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Friday, October 30, 2026

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@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Quantum $QMCO ran to $34.50 on October 2, 2026, and has fallen 41.3% since, to $20.25/share. No $QMCO insider has bought or sold shares in the open market since my August 16 update, including Dialectic, the activist fund managed by director John Fichthorn. Dialectic received 14.1M shares in June when it settled its convertible notes, 35.8% of the 39.4M shares outstanding, which makes it $QMCO’s largest shareholder. Its lockup, which also covered $QMCO’s officers and directors, ended on August 23, 30 days after the PIPE shares were registered for resale. So Dialectic could’ve sold into the run to $34.50, and it hasn’t reported a sale. On October 1, $QMCO granted options to buy shares at $31.885, that day’s close, to three executives: → Hugues Meyrath (CEO): 500,000 options. → James Clancy (COO): 400,000 options plus 150,000 RSUs. → Anthony Craythorne (Chief Revenue Officer): 200,000 options. The options vest monthly over four years and only pay off above $31.885, 57.5% above $20.25. CFO William White, fired eight days later, got no grant. So the largest holder hasn’t sold, and management’s new options only pay off above $31.885. But no insider bought during the drop either.
@convequity

Convequity on X

Buying an inference provider could make a software company's AI growth look much stronger. I partly agree with Sridhar. Ali Ghodsi's strengths extend well beyond technology into marketing, dealmaking and fundraising. I see Databricks as a very aggressive commercial operator, and staying private gives it more flexibility over which financial metrics the public gets to scrutinize. Snowflake ($SNOW) has to defend its growth alongside margins, stock-based compensation and dilution every quarter. Databricks has more room to prioritize the growth number in its public messaging while making trade-offs elsewhere. I'd like to see their full financials side by side. Separate core platform growth from inference resale, identify how much comes from AI-native customers, and quantify any benefit from changes in billing. Then compare gross profit, cash flow and dilution on the same basis. Inference is especially interesting here. A provider can collect a large customer bill while paying much of it to model or compute suppliers. Where accounting rules allow that full bill to be recognized as revenue, the business can add a lot of AI revenue for relatively little gross profit. That could make inference companies attractive acquisition targets for software vendors under pressure to show AI growth. Baseten and Fireworks come to mind, along with RadixArk and Inferact, founded by the creators of SGLang and vLLM respectively. These businesses offer serving technology and customers. An acquisition could also immediately increase the buyer's reported AI revenue, with a much smaller contribution to earnings if the acquired business has thin margins. The revenue boost would be acquired growth, so organic growth needs to remain visible. I wouldn't be surprised to see Snowflake and other publicly traded companies explore this route. If investors reward the added AI revenue more than the underlying gross profit warrants, buyers have an incentive to pay very high prices for these businesses.

Investor Letters

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SNY Earnings Review

Sanofi raised FY26 guidance after Q3 sales grew 14.3% at constant currency, led by 34.8% Dupixent growth; vaccines declined 6.6%.

SNY $108B
Cestrian Capital Research 1 click

AMZN Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Amazon reported $201.9 billion Q3 revenue and 39% AWS growth, while $220 billion in 2026 capex drove trailing free cash flow to a $42.4…

AMZN $2.6T
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks
SAP · long

Sap Se

SAP shares are down 45% since February 2025 as AI disruption fears create a long thesis on its risk-reward.

SAP $272B
Value Investors Club 2 clicks

Another Haircut with Avy the Barber

SoFi’s stock case hinges on interest rates, tangible book value and private-credit loan sales after its $1.5 billion equity offering.

SOFI $22B
WHAT ARE WE DOING? “Contrarians At The Gate” 3 clicks

Intel Q3 2026: Dead Inside

Intel’s Q3 2026 datacenter CPU shortage reflects wafer-start planning failures, not substrate constraints, after demand shifted from client…

INTC $348B
Irrational Analysis 2 clicks

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