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Kyle Grieve

lines on the record: 68
first: 2026-05-31
most recent: 2026-05-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I think that honestly sounds great to me. You know, while the returns on LyftCon exactly at that 12% mark, which is kind of what we try to go for, I think it's And the fact that it does have a pretty good growth potential. So on your points there about Berkshire, I tend to agree with you. I think, you know, we had some really, really good discussions about Berkshire. And I think it's very fair, fair to say that I completely agree with you on Berkshire. You know, it's obviously still a very, very solid company. But, you know, I would be lying if I said I'm just as impressed with it today as I was when Buffett was a CEO. So I think allocating to a starter position in that 2% to 3% range is a really, really good reallocation of capital.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Number of 40%, but just given the business's history, I think this is fair. So with all that, I get a terminal value of about 446 Krona, and this offers about 11% return with the dividend.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And higher margin businesses to add to the portfolio, and that the businesses that are already in the portfolio are able to maybe slightly increase their margins as well. So for this case, I apply a 27 times EV to EBITDA multiple for the business, assuming that the market continues to give the business a pretty premium metric given its growth metrics and capital efficiency. So I'm going to keep the share count the exact same while buybacks are an option that I would like for them to take. But I just think with how much they're focusing on dividends, I'm not going to assume that they're going to completely change course, even though that's the direction that I would personally prefer that they take. So this gives us a price of about $788 krona, which is a 24% annual return, including dividends. Now, as for the future return, I'm still applying a 20% margin of safety for this business. I flirted with 15% because I think this business is definitely durable, but I decided to keep it at 20% just to stay conservative. For the bear scenario, I weighed that at about 30%, which is lower than my usual.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, I think there's a lot to be bullish on in general for LyftCo. Given the current headwinds in the demolition and tools segment, I think it's fair to expect a tailwind once demand normalizes. Plus, you factor in that the business is now focusing on these two new segments, which obviously carry very high margins and are growing faster than the rest of the business. And there's just some very good growth levers out here for the business to continue to pull on. In the bull case, I assume its subsidiaries continue to grow organically at around 4%. Now, given that LyftCo isn't in that 500 subsidiary range, I think in the best case scenario, they could maintain that range, but it will certainly get harder as they scale. I assume that the M&A engine continues to roar in the top line grows at about 12 to 14%. So as for margins, I see these continuing to expand as they raise the bar on the margins of their acquisitions. So at the terminal date, I'm applying an EBITA margin of about 25%. So this is assuming that the higher margin segments continue to find high quality.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A continuing weakness in some of the cyclical markets that Lyft goes exposed to. Now, as a result, this along with some FX headwinds depresses beta margins to a touch below, you know, 21%. This assumes that margins are nearly all segment drop by about 1% with the demolition and tools segment continuing to face additional headwinds. Now, I know I'm not reducing margins much here, but Lyfto's margins have been incredibly, incredibly durable over the years. So since LyftCo has had its IPO, a B2 margins have actually never decreased year over year. So for that reason, I'm using an exit multiple of about 20 times EV to EBITDA to assume that the market continues giving it, you know, a decent multiple, but obviously not the same premium that they've had in the past. So given the top and bottom lines would continue growing in this scenario, I don't also model a dramatic compression in their multiple in the scenario. So in this scenario, I'm getting a value about 365 krona, which offers out a 6% return. And again, we have to add that dividend. So that gets us to about”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I see your point there, Sean. And one of my favorite investing books was Chris Mayer's Hunter Beggars. And one of my takeaways from that is that some businesses, and I believe Lyftgo to be one of them, you kind of have to suspend disbelief in their abilities. So, you know, yes, the majority of businesses will 100% have a harder time growing as they scale. But for certain businesses, if they can continue scaling in a healthy way, and if your research supports this, then you can get buying opportunities in these businesses that very rarely go on sale. Part of the reason a business like LyftCo is such a good business is that it doesn't really go backwards. As in, you know, I don't really see a scenario where revenue is going to decline meaningfully and the businesses just no longer generate cash. So for this reason, my bear scenario still factors in growth, albeit at a much lower growth level compared to the base case. Now, I'm assuming that we continue to see some organic growth, but it's much lower at just 2%. I also assume that they continue to make acquisitions, but M&A growth is lower kind of more in that 8 to 10 percent range. I also assume that there's...”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The growth trajectory in the past. I think this seems very achievable in the next five years, especially with the margins on some of their newest acquisitions clearly being very, very high in value accretive. I also assume the environmental technology and transportation products divisions, these new ones, which are naturally high margin, continue to grow and continuing raising the bar for the entire company. Now, here I'm applying a 24 times EV to EBITDA multiple. So this has been their median multiple since 2019. And I think given the high capital efficiency and the quality of the business, If they're growing at my assumed rates, this multiple is fair. Yes, it's probably kind of high, but I think it's fair. So I'm also assuming zero share dilution, which obviously has been its strategy in its entirety. So, you know, I don't think it's a hot take to say that they won't vary away from that. Now, with these assumptions, I get a price of 580 krona, which is offering about a 16% compound in annual growth rate. But you also have to add in the fact that they have this kind of one.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Lyftko is one of these businesses where if you assume that they just stick to what they're doing, there's a very good chance that they'll continue to get returns that they've made historically. Now, I know most investors, myself included, tend to discount future growth, and I think that's normally a very, very good idea because at worst, it just builds in an extra margin of safety. But the fact is that most businesses do tend to fail. So you kind of have to default to that if you want to be a responsible investor. For my base case, I assume a blended average of about 4% organic growth slowly decreasing to about 3% in the terminal year, which I'm using here as 2030. And I'm going to be using that same year for all other scenarios as well. So I assume about a 10 to 12% in top land growth with the rest of that growth coming from mergers and acquisitions. I'm assuming here that LyftCo continues to find very high quality acquisitions. And as a result, they're going to continue climbing up in a b to margins very moderately from today's number of about 22.5% up to about 23.5%. Now, given”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in the book, The Compounders, which I've discussed in depth on TIP 772, I actually went over a few businesses that for all intents and purposes are decentralized companies, but they actually experimented with centralization for a variety of reasons I won't go into right now. But basically the outcome of all that in pretty much all examples was that it was a failure. It was a failure centralizing. So because they tended to fail in that centralized business model, they all basically went back to decentralization, which ended up working very, very well. So, you know, I think in general with these decentralized businesses, if they go through periods of stagnation, sometimes they, you know, they feel that there's these drastic changes that need to be made in order to kind of escape that staleness. But, you know, from my research into serial choirs, generally going more centralized is a bad idea. But again, I thought I'd mention that as a risk because that's something I'd prefer not to see them take.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Super interesting to me or likely, and because you know, I think all these are obviously relevant, but they would also affect pretty much any business out there, except again for that dental insurance angle. So macro risks, as I've discussed, tend to hit the demolition and tools section the hardest. Luckily, the dental and system solution segments have been relatively resistant to economic turbulence. Now, the second overarching theme of risks that they discuss are operational risks, which I believe are more of the real risks of the business. These would include things like, you know, having the right people in place to continue scaling the business. So, you know, sometimes the person leading a business from, let's say, 100 million to a billion isn't the same person needed to take it from a billion to 10 billion. Now, I'm not saying at all that pair, their current CEO isn't capable, but I'm just saying that in some cases, if you don't have the right manager with the correct experience of scaling, this can obviously be really risky once you decide to continue growing up and scaling. Now, another risk is centralization.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they actually perform quite well. So during COVID, revenue decreased by half a percent. And at the same time, they actually increased their cash flow margins by about 1.5%. And they increased their earnings per share by 11%. And I think that's quite impressive during a time where the world essentially, to some degree, shut down. So I wanted to share their performance during COVID because I think many businesses just suffered greatly, but LyftCo did, I think, a really, really good job at growing, albeit at much lower rates than they had historically. Now I want to touch on some of the more company-wide risks. So LyftCoe shares a multitude of different risk types. First, you have the broad risks inside of its industry and markets. You know, these tend to be kind of vanilla, you know, macroeconomic factors, customer concentration risks, technological disruption, consolidation among competitors, and then more individually is the risk about insurance being disrupted, which obviously would affect its dental segment. You know, these really are”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But on a year to year basis, they actually fluctuate a lot more compared to some of the other segments around that number. So this segment, you know, it's tied to things like infrastructure, construction, enforestry capex. And, you know, unfortunately, these industries are all cyclical. And if they're not spending, then the segment is going to suffer most in terms of growth as well as in margins. Now, as for system solutions, this segment has the highest growth in both its top line and in cash flow. It's clearly doing very, very well, which I think is why they're separating the reporting of some of its divisions.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since LyftCo IPO, dental has compound revenue at just 6%, whereas demolition and tools has compounded a touch below 16%. And system solutions has compounded at nearly 18%. So the Abita Kegger for dental demolition tools and system solutions have been 9%, 17%, and 29%. But even though the dental segment is the lowest grower, it definitely has its place inside of the business. It tends to be the most stable segment with minimal deviations from its 20% AB to margins. This is due to the ongoing demand, like I think we both mentioned for dental products. It doesn't matter what's happening in the world when you need to get work done on your teeth. It's going to take a priority. And it also happens, obviously, that dental work is often covered by insurance. Now, the demolition and tools segment tends to be the most cyclical and volatile. I mentioned earlier that this segment currently is contributing to the slowdown in LyftCo in the last few years. Now, this segment has arguably the highest margins around 20%.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, great question, Sean. So it's interesting because the dental segment was a primary segment that was involved with LyftCo when it was first foreign, but revenue growth in that segment is actually the lowest. And by quite a”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And where their business is really, you know, their baby, this is a really, really big deal. Since a business like LyftCo is looking for long-term oriented businesses, management also tends to think long-term. So these businesses aren't managed by people who want to just sell their business while making out like a bandit while leaving all of their current employees at high risk of, you know, losing their job or being treated mispoorly. So for this reason, many businesses will actually prefer selling to a more decentralized type of business, such as Lyftco. Sean and Daniel have gone over constellation software spin-offs, and they're a great example. So the attraction of decentralization is that businesses have much less need to make these large changes once they're acquired. And that's versus being acquired by a highly centralized business whose sole purpose is to optimize margins of acquired businesses just to prepare them for getting rid of them and selling them to someone else.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think this is a pretty important part to understand about LyftCo because as businesses aren't really in just one industry, since they're in such a wide variety of industries, the real competitive pressure comes from other cereal choirs or private equity who want to come in and try to outbid Lyftko on a potential acquisition. So the key to understanding serial choirs is just how they treat acquisitions after they buy them. There are some acquirers, such as those in the private equity space, who fully intend on flipping the business once it's acquired. Now In that case, once acquired, the business may undergo some very, very significant changes. This could include things such as massive changes in culture, installing new management teams, utilizing consultants, cutting costs, firing employees, and even drastically changing business models. Now, to people who aren't business owners, this might not really sound like a big deal, but to business owners who have owned a business for over a few decades and have very, very close relationships with their employees.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The insiders really are just betting on themselves to create value, to exercise the option at a later date and collect the difference between the market price and the exercise price while not diluting shareholders at all.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A few things you got earnings, volume growth, working capital, and free cash flow. So this number is capped at just 100% of base salary. Now, given the fact that he has earned nearly 82% of his base salary, I would say, you know, he's probably doing a pretty good job performance-wise. Another nugget that I found interesting was that no variable-based compensation will be paid if a pre-tax loss is reported, which obviously makes sure that everything's running smoothly and profitably, which hopefully will make alignment between management and shareholders at a high level. Now, interestingly, executives and the board do not receive cash, but instead get these things called synthetic options. Now, this is very interesting. So since Carl Bennett obviously owns so many shares, like I just mentioned, he basically sold about 400,000 options to just 23 individuals inside of the company. Now, they can't be exercised until all the way into the future in 2030. Now, I think this is actually kind of a cool way of doing compensation because”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let me take the management comp here first. So LyftCode doesn't disclose much about specifically the base salaries outside of its CEO. So Pair Waldemar in 2025 made a base salary of about $34.7 million SEK, but in 2024 it was about $31.5 million SEK. And just for anyone US based, that's about $3 million USD in case you're wondering. So, you know, to me, that doesn't seem egregious at all, just again, given how much value he's created for shareholders. Now, getting to your point about bonuses and boards of directors getting these large insider ownerships strictly through getting options, as you can probably guess, given Liftco's very high quality and the fact that they haven't diluted shareholders, they have a pretty shareholder-friendly incentive program. So in terms of Pair Waldemarson, he had a variable remuneration of about 28.8 million SEK. So pairs, variable remuneration is judged by targets regarding”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here of the business being taken over by anybody else. I will say though, outside of Carl Bennett, the insider ownership definitely leaves quite a bit to be desired. So the second largest insider is Pair Waldemarson at 0.26%. So the boar's ownership of shares isn't really that exciting either with members owning shares all below 0.01%. So PAR just recently bought 15,000 shares of LyftCo on the open market, which is obviously a good sign. But other than that, the insider ownership outside of the chairman just isn't that exciting.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, since Pear has now led the business since 2019, I think using Buffett's rule of one is an excellent exercise to kind of just see what kind of a job he's done at allocating shareholder capital while being responsible for that duty. So since Pair has been CEO, he's been in charge of allocating about 12.7 billion Swedish krona back into the business. Now, over that period, the market has increased by about 75 billion Swedish krona, while dividends total about 6 billion Swedish krona. So he's produced about 6.4 Swedish krona per dollar or per one krona retained, which more than satisfies the rule of one, which is to create at least $1 per dollar retained by that business. Now, insider ownership on LyftCo is very good as well, mainly because their founder and their current CEO, Carl Bennett, owns just so much of that stock and it hasn't been diluted. So he alone owns about 50% of the shares, but 69% of the voting rights. So, you know, there isn't really any...”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so pear is a very, very good CEO of my books. And the thing that's awesome about that is that he's still quite young at just 49. So, you know, if he sticks around, he presumably has at least another decade or two to continue compounding the business. So he has a very long history inside of LyftCo. He was a CEO of Brock AB, which I mentioned earlier. Now what I didn't mention earlier was that Brock is not only a robot company, but also basically a conglomerate in its own right. So from there, Pair moved on to become the head of business of the dental area. and then into a role as the deputy CEO of Lifco. And then once Frederick Carlson left, as I mentioned, he was put in place as”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get into, so you know, let's assume a small number. I don't know, 5% that make a decent fit. That's still 1.6 million potential small and medium-sized businesses. And I'm not saying LyftCo is ever going to be some sort of consolidator of every single small and niche business in the world or in Europe. But just to say that I think that they have a large amount of potential targets out there. And then you take into account there's always new businesses coming online. So that number is probably going to grow at a very, very low rate, maybe the low single digits, but still that's meaningful rate and it will continue to rise up as more time passes. So, you know, in terms of growth, I think really the biggest concern for the business isn't where it can find more potential opportunities, but it will be in ensuring that they have the proper support to manage 500, 750, 1,000 companies over the next few decades. But I'm going to go over that in some more detail here shortly.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is an incredibly important nuance to understand about LyftCo. So the business currently has this market cap of 118 billion SEK, which comes out to about 12.6 billion USD. And they also have 275 companies. So, you know, this isn't a small operation by any means. And yet, when you actually look at the size of their potential market, they're just barely making a dent. According to the European Commission, small and medium-sized businesses or SMBs make up the vast majority of European businesses. And this is the exact type of business that LyftCo is looking for. So that puts the S&B market at about $32 million. So, you know, I don't really see them running out of ideas to look for anytime soon. Now, an important caveat to that number I just gave you, LyftCo obviously only buys these very, very specific niche business. And my guess that would be that this is probably a very, very small number of those actual businesses that would make up the specific niches that Lyftko wants.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Best use of capital would be to just reinvest all that back into the business to continue feeding the compounding machine.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All peers. Now, obviously, the data here is supporting my assumptions. So I've come across a few C requires that do pay dividends, and generally, you know, I would prefer that the businesses not have a dividend policy at all, as I think they're kind of leaving potential money on the table. If you have the right capital efficiency, which Liftco has and a large pipeline of a potential acquisitions, which I think Lifco also has. Now, to put it another way, if Lifco kept more of its profits in the business, they could then delever even more and reduce their need for leverage, which would also reduce financing expenses. Now, I understand paying a dividend when you have nowhere else to put your money, but in LyftGo's case, they have many more ideas than internal cash flow, which is why they are using debt. So in my view, the dividend is probably one of the only blemishes on LyftCo, which is otherwise a very, very high quality business. Now, paying a dividend would not be a reason that this business is not worth owning, so please don't get me wrong. But, you know, I just have to mention that for serial acquires and the position that I think LyftCo is in, I think that”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Lift Code does not engage in buybacks. Instead, they basically focus exclusively on distributions via dividends. So I'm not sure how many Swedish businesses that you've looked at, Sean, but it's actually quite normal for businesses in Sweden to issue dividends, even though personally, I'd rather they skip them. So just to get into their dividend strategy, basically they distribute about 30 to 50% of after tax profit as dividends for full year 2025, the dividend payout ratio was about 33%. Their dividend growth has essentially tracked their profit growth. So, you know, I think it's very, very likely that they're going to continue this policy into the future. Now, there's a few ways of looking at this. I think culturally, Swedish corporations are very attracted to the model of paying dividends to their shareholders. So according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, in 2022, 61% of publicly held Swedish companies paid a dividend, which they said led”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start to normalize or maybe even increase. And then the second part here that's important to take into account is there's been a bit of market weakness in the demolition and tool division. So revenue has decreased and margins of compressed a little bit. There are quite a few questions over this in the last quarters and their earnings call about this exact segment. Now it looks like with the construction industry being part of their target market and it not exactly lighting the world on fire, they've kind of faced some headwinds. Now I assume that this will normalize at some point, but it's impossible to know exactly when that will happen.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correlated with future returns of the business. And besides, you know, if you're making an acquisition and you're buying a business not only for intangible assets, but also for its intangible assets for things like brand, customer relationships, and even expertise, I feel like that's obviously something that does provide value and therefore you paid up for it. So it's still relevant to the purchase price and the capital that you've employed. Either way, you look at it a rose over 20%, which Lyftko has is a very good number. Now, another important consideration is just how far the ROS has moved upwards. So it's actually moved down a little peak in 2023 of 22.6%, but it's still up from back in 2016 when it was about 18.6%. So with the current drop in rose, I think it's more of a product of two things. So first, it's a part of their current investment phase. You know, some of the newer investments that they made are going to take some time to become fully optimized and integrated. And once they are, we should see those capital efficiency metrics.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think the capital efficiency metrics on this business are very nice and more importantly sustainable. So as I mentioned, LyftCo uses this metric called return on capital employed ROS. And they define this as Ebita before acquisition costs divided by capital employed. Now Ebita is pretty straightforward. You could just look at operating income, then add back amortization of intangible assets. Now for the denominator, capital employed equals total assets minus cash and cash equivalents minus interest-bearing pension provisions minus non-interest bearing liabilities. Then they simply just average this out over the last four quarters. They also show this number excluding goodwill. Now, I personally like capital efficiency metrics, which maybe have some correlation with my expected returns in the future. So when you remove goodwill and other intangibles, the capital employee numbers are so low that your rose number actually goes all the way up into the triple digits, which, you know, I don't know about you. It's just not really.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% a profit's back into their business. But, you know, serial choirs are kind of an exception because instead of buying businesses that can reinvest at high rates, the mothership can then just reinvest at high rates without reinvesting back into their own businesses. But to make things even better, Lyftgo obviously has some organic growth. So I would assume that there's certain businesses that are reinvesting into some growth opportunities. But my assumption is that this number is probably a lot lower compared to the wide variety of other businesses that they have, as well as the opportunities that they have to invest into other businesses.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when I first started learning about LiftGo, I actually assumed the exact same thing, but they share their CapEx to sales directly on their earnings presentation. And it actually stays basically permanently stabilized in just the one to two percent range, which I think is very, very low with a business that has some sort of manufacturing as part of its business model. So I wanted to dig in and find out more on how this was possible. So the best answer that I could find is that even though LyftCo has, quote, manufacturing, unquote businesses, they're more like assembly businesses. So for this reason, they don't have to worry about, you know, maintaining expensive machinery or product lines. And they can more or less just piece equipment together. Basically, they're buying finished components from a manufacturer, then assembling them themselves. So because LyftCode doesn't need to reinvest in that type of equipment, their businesses all tend to not need much capital to just function as is. Now, we've spoken about this a lot, Sean, but I think we'd both prefer businesses that can reinvest pretty much what”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And some of the other divisions, perhaps they can get a beta margins from their current level of around 22.5%, maybe towards 25-ish over the next five, 10 years. Now, given their strong track record of margin improvement, I definitely would not discount their ability to do this. Now, if they chose to continue getting the right mix into higher margin businesses, I think it could definitely raise the bar for the rest of the entire business. Now, I always find it really, really interesting for a business like LyftCo, which I think is already large to really just go out and continue finding businesses that are better and better in terms of their margins. It's just not easy to do, but I think they've shown an incredible ability to do it very, very well.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a couple. So I think two that are very important are free cash flow and capital efficiency, which they use called return on capital employed or just ROS, which I'll be referring to from here on out. So I'll leave ROS alone because I'm going to go over it in a little bit later when we talk about capital efficiency. But let's get back to free cash flow. So free cash flow per share has grown exponentially well since LyftCo has IPO'd in 2014 with about a 23% kegger. Now, obviously, this has been a great proxy for value creation when looking at serial choirs. I like to look at the cash that's generated from operations just because it doesn't remove cash that is invested in new acquisitions. So if you're looking for kind of like a constant cash number, I like that number even more than free cash flow, which excludes cash for acquisitions as well as growth capex. Now, I briefly touched on Abita margins, but they are also a very, very important metric. So it's a metric where I think it has to reach a ceiling, definitely, at some point. But given the increased margin.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The answer to that is just no because you know, even if they did capture all of that market share, it would just end up being a rounding error for them. So I think they just often leave it for a lot of these small fish companies. And, you know, that's a business that LyftCo picks up and it's been pretty successful. So, you know, I think with many of LyftCo's niche businesses, they're in that kind of pretty similar situation. There's competitors out there who are much more likely to pursue industries where the TAM is in the billions, you know, not the millions. And if you have a business that is a leader in its niche, then you are well positioned to continue reaping the profits from that business for many years to come. But again, it definitely depends on how good LyftCo's acquisition criteria is. And so far, it's proven to be very, very good.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of kind of more non traditional advantages. So for example, investing in businesses that serve these small niche industries is actually a pretty good competitive advantage in itself. You know, I've seen this numerous times in a lot of the micro cap businesses that I like to look at. So the question that I get when I'm talking about these kind of micro caps with other investors is if this business is only doing, you know, maybe 20 million in sales and they have competitors out there doing billions in sales, why wouldn't they just steal their market share? And I think that's a really, really good question. The answer is actually quite simple. So these small businesses, some of them at least have kind of these smaller patents that have been built out over many, many years. And while a bigger company could theoretically compete, it might actually take a lot of time and resources just to get to that point. And, you know, let's say there's a business out there doing $2 billion in sales. Are they really going to go out of their way to try to beat a competitor where the market is like, you know, let's say $40 million and unlikely to really grow much past that? And I think.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think there's a lot, but to just touch on your MBA analogy there, I really like it. And I think the funder are a great example. Another great example would be the San Antonio Spurs, who are also an incredible team. And interestingly, you brought up that point about mean reverting. And even though the Spurs are this organization that have been like incredible for multiple decades, basically a couple years ago, they weren't that good. And so it just kind of goes to show you that even if you have this incredible culture, you mean revert. And I think if you do have an incredible culture, the thing that's really good about that is that you mean revert for a shorter period of time. So in a company like Lyftgo, you know, right now, they're going through some period of a little bit, I guess you could call it mean reversion. Maybe it's underperformance compared to where they've performed previously. But I think with these really, really high quality teams, just like having a really, really high quality sports franchise, you fix things pretty quickly, especially compared to other teams. So getting back to your question here about what else I think has helped them outperform. I think they have...”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which both have among the highest margins in all of Lyft Coast divisions. So environmental technology has Abita margins of around 28%, while transportation products have an Abita margin of around 25%. Now, as Liftco continues to scale and they make these other divisions a larger and larger focus of the business, if they can continue growing while maintaining or increasing profit margins, then that should theoretically allow LyftCo to have operating leverage at both the consolidated and divisional level. When CEO Pair Waldemarsen was asked if he actively searches for higher margin businesses, he sort of sidestepped it and noted that they just look for high quality businesses and that the margins tend to vary somewhere between that 22 to 30 percent mark. But circling back to processing power, you know, I think I'll leave it to listeners to determine if they think Lyftgo has a processing power mode or not.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Helmer defines the benefit of a process power as a company with process power is able to improve product attributes and or lower costs as a result of process involvement embedded within the organization. So the question of whether LyftCo has process power requires us to just answer one question. Is Lifco improving companies through their operational process or are they just managing them more carefully? So since LyftCo is decentralized, I don't think they're focused too much on firing people inside of an acquired business just to optimize their margins. Where LyftCo is really, I think, showing some signs of processing power is in the fact that they have consistently tried to steer the business towards higher and higher margin areas. For instance, the dental division over time has explicitly shifted its product mix from distribution to more higher margin manufacturing and technology businesses. So an even better, more recent example was one that I mentioned earlier with the Systems Solutions Division splitting off environmental technology and the transportation products division.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think when it comes to serial choirs, the question of a competitive advantage is nearly always kind of mysterious, you know? So when you think of it, if a business is made of a bunch of businesses doing 10 million euro in revenue, how could it possibly have a MO that protects it from competitors? Now, to me, the answer kind of lies in the business model. And more specifically, it lies in whether or not a business can pick and choose a correct subsidiaries that truly have these long-lasting characteristics. So some listeners might consider this to be process power, which is a competitive advantage that Hamilton Helber uses in his book, Seven Powers. So I had the opportunity and chance to interview him, and I asked him if he ever found another business that had process power and he told me no. And he actually even asked some of his other members of his fund. So I'm very hesitant to say.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Servicing that debt. But as I saw from Lyftco's numbers, they just basically rarely go above that two times net debt to EBITDA number. And given the steadiness of their niche businesses, I think they're very, very well positioned to continue adding more acquisitions in the near future. Now, if we break down their debt, both at the current and long-term level, it consists of loans with variable interests of about 9.7 billion SEK, lease liabilities of 1.3 billion SEK. And then the put call options like you just discussed of about 2.9 billion SEK. So to answer your question on whether the put call options are debt, the answer is definitely yes. But one cool feature of the put call options is that they actually aren't interest-bearing.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, let me get to your debt point first and I'll layer on the put call options. So LyftCo is definitely not a business that avoids debt since they have many, many potential acquisition targets and only so much cash generated by the business, they are using debt to maximize their ability to create shareholder value. So their net debt to EBITDA target is between two and three times and they've generally stuck below that low end of that range. So the intelligent use of debt comes down to a couple things such as basically your capital allocation decisions. I think if you have a high return on capital, I personally am fine with a little bit of debt. It has to be manageable. But, you know, if you have a little bit of debt and you have a long track record of success and that rare ability to just maintain a reasonably high amount of capital efficiency going forward, well, then you can create a lot of shareholder value. Now where debt can definitely be dangerous to a serial acquirer is if their acquisition quality falls off and they begin to have issues.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Clearly states that Lifco cares very, very deeply about shareholder value. And very interestingly, they've actually never issued options or used dilutive financing in its history.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of their cash outlay and put call options. So in the last two years, put call options have ranged between about 14 to 17% of deal value. And the remainder is funded through internally generated cash as well as debt. Now, the pull call options can last for multiple years. From what I could gather from their financials, most put call options mature in the kind of the two to five year time period after acquisition. Now, it's really interesting to me to see that they have some of these put call options that actually mature over five years from now, which I think is a really good signal that they're looking for businesses that hopefully are aligning themselves with LyftCo over the long term. Now, another thing worth mentioning is that inside of these put call options, they do have that dirty word, which is options in their wording, but these are actually not dilutive to shareholders upon exercise. So instead, Lyft code is using cash or debt on the put call option, which is really great to see as it just doesn't dilute shareholders at all. Now, I think that.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the business gets a put option. So this means that they can sell or put their shares to Lyftgo at a predetermined price. Now at the exact same time, LyftCo has a call option or the right to buy or call away the remaining shares from the seller. If either party exercises their option, the other side is basically obligated to buy or sell from the other party. Now in this case, LyftCo will always acquire the shares from the minority shareholder, which helps LyftCo get to that 100% ownership over time. Now the question here is, you know, why do they use the system? So there's a couple of really good reasons. First, it gives the minority shareholders some flexibility. This allows the sellers to have additional upside participation after they sell. And it also aligns the interests of the minority shareholder, as well as LyftCo and Lyfto's shareholders. So the option price is tied to future earnings with an attached multiple to it. So if the minority shareholder is able to achieve growth in those earnings, then they can increase the value of their put option. Liftcoals can vary considerably.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Sean, before I get into that, I will say on your point there about trust, I think that is a huge, huge factor in Serial Choirs. You basically have to trust the fact that they're going to continue doing a job without necessarily having the disclosure to actually look at the data to confirm that what they're doing is the right thing. I know I've had a couple businesses in the past where unfortunately I think management didn't do as good enough job. And then in that case, it's like, okay, well, can I trust you anymore? And obviously luckily I think in LyftGo's case going in, you know, I think they just, they have such a good track history that you kind of have to default to trusting them if you want to invest in them, of course. And then you kind of just have to look at the mothership numbers from there and just make sure that they're going on the right path. Now, back to your question there on earnout. So the earnout structure is definitely a lot different from what I usually see. So they use something called put call options in their acquisitions to purchase the remaining minority stake in their subsidiary. So here's how it works. So the seller.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Using that data, I'm left with an Abita multiple about seven times on average for their acquisitions last year. So I think that's probably a pretty reasonable midpoint of what they're looking for. Now, I'd like to get back to that serial acquire arbitrage thing I just discussed. So let's take a look at an example here. Let's look at a business called Toppy, which was one of Lifco's acquisitions in 2025. So this is a business that specializes in pallet exchange solutions. Now, the business did about 17 million in euros in sales at acquisition point. So if we assume about 23% margins for the system solution segment, then this business would be doing about 4 million or so euros in Ibita. So if they paid seven times Ibita, then they assumed price is somewhere around 27 million euros. But, okay, now we have to take into account that Lyftgo trades obviously at a much higher premium than seven times Abita. So LyftCo's current EV to EBITDA, which is pretty similar to the Ebita number, is around 18 times.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of hard, but LyftCo actually doesn't explicitly tell you what kind of multiples that they're looking for on their acquisition prices. So my assumption is probably they're doing this for strategic reasons. You know, they're just trying to avoid inviting others to copy what they're doing because obviously it's worked very, very well in their history. Now, I'm not sure that's possible given that there's just no shortage of serial acquires out there, but I think you get my point. Most serial choirs in this area are looking for something called serial acquire arbitrage. So this basically means that you're getting bought out at a private market multiple, then you immediately rerate once you become part of a publicly traded mothership. So generally four to seven times ABTA sounds about right to me for niche private businesses. So I loaded up the sales that they bought in 2025, then assumed a beta margin right around Lyfto's consolidated number of about 22%. And from there, I divided the Abita by the cash that they used in the acquisition of these subsidiaries.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“soon but you know we never know now as for the geographic order of sweden it's definitely going to be number one in terms of where they're exposed to with germany right on its tail and then following that you got uk italy and norway which have all been uh very very good growers over the last few years”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so before I get to that question, Sean, I just want to comment on something you said there about that process and how it feels like there's a lot of layers. So I think the fact that they have this process and maybe the way that I listed it makes it appear that way. But in reality, I think the actual, if you think of it as having the board of directors at the company level and then having individual smaller board of directors. So I don't think everything's actually being pushed up top. They have these smaller basically decentralized groups that are doing it. And that way you skip a lot of that centralization and bureaucracy that basically just hamstrings businesses. And unfortunately, hamstrings them even more as they scale. So just wanted to put that out there. Now back to your question here. So in terms of the risk happening in Europe, you know, personally, I have a couple businesses. We have a couple businesses in the intrinsic value portfolio in Europe. And I think we have to basically stay aware of what's going on with the war going on in Ukraine. I'm hopeful that, you know, given what's happened so far, it's going to deter Russia from doing anything like this anytime.”
2026-05-31 · We Study Billionaires · TIP819: Lifco AB (LIFCO-B.ST): The Serial Acquirer Building an Unstoppable Compounding Engine w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT