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Tuesday, November 10, 2026

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From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Quantum $QMCO, the tape library maker, just reported a record backlog of nearly $100M as of September 30, more than double the record $45M as of March 31! $QMCO’s revenue rose 42.9% to $89.6M in the September quarter (fiscal Q2), $5.6M above the top of its $82.0M ±$2M guidance, and adjusted EBITDA of $11.1M beat the top of its $6M ±$1M guidance by $4.1M. Secondary storage, mainly tape systems, grew 126.2% from a year earlier to $44.7M, half of revenue, up from 32%, with hyperscale demand up more than 2.6x. CEO Hugues Meyrath said on the March-quarter call in June that $QMCO “should see a lot more tape drives” from $IBM, its drive supplier, in the September and December quarters, letting it convert its tape library backlog into revenue. Instead, backlog more than doubled, and Meyrath said on the September-quarter call that demand remained ahead of supply, “particularly media and tape.” He said $IBM’s “statement of direction” is to double its tape drive output year-over-year, but “we just don’t know how quickly IBM is going to ramp tape drives.” Chief accounting officer Hiral Patel added that revenue beat guidance “primarily due to price and volume mix,” and that she expects pricing volatility from component shortages “to remain a headwind going forward.” $QMCO guided December-quarter revenue to just $91.0M ±$2M, up 1.5% at the midpoint, and said any upside depends on how many components it can get. It also guided adjusted EBITDA down to $9.1M ±$1M from $11.1M, as operating expenses rise with commissions and R&D hiring. That revenue guidance still runs at $364M/year, above the $360M of FY2028 revenue (year ending March 2028) in the base case of my October 28 update. At $19.70/share after hours, close to the $20.25 in that update, $QMCO’s EV is 2.4x TTM revenue, down from 2.8x. It’s also 21.6x the December quarter’s adjusted EBITDA guidance, annualized, down from 34.4x the September quarter’s. So I read the quarter as $QMCO already running at my base case’s revenue, with the bull case’s $400M still depending on $IBM’s drive supply. What I’d want to see in the December-quarter results: 1) IBM: Meyrath saying $IBM’s tape drive output rose, since my bull case assumes it ramps early in 2027. 2) Backlog: Revenue above the $93M top of guidance and backlog below ~$100M, which would mean $QMCO is shipping orders faster than new ones come in. 3) Gross margin: Holding near the September quarter’s 41.0%, even though the guidance midpoints imply under 40% by my math.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

I turned Toast’s $TOST 2027 framework into an adjusted EBITDA estimate, to see what the restaurant software and payments company trades at on next year’s numbers. Incoming CFO Michael Senno will own the 2027 numbers, and he already set the frame on the Q3 call. He said he’s “confident in the 20%+ framework” for recurring gross profit growth (Q4 is guided to 22-24%), but expects “very modest margin progression next year” after a ~36% adjusted EBITDA margin in 2026, since $TOST wants room to keep investing in its newer markets. Those newer markets (enterprise, international, and retail) are nearing $200M of ARR and doubling for a second straight year, per CEO Aman Narang, and Senno said the core business already earns margins over 40%. At $34.67/share, $TOST’s enterprise value is $18.3B ($20.1B market cap on 581M shares, less $1.89B of cash and marketable securities, with no debt), or 21.6x 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance. In my August 10 update, I said I’d add if a pullback took $TOST down to the high teens on forward EV/EBITDA. On the 2026 guide, that’s ~$29/share, which the stock briefly touched at the start of October. Reading Senno’s “very modest margin progression” as a margin near 2026’s ~36%, 20% recurring gross profit growth would mean ~$1.0B of 2027 adjusted EBITDA. So on 2027 numbers, the stock already trades at ~18x, in the high teens.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Root $ROOT, the car insurer that prices drivers on how they actually drive, closed Friday at $43.37/share, down 24.1% in two days from $57.15 before its Q3 report, even though it earned $14.4M against a $5.4M loss a year ago. In my August 10 update, I said $ROOT was riding out the soft market (when large carriers cut prices and spend heavily to win customers) by protecting margins instead of buying growth, and Q3 showed exactly that trade-off. Premiums in force (the annualized premium on every active policy) fell 5.4% y/y, nearly double Q2’s 2.8% drop. Growth in policies offset the lower premium per policy through Q1, but policies were flat from June at 484,037 (+3.8% y/y) while premium per policy fell 8.9% to $1,441. Basically, this means that $ROOT’s customers are paying less on average, and Root’s customer count has barely moved since June, so the total it collects from customers each year is shrinking (down 5.4% from a year earlier, to $1.40B). CEO Alex Timm said larger carriers raised marketing and cut prices during the quarter, so $ROOT gave up direct-channel growth where returns fell below its targets. CFO Megan Binkley expects year-end policies in force to be “broadly in line with the third quarter.” But new business through partners and independent agents still rose 19% y/y and made up 52% of the total, up from 44% a year earlier. The quarter’s big partnership win was Carvana $CVNA, the online used-car seller, which renewed its embedded insurance deal (coverage sold with the car) on August 31. Timm said the program had sold “well over 250,000 policies” by then. Carvana’s new warrants for up to ~1.5M shares (~10% of the share count) vest on policy milestones through August 2028, so it only earns them by selling more Root policies. In October, $ROOT also launched a pilot with Hyundai, one of its existing partners. At 14 Phoenix-area dealerships, buyers who finance or lease a new Hyundai through Hyundai Capital America get six months of Root insurance free if they enroll and qualify. The pilot puts $ROOT in front of car buyers at the dealership, the way Carvana does online.

Investor Letters

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No title

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