Rising oil prices and persistent inflation concerns are keeping investors cautious as volatility returns to equity markets, but select opportunities remain for investors focused on valuation and long-term fundamentals.
BNN Bloomberg spoke with Molly Pieroni, president at Yacktman Asset Management, about why she is avoiding leverage and expensive stocks, where she still sees value in energy and technology, and why companies such as Canadian Natural Resources, Samsung Electronics and U-Haul stand out.
Key Takeaways
- Pieroni said Yacktman remains focused on long-term investing and is avoiding companies with excessive leverage in the current interest rate environment.
- She highlighted Canadian Natural Resources for its long reserve life, disciplined capital allocation and decades-long record of dividend growth.
- Pieroni said Canadian energy producers could benefit if additional pipeline capacity expands oil exports to Asian markets.
- She argued Samsung Electronics offers exposure to memory chips, semiconductor foundries and consumer electronics at a valuation she views as attractive relative to peers.
- Pieroni said U-Haul’s self-storage business alone could justify the company’s valuation, while investors also gain exposure to its truck rental operations.
Read the full transcript below:
LINDSAY: With oil prices climbing and inflation concerns lingering, investors are treading carefully in today’s volatile markets, but our next guest says opportunities remain for those who can cut through the noise. Joining us now is Molly Pieroni, president of Yacktman Asset Management. It’s great to have you join us. Good morning.
MOLLY: Good morning. Thanks.
LINDSAY: So, what’s your take on what we’re seeing in terms of the direction of the markets today?
MOLLY: Yeah, it appears to be a lower open, to your point, driven by the tech stocks moving. At Yacktman, we invest for the long term. In fact, we’ve been in Microsoft since 2003 in varying sizes, so any given day market moves aren’t going to impact the way that we invest at Yacktman.
LINDSAY: In terms of sectors or specific companies, what are you choosing to avoid right now, and why?
MOLLY: Yeah, we think a lot about risk at Yacktman. In fact, we consider ourselves business owners, and we have a business owner mindset when we look at companies. We don’t like leverage, as an example. Leverage, especially in these types of interest rate environments, as well as this type of, you know, what can happen to market capitalization very quickly, that just adds to the risk of any company. So we often consider ourselves allergic to debt on the balance sheet.
LINDSAY: Okay, we do have some stock picks. I do want to get into those in a moment, but without giving any of those away, what parts of the market are you leaning into right now?
MOLLY: Yeah, we actually invest across all sectors. We do have significant positions in the energy sector at present, as well as select parts of the tech market as well.
LINDSAY: Okay, let’s get into your stock picks then. In particular, these are on your radar. So Canadian Natural Resources is the first one. Tell us what opportunities you’re seeing here right now.
MOLLY: Well, we actually love Canadian Natural Resources and actually invested in the company back in 2021 when, you know, COVID had hit. The entire sector was trading down to like two per cent of the entire market, and actually, for a bit, energy prices even went negative. So we looked really closely because we think a lot about price at Yacktman, and the prices for investing in some fabulous companies became really compelling to us. As you know, Canadian Natural Resources, right up there in Alberta, is an oilsands company, so essentially you’re just manufacturing the oil. There’s not as much risk as you see in some of the other energy players who have to go find the oil. At CNQ, we actually know the oil is there, and it’s got 30-plus years of reserves right at their disposal.
The other thing we would point out about CNQ is they’re very early leaders in being very smart capital allocators, like we’ve seen other companies do in the energy sector. I think it’s 26 years of increasing dividends, and the management team is just absolutely terrific, so we really like Canadian Natural Resources. I also just saw that the pipeline is getting the final bits of approval in Alberta, and that will actually offer a very interesting new vector, perhaps, if the oilsands companies are able to then provide their oil for the Asian countries who are getting hit especially hard with the conflict in the Middle East.
LINDSAY: How do you think CNQ will factor into that? That pipeline project is obviously down the road if it does happen, but where do you think they’ll sit within that?
MOLLY: Yeah, I think many of the companies, including CNQ, will really be beneficiaries of being able to export Canadian oil more broadly than they are able to today. I think that’s a definite plus for CNQ, for sure.
LINDSAY: Okay, let’s move on to your next one. That’s Samsung Electronics. You say Samsung’s on track to be one of the most profitable businesses in the world this year. Tell us more.
MOLLY: Yes, we’ve been investors in Samsung for quite some time as well. There’s basically three legs to the thesis. One, you own a memory business, so you’ve got what we’ve seen in some of the U.S.-based companies like Micron, but you have Samsung and SK Hynix in the mix as well. So you’ve got a really strong memory business that is absolutely a core part of the AI buildout and, in many cases, has become the bottleneck. Whereas you used to see memory being a cyclical industry with kind of just very commoditized supply, now all of a sudden they’re doing take-or-pay contracts out three to five years and really selling out capacity, so the prices have moved accordingly in the memory space.
You’ve also got foundry, which, you know, when we think about Taiwan and some of the risk in the geopolitical arena, you’ve got an ability to invest in Samsung, that’s one of the world’s leading foundries. In fact, here in Texas, where we’re based, they’ve built out, I think it’s 1,200 acres of a foundry project, and they’ve invested 20-some-odd billion dollars so far, and there’s another $30 billion to $40 billion to come in. Just a very large and cutting-edge foundry factory, where you’re doing some of the most high-precision manufacturing on the planet. We like to see a second sourcing to TSMC, which is the leading chip foundry in the world, but it’s also unfortunately placed in a pretty controversial part of our planet.
Also in Samsung, you of course have the phone and other consumer electronics business as well. So in a way, it’s like Micron and TSMC and Apple all rolled into one global chip company — or technology company — that you can actually invest in and own for an extremely low price, which is again how we think about it at Yacktman. It’s almost always about the price, and we’re able to look at something that’s a very compelling multiple relative to its competitors in each of those spaces.
LINDSAY: Lastly, U-Haul, another stock you like right now. Tell us why.
MOLLY: Sure, and as you can tell, we’re generalists if we’re investing in an energy company, a tech company and U-Haul, which is kind of part of the story. U-Haul is the truck rental company and self-storage business that you may be familiar with. In fact, when you’re out on the highways, you’ll see U-Hauls actually doing their very own advertising by customers driving the trucks.
It’s got two basic lines of business, the trucking side and the self-storage side, and it doesn’t cleanly fit into a sector. It’s part of why we think it’s an undiscovered name, because they don’t break out the financials into the trucking business versus the self-storage business. If you look at what’s underlying in terms of their share in each of those businesses, each of those businesses is extremely strong.
Recently, there was a self-storage business that was purchased by a competitor. If you applied that same type of valuation methodology to U-Haul, you’re essentially getting the trucking side of the business for free, and you’ve got one of the leading trucking businesses out there. It’s kind of like the Kleenex brand if you think about self-moving.
LINDSAY: Interesting, and as you say, such a diverse group of stock picks for today. Great stuff. Molly Pieroni, president of Yacktman Asset Management, appreciate you joining us. Thanks so much.
MOLLY: Thanks, Lindsay.
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This BNN Bloomberg summary and transcript of the May 19, 2026 interview with Molly Pieroni are published with the assistance of AI. Original research, interview questions and added context was created by BNN Bloomberg journalists. An editor also reviewed this material before it was published to ensure its accuracy and adherence with BNN Bloomberg editorial policies and standards.
