Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet took combined annual capital expenditures from roughly $120 billion to roughly $500 billion in four years. A ROIC/WACC/EVA read on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud finds all three still clear their cost of capital — but the spread that made them extraordinary compounders has narrowed sharply at Microsoft and Alphabet, and all three now converge toward a similar, materially lower level of return on new capital.

In October 1995, Elsinore Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.^[1] Elsinore owned the Four Queens Hotel and Casino, a fixture on Fremont Street since 1966, along with a scattered portfolio of other gaming interests that had stopped paying for themselves. I had been Controller of the Four Queens for about a year by that point — the person who knew exactly how bad the numbers were before anyone outside the building did

This chart file is a companion to "Is the AI Capex Supercycle Earning Its Cost of Capital? A ROIC/WACC/EVA Analysis of Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet" published at gregg-carlson.com. The companion report contains complete methodology, ROIC framework, segment-test limitations, scenario analysis, and full disclosures. All figures have been cross-verified against the three author financial models and named public sources cited per chart.

A Class B Las Vegas multifamily deal can be financed at a rate that matches, or exceeds, its own cap rate today. When that happens, borrowing doesn't boost the return — it mechanically drags it down. This report applies the ROIC/WACC/EVA framework this series has used for gaming equities to a real estate deal for the first time, using current market data and a fully-disclosed worked example.

My prior report on this market established that four years of NGCB data support genuine, if modest, expansion of the Las Vegas locals market since Durango opened — and that Red Rock Resorts captured real share on top of that expansion. One variable was conspicuously absent from that analysis: the demand driver everyone in this market, RRR included, points to as the underlying reason any of it is happening at all. Clark County population growth. This report tests that claim directly, using the same primary-source discipline as the prior one — the state's own certified population data, a live regression rather than an assumed correlation, and a side-by-side check of what RRR's and Boyd's own investor materials claim against what the independent data shows.

Did Durango expand the Las Vegas locals market, or just take a bigger slice of it? Four years of NGCB data, cross-checked against RRR's and Boyd's own filings, settle the question

Medical cannabis is already relieved from 280E — adult-use is the question that remains. Using McKinsey’s ROIC-versus-WACC framework on the five largest multistate operators, eliminating 280E on recreational sales is worth roughly $2.5 billion of intrinsic equity value, about 47% of their combined market capitalization.

Excluding goodwill, these businesses earn 15–19% on invested capital before tax, yet 280E drags the after-tax return to near zero. The gap is tax policy, not operations — and it is reversible. The probability of that change, however, remains unknown and should not be relied on.

Rescheduling changes more than the tax line. As 280E relief, banking access, and a lower cost of capital begin to converge in 2026, the financial model of the U.S. cannabis operator is being rewritten.

This piece looks past the headline at what actually shifts for operators and investors — effective tax rates, access to institutional lending and capital markets, refinancing windows, and the capital-allocation moves a CFO should be positioning for now, while the timing of full relief stays uncertain.

The technology is the easy part. The hard part is human and organizational — and 94% of companies are proving it. New article: the CFO AI leverage multiplier, the implementation reality, and the ROI curve by business size.

I have been applying AI tools to my CFO and financial advisory practice since ChatGPT became publicly available in 2022. The foundation that made that application productive from the start was not AI skill — it was 25 years of financial domain expertise that allowed me to direct AI effectively, evaluate its outputs critically, and integrate it into professional work that clients could rely on.

Andrej Karpathy frames the current moment precisely: everything is a skill issue. The AI capability is there. For domain experts, the bottleneck is lower than it is for generalists — because professional judgment is the most important variable in AI-assisted work.

The Controller function — month-end close, account reconciliations, financial reporting, GAAP compliance — is the finance role most immediately transformed by AI.

AI automates the mechanical. It does not replace the judgment. Revenue recognition under ASC 606, complex accruals, intercompany eliminations, lease accounting under ASC 842, inventory costing methods, and management reporting context all require professional judgment that no current AI system can reliably provide. A business that replaces its Controller with AI tools alone will produce faster financial statements that are less reliable.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are each spending $80B–$200B on AI infrastructure in FY 2026 — a combined commitment approaching $600 billion. But the strategies are fundamentally different: Amazon is building vertically (custom chips + cloud), Microsoft is monetizing through distribution (Azure + Copilot + OpenAI), and Google is leveraging its model advantage (Gemini + Search + Cloud). The capital allocation choices each company makes today will determine their competitive positions for the next decade.

Most business owners read their financial statements once a year, usually at tax time, after their accountant has already prepared them. The value in financial statements is not in confirming what happened — it is in telling you what is happening right now and what is likely to happen next.

The three financial statements are not three separate documents. They are three views of the same business, linked together. The income statement tells you whether you made money. The balance sheet tells you what you own and owe. The cash flow statement tells you whether you have cash. A business can show profit on the income statement and simultaneously run out of cash.

Amazon’s Q1 2026 earnings beat across every major line: $181.5B revenue (+17% YoY), $23.9B operating income at a record 13.1% margin, AWS growing 28% to $37.6B (fastest pace in 15 quarters), and Advertising at $17.2B (+24% YoY) crossing $70B in TTM revenue.

Amazon is not one business — it is seven with radically different economics. AWS and Advertising, which represent approximately 31% of revenue, generate the overwhelming majority of economic value. Valuing Amazon without separating these segments produces a meaningless blended average.

Most business owners bring in a fractional CFO too late — after a cash crisis, a failed capital raise, or a deal that fell apart in diligence — rather than before any of those events occur. The twelve signals in this article are designed to help identify the need earlier.

Most business owners who have never raised capital professionally do not know what a lender or investor actually does with the financial information they receive. Understanding that analytical process is the difference between a fundable business and one that gets passed over.

Equity capital is the most expensive form of financing measured in permanent ownership dilution. Every percentage point you give up is permanently gone unless you buy it back at a higher price later.

The most common mistake founders make is negotiating valuation hard and terms lightly. The terms — liquidation preferences, anti-dilution provisions, board composition, protective provisions — determine your actual economic outcome far more than the headline pre-money figure.

Andy Jassy's 2025 letter is not primarily a shareholder communication. It is a capital allocation philosophy, a competitive strategy memo, and a treatise on long-duration thinking — all wrapped in annual report format. The lessons it contains apply to any business at any scale.

The CFO role is not one job — it is fundamentally different at each stage of the business lifecycle. What a startup needs from its CFO has almost nothing in common with what a distressed company needs. Mismatching CFO capability to business stage is one of the most expensive leadership mistakes a company can make.

One year after Liberation Day, the U.S. effective tariff rate is approximately 17% — the highest since the 1930s — even after the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA-based reciprocal tariffs in February 2026. A replacement 10% global tariff under Section 122 is now in effect.