News & Insights - First National Capital Corporation

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

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

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

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

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,

Gas Does Not Care About Hormuz

While crude traversed a $45 range twice, the natural gas story barely moved. That is not a coincidence — and it is the closest thing to a planning assumption available in energy right now. Everything about energy in 2026 has been narrated through the Persian Gulf. Crude above $110 in March. Mid-$60s in early July. Back near $90 by month end. A memorandum of understanding signed and abandoned inside five

Your Borrowing Base Is Engineered to Fail You at the Exact Wrong Moment

Redetermination against a price deck is not a flaw in reserve-based lending. It is the design. The problem is what operators are funding with it. Every upstream operator understands how a borrowing base works. Reserves are engineered, a price deck is applied, advance rates are set, and availability is established. Twice a year, usually, the whole exercise is repeated and the number moves. What gets discussed less often is the

The Most Rigorous Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life

If the EIA cannot hold a price call for a month, no operator should be running a capital plan that requires one to be right. On July 7, the Energy Information Administration published its Short-Term Energy Outlook. The forecast had been completed six days earlier, on July 1. It cut the 2026 Brent projection to $82 per barrel from $95 — a 14 percent reduction in a single month —

New Research Finds U.S. Manufacturing Capital Investment Outran Every 2026 Forecast — While the Manufacturers Who Waited for Clarity Paid the Higher Price

First National Capital Corporation’s mid-year analysis finds machine tool order values up nearly 32 percent against forecasts calling for flat to declining activity, and identifies underwriting capability — not credit availability — as the constraint on middle-market execution IRVINE, Calif. — August 5th, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers of capital equipment and project financing in North America, today released The Cost of Waiting,

Nobody Is Coming to Hire For You

Manufacturing has spent four years treating the labor shortage as a cycle to wait out. The data has been saying something different for a while now. There is a comfortable story about manufacturing labor that has been told at conferences since roughly 2021. It goes like this: the shortage is a hangover from the pandemic, the workforce will normalize, wage pressure will ease, and the plants that held their nerve

You Have Waited Ten Months for a Number That Would Not Have Changed Your Decision

The Section 232 determination on robotics is overdue. Run the automation math at every plausible tariff rate and the answer barely moves. On September 2, 2025, the Commerce Department opened a Section 232 national security investigation into imports of robotics and industrial machinery. The scope was drawn broadly: CNC machining centers, turning and milling machines, grinding and deburring equipment, industrial stamping and pressing machines, and the programmable computer-controlled systems that

Your Machine Tool Quote Is Half Automation. Your Bank Financed the Metal.

The gap between order values and unit counts is the most important number in manufacturing capital right now — and it is invisible to most underwriting. Something strange is happening in machine tool orders, and almost nobody outside the industry has noticed it. Through the first five months of 2026, U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $2.77 billion — up nearly 32 percent against the same period last year, at a

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