CNNE

CNNE is not the restaurant company its SIC code implies — the $424M revenue and -28% operating margin are almost entirely the loss-making Restaurant Group, while the real story is a Bill Foley holding company whose value sits in investment stakes. Judging it on P/S (1.6) or net margin (-121%) is the wrong lens; the -$513M FY2025 net loss is dominated by equity-method and mark-to-market moves, not operations. The right anchor is book value: $1.02B of equity on 46.3M shares is ~$22.03/share, so at $14.72 the stock trades at roughly 0.67x book — a ~33% discount. The balance sheet backing that book is genuinely clean: liabilities/equity of just 0.32x, only ~$71M total debt, and $182M cash, freshly reinforced by the August 2025 D&B Disposition that brought in $540.3M cash (plus $89.5M from the earlier 10M-share sale) after D&B was taken private at $9.15/share.

Management is leaning hard into that discount, which is the constructive part of the story. The MD&A and Item 5 show all of the 2022 and 2023 repurchase authorizations fully exhausted in 2025 — ~12.3M shares bought for ~$237M at $18–19.52 averages — plus a new 10M-share 2025 program, driving the 26.2% YoY share-count reduction and $320M of total buyback cash. Buying below NAV is per-share accretive, and the D&B proceeds give ample dry powder to continue while also funding new bets (additional 30% of JANA Partners for $67.5M to reach 50%, ~$50M into Black Knight Football, now 42.7%).