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Tuesday, October 13, 2026

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@AsifSuria

Asif Suria on X

We wrote about Bumble $BMBL as a potential deal situation we wanted to participate in for our August newsletter a few weeks ago and @compound248 has most of this right. Disclosure: I am long Bumble. Here is how the $1 billion acquisition value (if that number is correct) breaks down: Debt at the end of Q2 2026: $451 million Cash on the balance sheet: $154 million Net debt: $297 million Their recent debt refinancing required them to pay down $5 million of debt each month. The company generated over $50 million in free cash flow in Q2 2026, which was down from over $70 million in Q1 2026. Assuming they generated an additional $40 million in free cash flow in Q3 2026, net debt is probably closer to $260 million. This leaves $740 million for the equity portion of the deal. Common Class A shares outstanding: 131.86 million (as of June 30 from latest 10-Q) Common units (can be converted to class B shares): 21.25 million RSUs: 12.36 million I am not counting 1.42 million options because the vesting price is over $17. The 17 Class B shares are also a rounding error. Hence total diluted shares outstanding work out to approximately 165.47 million. The per share acquisition price works out to $4.47. Regarding the stock trading at a 8% discount to acquisition price, I will have to disagree because CEO Whitney Wolf Herd is supposed to roll over her equity and I don't see much antitrust risk. The average spread of the 79 active M&A transactions we are tracking is 3.96%. This includes deals like Western Union's $WU acquisition of International Money Express $IMXI that is trading at a spread of over 47% Normalized spreads excluding outliers are closer to 2%. I'll include parts of our August writeup about Bumble in the next tweet.
@Fierce__beast

Fierce_beast on X

$EVLV i'm getting something like -.2/sh of real earnigns right now, and something in that ball park for next year as a base case. The downside is significant PT <3/sh if they are unable to grow into their margins, or face continuous pressure from opengate. If they succeed (let's say 25% growth and margin improvement), i also see limited upside: Here's how i get my Earnings number: Adj. EBITDA: +$15M Stock comp: -$23M Fleet wear (D&A + retired units): -$29M Interest, growth capex, net one-offs: -$3M earnings of about -$40M, or -$0.20/sh Current management missed 3 of 4 gross margin guides, and the promised shift toward subscription reversed twice. Recent trends: Revenue +34%, but ARR only +20% (was 34% five quarters ago). Backlog (RPO) up only mid-teens Gross margin 58% → 50% in two years New ARR per unit added: ~$17K in 2024 → ~$10K now Here's how i get limited upside in the bull case: revenue grow 25% a year to about $557M in 2031 adj. EBITDA margin rises from 8.5% to 25% by 2031, then 27% by terminal year 2040 or so. SBC falls to 5–7% of revenue and fleet wear to 10–12%; Assuming a 9% required return, i am getting around 4.5/sh which is the current stock price. Are they subscale? Don't they have like 9k units deployed? That's subscale? What exactly are the "scale" advantages for this type of company? How good is their product vs opengate as a total cost of ownership? doesn't look good for evolv. Says Evolv is 5x the price over 4 years but little differentiation in terms of throughput and accuracy. Why would anyone buy evolv. The school contracts covered by the FTC settlement date from April 2022 through June 2023, and on 4-year terms they renew in 2026–27. We will just see what happens thousands of units are up for renewal or if there is some switching that happens.
@calvinblissett

Calvin Blissett on X

I listened to all Whitney Wolfe Heard interviews, that gave me a lot of confidence she would/will improve the consumer experience relentlessly, the business wasn’t/isn’t declining as much as perceived or sentiment makes it out to be. Even if it continued melting at the current pace and never growing the FCF would create immense value for equity holders. I don’t think it will continue melting though as they update and iterate on the experience and resume marketing spend. I think resuming marketing spend would be a big catalyst in terms of returning to growth that wasn’t reflected in the stock . $BMBL

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