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🍋 Soho House Checks Out

🍋 Soho House Checks Out

Plus: Citi’s raid on JPM bankers crosses double digits, Apollo pushing financial engineering boundaries, SPAC King returns, and foreigners are piling into U.S. real estate.

Short Squeez
August 19, 2025

Together With

“No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.” — General George S. Patton, Jr.

Good Morning! Citi’s raid on JPMorgan has now poached more than 10 bankers. Apollo is pushing the limits of financial engineering with its Fox hedge to boost insurance returns. And Ethereum’s biggest backers are unleashing billions to break deeper into Wall Street.

Google is planning to build a nuclear plant by 2030. BofA says the era of mega-cap dominance may be ending, while foreigners are piling into U.S. real estate and Vanguard readies its first active stock-picking ETFs.

Plus: Ozempic is going half-price for U.S. patients paying cash, YouTube wants to host the Oscars, Duolingo’s social mastermind Zaria Parvez is moving on after building its TikTok to 8M followers, and Sam Altman warns the AI market is bubbling.

Mosaic takes you from CIM to LBO in just 5 minutes, error-free. Already trusted by CVC, Investcorp, New Mountain, and Warburg Pincus. See it in action.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Soho House Checks Out

Soho House is officially going private, capping a turbulent four years on the public markets. The members-only club operator agreed to a $2.7 billion take-private deal led by MCR Hotels (owner of New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, among others), with financing from Apollo and Goldman Sachs, plus a splash of Hollywood, with Ashton Kutcher joining the board.

Shareholders will receive $9 per share in cash, a 17.8% premium to the last close. The stock jumped 15% on the news, a sharp turn for a company that went public in 2021 at $14 a share before losing nearly half its value.

Despite growing to more than 40 clubs worldwide and 270,000 members, Soho has struggled to turn a profit. In Q2, revenue rose nearly 9% to $330 million, but investors never bought into the idea that exclusivity could scale under quarterly earnings pressure.

MCR’s CEO Tyler Morse will step in as vice chairman, while Neil Thomson replaces Thomas Allen as CFO. Founder Nick Jones and executive chairman Ron Burkle will retain majority ownership.

Hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb, a 10% shareholder who had pushed for a fair sale process, also threw his support behind the deal.

Apollo is playing a central role too, contributing roughly $850 million in hybrid capital.

Soho’s story began in 1995 when Nick Jones opened the first club above his Café Boheme in London’s Soho neighborhood. Today, the club has locations across Europe, North America, and Asia.

Takeaway: Soho may be going private, but its challenges are far from over. A private members’ club probably should have stayed private… and with Apollo in the room, expect restructuring and plenty of it. Let’s just hope the next round of “restructuring” doesn’t involve $25 cocktails becoming $50.

HEADLINES

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CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Equities closed mixed as investors looked ahead to retail earnings this week
Industrials and consumer discretionary sectors led gains; real estate and communications lagged
10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.33%, still below its July peak of ~4.50%
Asia markets mostly higher, with Japan’s Nikkei at record highs; Europe higher on optimism around Ukraine talks
Dollar strengthened vs. majors; WTI oil gained on Russia-Ukraine discussions and India’s oil imports

Economic Data Highlights

Retail earnings in focus: Home Depot (Today), Lowe’s and Target (Wednesday), Walmart (Thursday)
S&P 500 earnings season: 92% of companies have reported, with 82% beating estimates; avg. 8.4% surprise
Earnings growth forecast revised to 10.4% from 3.8% earlier in the quarter
Strength broad-based across 10 of 11 sectors, with energy the lone laggard
2025 earnings growth projected at 10.3%, supported by Q1’s strong 12.8% rise

Reported Earnings

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) – EPS and revenue both topped expectations; commentary highlighted strong AI-driven security adoption and resilient enterprise demand

Earnings Today

Home Depot (HD) – Watch for housing-related demand trends and DIY vs. pro segment performance
Medtronic (MDT) – Focus on surgical device sales, margins, and innovation pipeline
XPeng (XPEV) – Key metrics include EV deliveries, gross margin recovery, and China market share

Movers & Shakers

(+) GoodRx Holdings ($GDRX) +37% after striking a deal to sell Novo Nordisk's GLP-1s for $499/month.
(+) Duolingo ($DUOL) +13% because of an upgrade to overweight at KeyBanc Capital Markets.
(–) Antero Resources ($AR) -6% after a downgrade by Roth, threat of oversupply in the gas market.

Private Dealmaking

Soho House to be taken private in $2.7 billion deal
Advent International bought U-blox for $1.3 billion
Amphenol to buy Trexon from Audax Private Equity for $1 billion
IVIX, an AI finance platform, raised $60 million
XOPS, an autonomous IT company, raised $40 million
Sola, an AI co-pilot for robotic process automation, raised $21 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Primal Intelligence

Description: A groundbreaking dive into the hidden power of the human mind. Fletcher introduces Primal Intelligence, a form of intuition, creativity, and emotional clarity that AI can’t replicate—and that we can all develop. Backed by neuroscientific research and real-world applications (including U.S. Army Special Ops), this book offers a proven path to outthinking uncertainty, seeing the future more clearly, and making wiser decisions under pressure.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: August 19
Audiobook Length: 9 hrs 3 mins

Ideal For: Creatives, innovators, high-pressure professionals, educators, and anyone looking to unlock deeper cognitive agility in a fast-changing world.

“A fascinating exploration of human potential that will change how you think about thinking… Essential reading for anyone who wants to thrive in an uncertain world.” — Daniel H. Pink

DAILY VISUAL

Tech Is Vulnerable

AI will have a significant impact on our lives and productivity. But that doesn’t mean that the tech companies in the S&P 500 are correctly priced.

The P/E ratio for Tesla is almost 200, and the P/E ratio for Nvidia is around 60. Many software companies are likely to go out of business because of ChatGPT.

The bottom line is that it is not clear that the tech stocks in the S&P 500 are the best choices when investing in the AI theme, and the chart below shows that the situation today is surprisingly similar to the IT bubble in the 1990s.

Sources: Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist (Torsten Slok)

PRESENTED BY BILT

Rent Rewards Startup Hits $10.75B

Bilt just raised a fresh round of funding at a $10.75B valuation; a testament to how fast the rent rewards platform is scaling.

With over 5M renters using Bilt to earn points on rent payments, redeemable for travel, fitness, dining, and even home down payments, the company is reshaping how renters build value.

DAILY ACUMEN

Delta

A stock’s delta tells you how much its option price will change with the underlying move.

Translation: it’s not the level that matters, but the rate of change.

The same is true in your career. Two people may sit at the same desk today, earning the same salary.

But one is compounding skills, building networks, absorbing asymmetric knowledge; the other is coasting.

Their present looks identical, but their delta is worlds apart.

Investors obsess over absolute valuation, but the best focus on momentum of improvement—who’s accelerating faster than the market realizes.

In life, delta is your secret signal.

You don’t need to be ahead today; you need to be improving at a steeper slope.

Small gains stack invisibly until they tip into inevitability.

The question isn’t “Where am I now?” but “What’s my rate of change compared to yesterday?”

In markets and in life, wealth belongs not to the one who starts ahead, but to the one compounding faster.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

NBA star turned psychologist: John Amaechi’s must-read books
9 cognitive habits of people who always get stuff done
Want a job in tech? McKinsey says you need these skills
The underrated relationship skill that strengthens any bond
11 tactics for breaking through a career plateau

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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