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Friday, September 4

Friday, September 4, 2026

Everything we published on this day.

60 stories — the front page that day →

Sixty Dollars or Nothing

Chiron granted seven executives 195,610 options at a $60 strike, 63% above the market price and above its published valuation range.

XRN $415M
Orphan REITs

The Week That Was

August payrolls and soaring diesel prices strengthen the case for a September Fed hike, while HBM costs are compressing AI hardware gross…

AVGO $1.6TCIEN $51B
CV's Substack

Trading Post 9/4/2026

Lululemon reported a 9% global comparable-sales decline, 20% lower leggings sales and mid-single-digit operating-margin guidance, with…

LULU $11B
Cassandra Unchained
@ACapitalLP 1 click

A Capital on X

The best trades are where perception <> reality. A common trader exercise is to ask yourself: who is on the other side of the trade and why are they selling to you? What information do they have? Are they more informed than you? The best opportunities are where the seller isn’t more informed, they’re simply misinformed about what’s actually going on. Take $OWL, where the prevailing narrative was a private credit apocalypse, but you did the work and saw the residual value in the fund stakes business and an overblown level of negative sentiment. Or $TLN, where Governor Josh Shapiro and CNN want you to believe data centers are the problem, while the thirst for compute, contractual cash flows and need for electricity remain undeniable. The narrative may work against you initially. That’s often what creates the opportunity. But if your work is thorough enough, your thesis is right and you can hang in there, the gap between perception and reality eventually closes. That’s where alpha is made.
@BlueDuckCap

BDC on X

Haven't posted $AIRS thoughts since the Q2 miss. But after speaking to management and refreshing on the thesis here's an update: 1. The opportunity for post GLP1 procedures remains as large as ever. When a new "thing" starts trending, a business such as theirs with surgeons, devices, and rigid medical process can't just turn on a dime to capture the growing opportunity in a few months. It takes a little time and the management team is measured, disciplined, and thoughtful about the best way to pivot. Why? Because this is a health care setting where you don't just throw stuff at the wall. But... 2. ...Measurable evidence of the new are opportunities (skin removal, tightening etc) gaining momentum is emerging: Skin excisions grew 100% from Q4 and have increased within the mix going from Q4 4.3%, Q1 4.9% to Q2 5.9%. That's real evidence of progress on addressing a massive post GlP1 demand wave. 3. The announced partnership with Alloclae might be a GAME CHANGER as the fat transfer procedure is hitting the zeitgeist as we speak. Alix Earle has 14mn social media followers and the rumor mill consensus is that she just had the procedure done. Sure looks like it to me. 4. I was expecting them to announce a debt refi that didn't come. Disappointing, yes. But, I still believe it is coming and management said so too: "We recently signed an amendment exceeding the maturity of the facility to November 2027. At the same time, we continue to make progress refinancing. The continued stability in our business has allowed us to receive multiple-term sheets that we believe are aligned with our long-term interest and the maturity extension gives us additional time to achieve the right transaction." 5. Mgmt keeps talking about restarting store growth given low saturation and lack of presence in many notable markets such as Long Island, Tampa, etc. You don't wave new store growth in front of the market unless you think you are going to refi the debt and have some stuff cooking to reignite SSS. Maybe more promotional management teams would, but having gotten to know this team well, I am confident that they are not inclined to promote things that they don't have high confidence in. When Yogi became CEO he literally told me no plans to go on the road and meet with investors because they need stability first. Now its a total 180 on that point. 6. There's so much operating leverage here. If the new GLP1 related opportunities continue to gain momentum, and if they add 3 stores to the 31 store base, then we grow ebitda 41% next year. Today we are trading at just 4.9x past peak adj ebitda. In five years, why can't they expand to 40 stores? Based on the unit economics per store, they would then be in position to exceed prior peak earnings. This was a mismanaged business that got hurt by the early rapid onset of GLP1, but we now know that the other side of that demand wave comes with a whole new set of demand for aesthetic work. The opportunity is absolutely massive. And if this current team doesn't get it done, then given the long term filers in the name (PE, activists), I suspect that new owners would be happy to enter the picture. Meanwhile, the short interest remains high and the top five holders aren't going anywhere. *This is not advice, just our opinion. We are long AIRS but that can change at anytime.
@orrdavid

David Orr on X

$LULU's old brand was exclusive, high quality clothes. Curated for only the best thing. Back in 2015. Over time, they expanded a ton and from too-high of volume alone, it would have been impossible to keep quality high. Recently this spun out of control and quality is downright terrible. How can this problem possibly be fixed? Don't they use a zillion different suppliers? I don't think there are enough good ones to replace them, even if someone executed very well. On top of quality problems, they ruined the brand image with DEI garbage. I don't see how that is repairable, at least not for many years. And finally, the whole athleisure category is stale. Which is $LULU's entire brand. Point being, if I was management, I would see no path to turning this ship around within 5 years. And the remaining company at the end would be much smaller than it is today. And that'd be the good outcome, with any of the above three points being a failure mode anyway.
@leevalueroach 3 clicks

Lee Roach on X

Rayonier $RYN owns 4,003,000 acres across eleven states. Here's what happens when you value everything else on the balance sheet and subtract it. Enterprise value is $7.64B. Market cap $6.19B plus $1.45B of net debt. Now take out the pieces that aren't dirt: Six sawmills and a plywood mill, $1.0B. Cross-checked two ways. Replacement cost runs ~$700/MBF on 1,155 MMBF of capacity. Mid-cycle EBITDA of $175M at 6x gets you the same place. Three master-planned communities, $482M. Wildlight north of Jacksonville, Heartwood next to Hyundai's $7.59B plant in Georgia, Chenal Valley in Little Rock at 70% sold out. DCF'd at 12%. The rural land program, $650M. They sold 7,490 acres at $5,439 last quarter against a portfolio the market marks at $1,447. That 3.7x spread on ~30,000 acres a year, decayed and discounted over a 13-year runway. Solar options on 77,000 acres, $125M at a 25% conversion assumption. Carbon storage across 154,000 acres, $80M. Smackover lithium, $30M. Real geology, ten cents a share. The below-market debt mark, $130M, audited on the balance sheet. That leaves $5.14B for the timberland. Now subtract the trees. 188M tons of standing merchantable inventory at current TimberMart-South stumpage, with pine sawtimber at $23.34/ton and pulpwood at $5.40, is $3.57B. Residual: $1.57B of bare land across 4,003,000 acres. $393 an acre. Cutover land in the South, meaning ground that was just harvested with zero merchantable timber on it, transacts between $1,200 and $1,800. Three marks you can check yourself: In August the company sold 36,000 Washington acres at $4,028 and bought 57,000 Texas and Alabama acres at $2,561. Same month, same management. They paid 77% more than the market credits them for what they already own. Morgan Stanley's fairness opinion produced $47.55 to $55.80 on a DCF and $20.85 to $25.20 on trading comps in the same document. The stock is at $20.81. That gap is institutional cost of capital at 7% versus public equity demanding 9 to 10%, applied to an asset with thirty-year cash flows. Management bought back 4.9M shares for $103.5M in H1 and repaid a $200M term loan with cash rather than refinance it. I built the whole thing a second way, from transaction comps by state instead of tons and dirt. $31.80 versus $31.66. Bear case marks the entire South at $1,700/acre, puts the mills at a trough multiple, converts solar at 15%, and still lands at $24.74. Every case sits above the current price. One caveat I'll state myself: the $393 assumes rural HBU is a separate asset. Treat it as embedded in land value instead and you get $555. Still under cutover. The conclusion holds either way. Full work, every input shown, plus the part about the debt structure that I think almost nobody is modeling, linked below.