TSOH Weekly Roundup (06/05/26)
Welcome to another edition of TSOH Weekly Roundup, which is sent on Friday at 11am ET. Each update features a Chart of the Week and a brief discussion on three news items relevant to the TSOH investable universe.
Chart Of The Week (from “Dollar Tree: Through The Noise”)
Three Notable Items
“Golf Is Now Cooler and Younger. The Stock Market Has Noticed.”
Following a difficult stretch for the industry in the 2010’s, the golf business is running hot again; as discussed in this WSJ article, golf is benefiting from sustained pandemic-related participation tailwinds, along with off-course formats that have made the game accessible to newer players. (For more on this topic, revisit the Acushnet Holdings initiation published in August 2025.)
“The sport gained a lot of new participants in 2020 because it was the perfect socially distanced activity. Unlike other pandemic fads, interest has kept growing. Rounds played in the U.S. rose 14% in 2020 and have increased almost every year since. Through April, rounds played in 2026 were up 5.3%… The number of commercial golf simulator locations has roughly doubled in the past three years… As a result, golf participation off the course has surged 63% compared with 2019, according to the National Golf Foundation… About 19 million Americans have only played golf off-course, about 40% of all golfers. On-course annual participation is high by historical standards at ~29.1 million, but still not as high as during the Tiger boom.”
“An Interview with Satya Nadella About Finding Core Competencies”
Following Microsoft’s annual developer conference, CEO Satya Nadella was interviewed by Ben Thompson of Stratechery. As competitors like Anthropic and OpenAI encroach further on their turf, much of the conversation focused on Microsoft’s evolving strategic vision and long-term investment priorities.
Satya Nadella: “Hyperscale businesses are about having a few big customers, but also a massive long tail. You can’t have a book of business that is just a few model companies - in fact, one model company [OpenAI]. That was the fundamental decision… Over time, Anthropic or OpenAI will build their own; it makes sense. To me, it was clear that what I didn’t want to do was to allocate all my compute to one player [OpenAI], so that was the adjustment. Once you make that adjustment, you can’t build ten gigawatts in Texas and say, ‘that’s it’. You’ve got to build a plant spread around the U.S., around the world; that adjustment is what we want to do on hyperscale.”
“Costco Reports Q3 FY26 Results”
As discussed in last week’s BJ’s Wholesale update, the company faces a formidable competitor in Costco (to put it kindly). That was evident in the quarterly results Costco reported on May 28th, with U.S. merchandise comps up 6.8% in Q3 FY26 – outpacing BJ’s results in the most recent quarter by more than five percentage points. The glass half full take is that BJ’s is well positioned to be a fast follower; if they effectively learn from and copy Costco, that will go a long way towards strong returns for BJ’s in the decade ahead.
Costco CEO Ron Vachris: “Against the backdrop of ongoing macro uncertainty, our focus on providing quality goods and services at the lowest possible price continues to resonate strongly with our members. Nowhere has this been more apparent than our gas business… Each month of the quarter set successive all-time company volume sales records, with the final five weeks becoming our top five volume weeks ever. Our gas team performed exceptionally well to manage this unprecedented demand, which requires multiple daily gas deliveries to many locations. The high consumer price sensitivity, which fueled these record volumes, also drove many members to use our gas stations for the very first time in the third quarter. We believe this will drive even greater loyalty with these members in the future as members who use our gas stations typically spend more in the warehouse.”
TSOH Updates
Here’s the updated TSOH research list for the past six months:
Monday’s research report will be an update on Dollar General (DG).
Have a great weekend!
NOTE - This is not investment advice. Do your own due diligence.
I make no representation, warranty, or undertaking, express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, completeness, or reasonableness of the information presented in this report. Assumptions, opinions, and estimates expressed in this report constitute my judgment as of the date thereof and are subject to change without notice. Projections are based on a number of assumptions, and there is no guarantee that they will be achieved. TSOH Investment Research is not acting as your advisor or in any fiduciary capacity.