Larry Robbins pitches at Sohn Investment Conference 2026

Hello, hello. I am your semifinal act for today, so I promise I will keep you awake. In answer to the question: No, I do not wear a suit to my men’s league hockey game, but I had this made for CVS’s board meeting because the stock just hit $90, all right? “Together We Build” is a phrase that we use for stocks that are underperforming and that we want to outperform.

There are certainly plenty of opportunities to talk about right now. Last year, I pitched 2 stocks: Teva and Global Payments. I titled the presentation “Double Down” because, just like what we see in the market, many stocks have doubled and many stocks are down. As a matter of fact, there are 41 stocks in the S&P 500 that have doubled over the last year, while almost a third of the stocks are down in an up-30% market. We’ve never seen this kind of dichotomy.

1. The Market’s Great Dichotomy

The question is, which category are you supposed to chase? The answer is, of course, you need to pick in both. Within down stocks, stocks are down for 3 reasons: There are some that visibly stumbled, and there are some that have yet to falter but that people think are clear roadkill. The ones we’re interested in are the ones that are resilient but perceived to face existential threats that are simply not there.

We also don’t mind investing in stocks that have doubled if they have 2 different characteristics: either we find continued value in AI infrastructure with rapidly accelerating fundamentals, or they are former fallen angels that reclaimed their wings but whose valuations were so cheap that they still remain attractive. In 10 minutes, I’m going to give you 9 companies and challenge how quickly you guys can listen and take pictures. They fall into 3 categories: down but a coiled spring, doubled with huge momentum, and doubled but we still love them.

2. Global Payments Keeps Executing

Starting with Global Payments, which I pitched last year and will pitch again this year because, in fact, they hit every number. Yes, they do process transactions for Middle East Airlines that are obviously going through a very unique travel disruption. That took literally 0.2% out of volume growth last quarter and may take 1% of volume growth out of the year, but the company continues to execute. Their leverage will be down to 3 times.

Their Genius product is, in fact, genius, taking share in the marketplace. We have Elliott on the board, and we have Silver Lake on the board. They will buy back $7.5 billion worth of stock. You get what we believe is accelerating earnings growth that will be above 20%. What are you paying for that? Four—yes, 4—times earnings.

3. Genius Sports Owns The Data

We’re involved with a small company called Genius Sports, ticker GENI. They are the data layer that sits between the NFL and your sports gambling, so that we can verify how much yardage happened, what the play percentage was, and all those prop bets, as well as the bets on the overall games. Their contracts on the gaming side—75% of revenues—are long-term contractual. They have 20% price escalators. This is as good a business as we have seen.

They did an acquisition in February, at a time when private credit markets were collapsing. People did not like acquisitions, and they did not like levering up. We liked the acquisition. We have them trading at 4 times our 2028 earnings estimate for a company that we believe is going to grow its top line 20%, and EBITDA and EBIT 30%. Trading at 4 times, they are levered today. We believe that their leverage will be under 1 time, inclusive of paying an earnout based on the success of that acquisition.

4. AI Momentum Is Different

Nobody knows what to do if you own AMAT, AMD, ONTO, Intel, or anything else that’s gone bananas. I would simply point out that, while this is not our normal thing, we have owned these stocks for a while. We have benefited from them, and we’ve done some very selective selling as they’ve certainly changed on a risk-reward basis.

I would point out that the revenue growth is astounding. The valuations, which are all anchored at about 20 times 2028 earnings, do seem to be not only reasonable but attractive if one understands that by 2030 these companies are going to still be in hypergrowth mode. We know that the hyperscalers continue to spend. We know that the number of tokens for inference continues to explode. We know that the companies that are reporting their ARR on large language models are, of course, accelerating.

Maybe this time next year Claude will be speaking on my behalf, but nonetheless, as long as I’m here, I can make the observations. It’s literally never happened in the 26 years we’ve been around that we’ve seen this kind of momentum. In the Nasdaq 5,000 in 1999, there was a date certain and a time certain that it would all end, because it was a dramatic pull-forward. Here, we believe that this is going to accelerate, and then it’ll plateau or slow down in growth, but not give back.

We can see that AMD’s earnings estimates have gone from $7 to $16-plus currently. I think the Street’s at $12, whereas it’s $16-plus. I would point out that most bulls think that $40 to $50 is AMD’s earnings power in 2030, and therefore a $440 stock price isn’t irrational when one thinks about what multiple it’ll end up at by the end of 2029. Of course, the pick-and-shovels guys—the AMATs and the ONTOs—can’t possibly be producing capacity fast enough to sell equipment into the semiconductor industry.

5. CVS Repairs Its Earnings Power

Which brings me to my beloved CVS, of which I’m still on the board. The company has made an enormous amount of progress in the last 18 months since I and 3 others joined the board, since they changed their CEO, and since they changed their culture and began the process of repairing the company. They’re all the way up to 10 times earnings, which, again, looks to be extremely attractive to us.

All of this is publicly available information. This was Glenview’s slide that we shared with the top 450 managers 1 year ago, in April 2025, to explain to them what we thought the implied earnings trajectory would be if we simply got the Aetna businesses, as well as a business called Oak Street, from losing money to break-even, and then from break-even to target margins over a period of years. Here are the earnings that it would unlock. In fact, we thought that the earnings could double on that alone.

That means no generation of cash flow. That means no growth in either business. Just literally that could double earnings. We would point out that, of the potential earnings growth, two-thirds came simply from fixing the Medicare Advantage business.

The company is well on its way toward repairing the company. They’ve had 5 straight quarters of beating and raising. Leverage at the company has come down significantly, from just under 5 times to 4.1 on a Moody’s-adjusted basis and 3.5 on a straight-up basis. They’ve gone from $0 in Aetna to $4 of Aetna. They still have much more to go.

There’s a very exciting tech initiative they have called Health 100 that will reveal itself over the course of the next 12 months. They will finally be in a position to deploy offensive capital at year-end or at the beginning of next year, as their leverage comes down and supports their strong investment-grade credit ratings.

By the way, earlier you heard from David Einhorn on Centene. Our thesis in Medicare Advantage and in CVS does rhyme. We own Humana. We own Centene. David is right. I do believe that business is quite durable, and the pendulum swing is happening for all the MA players.

6. Teva And Viatris Stay Cheap

We continue to like Teva despite its progress. Last year, we said the pipeline was worth $3 to $9 a share. The TL1A product continues to get great data. We believe the pipeline value has increased to $6 to $12 a share. The company is 1 year closer to its margin goals of hitting a 30% margin target.

We believe that you’re going to see 20% earnings growth next year in order to get from point A in 2026 to point B. The company is trading at 11-and-change times next year’s earnings for that type of earnings growth. If you value the pipeline and back out the stub value, because the pipeline does not contribute to earnings until 2029 or 2030, you’re paying 7.5 times for the core business, with a management team that clearly has to be viewed as having tremendous credibility.

If you think you missed Teva, Teva Lite is called Viatris. That stock has also doubled. It’s all the way up to 6 times earnings, which means, yes, it was trading at 3 times earnings a year and a half ago. Their pipeline is different. It’s not quite as major a blockbuster, and it has a little bit more risk associated with it, but we are constructive about their pipeline. We are constructive about the overall balance sheet and capital deployment. It’s trading with a very high free-cash-flow yield, and we think there’s lots of good optionality to that.

7. Tenet Delivers A Turnaround

Finally, I would mention the fact that when we say “Together We Build,” we mean it. We revamped the board of Tenet Healthcare almost a decade ago. It’s been one of the best turnarounds that we’ve seen in healthcare. They continue to provide more for less. Their ASCs continue to grow, providing healthcare and surgeries in a lower-cost setting than an acute hospital.

I would look at the stock price chart on the top right and note that, while the stock has tripled, that’s because the earnings tripled. We’ve had absolutely no multiple expansion, despite the fact that leverage has come way down, the portfolio has evolved, and Dr. Sam Sataria, as CEO, has proven himself to be, honestly, one of the top CEOs that we’ve ever seen throughout our 25 years.

The company has an active buyback plan. If they were to fix leverage at 3 times EBITDA, they could buy back two-thirds of the company at these prices over the next few years.

We don't think that's going to happen because we think the stock will continue to perform quite well. With that, I would again thank you all for supporting the Selan Foundation in its 31st year and all of its good work. Take care.