Friday Furnace

David Horn resigned as President, CFO, and Treasurer of Seer, Inc. effective October 1, 2026, with no CFO named to succeed him. CEO Omid Farokhzad absorbed the President title, giving him three of the company's top roles simultaneously. The departure lands while Seer's Special Committee is actively evaluating two unsolicited acquisition proposals — one from Farokhzad himself, revised July 29, and one from activist investor Bradley Radoff's group at $2.55 per share, received July 28. The company replaced Horn in the principal financial officer seat with Charles Endweiss, its VP of Financial Planning & Analysis, whose title is Treasurer — not CFO.

MG Mistras Group, Inc. Merger Pending

H.I.G. Capital to Take MISTRAS Private at $20.35 a Share

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $632M

MISTRAS Group agreed on September 17, 2026 to be acquired by H.I.G. Capital affiliates at $20.35 per share in an all-cash deal carrying roughly $866 million in enterprise value including debt. The offer represents an 8% and 13% premium to the company's 30-day and 90-day volume-weighted average prices — thin by historical take-private standards, though the press release notes the price reflects 61% appreciation from December 31, 2025. A 40-day go-shop period runs through October 27, 2026, and Stephanie Foglia, who controls roughly 21.72% of shares and adopted an activist 13D posture on December 31, 2025, has not signed a voting agreement, making her a key variable in whether the deal clears.

SAR Saratoga Investment, Corp. Leadership Transition

Saratoga CFO Steenkamp Steps Down; Controller Named Principal Financial Officer

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $287M

Henri Steenkamp is stepping down as CFO, CCO, Treasurer, and Secretary of Saratoga Investment Corp. effective October 31, 2026, citing health reasons. The company is not carrying forward the CFO title at the BDC level; instead, controller Christine Ramdihal has been named Chief Accounting Officer, Treasurer, and principal financial officer, while Rochelle Kracoff takes over as CCO and Secretary. The transition comes as Saratoga has posted two consecutive GAAP net losses and NAV per share has slid from $25.86 to $23.23 over three quarters — a period during which the company executed at least six debt issuances.

DASH Doordash, Inc. Founder Entrenchment

DoorDash Founders Use Supervoting Shares to Reincorporate in Nevada

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $84.3B

DoorDash completed its reincorporation from Delaware to Nevada on September 18, 2026, replacing its corporate charter and bylaws with Nevada equivalents. The move was approved on August 6, 2026, by written consent of stockholders holding 54.2% of voting power — that bloc consisting entirely of co-founders Tony Xu, Andy Fang, and Stanley Tang through their Class B supervoting shares. The company's own disclosure acknowledges that certain stockholder rights changed as a result, with a full description of those changes contained in a Schedule 14C filed August 27, 2026. New indemnification agreements are being executed with every director and officer under Nevada's more permissive corporate law.

DDS Dillard's, Inc. Governance Shift

Dillard's Quits NYSE for New Texas Stock Exchange

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $9.9B

Dillard's is voluntarily transferring the primary listings of its Class A Common Stock (DDS) and 7.50% Capital Securities (DDT) from the NYSE to the Texas Stock Exchange, with NYSE trading ending October 2, 2026 and TXSE trading beginning October 5, 2026. The move comes four months after Alex Dillard consolidated a 31.8% stake through a family-holding-company merger, and just over a year after Dillard's reincorporated from Delaware to Texas. The company's stated rationale is its Texas heritage and the TXSE's 'technology-driven platform'; the filing does not address liquidity or listing-standard implications for minority holders.

UVV Universal, Corp. Management crisis

Ingredients VP Termination Adds to Universal's Leadership Churn

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $1.1B

Universal Corporation terminated J. Patrick O'Keefe, its Vice President of Ingredients, without cause on September 15, 2026 — seven weeks after he had publicly announced his intention to retire and stay on until a successor was found. No reason for the change was given. The termination is the latest in a string of senior leadership disruptions at Universal, which saw the offer to its newly elected CFO withdrawn just eight days after it was extended earlier this year, before a third executive took the role. The Ingredients segment O'Keefe led has posted sharply deteriorating results, including a $41.1 million goodwill impairment on its Shank's operation and an operating loss in the most recent quarter.

LBRT Liberty Energy, Inc. Capital Strategy Shift

Liberty Energy Discloses $493M Power Contract Signed Seven Months Ago

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $3.1B

Liberty Energy has disclosed a $493.2 million contract with Northeast-Western Energy Systems USA LLC — signed February 13, 2026 — roughly seven months after execution, with the filing offering no explanation for the gap. The disclosure brings Liberty's total publicly committed power generation equipment purchases to approximately $1.33 billion across three separate contracts, all directed at projects the company still describes as 'prospective.' Those commitments sit alongside $1.295 billion in zero-coupon convertible notes raised earlier this year, as the oilfield services company bets heavily on a distributed power buildout while its core business operates at a 1% adjusted pre-tax return on capital.

RTB RTB Digital, Inc. Distressed

RTB Digital Signs $89M Minority Stake Deal Without Disclosed Funding

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $126M

RTB Digital, Inc. has agreed to acquire a 49.5% stake in Paradium.AI — formerly The Arena Group Holdings — for approximately $89.6 million, of which $73.6 million must be paid in cash at closing. The deal also requires RTB to issue $11.5 million in common stock to Paradium under a linked ten-year platform agreement. Closing is contingent on RTB completing a capital raise that has no disclosed source, a condition the company itself flags in the filing. The company's market cap stands at approximately $125.7 million, and its predecessor survived the past year on PIPE tranches of $5 million and $6.5 million.

DAKT Daktronics, Inc. Management crisis

Daktronics Acting CFO Paid $1.2M Base, Double the Permanent CEO

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $839M

Daktronics raised Acting CFO Howard Atkins' base salary to $1,200,000 annually — twice the $600,000 base paid to permanent CEO Ramesh Jayaraman — as the company approaches nine months without a permanent finance chief since Jayaraman took over in February 2026. Atkins also received a one-time RSU grant worth $170,000 that vests either pro-rata over three years or in full the moment a permanent CFO is named, a structure designed to retain him through an open-ended search. The pay package, disclosed alongside routine annual meeting results, underscores a CFO vacancy that the company acknowledged publicly as far back as December 2025 and has yet to resolve.

CLSK Cleanspark, Inc. Strategic Pivot

CleanSpark Names Meta as Data Center Tenant, Prices $2.276 Billion in Project Finance Notes

Market cap : at edition (Sep 18, 2026) $3.4B

CleanSpark's subsidiary CSDC Finance I, LLC priced $2.276 billion in 7.875% senior secured notes due 2031 at 98.5 cents on the dollar to finance the Sandersville, Georgia data center build-out — and an investor presentation filed simultaneously named Meta (through subsidiary Anviran, LLC) as the previously confidential tenant for the first time in a public SEC filing. The 20-year triple-net lease covers 175 megawatts of critical IT load and is projected to generate approximately $6.6 billion in base-term contracted revenue, with an average annual net operating income of roughly $330 million. The notes are ring-fenced at the project-subsidiary level, secured by first-priority liens on Sandersville assets; CleanSpark parent provides a completion guarantee if project proceeds fall short.

Seer CFO Departs With No Replacement Named as CEO Accumulates Three Titles