YB new stock pitches (Fri, Feb 6)

Nomad Foods Limited (NOMD) is a long position at $12.50 with a $30 price target, representing a dominant frozen food leader in Western Europe with 18% market share and €3B revenue across brands including Iglo, Birds Eye, Findus, and Goodfella's Pizza. The stock has fallen 60% from 2021 highs and trades at 6.5x EV/EBITDA (versus 14x at peak) following three quarters of negative organic growth, though management sees growth recovery in 2026 and cites temporary factors like inventory normalization with actual sell-through remaining slightly positive at +0.2%. The company is taking pricing actions in early 2026 after holding off on mid-year pricing in 2025, while recent NielsenIQ data shows frozen fish category volumes up 1.5% with Nomad outperforming at +1.6% growth. With a high-teens FCF yield, the company can generate 55% of its current $1.8B market cap in cash by 2029 (approximately $1B over 2026-2029), converts free cash flow at 11% of sales above industry average, and management has signaled aggressive share buybacks with historical precedent of retiring 14% of shares in 2020. The recently completed debt refinancing provides €150M additional liquidity to immediately buy 10% of the float, while the company could raise an additional €210M and still maintain 2021 leverage ratios of 3.9x, sufficient to retire another 14% of shares. Management expects 15% higher FCF in three years reaching €335M ($395M or $3.00 per share), and if the company holds share and protects margins, it can earn ~$3 EPS in 1-2 years, representing a $30 stock at 10x multiple versus the historical 13x.

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Inhibikase Therapeutics (IKT) is developing a gut-masked imatinib prodrug for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), trading at approximately $550 million fully diluted despite blockbuster potential with $2.5-5B peak sales estimates. Imatinib has proven efficacy in PAH through multiple randomized controlled trials including Novartis' Phase 3 IMPRES trial, which showed similar efficacy to Winrevair on the registrational 6-minute walk distance endpoint, but was discontinued due to brain bleeds (only occurring with anticoagulants no longer used in practice) and limited intellectual property life. AVTE's inhaled imatinib approach failed completely, suggesting systemic dosing is necessary for efficacy, which prompted IKT's late 2024 recapitalization according to participating investors. GOSS will report Phase 3 results for their inhaled seralutinib (targeting same pathways as imatinib) in February 2026, though the author believes systemic dosing should be superior. IKT's prodrug approach aims to reduce gastrointestinal toxicity while maintaining therapeutic imatinib concentrations, with 500mg prodrug dose bioequivalent to 400mg imatinib, though small healthy volunteer studies still showed some GI issues. The investment thesis centers on high probability of success given established imatinib efficacy, attractive valuation compared to INSM's $5.7B market cap increase on positive PAH data and GOSS' previous $1B valuation pre-Phase 3, and a catalyst desert creating opportunity with interim safety readout in 1-1.5 years, interim PVR readout in ~2.5 years, and Phase 3 6MWD readout in ~3.5 years.

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Nitto Boseki Co., Ltd. (3110.T) controls 90% of global T-glass supply, a mission-critical insulation layer for AI substrates that determines warpage, yield, and signal integrity in high-end GPU and AI server packages. Despite being less than 1.5% of the BOM of a $25k+ accelerator, T-glass sits at the tightest bottleneck in the stack, with demand driven by the deepest-pocketed customers in the world and supply constrained by physics and process control rather than willingness to invest. The company's moat stems from competitors' inability to simultaneously achieve low dielectric loss, low surface roughness, high resin wet-out, and stable laminate yield at volume scale - while competitors can hit 2-3 of these requirements, fixing one variable breaks another, creating technical whack-a-mole situations that prevent qualification-grade yield at scale. Nittobo co-designs the entire system including glass chemistry, draw conditions, sizing, and weave geometry, locking down narrow process windows beyond just material specs, which explains why datasheet parity has not translated into supply relief. The moat is widening as Nittobo develops T-glass 2.0 with 30% thermal expansion improvement (targeting 2.0 ppm versus 2.8 ppm) for 2028 AI packages, while expanding capacity through Fukushima's 3x T-glass output expansion and Taiwan furnace investment. The author's base case FY3/28 EPS is ¥1,945 versus ¥503 consensus, driven by LTA price resets, flow-through of announced price hikes, and repurposing lower-grade furnace capacity to T/NE Glass, with incremental profit margins declining from 92% to 80% due to fixed costs from plant upgrades. Trading at 8.5x base-case FY3/28 EPS, the stock is priced as a commodity materials business despite gating AI accelerator output with demonstrated pricing power disproportionate to its BOM share.

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