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Saturday, October 31, 2026

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Verra veerer

Verra Mobility’s Avis termination threatens 2027 earnings, while Government Solutions profit rose 25% and implied fourth-quarter guidance points to a sharp slowdown.

VRRM $505M
The Oak Bloke 2 clicks

From X

@calvinblissett

Calvin Blissett on X

$TZOO. Something happened after I posted this. For the second time someone intelligent reached out sharing their thoughts and insists. They were one of the only people to speak to the CEO in the past year. I’d never looked too deeply but it’s been on Joel Greenblatt magic formula for years now. They underwent a significant business model change. I can attest to the value proposition personally because recently I traveled somewhere where they posted a very popular (very good value) deal. AI is not as much of a threat as it may seem and actually is more likely to be a tailwind which I explain. The business model grew through 2008 so I’m not overly concerned about recession risk, and their reports show that 74% of their affluent travel loving customer base would cut travel last. I think the stock can 4x. It reminds me of $BMBL sentiment and accounting wise. Writeup tommrow
@calvinblissett 1 click

Calvin Blissett on X

$EVER: $23.51, $828M mkt cap, $192M of cash and ~$2M of debt, ~$638M EV. $114M of TTM net income, $95M of FCF, 7.6x earnings, and a new $50M buyback. EverQuote is the site you end up on when you google "cheap car insurance." It sells those shoppers to Progressive, State Farm and thousands of agents. The business swings with the auto insurance cycle. When carriers are losing money they cut ad budgets to almost nothing, and when they're making money they spend. My favorite VIC find this week: Arturo wrote EVER up as a short in May 2023 at $6.31, calling it lead gen "that has no moat" that "seems to have lost momentum." He was probably right about the moat and very wrong about the cycle. Carriers repriced, got profitable and turned the spend back on, and the stock is up ~3.7x since. That's the whole game with cyclicals: buy them when the people writing short reports are making sense. On Oct 21 the board added a $50M buyback, ~6% of the market cap, and Hedgeye pegs it at ~4.7x 2027 EBITDA. The risk is the same as 2023, a soft auto market. But you're paying 7.6x earnings with 23% of the market cap in cash to find out.
@stockgutter

SG on X

So you got an LLM to spin out a fancy DCF model for you, or maybe you hacked one together in Excel. How do you account for changes in outstanding shares? Most use a linear assumption. That might work for a company that throws off steady FCF, has limited SBC, and consistently buys back shares. For these, share count often shrinks predictably. But for money losing companies, its usually just a poorly reasoned throw-shit-at-the-wall guess. That's a problem. Dilution is the greatest threat to these names, and Wall Street's DCF models never give it serious contemplation. Example: show me an analyst who modeled in 2024 that $SPCE would 7x its outstanding share count. There are none.

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BMBL 2026-10-21

Bumble is being taken private

Bumble agreed to a $6.05-per-share cash sale to Ithaca Holdings, 136% above its October 2 share price.

BMBL $788M
Modern Value Investing 8 clicks

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 $578M
Trade Ideas Flow 21 clicks
FINV · long

Finvolution Group

FinVolution, a China and ASEAN unsecured consumer lender, trades at 4x earnings and 0.5x book value.

FINV $667M
Value Investors Club 5 clicks

What I’ve Been Up To

Cogent Communications and AI data-center bottlenecks feature in a newsletter update on recruiting, financial media and conference takeaways.

CCOI $397M
Stock Thoughts 6 clicks

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