PelicanTrader
Portfolio Manager at Equity Empire, Former Hedge Fund Manager
Kodiak AI is one of the money-losing SPAC mergers that should have stayed private longer, lacking a clear near-term path to profitability or enough cash to get there. Coming public via SPAC is not itself the problem: Vertiv is up 2,000% since its merger closed, but for every such success there are about 20 money-losers. x.comÂ
Agility Robotics' SPAC merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI is not the retail-access win it is sold as, because the venture returns are already gone. Amazon, SoftBank and Foxconn aren't new backers; they are rolling existing equity under a 180-day lockup. The $200M minimum cash condition signals that sponsors expect heavy redemptions rather than offering a safeguard. Public investors get the leftover risk without the leftover upside. x.com x.comÂ
T1 Energy remains unattractive because, as an unprofitable business, it faces high dilution risk, substantial stock-based compensation, reliance on unlikely future promises and valuation that becomes difficult in a panic. x.comÂ
Boxabl is headed the way of 99% of SPAC targets: founders believe their company is the outlier but have no natural buyer, then reverse split a few times and delist. @GalianoTiramani counters that Boxabl has 70,000 investors and millions of social followers, but anyone can raise from retail with Facebook ads and Reg A offerings, and Jet.AI's SPAC team made the same argument. x.com x.comÂ
Churchill Capital Corp XI is a SPAC, a shell company with nothing there, and not worth betting on. x.comÂ
Bakkt has never generated real earnings and still cannot articulate a coherent strategy to do so. Bull valuations that rest on hoped-for future EBITDA, such as 10x a $100M figure, are wishful thinking. x.comÂ
Some de-SPACs below their $10 trust value are live businesses with real assets still priced as wreckage, and buying before they graduate is the trade. Merlin cleared Critical Design Review on its $105M USSOCOM autonomous-flight program, with $183M cash and no debt. Opendoor cut aged inventory from 51% to 10%, turned EBITDA positive in April and holds $1B cash. Eos Energy owns its zinc storage chemistry, free of Chinese supply chains. Most de-SPACs still fail, and sponsors profit from dilution. … Show more
Xanadu's stock was a textbook trap that has now sprung, falling about 60% premarket as insiders exit. An S-1 registered about 294M shares for resale by existing holders, which brings the company nothing and floods the float of a startup with $4.6M in annual revenue. A multi-billion-dollar valuation was unsustainable, and as a post-SPAC name its hype premium evaporated once lockups and conversions hit. Brilliant technology doesn't make a safe stock when insiders rush for the exits. x.comÂ
