Category: Uncategorized

TULSA, Okla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ: ARLP) (“ARLP” or the “Partnership”) today announced that it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire certain general partner and limited partner interests in AllDale Minerals III, LP and AllDale Minerals IV, LP (collectively, “AllDale III & IV”) for approximately $206.2 million, subject to customary closing price adjustments.

The transaction implies an aggregate gross valuation for AllDale III & IV of approximately $410.0 million. The general partner and limited partner interests being sold by the third-party selling interest holders are valued at approximately $306.2 million, with $206.2 million of the interests to be acquired by ARLP and $100.0 million of the interests to be acquired by related parties of Joseph W. Craft III, ARLP’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

The difference between the $410.0 million aggregate gross valuation and the $306.2 million value of interests being acquired reflects existing interests already owned by ARLP and related parties of Mr. Craft.

Upon closing, ARLP’s aggregate economic interest across AllDale III & IV is expected to increase from approximately 5% to 61% and ARLP, through a wholly owned subsidiary, is expected to own 100% of the general partner interests of AllDale III & IV, that will be non-economic post-closing.

The agreements provide for an effective date of April 1, 2026, and the transaction is expected to close during July 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. Given the participation in the transaction by related parties of Mr. Craft, the terms of the transaction were approved by the conflicts committee of the Board of Directors of ARLP’s general partner, which is comprised entirely of independent directors.

AllDale III & IV Acquisition Highlights

• AllDale III & IV hold approximately 48,500 net royalty acres (“NRAs”) across premier basins and resource plays including the Permian, Anadarko, Bakken, and Haynesville
• The Permian represents approximately 7,300 of the NRAs and 52% of 1Q26 total royalty revenue
• Average 1Q26 production of approximately 5,940 BOE per day in total and 3,665 BOE per day net to ARLP’s economic interests⁽¹⁾, consisting of 27% oil, 18% NGLs, and 55% natural gas
• Approximately 67% of 1Q26 total royalty revenue was generated from oil
• The acquisition further de-risks ARLP’s existing minerals portfolio via a gross core acreage expansion with limited overlap to ARLP’s existing royalty asset base
• Meaningfully enhances ARLP’s northern Delaware, Anadarko, and Bakken positions, increasing trailing-twelve-month new wells placed on production by 59%, 78%, and 91%, respectively
• Provides entry into the Haynesville, a key natural gas resource play supporting LNG export demand
• Implied acquisition multiple on the general partner and limited partner interests being acquired by ARLP of approximately 5.0x projected next-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA, based on commodity strip pricing as of June 5, 2026, and inclusive of existing AllDale III & IV hedges to be assumed at closing
• Expected to be immediately accretive to ARLP’s free cash flow per unit, based on current assumptions
• ARLP’s acquisition is expected to be funded through a combination of cash on hand, borrowings under ARLP’s revolving credit facility, and a new debt facility at Alliance Minerals, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of ARLP
• Pro forma total leverage is expected to remain below 1.0x following the closing of the transaction

Pro Forma ARLP Oil & Gas Royalties Segment Highlights

Upon closing the transaction, ARLP is expected to have:

• Control of approximately 115,680 NRAs, with over 44,770 NRAs in the Permian
• Average 1Q26 production of approximately 17,295 BOE per day in total, and 14,285 BOE per day net to ARLP’s economic interests⁽¹⁾
• Exposure to 59 gross active rigs across the pro forma portfolio, including 47 gross active rigs on Permian acreage

⁽¹⁾ Net BOE per day attributable to ARLP’s economic interests represents ARLP’s acquired share of production after excluding noncontrolling interests.

Management Commentary

“This acquisition accelerates the continued growth of our Oil & Gas Royalties segment,” said Mr. Craft. “The AllDale III & IV portfolio adds scale and development upside across multiple U.S. basins, anchored by a meaningful Permian position. It also expands our natural gas footprint with entry into the Haynesville, a resource play well-positioned to benefit from long-term LNG export demand growth.”

Mr. Craft continued, “We believe this acquisition strengthens ARLP’s long-term royalty platform, broadens our exposure to high-quality operators and advances our long-term strategy of building a durable, cash-generating royalties business that complements our existing coal operations.”

Cary Marshall, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, added, “The participation by related parties of Mr. Craft is expected to enhance the capital efficiency of the transaction for ARLP. We expect this structure will generate attractive risk-adjusted returns, maintain pro forma leverage below 1.0x, and preserve liquidity for future growth opportunities.”

About Alliance Resource Partners, L.P.

ARLP is a diversified natural resource company that is currently the second largest coal producer in the eastern United States, supplying reliable, affordable energy domestically and internationally to major utilities, metallurgical and industrial users. ARLP also generates operating and royalty income from mineral interests it owns in strategic coal and oil & gas producing regions in the United States. In addition, ARLP is positioning itself as a reliable energy partner for the future by pursuing opportunities that support the growth and development of energy-related technologies and infrastructure.

News, unit prices and additional information about ARLP, including filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), are available at www.arlp.com. For more information, contact the investor relations department of ARLP at (918) 295-7673 or via e-mail at [email protected].

The statements and projections used throughout this release are based on current expectations. These statements and projections are forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially. These projections do not include the potential impact of any mergers, acquisitions or other business combinations that may occur after the date of this release. We have included more information below regarding business risks that could affect our results.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: With the exception of historical matters, any matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results. Those forward-looking statements include expectations with respect to our future financial and operational performance, coal and oil & gas consumption and expected future prices, our ability to increase or maintain unitholder distributions in future quarters, business plans and potential growth with respect to our energy and infrastructure investments, optimizing cash flows, reducing operating and capital expenditures, infrastructure projects at our existing properties, growth in domestic electricity demand, preserving liquidity and maintaining financial flexibility, and our future repurchases of units. These risks to our ability to achieve these outcomes include, but are not limited to, the following: decline in the coal industry’s share of electricity generation, including as a result of environmental concerns related to coal mining and combustion, the cost and perceived benefits of other sources of electricity and fuels, such as oil & gas, nuclear energy, and renewable fuels and the retirement of coal-fired power plants in the U.S.; our ability to provide fuel for growth in domestic energy demand, should it materialize; changes in macroeconomic and market conditions and market volatility, and the impact of such changes and volatility on our financial position; changes in global economic and geo-political conditions or changes in industries in which our customers operate; changes in commodity prices, demand and availability which could affect our operating results and cash flows; impacts of geopolitical events, including the conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East; actions of the major oil-producing countries with respect to oil production volumes and prices and the direct and indirect impacts over the near and long term on oil & gas exploration and production operations at the properties in which we hold mineral interests; changes in competition in domestic and international coal markets and our ability to respond to such changes; potential shut-ins of production by the operators of the properties in which we hold oil & gas mineral interests due to low commodity prices or the lack of downstream demand or storage capacity; risks associated with the expansion of and investments into the infrastructure of our operations and properties, including the timing of such investments coming online; our ability to identify and complete acquisitions and to successfully integrate such acquisitions into our business and achieve the anticipated benefits therefrom; our ability to identify and invest in new energy and infrastructure ventures; the success of our development and growth plans for our wholly owned subsidiary, Matrix Design Group, LLC, and our investments in emerging and other infrastructure and technology companies; dependence on significant customer contracts, and failure of customers to renew existing contracts upon expiration; adjustments made in price, volume, or terms to existing coal supply agreements; the effects of and changes in trade, monetary and fiscal policies and laws, and the results of central bank policy actions including interest rates, bank failures, and associated liquidity risks; the effects of and changes in taxes or tariffs and other trade measures adopted or threatened by the United States and foreign governments, including the imposition of or increase in tariffs on steel and/or other raw materials; legislation, regulations, and court decisions and interpretations thereof, both domestic and foreign, including those relating to the environment and the release of greenhouse gases, such as state legislation seeking to impose liability on a wide range of energy companies under greenhouse gas “superfund” laws, mining, miner health and safety, hydraulic fracturing, and health care; deregulation of the electric utility industry or the effects of any adverse change in the coal industry, electric utility industry, or general economic conditions; investors’ and other stakeholders’ attention to sustainability matters; liquidity constraints, including those resulting from any future unavailability of financing; customer bankruptcies, cancellations or breaches to existing contracts, or other failures to perform; customer delays, failure to take coal under contracts or defaults in making payments; our productivity levels and margins earned on our coal sales; disruptions to oil & gas exploration and production operations at the properties in which we hold mineral interests; changes in equipment, raw material, service or labor costs or availability, including due to inflationary pressures or tariffs; changes in our ability to recruit, hire and maintain labor; our ability to maintain satisfactory relations with our employees; increases in labor costs, including increases in the costs of health insurance, adverse changes in work rules, or cash payments or projections associated with workers’ compensation claims; increases in transportation costs and risk of transportation delays or interruptions; operational interruptions due to geologic, permitting, labor, weather, supply chain shortage of equipment or mine supplies, or other factors; risks associated with major mine-related accidents, mine fires, mine floods or other interruptions; results of litigation, including claims not yet asserted; foreign currency fluctuations that could adversely affect the competitiveness of our coal abroad; difficulty maintaining our surety bonds for mine reclamation as well as workers’ compensation and black lung benefits; difficulty in making accurate assumptions and projections regarding post-mine reclamation as well as pension, black lung benefits, and other post-retirement benefit liabilities; uncertainties in estimating and replacing our coal mineral reserves and resources; uncertainties in estimating and replacing our oil & gas reserves; uncertainties in the amount of oil & gas production due to the level of drilling and completion activity by the operators of our oil & gas properties; the impact of current and potential changes to federal or state tax rules and regulations, including a loss or reduction of benefits from certain tax deductions and credits; difficulty obtaining commercial property insurance, and risks associated with our participation in the commercial insurance property program; evolving cybersecurity risks, such as those involving unauthorized access, denial-of-service attacks, malicious software, data privacy breaches by employees, insiders or others with authorized access, cyber or phishing attacks, ransomware, malware, social engineering, physical breaches, or other actions; and difficulty in making accurate assumptions and projections regarding future revenues and costs associated with equity investments in companies we do not control.

Additional information concerning these, and other factors can be found in ARLP’s public periodic filings with the SEC, including ARLP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, filed on February 26, 2026, and ARLP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, filed on May 8, 2026. Except as required by applicable securities laws, ARLP does not intend to update its forward-looking statements.

Contacts

Investor Relations Contact
Cary P. Marshall
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
918-295-7673
[email protected]

HOUSTON, June 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Summit Midstream Corporation (NYSE: SMC) (“Summit,” “SMC” or the “Company”) today announced continued commercial execution across two of its key growth platforms, the Double E Pipeline in the Permian Basin and its crude oil gathering systems in the Williston Basin.

Highlights

• Executed two new long-term firm transportation agreements totaling 150 MMcf/d, bringing total Double E open season commitments to 250 MMcf/d and total contracted capacity to approximately 1.9 Bcf/d
• Extended Double E open season to June 30, 2026 given significant inbound interest; advanced discussions ongoing with multiple shippers in excess of available expansion capacity
• Expect to FID Double E compression expansion by end of the summer; executed purchase order to secure turbine compressor units to maintain end of 2028 project in-service date
• Executed a new crude gathering agreement in Divide County, North Dakota with more than 40,000-acre area of dedication; 15 new four-mile lateral well connects expected during fourth quarter 2026

Management Commentary

Heath Deneke, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, commented, “We are very pleased with the progress we are making on obtaining commercial commitments to support the previously announced Double E Compression Expansion project and we remain on track to reach a project FID by the end of this summer. To date, we have executed 250 MMcf/d of long-term binding agreements during the open season with multiple Shippers. We have also entered into a firm option agreement to provide an additional 200 MMcf/d of capacity for a certain Shipper. Additionally, we continue to advance discussions with multiple Shippers, which collectively, have expressed interest well in excess of the 800 to 900 MMcf/d of expansion capacity. As a result, we have extended the open season through June 30 while we continue to work on securing additional binding commitments. The remaining available expansion capacity will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis to Shippers that execute a binding precedent agreement.

“In the Williston, today’s announced commercial agreement is another example of Summit capturing growth as development activity in the basin continues to migrate towards our operating footprint in Williams and Divide Counties. With this additional long-term crude gathering agreement, we have now expanded our dedicated acreage footprint by more than 240,000 acres in just the past six months.”

Double E Pipeline — Compression Expansion Open Season Update

As part of the ongoing binding open season for Double E’s Compression Expansion project, we have now executed three long-term firm transportation agreements totaling 250 MMcf/d and we have entered into a firm option agreement for an additional 200 MMcf/d of capacity which may be executed by the Shipper this summer. Additionally, we have received an affirmative FID notice on a processing plant expansion from the Shipper on the previously announced 230 MMcf/d firm transportation agreement. With the 250 MMcf/d of new binding agreements entered into thus far during the open season and the affirmative FID on the previously announced 230 MMcf/d firm transportation agreement, Double E’s total contracted firm capacity has increased to approximately 1.9 Bcf/d.

As a result of the ongoing significant level of interest received from prospective Shippers, Double E has extended the binding open season through June 30, 2026. The Company believes the expansion capacity could ultimately be oversubscribed and is awarding available capacity to Shippers that execute binding precedent agreements on a first-come, first-served basis.

Double E’s Compression Expansion project would increase the pipeline’s capacity by approximately 50%, from approximately 1.6 Bcf/d to approximately 2.4 Bcf/d. The Company expects to reach a formal final investment decision by the end of summer 2026. In advance of the FID, Double E has recently executed a purchase order to acquire gas turbine compressors to secure the long lead time equipment necessary for the project and maintain the Company’s end of 2028 targeted in-service date. Additionally, Double E anticipates filing its 7c certificate application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission later this year.

Williston Basin — New Crude Oil Gathering Agreement

Summit has executed a new crude oil gathering agreement with a producer in Divide County, North Dakota. The agreement includes a 40,000-acre area of dedication contiguous to Summit’s existing Polar and Divide systems, and the Company expects to connect 15 four-mile lateral wells associated with the agreement by year-end 2026.

This agreement is similar in structure to the new crude oil gathering agreement Summit announced in its fourth quarter 2025 earnings results. Taken together, these agreements reflect increasing operator engagement in the northern and western portions of the Williston Basin, where Summit’s infrastructure is well positioned to service incremental development as activity migrates towards our operating footprint in Williams and Divide counties. Summit remains well positioned to continue to expand its customer base and contracted dedicated acreage position as operators continue to pursue 3- and 4-mile lateral development programs in these areas.

About Summit Midstream Corporation

SMC is a value-driven corporation focused on developing, owning and operating midstream energy infrastructure assets that are strategically located in the core producing areas of unconventional resource basins, primarily shale formations, in the continental United States. SMC provides natural gas, crude oil and produced water gathering, processing and transportation services pursuant to primarily long-term, fee-based agreements with customers and counterparties in five unconventional resource basins: (i) the Williston Basin, which includes the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in North Dakota; (ii) the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which includes the Niobrara and Codell shale formations in Colorado and Wyoming; (iii) the Fort Worth Basin, which includes the Barnett Shale formation in Texas; (iv) the Arkoma Basin, which includes the Woodford and Caney shale formations in Oklahoma; and (v) the Piceance Basin, which includes the Mesaverde formation as well as the Mancos and Niobrara shale formations in Colorado. SMC has an equity method investment in Double E Pipeline, LLC, which provides interstate natural gas transportation service from multiple receipt points in the Delaware Basin to various delivery points in and around the Waha Hub in Texas. SMC is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain statements concerning expectations for the future that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may project, indicate or imply future results, events, performance or achievements and may contain the words “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “believe,” “will be,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” and similar expressions, or future conditional verbs such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “would” and “could.” In addition, any statement concerning future financial performance (including future revenues, earnings or growth rates), repurchases of the Company’s common stock, payment of dividends on any series of stock, ongoing business strategies and possible actions taken by SMC or its subsidiaries are also forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements also contain known and unknown risks and uncertainties (many of which are difficult to predict and beyond management’s control) that may cause SMC’s actual results in future periods to differ materially from anticipated or projected results. An extensive list of specific material risks and uncertainties affecting SMC is contained in its 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2026, as amended and updated from time to time. Any forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and SMC undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new information or events.

 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/summit-midstream-secures-additional-double-e-commitments-and-extends-open-season-amid-strong-shipper-demand-302793484.html

SOURCE Summit Midstream Corporation

832-413-4770, [email protected]

If you have been following the small and microcap market closely over the past several weeks, today marks a significant checkpoint. Monday June 8 is the official “lock-down” date in the 2026 Russell US Indexes reconstitution schedule — the point at which preliminary membership changes are considered final and the market begins positioning in earnest for one of the highest trading volume events of the entire year.

The reconstitution itself happens after the close on Friday June 26. Markets open on Monday June 29 with the newly rebalanced indexes in effect. Between now and then, every dollar benchmarked to the Russell family of indexes — which collectively underpin trillions in passive investment products, ETFs, and institutional mandates — begins its systematic repositioning process.

What the 2026 Reconstitution Actually Shows

The preliminary data released by FTSE Russell on May 22 tells a specific story about where the US equity market stands after a year of significant movement. The total market capitalization of the Russell 3000 — the broad index tracking the largest 3,000 US-listed companies — rose 29% year over year to $75.6 trillion as of the April 30 rank day. That growth was driven primarily by continued mega-cap strength, with the ten largest companies in the index growing their combined market cap 47% to $26.4 trillion. But the preliminary data also confirms what we have been covering here throughout May and early June: small cap companies posted strong gains of their own, and market breadth is genuinely improving.

The migration numbers tell the story at the company level. Sixty-two companies are graduating from the Russell 2000 to the Russell 1000 — meaning they have grown large enough to cross into large cap territory. Of those, technology and industrials companies account for the largest share with 18 additions each, followed by healthcare with seven. At the same time, 237 companies are being added to the Russell 2000 this cycle, including 37 moving down from the Russell 1000 and a significant cohort of healthcare names — 87 in total — joining the small cap index.

Why Lock-Down Day Matters for Active Investors

The mechanics of reconstitution create predictable price dynamics that active investors in the small cap space have historically used to their advantage. Stocks confirmed to be added to the Russell 2000 or Russell 1000 attract forced buying from passive funds and ETFs that must replicate the index composition. Stocks being deleted face the opposite — forced selling by the same funds regardless of underlying fundamentals. Both effects tend to be most pronounced in the days immediately before and after reconstitution day itself.

June 26 consistently ranks among the highest single-day trading volume events of the year precisely because of the scale of simultaneous repositioning happening across the index. This year that dynamic is amplified by an additional layer of significance.

A Historic Change to the Reconstitution Process

2026 marks the first time since 1989 that FTSE Russell is running a semi-annual reconstitution schedule. Rather than one annual rebalance in June, the indexes will now be updated twice a year — with a second reconstitution scheduled after the close on Friday December 11, 2026. The shift is designed to more accurately capture the pace at which companies are moving across market cap segments in today’s environment and to reduce the distortive impact of concentrating all index-related trading into a single annual event.

For small and microcap investors, the semi-annual schedule has a direct implication: the window between when a company’s fundamentals change and when those changes are reflected in index composition is now meaningfully shorter. Companies growing rapidly into small cap territory, or contracting out of it, will be captured and repositioned faster than at any point in the past 37 years.

We have been covering the small cap outperformance story throughout May and into June — from the valuation discount that still exists relative to large caps, to the record microcap returns that most investors have not fully noticed. The Russell reconstitution on June 26 is the structural mechanism through which much of that market evolution gets formally recognized and institutionally repriced. Mark the date.

A significant valuation disconnect has been building in U.S. equity markets for nearly three years — and the Q1 2026 earnings season made it harder to ignore.

Small and microcap companies are delivering some of the strongest earnings growth numbers in years, yet their valuation multiples remain near historic lows relative to large caps. For investors willing to look beyond the mega-cap trade, the message is clear:

Small caps may be entering one of the more attractive valuation reset windows in a generation.

Where Valuations Stand Right Now

The S&P 500 currently trades at approximately 22x forward earnings, above both its five-year and ten-year averages. By comparison, profitable Russell 2000 companies trade closer to 14–15x, while the S&P 600 small cap index trades around 15.8x.

That places the large-cap valuation premium at roughly 30% to 42% over small caps — one of the widest spreads seen in the past two decades.

The valuation disconnect is even more pronounced when looking at EV/EBIT, a metric many institutional investors prefer for cross-cap comparisons. According to Royce Investment Partners, the Russell 2000’s EV/EBIT relative to large caps is near its lowest level in more than 25 years.

What the Earnings Data Shows

The valuation gap would be easier to justify if small caps were underperforming fundamentally. But that is not what the data shows.

Heading into Q1 2026, the Russell 2000 carried consensus earnings growth expectations of approximately 44.9% year over year, with revenue growth projected at 5.2%. That combination suggests improving operating leverage as smaller companies recover from a prolonged period of pressure caused by higher rates, inflation, and tighter capital conditions.

Performance has already started to reflect the shift.

The Historical Context

For much of the past 25 years, small caps traded at a valuation premium to large caps because of their higher growth potential. That relationship inverted during the higher-rate cycle, as smaller companies faced greater pressure from financing costs, inflation, and reduced investor risk appetite.

That inversion pushed the valuation spread to levels not seen since the dot-com era.

Historically, when valuation gaps between small and large caps have reached this kind of extreme, small caps have often gone on to deliver above-average returns over the following three to five years.

One additional data point reinforces the opportunity: the Russell 2000’s weight within the Russell 3000 currently sits at approximately 4.6%, well below its historical average of 7.6%. In other words, small caps remain structurally underrepresented in the broader market.

Time to Revisit Small Caps

• Strong earnings growth.
• Historically discounted valuations.
• Improving fundamentals.
• Low investor allocation.

That combination may create one of the more compelling small and microcap opportunities investors have seen in years.

Against this backdrop, Noble Capital Markets will host its upcoming Virtual Small Cap Conference on June 3–4, giving investors an opportunity to hear directly from emerging growth companies across multiple sectors.

For investors looking to identify opportunities before broader market recognition returns to the asset class, this may be an important time to listen, compare, and look deeper into the small-cap universe.

The valuation gap is real. The earnings recovery is underway. The time to revisit small caps may be now.

Rank Day is behind us. On April 30, FTSE Russell locked in the closing market capitalizations that will determine which companies get added to, removed from, or shuffled between the Russell 1000, Russell 2000, Russell 3000, and Russell Microcap indexes. The data is set. What comes next is where investor attention needs to be focused.

The first preliminary additions and deletions list publishes on May 22 — ten days from today — after 6 PM ET. If you’ve been following our coverage of this year’s reconstitution, you already know why 2026 carries more structural weight than any reconstitution in decades. If you’re just catching up, start here: Russell Reconstitution 2026 — What Investors Should Know and Rank Day Coverage.

Here’s what’s changed since April 30 and why it matters.

The Market Has Moved Since Rank Day

The twelve days since rank day have not been quiet. This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported April CPI came in at 3.8% year-over-year, with energy prices surging 3.8% in a single month on the back of ongoing Middle East conflict and elevated oil above $100 a barrel. Rate cut expectations for 2026 have effectively been wiped off the table. Consumer sentiment sits near historic lows.

At the same time, small caps have been dealing with a bifurcated environment — some sectors, particularly defense and domestic manufacturing, have seen meaningful appreciation, while rate-sensitive and consumer-facing names continue to struggle. That divergence matters enormously in a reconstitution year, because companies near the market cap breakpoints on April 30 may have landed in very different positions than they would have a month earlier.

What the Preliminary Lists Could Show

The market volatility of the past twelve months has reshuffled market caps across the small and microcap universe more dramatically than most years. That sets up for a higher-than-normal number of index movers — companies graduating to the Russell 1000, falling into the Russell 2000, or dropping out of the Russell indexes entirely. Defense and energy-adjacent names that have appreciated significantly may be candidates for upward migration. On the other side, consumer discretionary and rate-sensitive small caps that have seen compression could face demotion or deletion.

The stocks to watch most closely are those sitting right at the boundary between indexes. For companies near the Russell 1000/2000 breakpoint, passive fund flows triggered by an index move can be substantial — and the price action in the weeks following the preliminary list often front-runs the actual reconstitution.

The Window That Matters Most

The preliminary list on May 22 is the starting gun, not the finish line. Updated lists follow on May 29, June 5, June 12, and June 18. The lock-down period — when membership is considered final — begins June 8. Reconstitution takes effect after the close on June 26.

That means the actionable window for investors runs from the moment the first preliminary list drops through the lockdown on June 8. Historically, the most significant price moves around reconstitution happen in this period, not on recon day itself. By the time June 26 arrives, passive funds benchmarked to Russell indexes are simply executing what the market has largely already priced in.

With more than $12 trillion benchmarked to Russell U.S. Equity indexes, the capital flows triggered by even a single significant addition or deletion can be meaningful — especially for smaller companies with lower liquidity.

Channelchek will be covering the May 22 preliminary list in detail as it’s released. Ten days. Watch this space.

Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM) surged nearly 28% on Friday after Bloomberg reported the company has signed a seven-year, $1.8 billion cloud computing deal with Anthropic — the AI company behind the Claude family of large language models — to help meet what Anthropic describes as explosive and still-accelerating demand for its AI software. The contract is the largest in Akamai’s history and marks a significant pivot for a company that has built most of its business around content delivery networks and cybersecurity services.

Akamai had disclosed the agreement Thursday, describing it only as a deal with a “leading frontier model provider” without naming the counterparty. The identity of that provider — Anthropic — was confirmed Friday through sources familiar with the matter, per Bloomberg. Neither company commented publicly on the details.

The context driving the deal makes the scale easier to understand. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said this week at a public conference that his company experienced 80x growth in annualized revenue and usage in the first quarter of 2026 alone, driven by surging enterprise adoption of Claude for software development, workflow automation, and other AI-assisted tasks. That kind of growth rate creates an infrastructure procurement challenge that most companies would struggle to solve quickly — and Anthropic has been solving it aggressively. In addition to Akamai, the company has separately secured computing capacity through Alphabet’s Google and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in deals announced in recent weeks.

For Akamai, the significance of landing this contract goes well beyond the revenue figure. The company has been investing steadily in cloud computing infrastructure in an effort to grow beyond its legacy CDN and cybersecurity business, which — while profitable — has faced saturation and margin pressure. A seven-year, $1.8 billion commitment from one of the most prominent AI companies in the world is exactly the kind of anchor contract that validates a multi-year infrastructure buildout and gives the market a reason to re-rate the stock. Friday’s 28% move reflects not just the deal itself but a reassessment of what Akamai’s computing business could become if it continues to attract AI-scale customers at this level.

For investors watching the AI infrastructure buildout broadly, the Anthropic-Akamai deal is another data point in a clear and continuing theme: the most consequential compute deals being signed right now are not going exclusively to the hyperscalers. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are still capturing the majority of AI cloud spending, but frontier AI labs are actively diversifying their infrastructure dependencies — and that is creating real commercial opportunities for companies like Akamai that have built credible distributed computing capacity at scale.

The broader implication for small and microcap investors is worth keeping in mind as well. Every dollar of infrastructure spending at the frontier AI layer flows downstream — into hardware, data center components, cooling systems, fiber networks, and specialized software. Companies across those supply chains that are positioned to benefit from a sustained, multi-year AI infrastructure buildout remain one of the more compelling structural themes in the small-cap space right now.

Akamai’s stock closed Friday at levels not seen in over a year. The company has not provided additional public details on the deal terms beyond confirming the seven-year compute contract.