Woodworth Contrarian Fund, LP

10/15/2026

Remember those Lands' End catalogs your grandparents used to get? Well, the company might be worth a hell of a lot more than Wall Street thinks.

Here's a fun piece of American business history:

In 1963, Lands’ End was selling sailing equipment out of a Chicago basement. When its first catalog arrived, somebody had managed to put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

The company couldn't afford to reprint the damn things.

So they kept the typo. Forever.

Fast-forward six decades, and Lands’ End is doing something considerably more interesting than selling fleece vests.

💵 A $300 MILLION transaction with WHP Global.

📉 Dramatically reduced debt and interest expenses.

📈 Improving profitability and expanding gross margins.

🏷️ A stock trading around $10 when we wrote this, despite $16.42 per share in tangible book value.

At the Woodworth Contrarian Fund, we think the market has gotten this one spectacularly wrong.

We've published a comprehensive analysis of the turnaround, the company's fascinating history, and why we see substantial upside in this forgotten American brand.

Apparently, Wall Street thinks the entire company belongs on the clearance rack. We disagree.

Read our latest research 👇

https://www.woodworth.fund/news/lands-end-typo-turnaround-bargain

WHP Global

From a misplaced apostrophe to a $300 million financial makeover, Lands’ End (LE) has spent six decades defying expectations. Now, with debt slashed, margins expanding, and shares trading well below tangible book value, Wall Street seems to have overlooked one hell of a turnaround story. We're dig...

09/28/2026

Apparently nobody told Shoe Station that struggling retailers are supposed to have mountains of debt.

$SHOE had a lousy Q2. Sales fell. Margins got whacked. Management is dumping stale inventory.

Naturally, the stock got punished.

But underneath all of that sits a company with no long-term debt, $118 million in cash, another $13.6 million in securities, a 5%+ dividend yield, and 14 consecutive years of dividend increases.

Oh, and it’s trading below 60% of tangible book value.

Management is clearing the shelves and moving toward localized inventory instead of assuming customers in every market want the exact same shoes.

The market sees the ugly quarter.

We see the clearance rack.

Newsletter subscribers got our full breakdown Saturday. Now everyone else gets it.

👟 Stepping Into Value with Shoe Station (SHOE)

https://www.woodworth.fund/news/stepping-into-value-with-shoe-station

09/10/2026

☔ It looks like rain in the Salem Hills this weekend - and not just from the weather.

Willamette Valley Vineyards is hosting a celebration Saturday for the “launch” of an expansion where it says future vineyards and hospitality are planned.

There are a few problems.

The hospitality vision remains unpermitted. The w**e industry is drowning in oversupply. Vineyards across the West Coast are pulling vines and leaving grapes unharvested.

And WVVI wants to expand.

Perhaps most strikingly, WVVIP recently traded around $2.65 on the open market while the company was offering those same preferred shares directly to the public for $3.45.

Meanwhile, WVVI common stock has fallen to levels not seen since 2004.

So why throw an expansion party now?

Our latest report looks beyond the celebration and examines what we believe is really driving the narrative - and why our view on WVVI and WVVIP remains firmly negative.

WVVI: Raining on the Parade of Deception

https://www.woodworth.fund/news/willamette-valley-vineyards-wvvi-raining-on-the-parade-of-deception

**eIndustry

Willamette Valley Vineyards is celebrating expansion. We see warning signs. An unpermitted hospitality vision, vineyard expansion into an industry glut, and preferred shares offered above market reinforce our view that WVVI’s growth story is increasingly disconnected from financial reality.

08/25/2026

Pass the ketchup. And the 7% dividend.

Kraft Heinz has spent years digging out from past financial engineering, but we think the underlying story is getting more interesting: strong cash flow, manageable debt, continued reinvestment, and a hefty dividend while investors wait.

Why we maintain a $34.50 fair-value target for $KHC:
www.woodworth.fund/news/khc-pass-me-the-dividend

Kraft Heinz has been passed around a lot between institutional investors over the last few years.  The staying power of the brands is nothing to be scoffed at, and the global reach is the envy of staples companies everywhere, but the company has also definitely been the victim of financial

08/18/2026

Willamette Valley Vineyards wants investors looking at the shiny resort renderings.

We suggest looking at the bank account.

WVVI ended Q2 with a $534,488 bank overdraft, has $46.9 million of preferred liquidation preference sitting ahead of common shareholders, took a roughly $1.1 million hit tied to the RNDC bankruptcy, and is now pitching a grand “destination resort” that is not allowed under Oregon law.

But don’t look behind the curtain.

Our latest report does exactly that.

We believe the financial reality is simple: WVVI common stock is effectively a zero.

https://www.woodworth.fund/news/willamette-valley-vineyards-wvvi-the-man-behind-the-curtain

Willamette Valley Vineyards is running out of room to maneuver. Our latest report examines WVVI’s mounting liquidity crisis, growing preferred-stock burden, RNDC-related losses, and a proposed destination resort that is not allowed under Oregon law . We explain why management’s narrative does no...

08/10/2026

A few years ago, FreightCar America, Inc. was producing approximately zero railcars.

Today, it is capturing roughly 45% of new industry railcar orders.

That alone is a pretty wild turnaround.

Q2 2026 brought even more progress: backlog value jumped 121% sequentially, free cash flow reached $11.35 million, market share kept climbing despite a slower overall railcar market, and the company is now expanding into parts and refurbishment through its acquisition of Southern Parts & Equipment.

Even the enormously annoying warrant accounting issue is finally nearing the end.

The industry is soft. FreightCar keeps taking share anyway.

We dug through the quarter, the acquisition, the warrant cleanup, and where we think the valuation goes from here:

FreightCar America’s turnaround is becoming harder to ignore. Q2 brought surging backlog, stronger cash flow, 45% of industry new railcar orders, a strategic acquisition, and a cleaner balance sheet that could finally let RAIL’s underlying earnings shine through.

06/24/2026

Shorting is not the mirror image of long-term investing.

It is a tactical strike for moments when the market starts treating narrative like currency.

That is the thread running through the latest Millegan Memo, which went out to subscribers yesterday and is now live.

In June 1775, Congress tried to finance a revolution with paper promises, confidence, and no real taxing power. For a while, the Continentals spent. Then belief cracked, the bills collapsed, and “not worth a Continental” became one of America’s first great financial insults.

Different century. Same lesson.

When SpaceX mania, leveraged hype, or any other market story gets too far ahead of reality, the question is not whether the story sounds exciting. It is whether the paper is actually worth what people are paying for it.

Sometimes the story spends.

Sometimes the bill comes due.

Read it here:
https://www.woodworth.fund/news/the-millegan-memo-feb-june-2026

At Woodworth, we like value because it usually survives the sort of adversity that exposes everything else. This month’s Memo is about exactly that: puncturing market delusions when hype gets stupid, defending the radical act of owning boring cash-flow businesses like Kraft Heinz, and looking back...

06/05/2026

Don’t buy the SpaceX IPO.

Not because SpaceX is a bad company.

Because Wall Street’s biggest IPOs are usually built for the people selling first — not the long-term investors buying into the hype.

The story will be easy to sell: historic company, historic IPO, historic opportunity.

But “historic” does not mean cheap. “Everyone wants in” is not an investment thesis. And a great company can still be a bad entry price when insiders, issuers, and underwriters have chosen the perfect moment to unload stock into public demand.

Our latest article breaks down why marquee IPOs often favor Wall Street, why lockup expirations matter, and why the better contrarian move may be waiting for the launch-day circus to end.

Read the full article below (subscribe to our newsletter to get these scoops first):

https://www.woodworth.fund/news/why-you-should-not-buy-the-spacex-ipo

The SpaceX IPO may be pitched as the moonshot of the decade, but Wall Street’s “biggest IPO ever” script usually has a funny way of making issuers, insiders, and underwriters rich before ordinary long-term buyers get their turn. In our latest contrarian breakdown, we look past the confetti and...

05/27/2026

New Woodworth article: WVVI: Sour Grapes, Stressed Distributor.

Willamette Valley Vineyards may be showing sales growth on paper, but the quality of that growth matters. Our latest update looks at WVVI’s deeper reliance on distributor sales, the Republic National Distributing Company risk, rising receivables, thin cash, bank overdraft habits, covenant pressure, and why preferred equity may not be fixing the underlying operating problem.

The short version: booked sales are not the same thing as collected cash.

Read the full article:
www.woodworth.fund/news/willamette-valley-vineyards-wvvi-sour-grapes

**eindustry **e

Willamette Valley Vineyards’ latest East Coast distribution reshuffle was presented as a growth initiative, but distributor RNDC’s ongoing collapse makes WVVI look materially riskier than management’s recent press releases suggest. The company aligned distribution in New York and parts of the ...

05/12/2026

Kraft Heinz is not suddenly a glamour stock — and that is exactly what makes it interesting.

The latest quarter did not show a miraculous reinvention. It showed something more useful: steady cash generation, a protected dividend, improving share trends, and management redirecting attention away from corporate breakup theater and back toward long-term brand investment.

Berkshire’s exit is the headline. The halted breakup may be the strategy.

Read our latest Woodworth piece on why $KHC still looks like a respectable contrarian holding hiding in plain sight:

www.woodworth.fund/news/less-drama-more-ketchup

Kraft Heinz is not a glamour story - and that may be the point. The latest quarter showed a business still generating strong free cash flow, protecting a 6%+ dividend, improving share trends, and redirecting energy away from corporate breakup theatrics and back toward brand investment. With the spli