↑ Read the latest from the desks · fresh intelligence, published daily✦Quiet reading✦No ads, ever✦Ad-free articles read by humans today …↑✦Boards engagement today … people · … AI✦Corporate brand & media services✦Made in Virginia Beach since 1997✦
Five activist 13Ds in six days, **$5.8bn** combined market cap—Autodesk and Vail are the real plays, proxy votes in **11-13 weeks**.
$69bn
enterprise value software business trading at
8.2x
forward revenue
4.1%
of outstanding shares worth roughly
$240mm
at current prices
Starboard Value disclosed a stake in Autodesk on February 6, marking the San Francisco activist's first named target of the year. The position—size undisclosed but material enough to trigger 13D filing—sits inside a $69bn enterprise value software business trading at 8.2x forward revenue. Starboard now controls sufficient equity to force a special meeting, with proxy materials expected by mid-March.
Oasis Capital Management filed a 13D on Vail Resorts the same week, holding 4.1% of outstanding shares worth roughly $240mm at current prices. The Denver-based real estate investment vehicle cited underperformance relative to peers—Vail's five-year total return of 18% trails the S&P 500 by 62 percentage points. National Presto Industries, a $380mm market cap defense contractor and small appliance maker, drew a 13G from an unnamed institutional investor accumulating 6.8% of the float. Metalla Royalty & Streaming, a $210mm precious metals royalty play, saw two separate activists—one based in Toronto, one in New York—cross the 5% threshold within four trading days.
The simultaneity matters more than the individual stakes. February historically sees 23% fewer activist campaigns than October, the modal month for 13D filings. Five disclosed positions in the first six business days of the month suggests either compressed holding periods from late Q4 accumulation or coordinated timing around earnings blackout windows lifting. Autodesk reports Q4 results February 25; Vail on March 6. Both companies face annual meetings in late April or early May, leaving 11-13 weeks for proxy solicitation and board negotiation.
The sector spread is deliberate. Autodesk and Vail both trade at valuation premiums to sector medians—8.2x revenue versus 6.1x for application software peers, 14.3x EBITDA versus 11.8x for leisure operators—while posting margin compression. Autodesk's subscription transition added $1.2bn in deferred revenue over three years but operating margins contracted 420 basis points since fiscal 2021. Vail's EBITDA margin dropped 380 basis points year-over-year despite 7% lift ticket price increases. Activists read this as capital allocation failure, not industry headwinds.
National Presto and Metalla represent the lower end of activist market cap targeting, where board seats cost $8-12mm in proxy contest expenses rather than the $40-60mm required for large-cap fights. Metalla's $210mm market cap supports a royalty portfolio generating $18mm annual revenue with 91% gross margins, yet the stock trades at 0.86x net asset value. National Presto holds $440mm in cash and marketable securities against a $380mm market cap—a $60mm discount to liquidation value before assigning any value to ongoing operations. Both are classic sum-of-parts candidates.
Allocators should track three milestones. First, Autodesk's February 25 earnings call for management commentary on capital allocation—Starboard typically demands $500mm-1bn buyback authorizations or special dividends in software fights. Second, preliminary proxy filings in the EDGAR system between March 10-20, which will name specific board candidates and reveal whether activists are running solo or as a wolf pack. Third, ISS and Glass Lewis voting recommendations, usually published two weeks before annual meetings, which swing 18-22% of institutional votes in contested elections.
The house view: activism works when the math is obvious and the exit is clean. Autodesk and Vail meet both tests. The small-cap positions are noise unless a second fund joins each fight.
Branded by POPS4 · proof in 60 seconds
For the principal
Watch Autodesk's February 25 call for buyback language—Starboard victories typically return 12-18% within six months of settlement.
For the operator
ISS recommendations publish two weeks before annual meetings; position before those dates to capture the 4-7% pre-vote runup.
For the house
Long Autodesk March $285 calls, long Vail April $180 calls—both sized at 1.2% of named-account equity allocation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.