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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

@convequity 1 click

Convequity on X

Circular AI financing keeps getting bigger. A record $63 billion vehicle, partly supported by Broadcom ($AVGO), will buy Broadcom chips for Anthropic, and it only pays off if enterprises adopt AI beyond coding. The vehicle borrows, buys Broadcom XPU accelerators (custom AI chips) and networking gear, and leases them to Anthropic. Deliveries are expected from 2027. Broadcom guarantees a residual value of $40B+. This is the latest example of the banks, hyperscalers, model labs and chipmakers are frontrunning AI demand they expect to be insatiable. Without faster enterprise adoption, that demand may not arrive, and the financing stays circular. AI has to spread from coding into the rest of the enterprise. Coding can be checked, because code has to compile and pass tests. Other domains need the same verifiability, which means codifying context that lives in employees' heads, or at best across email, Slack, WhatsApp and work-management platforms. Vendors that can codify that context should extract immense value. Palantir ($PLTR) is the closest so far. Palantir's ontology, a structured account of an enterprise's objects, relationships and rules that software can use to check a result, is critical because it is instrumental to verifiability. We think it can make an average Nemotron model state of the art for that enterprise's own work. If the result is good enough, enterprises will use it and achieve sovereign AI. Once that context is codified, enterprises will not want to blindly run closed frontier models on it and give their know-how away. Broader adoption depends on data sovereignty. The shift has been visible since Palantir's Alex Karp warned earlier this year that handing closed frontier labs their data, models and institutional know-how means losing control of the value. The path is intelligence sovereignty plus more verifiability, then greater enterprise adoption, which would justify this frontrunning. It would also benefit Nvidia ($NVDA), which needs enterprise adoption because hyperscalers and model labs are leaning toward custom chips.
@ACapitalLP 1 click

A Capital on X

Interesting setup in $VOYA ahead of Q3 earnings and TCIM’s November 24 no-confidence referendum. Can certainly see a path to $150+ in a strategic takeout given the quality of the retirement franchise… My hesitation is how much activist premium is already embedded in the stock. Shares are up ~30% since TCIM surfaced in April, and the referendum is non-binding. If Q3 disappoints and the activist fails to gain traction, hard to see why this couldn’t trade back toward the pre-activist ~$75 level. Love the potential upside, less convinced by the asymmetry at ~$97… Thoughts welcome.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

35% of TOYO Co., Ltd’s $TOYO H1 2026 revenue came from one customer it doesn’t name, and 22% came from companies under its own controlling shareholder. $TOYO manufactures solar cells, the processed silicon wafers that turn sunlight into electricity, and assembles some of them into panels (modules). Its cells use TOPCon (tunnel oxide passivated contact), a common high-efficiency silicon cell design. $TOYO runs three factories: 1) Ethiopia (4 GW of cells): Started production in April 2025, six months after $TOYO announced the plant, added a second 2 GW line in August, and reached its 4 GW nameplate in October 2025. 2) Vietnam (2 GW of cells): Running since H2 2023, but its cells now go to non-U.S. markets like India and Taiwan, since the U.S. Commerce Department set anti-dumping and countervailing duties (taxes on imports sold below cost or subsidized) on Vietnamese cells in April 2025. 3) Texas (2 GW of modules): A leased 567,140-square-foot plant near Houston that started its first 1 GW line in October 2025 and had completed its second by early October 2026. It assembles panels from $TOYO’s Ethiopian cells. VSUN (Vietnam Sunergy JSC) is the Vietnamese panel maker $TOYO was carved out of, and both companies sit under the same majority shareholder, Abalance, a Japanese solar group. VSUN is still $TOYO’s lender, owed $51.4M including interest, and a past wafer supplier through its Chinese subsidiary. $TOYO’s $261.0M of H1 2026 revenue came from four lines: → Third-party cells (56.5%): $147.6M of cells sold to outside module makers. → Related-party sales (22.0%): $57.5M of cells and modules sold to VSUN and its affiliates. → OEM services (14.2%): $37.2M of fees for cells made under one customer’s name, which $TOYO books net, counting only its fee as revenue. → Third-party modules (7.2%): $18.7M of Texas-made panels. Upstream, 70% of the polysilicon (the refined silicon that wafers are cut from) in $TOYO’s Ethiopian cells comes from a U.S. producer and the rest from OCI’s plant in Malaysia, Rhone Resch, $TOYO’s Chief Strategy Officer, said on the Q2 call. Resch also said its 2026 wafers come from non-China production, “including a designated facility in Indonesia.” $TOYO markets its supply chain as “non-FEOC,” free of any foreign entity of concern. U.S. buyers care, since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) denies the main clean-power tax credit to projects with too much equipment from Prohibited Foreign Entities, a label aimed at Chinese suppliers.

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New Ideas From The Road

Aurelion Research increased healthcare exposure and sees opportunities in banking and defense, alongside research on Alcoa, Nike, ONON and…

AA $10BNKE $60B
Aurelion Research 4 clicks

Oracle: The Party Is Almost Over

Oracle’s CDS spreads exceed 320 basis points as debt approaches $135 billion and fiscal 2027 capex targets $95 billion, amid heavy reliance…

ORCL $363B
David Desjardins 1 click

Site Centers (NYSE:SITC)

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

SITC $192MCURB $3.6B
Real Assets, Real Value 5 clicks

Coupang: 3Q26 Business Recap

Coupang’s product-commerce growth rose 9% as data-leak effects fade, while management expects margins to return to pre-incident levels by…

CPNG $27B
Speedwell Memos 3 clicks

update on Gartner

Gartner’s growth has stalled after federal contract losses and cautious commercial spending, raising questions about its competitive…

IT $13B
scuttleblurb 1 click

Recycle Bin

Used aircraft engines can be repurposed as gas turbines, easing data center power constraints while tightening aviation supply.

EQT $33BRRC $12B
Doomberg 8 clicks
AMRZ · long

Amrize

Amrize (AMRZ) produces aggregates, cement and roofing materials across the US and Canada.

AMRZ $22B
Value Investors Club 3 clicks

TWLO Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Twilio's Q3 revenue rose 20% to $1.56 billion, but Q4 organic growth guidance fell to 11% to 12% and RPO declined 28%.

TWLO $33B
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

Namib Minerals: Research Flash

Namib Minerals accelerates Redwing’s restart, targeting first gold this month and a ramp from 338 ounces monthly to 835 ounces by Q2 2027.

NAMM $46M
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 clicks

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