I continue to be amazed Clear is still in business. I've had it for years (free through a CC), but I think I use it once per year at most. TSA is slowly but surely improving, and "Touchless" beats Clear every time.
TSA has gotten a lot better in my experience too. I think of Clear as a kind of luxury or perk for very frequent travelers. It may be just as convenient as current-TSA 90% of the time, but those 1 in 10 moments for a person who travels twice a month may be worth it, like a luxury insurance policy against stress.
I bought another digital security company recently: OneSpan. They have navigated the hardware -> subscription software transition after years of efforts from an activist fund called Legion Partners. In the worst case, stock is roughly fairly valued around $17. Best case, stock trades at a higher multiple (now it’s about 2.5-3x EV/ARR for a business that’s not growing much) and can go up, if I recall correctly, 60-100%. The counter argument is that a non-growing SaaS company does not deserve multiple expansion. It depends on whether they can increase maintenance revenue.
This was super interesting to read. It will be interesting to see how Clear evolves. One of the most difficult things for an investor, in my view, is selecting the universe in which to play. How to identify above-average businesses that will hopefully flourish into the foreseeable future. This framework that you distill I think could be really helpful if people apply it. Good work.
Thanks for the kind words! Although I didn't explicitly say it, there was a lot of judgment in narrowing the list down, which reflects your point about the difficulty in selecting the universe.
I continue to be amazed Clear is still in business. I've had it for years (free through a CC), but I think I use it once per year at most. TSA is slowly but surely improving, and "Touchless" beats Clear every time.
TSA has gotten a lot better in my experience too. I think of Clear as a kind of luxury or perk for very frequent travelers. It may be just as convenient as current-TSA 90% of the time, but those 1 in 10 moments for a person who travels twice a month may be worth it, like a luxury insurance policy against stress.
I bought another digital security company recently: OneSpan. They have navigated the hardware -> subscription software transition after years of efforts from an activist fund called Legion Partners. In the worst case, stock is roughly fairly valued around $17. Best case, stock trades at a higher multiple (now it’s about 2.5-3x EV/ARR for a business that’s not growing much) and can go up, if I recall correctly, 60-100%. The counter argument is that a non-growing SaaS company does not deserve multiple expansion. It depends on whether they can increase maintenance revenue.
This was super interesting to read. It will be interesting to see how Clear evolves. One of the most difficult things for an investor, in my view, is selecting the universe in which to play. How to identify above-average businesses that will hopefully flourish into the foreseeable future. This framework that you distill I think could be really helpful if people apply it. Good work.
Thanks for the kind words! Although I didn't explicitly say it, there was a lot of judgment in narrowing the list down, which reflects your point about the difficulty in selecting the universe.