TexMex

@RecurveCapital Agree, but a lot of people out there also look at analyst estimates and don't actually do the work.

@TraderTexMex I think anyone serious about it adjusts for the TMUS payments.

Alright, another $CCOI thread. Pretty wild stock move today, brings me back to the good ol’ days of $CVNA back in 2022. Fun to joke about later, not fun to experience in the moment. A lot of people have been pinging me about Cogent since I have been rather public about it. I’ll try to summarize my thoughts: (1) Dividend cut was painful but needed. It should have happened a year ago. BS got over-levered and waves and DC monetization too slow to ramp. Cash flow and BS got better to the tune of $200m/year. I like the plan to revisit only after net leverage drops below 4x. They can get there through EBITDA growth and asset sales, like the DCs announced today. (2) Why oh why did they suspend the buyback? If they happen to get the DC proceeds, they should be able to buy 4m shares at these prices. Maybe they can un-suspend the buyback whenever they want, without notice? (3) Wave added +281 connections. Again, a disappointing number. I think what we’re learning is that whatever number they brought into the quarter that was installed but not billing is roughly what we’ll see in new connections next quarter. Customers are just not ready to accept them faster than that. I have heard anecdotes of large orders that have been/are getting installed rapidly. Many hundreds of them. I doubt anything I’ve heard has actually converted into billed waves yet. However we slice it, Cogent is not installing anywhere near its monthly capacity – and that’s a disappointment. Backlog additions were weaker than expected, but I was not surprised by that given the low install number. It’s a bit absurd to stack the funnel when so few waves are getting installed. The whole narrative hinges on wavelengths becoming a material growth vector for Cogent. 5,200 waves in the funnel, probably 3k are either installed, installing, or signed but not yet installed. 3k x $2100 x 12 = $75.6M of ARR(2) sitting there in the funnel waiting for customers to be ready, so about a $115M run-rate business. As to why these aren’t installing faster, I don’t know. I had thought it’s a timing issue. It probably still is a timing issue, but the longer we wait, the more I worry that there is something broken in Cogent’s commercial apparatus. Not sure what that might be, but execution does not feel tight. Exacerbating everything about waves is Dave’s communication. He has hit the targets on network readiness. He has missed every other target related to the business, whether it’s a quarter away or a year away. He has no credibility left – nor should he. Dave is a brilliant guy, but he cannot see the matrix when it comes to this business. He clearly does not understand customer behavior at all. Doesn’t mean he won’t learn it eventually, but from a forecasting perspective, he might as well be flying blind. (4) IPv4 wholesale leasing – best news I’ve seen in a while. Get them leased up and get them generating revenue. Once IPv4s are used, churn is very low and I think the future risk of IPv6 disruption is very low. In other words, the risk of a value impairment is very minimal if they are used by customers; the risk is far greater if they sit unused. I’m glad to see they are being proactive about using wholesale partners – very clever. DC sales – not sure how many MW. Probably 15-20 MW would be my guess, so maybe HSD millions per MW. Would be a nice price if that’s true, we’ll find out soon enough. Feedback I am hearing is that it is a pretty legit offer with a high-quality counterparty, and someone who has worked with Cogent for many years. The range of outcomes actually doesn’t feel that crazy to me looking forward. On the low end using very modest assumptions for ramping, maybe waves will be a $200m business in 2028. On the high end, it could punch up to Dave’s target. That is a pretty big delta, but both scenarios provide significant EBITDA and FCF to the business and make the stock quite cheap here, especially asset sales help get leverage down a lot faster. Lastly, I think it’s worth considering this angle. Cogent Infrastructure owns the fiber network and the physical Sprint facilities. Cogent has built a great and highly capable network, but it is commercializing it poorly. The replacement cost of this fiber network is tens of billions. It now has >$100m of business to be generated on it, plus Cogent as a dark fiber customer. What would a strategic acquirer pay for a physically unique long haul fiber network that has been fully upgraded and connected to every major data center in the US, Canada and Mexico? I think the number starts above $5B. Hoping for an M&A outcome is not a strategy, but it is an interesting angle to chew on.

This is real, by the way:

Michael Burry appears to be shutting down Scion Asset Management.

Some noise in guidance from accounting change on how advertising expenses will be recognized post BK that will pressure Q4 ebitda and then naturally bolster 2026 since it was shifted into Q4. Explains the lack of a material guide up. Maybe a muted response going forward until more clarity and more evidence of a turn around.

$WW $172m rev vs $161m est and Ebitda of $43m vs $29m est. Crushed it.

$WW End of qtr clinical subscribers was 124k, estimate by MS was 112k. Material beat there Now all compounded users have fallen off, they would have zero left.

$WW $LLY Eli Lilly announced $3.59b in Zepbound sales in Q3, up 185.3% y-o-y. Good sign for WeightWatchers Clinic business

$WW Nice day, traded 8.8% of all the shares outstanding today, which is 2nd most since emerging from BK.

We sent out our original note on the $WW turnaround post-BK back in August but it's become very apparent that not many people understand the upside here. The value is in the credit agreement and assuming no upside to projections or the multiple, we're looking at >$25/share of equity value just from deleveraging. Factor in the market catching wind, and there could be a path for $WW to triple off the current levels. See our credit agreement explanation and math below. cedargroveresearch.com/p/ww-the-value…

Remember Paul Lynde? Some of you have no idea who he was. That’s OK, because this has nothing to do with him… but it has everything to do with a different way of looking at the bull thesis on Weight Watchers $WW, via the credit side of the ledger. My latest… herbgreenberg.com/p/a-different-…

$WW $AMZN WeightWatchers doing a lot of things over the last month, definitely locked in and focused on changing the direction of the company. streetinsider.com/Corporate+News…

$WW WeightWatchers' next act goes beyond points axios.com/2025/10/16/wei…

Yea actually nevermind, it's confirmed. $HIMS out Benefits $WW though

i see what you guys are doing: *NVIDIA TO INVEST UP TO $100B IN OPENAI

Queen Latifah was on The View yesterday talking up all things regarding $WW and the brand and Menopause. We'll see how this effects subscribers moving forward. abc.com/video/22a00018… 4:50 mark

Queen Latifah + $WW + Launch of Menopause division wsj.com/articles/weigh…

@natstewart5 Been my homepage for at least 28 years 😔

Man, this sucks. I have used Bigcharts.com to do quick "chart checks" since the late 90's, on a regular basis. One of the few remaining holdovers from the old days of the internet - lots of easy functionality, no clutter - is soon to be gone.

@EllliotttB Always tapping the ATM to cover short fall of cash flows to fund that common and pref dividends, not to mention any capex.

Mobile home parks have downside protection because they are simultaneously supply constrained and the lowest cost option in any market