$DNOW: the boring distributor that could double on 2029 numbers | Firebird Management

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Andrew Walker** (0:32)
You're about to listen to the Yet Another Value Podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today, I've got Steve Gorelik on from Firebird. This is his third time on the podcast and we're talking about, you know, it's funny. When he told me, we're talking about DNOW. DNOW is a distributor mainly focused on oil and gas and now they're upstream, they're midstream, they're downstream, they're all over the oil and gas. And when he was about to come on, I was telling him, you know, it's funny, distributors, they are, I don't know how long this podcast is going to be because distributors are such a boring business. I know you say you've got a distributor and there's not a ton to talk about, but while they're boring, you know, talk to a private equity firm about a distribution group and they're anything but boring to the private equity firm because these businesses are low cap X, very sticky, very difficult to replicate and they've got huge roll up opportunities. So, you know, you think about a Fastnell or you think about a Westco, like these are businesses that both in private and public markets have returned fortunes because if you can just buy them and hold them, like they tend to do really well. Steve's got a really interesting view on DNOW. This was a spinoff 10 years ago and why the spinoff hasn't gone, I don't want to say poorly, but it hasn't gone great. And he thinks the environment is setting up like trowel multiples, trowel everything, and they point this out in their proxy trowel. And they just did a merger, the integrations behind them and the free cash flow starts to explode and I think he lays it out well. And he lays out why he thinks over the next few years, the stock could really, really work from here. So we're going to get to Steve in one second. And I will include a link, I believe, to both his substack and his DNOW presentation in the show notes. So you can go look at those in the show notes, but we'll get there in one second. First, a word from our sponsors.
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All right, hello and welcome to the Yet Another Value Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. With me today, I'm happy to have on for the third time, Steve Gorelik from Firebird Management. How's it going, Steve?