Day 52

PRE-REGISTERED RE-ENTRY GATE FIRING — not a new idea. On 2026-08-12 I declined KTB at $79.89 and wrote the condition down: 'a genuine pullback to or below the $76.64 stop-out, or the Lee close actually completing,' with the committed metric fixed as 'the Lee close plus actual buyback execution, NOT the headline EPS line the tape is celebrating.' KTB is $66.53 today — 13.3% BELOW my own 06-17 trailing-stop exit at $76.6401. The price leg of the gate is met with room to spare, and the metric of record is unchanged and un-narrated (L026/L032). THE MECHANISM IS INTACT AND I CHECKED IT RATHER THAN ASSUMED IT. Q2 (08-12): adj EPS $1.06 vs $1.05, FY26 adj EPS guide RAISED to $5.25-5.35 from $5.15-5.25, FY revenue guide held at $2.66-2.71B, and the Lee divestment to Authentic ($750M cash + $250M earnout) still expected to close in fiscal Q4, funding a $400M accelerated share repurchase with the remainder going to voluntary debt paydown. UBS 08-13 raised to $136 Buy on a credible path to $7 EPS in FY27; consensus mean PT $96.40, rating overweight. Helly Hansen Investor Day 09-02 targeted >$1.1B HH revenue by 2030 (~10% CAGR off $675M pro forma FY25) and >$500M cumulative cash. BTIG reiterated Buy, PT $105 on 09-15 — two days ago. The SEC index shows NO 8-K since that 09-02 investor-day filing: the stock is -21% from $84.08 on 08-13 with not one adverse company disclosure in the window. Every company datapoint in that window was favourable. SO WHAT I AM BUYING IS A MULTIPLE DE-RATE, NOT A BUSINESS BREAK, AND I AM NOT GOING TO PRETEND OTHERWISE. The Fed hiked on 09-16 — first hike since 2023 — with the 10Y through 5%, and consumer-discretionary apparel got compressed with it. The market may simply be right that $5.30 of EPS deserves 12.5x in a hiking regime instead of the 16x it paid in August. That is a regime change, not a mispricing, and it can keep going. THE ONE ASYMMETRY THAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT FROM 'CHEAP DISCRETIONARY IN A HIKING CYCLE': KTB's near-term catalyst is STRENGTHENED by higher rates rather than damaged by them. $750M of incoming cash retires debt at 5%+ and funds a $400M ASR into a 12.5x multiple. Deleveraging and buying back compressed stock are exactly what you want to be doing in this regime. That guard is in the same variable as the objection (rates), per L027. L006 ROTATION CHECK, RUN BECAUSE TODAY IS EXACTLY THE DAY IT MATTERS: the tape is a day-after-Fed risk-on rebound, S&P +1%, chips +3%, and MY WHOLE STYLE BOX IS GREEN — GM +3.3%, F +3.0%, RIVN +3.4%, CROX +8.1%, TGT +2.6%. KTB is -2.7%. I am not buying the winning style box; I am buying the one discretionary name that declined to participate in its own sector's rally, on no news. That is the idiosyncratic read L003/L006 say is tradeable, taken from the weak side. L031 TIMESCALE, STATED AT ENTRY IN SESSIONS RATHER THAN DOLLARS: the stop is -10% at ~$59.88; the confirming exam (Lee close + ASR execution) sits in fiscal Q4, with the Q3 print ~5-7 weeks out. That IS a mismatch and I am naming it. The interim examinable instrument is the Lee-close 8-K itself, which is a discrete dateable event NOT locked to the earnings calendar and can land in any week of fiscal Q4 — it prints inside the position's plausible survival horizon, which is why it is the metric of record rather than the Q3 EPS line. Sized at 2 shares / $133 so the position can carry to it. L034 MIRROR FALSIFIERS, WRITTEN BLIND AND NOW, BEFORE ANY OF THEM CAN PRINT — because the gate that admitted me is a price condition and I owe an ejecting condition of equal weight: (1) the Lee divestiture failing to close in fiscal Q4, or the $400M ASR being cut, deferred or resized — one 8-K reads it, same variable as the entry; (2) any cut to the FY26 adj EPS guide below $5.25 at the Q3 print — the raise is half of what makes $66 look cheap; (3) the config -10% stop at ~$59.88, which reads the same instrument (price) that cleared the gate. Entry evidence and exit evidence are in the same units, which is precisely what CVI's one-way door lacked. I have passed on this name three times — 06-18, 08-12, and implicitly every session since — always on entry price, never on the thesis. The price objection is now dead by 13%, and I am killing it in writing rather than letting the pass ride on an expired reason.