Here are the InfoArb Tear Sheets we think you should pay the most attention to, where the differences between press releases and earnings calls are dramatic because they outline new catalysts, trends, and clarify misconceptions from just reading the press release.
These summaries are created to help you speed up your research on interesting companies. They are not buy/sell recommendations.
💡 These are tear sheet summaries; click any title to read the full tear sheet.
WLDN — Willdan Group 🟢 Strong Signal
Description: Willdan Group is an energy and infrastructure technical-services firm serving utilities, governments, and commercial customers across energy efficiency, grid modernization, engineering, software, data-center, and battery-storage projects. Market cap is $1,115.1 million on Q2 2026 revenue of $231.0 million (+23.5% YoY).
Set-up: This was a high-growth, margin-expansion quarter: 18% organic revenue growth drove adjusted EBITDA up 50.6% to a record 28.2% margin, with adjusted EPS of $2.07 (vs. $1.50) and GAAP EPS of $1.58 (vs. $1.03). The balance sheet carries just $33 million of net debt, roughly 0.3x trailing adjusted EBITDA, even after $50 million of acquisitions. The call revealed management deliberately set conservative guidance with a timing cushion, and that a $110 million LADWP expansion is still ramping and could become the largest customer in 2027, with data-center electricity demand and commercial diversification emerging as new growth engines.
Information arbitrage:
LADWP upside outside guidance: The $110 million expansion is still ramping and could become the top customer in 2027, an award current FY2026 forecasts do not fully reflect.
Guidance carries a hidden cushion: Management intentionally embedded project-timing conservatism, so numbers are set to be beatable rather than at risk.
Data-center demand as dual lever: AI-driven data-center and grid work is establishing a national footprint while also boosting internal productivity, an underappreciated structural tailwind.
Risks: Q2 pulled revenue forward from later quarters and the record 28.2% EBITDA margin plus unusually favorable tax treatment are expected to normalize in H2, so GAAP comparisons weaken and rising technical labor costs pressure profitability.
ASYS — Amtech Systems 🟢 Strong Signal
Description: Amtech is a semiconductor-equipment maker with two segments: Thermal Processing Solutions (reflow/thermal gear for advanced packaging and AI server boards) and Semiconductor Fabrication Solutions (mature-node, silicon carbide, specialty chemicals). Market cap is $269.2M on Q3 revenue of $22.4M.
Set-up: Revenue grew 14.5% YoY to $22.4M, GAAP EPS reached $0.10 (from $0.01) and non-GAAP EPS $0.14 (from $0.06), with gross margin at 50% versus a 41.5% normalized prior year. TPS book-to-bill hit 1.37, the third straight quarter above 1.0, and new higher-density packaging platforms launch at SEMICON Taiwan in September with order acceptance thereafter. The release framed a “strong AI quarter,” but the call showed durable, farther-ahead demand.
Information arbitrage:
AI is now the engine: AI-related equipment already exceeds 40% of TPS revenue, a figure absent from the press release, giving direct AI-infrastructure exposure the headline number masks.
Backlog reaches into fiscal 2027: orders are scheduled through Q1 and partly into Q2 FY2027, materially longer forward visibility than the $28.7M headline backlog conveys.
New TAM plus dry powder: the first commercial AI semiconductor-cooling order opens an adjacent market, and $83.1M cash with a debt-free balance sheet (after a $56.5M raise) is explicitly earmarked for synergistic acquisitions.
Risks: SFS revenue fell 13% YoY to $4.6M and management no longer expects a meaningful silicon-carbide recovery, concentrating the story on a single AI end-market that could cycle.
NNBR — NN, Inc. 🟢 Strong Signal
Description: NN is a diversified precision manufacturer of engineered metal components and assemblies, shifting from an auto-heavy book (about 40% of business) toward higher-margin AI/data-center, defense/electronics, and robotic-surgery/medical markets. Market cap is $193.4M on Q2 revenue of $128.7M.
Set-up: NN is moving from turnaround into a capacity-expansion phase. Q2 revenue rose 19% YoY to $128.7M, adjusted EBITDA grew 36% to $17.9M (13.9% margin, up 170 bps), and adjusted EPS was $0.11 versus $0.02. The tell is timing: management said the largest new data-center, medical, and defense awards “contributed nothing to first-half results essentially,” with the first 50-machine data-center ramp expected to exceed $1 million of monthly sales around November. Reported growth therefore understates the emerging run-rate.
Information arbitrage:
Richer margin on new work: new programs carry roughly five percentage points higher gross margin than the existing portfolio, so the mix shift lifts profitability structurally as awards ramp, not just cyclically.
Refinancing EPS lever: the preferred-stock refinancing is expected to cut annual financing expense by about $13 million, a direct earnings tailwind not reflected in Q2 results.
Capacity hints at a bigger prize: management is evaluating space for roughly 200 additional machines, calls guidance “somewhat conservative,” and says medical alone could double before it moves consolidated numbers.
Risks: Heavy capex and prior common-share dilution weigh on the equity, a second refinancing step on the term loan is still pending, and simultaneously ramping 150-plus programs carries real execution risk.
PMTS — CPI Card Group Inc. 🟢 Strong Signal
Description: CPI Card Group is a U.S. payments technology provider that makes physical payment cards and provides personalization, instant issuance, prepaid packaging, and digital payment solutions to banks, fintechs, and processors. Market cap is roughly $260.7 million on Q2 2026 revenue of $149.2 million.
Set-up: The company is in a growth-and-deleveraging phase, posting Q2 revenue of $149.2 million (up 15%, of which 12% was organic and Secure Card organic growth was 13%) with GAAP diluted EPS of $0.17 versus $0.04 a year ago. Management booked record first-half free cash flow, improved leverage, and raised full-year revenue and free-cash-flow guidance. The near-term catalyst is a back-half inflection in the higher-margin Integrated Paytech unit, whose full-year growth guidance was lifted to about 20% after only low-single-digit first-half growth, with management guiding to “strong Q3 and very strong Q4 growth.” A second timed catalyst is TRISM, expected to add $3.5 to $4 million in H2 2026 with a 2027 run rate that could be more than double that.
Information arbitrage:
Organic beat behind the headline: The 15% reported growth is actually 12% organic and 13% Secure Card organic, showing genuine share gains rather than acquisition math the market may be discounting.
2027 TRISM step-up: The 2027 run rate could exceed twice the H2 2026 contribution, a ramp not yet in consensus numbers.
Closed-loop prepaid whitespace: Management estimates closed-loop volume at roughly five times open-loop, a market CPI only entered in late 2025.
Risks: Q2 gross margin benefited from more than $3 million of temporary tariff refunds (about 160 basis points of the year-over-year gain), and management left Adjusted EBITDA guidance unchanged despite raising revenue, implicitly flagging sustainability; the IPT forecast is heavily back-end-loaded and prepaid weakness is lasting longer than expected.
KLNG — KOIL Energy Solutions 🟡 Moderate Signal
Description: KOIL Energy is a micro-cap subsea energy equipment and services company supplying infrastructure that connects offshore wells to production facilities, split between fixed-price manufacturing and higher-quality services/rental. Market cap is $31.2 million on quarterly revenue of $9.229 million.
Set-up: Q2 revenue rose 78% year over year to $9.229 million, with service revenue up 115% and adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 million versus just $163,000 a year ago, lifting basic EPS to $0.05 from $0.01. Services have grown from roughly 30% of the business two years ago to slightly more than 50% this quarter, and management says its multi-year growth investment has “reached an inflection point.” The offset is capital intensity: cash sits at only $922,000, working capital fell to $3.8 million from $5.1 million, $2.4 million is drawn on a new $5 million facility, and management is evaluating additional financing.
Information arbitrage:
New customers already a third of revenue: 32% of Q2 revenue came from customers acquired in the past year, showing the international expansion is contributing now rather than being future potential.
A fully depreciated carousel now earns revenue: a previously idle, near-zero book-cost carousel now generates storage day rates and associated services, and the new mobile carousel can be re-rented beyond its current contract for layered utilization.
Brazil ramps through services first: management expects Brazilian service activity to grow faster than manufacturing over the next couple of quarters, making it a near-term lever rather than a long-dated one.
Risks: Cash of just $922,000 alongside management actively seeking more financing for rental equipment makes a funding squeeze or dilution the central risk, and the model depends on hitting rental-utilization and working-capital targets.
ACFN — Acorn Energy, Inc. 🟡 Moderate Signal
Description: Acorn owns 99% of OmniMetrix, which sells remote-monitoring hardware and high-margin recurring monitoring services for standby generators and critical infrastructure across telecom, healthcare, energy, and government, serving over 25 Fortune/Global 500 accounts. Market cap is about $48.0 million; Q2 2026 revenue was $2.49 million, down 29.4% YoY.
Set-up: The headline is ugly (revenue down 29.4%, EPS down 57% to $0.12, hardware down 51.7%) because unusually large prior-year telecom hardware rollouts have rolled off. Underneath, recurring monitoring revenue grew 8% at roughly 95% gross margin, lifting blended gross margin 750 bps to 82.4%, and the OmniMetrix segment still generated about $722,000 of operating income. Management is steering toward a recurring-revenue model with two new growth engines, Champion Power Equipment and OMNI360, while preferring debt over dilutive equity.
Information arbitrage:
Installed base entering renewal: Large prior-year telecom hardware deployments are now hitting renewal windows and converting into recurring revenue, with monitoring typically starting months after shipment, a lag that delays recognized revenue rather than losing it.
OMNI360 unit economics step-change: A full deployment could generate roughly $5,000 of equipment revenue and $2,000 annual monitoring versus about $650 and $200 for legacy systems, a large per-unit uplift the market is not paying for.
Champion compounds endpoints: Annual Champion shipments add accumulated monitored endpoints each year rather than one-time sales, seeding a growing recurring base.
Risks: OMNI360 is still pre-revenue with zero sales, Champion has no contractual volume minimums, and enterprise sales cycles are long, so the recurring thesis rests on unproven catalysts against a sharply declining top line; blended margin is also expected to normalize toward ~75%.