Scan #063: Who charges rent on the next decade's physical plumbing

Today's scan sits across a single operating theme: who gets to charge rent on the physical plumbing of the next decade. Entergy and Dycom own the grid and the fiber the hyperscalers depend on. Everest Group writes the reinsurance that lets insurers write the physical risk the climate forces are repricing. Pano AI is the pure-play wildfire detection operator sitting between those insurers and the utilities they underwrite. Everstream Analytics and Loadsmart contest ownership of the supply-chain risk and brokerage layers. Postscript and Academy Sports Outdoors round out the retail-ecommerce tape with a Shopify-native messaging platform tested by Klaviyo bundling, and the sporting-goods incumbent whose pandemic lift is quietly reversing.

Entergy Corporation — Energy · Well-positioned. The Gulf Coast regulated monopoly where load growth has structurally re-rated, with a nuclear fleet, long-dated hyperscaler contracts and a $50B+ capital plan that has roughly tripled since 2023. Drew Marsh's management has turned geography into one of the largest capex plans in the US utility sector. The risk is political, not competitive.

Everest Group, Ltd. — Insurance · Well-positioned. Top-ten global reinsurer with ~$17B GWP. Reinsurance pricing is softening but still writing at returns above cost of capital for 2026-27. The 2024 US primary casualty reserve charge appears cleaned up under Jim Williamson; the valuation discount to Arch and RenaissanceRe is the opportunity.

Dycom Industries, Inc. — Construction · Well-positioned. The dominant US specialty contractor for digital infrastructure, with $11.9B backlog as of Q1 2026 — nearly double FY2023. Three structural drivers (FTTH overbuild, hyperscaler long-haul interconnect, BEAD) all point the same direction. Labor is the moat; autonomous horizontal directional drilling is the real wedge against it.

Academy Sports and Outdoors, Inc. — Retail · At-risk. The low-cost Southern big-box operator in US sporting goods, outgrown but out-margined by Dick's. Pandemic pull-forward in outdoor and firearms is quietly reversing; the geographic push outside the Southern core is unevenly productive. DTC athletic brands continue stealing wallet share. Operating margin probably compresses toward 7-8% at normalisation.

Pano AI — Energy · Emerging. Managed-service wildfire detection on a network of 1,000+ panoramic tower cameras with 24/7 analyst verification. $44M Series B in June 2025 brings total raised to ~$100M. The open question: does Pano re-architect from camera-network owner into a hardware-agnostic detection OS that fuses satellite, drone and third-party feeds — or stay capex-capped by its own stations?

Everstream Analytics — Supply chain · Emerging. The scaled independent supply-chain risk analytics incumbent, formed in 2020 from DHL's Resilience360 and Riskpulse. ~$99M raised; estimated $75-150M ARR. The open question: does Everstream own the primary data layer and the agentic workflow for risk — or get sandwiched between ERPs bundling risk below and AI-first alerting vendors above?

Loadsmart — Logistics · Emerging. The surviving independent US digital freight broker after Convoy and Transfix's exits, with Opendock dock-scheduling as the strongest SaaS leg. $200M Series D at $1.3B in Feb 2022 — now the valuation overhang. The open question: does Loadsmart complete the pivot from brokerage-first to software-plus-brokerage before the next freight cycle resets?

Postscript — Ecommerce · Emerging. The Shopify-native SMS marketing leader, ~$150-200M ARR, betting the next decade on Shop AI merchant agents. The open question: does the AI-first conversational-commerce product win Shopify Plus brands before Klaviyo's email+SMS bundling erodes the base?