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Saturday, October 31, 2026

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When the liquidity does not add up

Arbor Realty Trust’s dividend suspension is presented as creating $60 million of liquidity, raising questions about its ability to meet 2027 debt maturities.

ABR $2.2B
John Hempton's Newsletter 3 clicks

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.
@convequity 1 click

Convequity on X

Software multiples have fallen further since our January report. As of 7 Oct 2026, 238 companies in our all-software watchlist have EV/Sales (NTM) data on Koyfin. The median is 3.1x, down from 3.7x in January. The average is 5.4x, down from 6.2x. The 25th percentile is 1.8x, down from 1.9x. The 75th percentile is 5.5x, down from 6.1x. 191 of the 238 (80%) trade below our 6.7x private equity floor. 113 trade below 3x. The Bessemer Cloud Index shows the same pattern. Its median is 4.7x, down from 5.1x in January. 46 of its 68 companies (68%) trade below 6.7x. The cheapest are $CXM at 0.9x, $SPT at 1.1x, $MNDY at 1.7x and $WIX at 1.8x. In our watchlist, only 21 companies trade above 10x. The most expensive are $PLTR at 44.5x, $CRWD at 42.4x, $NET at 38.6x, $PANW at 24.2x, $DDOG at 19.5x and $SNOW at 16.3x. Growth still earns a higher multiple. The 44 names expected to grow revenue 20%+ a year over 3 years have a median of 5.2x. The 85 names expected to grow under 10% have a median of 2.6x. Even for the faster growers, the 5.2x median is below the floor. The market is paying up for very few names. We think that is right. Many software companies have slowing growth, high costs and no clear AI strategy. We would not buy the sector, or a cloud index, on valuation alone. In software, we focus on the few companies rebuilding their products around AI, and our SaaS Survival Scorecard tests key SaaS names against the pressure from AI agents.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Markets often miss second order implications until it shows up in direct statements. - If $LITE is completely sold out... (largely due to $NVDA bottlenecking everyone else, eg. securing Greensboro capacity), where else do your other companies like $AMD / hyperscalers / etc. get their supply procurement? - $SIVE is coming online with like 1/6th of the world's current laser capacity by themselves. (100M+ cw dfb lasers vs. 608M EML/CW globally per Trendforce). Not even including their partner foundries that they're targeting 2:1 for. - $AAOI is coming online with a ton of capacity too next year enough to produce 400k ELSFP + $471m/month of transceivers. Then combine that with other supply chain statements like "Having 2-3 suppliers used to be the norm, now it is 5-7" from Lightcounting. So as long as your products actually work + can scale, it's hard to see anyone else with capacity not get qualified into your supply chains. Since optical component shortages are a massive bottleneck now.

Investor Letters

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Molina & Kinsale

Molina Healthcare and Kinsale Capital’s earnings are reassessed through a long-term lens, emphasizing conviction and detachment during…

KNSL $8.3B
Bearstone 8 clicks
PSN · long

Parsons CORP

Parsons generates roughly half of its $6.4 billion revenue from Federal Solutions, serving defense and intelligence customers.

PSN $5.6B
Value Investors Club

MYR Group q3’26 Earnings Preview

MYR Group’s Q3 2026 preview cites data-center and power transmission demand, with long-term service agreements supporting margin growth and…

MYRG $4.3B
Monte Independent Investment Research 6 clicks

Mosaic, Part One: The Story

Mosaic’s history traces the 2004 Cargill-IMC merger and the phosphate and potash mines that shaped NYSE: MOS.

MOS $6B
Latticework by MOI Global 34 clicks

Mosaic, Part Two: The Deep Dive

Mosaic, NYSE: MOS, is the subject of a second audio program for professional investors analyzing fertilizer producers.

MOS $6B
Latticework by MOI Global 5 clicks

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