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Wednesday, August 12

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Everything we published on this day.

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Research Roundup Vol. XLVIII

Palantir’s Q2 revenue beat, Sony’s physical-media exit and Diamondback’s Permian gas constraints frame a roundup on AI adoption, oil prices…

PLTR $466BSONY $137B
Monte Independent Investment Research 1 click
@KEDM_COM 1 click

KEDM.com on X

Optimist Fund @optimist_fund sees an opportunity in the buy-now-pay-later space and has conducted a deep dive into Affirm $AFRM. The fund says the buy-now-pay-later model is still lightly penetrated in US e-commerce and barely penetrated once bricks-and-mortar retail is included. Underwriting every transaction individually at the point of sale, with terms fixed upfront and no compounding interest or late fees, aligns the lender with the consumer in a way the revolving credit card model does not.
@KEDM_COM 1 click

KEDM.com on X

Stride’s $LRN CEO James Rhyu seems to be getting canned and will be replaced by old-timer Robert Knowling. Is the 71-year-old CEO the right person to run a company that’s struggling with tech implementations, or is he better suited to manage relations with school boards? To calm the markets, LRN pre-released earnings in line with expectations, but they failed to comment on enrollment figures, which spooked markets. This has been a volatile name. If they guide to a return to growth in Q1, this should re-rate from the 9x FCF it currently trades at. If for some reason enrollments decline because parents are holding a grudge after a year of tech issues, watch out below. Operating leverage is very strong here. Mr. Knowling’s contract includes a change-of-control provision.
@ActAccordingly 2 clicks

PAA Research on X

I'm short a little $CRWV. Obviously I'm not happy with the move today, but I listened to the @cnbc interview with the CEO and two things really made me feel better: 1) @jimcramer called it an "inflection point" and a day that will go down in history (thank you for your tireless service Jim) 2) The $CRWV CEO's stuttering and non-stuttering sequences really were quite revealing. I'm not trying to belittle someone's speech challenges. Public speaking is hard, but someone with some basic CIA interview skills training would have a field day with his 5-10 minute segment on CNBC, particularly when asked about margins, insider selling, and project delays. He struggled mightily there to get the words out, which is telling. Of course @CNBC clipped out most of those parts of the interview, but you can watch the rest here. https://t.co/ldWzhWZXlO
@leevalueroach

Lee Roach on X

The management team at $NCMI are idiots. Pausing the dividend and buyback to buy an operate of digital video elevator and lobby advertising in office buildings. For $275 million. They pulled guidance too and net leverage is 3.9x. They are buying this garbage at 14.5x 2025 EBITDA. The $3.5 million of annualized syngeries only gets you to 12.2x EBITDA. And they are headlining a 10x acquisition multiple. Any management team that spends shareholder capital buying overvalued assets needs to be fired.
@RagingVentures 2 clicks

Raging Capital Ventures on X

Just as Lucent and Alcatel did, $NVDA is providing enormous vendor financing, thus in part the argument as to why it is a “synthetic” neocloud hyperscaler. $NVDA is on the hook if the neoclouds stop paying. I think there are great similarities between the neocloud boom and the CLEC buildout. And I think there is great risk of DWDM-like innovation (which is what killed the fiber industry) in LLMs, memory, et al. Finally, some investors whine about $NVDA’s “low multiple.” That’s what happens when you lend money to your customers to prop up pricing power and stem market share loses to ASICs. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.