Sohn 2025

Industrials, eyecare, streaming spinouts, unloved exchanges, and banking middleware . . . but very little tech or AI

Publishing note: Random Walk is going to experiment with a different publishing cadence over the next few weeks (more details forthcoming). I will endeavor to trade some frequency for depth, at least some of the time.

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👉👉👉Reminder to sign up for the Weekly Recap only, if daily emails is too much. Find me on twitter, for more fun. 

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Sohn 2025

Another Sohn Conference in the bag, and it was a blast. My notes are below, and although I didn’t catch everything or everyone, I caught a bunch.

General observations:

• chemicals, energy, and industrials were frequent themes, so no real surprise there

• very few consumer names, which was surprising, and fairly light on tech, which was surprising, as well.

• Not too much AI either (other than energy), and there seemed to be a general sense of AI fatigue (which was also somewhat surprising)

In terms of sections, the conference was organized roughly as:

• Emerging managers (Longs)

• Big Shorts

• Lightening Round Longs

• Afternoon Longs

• Another Lightening Round

Let the trade ideas begin . . .

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Emerging Managers (Longs)

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Joe Talia – VictoryArc Holdings

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE: TASE)

• Recently public, as a for-profit company—used to be a mutual, run for the benefit of the small group of member banks;

• Local monopoly, capital-light model with royalty-like economics;

• Limited analyst coverage (Jefferies only); significant margin expansion potential;

• Trades at 10x vs 20x peer average for exchanges—depressed share price by war;

• Trophy asset is the HQ in downtown Tel Aviv, with value = 10% of market cap; possible takeout candidate

RW Take: exchanges can be great businesses, both as standalone, but also as acquisition targets (because network effects benefit from further consolidation (sometimes)). Israel certainly punches above its weight both in terms of capital markets and company formation. Catching the exchange at a fairly early part of its “for profit” journey, is a plausible explanation for the discount. Worth looking into more.

What I don’t fully understand is why anyone would choose to list on TASE rather than some other exchange?

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Connie Lee – Felis Advantage

nCino ($NCNO - NCNO 0.00%↑) (Banking middleware)

• Cloud banking platform—helps smaller banks with onboarding and workflows related to mortgages, account management, etc.

• Sticky product (90% recurring revs, with 40% incremental margins), in heavily-regulated market, with high barriers to entry.

• Pricing power reflecting in 5–7% pricing hikes (although 4% of rev from SVB/First Republic)

• 20% penetration of $1B+ loan banks; strong data connectivity across markets; nascent AI product with only 20% penetration thus far

• Trades at 4x earnings, a 50% discount to vertical SaaS peers. nCino is priced to loan volume (which has been depressed due to lower mortgage origination activity), but revenues are still growing, despite lower volume

• Insight Ventures exited 33% position, which has pressured stock;

RW Take: sleepy vertical saas for smaller banks can be great businesses (and being tied to mortgage volume is a plausible explanation for the discount). I’m not sure there’s quite as little competition as Lee makes it seem (e.g. Better Mortgage, Morty, others), and query whether I want to hitch my wagon to sub-$1B banks and their mortgage origination businesses, in all events. Plus, there is apparently some accounting investigation ongoing.

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Kristov Paulus – Kulturs Capital Management

Robinhood (HOOD HOOD 0.00%↑) - digital brokerage