Baron First Principles Strategy

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) designs, manufactures, and launches rockets, satellites, and spacecrafts. Its ultimate goal is to make humanity multi-planetary. Products include reusable orbital launch offerings and a broadband service leveraging its satellite constellation, Starlink.
SpaceX is redefining the future as a vertically integrated leader in space, global connectivity, and AI. Rocket reusability fuels SpaceX's industry-leading launch cadence and scale while driving down cost—enabling rapid Starlink growth across global broadband, mobile services, and next-gen satellite constellations. Looking ahead, orbital AI may offer solar-powered compute at unprecedented scale and efficiency. Together with its in-house chip innovation and platforms like Grok, Macrohard, and Cursor, SpaceX is well-positioned to be a key player in the AI revolution.

Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) manufactures electric vehicles including sedans, SUVs/CUVs, a pickup truck, and a semi-truck. The company is also ramping up internal battery cell production, energy solutions, robotics offerings such as full self-driving and humanoids, and renewable energy generation and storage solutions.
We expect Tesla to continue growing its automotive business as it benefits from the secular adoption of electric vehicles, vertical integration, technological innovation, and cost advantages. The company is also leveraging its core automotive technologies to address the rapidly growing energy storage segment. In addition, Tesla's software and AI expertise is broadening the industrial opportunity to large and profitable revenue avenues that were previously locked in the legacy vehicle architecture, such as autonomous driving, robotics, insurance, and other AI use cases.

FIGS, Inc. (FIGS) is a fast-growing disruptor in global health care apparel industry. Founded in 2013, FIGS designs and sells scrubwear to health care professionals using a digitally native direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy through both its website and growing store base. 
FIGS is disrupting the traditional health care apparel market through a combination of its strong brand, superior product and merchandising, and DTC business model. We see a long runway for growth as the company gains domestic share domestically and expands internationally. We also like FIGS’ strong margin profile, marked by high gross margins, low markdown and fashion risk, and an effective marketing strategy, which we believe can support mid- to high-teens EBITDA margins over time.

MSCI Inc. (MSCI) provides investment decision support tools to global investment institutions.
We believe MSCI, the de facto standard for measuring global market performance, is positioned to benefit from the continuing development of emerging markets, passive investing, sustainability, and the growth of global financial assets. We believe the company's indexes remain the global standard for cross-border investing and will continue to be selected by institutions when issuing new mandates. MSCI’s index products, multi-asset portfolio tools, and risk analytics are mission-critical and deeply embedded in client workflows.

Shopify Inc. (SHOP) is a cloud-based software provider offering an operating system for multi-channel commerce. The company serves millions of merchants and is the second-largest e-commerce player in the U.S., as measured by gross merchandise value (GMV).
Shopify offers a scalable, end-to-end commerce platform that serves merchants of all sizes, including offline, international, and B2B businesses. Its aggregate scale, innovation, and ecosystem of partners allow merchants to run every part of their business on the Shopify platform. The company's access to real-time, transaction-level data across its merchant base strengthens its competitive position, allowing it to share the benefits of scale directly with its merchants. With less than 2% share of $25 trillion in global commerce (ex China), it has a long runway for growth.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H) is a global hospitality company with 1,363 Hyatt-branded properties representing 326,845 keys. The company's brands include Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, and Hyatt Summerfield Suite. It derives 90% of EBITDA from fees and 10% from owned assets.
We believe Hyatt has a significant opportunity to market more of its brands globally, given an undersupply of rooms across the world. Compared to peers, Hyatt has the lowest global brand penetration and the largest pipeline of unit growth. We believe its asset-light strategy and strong balance sheet, coupled with robust pricing for hotel assets, give Hyatt an opportunity to generate strong growth in earnings and cash flow, which the company could use for buybacks and tuck-in acquisitions.

Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR) is an automated global electronic broker. The company provides low-cost execution, clearing, and settlement of trades for retail and institutional customers across multiple asset classes and currencies.
Interactive Brokers is gaining share due to its advanced technology, quality of execution, and low trading costs. We expect the company to continue growing rapidly through international expansion and as domestic RIAs depart traditional institutions to launch their own firms. Interactive Brokers' competitive advantage comes from automation through best-in-class software engineering, which enables it to offer industry-low costs to customers. Founder and Chairman Thomas Peterffy is well regarded and is the company's largest shareholder.

The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW) is a discount brokerage firm offering securities brokerage and other financial services to individual investors directly and through independent financial advisors. The company has over $13 trillion in assets under custody.
Schwab’s emphasis on customer trust has made it a sterling brand in financial services. We believe its investor services division is well positioned to take share from traditional brokerages, while its institutional business continues to gain RIA relationships. The company has made acquisitions that have broadened its product offering and brought new customers onto the platform. As a result, we expect Schwab to retain clients while further lowering its industry-leading cost per client asset.

Spotify Technology S.A. (SPOT) is the world's leading music streaming service, with approximately 40% market share. The company monetizes through several tiers of subscriptions, advertising, and miscellaneous a la carte pricing. 
With over 290 million paying subscribers, Spotify has created a two-sided marketplace where creators can monetize their work and consumers can stream music. Longer term, we expect the company to grow to over 1 billion users (from 761 million today) and improve margins materially through advertising, its artist promotions marketplace, audiobooks, and improved cost discipline. We expect Spotify to continually improve its value proposition through additional features like video, and monetize this value through more optimized pricing tiers.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) provides financial information to the global investment community.
FactSet serves only a small part of the addressable market, which we estimate at over $20 billion annually. The company offers broader datasets and more advanced portfolio analytics than peers and has a highly regarded customer service model. FactSet has also been expanding into the fixed income and wealth management markets. The company's products are sticky, leading to retention rates of over 95% and high visibility. FactSet generates robust free cash flow, which it has returned to shareholders via share repurchases and dividends.