they might recoup the $80 MM investment in 4-5 years

I appreciate all the work you are putting into this and this is way off-topic so I'll leave it at this. The $80m paid for 90% of the company included $25m cash on Abraxas's debt-free balance sheet. So you are already at $54.9m net of cash acquired. Then they sold the headquarters and the drilling rig for cash. Abraxas has been in crisis (essentially bankrupt) for years. The Biglari deal retained a diminished pile of tax assets ($74m, fully reserved). We will see how they cash cow it going forward but I think they will get their $50m back soon enough and still have something of value left. Expenses will be way down (including the non-cash expenses incurred when you fire almost everyone), they moved the few remaining employees into the Biglari office. They moved $19.5m of excess cash into CBRL, JACK and RACE shares. It is a deeply unpopular company, I was just struck that they were the only one I have seen following Charlie's unconventional scenario. So when someone mentioned "does anybody know of any other companies following this playbook" I realized I did know of one odd bird behaving unconventionally.