Apollo's internal presentation on First Brands has surfaced, the same deck that led to a bespoke short position on the Term Loan. What did Apollo catch before anyone else: cash flow never matched claimed margins, 20% operating margins were unbelievable for the business and its many acquisitions, and the CEO had a long trail of failed entities with almost zero public footprint. Apollo then declined to buy Katsumi’s factored invoice exposure, shorted the debt, and made money. Katsumi allegedly saw massive invoice fraud in 2023 samples yet kept funding billions more. Sometimes, the edge is just reading the financial statements and looking up the CEO on Google. Shoutout to the Financial Times for obtaining the deck.