Retained Earnings @RetainEarn
Buy. Build. Compound. Essays for investors and operators who would rather own a great business than flip one. retainedearning.substack.com Joined November 2025-
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every CIM has a slide called 'untapped growth levers.' if they were easy to pull, the seller would have pulled them and asked for a higher multiple
ask any owner where year two's free cash flow went. 'a second line and a plant manager' and 'a dividend recap' are two very different businesses by year five
@kurtsaltrichter the risk shows up in whoever's selling to them. a customer paying for compute with a VC check churns the day the next round doesn't close. I'd haircut that revenue hard in the QoE
@leevalueroach same fight in every LMM deal with a big lease footprint. EBITDA looks clean until you put the rent back and look at EBITDAR. "no net debt" and "no fixed obligations" are two very different claims
@dirtcheapbanks 0.6x tangible book with a board averaging 74 isn't a discount. it's a succession plan with a balance sheet attached
a ban that comes with a how-to. buy within 18 months of the co, or put 15% of the price into the house. miss and it's up to $1m or 3x the price. and treasury still has 134 questions
The Treasury just released its first set of rule making around the ROAD to Housing Act's limits on institutional investors buying single-family homes. Lots to dig into, but first read confirms ROAD is not an "investor ban" as headlines have suggested. Just a bunch of red tape
the 100-day plan used to hire accenture. now the sponsor co-founds the consultancy. hg reportedly already has ~150 ai people across its portfolio, and anthropic ran the us version with blackstone and h&f
ANTHROPIC TO BACK NEW EUROPEAN CONSULTANCY WITH HG - FT
ai can rebuild the ebitda bridge in an afternoon now. it still can't notice the controller went quiet when you asked about march
@exec_sum the ceo hired for a 4-year plan is now in year 6 running a business that's been refinanced twice. that's a different job, and the board usually figures it out about a year late
@junkbondinvest @JohnCoxCap a lender that'll only go 65% against nav is telling you where it thinks nav is. the redemption queue is just the slower way to find out
@ConnorAbene easiest scope fix i've seen: put bookkeeping on the invoice as its own line at bookkeeper rates. clients stop handing it to the cfo pretty fast once they see it priced
Every number the board sees should break into 2 or 3 that someone can change this week. If it doesn't, nobody owns it
the analysis got cheap. the signature didn't. most of a qoe fee pays for a name the lender and the r&w insurer will accept, plus someone to call when the peg is wrong
Two years ago, I paid firms $80K to $150K+ for a quality of earnings report. Today I can do the full analysis myself with AI. Proof of cash, EBITDA bridge, add-back support, NWC peg, debt-like items. All of it. Which raises a fair question about what I was actually paying for.
when a PE-owned business gets worse, look at year three. the plan slipped, the debt didn't, and cutting is the only lever the lender will sign off on
@ConnorAbene I think this applies to all aspects of life. Knowledge of how money works is very important
the 5 filters are what to look for. this one's on why a 20-year hold changes how you price the deal in the first place retainedearning.substack.com/p/why-permanen…
Most PE underwriting asks what someone will pay for this in 5 yrs Permanent capital asks a harder one. Would I want to own this business in 20? No escape hatch there. Every weakness compounds (so does every strength) The 5 filters a business has to pass 🧵
every add-back has the same life cycle. one-time in the CIM, non-recurring in the QoE, a budget line in year two, a full-time hire by year three
prepack, not a shutdown. the getty family and koch put in up to $533m and walk out owning 100%. public shareholders get zeroed, unsecured notes get a $170m check
Getty Images files for bankruptcy amid mounting debt and AI competition trib.al/yWA1XMj
@asmartbear Retool surveyed 817 builders late last year and 35% had already swapped at least one SaaS tool for something custom. lots of puppies getting adopted the vet bill shows up when the one person who built it leaves
@cjgustafson diligence spells it out for you. the QoE splits 'ARR' into contracted and everything else, and the multiple only goes on the first pile usage revenue still gets paid for, just at a multiple that doesn't say ARR on it
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