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The narrative is clean energy and AI data centers. A winning combination, apparently. Everyone needs power, and Bloom’s boxes – solid oxide fuel cells, they call them – are supposed to be the answer. They convert fuel into electricity without combustion. Sounds…efficient. And they can be installed in 90 days or less. Which is good. Because waiting is so last year.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission – a document which, one imagines, inspires more yawns than investigations – reveals that this acquisition elevates Clifford Capital’s stake to 2.72% of their reportable assets. A significant holding? Hardly. But enough to suggest a belief – or perhaps a hope – that Thermon’s particular brand of industrial heating will continue to prove… serviceable. The fund’s total position now values at $15.55 million, factoring in the inevitable fluctuations of the exchange.

Few entities dominate their sphere with such unnerving precision. Axon, formerly TASER International, has ascended to become the undisputed leader in law enforcement technology. Electrical stun guns, body cameras, dashboard cameras… these are not simply products, but instruments, extensions of authority. And now, software, the very sinews of control, to manage evidence, records, investigations… a complete ecosystem of surveillance.

H&R Block, a name synonymous with the annual reckoning, the quiet confessions of income and expense. The stock itself, however, has been adrift, a vessel tossed by currents it scarcely controls. A decline of 40% over the past year—a bruising fall, even as the broader market ascends. The S&P 500, a gilded balloon, rising while this particular craft struggles to maintain altitude. And yet, Lodge Hill Capital has chosen this moment, this apparent vulnerability, to cast anchor.

The final years of the Buffett reign saw a curious shedding of equity, a strategic divestiture that swelled the cash reserves to proportions bordering on the baroque. Share buybacks, a quarterly ritual for twenty-four consecutive seasons, ceased abruptly in June of 2024. Twenty-one months of abstinence. A prolonged pause that invited speculation, a silence that now, with Abel’s intervention, has been elegantly broken. One suspects a certain impatience, a quiet assertion of autonomy. Or perhaps, simply, a favorable valuation. The market, after all, is a capricious mistress, and even the most discerning eye can occasionally detect a fleeting moment of lucidity.