My feeling from the briefing and also years of holding SOL Patts...

My feeling from the briefing and also years of holding SOL Patts is that

1) They are comfortable with what they doing and have calculated the risk/return to a high degree of confidence, such can be seen in their recent deal with EOS.
2) They never move into space that they're not specilised in and they are confident on some of the future trends in both Australia/overseas, trends such as higher consumption of energy, people moving into middle class, increase in productivity and living conditions of mankind and also aging population. Sol patts aims to capture all these trend either directly or indirectly, they don't need to dig the gold, they just need to sell the shovels to the miners.
3) I don't understand the rational of investing in a swim school, its a high cost of capital business with low return and labour intensive... also, no economy of scale... even if it fails, it won't hurt Sol so from that perspective, doesn't really matter, but I still don't get it.
4) I agree some of the moves they've made in the recent years are questionable, eg, buying into a swim school and merge with Milton which I don't see much of a benefit and the explanation given are not convincing enough for me.
5) TPG is looking Ok at the moment with a potential sell out to Vocus, Tuas looking very strong, I have strong faith in Uranium, there is no way in achieving the zero emission target and meeting the energy needs at the same time without Uranium, Coal will last for years and decades, with Trump winning in November, I suspect these types of energy will come back in favour
6) BKW is still being valued as a product manufacturing company when its clearly a REITs/development business with huge stack in SOL, USA will up their infrastucture builds in the future as they have some really old aging infrastratures that needs renew, I think BKW will benefit and so will SOL.

Overall, I will give Sol a 7.5/10....not all their moves have been great but the track record speaks for itself, Todd holds a significant share in Sol and so does the Millner Family. I see them as risk averse and also risk taking at the same time and they clearly has the flexibility to move their capital swiftly as compared to other public listed companies. I think they will perform in line or outperform the market in the next decade.