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Monday, November 9, 2026

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@StableBread

Fajasy on X

QXO's $QXO roofing prices went from 1.1% below a year earlier in April to 4.1% above in September, per the November 9 call. Roofing and waterproofing, the business $QXO has owned longest, also grew its gross margin y/y in Q3, and its October daily sales rose 9.1% y/y, vs. 5.4% for all of $QXO. CEO Brad Jacobs said September "came in much stronger than expected." In my earlier post, I estimated that everything but TopBuild, the insulation business $QXO bought on July 1, made ~$272M of Q3 adjusted EBITDA, the same as in Q2. A higher roofing gross margin and flat adjusted EBITDA can both be right if $QXO's spending on people and technology grew faster than its gross profit, which the full Q3 report on November 12 should show. Jacobs also kept the $4B 2030 adjusted EBITDA target, but now measures it from "about $1.75 billion today," down from the "almost $2 billion" of 2025 combined EBITDA in $QXO's July investor Q&A. He said the ~$1.75B reflects current consensus estimates, so with the target unchanged, EBITDA now has to grow ~2.3x instead of ~2x. Jacobs told Tyler Grason of Patient Capital, who asked how he'd balance QXO with his new venture, CKX, that he works "pretty much seven days a week" and owns "about a quarter of the company." $QXO also said it has no debt maturities before 2031, over $2B of liquidity, and nearly two-thirds of its debt at fixed rates. So I read the call as the roofing business finally turning, but from a lower starting point than $QXO used in July. What I'd want to see in the full Q3 report on November 12: 1) Roofing: Its adjusted EBITDA vs. Q3 2025, if $QXO breaks it out, to see whether the gross margin gain carried through. 2) Costs: Whether operating expenses grew faster than gross profit across $QXO.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

QXO's $QXO CEO Brad Jacobs just announced his ninth company, which he'll run as chairman and CEO while keeping both roles at QXO. His firm, Jacobs Private Equity, is putting $900M of a $1B investment into CKX Lands $CKX, a small Louisiana land company that will be renamed and operate "in an industry to be determined," in a deal expected to close in early 2027. Jacobs started $QXO the same way in 2024, when his firm put $900M of a $1B investment into SilverSun Technologies, a small software reseller, and renamed it QXO. $QXO pre-released its Q3 results on November 9, three days before its full report, for a call that also covered Jacobs' new venture. Q3 sales rose 79% y/y to $4.90B, and adjusted EBITDA rose 85% to $557M, lifting the margin to 11.4% from 8.4% in Q2. In my August 16 update, I wrote that TopBuild, the insulation distributor and installer $QXO bought on July 1, would be the first acquisition that lifts the blended margin rather than pulling it down. TopBuild made an 18.4% adjusted EBITDA margin on $6.2B of sales in 2025, or ~$285M/quarter on ~$1.55B. If TopBuild earned that average in Q3, the rest of $QXO (its roofing business plus Kodiak, the lumber and building materials distributor it bought on April 1) made ~$272M on ~$3.34B of sales, an ~8.1% margin. That's the same $272M as Q2, and less than the $301M $QXO made in Q3 2025, before it owned Kodiak or TopBuild. So unless TopBuild fell short of its 2025 pace, the margin gain came from what $QXO bought, not from Jacobs improving the businesses it already owned. Jacobs says ending his $XPO, $GXO, and $RXO chairmanships in 2025 gave him the capacity for CKX. $QXO also named Ken West, who led three business segments at Honeywell $HON, president and COO as of September 1 to run its day-to-day operations. At ~$13.50/share, even after a ~17% jump on November 9, $QXO still trades in the low-to-mid teens my June 7 deep dive had as the bear case, where margins stall. The ~$24.60 base case, where combined margins move toward 14% by 2028, would be an ~82% gain. What I'd want to see from here: 1) TopBuild: Its Q3 adjusted EBITDA, if the November 12 report breaks it out, to confirm what the rest of $QXO earned. 2) Leverage: Net debt as of September 30 vs. the $7-9B I estimated in June, with Q3 interest expense up to $163M from $38M in Q2. 3) Management: Whether any $QXO executives move to CKX before the deal closes in early 2027.
@AsifSuria

Asif Suria on X

On our latest podcast, we spent some time talking about why Wendy's $WEN stock went up - instead of going down - last week after it turned down an acquisition offer by Trian Fund Management. The more interesting part was probably the insider purchases of two different biotech companies by Baker Bros. In one of those cases they were willing to buy after the stock went up more than 200% in less than two months. No wonder both $MDGL and $KOD are up more than 6% today.

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