Darren Gacicia - CFO of Eden Enterprises

Tom O’Flynn is the CFO of AES Corporation (AES). Tom provides a great overview of AES Corporation’s business model. He also discusses some really interesting catalysts for the company and highlights a compelling investment case for the shares of AES’ stock.

AES is a power company, but it’s different from regulated utilities, IPPs, and yieldcos, yet at the same time has similar characteristics. The asset portfolio includes traditional generation facilities, renewables, and a lot of the essential infrastructure required to produce and transmit electricity. Since the current management took the reins in 2011, they’ve pruned the portfolio, with more than $5B in asset sales over the past 7 years and exited 13 countries. During that time, management reduced parent level debt by $2B, cut costs by $300M, and they’ve returned almost $3B of cash to shareholders.

Part of the return to shareholders has been through dividends, and AES has also bought back about 16% of their stock since 2011. Another interesting fact is that the company has reduced coal generation capacity by about 20% over the past three years, and they’ve replaced a large portion of that capacity with renewable energy. De-risking the business has also been a key priority. Management has reduced AES’ FX exposure to around 15% from 40%.

Maybe one of the most interesting facts about AES Corp is that they are the largest owner of battery storage in the world, and the recently announced storage JV with Siemens called Fluence. The Fluence JV positions AES extremely well for the future. One of the reasons the battery JV is so interesting is because of the growth outlook. Generally speaking, growth investors aren’t interested in utilities. That’s because, double-digit earnings growth in utility-land is almost unheard of, at least not on multi-year outlook.

Another potentially big catalyst for AES Corp includes IMO 2020. This is a gross oversimplification, but IMO 2020 puts a cap on the amount of sulphur shipping vessels are allowed to use in fuel oil. This global regulation bodes well for global LNG demand. And with respect to debt, individual projects financed with non-recourse term debt, which means there is a natural deleveraging component to the business.

Something I like about this management team is that they’re focused on what they know, understand, and where they believe they have a competitive advantage. This perspective led to reducing the number of countries where they operate and becoming more acutely focused on developing and owning long-lived infrastructure assets.

Bahir Manios is the CFO of Brookfield Infrastructure, one of the largest diversified infrastructure companies in the world. Tune in to hear Bahir discuss BIP‘s asset portfolio, investment philosophy, and a very compelling investment story.

Orthobiologics are living substances like stem cells and platelet rich plasma (PRP) that some medical doctors use in the rehabilitation process. Dr. Matthew Lucas from the Centeno-Schultz Clinic, based out of Denver, CO, joins the podcast to explain the use of stem cells and PRP in medicine today.

Michael Rucker is the CEO and Founder of Scout Clean Energy, a private renewable energy developer. Michael is a renewable energy veteran with many years of experience developing utility-scale renewable energy facilities. Tune in to hear Michael talk about the history of Scout Clean Energy and renewable energy project development.

Charles and Colvard’s CEO , Suzanne Miglucci, joins The Stock Podcast to discuss moissanite gemstones, e-commerce, digital marketing, direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling and her vision for the company. Charles & Colvard (Nasdaq: CTHR) is the original and leading source of moissanite, the world’s most brilliant gemstone. CTHR manufactures, markets, and distributes moissanite gemstones as well as jewelry that incorporates the gemstones.

Brad Slingerlend and Brinton Johns are the co-founders of NZS Capital, LLC, an investment firm that focuses on innovative businesses that demonstrate non-zero-sum (NZS) characteristics. If you’re wondering what non-zero-sum means in investing, you really have to listen to this episode! Brad and Brinton are veteran tech investors with a top tier performance track record. Together they oversaw the Janus Henderson Technology funds for nearly 10 years. Over that period, they honed and perfected their investment philosophy and principles, which they share in this episode.

The Stock Podcast is super excited to have Gabriel Weinberg on the program. Gabriel is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine. And if you’re like me, when you heard the name DuckDuckGo, you probably did a double take. It’s a strange name, but so was Google. Yeah, I’m comparing this company to Google because it makes sense. That’s because DuckDuckGo is one of Google’s biggest competitors. You might be scratching your head at that statement because, well you probably didn’t think Google had any competitors.

That, in an of itself is a strange concept. I’ll wager that even the most die-hard free market capitalist uses Google for search, but doesn’t realize that they’re supporting a monopoly by using Google. Approximately 90% of internet search queries go through Google. Think about that for a moment…

Across the globe, the majority of us use Google almost exclusively for online discovery. Assume for a moment that your search results aren’t exactly what you actually searched for, but rather tailored by your search history and your location. Well, DDG doesn’t do any of that. You’re completely anonymous on DDG. You’ll hear a lot more about this from Gabriel, who is possibly one of the greatest intellects I’ve had the honor of interviewing. Just as a summary, the interview covers a lot of different topics like data privacy, the history of search, how Google became the behemoth that it is, Gabriel’s background and a bit about DuckDuckGo. But before getting to these topics, we spend about 45 minutes discussing Gabriel’s new book, Super Thinking – The Big Book Of Mental Models, which Gabriel wrote with his wife Lauren McCann. The book is truly fantastic and I encourage anyone who desires to be a better decision-maker to give it a read.

Devina Rankin is the CFO and SVP of Waste Management (WM), the largest waste services company in North America. In this episode of The Stock Podcast, Devina provides a brief history of the company and a great overview of the waste management business. Tune in if you’d like to learn about the waste management business, the recycling industry, and how landfills work.

I realize that Waste Management probably doesn’t need an introduction. Just about everyone out there has probably seen WM’s big green trucks driving around town. However, the waste management business is much more than just picking up trash. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scene that we don’t see. Running a waste management business is very complex, and that’s why it’s great to have Devina on the program to describe how they grew to become the leading waste services provider in North America.