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Saturday, October 17, 2026

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Calvin Blissett on X

LendingTree ($TREE) Upside: ~120% to ~$54. Assumes 7x the midpoint of 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance ($148.5 million), less ~$280 million of net debt, across 14.0 million shares. The stock currently trades at about 4x. LendingTree is the largest U.S. online marketplace connecting consumers with lenders and insurers. The stock has fallen 65% from its high, first on a Q2 earnings miss and lowered guidance, then in September on a Wall Street Journal report about Meta’s “Muse” AI agent, which investors fear could let consumers shop for loans and insurance without visiting a marketplace. At $24.43, TREE trades at roughly 4x enterprise value to 2026 EBITDA guidance of $145–152 million. The AI fear overlooks two things. First, insurance is now about two-thirds of revenue ($209 million in Q2, up 42%), paid by carriers buying leads regardless of where the search starts. Second, loan brokering requires state licensing and fraud controls; management notes that ChatGPT and Gemini declined to process loan applications and referred users to marketplaces including LendingTree. Net leverage has fallen from 5.3x in 2023 to 1.9x, removing the balance-sheet risk that once hung over the stock. The disintermediation risk is real, but a 4x multiple prices in a lot of it.
@calvinblissett 1 click

Calvin Blissett on X

GAMCO Investors ($GAMI) is the value-investing asset manager founded by Mario Gabelli, with $36.6 billion of AUM. The shares trade at a steep discount largely because of structure, not operations: GAMCO voluntarily left the NYSE for the OTCQX market, which puts it outside most indexes and institutional mandates. Its public float is small, and voting control sits with non-traded Class B shares held by Gabelli’s family entity. At $25.32, GAMCO holds $231 million of cash and investments with no debt, about $11 per share, or more than 40% of the market cap. With Q2 EPS of $1.07 (up from $0.93 on 13% revenue growth), the stock trades at about 6x annualized earnings, and the operating business excluding cash at roughly 3–4x. Part of its AUM sits in closed-end funds, permanent capital that cannot be redeemed, which makes the fee stream stickier than a typical active manager’s. Key-person risk around Mr. Gabelli is real, and the recent addition of Christopher Marangi to the board supports succession.
@calvinblissett

Calvin Blissett on X

Virtus Investment Partners ($VRTS) is a multi-boutique asset manager with $152 billion of AUM. The stock has fallen about 20% since August as quality-style equity strategies suffered $14.1 billion of year-to-date outflows. At $132.29, VRTS trades at about 6x annualized adjusted EPS of $5.54 with a ~7% dividend yield, and net debt is just 0.9x EBITDA. The less obvious fact: Virtus’s average fee rate rose to 43.1bps from 41.3bps a year ago despite outflows. Lower-fee equity assets are leaving, while higher-fee alternatives ($19.7 billion of AUM) and ETFs are growing, including the 56% stake in private-credit manager Keystone, acquired in March. One caveat from the footnotes: the noncontrolling interest liability jumped to $152.5 million, largely Keystone, which signals a future obligation to buy the remaining equity. Buybacks have shrunk the share count to 6.6 million.
@calvinblissett 2 clicks

Calvin Blissett on X

PetMed Express ($PETS) is an online pet pharmacy that has collapsed under Chewy and Amazon competition: FY2026 sales fell 21% to $179 million, with a $57 million net loss including a $26.7 million goodwill write-down. At $1.38, the stock trades at about one-third of the $4.00–4.25 per share unsolicited bids the board rejected in December 2025. With $21 million of cash, no debt and about 21 million shares, cash covers most of the ~$29 million market cap, leaving an enterprise value under $10 million, or less than 0.1x sales. The stabilization is tentative but visible: Q4 sales grew sequentially for the first time since FY2024 as AutoShip sign-ups improved, management is cutting $6.1 million of vendor costs, and new white-label pharmacy deals such as Rural King use excess fulfillment capacity. The risk is time: operating cash burn was $28 million last year, so the turnaround must show up within about four quarters. The board says it remains open to future offers.
@calvinblissett 2 clicks

Calvin Blissett on X

"I don't know of any other system that's as good… The snapshot it presents is an enormously efficient way for us to garner information about various businesses… I have yet to see a better way, including fooling around on the internet, that gives me the information as quickly." -Warren E Buffett on Value Line. I will do deep dives on the 2 opportunities you guys are most interested in. I think $GAMI, $ALX and $TREE (due to the narrative) are the most itneresting.

Investor Letters

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ZOOZ · long

Zooz Strategy LTD

ZOOZ Strategy trades at a roughly 37% discount to the market value of its Bitcoin holdings and cash on a fully diluted basis.

ZOOZ $51M
Value Investors Club 2 clicks

The Junk (Mail) Merger Arb

Star Equity’s $5 per-share Harte-Hanks acquisition offers $2.50 cash plus 0.25 STRRP per share after proration, against a $2 break price.

STRR $36MHHS $32M
Triple S Special Situations Investing 8 clicks

Portillo’s: Strategic Reset

Portillo’s reset follows weak Texas unit economics, cutting next year’s openings to five from roughly 10 annually and shrinking store…

PTLO $354M
TSOH Investment Research

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