New Ask Claude or ChatGPT about any stock, using Bullpen. Bullpen in Claude or ChatGPT. 7 days free
Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Back to the front page

From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Elmet $ELMT, the U.S. tungsten parts maker, reported a record $347.4M backlog for Q3, with two U.S. defense stockpile awards making up $197.5M (56.9%) of the total. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which runs the National Defense Stockpile, has funded $161.9M so far under its contract to buy up to $2B of tungsten ore and concentrate from $ELMT, already more than the $150M minimum it guaranteed. Each order under the contract can take up to 48 months to deliver, and $ELMT said in its October 1 deck that it doesn't intend to start deliveries "until sufficient incremental new supply is available." I wouldn't expect much of the $161.9M to show up in revenue before 2027. The other $35.6M is a DLA award for mostly molybdenum products that $ELMT's plants already make, and the 10-Q's own chart counts it in the $149.5M of aerospace and defense backlog. Take out both and backlog is $149.9M, up 14.0% from $131.5M as of July 3 and 71.7% from $87.3M as of September 30, 2025. In my August 16 update, I said I wanted to see the first backlog print with the new defense appropriation cycle. Without the two stockpile awards, aerospace and defense backlog grew 15.8% in Q3 to $113.9M, a bit slower than its 16.5% growth in Q1 and 17.8% in Q2. I don't see a step-up from the new appropriation cycle yet, and part of the growth is price: The 10-Q credits "tungsten material price flowing through to our end product pricing" without splitting price from volume.
@KEDM_COM

KEDM.com on X

Once a year, Bill Ackman @BillAckman of Pershing Square bangs the drum on Fannie Mae $FNMA and Freddie Mac $FMCC. They are high-quality, low-risk businesses currently trading at 1.5x earnings and operating under state conservatorship, even though Trump repeatedly mentioned taking the companies public. Ackman mentioned what a member of President Trump's administration said: “We can’t take the risk of the Communists taking control of Fannie and Freddie”. Bill’s letter makes his tweets look short by comparison, but it offers some good insights.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Elmet $ELMT, which makes tungsten and molybdenum parts for U.S. missiles and jets, saw its main division's gross margin rise to 31.8% in Q3 from 20.1% a year earlier, and management credits the jump mainly to how it bought and priced tungsten during Q1 2026's price spike. Revenue rose 55.6% to a record $79.6M, and tungsten products went from 14.8% of $ELMT's shipments in Q3 2025 to 33.6% in Q3 2026, which the 10-Q attributes to (1) price increases tied to higher input costs and (2) more volume from aerospace and defense customers. Meanwhile, $ELMT's microwave products division, which makes radio-frequency systems rather than tungsten parts, grew revenue just 4.4%, and its gross margin fell to 26.1% from 30.7%. $ELMT values its inventory on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) and average-cost basis, so Q3's cost of goods sold still reflected tungsten bought earlier in the run-up, while $ELMT's selling prices had already risen with the market. Its $152.8M of inventory as of October 2, up from $69.7M as of December 31, equals ~8 months of Q3's cost of goods sold, so most of what's on hand was bought after prices took off. Since then, tungsten prices have stalled: European ammonium paratungstate (APT), the traded form of tungsten, was quoted at $2,500-3,100 per metric ton unit (MTU, 10 kg of tungsten trioxide) in the week to November 5, per Shanghai Metals Market, vs. $2,900-3,100 on September 10. Q3's adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.3%, up from 12.0% in H1 2026. Unless tungsten climbs again, I'd treat part of the jump as a timing gain that fades as inventory bought at 2026 prices flows through. In my July 2 write-up, I picked $ELMT as the safest way to own China's tungsten squeeze, since it makes the parts instead of mining the ore. Q3 shows $ELMT's margins still move with the tungsten price, just with a lag. $ELMT's own 2031 plan assumes APT at $1,500/MTU, 40-52% below the November 5 quote.

Investor Letters

All letters

The AutoNation Story

AutoNation shed rentals and megastores, focused on dealerships, and retired 91.1% of its shares through buybacks after its 1990s roll-up…

AN $6.1B
Cannibal Stocks 2 clicks

The 10-Q Fills In the Buyback

Empire State Realty Trust bought $86.1 million of stock through November 6, while corrected sum-of-the-parts values range from $9.12 to…

ESRT $1.3B
Orphan REITs 2 clicks

No title

SpaceX’s $24 billion Starbase power plant, Microsoft’s Oracle capacity cuts, Riot’s $72 billion AI lease and Quanta’s sell-off frame…

RIOT $5.8B
Monte Independent Investment Research 3 clicks
HWKN · short

Hawkins INC

Hawkins (HWKN) faces margin pressure as cost increases and municipal budget constraints weigh on its water-chemical distribution business.

HWKN $3.2B
Value Investors Club 1 click

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

130 publications

Newsletters 110

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 79 of 282

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

91 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

369 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.