
Clark Street Value
963 FOLLOWERS
I'm an individual investor focused on finding value and special situation investments.
Clark Street Value
1w ago
CARGO Therapeutics (CRGX) (~$150MM market cap) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing CAR T-cell therapies for cancer patients. Last night, the company issued a press release stating they're discontinuing the FIRCE-1 Phase 2 Study of their lead asset, firicabtagene autoleucel, due to a non-competitive benefit risk profile for patients. The stock is down approximately 75% on the news.
Additionally, CARGO announced they are going to evaluate strategic options and are commencing a 50% reduction in force. The announcement is not a full waving the white flag ..read more
Clark Street Value
2w ago
International Game Technology (IGT) (~$3.5B market cap) is a gaming supplier, the result of a 2015 merger of IGT and Gtech that is currently being unwound. The historical IGT business is a video gaming terminal (slot machine) business, it is being spun in Q3 2025, merged immediately with smaller peer Everi Holdings (EVRI) in a reverse morris trust and the combined IGT/Everi will then be acquired by Apollo Global. The end result is a $4.05B cash payment, before taxes and expenses (estimated at $400MM), to RemainCo (the IGT name is going with the slot machine business) which will be ..read more
Clark Street Value
3w ago
Keros Therapeutics (KROS) (~$420MM market cap) is a what I'm labeling a pre-strategic alternatives broken biotech, the company in two separate press releases (here and here) announced the halting of all dosages in their Phase 2 clinical trial of Cibotercept (KER-012) due to observations of pericardial effusions, which is a condition where excess fluid accumulates in a membrane that surrounds the heart. What I find interesting in this situation is:
KROS has a significant cash position, my estimates put it around $650MM for a reverse merger, much higher than beaten up biotechnology compan ..read more
Clark Street Value
3w ago
I'm a couple days late on this post and turned into a bit of a "reply guy" on Twitter/X (you can follow me @ClarkinM) spewing some incoherent thoughts on the proposed Pershing Square offer, humor me a bit as I try to more intelligently spell out the current situation and where it might go from here.
On Monday, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square issued a letter to the Howard Hughes board outlining a proposed transaction that would see Pershing Square use the $1B they raised from outside investors at the management company level to buy 11,764,706 shares of HHH for $85/share in a tender offer. T ..read more
Clark Street Value
3w ago
Disclaimer: This is very illiquid and only appropriate for small PA's like mine
Income Opportunity Realty Investors (IOR) ($75MM market cap) is the smallest piece of the ARL/TCI/IOR Russian nesting doll, in a previous life it was akin to a mortgage REIT (although its a c-corp), today they only own one mortgage, their main asset is a receivable from Pillar Asset Management, the external manager and affiliate of the majority owner of ARL/TCI/IOR. IOR has no reason to exist, TCI and an affiliate (RAI) own 89.78% of IOR and are currently conducting a tender offer (deadline just extended ..read more
Clark Street Value
1M ago
Another one shared by a reader and similar to 23andMe, Soho House (SHCO)(~$1.5B market cap) is a 2021 vintage IPO that failed to live up to lofty expectations and now after receiving some bad press and investor skepticism, management along with an unnamed consortium want to take it private. Seems to be a mini-trend (MAPS is another one that was shared).
Soho House is a private social club that was founded in 1995 in London by Nick Jones (he still owns 5.2% of the company, presumably part of the go-private transaction), it now has 45 social clubs around the world, their growth strate ..read more
Clark Street Value
1M ago
I put out the call for reader ideas and as usual, received many good ones. A couple intrigued me enough to start small positions, one of those is 23andMe Holding (ME) ($100MM market cap). 23andMe is a well known direct-to-consumer DNA kit company that went public in 2021 via a Richard Branson SPAC at a $3.5B valuation. It came public with lofty expectations and a lot of hoopla, but it failed to create a sustainable business model beyond the one time novelty nature of getting your DNA sequenced. The stock price has fallen 95+%.
23andMe was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, sh ..read more
Clark Street Value
1M ago
Welp, it was bound to happen, but I underperformed the broad U.S. market by an embarrassing amount this year. My portfolio lost -6.39% compared to the S&P 500's 25.02% gain in 2024, however my lifetime-to-date IRR is still hanging in just above 20%.
I spent the last couple weeks going back through my portfolio, reaffirming the thesis for each, below are the elevator style pitches for my current holdings (didn't have enough time to discuss closed positions, if you have any questions on those, feel free to comment):
Rumored M&A:
Coincidentally, these are all land bank companies w ..read more
Clark Street Value
2M ago
Enzo Biochem (ENZ) (~$65MM market cap) in July 2023, closed on the sale of their clinical laboratory division to Labcorp (LH) leaving their subscale but growing Enzo Life Sciences ("ELS") division and a slug of cash at the RemainCo. Rhyming with other similar setups (most recently PFSW), the company is likely dressing up the ELS division for sale to complete the two-step liquidation of the company. The ELS segment makes products (picks and shovels for biotechs) for drug development and clinical research, it does about $32MM in sales annually making it an after-thought in the large ..read more
Clark Street Value
2M ago
Instil Bio (TIL) (~$70MM market cap) is a clinical stage biotech focused on developing tumor infiltrating lymphocyte ("TIL") therapies for the treatment of cancer. Instil was an early 2021 IPO, at the time it had a melanoma treatment, ITIL-168, that was beginning a Phase 2 clinical trial. They had ambitious dreams which included building a brand new laboratory and manufacturing facility in Tarzana, California to go along with leased manufacturing space in the UK.
ITIL-168 failed to impress and in December 2022, the company laid off 60% of their workforce and decided to put their re ..read more