patterns / recap_candidate
credit thesisnet assets negative AND deepening, with outstanding charges and real scale — a leveraged business that burned through its equity and needs to refinance the debt (and often raise fresh equity to keep scaling). Owner age is irrelevant here. Excludes companies whose control changed recently, a tell that the recap already happened.
A leveraged business that burned through its equity: the debt is still there, the cushion is gone, and every year it deepens. Unlike the stable zombie this one has real scale and existing lenders — someone financed it once and will need to be refinanced or replaced. Owner age is irrelevant here; the balance sheet sets the clock. The recent-control-change exclusion drops companies where the equity partner already arrived — visible in bulk as a fresh PSC.
A debt+equity recapitalisation mandate: refinance the stack, often with fresh equity to keep scaling (the Cult Wines shape — the deal that seeded this pattern). The charge register tells you who holds security today; the shortlist question is whether the lender is patient or already tired.
The badge is recomputed nightly across the whole index, and re-evaluated live the moment a company files — so a match is always a statement about the current register, not a stale list. Like every signal on the radar: a prompt to look closer, never a verdict.