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Friday, October 16, 2026

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@convequity

Convequity on X

Private equity puts a floor under software valuations, and you can work out that floor with simple arithmetic. A private equity buyer takes the company private, removes unnecessary staff, lifts margins to 30%+ and keeps growth in the low teens. A company restructured that way should be worth at least 20x EV/EBIT. At a 33% EBIT margin, 20x EV/EBIT is about 6.7x EV/Sales. That gives a simple test for any software stock. If it trades well below that level, the market values the business at less than a buyer could get from it just by cutting costs. In our view, the market sees no differentiated future for that company. So why don't more of these companies get restructured? One reason is ownership. Dual-class share structures are common across large-cap and mid-cap tech, and they limit how much pressure private equity and activist investors can apply. That makes it hard for a company like $OKTA to accept legacy status and carry out a deep restructuring. We expect many SaaS companies to keep fighting slowing revenue with high operating expenses rather than restructure.
@convequity

Convequity on X

$FTNT already has a fast-growing OT security business of more than $1bn. Robots will face the same security problems as factory machines. Factory equipment and IoT devices were designed for availability and safety. They shipped with weak or no security, and controls were added afterwards. Robots and humanoids are likely to follow the same pattern. Many will run custom or stripped-down operating systems, have tight CPU and power budgets, and sit under safety-certification rules that make heavyweight endpoint agents and frequent patches difficult. When security software is hard to install on the device, enforcement moves to the network: segment the environment, control which systems can talk to which, and inspect the traffic. That work needs a lot of switches inside the plant, in addition to a few firewalls at the perimeter. FortiSwitch is built to be price-competitive for cost-conscious industrial buyers, with security functions embedded and ASIC acceleration for always-on inspection. Endpoint vendors such as $CRWD can help protect higher-value machines, but their software has to run on the device itself, which is often hard on robots for the same reasons. As inference moves into factories, hospitals, warehouses and vehicles, every new AI-controlled actuator still sits on a network, often on the industrial backbones Fortinet already protects.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

The patents behind the key-capture technique of Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) now belong to Netskope $NTSK, a ~$7.6B cloud security company. In March 2024, Nubeva sold its web-traffic (TLS) technology for $1M to an unnamed “mid-sized U.S. based cyber security company,” keeping the right to support the product’s one remaining customer (still 41% of FY2026 revenue). USPTO records show Nubeva assigning five patents to Netskope in one filing signed March 1, 2024, three days before the sale closed, and recorded March 19, 2024. Three are cloud-security patents from Nubeva’s first business. The other two cover key extraction: 1) U.S. 11,805,107: The patent behind Session Key Intercept (SKI), Nubeva’s TLS key-copying software, granted October 31, 2023 to co-founders Greig Bannister and Randy Chou. It covers software that pulls an encryption key out of a computer’s memory and forwards it to whatever needs to decrypt. 2) U.S. 11,494,484: Granted November 8, 2022, and announced by Nubeva as its “U.S. Patent for Ransomware Decryption Technology,” with Bannister saying it “underpins Nubeva’s ability to continue as an effective solution against ransomware.” Bannister, the co-inventor on every SKI patent, resigned as CTO and director on March 1, 2024, the same day the patent assignment was signed, and went to Netskope with the patents. Following the TLS sale, Nubeva kept the other half of the process, turning captured keys into a working decryptor. It filed two patents on the decryptor side in 2024, both since granted: 1) U.S. 12,430,438, granted September 30, 2025: It covers running the ransomware in a sandbox (an isolated test machine) against a known file and matching the result to a library of standard encryption methods to find the one the malware used. With the method and the captured key, Nubeva can build the decryptor. 2) U.S. 12,561,431, granted February 24, 2026: It covers ransomware that encrypts scattered pieces of a large data store, like a virtual machine’s disk, from several processors at once. Nubeva’s method maps which pieces were encrypted, then decrypts each piece with the captured keys. When granting the second patent, the patent examiner flagged PayBreak, a 2017 Boston University research system that also copied ransomware’s keys as it ran, as earlier work in the same area. Copying ransomware’s keys mid-attack wasn’t new by 2024. Nubeva’s patents protect the recovery built on top of the captured keys. NuRR, Nubeva’s ransomware product, copies keys the same way SKI does, but Netskope now owns the two key-capture patents. Nubeva hasn’t disclosed any license from Netskope that lets NuRR keep using the patents. Any buyer would want the license question answered first. Chou has said Nubeva needs four AI patents granted before it partners or sells, and two are still pending. In a July 2024 video, he said a buyer wants the patents issued, since “if you are patent pending there’s a significant discount on the technology itself.” The last two are now well past the early-2026 timing he called typical, with no new date from Chou.

Investor Letters

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2026.42: Home At Last

Stratechery’s weekly bundle covers Apple HomeView and SpaceX’s cellular ambitions.

AAPL $5T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 4 clicks

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/16/2026)

Bumble agreed to a $1.3 billion take-private deal, while Netflix cut about 1,000 jobs and Meta discussed its Muse superintelligence models.

NFLX $511B
TSOH Investment Research 11 clicks

Is The Market Turning The Page?

CoreWeave’s debt and equity price action is framed as a wake-up call for investors amid a broader market discussion.

CRWV $34B
WHAT ARE WE DOING? “Contrarians At The Gate” 51 clicks

PesoRama: Research Flash

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TBBB $6.8B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 clicks

Modine Deep Dive

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MOD $9.2B
CV's Substack 18 clicks

AppLovin Deep Dive

AppLovin rebuilt its ad model with AXON 2.0, lifting LTM revenue to about $7 billion and margins to 77% as Unity competition threatens…

APP $88B
Speedwell Research 25 clicks
LLY · long

LILLY (ELI) & CO

Eli Lilly trades at 33 times this year’s earnings and 26 times next year’s, versus roughly 12 times for big pharma peers.

LLY $1.2T
Value Investors Club 2 clicks

Constellation: Stars Aligning?

Constellation Brands trades near $127 at roughly 11x next-twelve-month EV/EBIT, with recent business results offsetting concerns over…

STZ $22B
TSOH Investment Research 27 clicks

TSMC Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

TSMC reported excellent Q3 results, guided Q4 revenue growth higher and saw its shares slip despite strong AI-driven earnings momentum.

TSM $2.3T
Cestrian Capital Research 9 clicks

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