# Boyar Research's Jon Boyar on 2026's Forgotten 40 $UBER $BATRA Yet Another Value Podcast · 2026-01-13 · 54 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e5Sdw_HFWA ## Transcript Andrew Walker You're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with your host me, Andrew Walker. Look, if you like this podcast, would mean a lot if you could rate, subscribe, review, wherever you're watching or listening to it. That's how you get more of these podcasts. So, please do that if you enjoy this podcast. And if you don't enjoy this podcast, please don't bother. Uh, but today's episode, I think you're going to enjoy this one. It is with my friend Jon Boyar from Boyar Research. He is coming on for, I believe this is like the fourth time in fifth years. Every year they publish the forgotten 40. It's 40 more larger caps, midcap stocks, but you know, uh, pretty pretty liquid, pretty big 40 stocks that have a nice blend of value and maybe a little bit of catalyzed for the upcoming year. So, he's going to come on, we're going to talk a little bit about forgotten 40, themes that he's seen in the Forgotten 40, and then we're going to dive decently deep into particularly the Atlanta Braves and a decent bit into Uber as well. So, I think you're going to enjoy it. We're going to get there in one second, but first, a word from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by fiscal.ai. Fiscal.ai AI is a modern data terminal built for investors who want an institutional-grade platform without the complexity. Whether you're an individual investor or a professional portfolio manager, fiscal.ai gives you instant access to years of financials, earnings transcripts, and company specific segment and KPI databases all in one intuitive platform. What makes it stand out from other platforms? Speed, depth, and ease of use. Their data updates within minutes of earnings reports, not day segment, revenue, subscriber growth, it's all there. Easy to chart, compare, and export. I've been using fiscal AI for interesting ways to chart and graph and visualize different segment KPIs, comparisons, all of that. And I think it's been really interesting, particularly it's the segment. It's really the segment data. When you put it in a graph, you can get some really interesting comparisons. You know, margins from one grocery to another, how they've evolved over time, stuff like that. Anyway, use my link fiscal.ai. That's fiscal.ai ai/wyab for two weeks free plus 15% off any of their play any of their paid plans. That's fiscal.aiyav. All right. Hello and welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host Andrew Walker. I'm just springing the recording on my friend to talk about the Forgotten 40. My friend, Jon Boyar. Jon, how's it going? Jon Boyar Doing great. Thanks for having me. Andrew Walker I've got the—well, I've got my background blur, so the video can't show up, but I've got my copy of the Forgotten 40 right here. Happy to have you on to talk about it. I think this is almost an annual tradition because I think we've done 4 of the past 5 years. Before we hop into a few names, a quick disclaimer: nothing on this podcast is investment advice. That's always true, maybe particularly today, because I've got 2 stocks lined up, but we'll probably hop through a few more in the Forgotten 40. So, 40 potential stocks to talk about. Let's start here, Jon. You published the Forgotten 40, a list of 40 stocks, but I'd love to start with a little overview. What's the purpose of the list, and why do you publish this every year? Jon Boyar We've been doing this for over 3 decades now—almost 40 years, obviously. Andrew Walker Almost 40 years. You're almost at 40 for 40. Jon Boyar Exactly. We could do a lot with that. We're known for being long-term, patient investors. We take a 3- to 5-year time horizon for everything we do, even though we're catalyst-focused on all of them. But some of our subscribers aren't quite as patient. What we do is, every year, we come out with our Forgotten 40 and do 1-page snapshots on the 40 ideas that we've thoroughly researched before. It's not us sitting around the table and saying, "Hey, Intel looks cheap. Let's write it up." It's names that we follow and have conviction on, and we let our subscribers know at the start of the year which stocks we like. It's probably our most popular product. People love it. It's fun, and it has served as a great reference guide throughout the year. It's really cool. Andrew Walker I mean, again, I think we've done this 4 of the past 5 years, and obviously there's some overlap. How many names repeat from 1 year to the next? This is more of a year-long list—actually, mid-December to mid-December—but you're looking at year-long things. Jon Boyar It varies. This year, for example, I think there are 23 or 24 names that are new and were not on last year's list. We're cognizant that we don't want to keep recycling the same ideas. But sometimes those are ideas that you have conviction in, and they're compounders. For example, Uber is a name we love. It was on last year's list, and it was up about 30% or 40%. It's on this year's list, too. We think there are a lot of reasons to like it. You don't want new ideas to drive the process. It's really just what stocks we think will do best going forward. Andrew Walker Gotcha. I like that the start of the Forgotten 40, for those who haven't looked at it or don't know, begins with the themes you were talking about in 2024 and then gives your report card on how you did in 2025. What are the key themes in the Forgotten 40 stocks that you're looking at? Even if I took out the macro and focused just on the key themes, what are they? Jon Boyar There are a couple. In terms of the macro, like most people, we say we try to ignore it as best we can, but I think that's almost impossible to do. In terms of the 2 key themes, we think this could be the year for SMID because of a potential increase in M&A. That's a big deal for us. We think there could be a fair amount of deals this year. I think roughly 10 or 11 of the names are under $10 billion, something to that effect. The other theme was financials. We're really bullish on financials and diversifieds, too. We have some insurance companies in there, some regional banks, and Ameris. It runs the gamut. We took a significant overweight position, at least relative to the S&P 500, on financials, and SMID is an area that we're looking at. Andrew Walker Let's poke at financials a little bit. You're overweight financials. What's driving that overweight right now? Financials have had a pretty good run, to my mind. Especially for the large caps, they've had a great run since the dark days of First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank. What's driving the overweight and bullishness in financials right now? Jon Boyar One, they're cheap. Two, I think the deregulatory environment isn't fully appreciated. It's been reported, obviously, but I think there's going to be a lot of M&A, especially among the regionals. We have 2 or 3 regional banks on the list, like Cullen/Frost, a really interesting, somewhat off-the-radar bank. The insurance companies are still inexpensive. Something like Markel, a kind of quasi-financial, is obviously an insurance company, but it has Markel Ventures and a stock portfolio. The same is true of a Loews. Those are companies that have lots of things to like about them. Andrew Walker Gotcha. I think these were the 2 most interesting names. There might be 1 or 2 more—we'll go over Uber—but let's go into the 2 names I wanted to talk to you about in detail. The first one would be the Atlanta Braves. It used to be Liberty Braves. I still call it Liberty Braves in my head, but now it's the Atlanta Braves. The ticker there is BATRA. I never know how to say it. It's supposed to be a play on "batter," I think, but I never know. It's B-A-T-R-A. This is the Atlanta Braves. John Malone is still a controlling shareholder. Why don't you quickly go over the thesis for the Atlanta Braves, and then I can jump in with some questions? Jon Boyar Sure. We've been big fans of John Malone, and we've observed him pretty closely. First, the Atlanta Braves Holdings, just to paint the picture, owns the team and also owns some valuable real estate surrounding the park. Malone has been simplifying his empire. You see what's going on with Discovery, what happened with Charter, and what happened with Sirius. He's making things simple for his heirs. What's notable is that I believe the only stock that he had to file on that he purchased in 2025 was the Braves. I think that's somewhat telling. He's a seller of assets. He's not owning this for emotional reasons. Even though, if you read his book, he really likes Ted Turner, I don't think he's keeping it around just for Ted to be happy. But there's a tax law change that really isn't being given a lot of press. It's not from the One Big Beautiful Bill. It's from the 2021 tax law change, where, currently or going forward, for the top 5 employees—not just officers, but employees of a company—anything above $1 million can't be deducted for income tax purposes. For most companies, that doesn't matter. It's not a significant percentage. But for publicly traded sports teams, that's a really, really big deal. I don't have off the top of my head what the top 5 players on the Braves make, but it's a significant portion of income. And remember, it's just for public companies. Private companies—basically all their competition except for Rogers, which owns Toronto—don't have to abide by the same rules, so they're at a huge competitive disadvantage. Plus, John Malone is known for doing everything humanly possible to lawfully avoid paying taxes. He spun out the Atlanta Braves about 2–2.5 years ago, so there's no tax implication there. I think he puts this thing up for sale sooner rather than later. The market for sports teams is extremely hot, though maybe not necessarily for baseball teams as much. They're still getting big numbers. The stock is currently trading at roughly $40 a share. Utilizing what I think are conservative valuations for the real estate that they own, we get to $60 a share easily. I think it's one of those stocks, especially in an expensive market, that doesn't have a ton of downside but has a fair amount of upside. Andrew Walker So, that's great. To start, I had not put 2 and 2 together on the tax code change. Kudos to you for figuring that out and pointing it out. It just makes all the sense in the world. You've got the man whose memoir you read. I mean, I've read his memoir. I did a podcast on his memoir. The one through line of his memoir is, “Oh, my God, I will not pay taxes,” sometimes to my detriment. You think he wants to have this in a publicly traded wrapper when, if it just goes private, he doesn't have to pay taxes? Not him, but the company. No effing way he's going to do that. But let me lob in a few questions. One correction: There was 1 other publicly traded stock he bought. He bought GLIBA in the GCI spin-off. He bought that both on the open market and through the backstop to the rights offering. So, that would be the only correction there. Let's go through a few things. I guess the first is, you mentioned $60 per share, and the stock trades at $40 per share. Can you help me understand how you come up with those valuations, particularly on the sports side? They do own the Battery, too, so maybe a little bit of that as well. Jon Boyar Basically, I know it sounds like a glib way of doing it, but when you look at some of these deals, people look at the Forbes value, and they usually trade at a significant premium to it. I think we do it at a 15% premium, I believe, off the top of my head, plus a very conservative valuation for the Battery. Most of these deals have occurred significantly higher than a 15% premium, so we think we're being conservative. It's also worth noting that the Braves are different from most Major League Baseball teams. Growing up, I remember on TNT and TBS, because it was owned by Ted Turner, these games were broadcast nationwide, and they have a much larger fan base than most teams do. So, you have a lot of people who would covet this if it ever really came up for sale. It's also worth noting that Atlanta, for whatever reason, has a significant number of billionaires living in that area. So, it's an interesting situation there. Andrew Walker Look, you're spot on with this. This team pulls kind of like the Cowboys do in football. They're America's Team. This team pulls way above its weight in terms of fan base. Even if it wasn't for that history of the ’90s Braves and TBS, if you just look at the Southeast in baseball, it is so void of teams around the Atlanta Braves. I know they used to always say this with their RSNs: “Our RSN is so much bigger than everyone else's because of this unique geography we have.” It really outpulls its weight in terms of that. Let me ask a few questions, Jon. I have owned this in the past. I've thought about owning this right now, all the time. I'll tell you my one hold-up that I've had. You're familiar with this: In February 2025, ESPN, which is paying MLB $550 million per year in rights, can opt out. Now, in November, they opt back in for $550 million again, but they get a lot for opting back in, right? They take 6 of the RSNs, they take a lot of other things, and they get MLB.TV. I believe they get the rights to that. I worry that sports rights have gotten really top-tier as the cable bundle goes online. If I think about where the world is going, NFL sports rights are just going to infinity. But I do worry that these big national contracts are at risk. MLB—the thing is, it's such a long season and such a regional play. So, my worry, what I'm driving to, is that there's a reset coming for MLB. I tossed a whole lot to you there. I just want to toss that over to you. How comfortable will you feel with sports rights and everything going forward—1 year, 3 years, 5 years—especially as that RSN bundle, which is where a lot of the baseball money was coming from, is kind of unwinding? Jon Boyar Yeah, it's certainly a risk. It's certainly unknown what's going to happen there. There may be a reason why they're renegotiating. Major League Baseball is putting all these things in, I think making a lot of the stuff expire in 2028 and 2029. There could be a reason for that; there could be a strategy behind it. But I would say I view these things, whether it's the Atlanta Braves or Madison Square Garden Sports, which owns the Knicks and the Rangers, as publicly traded collectibles. If you believe in billionaires and billionaires with egos, you're bullish on these names. It's like a diversifier in a portfolio. I don't think the prestige of those is going away. Obviously, the economics are certainly important, but I think they probably will continue to get better. What you've identified is definitely a risk, and it's worth monitoring. But I think if this team came up for sale, there would be a lot of bidders. Andrew Walker Yeah. No, look, all you have to do is look at the Mets, right? I think the Mets' offseason and the way last season ended has been a little tumultuous, but I believe I heard quotes from Steve Cohen saying owning the Mets is the most fun I've ever had. You are a billionaire. You are literally one of the rulers of the world. Yes, but once you buy a sports team, it's just a different league in terms of the media coverage, your pull, and how you become a celebrity. I think there is something to that. You buy the Atlanta Braves, as you said, it's behind the Yankees; it's the team that everyone kind of knows in baseball. You're a hero in Atlanta, or you might be a villain sometimes, but I do think it really carries cachet. Let me ask another question here. The other interesting thing—I don't know if you know this—in August 2024, I believe, Malone, when he was getting his whole empire in play, gave the CEO of the Atlanta Braves, Terry McGuirk, the rights to his Class B stock. As part of it, he said, “Hey, almost 1 million shares. If you can sell the company for greater than $50 per share, you get the rights to that.” I always thought that was interesting. Now, obviously, the stock's at $40. If you sold it for $50 per share tomorrow, I'd love it. But I did have worries about that. Is Terry incentivized to drag a sale out? If you think about time value of money, if you push a sale, let's just say, 3 years from now, then you get 10% more each year. That's great if you've just got the call option on that $50. It might not be great if—let's change it from 10% to 5%—it's 5% more per year and you push it out 3 years. Now it's below our cost of capital. Did you think there was anything weird about that structure, or anything? Or was I too much in my head about it? Jon Boyar I think Malone, for better or for worse, really lets his employees or the leaders of his companies do whatever they want and gives them free rein. In the case of Warner Bros. Discovery, I don't think that was the greatest thing. He also overcompensates them significantly. Andrew Walker It's a poster child. I'm very involved in it. I'm quite long Warner Bros. Discovery right now with the bidding war, but I would just say, you look at David Zaslav making $1 billion for selling this company, and he put it together at prices way higher. You look at where the buybacks were happening—Liberty Global, LILAK, all these things—what Greg Maffei was making the last few years. Malone is the guy who's supposed to be, “Hey, we eat our own cooking and equity upside.” It just feels to me that these guys—I mean, I'm just blown away that it came to this, and I don't know what was happening. You read Malone's biography. The most glowing praise he has for it is for Mike Fries at Liberty Global, and Liberty Global might be the stock that has ruined the most hedge funds' lives. It is the biggest underperformer, and I just don't know if he's getting the wool pulled over his eyes, or if this is a case of, “Hey, it was such a bad neighborhood; if you didn't have such a great manager, this thing would have been way, way worse.” But I don't know the answer. But yeah, it’s a long, winding way to get to Malone’s compensation. Anything you have on that? Jon Boyar Yeah. No, I disagree with it. Listen, I want to incentivize people, but I think he goes above and beyond the pale for it. In terms of the $50 a share, listen, I think if he can get $60 a share for this thing, he should move on with his life. And what you pointed out happening in 2029 is also a risk with the baseball sports-media rights, so maybe he’s hedging his bet a little bit. But I think Malone is going to drive this thing. He’s certainly very active, I’m sure, behind the scenes, and he’s not going to want to pay and not be able to deduct his biggest expense from income. Andrew Walker On the sale. You know, another worry I always had was that Malone is famously averse to taxes, right? He loves to sell things not for cash but for stock. And a Liberty Braves team, or Atlanta Braves team, is a tough one to find a stock buyer for. I know for years the rumor was one of the original Home Depot crew would buy this with some Home Depot stock, and that would make sense, but it’s a sports team, so there are no synergies. Obviously, there can’t be a public-company buyer for the reason you listed and a thousand others. If I were long a company that announced it was buying a sports team, I’d have my pitchforks out pretty quickly. But how do you think about Malone’s aversion to a sale when his tax basis is going to be pretty darn low on this, I would imagine? And there’s not a stock buyer. Do you think he’s willing to eat that bullet, even with the income-tax changes coming? Jon Boyar Well, the WBD–Discovery–Netflix sale is a fair amount of cash there. Andrew Walker No, no longer controlled by Malone, though, right? He’s chairman of the board, but I think he has a lot of control over Zaslav. Jon Boyar True. But every offer that they were getting was for cash. And I also think at that point you’re looking and saying, “Hey, our standalone value is $12, and we’re getting $27 plus a spin-off from Netflix, and maybe $30 from Paramount.” At that point, it’s like, “Cool, I’ve got to pay a lot of taxes, but I’m making more after-tax than I’d ever dream of.” Andrew Walker Yeah, just on the Braves, it’s one of those things where I think he will sell. But if the offer is $60 and he says, “Hey, this is standalone $40 as a public company,” I wonder if it’s like, “Oh, let’s just keep waiting and keep pushing those taxes off.” I don’t know the answer. Jon Boyar Yeah. No, I mean, I think he’s a pragmatist. He’s a realist. I think he also realizes that, at least for now, the days of big corporations buying these baseball or basketball teams are over. It’s essentially wealthy people or private equity, at least for stakes in them. So I think that’s the only way he’s ever really going to truly realize value. It’s not like these are huge income-producing assets. Andrew Walker Work stoppage in MLB. Lots of questions, lots of rumors that there’s going to be a work stoppage, I believe, next year in MLB. How do you think about that with the Braves? The 1994 work stoppage took 10 years for MLB to come back. A work stoppage can be a death knell for the sport. On the other hand, you could say, “Hey, maybe Malone wants to sell now and get out before the work stoppage.” Maybe that’s a real incentive to get out now. On the other hand, sometimes work stoppages benefit the owners. The players always have less power than the owners, and if the owners are willing to lose a season, that’s a disaster for the players. You can get a lot of resets on the economics. And for baseball, putting a salary cap in place—you could imagine a lot of ways where it could get a lot more profitable a lot more quickly. So I just listed very low lows and very high highs. How do you think about a work stoppage when it comes to this? Jon Boyar I think all of your points are well taken. I think you can make a really good argument for pretty much everything that you said. I would say I look back at history. Look what happened with the NBA. I forgot what year it was. It was 2015. I could be off by a couple of years. Andrew Walker 2010, 2011, 2015. So, a couple of years. Jon Boyar The teams’ values have skyrocketed. So I think you can’t really view it. It’s impossible to handicap. This is a risk-reward scenario to me. As I said earlier, in an expensive market, I’m able to buy this kind of collectible that I think will at least hold its value, probably will increase in value, and have a chance to monetize it significantly above the current price. So this is kind of an interesting play. Andrew Walker No, look, I completely agree. I mean, this and MSGS. Now, MSGS, I thought 5 years ago the Dolans were ready to sell, and now that the Knicks are competitive, I don’t think they’re ever going to sell. But the nice thing here is everything gets sold eventually, right? I’m with you: these are a billionaire’s delights. You buy these things. And the other thing with baseball—the last thing, and then we can wrap up—is that I think 2 or 3 years ago they changed to the pitch clock. Baseball was dead before the pitch clock. It took too long in the modern world. No one cared. I think the pitch clock has made the games more exciting. My daughter’s too young to really know what’s happening, but you go to the games and they’re crisp. There’s a lot more action. You don’t have to commit 4 hours to a normal game. Baseball used to be just the U.S. and some Latin countries. I mean, the influx of Japanese money with Shohei Ohtani—and speaking of Shohei Ohtani, one interesting thing about the Braves is the Dodgers’ payroll and the Mets. The Dodgers and the Mets might push their payrolls so high now. Maybe the work stoppage resets this, but the luxury-tax payments these guys are going to be making—you might be talking about the Braves. A buyer could see some real dividends coming from the luxury-tax money. So I threw a thousand things at you, but I think baseball’s in a better spot than it’s been in a long, long time. I’m a little worried about the media rights, but I do think it’s in a better spot than it was even 12 months ago. So I threw a lot at you. I’ll give you the last word on all that. Jon Boyar Yeah. No, I agree with what you said. You had mentioned something about the Dolans, and it’s my favorite subject. The Dolans are doing great this year. The Dolans might not sell. Who knows? They’re not necessarily rational actors. I think Malone’s a rational actor. Dolan, not so much. There are a couple of things going on this year. Charles Dolan passed away about a year or so ago. Andrew Walker I was actually about to ask you that now that we started talking about it. Please continue. Jon Boyar Yeah, he was the patriarch of the family. He was a genius. He started HBO, or was one of the founders of HBO, had Cablevision, and had the foresight to buy, for a few hundred million dollars, I think, Madison Square Garden, which included the Knicks and the Rangers. I mean, a really, really bright guy. He passed away at 95 or 96 years old. Dolan controls it now. He loves what he’s doing. He loves being the owner of that team. I do think it’s interesting that he has huge relationships in Abu Dhabi. They’re a big sponsor of the Knicks. They’re also doing stuff, I believe, with the Sphere as well. Andrew Walker Allegedly, Sphere 2 is going to be over there. Jon Boyar Yeah. Do they take a minority stake in the team? It wouldn’t shock me. I mean, there’s a lot of money on the table there. We wrote a public letter 6 months ago saying what I think they really should do, because right now the enterprise value is roughly $6 billion for both the Knicks and the Rangers. The Los Angeles Lakers went for $10 billion, so essentially you’re getting the Rangers for free. The idea is to split up both teams into 2 publicly traded companies. Andrew Walker Oh, interesting. Yeah. Jon Boyar And because right now you’re getting zero credit for it, I think there are lots of ways to win there, too. So I’m long professional sports. I think it’s an interesting place to be. But yeah, I just wanted to bring that up. Andrew Walker Yeah. The other thing about the Knicks is that the league has said they’re going to make a decision on expansion this year, from 30 to 32 teams. And I think expansion would be generally good for them. There’s just so much talent in the league. If you’re a league, I understand the national media rights are where it’s at, but developing the fan base and having the locality matters. I think if they put a team in Vegas and Seattle, it sounds like, but I think they should put a team in Mexico City. It should start capturing one more country. Either way, if they get those 2 teams and you’re talking about $3 billion in expansion fees for both of those, you’re going to be talking about $300 million to $500 million of expansion fees coming directly through to the Knicks. And then what do they do with that cash? And for everything you can say about Dolan, I think he’s awful. Him and Al Davis—I love these guys whose dads bought teams, and these guys think they hit a grand slam even though they were literally born at home plate. But I think he's going to return that money to shareholders. If you return $500 million on a $6 billion mark, things get really interesting. You mentioned Charles Dolan passed away at the end of 2024, I believe. We're now into 2026. Are there any tax reasons—or anything else—as the estate evolves where they might say, “Oh, we need to sell this”? Or was it kind of buttoned up in all the trusts and everything? Jon Boyar I'm not sure on that, but I would say that they did sell Cablevision for a lot of money in cash. I don't know what people's individual liquidity needs are, but I don't see that necessarily being a huge deal. It's more of an emotional thing. The patriarch is now gone. Is there less emotional attachment in the next generation? I don't know. Which, again, with James Dolan, is a wild card. James Dolan also—when I think about him, and maybe this is because I'll pause it—but he does the music stuff and everything. He's the son of Charles, so I think younger—I mean, he's 70 now. Even when we talk about the patriarch dying, at some point he's going to pass away, or he's going to have to start thinking about it. The MSG payroll is loaded left and right with Dolans. When he passes away, all of this is in trust, right? You go from having—I think he's got 4 brothers and sisters—you go from having kind of 5 in control to the next generation: 10, 15, 20. At some point, it breaks apart. You saw this with the Lakers, right? Jeanie and her 2 brothers take over. But as more and more mouths have to be fed, these things are worth so much money, and you also have to pay a lot of money. I mean, the Yankees—the Steinbrenners—they're willing to spend, but when they go up against Steve Cohen, they lose every time, and you kind of need to have deep pockets. Anyway. Andrew Walker I rambled a lot on that. Any last thoughts on the Braves, Knicks, or anything publicly sporting? Jon Boyar Yeah, I would say the argument that either Malone or Dolan won't sell—the one thing I would always push back on is that I was shocked when I saw Mark Cuban sell the Mavericks. I can't think of someone whose identity was more wrapped up in a team than his was. So I think really anything is possible when it comes to that. I know he got a big price for the Mavs, but I would love to know more about the real reasons why he sold, because he's got plenty of money. That is a brand. Once you sell, and all these guys realize it, you know, Cuban—I follow basketball very closely—he had an agreement that he was going to be involved in operations going forward. The moment you sell it, a month later they say, “Hey, actually—” Andrew Walker Yeah, you're out of operations. Andrew Walker And for the Mavs, the Luka trade happens. I think they brought him back in for a little bit just because the Luka trade sent their fans into revolt. But all these guys say, “Who's the head of SNL?” Andrew Walker Michael. Jon Boyar I can't remember his name. He's been there. Andrew Walker Yes, yes, Lorne Michaels. Jon Boyar Lorne Michaels has a saying, if you follow anything. He's like, “Look, the moment you leave, they stop returning your calls. You lose the spotlight.” And his whole thing was, “I'm never going to have SNL pulled. I'm going to stay here,” because the moment you leave the sports teams—the moment you sell—I think Cuban probably saw this—your calls get returned a little bit less. Cuban still has some celebrity and everything, but you're just not quite the same player once you sell. Andrew Walker Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's turn to the other one that I wanted to talk about. Actually, before we turn, I want to pause for 1 second and ask 1 other question. You know, when I think about the last years in the Forgotten 40, a lot of media companies were in there. Comcast, I think, was a frequent player. I can't remember if Charter ever made it, but there were a lot of media companies. When I look at this year's Forgotten 40, unless I'm doing too fast a look, there are only 2: Disney and News Corp. Nintendo would be loosely a media company, but that's more gaming and brands. There are some things that go looser. I just want to ask: it's been a rough time for media. When we see only 2 media companies, is that just because it has gotten so bad out there that these are uninvestable? Or are there just better opportunities? Why have the media companies kind of fallen off at this point? Jon Boyar WBD would be a hard one to put in because who knows? It's kind of hard to predict the future there, and the deal had already been kind of announced at that point. Comcast—we have a lot of internal debates on that. It's certainly statistically cheap. There are lots of arguments you can make for it, and we just saw better opportunities. Media has been a really tough place to be. Nintendo really is kind of a media company, which actually could be bought by Comcast at some point in time. Wouldn't shock me. But, yeah, we didn't make a conscious effort. It was just kind of the opportunity set. Andrew Walker You know, I think 5 years ago, I knew people who had talked to higher-ups at Comcast, and they would joke, “Hey, if you guys want to buy Nintendo, that's the 1 acquisition we'd be behind.” I think Comcast would always be like, “Look, it takes 2 to tango.” Here's the issue: Comcast is pulling so hard. I don't know if they could afford Nintendo anymore. They probably could raise the debt, but the opportunity cost of buying their stock at 6 times EBITDA versus buying something and merging it into NBCU—it's an interesting question. There would be a lot of synergies there, though. But, yeah, let's turn to Uber. The other Forgotten 40 stock I wanted to pull out was Uber. Everybody knows Uber, but what's the high-level case for why Uber makes the Forgotten 40 after a pretty nice run since the 2020 recommendation heading into 2025? Jon Boyar We've been writing about this since the low $40s. We really like the name. We think it's still misunderstood on Wall Street. Before, people never thought that they would make a profit. Now they're obviously extremely profitable and gushing out cash. The bear case on it is autonomous driving, and there was probably close to a 20% drawdown toward the end of the year in the stock, which pushed it over the top to be on the list and gave us an opportunity. We really think they're a beneficiary, not a victim, of autonomous vehicles. For a variety of reasons, you look at Waymo. It has a great product, but it's still $150,000 per car or whatever it is. I realize those costs will be coming down, but it will never be economically feasible—or at least in the foreseeable future—for them to launch a product that can satisfy peak demand. They're going to need a hybrid system with Uber, or a company like Uber, in order to compete. I think the only way that we're wrong—or at least the only way we can think of being wrong on this thesis—is that there's only 1 winner in the autonomous-vehicle race and it can create its own app. I think it's going to be like cars: a fragmented market with multiple players. They're also experimenting with Lucid and doing their own fleet as well. It's a global company. You have both the delivery business and the ride-sharing part of the business. There's really a lot to like. Dara has done a really good job. He turned this from a cash-burning company into a real business. My other fear is that he makes a stupid acquisition, which I hope he doesn't do. There were rumors a year or 2 ago that he would buy Expedia. I don't know if that's true. He obviously was involved with Expedia before. That's also, I guess, a risk to the stock. Andrew Walker So you think the Uber opportunity is that the market—particularly at the end of the year, when the stock had the big drawdown—is just too pessimistic on how the AV future plays out here? Jon Boyar Yes. Andrew Walker I think so. I think that's right. I've had a lot of discussions—not a lot recently, but I've had discussions—with my friend Mario Gabelli. I've thought about it, but I can't claim to be an expert. Let me just try to push back, because I would probably agree, but I'll try to push back. If I look at LTM free cash flow here, it's about $8.5 billion, and that ignores about $2 billion of stock comp, right? Jon Boyar The market cap is about $181 billion. Andrew Walker So you're paying 20 times plus for the company here. That makes sense because it's a dominant, growing franchise. It's growing kind of in the high teens to 20%. There's decent operating leverage here. But when I look at those numbers and say, “Hey, Uber is the 1 example”—it's the example I use the most—of a company that has true zero risk. I don't know what the true zero risk is or what the odds of it are, but if you told me in 5 years autonomous vehicles have eaten Uber's lunch and Uber is gone... I can't say the odds of that are absolutely zero. So I would push back on you and say, “Hey, we're paying 20 to 25 times for a 20%-ish CAGR. That's cheapish, but if you assign anything over 0% odds, is there real risk-adjusted alpha here? It feels like you're almost fairly compensated for the risk you're taking.” Jon Boyar Yeah, I think you are being fairly compensated for the risk you're taking. Under your scenario, yes, that's true. I just think it's a highly unlikely thing to happen. There are lots of things that could happen to any company, and that's a risk of investing. That's why we generally stay away from technology companies, because there is that risk of being totally obsolete. Does this become Polaroid? Does it become Kodak? Whatever your example—Xerox. Some of those were zeros; others weren't, but we're pretty close to it. But yeah, it's a risk that it happens. I just think it's highly unlikely. Andrew Walker Yeah. No, I guess I say fairly compensated; I guess when I invest, I want to get unfairly compensated for the risk. Jon Boyar I think more than fairly compensated for the risk, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Twenty times for a company that's growing that quickly is pretty rare. Andrew Walker Where would you put fair value up here? Jon Boyar I think we do it at about a 20-times multiple and get to $132 a share. But I think this stock is not only good for the year ahead. I hate using the word “compounder,” but I think this will be a stock that you want to own for many, many years and just watch it grow on a tax-free basis. Andrew Walker So they've got 2 segments, right? When you say Uber, everyone thinks mobility, but they also have delivery—that's Uber Eats and everything. A few years ago, people were skeptical whether this was ever going to be a competitive business: DoorDash, Instacart, all this sort of stuff. I think it's emerged as the winner. How do you look at Uber Eats, Uber delivery, versus DoorDash and Instacart? Are they a secular winner? Am I thinking about that correctly, or is that a space that's still evolving? Do you have any worries there? Jon Boyar I think what it helps with is the dominance Uber has over Lyft. Why would you become a Lyft driver when you could do both for Uber? Having both services, and also having a larger customer base that has both the rides and the delivery part of the business, certainly makes them one of the dominant players in food delivery. I think it's just a big arsenal, a big tool in their quiver, to have that. But yeah, I was skeptical, and the market was skeptical, coming out of the pandemic. Are people really going to pay somewhat of an inflated price for the convenience of food delivery? I think the market has spoken, but then again, we've been in pretty good economic times for the people who can afford to use their service. So how it handles in a real recession, that's another whole other problem. Did you see the Reddit thing that went viral about the guy who thought he—who said he worked for one of the delivery services and they had all the worst pricing mechanisms you could think of? Andrew Walker No. No. What happened? Jon Boyar Okay, so it was this Reddit post that went viral, and a guy said, “Hey, I'm a software engineer. I work for...” He didn't say which one it was, but reporters contacted him later, and he claimed it was Uber Eats. He was like, “Our algorithms are so specific that we have our delivery drivers, and we can tell if this is a person down on their luck or not. If it's a person that's down on their luck, we know they'll take any job we throw their way, so we automatically throw them the low-value jobs. “And for you at home, we know your sensitivity and how hungry you are so deeply that we'll adjust the pricing. If it's a $20 pizza, but we know you order from this place a lot, it'll be $30 for you and it'll be $40 for the next guy.” So it was really evil stuff, especially on the driver's side. A bunch of journalists investigated it, and it was just a guy making it up. Andrew Walker But it was just a really interesting story because it was on the front page of Reddit, and Uber Eats and DoorDash were responding, “This is not our employee. We don't do any of that.” I mean, it was the type of evil stuff that would be the plot to a B-level Bond villain or something. I guess it wouldn't be a Bond villain because they're just overcharging people for pizza, but it went really viral. I do think it speaks to people's frustration. I know I never do delivery; I always pick up. I'm a hero, I know. But the level of fees—and when I go to a restaurant, I'm like, “Oh, I paid $12 for this burger,” but if I called the restaurant directly and ordered it, it would be $10—I do think there is some type of crackdown or pushback on the fees and pricing. Jon Boyar Well, I think there's a crackdown on tip culture in general, where you go to a restaurant to pick up food and people want to put 10%, 15%, or 20% on the keypad. It gets a little ridiculous, but people really do pay for convenience in the sense of Uber Eats and that part of the world. But I think what's interesting is, I don't know if this is true, but I heard that with Uber, if you have both Uber and Lyft installed on your phone, you get different pricing. Andrew Walker Luckily, I've got both installed. Jon Boyar That's on the apps. That's another one that the viral blog post that was debunked mentioned. It was like, “Hey, you think you're tipping the driver, but our things are so sophisticated that if you offer a $5 tip, then we'll drop how much we're going to pay them by $5 when we offer them the job.” So we can effectively take 100% of the tips. They wouldn't know. But I don't know. I thought it was interesting. Andrew Walker Yeah. My last question on Uber. I think of Uber as interesting because if you think of Waymo, Tesla, or anyone who wants to participate here, if you think long term and they're investing in the fleet—the heavy-asset fleet—Uber is the operating system, right? If Uber is how everybody gets access to that, that is a strategically disadvantaged place for anyone who does this. Tesla has a $1 trillion market cap. Waymo probably, if they raised—I don't know if they've raised recently—but Waymo would be well over a $200 billion market cap for sure if they raised. Do you think Waymo or Tesla looks at this and says, “Hey, we need to own, in my model, the operating system”? Do you think there would be any synergies to an acquisition there, or any strategic logic? Or the capture would be, “Hey, if you think the operating system needs to work with everyone, there's a reason—I'm sure IBM wishes they had acquired Microsoft—but if the operating system needs to work with everyone and Waymo buys Uber, then boom, Lyft is the default player for everyone else, and Uber kind of loses all the strategic advantages.” So do you think there's any acquisition rationale there? Jon Boyar I think there's an acquisition rationale, but I think Alphabet is going to be a rational actor. Musk has said that he doesn't need them, but Musk does say a lot of things that he ends up contradicting himself. I do think, in this regulatory world, that just wouldn't pass muster. But as an Uber shareholder, I wouldn't object if they pay. Andrew Walker Why wouldn't it pass muster from a regulatory perspective? Jon Boyar Tech, you know, I mean, they would have to make some sort of concession. I think they'd have to have this opened up for other people who can access the network. I just think big tech mergers would be pretty difficult. Maybe—I don't know. I'm not an antitrust expert, but— Andrew Walker So, I don't—just like, I'm sure the DOJ would not love it, and there would be a lot of political blowback. But if you went to court, what market are you increasing your market share in? Define the market, because if Waymo buys Uber, Uber has rideshare; Waymo has 0 rideshare. Jon Boyar Waymo is— Andrew Walker You're going to wait 3 years to find out or be proven correct? AT&T did that. Or they wait a couple of years to drag it through court and buy time. Jon Boyar Yeah. [laughter] It would have been better if they just walked away for them. Andrew Walker On a whole host of levels, but I think the argument would be, again, if you're Waymo and you think, “This is the OS we need to control the customer experience. We need to—” Jon Boyar It's strategically important. You buy it, and the DOJ says, “Yes, the big get bigger,” but I don't know what market they would sue to block on. Andrew Walker No, you are correct. My point is I don't think they would want to wait 2 or 3 years to find out, and then potentially, by the time that happens, you have a different presidential administration that could be much more left-leaning and have problems there. I just think it probably won't happen. But I think there is a strategic fit there, and it would be an advantage for Waymo to own it. I think it's really interesting, and Waymo's being smart in not using Uber in a lot of the markets. Jon Boyar And every time they do that, they announce they're going to a city. I think it was recently Minneapolis, although I could be wrong. Then Uber stock goes down. The same thing happened a few years ago. People were worried about Tesla, but now they don't even react to that. Waymo seems to be the real competition, or perceived competition. Amazon is in the game, too. There are lots of well-funded players. Andrew Walker Have you ridden in an autonomous car yet? Jon Boyar Not the full self-driving type of one. I need to get myself to San Francisco or Phoenix or wherever. I've heard it's amazing. Andrew Walker I haven't either. You get used to it, right? People used to take elevators and be scared when there wasn't an elevator operator there. Now it would be weird if you had an elevator operator. I do wonder how I would feel the first time I hopped in and there was no one in the front seat. I'm sure within the third ride I'd be sleeping in the back seat, but that first ride I'd be, "Whoa." This has been great. Look, there are 40 other stocks, and we've talked about 2 of them. Just one quick hit on one more you think is interesting before we wrap this up. Jon Boyar Sure. UniFirst. Do another U. Andrew Walker Oh, my gosh. Jon Boyar You and I have spoken offline about this. It's a super interesting situation. Should I just give a 30-second overview? Andrew Walker Yeah, please. Jon Boyar UniFirst, the uniform rental and distribution company, is a competitor to Cintas. Cintas has tried to buy them—I now think it's 4 times. It's a family-controlled company, and they have 70% of the vote. But this time could be different. In about a month, there's been an activist campaign. Engine Capital went in and is pushing for a sale of the company. One of their nominees, whom they selected for the board and who was defeated, was the grandson of the founder. So there's real dissension in the family. A couple of weeks ago, right after we went to press with The Forgotten 40, Cintas went in and made another bid for $275 a share. The stock was trading at around $160. The synergies are enormous. Cintas would pay well over $300 a share for this company. It is an extremely mismanaged business. They have a turnaround plan to make things better, but even under the best-case turnaround plan, they don't get to $275 anywhere anytime soon. I think the board realizes this. I think they're in a really tough situation, but I think eventually they're going to sell this thing. Right now it's trading for $200. I think it's going to happen well in excess of $300 a share, and we'll see what happens. Andrew Walker Fingers crossed. Look, I would cosign everything you said, and I would just add one more thing. I loosely—I don't think I'm breaking any rules by saying this—know the guys at Engine Capital, and I thought that was the most creative and best activist campaign I saw in 2025. You had a company that was controlled, and every shareholder knows that the company would be better under Cintas's control. For 15 years, they've tried to turn this thing around—margins, growth, everything—and they're just losing across every metric. It would be better to sell to Cintas, take the huge premium, and walk away into the sunset. But for some reason, most of the family wants to stay in control, even though none of them really work there anymore. I don't get it. Jon Boyar I think it's most of the family, from at least what I understand. I think it's 1 or 2 people, unfortunately—the ones who control the trust—who want it. The family is wealthy on paper, but they pay a minuscule dividend, and I think the younger generation wants liquidity, which makes a heck of a lot of sense. As you mentioned, none of them work significantly in the business, so there's no real attachment. The guy Engine Capital was going to put on the board, the grandson, was the last one to work there. He retired, if I remember correctly, 2 or 3 years before. I just thought it was the most creative campaign because they found a controlled company and, obviously, they did not win the proxy fight, but they embarrassed the heck out of the board. They found a way to say, "Hey, the last family member who was working there, the grandson of the founder, he's on our side. He thinks you should sell. Get out." I just thought it was a fantastically creative campaign. I can think of companies that probably need to be sold more, but it's just so obvious, and the buyer is right there: "Hey, here's the checkbook. Here's a huge premium." It's just crazy that a deal hasn't happened. Andrew Walker Yeah. Hopefully this will be the year, and hopefully we'll know sooner rather than later. I cannot think of any reason why they would not, except the family just rejecting it. Is there any rational reason why they wouldn't sell? All right, let's wrap it up there. I'll include a link to The Forgotten 40 in the show notes for anyone interested. We did 2.25 of the names, I would say, so anyone who wants to check out the other 37.75 can go there. This has been great. I'm looking forward to having you on for—we'll make it 5 out of 6 years in 2027. Jon Boyar No, sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.