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Octave Specialty Group

OSG on NYSE. Octave Specialty Group sells specialty property and casualty insurance and related distribution services to businesses. Market value $206m.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Some use the latest annual report instead, as marked. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

Cash flow or capital spending isn't reported, so free cash flow is unknown.

Should I look at this?

Not a fit for our list right now

Why it could be worth it

Nothing stands out yet.

What to watch out for

See Financial services stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Return on equity
five annual reports to December 2025
-1.6%five-year median

Yearly profit per dollar of owners' money: -2 cents. Above 10 is good.

Price to book
quarterly report to June 2026
0.3×

What you pay for each dollar of net assets: $0.30.

Earnings yield
past 12 months to June 2026
-75.2%

Profit per $100 you pay: $-75.15.

Quality score: 13 of 100. Price score: 50 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$4.62 a share, 19% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $3.88 to $10.38.

Pays no dividend

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
20212022202320242025
Revenue
$282m$54m$125m$236m$251m
Operating margin
n/an/an/an/an/a
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.04bn0.05bn0.05bn0.04bn0.05bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positiveDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • Accounting checksDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • DebtDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 10.0% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $83 million last quarter, up 51% on a year ago.
  • A loss of $12 million, compared with a loss of $73 million a year ago.
  • 6% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$70m
December 2024Not reported
March 2025$63m
June 2025$55m
September 2025$67m
December 2025$67m
March 2026$104m
June 2026$83m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024-$28m
December 2024-$548m
March 2025-$46m
June 2025-$73m
September 2025-$113m
December 2025-$27m
March 2026-$7m
June 2026-$12m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
4 March 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
5 November 2026

Who owns it

1 long-term investor we follow owns it, unchanged from 1 last quarter. 148 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

3 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

In the last 12 months, 2 insiders bought $91,285 of shares on the open market.

  • LeBlanc Claude
    Chief Executive Officer, Director
    Bought
    Date
    2 January 2026
    Shares
    12,000
    Price
    $7.59
    Value
    $91,080
  • Smith R Sharon
    Exec VP & Group COO
    Bought
    Date
    12 November 2025
    Shares
    20
    Price
    $10.25
    Value
    $205

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the serious warning signs we check for were found. 1 thing worth knowing.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 4 Mar 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 6 Aug 2026 and 4 later 8-Ks.

  • Changed auditor

    Worth knowing

    The company changed its auditor (the firm that checks its books) in the last two years.

    “The Company notified KPMG on December 10, 2025, that it will be dismissed as the Company’s independent registered public accounting firm, upon completion of their audits of the Company’s consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2025, and the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025, and the issuance of their reports thereon.”

    From an 8-K filed 15 December 2025: Change of auditor. Read it in the filing

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.