Yacktman Asset Management owns Samsung at what Molly Pieroni puts at two to three times cash flow, and it is one of the firm's largest positions.
Value investing has been the wrong place to stand through a market that keeps setting records. Pieroni's answer is that the discipline is what lets her firm own technology at all.
"We're the value investors. And I think we're a bit of a lost art. You may find us one day in the Natural History Museum. And with a sign below us, it says this was a value investor."
Pieroni is a partner and president of Yacktman Asset Management and started her career at Dean Witter Reynolds.
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Here are the 4 principles that matter.
👤 Guest: Molly Pieroni, Partner and President of Yacktman Asset Management
🎙️ Host: Paul Sweeney, who anchors Bloomberg Surveillance and previously ran equity research teams at Credit Suisse
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast feed
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 6 min
Key Takeaways
She expects higher interest rates to reach consumers and companies eventually, even with the index near records
The pressures she lists are rates, housing costs and the CPI print the market was waiting on the next morning
The firm reads at least 20 years of a company's financials before owning it, to see how it performed in bad conditions
Yacktman bought Microsoft in 2003, when Steve Ballmer ran it and Windows was, in her words, left for dead
She names cloud and the OpenAI relationship as the risks now, on the principle that "everybody's shooting at the winner"
Samsung is one of the firm's largest positions, at two to three times cash flow on her numbers
Four years of cash flow covers the entire market capitalization, and the memory, foundry and consumer-electronics businesses come with it
1. Value as a Lost Art
Asked how stocks perform with interest rates this high, Pieroni opened with a joke about her own discipline and then made the case that the rate move has not been paid for yet.
She put value investors in a museum display case. "We're the value investors. And I think we're a bit of a lost art. You may find us one day in the Natural History Museum. And with a sign below us, it says this was a value investor."
The market's direction has not matched the risk on the board. "The markets have been up and to the right for quite some time. We're close to all-time highs yet again." Higher rates, she said, come to bear at some point on both consumers and companies
Her worry is the consumer rather than the corporate balance sheet. "We look carefully at the balance sheets of the companies that we invest in, but we also recognize that the consumer could be in a tough position before we know it, just based on how many pressures there are between interest rates, housing costs, as well as the CPI that we're all watching closely."
2. Invest Like Business Owners
The host asked what the firm means when it says it invests like business owners, before getting to any stock picks. Pieroni described it as a research requirement rather than a slogan: the firm goes back through decades of filings to see how a business behaved when conditions were bad.
The lookback has a minimum length. The firm digs into the archives for historical financials and reads "20 years at a minimum" to establish the basic fundamentals of a business and how it performs in tougher environments
The reason is the stress test, not the history. "Because we want to know as business owners, which any shareholder is, how a company will perform and how it will withstand some tougher environments when and if they come."
3. Microsoft, Bought in 2003
Pressed on how a value shop ends up holding Alphabet and Microsoft, Pieroni said the position dates back more than twenty years, to a point when the stock was genuinely cheap and the business was written off.
The entry point was 2003, and the setup was ugly. "We invested in Microsoft back in 2003 when it really was a value stock. Steve Ballmer was running the company. Windows was left for dead. And it was a pretty challenging environment. And we've held through it in different sizes over time. But that was really our first step into the tech side of the market."
What keeps them there is cash generation and position, not growth. "And we think that what we see in these companies is they are cash flow generators. And look at their market share. Look at the positions that they hold. Look at the breadth and depth of their businesses. And as business owners, we can really look at those companies and feel comfortable that we're protecting the downside for our investors, which is very much how we think about things at Yacktman." The firm owns Microsoft and Google
Asked what could go wrong at Microsoft, she named two things. "Everybody's shooting at the winner, right? And there are different business lines at Microsoft. I think we could call out cloud as a risk area. And of course, they have this lovely relationship with OpenAI. So they're in the thick of it on the AI trend."
She prefers indirect exposure to the theme, bought cheaply. "But we like to find ways that are sort of sneaky ways to invest in AI. And we won't get into it today, probably. But we own companies that are very much in the AI mix. But we can own them at valuations, where it covers our downside really, really, really well."
She also pointed out that the value index itself now holds a memory maker. "And in fact, if you check the Russell 1000, I think you'll find Micron in the mix as well. Just to be fair."
4. Samsung's Korea Discount
The host asked directly whether Samsung is one of the ways the firm gets AI exposure at a price. Pieroni confirmed it is among the largest holdings and laid out the arithmetic she buys it on.
The valuation is the whole argument. "Samsung is one of our largest positions. And you can own Samsung, which is one of the global leaders in technology. You can own it for, call it, two to three times cash flow. You can look forward two or three or four years, and you've made up the entire market cap of the company. Plus, you own the memory business. You own the foundry business. You own the consumer electronics, not to mention the folding phone."
She attributes the price to the market Samsung is listed in, not the business. "But because it's part of this Korean discount that is still plaguing the Korean names, you get a world-class company for extremely low valuation, which is how we like to own these companies in our portfolio."
Bonus Insights
The host's explanation for why unfamiliar guests turn up in the New York studio this week is the US Open — Pieroni had been at the tennis the day before, watching Coco Gauff win in three sets: "All about Coco. Great experience, right? It was wonderful. It was a bit of winning ugly." She added that it was an excellent match anyway
The host noted that Pieroni started her career at Dean Witter Reynolds, now part of Morgan Stanley, and that she is a William & Mary graduate — which set off a claim that William & Mary against the University of Richmond, his own school, is the oldest football rivalry in the South
This is Pieroni's own segment of a longer Bloomberg Surveillance episode that also carried separate interviews with PGIM's Greg Peters on the bond market, Fordham Global Foresight's Tina Fordham on geopolitical risk and Citi's Heath Terry on AI infrastructure, each written up on its own
Pieroni's bottom line is that a value discipline built on decades of financial history is what allows her firm to hold the largest technology companies without paying a growth price for them — Microsoft since 2003, and Samsung today at a multiple she says already discounts the memory, foundry and consumer businesses to nothing.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Samsung (One of Yacktman's largest positions, bought at what she calls two to three times cash flow, with the memory, foundry, consumer-electronics and folding-phone businesses attached)
Microsoft (Owned since 2003, when she says Windows was left for dead; cloud and the OpenAI relationship are the risks she names now)
Google (Held alongside Microsoft as a cash flow generator with market share the firm can underwrite as a business owner)
OpenAI (Cited as the reason Microsoft is "in the thick of it on the AI trend," and therefore as a source of risk rather than only upside)
Micron (Her example that the memory makers have migrated into the value indexes — she says it now shows up in the Russell 1000)
Yacktman Asset Management (Her firm; the downside-protection framing is how she describes its whole approach)
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