Stagwell STGW and Driven Brands DRVN: Adam Wyden’s thesis on Yet Another Value Podcast

On this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker interviews Adam Wyden of ADW Capital about two core positions in his portfolio: Stagwell (STGW) and Driven Brands (DRVN). Walker discloses that he personally owns Driven, and notes this is his second podcast on the name.

Wyden frames both stocks as classic “buy someone else’s pain” situations: complex, out‑of‑favor stories that public markets have largely shunned. He argues that Stagwell is a misunderstood marketing services platform emerging from a messy merger, while Driven is a heavily criticized roll‑up with valuable underlying assets.

Timed to the July 7, 2026 publication date, the conversation is positioned against a market backdrop dominated by AI, semiconductors, and mega‑cap tech. Wyden suggests this has stretched the valuation “rubber band” away from traditional value and event‑driven opportunities like STGW and DRVN, creating the setup he wants as a contrarian investor.

For Stagwell (STGW), Wyden’s thesis starts with industry structure. He compares Stagwell to legacy advertising holding companies like Omnicom, Publicis, WPP, and Interpublic, but emphasizes that Stagwell was purpose‑built over the last ~11 years around digital, data, and political capabilities.

According to Wyden, the modern Stagwell came together when Mark Penn merged his roll‑up (backed by Steve Ballmer’s family office and others) into MDC Partners, cleaning up troubled legacy assets and building a scalable technology backbone. He thinks the combined platform can grow EBITDA from roughly the hundreds of millions at merger to around 700 by 2028, with management guiding to about a billion of EBITDA by 2029.

For Driven Brands (DRVN), Wyden paints a different picture: a subscale, highly leveraged roll‑up weighed down by corporate overhead and past missteps in areas like car wash. He likens the stock to a “dirty garage find Porsche” with rust but a low‑mileage engine, arguing the core quick‑lube asset (Take 5) is fundamentally attractive yet mispositioned in public markets and likely better off under private equity or a strategic owner.

Wyden grounds much of his Stagwell (STGW) argument in numbers and capital allocation, albeit with only approximate figures on the podcast. He says Stagwell has grown from essentially zero to a few hundred of EBITDA in about 11 years, and claims management now expects about 500 of EBITDA this year, potentially growing toward 700 in 2028 and roughly a billion by 2029.

Based on his own modeling as of early July 2026, Wyden says he expects around 340 million of free cash flow in the remaining three quarters of the current year, after a seasonally weak Q1. He believes they can deploy 150–175 million into share repurchases within their credit agreement’s restricted payments basket, buying roughly 20 million shares if prices stay depressed.

He repeatedly references Publicis trading at about a 9% free‑cash‑flow yield as a comp, and argues that on his 2027–2028 free‑cash‑flow estimates Stagwell trades at roughly a “low‑20s percent” free‑cash‑flow yield. He notes CEO Mark Penn has publicly stated Stagwell’s political and cloud‑based marketing businesses alone could be worth roughly 1.2 billion, and points out that Penn has emphasized buybacks over M&A in 2025, saying the stock is “way too cheap.”

Wyden and Walker acknowledge several issues that temper the bullish framing for Stagwell (STGW). First is key‑man risk: Mark Penn is about 71 years old. Walker questions whether a buyer will pay up for a business whose iconic leader won’t be there indefinitely. Wyden responds that Penn and his lieutenant Jay Leveton have built a deep bench and that agency heads have accepted large stock consideration with low turnover, but he concedes the earliest years were more of a “jockey bet.”

Second is the industry’s historic difficulty generating excess returns. Walker notes that large agency groups like WPP and IPG have often lagged the S&P 500, with human capital “walking out the door” and capturing economics. Wyden argues Stagwell can buck this trend through an owner‑operator culture, digital transformation work, and a more consultative positioning that blurs toward McKinsey or Accenture‑type strategy mandates.

On AI, Walker lays out a bear case that generative tools could let top creatives leave agencies and operate solo with AI “back office” support. Wyden pushes back, saying that for giant marketers like Heineken, Starbucks, or Hershey, the complexity of media buying, first‑party data, and decades of proprietary insights create a moat that a lone freelancer plus AI cannot replicate. Still, the discussion underscores that technology disruption is a central risk.

For Driven Brands (DRVN), Wyden flags subscale corporate overhead and leverage as core structural problems. He questions management’s focus on leverage optics over opportunistic buybacks, and highlights prior capital allocation mistakes (including car wash and an accounting restatement) as reasons many public investors remain skeptical.

Looking ahead, Wyden lays out several milestones he believes will determine how the Stagwell (STGW) and Driven Brands (DRVN) stories play out. For Stagwell, he highlights the upcoming political cycle as an earnings catalyst, noting that 2022 political spending represented a peak that muddied early post‑merger comparisons, while the next big cycle in 2028 should boost EBITDA and free cash flow.

He also focuses on Stagwell’s internal AI efforts. Wyden says the company is developing an “agentic operating system” that ties together client first‑party data with Stagwell’s own data sets, citing IBM as an example client deploying new tools in collaboration with partners like Palantir. He argues that evidence of meaningful adoption of these tools by large accounts will be a critical signal that Stagwell is an AI enabler rather than an “AI loser.”

On capital allocation, he listens closely to management commentary about buybacks versus acquisitions. As of 2025–2026, Wyden notes Penn is publicly favoring large repurchases, including a plan to buy about 20 million shares in 2025, and he treats follow‑through on that plan as a key test of owner‑operator discipline.

For Driven Brands, Wyden is watching whether the board pursues asset sales, a sale of the whole company, or deeper cost cuts. He mentions potential strategic combinations, such as Take 5 merging with Valvoline’s quick‑lube business or being acquired by another operator like Mavis, while acknowledging possible antitrust constraints and franchise‑agreement complications. In his view, any move that gets DRVN into private hands or a more efficient strategic structure would be a major inflection point.