This Week in Special Situations
A survey of event-driven investment ideas
This Week in Special Situations is a research-based slide presentation sent on a separate mailing list. If you do not wish to receive it, opt out here.
This is the seventh issue of This Week in Special Situations, our curated survey of actionable ideas. We do not attempt to profile every special situation in the market. The universe of activist campaigns, buybacks, insider purchases, strategic reviews, and merger arbitrage spreads is vast, and most of it is noise. We filter for situations with a misaligned price or a noteworthy structural reason for market inefficiency.
Over time we will likely narrow this list further. That is where you come in. Please tell us which situations added value to your process and, just as importantly, which were of no consequence. Brutally honest feedback is the most valuable input we can receive. It will shape what we keep and what we cut. Our goal is to make this survey progressively more useful to you.
This week’s report (available as a slide deck) profiles 34 situations across five buckets: activist campaigns, capital return and insider conviction, strategic alternatives, M&A, and corporate separations. Below we highlight the handful that stand out on catalyst clarity, valuation, and asymmetry, followed by thesis summaries covering a broad cross-section of the report.
This publication is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The information is based on publicly available data and regulatory filings. Errors are not only possible but likely. Readers should conduct their own research.
The Situations That Stand Out
A few of this week’s situations rise above the rest on the combination of catalyst clarity, valuation, and asymmetry.
Smith & Nephew (UK: SN) is an undermanaged three-division medtech conglomerate where Cevian Capital has now built its largest position ever, at 14% of shares outstanding, explicitly targeting a breakup that would separate Orthopaedics, Sports Medicine and ENT, and Advanced Wound Management into focused units. The July 27 Schedule 13D/A discloses 119 million shares, or 14% of shares outstanding, aggregate cost near $1.67 billion, built from a 5% initial disclosure two years ago. Top-20 holders have already pushed publicly for divesting Orthopaedics, and management signaled openness to a split as far back as March 2025. Cevian’s track record on governance and margin outcomes is strong: an Ericsson board seat and margin discipline after a multi-year campaign, ABB Power Grids sold to Hitachi after Cevian pressed for the spinoff, Vodafone portfolio simplification substantially executed following the 2022 stake build. Insider ownership is roughly 0.2%, so the board has little defensive alignment against Cevian and its aligned top-20 register. Half-year results on August 4 and the 13D anniversary dates are the near-term catalysts for board-seat or breakup demands to surface.
CCC Intelligent Solutions (US: CCCS) is a live Morgan Stanley-run sale of a mission-critical auto-insurance-claims software platform whose stock trades at roughly 63% of its year-ago value, with Elliott building a private-equity stake ahead of the process becoming public. Reuters reported on July 9 that CCC hired Morgan Stanley and had already approached prospective buyers, and Bloomberg reported one day later that Elliott had built its stake before the sale news, routed through its private-equity arm rather than its public-activist unit, a signal of bidder or co-investor positioning rather than a campaign for board change. The stock closed near $6.15 on July 29 against a $3.6 billion market cap, having round-tripped violently on the news. Advent International’s November 2025 full exit at $7.79 per share sits well above the current price. Q2 results before the open today are the first data point inside the process, with consensus at $0.10 EPS on $284 million revenue following a 43% adjusted EBITDA margin in Q1.
Chemed (US: CHE) is a two-business conglomerate whose activist-led breakup thesis rests on a low-growth, margin-eroding Roto-Rooter segment sitting inside an otherwise high-quality VITAS hospice business, with a formal Barington strategic-review demand now on the table. Barington Capital’s July 20-21 letter from CEO James Mitarotonda demanded a strategic review of the VITAS-Roto-Rooter pairing, a zero-based review of the $70 million corporate cost base, and a board refresh requiring at least two 20-plus-year directors to step down at the 2027 annual meeting. Q2 results one week later gave management fresh cover: revenue rose 9% to $673 million, adjusted EPS jumped 42% to $6.06, and full-year EPS guidance was raised to 25.75. Roto-Rooter, the segment Barington targets, grew only 3% and lost another 77 basis points of margin, keeping the breakup logic intact. Barington’s disclosed stake is roughly 0.4%, so this is a letter-writing campaign rather than a proxy fight yet, and the near-term catalyst is the board’s public response.
Quick Thesis Summaries
The capsule theses below cover a broad cross-section of this week’s issue. Each, along with additional special situations, is developed fully in the downloadable PDF slide deck.
Nano Dimension (US: NNDM) — Murchinson now controls the board after a July 17 settlement, with no strategic-review verdict yet on the contested $890 million Infinite Epigenetics reverse merger; watch for the review outcome as the next binary catalyst at a stock trading at 0.66x tangible book with a negative enterprise value.
Pinterest (US: PINS) — Board authorized a $3.5 billion buyback backstopped by a $1 billion Elliott convertible note at a $22.72 initial conversion price, retiring 14% of shares in a single quarter and delivering roughly $2.0 billion of buybacks executed in H1 2026.
BASF (Germany: BAS) — New €1.0 billion share buyback tranche launches August 2026 and runs through April 2027, equal to about 2% of a €45 billion market cap, funded 7x over by €7.8 billion trailing FCF alongside €1.6 billion of Q3 2026 bond and loan early repayments.
Wipro (US: WIT) — Record tender-offer buyback at ₹250 per share retired 6% of equity, with promoters tendering pro rata to hold their stake near 73%, funded entirely from free reserves rather than debt.
Yext (US: YEXT) — Completed modified Dutch auction tender retired 20% of shares at $5.75, and the stock now trades below the clearing price, giving new buyers effective entry below the price a self-selecting group of holders was willing to accept.
Docebo (US: DCBO) — $70 million fixed-price self-tender at $20.40 per share expires August 26, targeting 14% of shares outstanding while the stock trades roughly 7% above the tender price at $21.87, meaning proration is likely.
New Mountain Finance (US: NMFC) — Genuine buyback, not merger dilution: shares outstanding fell 7% quarter-over-quarter to 95.6 million as the BDC retired stock at a 27% discount to NAV, one of the largest BDC-buyback signals of the year.
MidCap Financial Investment (US: MFIC) — Apollo-managed BDC cut shares outstanding 8% quarter-over-quarter via buybacks, exhausting a $100 million authorization at a steep discount to NAV.
Ibotta (US: IBTA) — Board has repurchased roughly $310 million of stock since August 2024 while shares outstanding fell more than 5% in consecutive quarters, an unusually aggressive pace for a recently IPO’d digital-marketing platform.
i3 Verticals (US: IIIV) — Two consecutive quarters of 5%+ sequential share-count reduction, backed by a fresh $100 million authorization following last year’s exit from the payments business, marking a genuine narrowing of the equity base.
Diversified Energy (US: DEC) — Aggressive buyback pace cut shares outstanding 6% quarter-over-quarter, with a live authorization covering roughly 10% of the share count still two-thirds unused.
Yelp (US: YELP) — Repurchases cut shares outstanding 7% quarter-over-quarter, with a $500 million authorization added in February giving the buyback more runway than the current share price reflects.
Alithya (Canada: ALYA) — Board launched a strategic review after concluding the market price undervalues the IT consulting firm, opening a defined process at a company small enough for real optionality.
SEACOR Marine (US: SMHI) — Board launched a formal strategic-alternatives review on July 29, 2026 after its largest shareholder publicly demanded a sale, establishing a defined process at a still-cyclical offshore supply operator.
KKR Real Estate Finance Trust (US: KREF) — Board formed a special committee to review a sale or merger after book value fell 14% in a single quarter, an unusually clean setup where a defined process and a fresh valuation baseline arrive together.
Pinewood Technologies (UK: PINE) — Shares trade at a 4% spread to Ridgeview’s 448p possible cash offer with a Rule 2.6 PUSU deadline of 21 August 2026, a compact UK Takeover Code timeline.
Union Pacific (US: UNP) — Canadian National dropped opposition to the $85 billion Norfolk Southern deal, clearing a key regulatory obstacle while the arb spread still prices in real STB risk that most large-cap arbs would consider mispriced.
Domo (US: DOMO) — Asset sale of the AI and Data Platform Business to Progress Software leaves a cash-and-NOL shell at a ~25% discount to guided $4.84 per-share post-closing net cash, before assigning any value to a $900 million+ NOL pool.
Honeywell (US: HON) — Three-way breakup complete with the Aerospace spin, leaving a leaner automation pure-play at a distorted single-digit trailing P/E as the market re-underwrites each piece.
Flex (US: FLEX) — Full leadership slate now named for both sides of the CPI spin, keeping the tax-free separation on track for Q1 calendar 2027 and reducing execution risk on one of this year’s largest US industrial separations.
The deck is available to members (scroll up to download, or sign up below).
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