they’ve got enough reserves to, to weather that storm. And you know, from sort of cyclical companies I’ve seen before, it sounds like they’ve probably got a an overhang of inventory. Like the tractors, they can’t sell and they’re combine harvests, they can’t sell. And that’s a bit like a pig working through a python.

So you’ll see a big bulge of, of, of stock move through the business and get stuck, and then eventually get. Discounted and sold. And before they take on new stuff, they’ll be, um, they’ll be selling their old stuff. So it, it should work itself out within a period of time. Whether that’s one year, two years, I don’t know.

I dunno, the or the industry well enough, but, um, that that’ll be a problem that they’ll chip away at, get rid of. Um, may have the reverse problem if suddenly things come good in the farming industry that they haven’t got enough tractors to sell, but. Well, they’ll worry about that when it happens.

But, um, yeah, it’s, it’s, to me it’s sounding like short term [00:32:00] problem is a buying opportunity. Um, it’s, it’s hard to say though, because we are in the new world of tariffs on their imports and farmers doing it tough because of, uh. Uh, costs are cost rising for them being able to pass it on to their customers.

So I, I suspect it’s, it’s a bit of a turmoil, but is it gonna be a turmoil for the next 10 years? Possibly not. And, you know, both the farmers and this company will write it out. I would think. Um, certainly been well run so far. Like you said, as a founder, uh, with skin in the game, he would be very experienced at downturns in the ag industry.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and we’ll know exactly how to trade through what I would’ve thought.

Cameron: Yeah, from my perspective, I agree with everything you said and it, like, there are going through a tough period, but it’s not of their own making. From what I can tell, it’s general macro economic pressures on the business, but outside of that seemed to be a very well run [00:33:00] business, double their revenue in the last five years.

Um, you know, they, they’ve, and were profitable, uh, through all of that time, like their net profit. From 2020 through to 2025 was 14 million in 20, 20, 19 0.4 million, 20 21, 60 6 million in 2022, 102 million in 2023, 112 million in 2024, and then the pressures kicked in and it started to go backwards in 2025.

As I said. And those were boom years, as I said, with some of those like 21, 22, 23. So that explains some of that increase. But, um, taking your net profit from 14 million to 112 million in four years, five years, you know, not a bad, not a bad business. They seem to know what they’re doing.

Tony Kynaston: Yep. I agree.

Cameron: All right. Well, uh, that’s all right. Now we’ll cut to is our tradition at the [00:34:00] end of our shows, after we finish talking about investing, we do after hours where we talk about books, music, film, tv, travel, golf, horses, kung fu. My abs, um, everything, anything else that people wanna know about. So let’s talk after hours.

Tony.

Marker

Cameron: you’ve got a couple of interesting shows in your list of notes.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. So two in particular, uh, the man who fell to worth. The old, uh, David

Cameron: The original,

Tony Kynaston: The

Cameron: classic.

Tony Kynaston: yeah. I

Cameron: Nicholas Rogue.

Tony Kynaston: hadn’t, seen it since it came, since I saw it in the theaters when it, uh, probably its second time round, I think. I think it

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

Tony Kynaston: been R rated, so I don’t think I would’ve seen it the first time round. Um.

Cameron: funny ’cause I was thinking about that movie just last night before I got your notes as I was shaving around my nipples and. I was thinking of the scene where he slices his nipple off and I [00:35:00] was thinking about that film and then it was in your notes. How weird is that?

Tony Kynaston: I’ve got your bathroom bugged probably.

Cameron: Uhhuh?

Tony Kynaston: no, I um, yeah, but I, I loved it. Um, it’s, it’s

Cameron: It’s great.

Tony Kynaston: lynch in it, in its style. In that it’s,

Cameron: And I remember,

Tony Kynaston: does have a

Cameron: sorry, I was going,

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: I remember reading an interview with Bowie, you know, late in his life saying he could, couldn’t remember anything about making that ’cause he was so high through the entire making of it. He had no recollection of it whatsoever. I.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah, so I, I, what I wanted to say as well is it’s on SBS, so it’s, um, you can watch it there with a few ads, um, I’m finding SBS to be a treasure trove of quality movies. Um, they’ve got a. A section out there at the moment called the Oscars, and it’s probably about 70 really, you know, great [00:36:00] movies that, that, um, a couple I haven’t seen before, so I’m gonna go back and watch those.

But, um, yeah, it’s a real, it’s my go-to destination for movies at the moment. I.

Cameron: We’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale on SBS the final season of that, I should say. We hate watching it ’cause we kind of hate it right now. It’s so terrible, the writing, but we’re determined to finish it. I think we’ve got one episode left to go, but we’re just, we’re just being snarky through the whole thing now.

Just hate watching it, which is fun in its own way. But I did see, uh, like all of these greater var. Films that they’ve got on there, all of his collection. And there’s a bunch of his I haven’t seen. And the ones that I have seen, I watched probably in the nineties. And I say that kept saying to Chrissy, we, we need to, I mean the ads piss me off on SBS, they’re the worst ads, and they repeat them constantly.

It’s really, I dunno why the advertising is so terrible on SBS, but that aside, uh, yeah, good, good curated collection of content. [00:37:00] They seem to have.

Tony Kynaston: And then, uh, the other movie I watched last night actually was The Apprentice. It wasn’t on SBS, it was on Stan. Um. And I’m loving it. I mean, Jeremy Strong’s fantastic is Roy Cohen, it’s, it’s basically the Donald Trump origin story, which is, is super industry

Cameron: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tony Kynaston: what he learns from Roy Cohen, the rule, the Roy’s three rules, rule one, attack, attack, attack.

Rule two, admit nothing. And rule three uh, you never have a defeat. It’s always a victory.

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

Tony Kynaston: And, that pretty much sums up the playbook for Trump.

Cameron: Yeah, Roy Cohen was the, well, one of, one of several guys behind him that helped catapult him, but uh, played a big role in helping him develop his strategy later in life. Yeah, well, through his real estate career too, but he’s turned it into politics as well.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. It’s an interesting sort of vibe for the movie. It’s, it’s set back in New York in the, probably the seventies, I’d say, before it [00:38:00] was cleaned up. So, you know, it’s, um, it’s, it’s. I think they’ve even adopted that sort of style for the film. It’s grainy and it’s, you know, lowly lit and, and all that.

But yeah, very of its time.

Cameron: Hmm. No, I’ve been looking forward to seeing that the, the guy who plays Trump in it too, I can’t remember his name. Stan something.

Tony Kynaston: I don’t, I can’t remember his

Cameron: Sebastian Stan. Sebastian Stan. Yeah, he’s done a lot of superhero movies. He’s looking like the Captain America things. But before that, when he was quite young, um, he was in a series that I can never remember the name of, but, um, star Ian McShane.

So after Deadwood, there was this short-lived series where Ian McShane played the King of America. It was sort of an alternate reality thing.

Tony Kynaston: uh, American Gods Is it? It’s the,

Cameron: No, no, that’s where he plays a God.

Tony Kynaston: Neil Gaman wrote.

Cameron: No,

Tony Kynaston: Man in

Cameron: that one.

Tony Kynaston: the High [00:39:00] Castle.

Cameron: No, he’s not in that. Um, it’s called like butterflies or something. Hold on, I’ll tell you. Um, it only ran maybe two seasons.

 Kings. There you go. It’s loosely based on biblical story of King David. But said in Modern Day America. And, uh, anyway, Sebastian Stan plays his son in it, who’s sort of raised to be the heir to the throne, but he’s closeted homosexual and very sort of weak. And Ian McShane’s this brutal, uh, magnate, but he, the, the, it’s one of these weird shows where the writing is very good, very sort of Shakespearean, Macaulay Culkin was in it too.

But, um, really well done. Check it out. If you ever get a chance, um, well, well worth a watch. [00:40:00] Um, but yeah, Sebastian Stan is good. Like I really thought he was a great actor in that. And then he went and just sort of, I won’t say wasted his life doing superhero movies ’cause I’m sure he got paid a lot of money.

But Brian Cox is in it too. Um, from succession. Um, he plays the. Previous king who had been overthrown in a coup, and Ian McShane keeps him in like a, a prison. Everyone thinks he’s dead, but he’s really alive in this secret prison. And Ian McShane will go visit him every now and again with a very expensive bottle of scotch and they’ll just sit there and drink and talk about, I think he was like a, they were old friends that have known each other forever and he had to depose Brian Cox and they sit down and they have a little heart to heart about how to run the kingdom.

Anyway. Yeah. Well, I’ve watched, I’m halfway through watching a 1984 low budget sci-fi film called Night of the Comet, which is set in la um, [00:41:00] lo I read it Mabb. It was shot for $700,000 and made 14 million when it came out. So a huge financial success, very low budget, sort of apocalyptic end of the world zombie thing.

But fun. I just love, it’s like low budget, early eighties sci-fi movies. Yes, please. That’s for free. There’s a lot of things on YouTube that are free, like these old sort of bargain basement VHS films that are to totally in my wheelhouse. But the thing I wanted to talk to you about is, uh, over the weekend, for some reason, again, on YouTube, I watched the whole.

Ali versus George Foreman fight in Zaire, the Rumble in the Jungle,

Tony Kynaston: Okay.

Cameron: which I haven’t watched for years. Oh, so good. So good to watch. Have you ever sat down and watched that?

Tony Kynaston: The Roper

Cameron: Oh,

Tony Kynaston: Absolutely.

Cameron: Roper dope.

Tony Kynaston: Mm. [00:42:00] And

Cameron: Ali.

Tony Kynaston: is just my favorite documentary

Cameron: Great,

Tony Kynaston: brilliant.

Cameron: great doc. I remember showing the twins that when they were probably Fox’s age. Yeah. Such a great documentary.

I asked Hunter if he remembered watching it. He was like, nah, I dunno what you’re talking about. But yeah, great documentary, but watching the whole fight all eight rounds and just Ali 30 33 I think, and Foreman was 24 at the time. Ali just comes out, right? The commentators are saying, well, Ali’s gonna have to, he’s gonna stay away.

Foreman hasn’t gone past two rounds in any of his boxing matches. Ali’s gotta just try and dance away from him and not let him hit him. Bell rings, Ali just leaps in there and starts throwing jabs and going at him and then getting in tight. And as we know from the documentary, just, is that all you got, George?

Tony Kynaston: the roper do. I mean,

Cameron: Gets [00:43:00] him angry.

Tony Kynaston: the

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: great ‘ cause it. He talks about Ali walking past foreman training every day and seeing, seeing foreman tearing into the punching bag and then just getting tired and every

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Ali’s going, that’s how he’s, I’m gonna beat him. Gotta make him tired.

Let him hit me until he. Runs outta steam, which it like, you know, just imagine it’s, it’s almost like the Garden of Gethsemane, isn’t it? It’s like, you know, I know what I’ve gotta do, but this I’ve gotta get pummelled by. I’ve gotta go through rounds of train wreck of, of car crashes before I get to, you know, where I need to be to beating. Must be incredible

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: do that and physical

Cameron: just keeping, keeping his arms up and just taking the body shots. He did take a few hit blows to the head, but a lot of bo, mostly body shots and uh, yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Who Commentated, was it Cosell?

Cameron: I think Cosell is, there’s a, and Joe Frazier is one of the commentators. They got a whole panel of Ken Norton? No, no. Ken [00:44:00] Norton came later. I don’t know. There’s, there’s a couple of other Ali victims that are on the panel, but, uh, yeah, just, and then just watching the last seconds of the eighth round when I think there’s like 20 seconds to go in the eighth round.

And Ali just, just. Explodes off the ropes and just hits him with a couple of jab hook combos and lands one, and that’s it. He’s down. It’s just magnificent to watch. It’s really great. Ali’s last great hurrah, really?

Tony Kynaston: Hmm.

Cameron: Um, yeah. What a, what a what a what an athlete he was in his day. And an an interesting human being too.

Tony Kynaston: Mm.

Cameron: I read his memoirs many, many years ago. I was in my early twenties, I think. Really enjoyed those. Alright, well, uh, it’s not quite two 30, Tony. Um, should we check the news? it’s not on Reuters, [00:45:00] Google News.

The Reserve Bank has delivered its third interest rate cut of 2025 with a 0.0 0.25 percentage point reduction at its August board meeting, so you successfully, incorrectly, deliberately predicted it.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah, you predicted a cut last month and they didn’t, so this time you predicted No cut.

Just so they would do it to spite you.

Tony Kynaston: it’s,

Cameron: Outta spite.

Tony Kynaston: hard to find a friend who gets things a hundred percent right. But it’s still equally as valuable to find someone who gets things a hundred percent wrong. They, they’re usually easier to find.

Cameron: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Why are you looking at me when you say that?

Tony Kynaston: I have

Cameron: Um.

Tony Kynaston: on the screen.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah.

Alright. All right. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week of QAV America. Uh, thank you Tony. We’ll see what we’ve got next week.

Tony Kynaston: thanks Cam. And I’m looking forward to Titan going up tenfold after you’ve done a pulled pork on it, just like some of your other stocks. Happy Nasdaq everyone.

Cameron: [00:46:00] Yeah. Yeah. Happy Missy.

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