Welcome to the Q1 2026 issue of Hidden Value Stocks from Hedge Fund Alpha (formerly ValueWalk Premium).
This edition features Sonu Chawla of TimesSquare Capital Management and Eric Su of EHS Investments.
Chawla selected JFrog and Carpenter Technology, seeing target prices of $78 and $378, respectively, for the two names.
Su featured TrueBlue. He’s set a target price of over $9 for the near term and $30 to $60 by 2030.
Please contact us at [email protected] with any comments, questions or suggestions.
Jacob Wolinsky, Founder, Hedge Fund Alpha
Michelle deBoer-Jones, Editor-in-Chief, Hedge Fund Alpha
Meet Sonu Chawla of TimesSquare Capital Management
Sonu Chawla of TimeSquare Capital Management has been in the investment business for nearly 20 years. Before pursuing investing, she was a technology consultant working for a Big 4 consulting firm. Chawla holds a Master of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Before joining TimesSquare in 2018, she worked at a multi-strategy fund that wound down operations. “I have been a growth investor throughout my two-decades-long investing career, and TimesSquare’s focus on quality growth investing and collaborative work culture are well aligned with my value system,” Chawla told Hedge Fund Alpha. “At TimesSquare, I started off as senior analyst covering TMT stocks in 2018 and became a co-PM of [the] MidCap growth strategy in 2022 in recognition of technology’s representation in portfolio and my strong contribution of alpha generation for the portfolio.”
Background on Sonu Chawla
Growing up in India in a household that championed female education, Chawla lived a vital counter-narrative to the prevailing patriarchal norms. That foundation gave her the confidence to pursue her degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.
“At the time, women represented only [a] low-single-digits percentage of my graduating class, and the environment was a true ‘proving ground,’” Chawla said. “Navigating a campus not originally built for women — from the logistical hurdles of limited infrastructure to strict curfews that restricted lab access — forged a deep sense of resilience and a belief that any problem can be solved through persistence.
This ‘figure-it-out’ culture is the backbone of my professional identity. Being a minority in such a high-pressure, male-dominated setting was a masterclass in adaptability and collaboration; it effectively prepared me for the rigors of the investment industry.”
She feels her transition into fund management was a natural evolution of her work in technology consulting, which taught her how to analyze business models and management execution from the inside out.
“While consulting, I gained a unique ‘under-the-hood’ perspective on how different companies across various sectors operate and scale,” Chawla added. “I realized that what I enjoyed most wasn’t just solving a specific operational or technology problem but analyzing the broader industry dynamics and the strategic decisions made by management. I wanted to pivot from being a consultant to being an investor, where I could apply that same analytical rigor to capital allocation.”
To bridge that gap, she earned her MBA and CFA designation to solidify her financial foundation. Driven by an intellectual curiosity, Chawla aims to deconstruct a company’s story and evaluate the execution of the team behind it.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘why’ behind a company’s success, and fund management allows me to spend my career digging into those stories,” she said.
Meet Eric Su of EHS Investments
Eric Su founded EHS Investments in 2025. Prior to launching his fund, he headed M&A at IAC/ InterActiveCorp, a publicly-traded holding company of digital brands, and served as a partner with Marcato Capital Management, an activist hedge fund, starting at the firm as an analyst in 2013. Before that, he spent two years in investment banking at Evercore.
The Marcato Capital years
Launched in 2011, Marcato Capital Management was a hedge fund seeded by Blackstone and founded by Mick McGuire, a former partner at Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management. At Marcato’s peak, it managed $3.5 billion in assets.
Adopting a similar approach as Pershing Square, Marcato ran a concentrated portfolio with long-term time horizons, an activist strategy, and a fundamental approach to investing. The firm differed from Pershing Square in its focus. on small- and mid-cap equities and deeper value situations, a stylistic focus that resonated with Su as a young investor.
He spent six years at Marcato, eventually becoming the firm’s youngest partner a few years after joining. While at the firm, he was involved in its successful activist campaigns in Lifetime Fitness, which was sold to Leonard Green, Epiq Systems, which was sold to OMERS and Harvest Partners, and Bank of New York Mellon. Su also worked on a number of constructivist engagements, including Vail Resorts.
IAC investment leads to greater opportunities
While at Marcato, Su led the firm’s investment in IAC. After coming to know the IAC team from his time covering them, IAC management brought him in to join their M&A team, a unique group inside the company that was seen as a training ground. Future executives across the various businesses were trained in IAC’s unique culture and owner-operator ethos. Su eventually headed up the team and its functions after a series of internal promotions.
“IAC has never been easy to place into a simple descriptive bucket,” Su told Hedge Fund Alpha. “It is an amalgamation of a business incubator, private equity firm and operating business, reflecting the DNA of its maverick executive chairman, Barry Diller.”
IAC has evolved over time into a conglomerate of digital brands from a single initial platform asset called Silver King Broadcasting. The company has bought, built and incubated hundreds of businesses primarily focused on the consumer internet space, including brands like Tinder, Expedia, Ticketmaster, LendingTree, Vimeo, Angi and others.
“Transitioning from a deep-value fund like Marcato to a platform like IAC was a unique challenge,” Su added. “IAC focuses primarily on emerging consumer internet companies. I joined IAC just as the entire category became a VC feeding frenzy during the speculative growth bubble of 2021 and 2022. Navigating that environment required tremendous discipline and an ability to take an independent view.”
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