Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Monday, October 19, 2026

Back to today

From X

@junkbondinvest

junkbondinvestor on X

Semafor out with a hitpiece on private credit. They lump the loans together without explaining one is senior and one is junior (both are first lien). But that's beyond the point. $FSK has a 1L loan to a distressed company marked at 98 cents (for reference, TCPC has it at 86 cents). Whatever, fine. And on the same company's JUNIOR tranche 1L debt? They have it marked at 10 cents. Both loans are PIK, already restructured once, and the equity is marked at ZERO. How do you justify a 98 cent mark on a company likely headed for bankruptcy, while simultaneously marking your junior debt at 10 cents? C'mon! Imagine this in public credit markets? This is the kind of shenanigans which makes no one trust PC marks.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

At ~$6.8M net of cash, Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) trades below every one of the five small ransomware-security deals I found with a disclosed price. That’s a CAD$13.0M market cap at CAD$0.185/share (70,173,783 × CAD$0.185), or $9.3M at 1.40 USD/CAD, with the $2.49M of cash and $12,262 of debt netted out. The $6.8M buys two granted patents, two pending applications, the unfinished AI decryptor builder, and a deployment agreement with what Nubeva calls a top-10 global bank, on $500,586 of FY2026 revenue. Here’s what larger security firms paid for five small companies that detect, stop, or recover from ransomware, per the buyers’ filings: → Smokescreen (June 2021): Zscaler $ZS paid ~$11.7M in cash for a startup that plants decoys to catch attackers. → TrapX Security (January 2022): Commvault $CVLT paid $18.65M in cash for an Israeli decoy-technology company. → Minerva Labs (March 2023): Rapid7 $RPD paid $34.6M for a 14-person Israeli startup selling anti-evasion and ransomware-prevention software. → Appranix (April 2024): Commvault paid $26.27M in cash and stock for a Boston startup that cuts the time to rebuild cloud applications after an attack. → Airgap Networks (April 2024): Zscaler paid $124.4M for an “early-stage” network-security company whose product it called a “ransomware kill switch.” For context, Commvault bought TrapX and Appranix as product lines already bringing in ~$3.2M and ~$2.4M a year. Rapid7 and Zscaler bought Minerva Labs and Airgap mainly for their technology. A buyer would be paying for Nubeva’s technology too, meaning four AI patents (assuming the last two come through), the key-capture agent, and a top-10 bank as a reference account (if the license customer renewed), not just ~$500K of revenue. Still, Nubeva’s revenue is a fifth or less of what TrapX and Appranix brought in, and 82% of its revenue comes from two customers, one of which may not have renewed. So I’d put a sale at the low end of these deals, $12-19M (Smokescreen to TrapX), or CAD$0.23-0.37/share, 1.3-2.0x from here. The ~$26M median (2.8x) is the more bullish upside case. If nothing works, two more years of burn leave $0.93-1.29M of cash, and adding the two granted patents and what’s left of the business gets shareholders $1.33-2.01M, or CAD$0.03-0.04/share, a 78-86% loss from CAD$0.185. In other words, CAD$0.185 sits ~45% of the way between the CAD$0.03-0.04 floor and a TrapX-size sale (CAD$0.37/share). If those are the only two outcomes, the market is pricing a sale as close to a coin flip.

Investor Letters

All letters

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 21 clicks

Build-A-Bear: A Narrower Path

Build-A-Bear's push into prestuffed toys and broader retail distribution tests brand stretchability, but recent results warrant caution.

BBW $303M
TSOH Investment Research 17 clicks
SKIN · long

Skinhealth Systems INC

SkinHealth Systems owns a dominant professional skincare consumables franchise but trades at roughly $115 million market cap and $255…

SKIN $73M
Value Investors Club 2 clicks

Do You Trust Apple?

Apple’s HomeView strategy ties Siri, privacy and smart-home control to consumer trust in its vision for the home.

AAPL $5T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 3 clicks

Semtech Analyst Day Review

Semtech raised Q3 guidance and targets $3.2 billion of fiscal 2030 revenue, excluding upside from its AI data-center optical and copper…

SMTC $13B
CV's Substack 13 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

128 publications

Newsletters 108

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 53 of 245

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

90 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.