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Pepsi’s Poppi Acquisition Is Going Flat

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Pepsico ($PEP) popped the champagne corks 18 months ago when it announced the acquisition of specialty soda maker Poppi in March 2025 for $1.95 billion. Famed for its low-sugar concoctions and an appearance on SharkTank, Poppi seemed like a startup with a bright future. Now that bright future might be fizzling out. Pepsi filed its latest earnings release last week , for the quarter ending Sept. 5. Buried in the Financial Instruments footnote disclosure was this: In connection with our acquisition of VNGR Beverage LLC (Poppi), we recorded a contingent consideration liability measured at fair value. Under the terms of the arrangement, we will be required to make a payment of $300 million if certain performance milestones are achieved by the third quarter of 2027; otherwise, no payment will be made … An increase in the net revenue and margin forecasts would result in a higher fair value measurement, while a decrease in the net revenue and margin forecasts would result in a lower fair val...
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Q3 Earnings Season Takes Off With Delta

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FUEL COST Q3 2025 $2.25 per gal FUEL COST Q2 2026 $3.66 per gal FUEL COST Q3 2026 $3.80 per gal Delta Air Lines ($DAL) roared down the runway of Q3 earnings season today, with revenue up briskly, total costs up even more, and fuel costs specifically up so much you don’t even want to look at the line-item.  Delta has been the first to file quarterly earnings for several years now, and today’s earnings release did not disappoint . It’s a fascinating glimpse into how a large, complicated business is navigating the economic pressures of today. We can start with the big numbers. Total revenue for the quarter was $20.2 billion, up 21.1 percent from the year-ago period. Total costs, however, were $18.7 billion, an increase of 25 percent. All of that ultimately led to declines in operating income (down 13.7 percent), net income (down 45.6 percent), and EPS (down 47.2 percent to $1.15). But nobody is here for the headline numbers, right? We love airlines for all the non-GAAP disclosures the...
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Metrics for Tracking Debt Exposure

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Today we return to the issue of corporate debt, and which firms might feel more pressure in 2027 as they try to refinance old debt at today’s higher interest rates. Our previous post last week gave a few suggestions for how analysts can use Calcbench to track such data; now let’s consider a few more examples based on actual corporate disclosures.  To start, we used our Multi-Company page to pull up the 2025 disclosures of non-financial companies in the S&P 500. We looked at interest expense compared to net income, and charted those companies with the highest ratios of interest expense to net income. Figure 1, below, shows the top 10. Name Ticker Interest Expense Net Income Ratio American Airlines Group Inc. AAL $1,716,000,000 $111,000,000 1545.9% Aes Corp AES $1,407,000,000 $162,000,000 868.5% Omnicom Group Inc. ...
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Marked Down, Not Written Off: BDC Holdings Valued at 50–70 percent of Cost

We pulled the schedules of investments from more than 160 business development company filings for fiscal Q2 2026. We then looked for portfolio companies valued between 50% and 70% of cost: names that have lost at least 30% but still carry most of their value. Here's what stood out: Over 200 portfolio companies marked down at least 30%. Together they carry about $10.8 billion at cost, now valued at roughly 60 cents on the dollar, an unrealized loss of about $4.3 billion. The biggest holdings are software. Medallia, Cornerstone OnDemand, Kaseya, Symplr and Barracuda lead the list by cost, each held by eight or more BDCs. 84 of these companies are held by more than one BDC, and the BDCs often disagree. Curia Global's debt is marked at about 9% of cost by one lender and over 80% by others. Medallia's debt ranges from 39% to 51% depending on who holds it. The same company often appears under many names. Kaseya shows up under 14 different names across filers. Getting to a c...
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