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Tuesday, October 20, 2026

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Vicor Update, Part Three

Vicor’s $66.6 million in AI power-delivery royalties generated about $50 million of operating profit, eclipsing its module business as revenue reached $197.1 million.

VICR $10B
CV's Substack 27 clicks

From X

@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.
@SouthernValue95

SouthernValue on X

$MSFT outlining their view of digital work and application stack of the future: - Copilot as the UI/OS for getting work done - Supported by the context layer of Microsoft IQ, bringing in data from all of your other tools - Connected to an “infinite software factory” to build personalized apps that help you get work done more efficiently, running on a managed infra layer that keeps data within the rails and avoiding app sprawl - and he is clear that existing Systems of Record need to evolve to support this structure or be replaced.

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Heico Corporation

HEICO sells FAA-approved aircraft replacement parts at 30% to 50% discounts to OEMs, gaining customers as restrictive aftermarket contracts…

HEI $43B
D Invests 13 clicks

Copper Fox Metals: Research Flash

Copper Fox’s C$9.1 million Schaft Creek program advances metallurgical, tailings, water and road studies toward a pre-feasibility study,…

TECK $31B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 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 ad…

APP $92BU $18B
Speedwell Memos 66 clicks

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