Chris Judd's Talk Ya Book Podcast · Chris Judd's Talk Ya Book

Sunny Bangia

April 30, 2024·21 min·5 clips

Chris Judd opens with Sonny Bangia at a turning point for Black Wattle Partners. Bangia says the firm is about to launch its global equity strategy. He describes it as high conviction. It is not tied to any one country or industry. The starting point is quality. Bangia says the team wants great businesses. The catch is simple: the business has to be temporarily impaired, not permanently damaged. He is looking for a glitch. That glitch can be cyclical or just temporary. Judd pushes on concentration. Bangia keeps the answer practical and grounded in portfolio construction. The discussion then moves to FICO. That is where things get more detailed. Bangia walks through the economics of the credit-scoring system. He compares the score, the credit bureaus, and the eventual revenue chain. The main question is whether FICO is getting a fair share. His answer is that the market may still be underestimating the company’s pricing power. He argues that pricing has years of catch-up ahead of it, including room to catch up with inflation. AI comes up next. Bangia does not present it as a clean threat. He says the more important path is adoption, not displacement. Newer lenders may start with proprietary systems, but FICO benefits from broader data access across the financial system. That wider dataset can make its score more complete. He also points out that lending is regulated and capital intensive. Those realities make an industry standard especially useful. More fintechs and lenders may decide that plugging into the FICO ecosystem is simpler than replacing it. The result, in his view, is a business with more pricing room than the market may be assuming. The show closes on that larger point. FICO looks like a dominant franchise with latent revenue power. The tone stays measured throughout.

As heard by us

A clear look at quality, pricing power, and why a market leader may still have room to reprice.

Chris Judd lets Sonny Bangia lay out a fairly hard-edged global equity case, then keeps nudging the discussion back to valuation, pricing power, and business quality.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A sharp, numbers-first chat on a newly launching global equity strategy and FICO's pricing power.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Chris Judd's Talk Ya Book Podcast