IdeaHouse 2026 – Part 6: International Names, Screens, and Miscellaneous Standouts

The seventh and final installment of the IdeaHouse Omaha 2026 series gathers seven pitches that don’t fit cleanly into the other five themes — but each is worth its own write-up. The set is heavily international: a Chinese tech powerhouse at at 15x earnings while compounding 16% top-line; China’s Tesla trading at one-third the multiple; a deep-discount Hong Kong real-estate conglomerate; the depository duopoly that sits underneath every retail securities trade in India. Two domestic specials round out the international names – OTC Markets Group and a nano-ca. Then a UK trader’s two-filter quantitative screen built around insider buying plus extreme fear, and Whitney Tilson’s pairing of a quiet Berkshire buy with a moonshot pick.

7 ideas – from Tencent and XPeng to a Hong Kong holding-company discount, India’s depository duopoly, a UK trader’s two-filter screen, plus Whitney Tilson’s Berkshire pair and three U.S. specials

Whitney Tilson Pairs a Quiet Berkshire Buy with Joby Aviation Moonshot

Berkshire: A Quiet 12-14 Percent Discount

Tilson’s Berkshire thesis is straightforward. Over the prior 12 months, Berkshire Hathaway had declined roughly 12% while the S&P 500 was up approximately 27%, a gap he estimated left the stock about 12 to 14 percent undervalued at the time of the presentation. He is not expecting fireworks. The word he used to describe it was “quiet,” a holding that lets investors sleep at night while expecting modest outperformance relative to the market over the medium term. For a conference audience gathered in Omaha the day before the annual meeting, the framing needed little elaboration.

Moonshot Methodology: Learning from Netflix, Tesla, and the Ones That Got Away

Before turning to Joby itself, Tilson laid out the analytical framework he uses for high-risk, high-reward positions. It is rooted in his own history of getting transformative companies right and getting them badly wrong. The pattern running through each case is personal: he visited the companies, met the founders, and made a judgment call on the technology and the team.

The Netflix chart told the most instructive story. Tilson’s slide noted that he was short Netflix in 2009-2010 as the stock rose 150%, eventually publishing his short thesis publicly in December 2010, which prompted Reed Hastings to respond with a public rebuke. He met with Hastings, covered his short immediately, and bought near the bottom in 2012 – right before the stock went up roughly 90 times in eight years. The episode illustrated both the cost of being wrong about a truly disruptive company and the value of being willing to change one’s mind.

Tesla was presented through a similar lens. Tilson showed Tesla’s price chart under the heading “Tesla (Electric Cars),” tracking the run from the early 2010s through the 2020-2021 peak. He noted that he visited Tesla roughly 12 years before the presentation, and that the stock has returned approximately 50 times from the levels at which he first assessed the company.

Apple’s chart, labeled “Apple (Smartphone) after the launch of the iPhone on June 29, 2007,” added another data point to the same argument: transformative technology, backed by a visit and conviction, rewarded investors who understood what was happening early.

Tilson also showed the iRobot (Robots) chart as a cautionary counterpoint. His slide described running into prominent short seller Andrew Left while he was short iRobot in January 2014. Left told him the stock was a bad short because it was the only public company in an exciting sector where retail investors might get excited – the stock later tripled in a year. The lesson Tilson drew was specific: when a company is the only public vehicle in an emerging technology category, retail enthusiasm can overwhelm fundamentals far longer than short sellers expect. That observation sits at the center of his Joby thesis.

The Virgin Galactic slide showed most clearly how Tilson manages these positions in practice. His firm recommended Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE) at $10.20 on December 18, 2019, after visiting the spaceport the previous January. They sold half at $20.40 on February 10, 2020, another tranche at $37.64 on February 19, and the remainder at $50 on January 27, 2021. The stock subsequently crashed 82%. The framework he described is explicit: buy a small position when the technology is real, size it as a moonshot, and trim aggressively as the stock overshoots.

The Joby Aviation Thesis

With that context established, Tilson made the case for Joby Aviation. The aircraft itself is the starting point. The vehicle is built from carbon fiber, uses electric motors, batteries, and custom avionics, and operates with six engines plus a wing, a configuration that allows it to glide safely if any motors fail. It is approximately 99% quieter than a conventional helicopter, which Tilson argued makes regulatory and community acceptance far more achievable than prior air-taxi concepts. It also costs roughly two-thirds less to operate than a single helicopter, meaning the economics can work at price points that attract genuine consumer demand rather than requiring ultra-premium fares.

Tilson outlined a dual revenue stream: operating an air-taxi service directly and selling aircraft to end users including the military and airlines. Joby acquired Uber Elevate, and the partnership with Uber means customers can book a Joby aircraft through the existing Uber app, the same way they book a car. Expected trip profiles run 20 to 50 miles, with concrete examples including Manhattan to JFK, Narita airport to downtown Tokyo (40-50 miles), Miami to West Palm Beach (65 miles), Dubai to Abu Dhabi (81 miles), and New York City to East Hampton (97 miles).

The partner roster is what separates Joby from earlier eVTOL attempts. Toyota and Delta Airlines have both committed, and routes are actively being set up. The U.S. Air Force has taken first deliveries of the aircraft. Tilson noted that he had personally flown in a Joby aircraft from lower Manhattan toward Central Park, describing the experience as akin to “flying a Mavic drone,” which he meant as a compliment: smooth, quiet, and controlled. Near-term commercial milestones include Abu Dhabi to Dubai service and a lower-Manhattan-to-JFK demonstration route.

At the time of the presentation, the stock had pulled back from a high near $20 to approximately $9.25, putting the market capitalization at roughly $5.9 billion. Tilson acknowledged the obvious risks: no FAA certification yet, and current battery technology limits flight duration to approximately 30 minutes. His response to both was framing rather than dismissal – he holds Joby in a dedicated moonshot bucket sized appropriately for a binary outcome, not as a core position.

He also reframed the valuation question. Rather than asking what an air-taxi company is worth, he asked what Joby’s battery technology, electric motor engineering, and aviation engineering talent would be worth to a strategic acquirer. Tesla, or any major automotive or aerospace firm, could plausibly pay up simply to acquire the team and intellectual property. That floor argument is not what drives his enthusiasm, but it sets a lower bound on how badly the trade can go if the air-taxi business takes longer than expected to launch commercially.

Sizing the Moonshot

It is not a large position, it is sized as a bet in a moonshot bucket where losing the whole amount is an acceptable outcome. What Tilson argued at IdeaHouse is that the asymmetry justifies the risk: the technology is real, the team has produced an aircraft that is actually flying, the partners are serious, and the only public company in the eVTOL category is sitting at roughly half its prior high. He drew that exact parallel to what Andrew Left told him about iRobot in 2014 – when the only public stock in an exciting new category pulls back, that is when it tends to matter most to stay long.