Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
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Monday, October 19, 2026

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LXS.DE: a 2028 sale it can force

Lanxess can force Advent to buy at least half its Envalior stake in April 2028, potentially raising about €745 million to reduce net debt.

LPTH $525M
Trade Ideas Flow 16 clicks

From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

From June 1 to October 16, Boost Run $BRUN fell 77.3%, vs. 37.4-58.7% for CoreWeave $CRWV, Nebius $NBIS, and $IREN. That drop in AI infra stocks is tied to to rising bets on another Fed rate hike. Higher rates hurt GPU clouds in two ways, since they (1) raise the cost of the debt that pays for their GPUs and (2) lower what investors will pay today for profits that arrive years later. But all three peers kept or raised their 2026 targets: → $CRWV: Raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $12.4-13.2B on its Q2 call. → $IREN: Raised its year-end ARR target to more than $4B on July 20. → $NBIS: Reaffirmed its 2026 guidance with its Q2 results. The problem is that lenders are charging more now. CoreWeave’s 9.625% notes due 2032 yielded 14.74% on October 16, up from 13.19% on October 1, meaning CoreWeave would likely pay ~15%/year to borrow the same way today. So the selloff came from how investors now see the cost of funding the demand for GPU clouds, not from the demand itself.
@StableBread 9 clicks

Fajasy on X

I first wrote up an AI data center company that rents out $NVDA GPUs to AI startup companies on April 15, 2026, when it still traded as a SPAC at $10.70/share, just above its ~$10.60 trust value. The merger was a success, and the stock peaked at $39.20/share on June 1st. Now it trades below its SPAC price. That company is Boost Run $BRUN, which has fallen to $8.89/share, down 77.3% from its peak, even after it announced its largest disclosed contract on October 6 (worth $525.6M). The three larger listed GPU clouds have fallen from their 2026 highs as well, through the October 16 close: → CoreWeave $CRWV: Down 55.5% to $61.39/share. → $IREN: Down 60.2% to $26.99/share. → Nebius $NBIS: Down 42.3% to $165.47/share. So $BRUN fell with the group, but further than all three. I’d blame the drop from $39.20 on two causes that have nothing to do with $BRUN’s core operations: (1) higher rates and borrowing costs, and (2) $BRUN’s float growing ~3.1x, which was expected once its lockup ended and its warrants were called. Yet the business carries less risk than it did as a SPAC: → Contracts: $1.61B with disclosed terms and TCV over $2.6B, including $1.43B signed since my April write-up. → Customers: Thinking Machines Lab (the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati) and Cohere make up 61.9% of the $1.61B on three- to five-year terms, after three customers made up 75.9% of 2025 revenue, led by RunPod, a GPU cloud platform, at 44.5%. → Year-end target: If Thinking Machines’ GPUs are fully running by December 31 and the June order starts on November 30, the five disclosed contracts running by year-end cover $300.6M (75.1%) of the $400M ARR target. → Merger: Closed on May 8, 2026, with zero redemptions. → Balance sheet: The merger proceeds paid off its short-term bridge loans, the going-concern language is gone, and pro forma cash is $191.8M, up from the $108M I used in my June 3 update, right after the merger. But $BRUN still has to get the GPUs bought, financed, and running by December 31: → To reach the $1.0-1.2B of GPU spending management expects for 2026, $BRUN has to deploy $663-863M of GPU servers in H2 2026, 2.3-3.0x its cash and contracted prepayments. → CFO Erik Guckel said on the Q2 call that $BRUN is working on new ways to finance the build, but I found no new facility, lender, or term sheet in its filings or press releases from August 14 to October 16. → $BRUN’s named customers are private AI startups without investment-grade ratings, so its contracts are harder to borrow against. → If lessors funded 70% of the H2 2026 build instead of 79.5% (as in H1 2026), $BRUN would need $199-259M of its own cash for the build, more than its $191.8M of pro forma cash. → Both 10-Qs came late, after notices of late filing on May 26 and August 14, and $BRUN still reports three material weaknesses, the most serious kind of gap in a company’s financial reporting controls. → Founder and CEO Andrew Karos controls 87% of the vote. At $8.89/share, $BRUN’s EV is $989.7M. That’s 2.5x its $400M target for year-end ARR, down from 5.4x at the $22.93 price in my August 16 update. At 2.5x, $BRUN trades below all three peers, including $IREN at 3.2x. So did the thesis break, or just the stock? That’s what I answer in my new ~5k-word update on $BRUN, including my bear, base, and bull cases (Excel model included).
@aleabitoreddit 1 click

Serenity on X

Last major $SIVE disclosure was 100M CW DFB laser capacity Q4 2027. And a new foundry partner (that makes 2 including Win Semi). Expected $JBL revenue coming in H1 2027 (with lasers for Jabil's 1.6T LRO scaling up H2 2027). There's channel checks along the way like CIOE where Sivers was engaged with Chinese pluggable makers + laser ASPs being raised. 70mW/100mW ranges were the most tight to Chinese pluggable makers, which was surprising. Biggest industry read through was $LITE selling out into 2029, making agreements for 2030, and having hyperscalers pay for capacity expansion for 2031. I don't think anyone has enough information to do any sort of accurate modeling for $SIVE like you can for $AAOI given they don't release product breakdown + capacity targets by quarter. The 200mW NPO lasers Sivers is sampling is likely different ASP than your 70mW lasers shipped to pluggable makers. And your custom CPO lasers are different pricing too. Like all sampling/qualification players from $AEHR to $AAOI back in 2025, usually the risk/reward comes in whether qualifications convert and what new customers they have, which is always a risk. In a bull case, if $SIVE comes online with 300m laser supply (2:1 implied ratio, already has "tremendous" supply online from likely US fab) during a structural shortage. Pluggable players like $JBL, 6 other vendors. $GFS as the reference design laser for their CPO/NPO platform. Your minor players vendors like $POET, $AEVA and other players end up scaling. And all the other custom products they hinted they were working on in the past for CPO years back. I think the probability that they cook is higher since there's so many ongoing qualifications during a bottleneck. We've already seen ownership changes from Swedish investors to US/International retail from $SIVE shareholder disclosures. My guess is that trends institutional from retail before US listing next year amid the market correction. Think people forgot institutions have already financed their expansion, which was a 700M SEK round 100%+ ago (multiple times oversubscribed). And that $SIVE uses primarily external fabs, so it's not the same as a lot of the major financing concerns affecting Neoclouds. Anyway, up to management execution, I'm not running Sivers so no clue what other companies are working with them now, whether it's Cambridge or some other US player like Semtec. TLDR: - Just need to wait for earnings for more disclosures around qualifications + partners, only so much public can guess from channel checks and supplier mapping. Not quite the same as $LITE CEO where you can see the guy on Fox news or Bloomberg interviews every week (which is a good thing)

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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.

BMBL $783M
TSOH Investment Research 11 clicks
IMXI · short

International Money Expr INC

International Money Express is shorted on the market pricing an 80-85% chance that Western Union closes its roughly $500 million…

IMXI $311M
Value Investors Club

Dance with the Devil (Nasdaq: ILPT)

ILPT’s Hawaii ground leases and US warehouse portfolio are improving, while five-year fixed-rate refinancing eases the debt burden created…

ILPT $416M
Real Assets, Real Value

What I Read This Week

Cable stocks face renewed broadband share-loss concerns from LEO satellites, while AI links cover Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Anthropic and…

CCOI $428M
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