Michael Burry Buys More of This Stock Despite a 71% Collapse and CEO Departure: Here's Why

The Big Short's Michael Burry is known for winning big during the 2008 global financial crash. Last year, he shuttered his hedge fund on AI bubble fears and has transitioned to disclosing trades and the rationale behind them on Substack.

Burry, known for his contrarian bets, appears to be channeling his value investing philosophy lately, buying beaten-down stock with robust fundamentals and potential for a solid rebound.

In a Monday trading post on Substack, Burry said financial technology company Fiserv, which is down 55% over the past five years, is a 'dog of a stock, now under $48 from $226 early last year.'

Burry remained bullish on the Fiserv stock while highlighting that the current stock price is at a 10-year low. It also gapped down by over 3% eight times and more than 10% three times over the past 18 months, he added. On Monday, the stock gapped down about 8% and closed 10% in the red after CEO Mike Lyons' sudden exit, which Burry believes is a 'thesis violation,' but it does not mean sell, but re-evaluate.

For those investors selling the stock, Burry reminded them that Fiserv secured the top spot in the 2025 IDC FinTech 100 for the third straight year, processes 10,000 transactions per second, with 1.8 billion issuer accounts, 339 million deposit and loan accounts, and reaches 95% of US households. He also highlighted Fiserv's 3.9 million small businesses, 900,000 Clover merchants, 7,000 enterprise-level clients across nearly 1 million locations.

'In something like this, buying very cheap is important. This will not soon romance the growth crowd, and the payments space is, as I said at the top, changing enough for a wise investor to be patient with the incumbents,' Burry noted, adding that the company's core business remains intact despite the sharp selloff.

Burry used the selloff to add to his position. 'Today, I bought more FISV at approximately $48.50,' he said, adding that the position is now roughly the size of his holdings in MercadoLibre and Birkenstock. He also shared a chart detailing how trading volume has remained elevated for many months, potentially hinting at a bottoming process.

Burry's Take on CEO Departure

Burry highlighted that Lyon joined Fiserv just more than a year ago, and the stock has tanked by a whopping 71% during his tenure.

'It is a bad look, but the prior CEO before Lyons had set the company up with aggressive accounting and short-term sales tricks that had to be unwound,' Burry wrote. 'When Lyons told the story, the stock crashed, and kept crashing.' Lyons now joins Truist Bank as CEO, and it is likely that he found Fiserv 'impossible to turn after he got a deep look at it,' Burry added.

He stressed that new Fiserv CEO Takis Georgakopoulos has technology expertise in payments, which Lyons did not have. The new CEO is there to grow the business with high-return on invested capital (ROIC) moves and to ensure existing moats are fortified, according to Burry.

Georgakopoulos comes from the Clover side of the business, which competes in payments by being 'preferentially bolted onto and into Fiserv's extensive roster of current clients,' he explained.

Takis joined Fiserv in late 2024 after 17 years at JPMorgan Chase as the lead of the bank's global payments business. 'Takis is an inside hire but not part of the old guard. To be clear, the business itself runs just fine no matter who is CEO,' Burry had concluded.

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