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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

@StableBread 3 clicks

Fajasy on X

How much of the $400M of ARR that Boost Run $BRUN is targeting by December 31 is already signed? Five of its seven contracts with disclosed terms can count toward the $400M target, since the July order and Cohere, $160.7M/year combined, don’t start until 2027. If Thinking Machines Lab’s GPUs are fully running by December 31 and the June order starts on November 30, the five cover $300.6M (75.1%) of the target, leaving $99.4M for contracts without disclosed terms. For comparison, the Q2 deck’s deployment schedule had $0.4B of the then-$1.9B of TCV in production by the end of Q2, with all of it live by Q1 2027. From there, the deck shows another $0.4B of TCV going into production in Q3 and another $0.4B in Q4, a straight line to $1.2B by year-end that management calls consistent with the $400M+ ARR target. The deck’s footnote says the Q3 figure is a management estimate “interpolated from disclosed metrics,” so the actual climb will likely be lumpier, with the June order alone starting November 30. Cohere’s racks start in Q2 2027, right after the deck’s schedule ends, so even without a new contract, $BRUN has signed deployments lined up through mid-2027. $BRUN’s last ARR figure was $145M as of June 30, from the Q2 call, so the Q3 report (expected in mid-November) will be the first check on H2 2026. A straight-line climb from $145M (as of June 30) to $400M by December 31 would mean $136.3M of H2 2026 revenue, in line with the $127.9-137.9M needed to hit the $170-180M of 2026 revenue its October 8 prospectus amendment still estimates. By quarter, that climb works out to $52.2M of revenue in Q3 and $84.1M in Q4, up from $31.1M in Q2. In other words, the year-end target is mostly contracted, and the risk is getting the GPUs bought, financed, and running by December 31.
@convequity 6 clicks

Convequity on X

We sold TSMC ($TSM) earlier this year and are staying out, despite strong demand for its leading-edge chips. Our view is that investors may be too confident that leadership in shrinking transistors will keep earning the same share of industry profits as more performance gains come from stacking circuits, connecting chips and integrating optics. Logic folding could also make older manufacturing processes more competitive, which would weaken the pricing power that TSMC's leading-edge investments depend on. In 2009 TSMC's leadership initially rejected advanced packaging as low-margin work before being persuaded otherwise. Together with today's cautious approach to expanding capacity, we read that as a deeply risk-averse culture. That discipline protects returns. It can also leave TSMC slow to back technologies that challenge its existing business, and by the time their value is clear, other suppliers may have secured the key customer relationships.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Founder and CEO Andrew Karos hasn’t reported a single sale of Boost Run $BRUN stock since the listing. He takes a $1.00/year salary, owns 44.6% of the shares, and controls 87% of the vote, so his pay comes almost entirely through the stock. Since my August update, the only open-market sales came from director Sean Goodrich, who holds his stake through Goodrich ILMJS LLC, an investor on Willow Lane’s side of the merger. Goodrich’s sales came after a forced warrant exercise. Once $BRUN closed at or above $18.00 on 20 of 30 trading days, Boost Run could redeem its warrants for $0.01 each, so after it called them on July 21, Goodrich paid $12.7M on August 19 to exercise his 1,101,986 warrants. He then sold 198,200 shares at $20.15 on August 27 and 500,000 at $14.00 on September 14 for $11.0M total, 86.8% of what the exercise cost him, and still holds 4,437,921 shares (8.2% of the Class A). So I don’t read the sales as a verdict on the business, since he sold about what the exercise cost him when he could have sold far more. Meanwhile, three executives have more stock coming. The compensation committee granted them 4.59M time-based restricted stock units (RSUs) on September 29, 5.5% of the shares outstanding. At the $16.65 grant-date price, the 4.59M RSUs are worth $76.4M, 42.5-45.0% of the $170-180M 2026 revenue estimate. Giving up 5.5% of the shares is expensive, but the grants give the CTO who runs all of $BRUN’s GPU deployments and the CFO who has to finance the GPUs a reason to stay through mid-2029. $BRUN still reports three material weaknesses, the most serious kind of gap in a company’s financial reporting controls. They’re in (1) IT general controls, (2) segregation of duties (keeping one person from handling a transaction end to end), and (3) the number of qualified accounting staff. $BRUN’s filing record hasn’t been clean either. Both 10-Qs came late, after notices of late filing on May 26 and August 14, and the original Q1 10-Q, filed June 1, called its disclosure controls effective until an amended Q1 10-Q on August 18 said they weren’t. I’m comfortable with the weaknesses for now, since (1) the S-4 (merger filing) disclosed all three before the merger, (2) the amendment didn’t change any reported numbers, and (3) $BRUN has hired a chief accounting officer, a COO, and a CIO to fix the gaps. But lenders, and any agency rating the parent-level debt $BRUN wants, will read the same filings.

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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…

VRRM $404M
The Oak Bloke 2 clicks

FTAI 3Q26: Aero margins in focus

FTAI’s Aerospace Products margin rebounded to 31% as CFM56 module output rose, while Power deposits and contracted deliveries fund its 2027…

FTAI $20B
Stock Thoughts 4 clicks

Microsoft's AI Boom Has A Cost

Microsoft’s Azure grew 48% as AI monetization accelerated, but doubled CapEx, largely for CPUs and GPUs, reduced quarterly free cash flow…

MSFT $3.9T
Yiannis Zourmpanos 2 clicks

CVX Earnings Review

Chevron’s Q3 revenue rose 35% to $65.2 billion and EBITDA 75% to $20.2 billion, while production trailed guidance and refining margins…

CVX $465B
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

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
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

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

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