Sunday, October 4, 2026

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British American Tobacco: Harvest

British American Tobacco’s U.S. reset revives combustibles and rebuilds its nicotine-pouch portfolio after legacy-brand writedowns and Velo 1.0’s failure.

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Convequity’s AI Bubble Barometer (ABBX) — Week of 2 October 2026 Our weekly framework tracks valuations, returns, capex, financing risk and infrastructure capacity across hyperscalers, neoclouds and model labs. Friday 2 Oct 2026 close (US ET): - Price drove the move: EV rose about $44B to about $14,114B. Invested capital (IC) was unchanged at $2,338B. - EV/IC: 6.04x, up 0.02x from 6.02x on 25 Sep. - All-in EV/IC: 6.76x. 1. Returns. Our paired, annualized forward ROIC (which is not trailing accounting ROIC) for Q2 2026 is 30.0%, against an AI WACC of 9.8%: 3.07x ROIC/WACC and a spread of +20.3 percentage points. 2. Capex. Latest-quarter cash capex is $228.7B. 3. Debt. Borrowings are $595B. All-in exposure is $3,624B, or 6.10x borrowings, adding purchase obligations, construction commitments and uncommenced leases on top of borrowings and leases. 4. Gigawatts. Current capacity is 45.7 GW, with 153.4 GW planned. $MSFT versus $GOOGL: MSFT’s all-in exposure is about 17x borrowings, and it is renting more: external capacity is about 12% now and 21% of planned capacity. GOOGL’s all-in exposure is 10.2x borrowings, while its external capacity share remains small at about 4% now. We see a price-led rise in valuation, with modeled forward returns still well above the cost of capital. Future spending commitments are much larger than borrowings alone suggest, and the reliance on rented capacity differs across companies.

Nike, Part Two: The Deep Dive

Nike’s second Latticework program examines the company and the global athletic footwear and apparel industry for professional investors.

NCNO · long

Ncino INC

NCino is a commercial-lending system of record for banks and credit unions, trading at roughly 3x enterprise value to sales.

Thinking Notes

AI capex rests on coding-centric benchmarks, cheap-model commoditization and circular financing: OpenAI’s $60 billion annual Oracle…

Groupon Built a Brain

Groupon is building an AI “Brain” to personalize its app for each user, turning its turnaround plan into a product initiative.

Thoughts on PayPal Buyout Offer

PayPal faces a $60.50-per-share buyout offer from Stripe and Advent, with a rejection or counteroffer above $80 viewed as more likely.

New Position: Volatility Merchant

A digital market-infrastructure platform dominant in rates and expanding in credit trades at 22 times free cash flow, with 45%+ FCF margins…

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