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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 2 clicks

Calvin Blissett on X

$SSTK: $4.14, $153M mkt cap, ~$317M EV, ~$90M of TTM FCF. That's ~59% of the market cap in one year of free cash flow, ~3.5x EV/FCF, and 0.17x sales. Down 78% this year. This is the crazy one. Shutterstock sells stock photos, footage and music to marketers, and AI image generators are eating that business. Revenue is down 11% to $901M. The Getty merger died in July after the UK regulator demanded a sale of Shutterstock's editorial business and Getty walked away. Getty then filed Chapter 11 on Oct 21, and Shutterstock suspended its dividend to pay down debt. Then on Oct 28 founder Jon Oringer came back as CEO and Chairman. He owns ~30%, and his stake is down ~80% this year. X is split: one guy called him checked out since 2020 and "an even worse COB," another called it the start of a serious shake-up. Either way, the founder who owns almost a third of the company now has every reason to fix it or sell it. Value Line still rates Financial Strength B. You're paying 3.5x free cash flow for a melting ice cube, so the question is how fast it melts. If FCF falls 20% a year it still roughly pays back the whole EV in about five years. Q3 is Nov 5. Size it like a lottery ticket. Not investment advice. Do your own work.
@calvinblissett 3 clicks

Calvin Blissett on X

$ANGI: $5.99, $243M mkt cap, $189M of cash vs $422M of debt, ~$477M EV, ~4.3x EBITDA. Shares down 16% in a year and the stock down 55%. Angi is HomeAdvisor plus Angie's List, the place you find a plumber, spun out of IAC in April 2025. I won't pretend it's clean. Q2 revenue fell 11% to $248M, service requests fell 6%, guidance got pulled, and management pushed a return to growth into 2027. Refinancing the bonds due within a year is the top priority. So why is it here? JLHR wrote it up on VIC in May 2025 at $15.75 at 6-6.5x EBITDA. His point was that everyone was staring at revenue and missing how much better the earnings power had gotten. It's 4.3x now. Since then the share count is down 16%, BlackRock just disclosed a 12.5% stake, and July's EBITDA margin ran ~700bp above Q2. They also bought Contractor+, a back-office app used by 50K contractors, to make Angi part of the pro's daily workflow. Value Line gives it a 5 for Performance and a 5 for Safety, the scariest costume in the issue. Investor day is Nov 17. If the refi gets done and revenue stops falling, you're paying ~4x EBITDA for one of the best-known brands in home services. If not, it's a lot of debt for a $243M equity.
@calvinblissett

Calvin Blissett on X

$TZOO: $5.16, $53M mkt cap, ~$8M of cash vs ~$6M of debt, ~$51M EV. Shares down 12% in a year, and insiders own 36%. Travelzoo is the travel-deals email your parents still open. 30 million members, founded by Ralph Bartel, and his family still runs it. It's halfway through switching from advertising to paid "Club" memberships. GAAP makes that look awful because the cost of signing members is expensed up front, while the fees come in over 12 months. Q3 revenue was $22.9M, up 3%, with a wider loss but record paid-member adds. clarksquarecap wrote it up on VIC in April at $5.92. He argued it screens badly on every metric while the economics get better, and estimated ~$1.40 of EPS by 2027, around $20 at 15x. He put the downside at 10-15% at a trough EV/sales. After Q3, people on X said the same thing: "GPM back up, CAC down, and record acquisition of paying members," and one called it "5x P/E diluted on 2028 numbers." Value Line has Financial Strength at C++, but it raised the Technical rank yesterday. It's tiny and illiquid, and the whole thesis depends on renewal rates nobody has seen yet. The first cohort renewing is the catalyst. Size it like a $53M company.
@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.

Investor Letters

All letters
BLND · long

Blend Labs INC

Blend Labs (BLND) is presented as a long investment idea, with prior VIC writeups cited for business background.

BLND $274M
Value Investors Club 2 clicks

[OTCM] Listings for the rest of us

OTC Markets gives smaller, distressed, and lightly disclosed companies a trading venue outside NYSE and Nasdaq, with lower listing barriers…

OTCM $626M
scuttleblurb 3 clicks

Seer

Seer trades at $2.04 against $3.90 per share of net cash as activists press a board that rejected five buyout proposals and won reelection.

SEER $108M
Triple S Special Situations Investing 4 clicks

Hidden in Plane Sight

An aerospace company’s profitable core is obscured by a long-running FAA development program; approval, abandonment, or shrinking losses…

ASLE $231M
The Mikro Kap 3 clicks

Stranded Indium-Phosphide

Aeva’s high-power InP SOA design could supply NPO/CPO optical modules at roughly 17% gross margins, versus 51% for eight discrete DFB…

AEVA $638M
Irrational Analysis

RI(N)sing higher

RIN prices near all-time highs reflect tighter renewable-fuel mandates, a shrinking credit bank, and biodiesel production shortfalls.

FF $254M
Treasure Hunting 4 clicks

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