Business Breakdowns
· Parsa Kiai, Matt Reustle
But I would anticipate that Idemia, Thales, and some other producers like FCS and others will start to encroach as the new entrants into this business. [00:00:00] S0: Natural to attract that competition over time, and it'll be interesting to see how they compete. You've made a few references to Dave Cote's track record with M&A, and I think it's a perfect opportunity to introduce that. Maybe introduce Resolute Holdings and that interesting dynamic into this business. Maybe you can lay out the framing for how you think about Compo's potential to make acquisitions, how Dave's history plays into it, and then we can address Resolute in detail or follow up with questions that I might have around it.
· Parsa Kiai
[00:00:00] S1: For anyone who doesn't know Dave Cote, I would suggest reading his books. It really is an incredible masterclass on focusing on the long term and on the short term. So he has a book called Winning Now, Winning Later and another book called How to Be a Leader, and these are incredible books. And Dave took over as the CEO of Honeywell in 2003. If you go back then, 9/11 had just occurred. You had the dot-com bubble explode. Honeywell, they had the aborted merger with GE that was blocked by the EU. Honeywell was in a bit of a tough spot. I think the quarter before he took over, it had negative 4% organic growth. And by the time he left 15 years later, revenues were up 100%, EPS was up 400%, and the stock was up 500%, more than double what the S&P did. Then he became the chairman of a company called Vertiv, which provides liquid cooling systems for data centers. In the five years that he was chairman, that stock went up by close to 600%. And we've got a very good relationship with CEO Jon Wilk, and Jon has told us you've never met a guy that's more hard-charging and focused and relentless as Dave Cote. Not only on the operational improvement, but their approach to M&A is very similar. You guys have had Brad Jacobs on the Colossus podcast talking about the right approach to M&A. David Cote's approach is very, very similar, and it really comes with a few guiding principles. One of the first would be to build a robust internal pipeline of potential deals so you're not wedded or desperate on any single deal. So date a lot of people and have a lot of options out there. You really focus on good businesses with strong competitive positions that have not been run to their full potential, either because of underinvestment or lack of focus or something else. But you're not buying broken businesses. You're buying good businesses that should be better than they are and the willingness to pay a fair price but not to overpay. And you begin the integration process before the deal closes. As soon as you have an agreement, you are working with the teams to integrate that business. Take your best practices, what was the Honeywell operating system and is now the CompoSecure operating system, and integrate that. It's that M&A potential that people are excited about. And you mentioned Resolute Holdings.
· Parsa Kiai
This is a fascinating case study because if you take something like QXO, which is the new building products endeavor by Brad Jacobs, it receives a bit of a halo valuation because of Brad's incredible track record of creating shareholder value. At CompoSecure, we've done something a little different in that we've spun out the asset management side, we've spun out the capital allocation business into something called Resolute Holdings. And Resolute's job is to allocate capital, do strategic M&A for CompoSecure, and eventually on its own. But the initial view is that it's going to be focusing on M&A for CompoSecure. And it's quite fascinating because Resolute was spun out to shareholders of CompoSecure. Resolute Holdings, you've got an interest in both of these entities now. Resolute Holdings stock has done exceptionally well so that it is valued relatively richly today because you don't have much in the way of revenues. Resolute gets a 10% share, a 10% royalty, if you will, or management fee on CompoSecure's EBITDA. The stated goal is we are going to grow the EBITDA at CompoSecure by many, many fold, and the market believes that. Look at Mr. Cote's track record, we're going to do this. So right now the revenues at Resolute Holdings are something around $15 million, and that's basically the cost of looking for deals. We've got employees looking at the ground, doing due diligence, and that will grow as CompoSecure's EBITDA grows. So you have this symbiotic relationship where the team at Resolute Holdings is focused on growing the EBITDA at CompoSecure by 50% or double or triple, and the market is giving a halo valuation to Resolute Holdings. I don't think you really have priced that into CompoSecure yet. If you look at Resolute Holdings, it's valued at about a $700 million market cap. And if you look at a high growth asset manager multiple, it implies that CompoSecure's EBITDA should be double or more of what it is today. With Mr. Cote's controlling interest in both companies, you've got a strong alignment of interest. So really fascinating case study on what we're going to see in real time between capital allocation and M&A.
· Matt Reustle
[00:00:00] S0: It was an announcement made that was a little bit of a head scratcher to me, and I can't say that I necessarily loved it at the time. But I also look at Dave Cote. He's brought Tom Knott, who was the Goldman banker who worked with him on Vertiv and then came over with CompoSecure. We will see over time how it plays out. It's just a very interesting structure. You framed it perfectly well there in terms of it will act as a case study in terms of value unlock within businesses on the M&A side. Would you expect that acquisitions would be very overlapping and naturally tuck in? It could be bigger in size but fit the overall strategy. Could you see them diversifying away? Do you have any read on that in terms of—I would expect M&A given Cote's track record. I think he's made 150, 200 plus deals in his career, so he's familiar with it in the same way that Brad is. What would you expect in terms of sticking with the core business lines versus extending out where?
· Parsa Kiai
[00:00:00] S1: We have no knowledge of any transaction, but we would anticipate it is in the payments hardware, technology, software, security, and authentication verticals so that it will look like an adjacency to where CompoSecure is today. One of the biggest reasons we get comfortable with the long-term physical card disintermediation risk is that there's so many opportunities to grow this business from its pole position in physical card manufacturing to these different adjacencies. Whether they're recurring software revenue lines, whether it's adjacencies on the hardware side, it'll initially be in the payments space. Longer term, I could see diversification being implemented, and I think that would very much be positive because you would reduce some customer concentration, you would reduce some long-term industry disintermediation risks. It would morph into a much higher multiple business. One of the things that you will always expect is it will be done at an appropriate valuation and it will be in the interest of shareholders. And when you get people like Dave Cote, we get questions like, well, how do you know he's going to do a good deal? Again, you say okay, well last year he bought a controlling interest in CompoSecure at $7.50 a share, and today you get a share of CompoSecure at $20 and Resolute Holdings at $80. So he did a great deal last year. He's going to continue to do good deals, and he's showed you the playbook of how he's going to do it. It'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out, but initially payments, longer term probably diversification, but with shareholder value as the primary north star.
· Matt Reustle, Parsa Kiai
[00:00:00] S0: It's going to be fascinating to watch. And I think with that Resolute, I'll call it a dislocation in terms of how it's trading, which made me scratch my head a few times. You wonder what is being worked on and what's happening. I guess if we're to tie everything together, you mentioned the stock has had a nice run over the past year, year plus. What still stands out as the main catalyst for this business? [00:00:00] S1: There's several. If you look at the reaction to American Express's earnings last week and stock did great and they raised their guidance, the premium metal card is still the best customer acquisition tool for the high-end credit card holder. All of these companies are going to continue to invest resources, and it's going to be driven by American Express, Chase, and a lot of other issuers, neobanks, and the market recognition of that durable growth and CompoSecure's pole position as the key supplier. I think that is one key catalyst. I also think getting Arculus to the point where it starts being a material contributor, starts having a positive cash flow contribution instead of a small negative, and the cross-selling opportunities in security and authentication is a big catalyst and could change the narrative on the company. And then of course the M&A debut. I think everyone's trying to see what they're up to, but it'll be an interesting one. [00:00:00] S0: On the other side of the spectrum in terms of the risks, and in theory, what would keep you up at night, for lack of a better cliche? What's most prominent?