Summary

Boyar’s 2026 Forgotten 40 tilts toward SMID-cap M&A and financials, where cheap valuations meet a deregulatory setup the market may still underprice. Roughly 23–24 names are new and about 10–11 appear to be below $10 billion, but novelty never drives selection: these are researched, high-conviction ideas, “not us sitting around the table and saying, ‘Hey, Intel looks cheap.’”
Atlanta Braves Holdings ($BATRA) is Boyar’s clearest asset-sale setup: a roughly $40 stock, an estimated $60-a-share value, and a tax change that makes public ownership materially worse. Pay above $1 million for a public company’s five highest-paid employees becomes nondeductible—a major disadvantage when those employees are baseball players—so Boyar thinks Malone “puts this thing up for sale sooner rather than later.”
The Braves valuation rests less on near-term baseball cash flow than on scarcity, fandom, and billionaire demand for a “publicly traded collectible.” Boyar applies only a 15% premium to the Forbes team estimate, adds a conservative Battery real-estate value, and sees limited downside; Walker counters that MLB’s regional-media model and looming rights reset could materially impair the economics.
A Braves sale is plausible, not certain: Malone’s tax aversion, management incentives, expiring media contracts, and a possible 2027 work stoppage all complicate timing. Boyar nevertheless calls Malone a “pragmatist” and argues a cash sale may be the only way to realize full value; Mark Cuban’s unexpected Mavericks exit shows even identity-defining teams can change hands.
Boyar sees $UBER as an autonomous-vehicle beneficiary because robotaxi fleets cannot economically provision peak demand and will require a hybrid marketplace. He cites an approximate, declining cost of roughly $150,000 per Waymo vehicle; his thesis chiefly fails if “there’s only one winner” that can supply the market and build its own app.
Walker’s valuation challenge is the right counterweight: approximately $8.5 billion of LTM free cash flow, $2 billion of excluded stock compensation, and a $181 billion market cap make him unwilling to treat AV obsolescence as zero-risk. Boyar still sees more than fair compensation, values Uber around $132 at 20 times, and calls it a stock to own for “many many years.”
Delivery strengthens Uber’s network, but pricing trust remains fragile. Uber Eats is one of the dominant delivery players and helps Uber compete with Lyft, though its resilience in a real recession is untested. Walker treats a viral, debunked Reddit post as evidence of fee and pricing frustration, not proof of algorithmic misconduct.
Walker sees strategic logic in Waymo or Tesla owning Uber as the customer “operating system”; Boyar agrees there is a strategic fit but flags regulatory hurdles. Walker challenges what market share a merger would increase and argues a buyer would not want to wait two or three years through litigation or a new administration. Waymo launches without Uber still move Uber’s stock, while Tesla announcements have lost some impact; Boyar’s conventional management risk is that Dara makes a foolish acquisition, such as the previously rumored Expedia deal.
UniFirst is the sharp event-driven coda: Cintas’s fourth approach at $275 versus a prior roughly $160 price, a current price near $200, and Boyar’s belief that synergies support “well well over $300.” Engine Capital exposed family dissent by nominating the founder’s grandson, but with 70% voting control, the outcome still depends on the controllers choosing to sell rather than remain in control.

Deep dive

1. The Forgotten 40 balances near-term catalysts with three-to-five-year conviction

Boyar describes a process refined over more than three decades: one-page snapshots of 40 companies already researched in depth, each selected with a three-to-five-year horizon despite being catalyst-focused. The list serves less-patient subscribers without abandoning Boyar Research’s long-term discipline.
Roughly 23–24 selections are new this year, but Boyar refuses to let fresh names “drive the process.” Uber returned after gaining approximately 30–40% because the question is still which researched companies should perform best—not whether every annual edition looks different.
The first portfolio theme is that this “could be the year for SMID,” with increased M&A supplying the catalyst. About 10–11 companies are below $10 billion, supporting the list’s takeover theme.
Financials form the other major overweight relative to the S&P 500. Boyar sees inexpensive regional banks and insurers alongside a deregulatory environment that “isn’t fully appreciated,” citing Cullen/Frost as an off-the-radar regional bank and Markel and Loews as multifaceted financial companies.

2. A tax asymmetry may force Malone’s hand on the Braves

Boyar’s Atlanta Braves Holdings setup begins with two assets—the team and valuable Battery real estate surrounding the ballpark—and one owner simplifying his empire. Discovery, Charter, and Sirius illustrate the pattern; the Braves, by contrast, were the only stock Malone had to file on that he purchased in 2025, according to Boyar.
The catalyst is a 2021 tax-law change: compensation above $1 million for a public company’s five highest-paid employees, not merely officers, cannot be deducted. That barely matters for most issuers but becomes enormous when the five employees are star players; privately held competitors generally escape it.
Malone is famous for doing “everything humanly possible to lawfully avoid paying taxes,” and Boyar sees no emotional reason for him to preserve a disadvantaged public wrapper. The Braves spinout is already about two-and-a-half years old, and Boyar’s conclusion is direct: a sale comes “sooner rather than later.”
Walker corrects one evidentiary point—Malone also bought $GLIBA around the GCI spin-off—and highlights an August 2024 incentive involving nearly one million Class B shares if CEO Terry McGuirk achieves a sale above $50. Walker worries that option-like compensation could reward delay; Boyar criticizes Malone’s practice of significantly overcompensating executives but says a $60 offer should end the debate.

3. The $60 Braves case weighs scarcity against media erosion

Boyar reaches approximately $60 per share from a roughly $40 price by valuing the team at only a 15% premium to Forbes and adding a conservative Battery estimate. Comparable teams often transact at much larger premiums, while the Braves’ TBS-era national exposure and unusually broad southeastern footprint expand the potential buyer pool.
Walker’s pushback is that baseball remains regional and inventory-heavy while the cable bundle unwinds. He describes ESPN as able to opt out of a $550 million annual MLB package in February 2025 and then opting back in during November at the same price while gaining six regional networks, MLB.TV, and other rights—materially more product for unchanged money.
Boyar concedes that future rights economics are “certainly unknown.” MLB may be deliberately aligning contract expirations around 2028–2029, but a possible 2027 work stoppage is impossible to handicap: Walker says the 1994 stoppage took MLB 10 years to recover from, while Boyar, unsure of the NBA date, points to a past lockout after which franchise values skyrocketed.
Walker’s offsetting evidence is that the pitch clock has made games faster and more watchable, Japanese interest around Shohei Ohtani has widened demand, and Dodgers or Mets payrolls could produce luxury-tax proceeds. Boyar still grounds the trade in sale value, not confidence in any single operating forecast.

4. Public sports equities are bets on billionaire scarcity value

Boyar treats the Braves and Madison Square Garden Sports as “publicly traded collectibles.” If an investor remains bullish on “billionaires with egos,” the limited supply and prestige of controlling a major franchise can matter more than ordinary near-term cash-generation metrics.
At roughly $6 billion of enterprise value for both the Knicks and Rangers, versus the Lakers’ cited $10 billion transaction, Boyar argues investors are effectively “getting the Rangers for free.” His proposed unlock is simple: split the two teams into separately traded companies so each receives an explicit valuation.
Charles Dolan’s death removes the family patriarch, but Boyar cannot identify an estate-driven need to sell. James Dolan loves owning the Knicks and is “a wild card”; Boyar floated, without certainty, a minority investment tied to Abu Dhabi relationships and Sphere-related activity.
Walker estimates NBA expansion could send roughly $300–500 million in expansion fees to the Knicks and Rangers’ owner and says he thinks Dolan would return that money to shareholders. Boyar’s broader answer to “they will never sell” is Mark Cuban: no owner’s identity seemed more entangled with a team, yet he sold the Mavericks. “Anything is possible.”

5. Media names fell away because better opportunities won the comparison

Disney and News Corp are the list’s two clear media selections, with Nintendo only loosely fitting the category. Boyar says the reduction was not a top-down decision: Warner Bros. Discovery’s already-announced deal made its future difficult to underwrite, while Comcast remained “statistically cheap” but lost internal debates to stronger ideas.
Boyar speculates that Comcast could someday buy Nintendo, though “it takes two to tango.” Walker sees the strategic fit but questions whether Comcast could afford it and weighs the opportunity cost of buying its own stock at roughly six times EBITDA instead of pursuing a merger.

6. Uber’s marketplace may become more valuable when cars drive themselves

Boyar began writing on Uber in the low $40s, when investors doubted it would ever earn money. It is now “extremely profitable” and “gushing out cash,” yet autonomous-driving fears produced a nearly 20% year-end drawdown that created the 2026 entry point.
His central reversal is that Uber should be an AV “beneficiary, not a victim.” Even if Waymo’s roughly $150,000-per-vehicle cost falls, an owned fleet cannot economically satisfy peak demand; robotaxis will need a hybrid system that supplements autonomous supply with Uber’s human-driver network.
The “only way that we’re wrong,” in Boyar’s formulation, is one autonomous winner capable of providing sufficient capacity through its own app. He instead expects a fragmented market resembling today’s auto industry, leaving Uber’s global marketplace valuable across suppliers; its Lucid experimentation also gives it a direct fleet option.
Walker assigns real probability to a Kodak-like outcome and asks whether a 20-plus-times multiple offers enough compensation. He cites $8.5 billion of LTM free cash flow, roughly $2 billion of stock compensation, and a $181 billion market cap; Boyar answers with a $132 estimate at 20 times and a “many many years” ownership horizon.

7. Delivery strengthens Uber’s network, but pricing trust remains fragile

Delivery gives Uber a two-sided advantage over Lyft: a driver can do both rides and food delivery, while customers use one account for both. Boyar regards Uber Eats as one of the dominant delivery players and says people who can afford it will pay inflated prices for convenience, though performance in a “real recession” remains untested.
Walker uses a viral Reddit hoax as a sentiment specimen, not evidence: a supposed engineer claimed Uber manipulated pay and individualized pizza prices before journalists established that he had invented the story. Its spread nevertheless exposed frustration with delivery fees, opaque pricing, and tip culture.
Walker sees strategic logic in Waymo or Tesla owning Uber as the customer “operating system”; Boyar agrees there is a “strategic fit” but flags regulatory hurdles. Walker challenges the antitrust market definition because Waymo has little conventional rideshare share and argues a buyer would not want to wait two or three years through litigation or a changing administration.
Waymo’s decisions to launch without Uber still move the stock, whereas Tesla announcements have lost some power over it; Amazon and other well-funded entrants reinforce Boyar’s fragmentation case. His more conventional management risk is that Dara makes a foolish acquisition, such as the previously rumored Expedia deal.

8. UniFirst’s economics point to a sale; its voting control points elsewhere

Cintas has now tried to acquire UniFirst about four times, but the founding family controls about 70% of the vote. This approach may differ because Engine Capital’s campaign surfaced internal dissent: its defeated board nominee was the founder’s grandson and the last family member to have worked in the business.
Cintas’s latest $275 proposal arrived after UniFirst had traded near $160; the shares were around $200 during the conversation. Boyar argues the synergies are enormous and could support “well well over $300,” while even UniFirst’s best-case turnaround plan does not reach $275 “anywhere anytime soon.”
Walker calls Engine’s effort the most creative activist campaign he saw in 2025: it embarrassed a controlled board by showing that a founder’s descendant favored liquidity after years of inferior margins and growth. Walker says he can think of no rational reason to reject the sale; Boyar’s account suggests the obstacle is the one or two people controlling the trust, despite younger-generation interest in liquidity.

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