| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 401K | 268 | $18.49 | $4,955 | 0.20% | $12.98 | $1,476 | +42.4% | — |
| HSA | 188 | $19.21 | $3,611 | 3.35% | $11.21 | $1,504 | +71.4% | — |
| Total | 456 | $8,567 | 0.19% | $2,981 | +53.4% | — |
In short: "Our current view on QNST: Hold the core position" — a thesis-intact hold with an explicit sizing allowance, after Q4 FY2026 (Aug 6, after the close) sent the stock up 36% in the after-hours session to ~$20.70, a new 52-week high of $20.91 and +84% from the Feb-13 $11.25 entry in under six months. The print "was a pretty thorough validation of every element of the thesis we laid out in February" — that the P&C insurance repricing cycle was restoring carrier profitability and reopening marketing budgets flowing through QuinStreet's performance-marketing infrastructure: revenue $373.9M, +42.7% YoY (4.1% above the $359.3M consensus), adj. EPS $0.50 (13.6% above $0.44), and Q1 FY2027 guided to $375M vs $358.8M — which "signals that management does not believe the Q4 acceleration is a single-quarter phenomenon." The evidence Haymaker leans on is the sequence: $287.8M → $346.1M → $373.9M → $375M guided, "four consecutive quarterly records… with no sign of deceleration," in "a carrier spending recovery that is still in its early innings" — so this is a business "more likely in the middle of its cycle," not one that has pulled growth forward. That the price now sits above the $19 average target is dismissed on a stated rule: "analyst targets are almost always backward-looking relative to earnings inflections of this magnitude, and a 36% single-day move on a 42.7% revenue beat forces a model rebuild"; at ~6.5-7× run-rate EBITDA valuation is not "necessarily stretched." Medium-term case unchanged (12-15% EBITDA margins on $1.5B revenue → $180-225M EBITDA → $2.7-4.1B cap at 15-18× = "more than a double… in excess of a triple"); "what has changed is the timeline… faster than the July base case assumed." The one qualifier is about your book, not the company: holders whose position has grown to "an outsized share of total portfolio weight" have "a rational basis for trimming 25 to 33%" — the sizing question Jul-20 deferred "after the Aug-6 Q4 print," now answered. "The thesis is intact, the execution is exceptional… this is not a high-water mark." Credit to Sy Jacobs.
QuinStreet runs online marketplaces that connect people who are actively shopping — for car insurance, a mortgage, a roofer — with the companies that want their business. It doesn't sell insurance; it sells the introduction, and it only gets paid when the introduction works (a click, a call, a signed customer). So its revenue is essentially a share of what insurers and home-services companies choose to spend on marketing.
That is why Hay bought it in February at $11.25. Car and home insurers had spent two years raising premiums to repair their finances; once profitable again, they compete for customers, and that spending flows straight through companies like QuinStreet. The bet was on the timing of that turn.
The August 6 results settled it. Revenue was $373.9 million, up nearly 43% on the year and comfortably ahead of forecasts, profits beat by more, and — the part Hay cares most about — management guided the next quarter above what analysts expected, which says the surge isn't a one-off. Line the quarters up and you get $287.8m, $346.1m, $373.9m, and a $375m forecast: four records in a row, each bigger than the last. The stock jumped 36% overnight to about $20.70, up 84% from his entry in under six months.
An obvious objection: the stock is now above the average analyst price target of $19. Hay's answer is a general rule worth remembering — analysts' targets lag reality when a company's earnings step-change like this, because a 43% revenue beat forces every one of them to rebuild their model from scratch. On the numbers he cares about, it still trades at about 6.5-7 times its current run-rate cash profits, which is not demanding for something growing this fast.
Where he thinks it goes: if the business gets to $1.5 billion of revenue at a 12-15% cash-profit margin, that's $180-225 million of profit, worth $2.7-4.1 billion at normal multiples — more than double, potentially triple, today's value. That target hasn't changed; what has changed is how fast it looks like arriving.
So the instruction is about your portfolio, not the company: hold the core position. If the 84% gain has made it an uncomfortably large slice of what you own, trimming a quarter to a third is reasonable risk management — but the thesis is intact and he doesn't think this is the top. He also gives the credit away: the idea came from Sy Jacobs, whose late-2023 Sprott call was at one point a four-bagger.
In short: The featured review — recommended Feb 13, 2026 at $11.25, now ~$17.31 (+~57% in five months). QNST runs digital performance marketplaces (cost-per-action lead-gen) connecting high-intent consumers to auto/home-insurance, mortgage and personal-loan clients; the February entry bet the market had priced a cyclical carrier-ad-spend trough (revenue fell from ~$500M in FY23) as a structural decline. The thesis is outperforming: Q3 FY26 record revenue $346.1M (+28% YoY, beat by 2.6%), adj. EBITDA $29.6M (+53%), adj. EPS $0.31; FY26 tracking ~$1.27B, >$1.5B within 18 months. At ~1.0× trailing revenue and ~0.82× forward, "far from overvalued." The incremental thesis is now margin expansion: Q3 EBITDA margin 8.6% → Q4 guide 11.1%; at a 12–15% margin on $1.5B revenue → ~$180–225M EBITDA → $2.7–4.1B implied cap at 15–18× vs ~$1.0B today. Aug 6 Q4 the catalyst (consensus $0.43 EPS, +39% sequential). One flag: CFO Gregory Wong sold 22,057 shares in June ("does not change our view"). Verdict: HOLD the full position — rating moves to H on the Trims/Holds table; "no objection to cutting back a bit at this price." Revisit sizing after Aug 6.
QuinStreet is a middleman for online advertising: when you shop for car or home insurance and click a "compare quotes" ad, QuinStreet is often the plumbing that connects you to the insurer — and it gets paid only when it actually delivers a lead or a customer (that's "cost-per-action"). A couple of years ago insurers slammed the brakes on marketing while they raised prices to fix their businesses, which gutted QuinStreet's revenue and crushed the stock to $11.25. Haymaker bought it in February betting that was a temporary, cyclical low being mistaken for a permanent decline — and they were right: insurers are spending again, revenue is growing ~30% a year, and the stock is ~$17.31, up ~57% in five months.
The new question is whether there's more to come, and Hay argues yes — but for a different reason than in February. Back then the bet was "cheap on sales." Now the story is profit margins: QuinStreet keeps more of every dollar as it grows (its profit margin roughly doubled quarter-to-quarter and management wants it higher still). If margins settle at a normal 12–15% on $1.5 billion of sales, the company could be worth $2.7–4.1 billion versus about $1 billion today. The next big test is the August 6 earnings report, where profits are expected to jump ~39%. One yellow flag — the CFO sold some shares in June — but Hay says that's routine and doesn't change the view. Bottom line: hold the whole position (they'd only "trim a bit" if you want to lock in some of the win), and reassess after August 6.
In short: His FAVORITE & largest lead-gen position — pristine balance sheet, history of buybacks, plus a second home-services lead-gen business he loves (matching home-improvement buyers to roofers/windows/flooring), boosted by the Jan-1-closed, highly accretive HomeBuddy.com acquisition (an earlier-stage, non-cyclical vertical). ~$666M cash/debt-adjusted cap; he sees ~$150–160M EBITDA this year, so "really trading at four-and-change times EV/EBITDA." "If I could only own one of them for the next five years," it's this — best growth profile, least insurance-cycle dependency.
QuinStreet runs websites that connect shoppers to companies who want their business and gets paid for each good "lead" it hands over. Sy's favorite and biggest bet in this group, for two reasons. First, its main insurance lead-gen business rides the same wave as the others (more people buying insurance online + a recovering insurance market). Second — and he may love this part more — it has a separate home-services business: matching homeowners to roofers, window installers, flooring, walk-in tubs and the like. Home improvement is only just starting to move online (mortgages did it 20 years ago, insurance this past decade), so that business is very early and barely cyclical.
It just bought HomeBuddy.com (closed January 1), a fast-growing home-services lead site, paid with about half cash and half debt, and Sy expects the deal to pay off even better than a stock buyback. The company has a clean balance sheet (~$100M cash, only ~$45M debt) and a history of buying back its own shares. Strip out the cash and debt and it's worth about $666M; against the ~$150–160M of earnings (EBITDA) Sy thinks it'll make this year, that's roughly four-and-a-bit times earnings — very cheap for a fast grower. His verdict: best growth, least dependence on the insurance cycle — "if I could only own one of them for the next five years," this is it.
In short: Pick of the Week — a "second-chance" small-cap turnaround at ~$11 (~$600–650M cap), mispriced as an AI victim at ~0.76× sales. The reality: a proprietary insurance comparative-rating platform (QRP, 100+ carrier integrations) that became essential infrastructure in the 2024–25 auto-insurance crisis — FY-Q2-2025 auto-insurance revenue +615% YoY. FY2025 revenue +78% to $1.1B, Adjusted EBITDA +299% to $81.3M, ~$73.5M FCF, $101M cash / zero bank debt. The $115M HomeBuddy deal (closed Jan 2026) adds high-margin auction-exclusive leads + social/native reach (a second traffic source beyond search). Management guides FY26 to $1.25–1.3B revenue / $110–115M EBITDA and a 10% margin milestone (from ~7.3%); at 10–12× EBITDA on $1.3B that's ~$23–28/share. Analyst PT $22–26. Risks: Google/Meta disintermediation, historical Progressive concentration (now <10%), short cancelable contracts, recession cyclicality. Idea from Sy Jacobs. Average into a relatively small position.
QuinStreet runs websites and software that match shoppers with companies that want their business — mostly people shopping for car insurance, and increasingly for home-services contractors. When you compare insurance quotes online, QuinStreet is often the plumbing connecting you to 100+ insurance companies at once (its "rating platform," QRP). That plumbing became suddenly precious in 2024–25: after Covid scrambled the auto-insurance industry, insurers were desperate for customers and flooded QuinStreet with business — its auto-insurance revenue jumped more than six-fold in a single quarter, and full-year sales rose 78% to $1.1 billion while it swung from years of losses to real profit, with no debt.
Despite all that, the stock sits around $11 and trades for less than one year's sales, because investors fear that Google or an AI tool will eventually cut out the middleman, and because the company has a checkered past (it burned investors a decade ago). Hay's argument, sourced from a star stock-picker named Sy Jacobs, is that the fear is overdone: Google has had 15 years and never built this at scale, the platform's carrier integrations took years to assemble, and management is steering margins from ~7% toward 10% — which on its revenue base implies a stock worth roughly $23–28, two to three times today's price. The recently closed $115M HomeBuddy deal adds a higher-margin home-services business and social-media marketing muscle on top. It's risky (a small company, cancelable contracts, real disintermediation risk), so Hay suggests a relatively small position and averaging in — a turnaround bet, not a safe blue chip.
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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.