Your balance sheet lists your trucks. It doesn't list what your trucks taught you.
Three American companies showed the pattern this month. Dave & Buster's posted second-quarter revenue of $544.1 million, down 2.4%, with comparable-store sales down 2.9%. Its operating margin fell to 3.6% from 9.5% a year earlier. Wendy's franchisee Meritage Hospitality filed Chapter 11 with 314 Wendy's restaurants across 15 states. Sleep Number sold substantially all its assets to SNBR Inc., and its liquidation plan winds down what's left.
Read the coverage. It counts stores, leases and debt. It doesn't ask what the operation learned along the way.
So can a company's data be worth more than its stores? Sometimes. Nobody knows until someone prices it. That is the problem.
I know what data looks like when it works. I saw it at Navistar.
Navistar used failure data to call truck owners before their trucks broke down.
I survived the International Harvester to Navistar collapse. What came out the other side ran 800 dealerships across the country.
Every truck was in the database. Every repair. Every part replaced. Every failure.
The team tracked MTBF, mean time between failure, for every major part in a $250,000 truck. Engine. Transmission. Brakes. Drivetrain. Cooling. Electrical. The curves came from real fleet history. Not vendor spec sheets.
I worked on the systems that put that history to work. They tracked each truck by VIN, mileage, route and operating conditions. They matched each part's failure curve to each truck. They predicted the failure window before the part failed.
Then Navistar did the part that matters. It picked up the phone.
The fleet manager never called Navistar. Navistar called the fleet manager. Before the breakdown. Before the tow. Before the lost load. The call came with a diagnosis, an appointment at the nearest dealership, and the parts already pulled into the service bay.
Look at what made that work. Not the trucks. Everyone had trucks. The data made it work. Every repair on every truck, kept and read by people who knew which curves mattered. The system was sophisticated. The intelligence was human.
That data was the engine. The truck was just where it lived.
Accounting rules generally don't let a company book data it built itself, so most balance sheets show that data as zero. Ask your auditor how that applies to you.
Zero doesn't mean worthless. It means unpriced.
Now look at those three companies again. Meritage owes Wendy's franchising arm a $24.9 million unsecured claim, and it defaulted on a $150 million bank facility. Sleep Number's plan allows lenders' prepetition loan claims at $477.5 million, less what they've already been paid, and cancels existing equity. A judge authorized about $154 million in lender paydown on 17 September.
A lender prices the stores. A buyer prices the leases. A judge sorts the debt.
The coverage skips the Navistar question. What did this operation learn, and who would pay to know it?
The evidence is sitting there. Dave & Buster's says its remodeled stores keep outperforming the rest of the system. Someone measured that. Meritage closed at least 60 restaurants and cut or changed breakfast at others. Each of those moves creates a before-and-after result. Those results exist right now, inside companies under pressure.
I don't know what data these three companies hold. I don't know who owns it. That is the point. Franchise agreements often give the franchisor rights to sales data. Platform contracts can do the same. You read your contracts before you price anything.
Here is the brutal truth. If you don't price your data, nobody will. A sale sets the price of everything the buyer takes. What you never listed, you never priced.
Stop calling operating data exhaust. It's inventory.
Start with an inventory, then check ownership, then test buyers. Here's the sequence I'd run.
Disclosure: I interviewed DataRevenue.io's founder, Chris Schuring, for my YouTube channel. I earn no fee from DataRevenue.io. Watch the interview or read the transcript.
Accounting rules generally don't let a company book data it created internally. A valuation is a separate exercise. Ask your auditor what applies to your books.
It's a separate company that holds qualifying data. DataRevenue.io says it certifies data for your balance sheet through one. Have your counsel and auditor confirm whether that works for you.
No. Operating data covers counts, timing, failure rates and demand curves. Customer data covers names, payment details and personal records. Keep personal data out of any data product.
Your contracts decide. Franchise agreements, platform terms and vendor contracts can all shift rights to someone else. Read them before you price anything.
Likely buyers are competitors' planners, suppliers, insurers, lenders and site-selection firms. Name three before you spend a dollar.
It tracked failure curves for every major part in its trucks across 800 dealerships. Then it called owners before their trucks broke down, with the diagnosis and the parts ready.
No. It's a pattern I saw at Navistar and a checklist. Talk to your auditor and counsel before you move any asset.
Sources: Dave & Buster's Q2 2026 release; Yahoo Finance; Restaurant Dive; Quartz; Hoodline; Stretto on Sleep Number; Bondoro; Law360; DataRevenue.io.
Navistar's edge wasn't the trucks. It read what the trucks were telling it and called first. Your operation makes the same kind of history every day. Price it before someone else decides it's worth nothing.
If you want help running the inventory, book a Fractional CDO consult at seriodesignfx.com. I run two brands: M.A.D. (Maverick Advantage Design) builds your brand, and M.A.P. (Maverick Advantage Platform) is the content engine that builds your LinkedIn authority.
— Charles K Davis, Fractional CDO
P.S. If you want a consultant who validates your current strategy, keep scrolling. This is for executives who run real operations and have never priced what those operations know.
M.A.D. Designs Your Brand. M.A.P. Makes You Known For It.
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