Sophon Capital Research

In late December 2025, I sat down with Brandon Solano, CEO of RAVE Restaurant Group (NASDAQ: RAVE), for a wide-ranging discussion on the company’s turnaround, franchise economics, and long-term scaling ambitions. Link here: open.substack.com/pub/alphaark/p…

@ragingbullcap $RAVE is great

A few things I like heading into 2026 that I haven't discussed much previously. $SNAP Got dinged with tax loss selling the last couple months, but really like the set up ahead. Subscription fees for SNAP+/storage add high margin revenue streams while bloated cost structure should continue to fall as a % of sales. Intriguing strategic optionality for AI players (e.g. Perplexity deal). Continue to buy commons, as well as selling $10 puts. $LB Almost cut in half from its highs only two months ago and is back to a compelling entry valuation. Added in size this AM. Call option on Permian data center build out, with a high quality, long-duration core business. $TBP Adding some more US nicotine exposure to go along with $haypp. NP category is exploding in the US and nothing stopping that train. ALP/FRE brands are, imo, higher quality than the leading brands available for the time being, and ALP specifically has a growing cult around it. One of those stocks that seems fully priced on current numbers, but could be worth multiplies given the growth engine. Longer term I worry about competition as Big Tobacco get new iterations approved in the US (why I ultimately prefer Haypp, which benefits from increased competition), but TPB can still work even with relatively low share. $VOD.L LEAPs. see @deepvaluedude @Uzocapital. Fittingly have been rolling some of my $ZEG.L into the party that sold into that monster LBO. $SSP political ad spend should go bananas this year and company made good progress in 2025 extending its terminal value through cost improvements and its sports business. Rightfully rejected the Sinclair offer, but doubt that's the end of it. $RAVE Accumulated meaningful position in this last Q below $3. Tiny microcap QSR that has been growing units and SSS despite struggles for many other concepts; significant white space for new units; strong balance sheet with no debt; entirely franchised/very high ROICs; hidden growth levers, including repricing of legacy models to higher royalties; store-level economics compelling; looks deeply mispriced to me.

Today is the best day of the year so far

Existing conventional TAM frameworks, in our opinion, do not capture a sufficient level of nuance when conducting industry/market research. In our opinion TAM should be treated as a “regime” - a specific archetype of structural environment. This matters immensely in valuation.

Thunderbird Entertainment $TBRD.V getting acquired. Pitched by a handful of investors recently: @Sophoninvest @P14Capital

@Sophoninvest Love this. Reminds me of the things static ratios would've missed like early Pritzker deals for Buffett who was betting on improvement of businesses under them even when the static ratios would have looked bad. Or if the moat is narrowing or widening.

Traditional financial analysis tends to freeze a company in time. Ratios, margins, and growth rates are all snapshots. But the real game is dynamic: a company that is getting better faster compounds value long before reported numbers catch up. The Sophon Trajectory Score was designed to quantify this “rate of change” in the behavioral domain — how sentiment, execution quality, reinvestment intensity, and cultural energy shift ahead of the data. Our belief is that markets are efficient in level, but slow in slope. The slope — the vector of improvement or decay — is where alpha hides.

Stock based comp is the number 1 most pressing allocation issue facing mgmt teams today

CeriBell $CBLL has high product quality and margin structure, credible leadership, and a long runway — but still reliant on execution precision and market adoption curves that are not yet proven durable. The story is less about disruption and more about clinical standardization. If pull-through remains steady, Ceribell could compound into a $1B+ medtech platform. If adoption flattens or incumbents encroach, the valuation’s air pocket could widen fast. We are including the name in active coverage, and will potentially initiate a position in our model portfolio as we conduct further due diligence.

Big pharma wants you to believe anti depressants are the optimal way to cure depression. They definitely are well-aware of the fact this is a massive falsehood

$TBRD.V at 1.6x EBITDA cannot get lower despite what Andrew Walker implied on my interview with him on his excellent podcast. The AI risk is fully baked in, it is not a commodity player, and benefits from what Hamilton Helmer called “process power”

@taobanker What were main takeaways from your process/success?

Today wraps up my 4th year managing my big sister's money. I've done 21.8% CAGR pre-tax and maybe around 16%-17% post-tax. S&P has done ~11%. I'm pleased because I've beaten all major benchmarks, and I'm relieved because no one wants to lose their big sister's money...

New post on our site …crocapatlas.sophoncapitalresearch.com Last month, we covered FILA Group in a brief initiation and issued a Buy rating. It didn’t take us long to understand the bull case - the value disconnect/steep discount to SOTP value in the name — and we wanted to share our opinion (many are already aware of this name from write-ups that have circulated). We spent some more time performing due diligence and wanted to share our findings once again. This note essentially serves as a “Part 2” to our previous initiation and can provide investors more depth in the name. As we already covered, FILA remains a surprisingly overlooked compounder in the consumer staples space, trading at what seems like distressed levels despite owning a global portfolio of entrenched brands and an increasingly valuable hidden asset in India’s DOMS Industries. While previous coverage may have emphasized its brand equity, vertical integration, and insider alignment, the investment case becomes far more compelling when unpacking the intricacies of the DOMS stake, recent tax reforms in India, and the misunderstood impact of deconsolidating DOMS from its financials. At first glance, FILA’s valuation seems puzzling. With a total market cap of roughly €425 million, and a 26.01% stake in DOMS valued at around €400 million, the implied value of FILA’s entire core business — spanning 20+ brands across 150 countries — is being priced at less than 2x trailing earnings. This would be deeply contrarian if the core business were in secular decline, but the reality is more nuanced. FILA’s underlying operations are experiencing short-term macro headwinds: softer consumer demand, FX impacts, and a disruptive SAP warehouse management rollout in North America. These have all contributed to recent revenue softness. But at the same time, EBITDA margins have actually improved, and normalized FCF generation remains strong. The headline weakness largely stems from poor year-over-year comps following the deconsolidation of DOMS ahead of its IPO — something that’s led many investors to miss what’s still a stable, cash-generative platform business. What our initiation missed is the fact that DOMS itself is not just an investment on the balance sheet — it is the clearest lever to rerate FILA’s equity.

In our initial coverage of Kaltura, we laid out the strategic strengths of the platform: a broad enterprise-grade solution, strong ARR growth, improving GMs, and a growing suite of AI-infused features. We called out the durability of its subscription model, customer stickiness, and positive cash flow trajectory as long-term positives. What we did not fully explore at the time was the per-share value compounding setup now emerging beneath the surface. This update focuses on that angle. In a year where revenue growth is pacing in the 1-3% range, most of the equity return will come not from top-line acceleration but from better GM mix, improved cash conversion, and disciplined control of share count. These are precisely the levers that have begun to turn in Kaltura’s favor, yet they remain underappreciated in the broader narrative.

As covered in our initiation on the name, Spok Holdings trades at a “no-growth” multiple due to screening like a slow-growth dividend payer — trading more like a bond proxy than a growth stock. But beneath that defensive profile lies a cash engine that would look familiar to any private equity investor: high recurring revenue, low churn, minimal capital intensity, and a clean balance sheet. Those ingredients raise an intriguing question: could a leveraged take-private make sense here, and if so, what would that imply for public shareholders?

A new special situation posted on our website! One of the most asymmetric trade ideas I stumbled upon in a while

Cantor thinks $NVDA is worth $7.3 trillion. That's more than the GDP of Japan, India and Germany. Cantor's "This is not a bubble" statement is going to be as infamous as Bernanke's "sub-prime mess is grave but largely contained".

Just find out my 2 week old personal blog is #64 in the Bestseller/Rising leaderboard on Substack. Wild.

As covered in our original initiation, the market narrative around $AIRJ has largely focused on its long-term vision of extracting water from ambient air using waste heat. While that thesis remains structurally attractive, we now see three overlooked near-term levers that sharpen the R/R profile ahead of scaled water generation: (1) compelling unit economics in industrial dehumidification already present today, (2) bounded dilution scenarios that can be credibly underwritten at current market cap, and (3) a tangible de-risking roadmap, tied to early revenue proof points in 2025–2026.

…crocapatlas.sophoncapitalresearch.com/p/wm-technolog… We’ve built a financial model for WM Technology, traded under the ticker MAPS and known for its flagship product “Weed Maps.” In our model, we size and estimate growth in active cannabis retail & dispensary licenses within the U.S., which is the company’s total addressable market.