This week’s update features a skull session with the CTO of Qualstar Corp. (OOTC:QBAK), the addition of Mistras Group Inc (NYSE:MG) to our Data Center Screen, and updates on Kingstone Companies, Inc (NASDAQ:KINS) guidance and a look into a messy form 8K filed by Konatel, Inc. (OTCQB:KTEL).

Jeff Sengpiehl, the newly appointed CTO of Qualstar Corp. (OOTC:QBAK), walked us through the company’s turnaround plan and why tape storage (yes, tape) is back in the spotlight. With deep experience from Disney/ABC and involvement in major media productions like Game of Thrones and American Idol, Jeff offered a unique lens into how data storage needs are evolving in the AI era, no just in technology land. More on this later. By the way, I will be having an update skull session with both the CEO, Steve Bronson, and Jeff in a few weeks. Put your name on this list if you are not a premium subscriber to Geoinvesting and want to be notified.

We also added Mistras Group Inc (NYSE:MG), a company that provides asset-protection, inspection & integrity services, to our Data Center Screen after comments surfaced through the NEW InfoArb Tearsheets platform. MG has traditionally been known for its inspection services across sectors like oil and gas and aerospace, but it’s now beginning to talk more openly about opportunities in less cyclical markets like the data center and AI infrastructure space.

We’re excited to announce our next Skull Session Event! This Monday 2PM Eastern Time, we’ll be hosting a Fireside Chat with the new CTO of Qualstar Corp. (OOTC:QBAK). I am extremely excited about this one. The company is sitting in the center of a growth trend that we haven’t covered in the data center and AI world yet: off cloud storage solutions.

Speaking of events, last week, we hosted a Skull Session with Adrian Courtenay (@ACourtenEye, LinkedIn) of GA-Courtenay Special Situations Fund, who shared his framework for identifying special situations and catalyst-driven opportunities, especially when it comes to merger arbitrage. By the way, Adrian has just published a book titled The Super Organisation Secret on the subject, which you can check out here. 

You know that we are big on information arbitrage, so this chat really resonated with me. I came across Adrian while perusing interviews at Sunday’s Idea Brunch Substack. 

This week we had a skull session event with the CEO of Aluula Composites Inc (OOTC:AUUAF) (TSXV:AUUA), earnings coverage on PPIH and CSBR and an addition of a stock to one of our model portfolios, partly motivated by how Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL)’s surging demand in it’s cloud revenue is telegraphing good things for this company.

The Skull Session highlight of the week was our “You Make The Call” chat with Sage Berryman, CEO of Aluula Composites Inc (OOTC:AUUAF) (TSXV:AUUA). The company manufactures and sells composite materials that are used in sectors like wind sports, outdoor gear, sailing, and other commercial applications. By the way, the company will be attending the Planet MicroCap conference in Toronto, Canada on October 22, 2025.

This was our second “You Make The Call” event. Our first was the result of Brett Mass of Hayden IR, suggesting that we should interview AZ, even though AZ didn’t meet the criteria of factors we normally look for when inviting companies to present on our Skull Sessions platform. However, we were attracted to AZ smart shopping cart product category, so that’s how we came up with the “You Make The Call” event. Let’s see if they can convince us to at least track the company.

The standout this week was our fireside chat with Nik Raman, CEO of $PXHI (used phone reseller/platform). Nik walked us through the company’s journey, from scrappy early iterations of a consumer-facing phone recycling platform to what it is today: a B2B software play quietly building mission-critical infrastructure behind the global used phone supply chain. On the day of the chat, the company announced a special dividend of $1.15, which temporarily sent the stock up 30%.

This week’s update recaps highlights from our September Open Forum, including August performance stats across our coverage universe, biggest movers, and new highs. And a last-second move, I also added a new name to our Focus Model Portfolio, an idea that emerged from real-time discussion and conviction that I was talking out loud about, and then it just hit me, why haven’t I added this to the Model Portfolio?🤯 

Even though we record and archive all of our video events, it’s situations like this that motivate me to remind you that attending our live events can be incredibly beneficial… it makes our Open Forums valuable beyond prepared slides.

Second quarter earnings season is essentially over, but this week was one of our busier weeks of video content with Investor Insights Skull Sessions highlighting Edwin Dorsey of The Bear Cave & Sunday’s Idea Brunch Substacks and Hugo Navarro from the Small Cap Treasures Substack. I have to say that these were amazing chats. Edwin and I talked about China Fraud and the new stuff he’s doing to help protect investors. Hugo is absolutely on fire with some of his recent stock picks.

The big news this week was that we officially closed Buy on Pullback Portfolio #13, with an average return of 50.2%. Our last three BOPs have now had a pretty impressive streak, with returns of 45.3%, 30.6% and 50.2% over an average time span of 8 months.

We actually highlighted BOP 13 in last week’s Sunday post. Here was the official closure announcement:

There’s no doubt that the BOP is turning out to be our best and most consistent high-returning model portfolio.

Here’s some stats to put this history, that started in 2016, into perspective.

Second quarter earnings season insights and live events…(including the August Monthly Forum, a fireside to understand the turnaround going on at ASYS, and a post-second-quarter management briefing chat with TGEN. Watch the TGEN discussion here.)…dominated our time last week, reminding us that we’re entering a stretch of potential inflection points for several companies we’ve been closely tracking.Although we’re waiting on real data center contract momentum from Fuel Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTEK) and Tecogen Inc. (NYSE:TGEN), we’re extremely excited that our pipeline of legitimate, boring industrial-type companies that could potentially benefit from data center trends continues to grow.