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.
