Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
RT @DimitryNakhla: A quality valuation analysis on $ICE 🧘🏽‍♂️

•NTM P/E Ratio: 20.98x
•5-Year Mean: 22.29x

•NTM FCF Yield: 5.06%
•5-Year Mean: 4.85%

As you can see, $ICE appears to be trading slightly near fair value

Going forward, investors can expect to receive ~6% MORE in EPS & ~4% MORE in FCF per share🧠***

Before we get into valuation, let’s take a look at why $ICE is a quality business

BALANCE SHEET🆗
•Cash & Equivalents: $850M
•Long-Term Debt: $17.36B

$ICE has an OK balance sheet, an A- S&P Credit Rating & 6.03x FFO Interest Coverage

RETURN ON CAPITAL🆗
•2020: 7.8%
•2021: 8.6%
•2022: 8.3%
•2023: 7.5%
•2024: 8.5%
•LTM: 9.3%

RETURN ON EQUITY🆗
•2020: 11.4%
•2021: 19.2%
•2022: 6.6%
•2023: 10.0%
•2024: 10.5%
•LTM: 11.5%

$ICE has decent return metrics as the company relies heavily on acquisitions

REVENUES✅
•2015: $3.34B
•2025E: $9.89B
•CAGR: 11.46%

FREE CASH FLOW✅
•2015: $1.12B
•2025E: $3.97B
•CAGR: 13.49%

NORMALIZED EPS✅
•2015: $2.43
•2025E: $6.90
•CAGR: 11.00%

SHARE BUYBACKS❌
•2015 Shares Outstanding: 559.00M
•LTM Shares Outstanding: 576.00M

MARGINS✅
•LTM Gross Margins: 100.0%
•LTM Operating Margins: 49.6%
•LTM Gross Margins: 32.4%

***NOW TO VALUATION 🧠

As stated above, investors can expect to receive ~6% MORE in EPS & ~4% MORE in FCF per share

Using Benjamin Graham’s 2G rule of thumb, $ICE has to grow earnings at a 10.49% CAGR over the next several years to justify its valuation

Today, analysts anticipate 2026 - 2028 EPS growth over the next few years to be slightly more than the (10.49%) required growth rate:

2025E: $6.90 (14% YoY) *FY Dec

2026E: $7.50 (9% YoY)
2027E: $8.36 (11% YoY)
2028E: $9.45 (13% YoY)

$ICE has a great track record of meeting analyst estimates ~2 years out, but let’s assume $ICE ends 2028 with $9.45 in EPS & see its CAGR potential assuming different multiples

25x P/E: $236.25💵 … ~15.9% CAGR

24x P/E: $226.80💵 … ~14.4% CAGR

23x P/E: $217.35💵 … ~12.9% CAGR

22x P/E: $207.90💵 … ~11.3% CAGR

21x P/E: $198.45💵 … ~9.8% CAGR

As you can see, we have to assume ~22x earnings for $ICE to have double-digit CAGR potential

At 24x - 25x, $ICE can CAGR near the mid-teens

$ICE is a high-quality business with a wide-moat & generates ~65% of total revenue from their exchanges revenue — the other ~35% from fixed income & data services revenue & mortgage technology

Though $ICE has traded for an average ~22x multiple over the past 5 years, I believe it’s justified for it to trade for 24x - 26x given its predictability & moat, among other things

$ICE is also still founder led — Jeff Sprecher (Founder & CEO) continues to be a brilliant leader with strategic foresight & a strong track record of executing complex integrations

Today at $153💵 $ICE appears to be a good consideration for investment with a decent margin of safety

#stocks #investing
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𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄‼️

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫, 𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲.

𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥® 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝. 𝐀𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞.

𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐛𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬. tweet

EndGame Macro
When Banks Start Saying No: The First Real Crack in the Economy

The blue line is the share of households who applied for any kind of credit over the past year. That’s been pretty steady for a decade, hovering around the low 40% range. In October 2025 it’s 41.1% nothing dramatic there.

The red line is the problem. That’s the share of applicants who were rejected for at least one credit product. A decade ago that sat mostly in the low to mid teens. Now it’s 24.8% roughly one in four and at a new series high. People are asking for credit at roughly normal rates, but a much larger share are being told “no.”

That’s about lenders pulling back. You’re seeing it first in autos and subprime, where non performance is rising, but the aggregate line tells you the mindset has shifted: banks and finance companies are moving from how much can we lend to how do we avoid being caught when the cycle turns.

How rising unemployment feeds into this

As unemployment edges higher, banks don’t wait for defaults to explode before they act. Their models are built on probabilities: when jobless rates move up, the expected chance of a borrower missing payments moves up too. That triggers a few predictable behaviors:
•They raise minimum credit scores and income requirements.
•They cut back on higher risk products (subprime autos, unsecured personal loans, certain cards).
•They quietly reduce limits and become much pickier on borderline files.

From the borrower’s perspective, nothing looks different until they apply and then suddenly the answer is no, or the terms are so bad they walk away. That’s exactly what a rising rejection rate captures.

And once that process starts, it can reinforce the very weakness banks are trying to avoid. People who lose hours or a job can’t use credit as a bridge. They miss payments faster. Delinquencies tick up, validating the banks’ caution and leading to even tighter standards. It’s a feedback loop.

How it trickles into the real economy

When access to credit tightens like this, the impact shows up with a lag, but it’s real:
•Big purchases get delayed or cancelled: cars, appliances, home repairs, education financing.
•Lower and middle income households, who rely most on credit to smooth shocks, pull back hardest on discretionary spending.
•Small businesses that depend on consumer demand see slower sales, and they respond the only way they can: they freeze hiring, cut hours, or trim staff.

So a line on a Fed chart that says 24.8% rejection rate is not just a technical curiosity. It’s an early sign that the adjustment margin in this cycle is shifting from price of credit (higher rates) to availability of credit (more no’s). That shift is usually what takes an economy from feeling merely tight to feeling genuinely strained.

People can live with higher rates for a while. They can’t do much when the answer just becomes…you don’t qualify anymore.

NY Fed: consumer credit application rejection rate hit new series high in Oct, just shy of one-in-four, due in part to auto-loan rejection climbing significantly amid subprime debt nonperformance... https://t.co/fgDlKOGGOy - E.J. Antoni, Ph.D.
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App Economy Insights
Saudi PIF just crashed the $WBD bidding war.

Potential buyers include:
$CMCSA, $NFLX, $PSKY.

Now the PIF is reportedly the surprise frontrunner. https://t.co/AkuJenpAPF
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Fiscal.ai
Ozempic (Novo Nordisk) v. Mounjaro (Eli Lilly)

Novo Nordisk continues to lose market share to Eli Lilly in the weight-loss drug category.

$NVO $LLY https://t.co/ok5qATzbTu
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Quiver Quantitative
Representative Mike Collins bought up to $165K of a meme coin called Ski Mask Dog over the last year.

It has now fallen 95% from its all-time high in December. https://t.co/Njw3XncIJe
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WealthyReadings
RT @WealthyReadings: 🚨 $TMDX is dirt cheap, and I don’t say that often.

Financials are strong. Growth is strong. Multiples are reasonable. And we’re set up for a Q4 beat.

Here’s why $TMDX will go higher, why they’ll likely beat FY expectations and why it is one of the best buy on the market 👇

Quarter flight numbers so far.
🔹October: 773 flights → 24.9 per day
🔹November to date: 317 flights → 26.4 per day
🔹Q4 to date: 1,090 flights → 25.3 per day

As of today, not even halfway through Q4, $TMDX has generated around $74.4M in revenue, roughly half of what’s needed to hit the low end of its FY guidance - which has already been raised three times this year.

This comes after just 43 days, with 49 days left in the quarter.

At the current pace of 25.3 flights per day, they’re on track for.

≈ 2,330 flights total in Q4
≈ $159M in revenue

That would push FY25 revenue toward the high end of their guidance without any acceleration in flight frequency.

And december is historically the strongest month of the quarter, and the second strongest of the year in terms of transplant activity and flight data for $TMDX.

So if they simply maintain this rhythm, they’ll hit the high end of their guidance and if flights accelerate - as history suggests, we're up for a beat.

That being said, my calculations aren't perfect, nothing really is, but there are reasons to expect a strong quarter based on today data for $TMDX.

All while the stock trades at its lowest multiples in years, with many bullish catalysts ahead.

🔹 Rapid growth & expanding margins
🔹 Recession proof business model
🔹 Multiple short-term growth verticals
🔹 Strong winter seasonality
🔹 Competition acquirerd 20×+ sales

You'll find everything you need to build your convictions just below 👇
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EndGame Macro
Basel Softens, Stress Rises: The Fed Isn’t Saying It Out Loud, But It’s Acting Like It Sees Trouble Ahead

On the surface, this all looks like routine regulatory housekeeping, the Fed meeting bank CFOs about Basel rules, and the New York Fed holding a call about the Standing Repo Facility. But taken together, it reads like the Fed quietly admitting the system is running tighter than they want to publicly acknowledge.

They’re not ringing the alarm bell. They’re doing something more subtle: backing away from anything that could make conditions worse, and rehearsing the playbook in case something snaps.

Why the Fed Is Softening Basel Right Now

The original Basel Endgame proposal would’ve forced big banks to hold a lot more capital. That sounds great in a classroom…safer banks, bigger buffers but in the real world, when balance sheets are already stretched, it means less lending and less capacity to absorb the flood of Treasury issuance.

And the Fed knows what the backdrop looks like:
•QT has pulled reserves out of the system.
•The RRP is basically empty.
•Treasury issuance is huge and persistent.
•SOFR and repo have already shown flickers of stress.
•Banks are treating balance sheet space like a scarce resource.

Put big capital hikes on top of that and you’re basically telling banks to take a step back just when the entire system needs them to lean in. No regulator wants to be the one whose rule helped cause a credit squeeze.

So they’re scaling it back and presenting a friendlier version next month, a version where capital stays relatively flat, not meaningfully higher. That’s the giveaway. When times are good, regulators tighten. When things feel shaky, they ease off.

This is the easing off phase.

Why the SRF Meeting Is the Other Half of the Story

You don’t call an impromptu meeting on the SRF, the system’s emergency funding hose unless you’re worried people may need it.

Or worse: that they won’t use it when they need it.

Banks still see stigma in borrowing directly from the Fed. It looks like weakness to boards, shareholders, regulators. So the Fed is checking in early, trying to normalize the idea of tapping the SRF if funding gets tight.

That’s the part most people miss:
This wasn’t about solving a crisis. It was about preventing one in a system where the buffers have gotten thin and liquidity doesn’t slosh the way it did a couple years ago.

What This Foreshadows

The Fed is acting like a group that sees what’s coming over the hill. They see:
•a cooling labor market,
•rising credit rejection rates,
•delinquencies starting to climb,
•spreads widening quietly,
•and less balance sheet capacity across the banking system.

In a world like that, even small shocks can hit harder.

So instead of waiting for a 2019 style funding spike or an accidental credit tightening, they’re doing two things in advance:
1.Remove any extra strain they might impose on banks.
(Hence the softer Basel rules.)
2.Make sure the emergency firehose actually works.
(Hence the SRF meeting.)

This is what central banks do when they’re not panicking, but they’re no longer comfortable either. It’s the institutional version of tightening the seatbelt when the road ahead starts to look uneven.

My Read

This isn’t deregulation for convenience or a random check in. This is the Fed acknowledging…quietly, indirectly that the economy is losing altitude and the financial plumbing is running with less slack than it used to.

They’re not trying to juice the system. They’re trying to keep it stable long enough to navigate a deteriorating backdrop.

The message buried under the headlines is simple…they see the stress building early, and they’re backing away from anything that could make it crack.

The Federal Reserve will meet the chief financial officers of big US banks next month to detail its updated plans for implementing international capital standards, said JPMorgan Chase Vice Chairman Daniel Pinto https://t.co/67tML[...]

BTv0N - Bloomberg tweet

EndGame Macro
Cities Want Yesterday’s Values. Homeowners Are Paying Today’s Bill

What’s happening in Chicago isn’t an isolated story or some freak policy choice. It’s the natural consequence of a simple math problem every major city in America is now dealing with: the property values that surged during the Covid era, especially downtown office buildings aren’t coming back, but the cities still want the revenue those inflated valuations once produced.

Covid Gave Cities a Mirage

During the pandemic, when money was cheap and asset prices were flying, commercial real estate valuations were pushed to levels that never made real economic sense. Cities loved it. A higher assessed value meant higher property tax revenue without raising the tax rate. It was painless and politically convenient.

But once offices emptied out, leases expired, and remote work became permanent for millions, the underlying value of those buildings started to collapse. The market is adjusting fast but cities are not. They’re still trying to collect taxes on yesterday’s fantasy prices.

Now Homeowners Are Becoming the Backstop

When CRE values fall, the total tax levy the city needs doesn’t magically shrink along with them. So the burden shifts toward the people who can’t contest their valuations as easily and can’t walk away from their property: homeowners.

That’s why you’re seeing record hikes in places like Chicago. And it’s why commercial landlords everywhere are taking their local governments to court. They know their buildings aren’t worth what the assessors claim. The valuations are stuck in early 2022, while the market is living in 2025.

This Is Going National

It’s not just Chicago. Any city that relied heavily on downtown property values like New York, San Francisco, Boston, D.C., Seattle, even second tier metros is going to face this same squeeze. They need the tax revenue to fund schools, pensions, public safety, and basic services. But the assets that used to generate that revenue have been structurally repriced lower.

When cities refuse to update those valuations, the pressure ultimately spills onto homeowners and small businesses. When they do update those valuations, they blow a hole in their budgets.

Either way, someone has to absorb the loss. Covid inflated the numbers. The market corrected them. Now the bill is being passed around and homeowners are next in line.

Chicago homeowners are getting hit with a record property tax hike after the city's downtown office buildings and CRE values fell sharply again.

#MacroEdge - MacroEdge
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