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Sunday, November 8, 2026

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Vicor Update, Part Four

Vicor’s Federal Circuit hearing put Foxconn’s disputed patent license under pressure, reinforcing its AI server royalty model and licensing leverage.

VICR $6.8B
CV's Substack 1 click

From X

@convequity 7 clicks

Convequity on X

Networking, not compute, now decides custom AI chip wins, and in our view that is Broadcom's ($AVGO) edge. As GPUs become more like specialized AI processors, matrix compute looks much the same everywhere. At 224G high-speed chip connections (SerDes), only Nvidia ($NVDA) and Broadcom can do it. If you want a custom chip, you go to Broadcom. That is why we avoid Marvell ($MRVL). A cheaper design partner is not necessarily cheaper overall: weaker connections and networking compound costs after deployment, resulting in higher total system costs. The bottleneck is moving from the switch to the optics. Lasers and optical signal-processing chips are short, and Broadcom can bundle priority optical supply with its custom chips, even for customers running Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia's lack of optical know-how is becoming its biggest disadvantage, and we expect Broadcom to take more share from it for years to come.
@convequity 3 clicks

Convequity on X

$CRWV 5-year CDS hit a record ~1,195bp on 15 Oct and the whole neocloud group sold off with it. Our ABBX tracker suggests the market is pricing contagion into the wrong names. The balance sheet first. At 30 June CoreWeave had $35.6B of debt against $5.5B of cash, and its ~$33B market cap now sits below its debt. $4.4B falls due in the rest of 2026 and $6.2B in 2027, mostly loan amortisation; no bond matures before 2030. Its 9.625% notes sold at par in June now yield ~14.9%. Add $16.3B of lease liabilities and $35.5B of leases not yet started. CoreWeave's Q2 operating cash flow: Net loss: −$0.63B + Depreciation & amortisation: +$1.39B + Stock-based comp: +$0.17B + Other non-cash items: +$0.28B − Working capital (payables, receivables, prepaids): −$1.32B + Customer prepayments: +$0.79B = Operating cash flow: $0.68B The core business makes cash, but working capital ate it. Without the prepayments OCF was −$0.11B. That OCF is already after ~$0.44B of cash interest, equal to 65% of it, and capex ran 9.5x OCF. Funding is where the group splits. CoreWeave builds with borrowed money: GPU-backed loans, 8.5–9.75% bonds and vendor credit, with ~$9.8B of H1 equipment supplier-financed outside the cash-flow statement. Prepayments covered 12% of its Q2 capex. $NBIS builds with convertibles (~$9B this year) and prepayments that covered 21% of Q2 capex; at 30 June it held $8.5B of debt against $8.0B of cash. $IREN builds with equity, a $3B 1% convertible and prepayments that covered 87% of its latest quarter's capex; net debt is ~$1.7B and cash interest equalled ~1% of OCF. The exposure that matters is its landlords. CoreWeave is ~77% of $CORZ revenue, the tenant at Galaxy's Helios campus and leases 400MW from $APLD. Yet since 2 Oct Core Scientific is down 17%, while Microsoft-anchored IREN is down 34% and Nebius 30%. Our view: the risk is CoreWeave's debt-funded build, not the neocloud model. If CoreWeave stumbles, the hit lands on the landlords that depend on its rent. Nebius and IREN share the model, not the funding.
@ParadisLabs 1 click

Paradis on X

For AI/Semis stocks, it feels like every earnings season becomes signficantly more important than the last. This time is the same, but for different reasons which has led to market chopiness: - Macro instability (Iran, oil, yields, inflation) - Midterms - $CRWV credit stress - AI ROI concerns via frontier lab ARR's (& pending hyperscaler earnings on top). Today: $SPCX Wed: $META, $TXN, $LRCX Thu: $BE, $WDC, $NOK Let's see if good EPS will be enough to turnaround sentiment.
@StableBread 1 click

Fajasy on X

Between July 10 and August 20, Boost Run’s $BRUN float more than tripled, a problem the larger GPU clouds didn’t have. When I wrote my June 3 update, its float was only ~17.5M shares (12.65M public shares plus 10% of insider and sponsor shares that were never locked up). In my May 17 post, I expected most insider and sponsor shares to stay locked up until mid-November, based on an S-4 (merger filing) sentence that read as if only 10% could be released early. But the July 2 S-1 (its resale registration filing) shows the lockup ended for all of those shares once the stock closed at or above $12.00 on 20 of 30 trading days after the closing, which by my count happened on June 8, 2026. The resale registration for 58.7M shares then went effective on July 10, and after $BRUN called its warrants on July 21, exercises added 11.45M new shares by August 20. That took $BRUN’s float from ~17.5M shares to all 54.3M Class A shares, ~3.1x as many, between July 10 and August 20, while the stock fell from $28.44 to $19.40. So I’d blame the drop from $39.20 on two causes that have nothing to do with $BRUN’s core operations: (1) higher rates and borrowing costs, and (2) $BRUN’s float growing ~3.1x, which was expected once its lockup ended and its warrants were called.

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Floor & Decor 3Q26: Business Update

Floor & Decor’s 3Q26 sales rose 3% while comparable sales fell 1.4%; it cut 2027 openings to 10-15 as high mortgage rates pressure…

FND $5B
Speedwell Memos 1 click
MTMTY · short

Metlen Energy & Metals PLC

Metlen Energy & Metals faces a 40% short case centered on its overpriced aluminium, alumina and Greek power businesses.

MTMTY $6.8B
Value Investors Club

Post Q3 EVC Update

EVC's Q3 update cites $30 million for a single station, a broadcast-business sale and stronger positioning for 2027.

EVC $832M
Nat Stewart - Stock Picking Newsletter 23 clicks

Entravision Q3 Update

Entravision’s Q3 ad-tech revenue reached $177.2 million, up 133% year over year, while total revenue rose 88% to $226.3 million and diluted…

EVC $832M
The Value Road 4 clicks

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