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Cameron: Yeah, I know. I keep noticing that and trying to pull my camera form. Welcome to QAV America, episode 36, Tony. Um, we just come out of our Australian show. One of the things that we did talk about though on that was article I saw in the New York Times this week about the state of the US economy. Uh, I think we’ve talked recently how the Trump tariffs don’t seem to have had the negative impact on the economy over the last year that we thought it might.

But according to the New York Times. Uh, in the economists that they’re talking to, uh, the US economy is doing well despite the tariffs, um, not because of the tariffs. Um, they’re basically saying the AI boom is what’s keeping the economy going in the us and it’s offsetting the drag from the tariffs. [00:01:00] It’s quoting Gida Goana for Harvard Economist and former first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund said the AI boomers basically offset the drag from the tariffs, but manufacturing is struggling, particularly small manufacturers are struggling.

The job market is anemic. Um, tax deductions aren’t helping manufacturing is just not getting, uh, the wind under its sails that some people thought the tariffs might bring. But as we talked about in the last show, I mean, trying to bring manufacturing back to a country that’s been offshoring it for 40 years was never gonna be a, a short term or easy process, you know, may pay off.

And we talked in the last show also about, you know, how difficult it is for businesses to make long-term commitments to major investments, to rebuild manufacturing capability when they don’t really know how long the tariffs are gonna be in place for, you know, if there’s, if, [00:02:00] if the midterms go ahead. And there’s a lot of talk in the mainstream media at the moment in the US about how the midterms may not go ahead because President Trump seems to be suggesting it from time to time.

We don’t really need to have the midterms. And then his press secretary will come out and say, he’s only joking.

Tony Kynaston: The prison of the Venezuela. I, I thought Yes. Right.

Cameron: He is also that yes, he’s and the, and the, uh, new Nobel Prize winner

Tony Kynaston: it.

Cameron: or recipient, maybe not winner, recipient.

Tony Kynaston: was a market for used Nobel Prizes, but good to know.

Cameron: Uh, I believe he’s also, uh, gonna win the Oscar for best actor this year. Best director, uh, cinematographer. Um, Nobel Prize in chemistry, physics, biology. It’s like Pokemon. Gotta collect them all. So the US economy is [00:03:00] trickling along, but um, you know, very much driven by investment in ai, AI data centers. Uh, the people that have made a lot of money out of investments in the mag seven are putting some of that back into the economy spending on goods and services.

But then a lot of talk about that being a bubble. I dunno if you saw this, if we talked about it last week, I can’t remember, but there was an announcement in the last week that Apple. Uh, gonna base the next version of Siri, not on homegrown technology and not on open AI’s technology, which seemed to be the direction they were moving on, but they’re gonna build it on Google Gemini,

Tony Kynaston: competitor.

Cameron: which puts a big question.

Well, Google, they’ve, they’ve got like a weird relationship with Google. Google’s paid them billions of dollars a year for many, many years to have Google search featured prominently on the iPhone, even though they are the competitor with Android. But now they’re gonna, the, the next version of series is gonna be built on Gemini.

Now it puts open AI’s [00:04:00] future, uh, with a big question mark over it. Uh, I, I assume that their lifeline was going to be being the default on iPhones. They’re not gonna be the default on Android phones now. They’re not gonna be the default AI on Apple phones either. So there’s a big question mark about how long they can continue to operate, um, how much money they can cont Sam can continue to raise.

And if they. If they fall over, that could have a massive impact on the Mag seven AI bubble,

Tony Kynaston: there’ll be a

Cameron: or maybe not, who knows?

Tony Kynaston: to put OpenAI on it.

Cameron: Yeah. Well, Microsoft might end up buying open ai, Microsoft, or Meta would be the obvious two to end up buying. Maybe Nvidia will buy open AI and just bundle that into the NVIDIA software stack.

Tony Kynaston: will stay with us over the weekend and he was, retired recently and planning a big caravan trip around Australia, which is. For our US listeners [00:05:00] is one of the goals of a lot of Australians to, to, to do when they retire.

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Um,

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynaston: and he has, he has all these, uh, bookings and destinations and timings in a spreadsheet. And, um, I forget now what question he was Googling and it came back based on your spreadsheet about the type of carava you own. I suggest this and like he’s going, how, how are you reading my spreadsheets? And we worked it out. And he’s got, uh, Microsoft copilot in his, um, Excel subscription. it’s going through his spreadsheets.

Cameron: Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is what I want. I wanted to know everything about me so it can give me better stuff. Google. Uh, so OpenAI also announced this week they’re gonna start rolling out ads in the free version of chat GPT in coming weeks. So this is, that’ll be interesting. Well, anyway, moving right along to my deep dive of the week, [00:06:00] Tony, this is a, this is a challenging one.

It is at the top of my buy list this week, and I was so not confident about it that I didn’t add it to the portfolio this week. I’m like, yeah, I’m talking to Tony before I add this one, but, uh, it’s a crazy story, which I hadn’t heard of before, but I’ve spent way too much time reading about this company.

And its travails,

Tony Kynaston: that, did you get the link to the story I had on shipping companies? I sent it as

Cameron: no.

Tony Kynaston: So just a quick, just a quick one.

Cameron: Oh

Tony Kynaston: an

Cameron: yeah.

Tony Kynaston: I read, in the Wall Street Journal saying that, uh, the headline is tanker tycoons in the, all Brokers cashing in on the Venezuela trade. Uh, so I dunno if these are now. But there was, um, so the article mentions all traders Vitol, V-I-T-O-L, and tr giura, uh, diving back [00:07:00] into Venezuela after Maduro’s ster. And it does mention some of the other companies as well, like, uh, tk, I think you’ve, um, a pulled pork on TK or mentioned TK Anyway, I won’t read the article, but uh, people can Google it. But, um, yeah, so we’ve long had tankers and tanker companies on the US Blist, they are making out like bandits going into Venezuela and shifting oil to the US at the moment.

Cameron: Ah, interesting. Um, I don’t, I’ve got, I, I still own a couple in our check in our bo uh, sorry, our US portfolio, um, TEN, Sarcos Energy Navigation. They’ve just had a huge jump. Let me see. Gas. Yeah, they’re up. So maybe that’s why our portfolio is actually doing really well. Um, I mentioned this last week, but like in the last, [00:08:00] um, well this month, last month, uh, the last 30 days, our US portfolio is up over 16% versus the s and p up about 1.5%.

Tony Kynaston: of Donald Trump to be

Cameron: Uh.

Tony Kynaston: doesn’t it?

Cameron: Yeah, in the last 90 days, our US portfolio is up 23.5% versus the s and p up 4%.

Tony Kynaston: a tanker companies then.

Cameron: So, well, Willis Lease Finance Company, which we talked about last week, is, uh, leasing, um, commercial aircraft and aircraft engines is booming back up again. It’s had a good, um, a good, uh, month or so after declining for most of last year from, its, it was up 300% at one point and then it declined back to, uh, up 200%.

But it’s had, uh, a good couple of months if I look at all of our charts. [00:09:00] Yeah, a lot of, let’s see, last, uh. Last month and over. International is down a bit. Euroes is actually down a bit. Another shipping company. Uh, regional management’s down quite a bit. Uh, but stealth gas is booming. KT is up. Career electric Power is up.

Yeah, it’s a, it’s a mixed bag, but, uh, the ones that are up, uh, really like, uh, Willis Lease Finance in the last month has gone from 135 to 185. So, you know, it’s, uh, had a, a really good 30 days. For some reason, I’m, I have no idea why, but

Tony Kynaston: TK

Cameron: complaining.

Tony Kynaston: the portfolio still. Oh, okay.

Cameron: I don’t, I, I think I did at one point and I had to sell it.

Um. While I’m here, QAV Light Portfolio, which is about a month old, is not doing well, surprisingly, [00:10:00] it has not had a good month. It’s down, uh, about 2% since I bought it versus the s and p up one and a half percent. So, so the stocks that we’ve been adding lately have not had a good start. A MCX is down 15%.

GTN is down. 12 VLRS is down six, and Zfa is down 1% we talked about last week, but you know, it’s early days, so I’m not really worried a great deal about that. The market generally is, the US market has not had a good month for a whole variety of reasons. So unless you’re in Mag seven land, so, um, yeah. It’s just tracking along.

But this company that I have to speak about today is, uh, what a corker. So it is called A MTD, the [00:11:00] A-M-T-D-I Idea Group. And, uh, wow. It is, it has a background. That is kind of crazy. So you ever heard of these guys before Tony?

Tony Kynaston: some Googling after you told me you’re

Cameron: Me either.

Tony Kynaston: them and Yeah, I agree. Wow.

Cameron: Wow. Um, at first glance, it’s a luxury suitcase at a thrift shop.

Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: go, wow, this is cheap. And it’s got so many beautiful aspects to it. Imagine buying a dollar’s worth of Ritz Carlton hotels, fashion magazines, Asian banking connections for about 4 cents. But the catch is the guy selling it to you straight out of a Scorsese film, and the auditor signing off on it is based out of a strip mall in Singapore.

[00:12:00] There are a lot of, a lot of, uh, question marks over this, uh, company. Um, not to say it’s not a, a good investment, not to say that there’s anything untoward about the company at all, but, um, I did have to, I did have to, um, hold off on this before I spoke to you because it was, uh, quite concerning in, in many ways.

So the origin story actually is. Based in Australia. Did you, did you come across that and when you looked at it,

company was born in 2003 when the Commonwealth Bank of Australia was one of the founders of this business with Lee K’s, CK Hutchinson, Hong Kong billionaire. His company [00:13:00] owns the majority of like Hutchinson Telecom around Asia and TPG in Australia, which used to be Vodafone. Hutchinson Plus has businesses in retail ports.

Energy, Alipay Hong Kong is a joint venture between Alibaba and uh, Hutchinson. Lee Kushing himself is still kicking around. He’s 96 years old, 38th richest person in the world. But. His stake in this business has been reduced down to about 4%. And the Commonwealth Bank got out, uh, I think after the global financial crisis.

Uh, Commonwealth Bank exited some of their more spurious Asian venture capitally type investments and decided to concentrate on actually running a bank back home. But this started off 22 years ago as an Australian style wealth manager for Hong Kong’s emerging middle class. [00:14:00] Let’s put together a fund and go and buy big assets that, you know, you wouldn’t be able to get into, uh, necessarily as an individual investor.

And we’ll go and buy these very, very we’ll buy hotels and ports and shopping centers and things like that. The A-M-T-A-M-T-D originally stood for ad minus times divide the four basic operations of mathematics. Seriously. It was supposedly based on fundamentals, no nonsense, finance, mathematics, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, fast forward to about 2015 when the story takes a hard turn, a guy called Calvin Choy basically took over the operation. This is the guy that, um, should be in a Scorsese film. Uh, he was the former managing director of UBS in Hong [00:15:00] Kong, I think. And, uh, yeah, he, he sort of exited and brought together Morgan Stanley’s private equity arm and a few other big banks, and basically engineered a bit of an investment slash takeover of A MTD with himself as the guy running operations.

And he wanted to turn it into a something different, what he calls a spider net. Which I gotta love, honestly, when if, if you have somebody saying that, yeah, this is a spider net. It’s a spider net. I kinda love the, just the, the visionary aspect of reminds me of the.com days when I was working at Microsoft and I’d have entrepreneurs that had come in and they’d say, let me show you what we’re doing.

And they’d get a, a pen on a whiteboard and there’d be lots of lines and things going round. And, ’cause they wanted [00:16:00] Microsoft to invest in it. And I’d spend an hour listen ’em and go, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. We’re pass. It’s a pass. Honestly, if you can’t explain it to me in about a minute.

I’m par. It’s way too complicated if it takes you an hour on a whiteboard to explain it. This is one of these things. But after, uh, Choi got Morgan and Stanley involved, he left UBS and he took over this thing, uh, two entities. One called LR Capital and one called CM International, which was a subsidiary of China Minh Investment Group acquired a 71 stake in the operation.

Now this sort of converted A MTD from more of a conservative wealth management Commonwealth Bank sort of thing for US listeners. Commonwealth Bank is one of Australia’s oldest banks used to be run by the government, hence its name got privatized in the nineties. I guess now it’s publicly [00:17:00] listed. But, um, you know, it’s been around for a very long time and has a reputation or had a reputation of being pretty conservative.

Uh, bank in Australia.

Tony Kynaston: it’s a retail bank too,

Cameron: Um,

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Uh,

Cameron: yes.

Tony Kynaston: a savings and loan in the us.

Cameron: Yeah, so it, it went, it sort of got reinvented by Calvin Choi into an aggressive capital markets player, C-M-I-I-G. The China Minche Investment Group at the time was a high-flying investment conglomerate in mainland China. Often compared to a private sovereign wealth fund. Got themselves into some trouble a little bit later on with a mountain of debt and fraud allegations, and it’s sort of, it’s still around, I think, but it’s being restructured.

And Calvin Choi was, as I said, former UUBS banker was installed as [00:18:00] the architect of this new A MTD was gonna diversify them away from basically, you know, a conservative insurance brokering into investment banking, asset management, and a FinTech player with lots of different assets and lots of different things.

Now this guy is, uh, extremely controversial. A sells himself as a great visionary, um, but he’s also got himself into a whole bunch of legal problems in Hong Kong. Uh. Which he’s, which has made his reputation in Asia, uh, fairly binary, uh, um, I’m not sure how many people think of him as a visionary and how many people think of him as, uh, a conman.

But he said he wanted to build a, a century old enterprise utilizing the spider net ecosystem, which [00:19:00] he invest, he invented this term basically, as I understand, it’s when a network of clients, investing companies and partners all do business with one another, theoretically, creating a self-reinforcing loop of value.

Actually, it doesn’t sound that much different from the Mag seven, right? Nvidia, we’ll give you money open ai, as long as you come and buy all of our stuff and et cetera. Maybe he, maybe he is a genius. Maybe he’s a very stable genius. He described A MTD as a super connector between the capital markets of the east and west to creating a digital ecosystem that would rival the established banking giants.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, the FFC, found that while he was a banker at UBS Choi failed to disclose material conflicts of interest regarding transactions involving LR Capital Financial Holdings and China Minh, [00:20:00] and also a company called Zinta Energy revealed that when he was acting as UBS advisor to clients, he Simon simultaneously held a hidden beneficial interest in the counterparties IE LR capital.

So he was basically advising. On one side and owning the companies that were taking an interest in these or having a stake in the con, uh, companies that were having an interest in this. So the whole, um, acquisition of A MTD via LR Capital that UBS played a role in when he was at UBS. He also had an interest in some of these businesses.

Anyway, basically he was banned by the SFC from the industry for two years, September, 2023 to September, 2025. So he managed to serve that out. I think he had to step down as chairman of A MTD while [00:21:00] all this was going on. It prohibited him from acting as a director or taking part in the management of N-E-S-F-C Licensed Corporation in Hong Kong.

He appealed, but his appeal was rejected and the ban was upheld. So, you know, buffet and Munger, you were talking about them just last week as saying, you know, you find people that you can trust and you invest in them. I’m not sure this guy really hits that benchmark. Um, on the surface of things, and I’m not passing judgment on Mr.

Choi at all. I’m just saying that on the surface it seems like he’s a bit of a controversial character that said he did restructure A MTD and they’ve made a whole bunch of investments, which we’ll talk about soon, but,

Tony Kynaston: with the positive side of his story. It’s, um, uh,

Cameron: hmm.

Tony Kynaston: of balance out the, the narrative a little bit. [00:22:00] looks like, from what I saw, he was one of the first, I think he was an audit partner at PWC, one of the big accounting firms, and he was one of the first to go into Hong Kong after it was handed back to China. And he became very, very well versed with the ins and outs of Chinese banking. I think that’s what led him to say, Hey, I can do a lot of deals here and benefit from my knowledge and, and bring access to these companies, which haven’t been part of the global stage for a long time. So I think that’s, I think that’s the. That’s the plus side that people saw in him what he was trying to do. And then, um, yeah, negative side is that there, there were, um, accusations of being on both sides of deals. So he was advising on the purchase of something he had share ownership in, for example. So, uh, yeah, as you say, controversially viewed.

Cameron: And that’s not even the interesting part of the story. [00:23:00] That’s not even the crazy part. Um, so the crazy part is what happened in 2022. So he spun off a division that was called A MTD Digital. It was a FinTech digital division that was also floated on the New York Stock Exchange. So the ticker for A MTD on the New York Stock Exchanges, A MTD, and that’s the company that we’re talking about.

He floated off a MT Digital, which had the ticker HKD 85, 80 6% of it Yeah. Was owned by a MTD group and then it went nuts. So [00:24:00] it. It floated. And, uh, so I think at IPO, July 15th, 2022 at $7 80, and then the share price immediately went up by like 30000% in a couple of weeks

Tony Kynaston: A MTD GameStop.

Cameron: at one point. Well see, this is the thing, 18 days after the IPO, it hit $2,555 per share from $7 80.

Um, that briefly gave it a market cap of over $310 billion, making it the 14th largest company in the world, larger than Bank of America, larger than Coca-Cola, larger than Shell and Costco combined. The punchline was, its reported revenues were about $25 million. [00:25:00] So at its peak, it was trading at over 16,000 times sales on around about 350,000 shares traded in a day.

Now that’s the digital, the HKD business, A-M-T-D-I idea. The parent company kind of got swept up in that. Its share price surged 300% in the same week. It was the highest traded stock on August 2nd. Uh,

Tony Kynaston: Hmm.

Cameron: exactly. Now, while this happened, no one knows.

Tony Kynaston: to say that HKD, the ticker code might be involved. Yep.

Cameron: I, I read four theories. One is that people confused it with the Hong Kong dollar, which sounds too stupid to be true, but Hey,

Tony Kynaston: didn’t the As, didn’t the ASX who looks after the

Cameron: this.

Tony Kynaston: market, confused two [00:26:00] companies with similar names? Mm-hmm.

Cameron: They did. Yeah. Now, one of the early theories was this. This was all happening during the GameStop A MC Wall Street bets, uh, kind of shenanigans. One of the theories was that they were involved. They either Wall Street bets mods came out and said, had nothing to do with them. They absolutely denied any sort of organized campaign.

There was no evidence that retail investors coordinated the pump like there was for GameStop and a MC. There are also theories that there was some IPO underwriting shenanigans. Several Asian companies had similar abnormal trading. Underwriters were accepting partial payment and warrants rather than cash, creating incentive schemes to art artificially pump the stock post IPO.

But again, no evidence, uh, no lawsuits brought against anybody here. So I’m not [00:27:00] making any allegations. Just saying, this is one of the theories that I heard. The fourth was that short sellers, um, openly call it suspicious. They said that there was some sketchy stuff going on. They were questioning how regulators allowed this to happen, that there was some sort of sophisticated manipulation going on behind the scenes.

Tony Kynaston: short sellers are like horse

Cameron: But

Tony Kynaston: When they lose, they just reach for the playbook and say the same things every time and blame everyone else. Yeah.

Cameron: yeah,

Tony Kynaston: Hmm.

Cameron: blame everyone else. Yeah, but here’s the thing, um, there was no investigation that I could find out about, um, despite what seems like obvious market manipulation,

Tony Kynaston: maybe

Cameron: sf, the SEC.

Tony Kynaston: Hmm.

Cameron: Well, something was going on, but there was no regulatory investigation launched. No statement from the company, nothing. SEC Chair Gary [00:28:00] Gensler even lauded the Sarbanes Oxley Act on the same day that HKD hit its peak.

Uh, you know, investors had GameStop halted, but HKD just ran wild. The Hong Kong SFC did take action, but against peripheral issues. Uh, as I said before, other stuff, he got his two year ban, but it was about the UBS stuff, not about this share price thing. So, um,

Tony Kynaston: sorry, I,

Cameron: were also it, hmm.

Tony Kynaston: it was a free float liquid in the issue because, uh, the parent company owned 85% of the stock and going back many, many years before. Better regulation in Australia. A reasonably well. A method of people who had lots of money to make more money was to buy of the shares in the company, float it, trade off a small portion of it, then it [00:29:00] would take almost nothing to ratchet up the share price, just a little bit of buying, to inflate their value.

And then for whatever purpose they could sell out or they could borrow against the valuation or whatever, they made a lot of money. So it could also be a, uh, a small float thing as well that, you know, if there’s lot of water trying to go through a thin funnel funnel, that creates pressure on the price.

So,

Cameron: So, you know, you, you have your shares, it’s $7 80. You sell them at $2,000.

Tony Kynaston: Correct.

Cameron: Happy days. Uh, anyway, the stock crashed. Uh, by mid-August 2022. It had fallen 90% from its peak, but then HKD surged 300% in the single day in September 14th, 2022, without any news to justify it. And then in January 5th, 2003, share shop from below $10 to nearly $30 and one trading [00:30:00] day before falling back again.

So each time, no explanation, no catalyst, no investigation, just the share price going nuts, and then falling back to where it was. So, you know, again, this is HKD I’m talking about this happened, not a MTD, different ticker, but same company, basically. Same management. Calvin Cho’s running these things and.

There’s this reputational scar issue, I think that’s still haunting both shares today. Um, and again, no investigation into why any of this happened. So nobody knows what’s going on. Everyone’s, I guess, too busy making money out of the mag seven to worry about it.

Tony Kynaston: I’m only speculating here, but those two seconds sort of false starts, I wonder if that was an attempt to restart, to prime the pump, so, so [00:31:00] to speak, to get momentum going for a, a larger run, which, which someone could have solved into, who knows, could have been a fat

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: they were buying Hong Kong dollars too.

Cameron: could’ve, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, as I wanna point out, that’s HKD, not a MTD, but again.

Tony Kynaston: The

Cameron: The Venn diagram has a lot of overlap. Spider net. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s other stuff as well. So, um, they did the Paris Pivot in 2023. So, um, August, 2023, they announced the migration of their headquarters from Hong Kong to Paris.

Tony Kynaston: Why not?

Cameron: Financial Brain is still in Hong Kong. Hmm.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron: Why not? Why not move to Paris? Yeah. Well the reason for it is they bought, uh, a magazine that’s sort of the basis of the fashion empire as I understand it. And France

Tony Kynaston: Oh,

Cameron: fic,

Tony Kynaston: meant they bought

Cameron: [00:32:00] uh,

Tony Kynaston: from a Newand.

Cameron: one magazine

Tony Kynaston: I

Cameron: and we’re like, this Paris Place looks great. We should move to Paris. Yeah.

Fic, um, it’s actually got a much longer French name, but we’ll stick with that. Founded in Paris in 1921. It’s the official publication of Parisian Couture. Uh, for a century it’s been the bible of fashion and high society. Famously, apparently launched the careers of Christian Dior, Pierre Alain Eve son, uh, not just a magazine.

It’s like, uh, you know, the basis of global luxury culture and. Revenues have been going backwards. Circulation have been going backwards as you can imagine, magazines have been struggling for quite a long time now. These guys picked it up. Came in as a white knight in uh, 2022 to acquire a hundred percent of the brand from the [00:33:00] family and a company called GEM and sort of mixed their business from a pure finance firm into more of a spider net conglomerate mixing investment banking with high-end media.

And is now involved in a number of legal cases involving that. The, uh, companies, the, the family and uh, one of the other companies that was involved in all of this is, uh, well, CMIG are, um, suing him. So, Cho has been accused by CMIG of financial fraud relating to the original buy-in to A MTD, claiming some projects actually made money, but he didn’t give us the profits and some had losses, but we dunno whether he truly invested or misappropriated the money.

And more recently, the Jou family, the [00:34:00] previous owners of FIC have launched legal proceedings against A MTD for trademark infringement, tax fraud, and misuse of corporate assets. They’re claiming they didn’t receive full payment for the, uh, transaction. So. The stock price surge, the UBS, uh, SFC banning now legal claims and it’s all very murky.

You, you try and figure out the financials for this thing, not to mention the audit situation. So they’ve changed auditors every couple of years. Um, 2014 to 2020. Ernst and Young was AMD’s independent auditor. Then they were replaced by Deloitte from 2021 to April, 2024. Then they were replaced in April, 2024 by a company called Audit Alliance, [00:35:00] not one of the big four.

Now this is a, you know, a big multi-billion dollar company on the New York Stock Exchange. You go and have a look at Audit Alliance’s website and. It looks rinky dink. Um, it’s a, like a, as I said earlier, based out of a strip mall somewhere in Singapore. Um, it does not look like a very high profile auditor.

Why you would officially, their official rationale is they have an auditor rotation policy for international best practices. Uh, but why you would rotate from a big four firm, two big four firms to a small regional player is hard to fully understand. It looks a little bit suspicious and dodgy. Not casting aspersions just saying doesn’t sit well with me.

So anyway, [00:36:00] um, they get a clean audit. I went and read their audit to make sure there was nothing. Dodgy looking in the Audit. Audit Alliance gave him a clean bill of health. So as far as I know, it’s all above board, but I’d be much more comfortable if it was coming from a big firm. But so that’s all of the nasty, dirty size, scary side of it.

On our checklist, it looks insanely cheap, but what’s really going on is a little bit hard to pick up. According to the financials they’re currently generating, they report in USD, by the way, these days, they’re currently reporting $90.6 million in operating cash flow, and the entire market cap is about 70 US million dollars for the company.

So you’re effectively paying 77 cents for every dollar of cash [00:37:00] flow that the company’s generating. Price to earnings is 2.11 price to book is 0.04. You’re basically buying a dollar of assets for 4 cents. The um, book value per share is $23 52. The current price is about a dollar, $2 and 2 cents.

Tony Kynaston: the, um, I’m a little bit confused. Are we talking about A-M-T-D-I-D-E-A? Is that the company you’re, yes, that’s what I thought

Cameron: Yes.

Tony Kynaston: So

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: I

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynaston: operating cash flow was about 5 million bucks in the last 12 months. I’m just gonna go on stock edia and have a

Cameron: Well, it’s not what it says in my spreadsheet.

Tony Kynaston: So I just thought I’d pull you up there and have a look.

Cameron: Says 90.5 [00:38:00] TTM.

Tony Kynaston: uh,

Cameron: Just bringing up Wikipedia as well,

Tony Kynaston: to be honest, I got my number from chat GPT, so, uh, it could be different kind of

Cameron: Tony. So, geez, Tony. Um.

Tony Kynaston: 34 per share is what I’m seeing in, that’s that’s per share though, down 50%, 48.9%.

Cameron: Actually 2024. It has 5 million cash from operating activities, 5.16 down from 40 the year before,

but 2025 TTM, according to my spreadsheet, says 90.

Tony Kynaston: you then, because ChatGPT,

Cameron: in, well, I can’t see that.

Tony Kynaston: well just chat.

Cameron: Sorry. Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: wrong or out of date.

Cameron: Well, [00:39:00] 5 million was right for 2024 financial year, but it’s, it’s, um, claiming that their last financials were very strong. So if you look at, um, the latest news, I’m on Fin Viz now. Um, here we go. This is a December 30th, 2025. A MTD idea Group achieved 150% increase in revenue, total net income surged 63.7% of US, 68.8 million.

Total assets amounted to us, 2.193 billion. Um, so yeah, they’re claiming they had a really good month. Yeah. But,

uh, here we go. The company’s revenue for six months ended increased from 36 million in the first [00:40:00] half of 2024 to 89 million in the first half of 2025. The increment was primarily attributable to hotel operations, hospitality and VIP services. Income rose from 7.9 million to 12.7 million, representing a 60.3% growth.

Dividend and gain related to disposed financial assets at fair value through profit or loss changed from 8.7 million to 8.6 million. Net fair value changes on financial assets at fair value through profitable loss rose from 7.2 million to 56.2 million. The, yeah, hold on. I’m not finished. The increase was mainly attributable to the unrealized gain on the company’s investment portfolio in the first half, in 2025.

So I’ve got this in my notes, um,

Tony Kynaston: the investment

Cameron: on.

Tony Kynaston: more sense to me because, um, it’s certainly been the case that, uh, [00:41:00] if like it was saying, uh, we have a property portfolio or a commercial property portfolio that was worth a lot more this year than last year, that would be a red flag.

’cause you,

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: people do that and it’s, um, property just doesn’t move that quickly.

Cameron: Yeah. But what that increase is in and where it came from is not

Tony Kynaston: Right. So we don’t, whether

Cameron: to me.

Tony Kynaston: portfolio, we don’t know if it’s stocks or whether it’s or property or, or what.

Cameron: Yeah, look, um, it’s, it’s hard to unpick and I think that’s one of, one of the problems with the spider net is.

Tony Kynaston: You get sticky fingers and you can’t get out.

Cameron: Like if I, if I keep reading down this profit, this, uh, sorry. This financial statement, it says, um, the company recorded a profit of 68.8 [00:42:00] million in the six months into June 30th, 2025. A growth of 63.7%, mainly resulting from the additional contribution recognized from the company’s hospitality businesses, and the gain on its investment portfolio.

Subsequent events, TGE, which is one of the businesses they’ve bought, has successfully executed the sale and purchase agreement for the acquisition of a hundred percent interest in the Hilton Garden in New York City, Tribeca with the payment of ve revocable deposit in December, 2025, and the goal of closing the acquisition of this hotel within the next two months.

So whether or not that factors into it, I don’t know. They also ended into sale and purchase agreement to purchase an 80% stake in the upper view regalia hotel in Kuala Lumpur. They’ve also agreed to buy a 50% stake in the Ritz Colton Hotel in Perth, Australia with a total value of $280 million. Um, they also, um, have a special pur [00:43:00] purpose acquisition company, which is, uh, doing a successful public offering of 15 million units at $10 a unit.

So that, and, and they’re TGE successfully completed a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange in December 20, uh, 2025.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: look, there’s a lot of moving, a lot of moving parts in this, and you know how much of it is. Something you’d want to invest in and how much of it is, you know, look at all my circles and lines, connecting them on a whiteboard.

And that’s, you know, for, for new listeners to QAV, we don’t claim to be experts on anything apart from your system of scoring companies based on their fundamentals. And you, you know, a lot more about certain sectors ’cause you’ve worked in senior executive positions in retail and energy. I know nothing about anything you said maybe [00:44:00] kung fu and history.

Um, but so I’m not gonna spend, I already spent a couple of hours reading up on this business. I’m not gonna spend a week, uh, studying the intricacies of the financials. It’s not like a buffet or a manga that’s not. What we do, we tend not to look at anything really. I just see it on my buy list and go all, I do a quick check on it, make sure that they’re not in a well-known criminal organization.

But apart from that, I’m gonna go, yeah, it’s at the top of the list. The more I read about businesses like this, the more I’m like, oh my God, really? But, you know, it’s hard to tell. Like, they seem to be making money. They, they’re definitely scoring very well on the buy list, but whether or not it’s, uh, smoke and mirrors, I don’t know.

But, um, my basic summary was gonna be this, um. There’s a trust problem, I think. Why is it so cheap? Okay. Basically the [00:45:00] market is screaming. We don’t trust you. I think between Calvin Cho’s regulatory history and the SFC band, the unexplained meme stock explosion of HKD, the corporate structure so complex that it makes Enron look straightforward.

Uh, um, a small Singapore strip mall auditor with a very questionable looking website, outstanding lawsuits from former business partners, and it’s fairly small. I think it’s, uh, the average daily trade is about 253,000 us. So big funds, even if they would touch, it can’t, it’s too small. Um, it’s too small even for you to invest in, you know, it wouldn’t even meet your benchmark, which is a lot bigger than that.

So the number, it, it’s all very murky. It’s very complicated. It’s, uh, this guy is either one of the greatest geniuses ever to be working in investment [00:46:00] banking in Asia, or, you know, this is Enron, 2.0 waiting to fall over. Right? Uh, yeah,

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. I

Cameron: true.

Tony Kynaston: me, to me it looks like a

Cameron: So.

Tony Kynaston: um, financier has tried to exploit their contacts and their knowledge of Chinese banking, to make money. And it’s become a big spy. The web of individual deals where he is connected money to assets, and now it makes the whole thing a spider web, very, a conglomerate, very hard to, to pick apart and say, you know, is it a hotel company?

Is it a magazine company? What are the assets worth? Et cetera, et cetera.

Cameron: Yeah. Is it a masterclass in the optics of value? Hey, look, we own all of these really flashy assets, which [00:47:00] may be mediocre assets in the case of the fashion magazine as one example, and circular cash flows that are too hard for anyone to track and follow, or is the guy a genius? Um, look, I, I was around enough in the.com days, as I said before, to.

Come to the conclusion decades ago that if I can’t understand it in five minutes, then it’s probably not something I wanna get involved in. But the flip side to that is, do I wanna think I’m smarter than the buy list? Um, and

Tony Kynaston: Yeah,

Cameron: very, very cheap.

Tony Kynaston: rewarded for the risk,

Cameron: Yeah,

maybe. I mean, so look, the bottom line is, if I look at the scorecard, the checklist scorecard, the price is lower than our IV number one. Uh, a lot lower prices. A dollar, uh, two IV number one is $2 48, so it’s trading in less than half the intrinsic value. It’s a lot less than book. As I said before, the book price is $23 52, [00:48:00] so it’s at a 90%, 96% discount to net asset value.

But how much of those assets, uh, we own a luxury fashion magazine in Paris, I can’t say, versus hotels and what hasn’t closed and et cetera, et cetera. Um, price to operating cash flow is insane. As I said before, 0.77 I think is one of the lowest I’ve ever seen. Book value growth is actually positive 29% CAGR over the last few years.

So at least in that metric, if you can believe those numbers, it looks good. Um, on the negative side, from a stock edia perspective, it didn’t get a score for quality rank or for stock rank, or for F score. Um, so, you know,

Tony Kynaston: are you reading the buy list chart on this one? Because I’ve got it as a cell. Yeah,

Cameron: wireless

Tony Kynaston: ator.

Cameron: chart.

Tony Kynaston: Huh?

Cameron: Oh, I’m glad you asked. So, yeah, the [00:49:00] bread later, because I knew, I, because, um, you know, I don’t use the bread later when I’m doing this. I use my script and my script looks at Yahoo Finance, not at Google Finance, which the bread later is based on even the bread Later, though. The bread later for new listeners is a charting tool that one of our Australian listeners built for us a few years ago that builds a sentiment chart based on five year end monthly prices.

And we write, buy, bylines and sell lines. You can see the H one and the H two. The H one is $43 20. The H two is $41 88. But that is, um, less than 8%, um, of the H one. So, uh, even if you were doing it with those numbers, you should be using May 21 as the H one, and then you’d have a much lower H two just a few months ago.

I think [00:50:00] that it would go through. That said, when I checked the Yahoo Finance numbers, they had very different numbers. Well, actually not very different, but they didn’t have even may as a peak. They’ve got March close at $43, 20 April, close at $42, may close at 41 88, June close at 36. So they had March as the H one and then it just goes all the way down

Tony Kynaston: um, the bread

Cameron: to, uh, today

Tony Kynaston: account.

Cameron: it should, but it didn’t for some reason on this. So I dunno why. So anyway, um, yeah, when I did the, when I manually did the chart in Wikipedia, um, which actually looks very similar to the ator numbers, but I took the March 21 as the H one and then I drew it through, I think it’s, you know, I don’t know, September or something, [00:51:00] um, 2025 as the H two.

Um, so yeah, pass that on for me. But anyway, bottom line is, Tony, what do you think?

Tony Kynaston: do I think? Uh, it’s a tough one, isn’t it? I

Cameron: Do we, do we double, do we second guess the buy list or do we just trust the buy list?

Tony Kynaston: I’m a little bit concerned about sentiment here ’cause I’m looking at the bread later, but I accept that the bread later may have got the code, the numbers or the H one, H two wrong, but I can’t explain that. Um. Otherwise our numbers stack up. I mean, there’s been plenty of times on my investing life that I haven’t liked the company I’ve been, that’s number one on the buy list, you know, held my nose and bought it. Um, we’re not betting the house on it. It’s one part of our portfolio. And if it becomes a sell, it becomes a sell. [00:52:00] So that’s how I have, that’s how I approach

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: to do any sort of to analysis to this company would take days and days to try and pick apart its assets, put a value on them,

Cameron: exactly.

Tony Kynaston: its cash flows, that kind of thing.

So, while I, while I agree with you, it’s very

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Um, a little bit suspicious, uh,

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: but the numbers and the numbers.

Cameron: well I remember when I did a pulled pork on Zep, the Chinese smartwatch company. I had similar misgivings because it kinda looked a little bit, sort of sneaky and you said, nah, I like it. And it’s up 700% since then. So

Tony Kynaston: think, I think zips are on a different street compared to this one. Yeah.

Cameron: it is. Um, but uh, you know, it was still a little bit hard to, [00:53:00] hard to see whether or not it was dodgy without knowing more about the smartwatch

Tony Kynaston: the thing

Cameron: factor.

Tony Kynaston: dod use to me, apart from all like this, this, this person is clearly entrepreneurial and, and those kinds of people always attract lawsuits and detractors and run ins with regulators, et cetera, et cetera. the most in, well, the

Cameron: yeah,

Tony Kynaston: say worrying. The most interesting thing for me is the fact that they’ve gone from using Big four accounting firms to an unknown Um, and I don’t

Cameron: yeah.

Tony Kynaston: the firm they’re using. I, I just dunno enough about them.

Cameron: This barrage is that, uh, the French way of saying disparage, right?

Tony Kynaston: don’t, I, I can’t comment on the firm they’re using, I dunno enough about them, but they seem very small. Um, for a large global international firm that’s now operating at least in two countries, if not

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Um, it’s strange than not using a Big four accounting firm. And given that his background’s in auditing, [00:54:00] um, you, you, you know, you wonder if he has enough knowledge of, of auditing to know that he shouldn’t be using a big four for, um, I’m extrapolating here,

Cameron: Well, I am sure he does.

Tony Kynaston: I, I, I’m

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: that, uh, all he’s doing is trying to save on fees, on audit fees by going with a small company. Hmm.

Cameron: Could be. Yeah, could be. Right. Um, but have you been to their website? Did you ever look at it?

Tony Kynaston: announced that

Cameron: audit firm?

Tony Kynaston: million of fees in the last year.

Cameron: Yeah. Singapore’s largest USA listed co audit firm is their claim to fame. Um,

Tony Kynaston: Yeah. And

Cameron: yeah, who we are

Tony Kynaston: in that market and very dynamic in that market. Who knows?

Cameron: could be, but uh, yeah, it looks, it looks kind of dodgy

Tony Kynaston: if it looks [00:55:00] dodgy.

Cameron: anyway.

Tony Kynaston: they’ve gone from using a Big Four firm to a small local firm look great. Yeah. firm that they’re using, I’ve got no idea if it’s dodgy or not. Um, I’m not gonna say, but

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: that they’ve been using Big Four firms until recently, uh, is a, is a bit of a red flag for me.

Cameron: Yeah. Um, for some reason, I was just gonna cover off on our, uh, pulled pork, uh, track record so far, mostly doing well. Um, we’ve, up until this week, we’ve done 32 stocks, 25 of them, uh, in positive territory. Seven are a negative. Uh, but MODG Topgolf isn’t coming up for some reason. And, uh, they’ve changed their ticker to Cali.

They’ve gone What was MOGG stood for? It was like modern [00:56:00] golf. They’ve changed their ticker. Just so there you go. The, you going back to Callie. Do you know that? You wouldn’t know that.

Tony Kynaston: Mm

Cameron: Going back to Callie, Ella, you know an Ella. What?

Tony Kynaston: early

Cameron: Who are you and what have you?

Tony Kynaston: after that. Ooh. Al Cool J in the early

Cameron: Hell Have you ever told me you like rap?

Tony Kynaston: Beastie Boys.

Cameron: The Beastie Boys.

Tony Kynaston: Boys. I

Cameron: You like the Beastie Boys? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Going back to colleague. So yeah, they are going back to Cali. I’ll have to change that in my spreadsheet. Alright, well, um, should I add ’em to the QAV light? Tony, we’re gonna take a punt.

Tony Kynaston: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah. Well that’s the question.

So the question, I’m going through all of this going, listen, am I, am I an expert on the intricacies of this? No. The market obviously thinks this guy’s, [00:57:00] something’s, something dodgy is going on, but, you know, we don’t trust what the market thinks, the sentiment, it passes the sentiment, even though there’s some, the chart doesn’t look great.

It does pass our sentiment. It is up a little bit and, um, it’s, uh,

Tony Kynaston: mean, like

Cameron: gets a good score.

Tony Kynaston: else that we, um, that we,

Cameron: Thank you.

Tony Kynaston: as you said before, like, I dunno, anything about mining or coal miners and, um,

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: you know, even big banks or whatever else we have on our bi so watch companies on the US Pilot,

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynaston: I know nothing about. So yeah, we, we trust the process and then but more importantly, we have cell.

Cameron: We trust the process.

Tony Kynaston: difference with us is we have cell processes and if we need to, we get out and cut our losses,

Cameron: Well, speaking of which, you know, a couple of the stocks that I have added to QAV Light, um, I should probably, uh, have broken their cell lines, but [00:58:00] I haven’t sold them because it’s only a couple of weeks in and it was sort of Christmas, new Year, and I’ve, I’m giving them a little bit of leeway. I’m like, nah, give them an, huh.

Well, look, my rule normally is to give them a month, you know, if I buy them and they immediately do become a three point sell within like a week or two, I’m like, well, you know, if I, if they were close to the three point sell line when I bought them and it fluctuates a bit and they go down, I’m like, yeah, I give them a month to sort of

Tony Kynaston: You’re

Cameron: settle in.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you said the guidelines not rules, Tony,

but Yeah, I think I’m gonna have to sell, I think, um, A MCX or GTN or one of those is about to hit its month. I think the 22nd is the month gets to the 22nd and it’s still a three point cent line. I’m gonna dump it [00:59:00] and replace it with something else, but, um, okay. Well, they have it. That is my pulled pork for this week.

Never a dull day when we’re doing these American stocks. I tell you. Uh, like we don’t have any companies that you do pulled porks on in Australia that are anywhere near as interesting as these American businesses. Right. Colorful. Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Colorful. Colorful. Used to be a, a

Cameron: All right. Have a good week.

Tony Kynaston: market. Lexington, if someone was colorful. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: Daily.

Cameron: Well, I think it. Oh yeah, I think it still is. Cult probably bad, but who knows? We’ll find out. Um, good luck with your, um, electrical problems, uh, which listeners won’t know anything about, but we talked about it off air. Hope you get that resolved. Get some sleep. You’re leaving anyway for a week. Aren’t you going to play some golf in Tasmania?

Tony Kynaston: Oh, I

Cameron: didn’t talk about that on the Australian show. We should have talked about that in after hours. Yeah.

Tony Kynaston: All right. Have a good week.

Cameron: All right, well [01:00:00] you have a good week. Thanks tk. Bye.

Bernard: Q A V is a checklist-based system of value investing developed by Tony Khighneston over 25 years. To learn more about how it works and how you can learn the system, visit our website, Q A V Podcast dot com.

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