Wednesday, August 26, 2026

@BrokenMoats Aug 24 1 click

Broken Moats on X

$suja dug in on a recent ipo that has collapsed, weirdly saw a bunch of people commenting on it and got curious. On the service it seems cheap, but EBITDA is not FCF. And I struggle to understand how the business scales the way the bulls and the sell side want you to believe it will. Cumulative fcf has been negative for years, and of course they cleaned the books for an ipo year, so numbers elevated td, but still nothing to get excited about and forward numbers already look disappointing right of the gate versus S1 guidance (a very bad look, and terrible way to establish trust with investors and sell side coverage) New mgmt background is uninspiring Debt load is quite high even post ipo, the recently lowered interest rate is nice for delta in income statement benefits next few quarters but still have a cash flow problem but this was a nice development. No idea what the slice business is or how it fits - it would be massively cash consuming if they actually try to compete in that space saturated with deep pocketed players like poppi and many other players with national advertising campaigns and distribution/shelf agreements with players like $KO and $PEP (slice is never going to get any meaningful mind awareness or share without massive marketing investment, and Suja does not have the capital or FCF to pull that off. The 90s nosteliga approach already worn off from the early 2025 launch as its not a relaunch of that heritage brand, it's just the ip wrapped as a prebiotic soda. ---it seems more like a story to dangle to get the ipo out that they can sell a huge TAM in their s1, which is a further strike against the board, the PE sponsor and mgmt (likely it just sits at the range its at and gets slowly unwound in a year or two to stop further cash bleed) PE sponsored and +60% owner -- can be your friend on locking float, but also your enemy when they need liquidity, the lock up period ends, or decide to move on. --- one of their other exits through IPO went a similar way, massively collapsed in value after the ipo, wallowed for a number of years and ultimately the PE firm bought out the remaining shares at pennies on the dollar to the IPO price (agrofresh) --Structure of ownership and tax agreements is highly unfriendly to passive long common equity shareholders (good for sponsor) Ultimately its an uninspired story, that is more expensive than it appears with fully diluted shares, a very difficult consumer space that relies on trends, shelf space staying in front of KO and PEP and BUD in addition to many many others on distribution and shelf space - a concentrated number of distribution points that gives power to their buyers (highly concentrated customer base on their sales (grocery channel) Stock probably bounces along the way especially in fronton or right after the coming lockup and the market loves to squeeze things one last time before their final resting space, and the tighter float here (assuming pe stays in) likely makes that more likely an outcome than not. So a swing trader after a brutal IPO? sure I would likely bet up before it's back in time out likely for good. But as an actual investment? let alone long term investment? I find that argument deeply flawed on both financial and fundamental basis