RPC

Ridgepost is a post-IPO private-markets asset manager whose growth engine has stalled. After scaling revenue from $151M (2021) to $296M (2024), FY2025 revenue was essentially flat at $297M (+0.3%), and net income crept up just 4.3% to $19.5M. That leaves a 6.6% net margin and a 4.8% ROE — weak for an asset manager, and the gap between the 22.0% operating margin and 6.6% net margin is being eaten by rising interest on long-term debt that grew 16.7% to $373M. At $7.83 the stock trades at 46.1x diluted EPS and 2.9x sales — a growth multiple on a no-growth, low-return business.

The cash-flow picture is the real tell. Operating cash flow cratered 77.2% to $23.0M while cash and equivalents fell 58.3% to just $28.2M — yet management paid $16.3M in dividends (up 5.5%) and has spent $136M on buybacks under a $157M authorization, repurchasing 522,728 shares at $9.54 in November 2025, above today's price. Funding heavy capital return with shrinking cash and a growing debt load, against a deeply negative retained-earnings balance of -$195M, is not the profile of a business compounding shareholder value; it reads as financial engineering to support the share count (down only 1.9%) rather than durable earnings power.