Pershing Square Challenge 2026 finalists pitch Amadeus $AMS | the toll booth on global travel

Amadeus $AMS is down roughly 25% because the market lumped it in with the SaaS names AI is supposed to gut. Team Amadeus, Pershing Square Challenge finalists, argue it's the opposite: a deterministic, mission-critical monopoly that AI makes more valuable, not less. We dig into the 50-year-old systems that planes literally can't take off without, why the GDS is the wrong job for an LLM, the Sabre and Constellation Software angle, and what the stock is actually worth.

Full pitch deck (~75 pages): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5bwef8mz2kplx2sub598w/PSC_AMS_LONG_vSent.pdf?rlkey=x5g0v7t1qk8hpg00ewix95hn3&st=rq9nzl4h&dl=0

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Chapters:

00:00 Why Amadeus landed on my radar

01:00 Sponsor: Trata

02:39 Meet Team Amadeus (Pershing Square Challenge finalists)

05:20 What Amadeus actually does: the toll booth on global travel

09:07 The AI fear that broke the stock

11:13 Is it actually cheap? Valuation and stock comp

15:26 Why Amadeus tops the AI-risk matrix

16:32 Air IT Solutions: the SAP of airlines

22:59 The Microsoft AI director who bet against AI eating this

24:15 Tech-debt pushback and the JFK field trip

29:09 Sabre, Constellation Software, and the monopoly complaint

33:16 How Amadeus won share during COVID

34:21 The air-distribution network effect

35:22 Why LLMs are the wrong tool for the GDS

39:50 The $1B biometrics acquisition

43:03 Google, Gemini, and the uptime math

45:47 Fair value and the bull case nobody's pricing

49:01 Amadeus as an AI beneficiary

51:02 Closing thoughts

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Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/