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Sunday, November 1, 2026

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Altria: Dutiful

Altria raised 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $5.66 to $5.74 and authorized more buybacks, while on! loses share as cigarette margins hold.

MO $130B
Invariant 1 click

From X

@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.

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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 $16B
Stock Thoughts 4 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

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/30/2026)

Markel spent $315 million repurchasing shares in Q3 as Thrive agreed to buy ADT for $7.6 billion and Hasbro cited rising adult toy demand.

MKL $23B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click
T · short

At&t INC

AT&T’s stalled deleveraging and share repurchase case has prompted a bearish turn on the telecom stock.

T $144B
Value Investors Club

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

INTC Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Intel's Q3 revenue rose 21% to $16.5 billion, led by 78% data-center and AI growth, but Q4 guidance of $15.5 billion trailed consensus.

INTC $348B
Cestrian Capital Research 4 clicks

Twilio CEO: ‘Buy the dip!’

Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler urged investors to “buy the dip” after earnings sent the software maker’s shares down 17% after hours.

TWLO $39B
The Technology Letter 2 clicks

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