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News & Insights

First National Capital company announcements and insights on the economy, sectors, capital deployment, CapEx trends, and more.

Data Centers Are Coal’s Biggest New Customer. Nobody Will Say It Out Loud.

Two facts, both from the federal government, both published this year. First: after fifteen years of flat electricity demand, the Energy Information Administration now projects U.S. generation growing 25% to 50% through 2050, with installed capacity rising as much as 90%, a transformation the agency attributes overwhelmingly to data center construction. Second: in 2025, the U.S. power sector retired 2.6 gigawatts of coal capacity, the least since 2010 and less

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America Runs on Rebuilt Equipment. Wall Street Still Prices It Like Scrap.

Walk any serious industrial site in America and you will find the same machine twice. On the books, it is a fourteen-year-old asset, depreciated to a rounding error, carried at a value that would embarrass a used car lot. In the pit, or on the floor, or on the ramp, it is something else entirely: a haul truck with a fresh frame-up rebuild and a new drivetrain, a CNC cell

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Nobody Believes a Coal Retirement Date Anymore. That’s a Finance Problem.

At the start of 2025, the owners of America’s coal fleet told federal regulators they would retire 8.5 gigawatts of generating capacity by year end. They retired 2.6, the smallest annual total since 2010. Plants with published shutdown dates kept running under Department of Energy emergency orders. Two plants cancelled retirement entirely. Operators of capacity scheduled to close in 2027 quietly withdrew those plans too. And when the Energy Information

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New Research Finds the Private Equity Exit Window Did Not Open — but the Portfolio Aged Anyway, and Deferred Operational Capital Is Why Some Assets Will Not Clear When It Does

First National Capital Corporation mid-year analysis finds distributions have held below 15 percent of net asset value for a record fourth consecutive year, and argues sponsors treating the extended hold as an operating mandate — not a waiting room — will exit first and at better multiples First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers of capital equipment and project financing in North America, today released Waiting Is

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The Covenant You Accepted in 2021 Gets Negotiated by Your Buyer in 2029

Structural concessions are made when the exit feels theoretical. At a seven-year hold, it stops being theoretical rather sooner than anyone planned. Financing decisions at portfolio companies are made under a particular kind of time distortion. The transaction in front of you is immediate and concrete. The exit is a slide in a fund model. So when a lender offers a rate concession in exchange for cross-collateralization across entities, or

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The Asset You Are Waiting to Sell Is Getting Harder to Sell

Extending a hold assumes the value is static. In equipment-intensive businesses, it never was. The logic of waiting out a bad exit market is straightforward enough. Multiples are compressed, buyers are cautious, the bid-ask spread is too wide, and taking a process to market now means accepting a price that does not reflect what the business is worth. Better to hold, let conditions improve, and sell into a stronger market.

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Every Automation Project You Deferred Funded an Add-On. That Was a Choice.

When operational capital and acquisition capital draw on the same facility, the allocation meeting has already been decided before anyone walks in. Ask an operating partner whether they have systematically underinvested in their portfolio companies’ equipment base and you will get an immediate and sincere no. Ask them to name the last three capital allocation decisions at a platform company and you will usually get three add-on acquisitions. Both answers

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New Research Finds Business Aircraft Buyers Who Waited for a Softer Market Got a Tighter One — and Were Out-Processed, Not Outbid

IRVINE, Calif. — August 19, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers of capital equipment and project financing in North America, today released Nothing Good Stays Listed, a mid-year research report examining how the business aviation market rewarded buyers who could execute through the first half of 2026 — and repriced the aircraft out from under buyers who paused. The report revisits the firm’s February

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High Hours Are Not the Risk. Bad Records Are.

Most underwriting reads utilization as wear and charter as diluted control. Both readings are backwards, and they are excluding good aircraft from good buyers. There is a reflex in aircraft lending that has calcified into something close to doctrine: hours are bad. The more an airframe has flown, the more cautious the file becomes. Charter placement compounds the caution, because now the aircraft is flying more and someone other than

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The Residual Is Not a Question About Your Credit

Two identical aircraft, two identical borrowers, wildly different payments. The variable is the lessor — and almost nobody asks about it. An owner evaluating an operating lease against a loan will typically approach it as a question about themselves. What is my tax position? How long do I intend to hold? What does my balance sheet look like? Do I want the depreciation? All reasonable questions. None of them explains

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98 Days on Market Means the Good Aircraft Never Reached the Market

Rising time-to-sale reads like a cooling market. It is describing the opposite, and the distinction determines whether you are a bidder or a spectator. Average time on market for preowned business aircraft reached 98 days on a trailing-twelve-month basis this spring, up more than 11 percent year over year. Read in isolation, that is a straightforward signal: aircraft are taking longer to sell, which means demand is softening and buyers

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The Most Rigorous Price Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life, New Research Says Operators Should Stop Building Capital Plans That Require One

IRVINE, Calif. — August 12, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, a leading independent provider of capital equipment and project financing, today released The Three-Week Window, a midyear research report examining how U.S. oil and gas operators deployed capital during a first half in which crude prices moved more than $45 in four months. The report opens with the Energy Information Administration’s July Short-Term Energy Outlook, published on July 7,

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