Update from the PMs – May 2025

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– Andrew Macken & Chris Demasi

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Q1 earnings season is well underway and it’s our first chance to hear directly from corporates all around the world on how Trump’s tariffs are impacting business.

The companies in which Montaka holds ownership stakes remain advantaged, continue to perform well, and remain poised to grow their earnings power for many years to come. And we see tremendous upside potential in their future values.

From ServiceNow, to Visa, to Spotify, Blackstone, Microsoft and S&P Global to name just a few, these businesses continue to deliver reliable growth in large and growing markets. And despite stock prices moving around over recent weeks, the long-term opportunities for these advantaged businesses remain highly attractive and underappreciated, in our view.

While many are intensely focused on near-term tariff-related announcements, we remain focused on long-term possibilities and probabilities. We’re certainly not the first to invest this way, but not everyone does. This month, in Patience and Probabilities: How Montaka’s Competitive Edge Drives Long-Term Success, Lachlan shares some important lessons from investing great, Nick Sleep: “The goal is to understand the long-term probability distribution – the likely range of actual business outcomes – and position portfolios accordingly. That means filtering out the noise of daily market fluctuations.”

Of course, investors can be forgiven for feeling a little nervous given the recent movements of their portfolios. The last two times volatility was at levels seen in April (as measured by the VIX) were (i) Covid 2020, and (ii) the GFC 2008. And it’s Trump’s confusing tariff policies that are at the heart of the financial chaos. To shine a light on the underlying imbalances that have led to this trade war, Andy pens a simple explainer in: The Defining Word of the Trade War is ‘Inequality’ not ‘Tariff’.

Finally, few things are more topical than ‘agentic AI’ of late. And that’s why Andy interviews Montaka’s Amit Nath in this month’s Spotlight Series podcast on all things AI agents and why we believe businesses like Salesforce, ServiceNow and others are very well positioned to take advantage of this transformational new technology, with valuable applications for all corporates, governments and consumers.

 

 

Sincerely,

Andrew Macken & Chris Demasi

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Podcast: Join the Montaka Global Investments team on Spotify as we share real-time examples and investing tips that govern our stockpicks. Click below to listen. Alternatively, click on this link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/montaka

 

 

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