TIP797: Born To Be Wired w/ Kyle Grieve
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You're listening to TIP. John Malone is one of the greatest value-creating CEOs of all time. At TCI, he compounded the share price by more than 30% per annum over 27 years. Very few CEOs can do this merely for a few years, let alone a few decades. But Malone was a wizard at generating shareholder value, while doing it in ways that I personally found a little tough to follow.
He understood value at a deep level, and he used his knowledge to find incredible deals for his shareholders. But part of his understanding of value and leverage led to some very interesting deal structures that even confused veteran Wall Street analysts. So today, I'm going to try to remove as much complexity from Malone's strategy as possible. I'll go over his what if not strategy and how he used it to analyze the downside of a potential deal. We'll cover how John used debt through his career very intelligently and how he dealt with several potential liquidity issues, allowing his shareholders and himself to fight another day.
We'll look at how John viewed taxes and why he believed it was his job to keep as much money in his shareholders' pockets as possible. One of my favorite topics I'll cover was John's thoughts on the disruptive forces in his industry, Netflix. We'll look at Netflix through the lens of what John thought could have been, and the forces that kept the cable industry at bay from making moves that would have provided tremendous value. rather than creating this unstoppable hydra that Netflix eventually became. While John's career began many decades ago, his story and lessons remain completely timeless today.
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