| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 401K | 95 | $107.58 | $10,220 | 0.42% | $91.93 | $1,487 | +17.0% | — |
In short: His flagship idea and the antithesis of the AI trade — "the WeChat of Kazakhstan," a super app cash-flowing $2B a year in a 10-million-person country, trading at "five to seven times cash flow" with a dividend yield "approaching 10%," run by a rockstar CEO who owns ~40-43%. The Turkey expansion is a free moonshot: "if the moonshot doesn't work at all you make two or three times your money… Heads I win, tails I win." Tencent/WeChat bought a big piece when the stock was "taken out back and shot."
Kaspi is a Kazakh "super app" — one phone app that handles your banking, payments, shopping and even your driver's licence, the way WeChat does in China. It trades on the Nasdaq, so an American can buy it easily. Ten years ago it was a broken, failing bank; a manager Pabrai calls a rockstar took it over, rebuilt it into the super app, and now owns roughly 40-43% of the company himself — so his money is in the same boat as yours.
The numbers are the appeal. Kaspi throws off about $2 billion of cash a year in a country of only 10 million people — no other Kazakh company is close — and the shares change hands at only five to seven times that annual cash, with a dividend yield "approaching 10%". Pabrai's point: you don't need a bank account when a business this profitable is paying you 10% a year just to hold it.
The extra kicker is Turkey. The CEO bought a small Turkish bank and a struggling fintech to repeat the Kazakh playbook in a country with eight times the population that is still "all analog, all paper" — and to fund it he suspended the dividend for 12-18 months, which made the share price collapse ("they took the stock out back and shot it"). Tencent, the owner of WeChat, bought a big stake on that dip, and so did the CEO. That collapse is what created the price Pabrai likes. His framing: if the Turkey expansion fails completely you still make two or three times your money on the Kazakh business alone; if it works, the upside is unknown. That's why he calls it "heads I win, tails I win" — not the usual "tails I don't lose much."
16:28He's an awesome manager. The dividend yield on it is approaching 10%. We don't need to put money in a bank. It's trading at like five to seven times cash flow. When it got taken out back and shot, WeChat in China came in bought a big piece. — Okay. — Michael himself bumped up his stake as well. — Right. — Okay? The way I look at this business is they've got the core business in Kazakhstan, which is actually still growing.
In short: His #2 management team/individual across the portfolio ("if you put a gun to my head"), purely on the track record — the quality of the people and what they've done.
Kaspi.kz is the dominant payments, e-commerce and fintech "super-app" in Kazakhstan — think a single app most of the country uses to pay, shop and bank. Here Pabrai isn't making a valuation argument; he's answering which management teams in his portfolio he rates most highly.
Asked for his top two, he names Constellation first and Kaspi second — "if you put a gun to my head" — purely on its track record: the quality of the people and what they've built and delivered over time. It's a vote of confidence in the operators, not a price call.
3:16I think Constellation just has just the most kick-ass DNA and business culture and all of that. I think they're very shareholder oriented, etc. Very disciplined on return of capital and you know, they're they're generating high ROEs and all that. The second one was more challenging for me to figure out, but I would say if you put a gun to my head, I would say something like Caspi, uh just based on the track record, uh would be a good number two in terms of the quality of the of the people and what they've done.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.