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Wednesday, November 4, 2026

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The Buyback Shows Up (ESRT Q3 2026)

Empire State Realty Trust repurchased $85.8 million of shares at $4.56 each, using 1359 Broadway sale proceeds to fund buybacks and debt reduction.

ESRT $1.3B
Orphan REITs 6 clicks

From X

@AsifSuria

Asif Suria on X

Nike's stock $NKE is down almost an additional 10% since I wrote this in June and what is even more remarkable is that On Holding $ONON is down 31% over the last year. The company went public on September 15, 2021 at $24 per share and closed its first day of trading at $35. All the wins On Running had against Nike, didn't matter because the starting valuation the market afforded the company towards the tail end of the COVID-19 bull market was too high. I have a pair of On shoes and had almost forgotten how remarkably comfortable they are until I switched to an older pair of Asics for a day. Ever since my Skechers shares were acquired by the PE firm 3G Capital last year, I have been thinking about investing in a potential turnaround at Nike or betting on $ONON's growth but thankfully decided against either option. Decker's $DECK with its HOKA and UGG brands hasn't been too hot either, down 14% over the last year. The correct move would have been $CROX or Asics in the Japanese market. But that is hindsight bias. Looking forward, two insiders, including the Co-CEO of $ONON appear to be bullish about the company's future prospects and purchased $2 million worth of stock each according to a Form 4 filed yesterday. The same insiders including the other Co-CEO also purchased shares in May at higher prices. Insiders are often early and that could certainly be the case here but these purchases are making me take a fresh look at $ONON again.
@convequity

Convequity on X

The $3T “hidden AI debt” number is not the story WSJ just put a headline on the shadow capex we’ve been tracking for a while. Purchase commitments + leases that have not started. Most of it never hits the balance sheet. The $3T is real. The interpretation is not. Add the explicit debt-like items on the books of $GOOGL $MSFT $META $AMZN and you get ~1.69x. Widen the definition to implicit / off-book instruments and it can balloon to 8.36x — approaching that $3T figure. That is the chart. It is not the economics. 1. Most of this is contract value, not a hard legal obligation to pay. A lot of it is pay-as-you-go. The commitments they actually have to fund already sit on the balance sheet. 2. The implicit load is shared. It is spread across financial players — private credit and equity — who are underwriting the build. Their IRRs are not insane. Current ROIC on this spend is still high. This is not a bubble from here. 3. AI ROIC can compress later. I would not be surprised. Near-term it is more likely to stay elevated or even rise. Compute is still short. Efficiency gains are raising, not lowering, the value of each incremental GPU-hour. 4. What the hyperscalers are actually doing: paying a bit more, accepting a slightly lower margin, and sharing a slice of the economics with investors who want the risk. That is risk offload, not hidden leverage. The cleaner setup is still the player that can keep building more capacity internally without leaning as hard on this structure. SpaceX is the extreme version of that. It also means more profit pass-through to the specialized GPU clouds sitting in the middle of this: $IREN $NBIS $CRWV and others. The $3T is a real number. Treating it as imminent balance-sheet stress is the wrong read. Pictures below are snapshots from our AI Bubble Barometer.

Investor Letters

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Site Centers (NYSE:SITC)

Site Centers' $3 per-share return-of-capital distribution and December delisting leave a discounted liquidation stub, with two properties…

CURB $3.6B
Real Assets, Real Value 5 clicks

Stevanato down 30%. Yikes.

Stevanato fell 30% after forecasting low-single-digit 2027 growth as lower Nexa syringe volumes from a GLP-1 customer offset solid Q3…

STVN $3.6B
Best Anchor Stocks 3 clicks

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…

ABR $2.2B
John Hempton's Newsletter 4 clicks
PRIM · long

Primoris Services CORP

Primoris Services, a $5 billion EPC contractor, has fallen about 60% from its peak.

PRIM $3.9B
Value Investors Club

Verra veerer

Verra Mobility’s Avis termination threatens 2027 earnings, while Government Solutions profit rose 25% and implied fourth-quarter guidance…

VRRM $333M
The Oak Bloke 3 clicks

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