AI started as a computing power problem. It then became a memory and packaging problem. It then became an electricity problem. It’s now a physical materials problem.

Jensen Huang is telling us exactly this as well. He estimated an $85 trillion physical world infrastructure upgrade over the next 15 years and I bet silver plays a bigger role in all of that than many people are expecting right now.

My focus recently has been less on the stocks/thematics people are agreeing with (optics, thermal management, power systems etc) and more with those thematics people aren’t talking about as much (silver, metals, chemicals).

I’m not saying there’s no more money to be made in optics, thermal management, and power systems… I think there is. But I look for outsized risk to reward opportunities and when every man and their dog is on board an investment theme…it tends to be a signal that the risk to reward is diminishing more than many think.

I ultimately wouldn’t be doing my job right if I was discussing the next theme to invest in as being packaging or optics.

That’s why I have started to research silver on a daily basis over the last month or two… all of which I’m going to concisely unpack into this article.

Introduction

Paid subscribers will know that I have been bullish on silver for some time now. I invested in Silvercorp Metals (SVM) last year at ~$3 and sold it on the 30th of January ~$12.15.

Above is the timestamped alert of that from my Google Spreadsheet (soon to be updated to my web-app).

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I invested in SVM more on the basis of a catch-up trade that I thought miners were undervalued compared to the underlying commodity (which I still deem to be very true) but my conviction on the underlying commodity (silver) was nowhere near as high as it is now.

So now I have:

1. Huge conviction in silver and its potential to head to +$150-$250 in the next 24 months.

2. A remaining conviction in silver miners being undervalued relative to the underlying commodity.

That creates a strong investment thesis.

Silver has always been thought of a precious metal or a monetary metal. One that acts as an inflation hedge or moves against the US Dollar. Whilst that may be true, it’s only a very small part of the silver thesis today.

Silver is an industrial metal with properties that no other metal has. And unsurprisingly… these properties are core to the entire AI trade.

When you combine the entire demand story which I’m going to explain with a supply picture that was already broken before AI entered the equation properly… and then you overlay that with equity valuations that remain historically depressed… you get a setup where the risk to reward seems very unique.

Contents

1. Silver Demand

2. Silver Supply

3. How high can silver go?

4. Why silver miners are still undervalued

5. The best silver miners to invest in

Silver Demand

Silver has the highest electrical conductivity of any element on earth… higher than copper, higher than gold. For most of the AI buildout early phase, that fact wasn’t too important because the near term bottlenecks were so important.

You needed more GPUs, more memory, faster networking, more power etc. It’s why stocks like:

• AMKR is up 330% in the last year

• BE is up 1,140% in the last year

But the phase we are entering next is different. It’s gradually becoming less and less about brute-force training and more becoming inference at scale and high efficiency. The economics begin to change quite a lot based on this.

The difference with inference is that the demand for continuous compute power is much more than in training. Tasks require thousands of loop-backs, multi-tasks working as part of a larger task, and above all continuous work.

The question becomes more about who can produce AI output at the lowest cost per unit with the least amount of energy wasted. At least, that’s what it is becoming. The first 3 years or so was brute force training and a race to build out AI. At some point efficiency had to become the more important part of the equation.

And that’s exactly why silver is becoming very important.

Silver sits inside all of the current bottlenecks:

• You have connectors for AI data centers and high-voltage grid infrastructure.

• You have switches for power electronics, circuit breakers, and grid distribution.

• You have packaging for advanced semiconductors and microelectronics.

All of these components govern electric loss and thermal performance so as hardware scales, demand for these components scales with it. And subsequently when these components become more important, the makeup of these components (i.e. the materials…i.e. silver) becomes more scrutinized.

But there’s much more to the AI trade than just the data centers. AI is heading to the edge with robotics, drones, medical devices, smartphones etc. And the same logic that applies in the data centers applies to the edge…but its’s amplified at the edge.

Edge devices have to have smaller batteries meaning power efficiency becomes even more important. There’s no room in edge devices just to add another cooling devices if thermal management is the issue. In data centers, there’s always room and capital available to spend your way out of the problem. That is not the case at the edge. You can’t just add more components because weight matters so much.

Here’s where we can take it an extra step.

Silvers cost as a percentage of the total AI buildout is negligible. By that I mean, when you’re building $1 billion data centres, the line item for silver is barely noticed. The material items are the land, the power, the GPUs, the memory, the networking gear. It’s not the cost of the silver within those components.

That means if silver costs rise by 50% over the next 2-3 years, it will still remain an immaterial part of the AI buildout cost. And people will keep buying it because:

1. It’s so necessary.

2. It’s so cheap relative to everything else.

So, from the demand side, I put it simply like this:

Bullish on the AI data center buildout? You should be bullish on silver.

Bullish on the Edge AI thematic? You should be bullish on silver.

I haven’t discussed solar, EVs, and other electrification here in this article either. But those longstanding themes remain and are still bullish for silver.

Supply

Before AI entered the equation, the silver market was already in a structural deficit. In 2024, the silver market was pressured because of solar demand, a grid upgrade, and general electrification. Today, those same pressures still apply but we also have the AI hardware demand as well.

There is currently ~148.9 million ouches of silver shortage which is the 4th consecutive years we have had a deficit. The main issue in supply is two fold:

Firstly, the vast majority of silver is mined as a byproduct of other extractions like lead, copper, and zinc. This simply means miners can’t just produce more silver. The silver output is fundamentally constricted by the output of copper, lead, and zinc.

Secondly, Mexico. Mexico supplies ~25% of global silver. For reference, that’s a much more concentrated source share than Saudi Arabia holds in oil.

Mexican output has been in a sustained mulit-year decline with no replacement capacity on the horizon. When your largest supplier is structurally shrinking and there is no pipeline of new projects ready to offset it, you do not have a cyclical supply problem. You have a long-term structural issue.

How high can silver go?

This is where the trade starts to get really interesting for me.

At the time of writing this, silver sits at $75.36. Most investors look at this and think that’s a 56% increase on 1980s and 2010 levels which may seem like a fair jump based on CPI and a modest increase in demand.

But it’s way off.

Silver is a monetary asset. It should not be measured against how consumer prices move. Instead, it should be measured against how much money exists to chase a fixed supply of metal…i.e. M2 money supply.

M2 money supply was $1.6 trillion in 1980. It stands at approximately $22.6 trillion today.

That’s a 14x increase.

So, if you apply that multiplier to the 1980 peak of $47, the money-supply adjusted equivalent is $658/oz today. You can look at different money supply aggregators but you’ll end up above $500/oz no matter how you look at it…compared to $75 today.

Let me be clear. This is not a price target. It’s a way of calibrating a bullish outcome and it’s a way of doing it fairly logically as well.

Adjusted for the dollars in existence, silver at $75 represents ~ a ninth of what $47 represented in 1980. Hopefully that gives you a gauge of the potential upside for the underlying commodity.

A reminder as well:

This article is actually going to get all tied up in the section below talking about the silver miners. The silver miners currently have a clear valuation gap between themselves and the underlying commodity…and I just put a logical way (though fairly bullish way) of the underlying commodity prices increasing over 8x from here.

Why Silver Miners Are Undervalued

With silver prices above $75/oz the earnings profile of silver miners has changed fundamentally from 2-3 years ago.

Here’s a couple examples of cash from operations for Hecla Mining (HL) and Pan American Silver Corp (PAAS).

PAAS’s cash from operations relative to FY23 has increased 196%.

Margins have increased from ~2.2% to 31.7% (PAAS) and 6.0% to 37.3% (HL).

It’s a completely different outlook for well operating mines.

Yet, despite this equity valuations have actually depressed since 2023. In 2023, PAAS traded above 22x NTM PE. Today it trades at 12.1x NTM PE. Its the market pricing silver miners as if the current earnings stories are temporary… or as if a reversion in silver prices is likely and therefore cash flows should be heavily discounted.

I personally disagree with all of that as I’ve made evident in this article.

For what it’s worth…if you adjust PAAS for example to measure how the stock is valued relative to the underlying commodity… you see PAAS near the very lows.

So, here’s how the situation can get resolved:

1. Unlikely: Silver prices break down sharply which would agree with the current multiples miners are trading at but disagree with my silver thesis entirely.

2. Likely: Equities re-rate upward to reflect the earnings power that these businesses have now silver is at $76/oz. This should only get stronger and stronger over time.

Given my thesis on the structural supply constraints and the expanding demand base, I think my likely scenario has ~80% probability of happening.

Which Silver Miners Are My Favorite?

The natural next question is of course how we play this theme. Here’s my plan:

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1. We’ve had our scandium play (SRL / SREMF) jump 50% in the last month.

2. NuScale Power (SMR) just 42% in the last week.

3. ClearPoint Neuro (CLPT) jump 37% in the last week.

4. And most importantly, Lemonade (LMND), my largest position jump 29% in the last week.

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This is a very challenging, but great time for stock pickers. I think it’s very important here, as always at new highs, to act with a bit of caution. Futures are currently down which is of course more than welcomed and expected after the recent surge. Whether this is a technical pullback (good), or the start of a more long-term structural pullback because of re-escalation again (bad), I’m not sure.

But as ever, I’ll let the index charts dictate what I do rather than getting lost in the political and macro madness of today’s world.

On a less macro level, I still see the biggest opportunities in hardware, mining, and LatAm as well as my AI application plays like ZETA, LMND, and UPST (of which my returns are currently quite mixed although they all had great weeks last week).

Before we get into the ideas for the week, I just wanted to highlight the database I’m currently building which is currently in beta testing and will be scheduled for full release in May.

This is a fully functional web-app / database / research website all in one go. You also get:

• Daily market commentary

• My personal portfolio and watchlist

• Weekly thematic commentary

• New Ideas

• Weekly Videos

All for just $24 a month (or $240 a year).

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Lowest Risk: Chemicals

This is the trade people aren’t thinking about enough. For the last few years, the AI investment conversation has been centered around the likes of NVDA, TSMC. Now it’s moved rightly on to the bottlenecks (packaging, optics etc). The more upstream layers is where I think the biggest alpha gap currently is though.

That’s critical metals (silver, copper) like I talked about last week:

And then the molecular foundation that makes all of this physically possible: Chemicals. Of which most are trading around 2019 levels.

Let me be more specific. Many investors now know about the optics trade (AAOI, CRDO, LITE etc). Fibre optical cables are not just glass though. It’s much more complex.

Every part of this fibre requires UV-cured polymer coatings, adhesives, protective jacketing made from advanced compounds etc. So as hyperscalers continue to deploy billions of metres of fibre optic cables, they are also relying on the demand for the specialty chemicals that make this possible.

The market has yet to price this in.

I’ll dedicate a separate post to this theme soon. But here’s the best chemicals stocks:

1. Element Solutions (ESI)

2. Entegris (ENTG)

3. Chemours (CC)

4. Cabot Corp (CBT)

5. Rogers Corp (ROG)

Dedicated post incoming on the chemicals industry.

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Medium Risk: Silver

I spoke about silver last week quite comprehensively. I always get torn here between discussing new themes or just doubling down on themes I have already spoken about. I have recently decided to do the latter.

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The war in Iran continues to reshape global energy markets at a pace that is almost impossible to keep up with but markets are slowly starting to look a lot more bullish again.

This environment remains very favourable to the stock pickers rather than index holders. YTD there’s been some incredible moves in many thematics (stablecoins, optics, semiconductor testing etc) whilst indexes have struggled to stay afloat.

Personally, I’m seeing the biggest opportunities in hardware, mining, and LatAm world right now whilst still remaining very long term bullish on a few AI application plays like LMND and ZETA, though the market currently isn’t rewarding those plays in 2026.

That’s why I’m starting to slowly increase my exposure to plays like copper, solar, and scandium which have some very nice momentum at the moment. If you want to see my exact stock portfolio, click this link:

Before we get into the ideas for the week, I just wanted to highlight the database I’m currently building which will be released to paid subs for beta testing in the next 48 hours with full release scheduled for May.

This is a fully functional web-app / database / research website all in one go. You also get:

• Daily market commentary

• My personal portfolio and watchlist

• Weekly thematic commentary

• New Ideas

• Weekly Videos

All for just $24 a month (or $240 a year).

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Lowest Risk: Silver

Most investors still think of silver as just another precious metal but that’s a massive underappreciation.

Silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any metal…by far. That makes it a critical one in the AI infrastructure buildout, especially as we shift from training to inference. The aim over the next few years will not just be to build the biggest models, but more importantly to run them efficiently and continuously.

This challenges the economics of the entire hardware cycle that we are in.

The objective now ultimately becomes a focus on lower cost per token and electrical and thermal efficiency. Silver sits within all of these hardware stacks like connectors, relays, packaging, thermal interface materials, and switching systems.

This makes silver heavily in demand in the agentic and physical AI world. More hardware equals more silver in systems where electrical loss and heat management matter enormously.

And then you need to add in the angles of:

1. Solar: The world just installed a record amount of solar capacity in 2025. Silver is the critical input in a photovoltaic cell.

2. Defence: Modern warfare is becoming more and more an electronics problem. Drones, sensors, ruggedized connectors etc. Silver is a critical metal in all of this.

3. Supply: Silver runs as a byproduct of lead, zinc, and copper so miners cannot just increase the supply of silver. We’ll likely run at a supply deficit for a while.

Considering all that…it’s hard not to be uber bullish on silver.

A higher risk way to play the silver trade is through SVM. Paid subs will know that I sold this last month for a +200% gain. I have not currently entered this one again, but it’s high on the watchlist.

Other potentials are Hecla Mining (HL), Pan American Silver Corp (PAAS), and Contango Silver & Gold (CTGO).

Medium Risk: Solar

I’m becoming very bullish on solar as nice way to play the next 2-3 years. Paid subs will know that I have recently started buying into TAN but it’s quite likely I’ll also add an individual stock quite soon to heighten the risk on this theme a bit.

Solar panel costs have now dropped 50% since 2022 and annual installations have nearly tripped. A solar panel built today generates electricity for 30 years with no fuel costs, no prices increases, and no supply risk.

The events of the last 6 weeks show you why this is so important.

From an individual stock pick point of view, my current options are:

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Behind the paywall below is the link for my April 2026 spreadsheet. In this article, I’m going to explain exactly how this portfolio and database works and how you can get value from it.

Firstly, it’s where I post all of my current holdings (with real monetary amounts), allocations, trades, buys, sells, adds, trims, and watchlists. It’s 100% transparent and all timestamped to the exact second.

But that’s just a small part of the total value add.

I also have an exciting update to this "spreadsheet” too.

Here’s how the database works:

Before we get into the spreadsheet, here’s the update:

By the end of April, I’ll have a fully functional web-app. Here’s a sneak peek of the UX right now.

And that’s just a small part of the total offering. On top of this database you also get:

• Daily market commentary

• My personal portfolio and watchlist

• Weekly thematic commentary

• New Ideas

• Weekly Videos

This web-app is going through beta-testing starting this week. My expected timeline is by the end of April it will be fully functional.

Portfolio:

• My core portfolio including exact dollar amounts.

• My exposure broken up into themes. Here’s a snippet of the portfolio tab to show how I’m currently weighted.

Everything here is formula driven directly from Yahoo finance live prices. You get full access to my exact portfolio and monetary amounts at all times. I don’t hide anything unlike most people. I’m all for transparency.

Portfolio Valuations:

In this tab, I’ve broken down my portfolio using a nice quantitative approach measuring revenue and EBITDA expected growth rates vs current NTM multiples. It’s a nice way of screening out some stocks in my opinion and it’s a nice building block for a lot of the work I do… though of course a lot more analysis goes into it that that.

Watchlist:

I also share my exact watchlist with:

• Technical entries: Where the chart says the “risk/reward” is skewed in your favour.

• Fundamental Entry: Where I see a fair value price where the math actually makes sense.

Here’s a snippet so you can see what the watchlist looks like.

Here you have access to daily movements in my watchlist, entry price per technicals, entry price per fundamentals, and then ultimately whether I’m interested in the stock or not.

Any that I am interested in are communicated in the paid chat (I send 5-20 messages on a daily basis in that chat).

Theme Tracker:

This tab is still not complete, but it will be very soon on the web-app.

This tab collates all the stocks per theme and gives you the weekly price action on them to give you a very quick indication of what theme is running hot right now. No need to search each stock on your chosen website. You have access to all stocks, and all price movements per stock/theme right here.

I hope you’re starting to realize this service is far more than just a portfolio. It’s a full database allowing you to either follow my portfolio and stock picks, or use the data to validate your own picks.

Specific Tabs Per Theme:

On my database I have a tab for each theme.

Current we have:

• Robotics

• Space

• Power Grid Upgrade

• Optics

• AI Applications

• Miners

• Cybersecurity

• Edge AI

Each tab has every stock in that theme broken down by revenue and EBITDA growth rates relative to its EBITDA multiple.

Here’s an example of the Edge AI tab:

1. A list of all the stocks in the theme.

2. A way to track the daily price action of all the stocks within the theme.

3. A way to see if the growth rates to multiple makes sense (“Bullish Fundamentals” column).

4. A way to see if the technicals look attractive based on moving averages (“Bullish Technicals” column).

5. A way to see if both fundamentals and technicals make sense at the moment (“Overall?” column).

This tab updates itself automatically every minute.

Link to spreadsheet

I’m going to put the link below the paywall below:

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But if there’s one lesson we’ve all learnt from the optics megatheme, it’s that huge money can be found by looking where nobody else is.

That’s why I’m writing this piece. I’m bullish on the plays a lot of us know about (ETN, HUBB etc), but there’s far more ways to play this theme than owning these stocks which now trade at PE multiples +30x.

The power grid upgrade isn’t an AI trade, nor a clean energy trade. It’s something far more fundamental. We’re on the verge of major economic growth, technological leadership, and energy transition…but every single one of these run through wires.

Not least old, overloaded, and massively underfunded wires.

BNEF’s latest grid outlook showed that globally grid CapEx has now topped $470B in 2025 and that rate of CapEx growth is still growing in the double digits. Capital is flowing into hardware, software, advanced power-flow control systems, and grid-enhancing technologies simultaneously. This is not just a cyclical spending spree…it’s the beginning of what forecasts are predicting as a $1.4 trillion infrastructure super-cycle running to 2030.

Here’s the part you need to understand though. You can’t simply just modernize a grid. You can’t train a transmission line crew in a few months. You can’t get HVDC cables delivered in under two years. You can’t manufacture a large power transformer to order and receive it before 2027.

The supply chain that builds and upgrades this infrastructure has some real constraints… in materials, in manufacturing capacity, in labour, in regulations that can’t be resolved by just increasing CapEx. This pressure is what makes the grid infrastructure buildout one of the most non-discretionary investment themes in the global economy today.

Before we get into this article, I want to mention my database that I am building for paid subscribers.

For the last 1-2 years I have shared a Google Spreadsheet. You can see the latest one here:

This document gives you access to:

• My portfolio

• My watchlist

• My theme tracker

• All of the stocks per theme I follow ranked by growth vs multiples (250+ stocks tracked amongst the one exciting themes).

What’s even better is that this document is becoming a web app.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing sneak peeks as we enter beta testing with a group of paid subscribers helping shape the product into exactly what this community needs. This is being built with you, not for you.

Because what I’m building goes well beyond stock picks and data dumps. I’m building a platform where subscribers have access to all the research, all the data, and all the commentary they need — in one place, updated in real time. And I do it fully transparently. My exact portfolio is shared so you always know precisely where my own money is going as well.

If that sounds like something you want access to, the link is below.

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Contents:

• Why this is a decade-long structural theme

• Bottleneck 1: The Transformer

  • Solid-State Transformers

• Bottleneck 2: Grain Oriented Electrical Steel(GOES)

• Bottleneck 3: Switchgears & Breakers

• Bottleneck 4: High Voltage Cables

• Bottleneck 5: Interconnection

• Bottleneck 6: Transmission Line Construction

• Bottleneck 7: Towers, Poles, & Structural Hardware

• Bottleneck 8: Grid Resilience

Everyone is talking about the grid. But almost nobody is talking about it correctly.

A proper thesis requires understanding why the money flows, where it gets stuck, and which second and third-order beneficiaries capture the value that the first-order trades have already priced in.

This piece does that. We’re going to walk the entire grid upgrade chain from raw material to software layer, identify every genuine bottleneck, price those constraints, and give you the full investable universe for each one (which you’ll then see on my database/web-app). I mention every relevant public stock, and then offer my highest conviction name/names within each section.

Why This Is a Decade-Long Structural Theme

U.S. electricity demand is doing something it hasn’t done since the 1970s: it’s growing meaningfully.

For two decades, from 2000 to 2020, overall electricity consumption in the U.S. actually declined slightly as efficiency gains offset population growth. That era is over.

AI data centers, manufacturing reshoring, EV fleets, and the electrification of homes and industrial processes have reversed the trend sharply. Analysts now project the US will need more than 150 gigawatts of additional capacity by 2030. To put that in context, the entire existing U.S. power fleet is roughly 1,200 GW — so we need to add the equivalent of ~12% of the entire grid in 5 years.

The grid itself — the wires, poles, substations, transformers, switches, and software that move electrons from generation to consumption — was largely built in the 1950s through 1970s. More than half of U.S. distribution transformers are beyond their expected service lives. Many transmission lines are 40-50 years old. The system was designed for a one-directional flow of power from central plants outward. Now we’re asking it to handle bidirectional flows from millions of rooftop solar installations, intermittent wind, distributed storage, and the concentrated power demands of 50MW data center campuses.

Global grid capital spending crossed $470 billion for the first time in 2025, up 16% year-on-year. U.S. utility capex hit $202 billion in 2025, up 8% from the prior year which itself was up 12.6%. This isn’t a one-year event. It is the beginning of what many analysts are calling a $1.4 trillion utility infrastructure super-cycle from 2025 to 2030.

The constraint is not capital. Capital is flowing well.

The constraint is physical: you cannot build the grid faster than the materials and workers that go into it.

The Eight Bottlenecks

Bottleneck 1: The Transformer

Electricity is generated at power plants at quite low voltages…10,000 to 30,000 volts. But the transmission of electricity at these voltages is inefficient today. Basic physics…the longer the wire, the more resistance, the more energy is lost as heat.

To move electricity economically across hundreds of miles of wires you therefore need to increase the voltage to +200,000 volts. This is what a transformer does. It steps voltage up before transmission and steps it back down before it reaches its end destination.

Pretty much all electricity generated in the US passes through at least 1-2 transformers before it is used.

How are transformers made?

Most transformers are made from a highly specialised steel alloy. It’s called grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) - that’s the core part of a transformer.

You’ve also got:

• The windings made from copper.

• The insulation

Here’s some basic stats to evidence this bottleneck:

1. Power transformer demand has surged 119% since 2019 whilst distribution transformer demand is up 40%.

2. Wood Mackenzie estimate 30% supply shortfall for power transformer and 10% shortfall for distribution transformers.

3. Power transformers now have a 2.5 year (128 week) lead time.

4. Utilities are paying 4-6 times what transformers cost in 2022.

5. The global transformer industry carries a 2-3 year manufacturing backlog not expected to ease before 2027.

List of stocks:

• Eaton | ETN

• GE Vernova | GEV

• ABB Ltd | ABBNY

• Siemens Energy | SMNEY

• Powell Industries | POWL

• Hubbell | HUBB

• Hammond Power Solutions | HMDPF

• Hitachi Energy | HTHIY

• SPX Technologies | SPXC: Has transformer components and electrical testing equipment business relevant to the bottleneck.

• Legrand | LGRDY

Favorites:

Eaton | ETN | $140.1B

ETN is a diversified power management company that sits right in the middle of the US grid modernisation theme. It designs and manufactures the full stack of electrical infrastructure - transformers, switchgear, circuit breakers, power distribution units, busway systems etc - across every voltage class.

Specifically in the transformer space, ETN is one of the small number of Western manufacturers with the engineering capability to build the transformers. It’s also acquired Resilient Power Systems making them a play on solid-state transformer technology too (see below).

Considering the growth rate estimates for ETN (mid teens for EPS growth), a 27x PE is quite expensive…but there are many stocks that are expensive for a reason and I’d put ETN in that basket.

GE Vernova | GEV | $242B

GEV does much more than solve the transformer bottleneck. It’s a massive global energy company operating across:

1. Power

2. Wind

3. Electrification

Its electrification segment is the fastest growing segment and supplies the hardware and software that connects generation to consumption. The business has an extremely strong moat but the investment thesis relies on you being comfortable buying a stock trading at 62x NTM EPS.

Here’s how I do “back of the napkin” maths on GEV:

Management guidance implies $5-6B in FCF in FY27-FY28 which means GEV is currently trading ~48x 2027 FCF which is a premium multiple, but it’s also a multiple that can be justified when FCF is growing at +40%. I can’t see GEV earning much more than 50x FCF multiple even if the electrification backlog doubles, and the wind segment stops becoming a drag. I wouldn’t be bearish on GEV at all, but I think at current levels you’re not aiming for more than 20-30% upside from here in the near term.

With that being said, I think GEV is one of those stocks you should always follow. If you get a +20% pullback I’d be inclined to invest as a fairly comfortable way to earn ~50% from a trade.

Solid-State Transformers (SST)

There’s a potential long-run solution to this transformer bottleneck though in Solid-State Transformers (SST) and the SiC Revolution.

The conventional transformer is a passive iron core filled with oil. It does one thing and one thing only: It converts voltage.

The emerging alternative is a software-designed power conversion built on Silicon Carbide (SiC) semiconductors. Instead of sitting on a pad and just converting voltage at a fixed ratio, an SST consolidates voltage conversion, fault isolation, power factor correction, frequency regulation, harmonics control, and phase balancing into a single programmable package managed in real time by software.

This means you replace not only the transformer, but the switchgear, tap changers, and capacitor banks as well.

The SST market is still in its infancy. It’s valued ~$180M as at 2025 but the technology is moving faster than I think most realize.

—> Eaton (ETN) acquired SST developer Resilient Power Systems in August 2025.

—> Navitas (NVTS) demonstrated a 250kW SST at APEC in 2026.

—> Wolfspeed (WOLF) launched the industry’s first commercially available 10,000-volt SiC MOSFET (the enabling technology for SST) in 2026.

Here’s the names you need to know in the SST space:

Wolfspeed | WOLF | $430M

WOLF is the most important name in the SST SiC layer. It’s the US pioneer of silicon carbide…Here’s what a professor from Duke said:

“The timing of WOLF’s commercialisation could not be better. The world is racing to connect AI data centers to the grid, and this will be the enabling technology.” - Dr Subhashish Bhattacharya

This still remains a very high-risk and investment stories aren’t just a play on technology. WOLF’s financials are pretty poor with net income rising, huge debt, and a lot of dilution.

WOLF just issued $379M in convertible notes with is dilutive at $20.14 per share meaning if WOLF trades above $20.14 at any point before 2031, noteholders can convert into equity. The other side to this is that proceeds are being used to redeem existing senior notes…making this more of a debt refinancing rather than a cash raise for continued operations.

It’s a messy capital structure, and a high-risk bet, but I think the reward is there assuming execution. It’s one of those speculative bets I’d be happy to take but position accordingly.

Navitas Semiconductor | NVTS | $2B

NVTS is probably the purest play on the SST thesis today and the financials also look far more solid than WOLF (though the competitive environment is worse), although the stock has moved 450% in the last year alone. That tends to be quite off-putting for some investors, me included, but the thesis is so intact for NVTS here.

Two very important quotes from the recent earnings call:

“You’re going to see first couple of megawatt SSTs, bundled with battery energy systems. Then you see high single-digit megawatt type of SSTs coming up.”

“You cannot deploy remotely half of what we’re trying to deploy with AI data centers with the grid we have today. So for me, AI data center and grid is the same thing.”

Despite the competitive environment being a challenge for NVTS, most competitors are either pure GaN or pure SiC. NVTS has both.

The part I’m slightly cautious about with NVTS is the lack of transparency around profitability timeline. Analysts currently aren’t estimating EBITDA profitability anytime in the next 3-4 years and management haven’t given any specific timeline so this is certainly something to be wary off.

Bottleneck 2: Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES)

This one is quite multi-faceted.

Grain-oriented electrical steel is the critical raw material used in most transformers. It’s a silicon steel alloy rolled and heat-treated which gives it very strong magnetic properties. Without it, you can’t build a power transformer.

And the vast majority of supply is controlled by a single US producer - Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF).

Read more

The SPY had its worst week since the start of the Iran war down 2.2% over the last week making this its 5th straight weekly close and now ~8.7% above from highs. More importantly, the SPY reaffirmed its position under the 200 daily this week and looks to be now heading towards the next key level which is the 100 weekly at 608 (another 4.1% decline from here).

I’ve said it over and over again…people have been calling “buy the dip” for the last few weeks but completely ignoring the SPY structure. When the SPY isn’t holding any form of bullish structure, you have to be a bit more cautious. It’s why I’ve held off buying individual names (aside from my regular DCAs) for ~7 weeks now despite some of those individual names I’m interested in being at levels I thought were cheap. They’re all now much lower. That’s why taking into account the index structure is very important…and it’s what I’ve been telling subscribers on a daily basis for the last few weeks.

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On the contrary, I do feel as though we are now much close to deploying cash than many perhaps fear. We’re now at what feels like peak uncertainty and peak fear and whether the war continues or not for 1 weeks, 1 month, or 6 months, I think the market is getting close to pricing in that peak fear.

I’m sitting on ~17% cash now and have been for quite a while. That’s a healthy cash position with continued healthy long exposure. I’m ready to deploy that cash into a handful of names whenever necessary and I suspect that time will come fairly soon.

Before we get into my 3 ideas for the week, take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

I also want to give an example of one of the many tabs within my portfolio. Here’s the optics tab:

I created this back in December 2025 before LITE and AAOI had their massive runs. It gives you a list of all the stocks within the theme measured by revenue and growth rates relative to multiples and also combines that with where the stock is trading technically vs key MA’s.

As you can see, LITE, VIAV, CIEN, and MRVL are still currently showing as very bullish. Outside of CRDO which I currently own, I think MRVL is my next favorite.

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Here’s what I wrote last week about COPX, TMQ, LEU, SANM, and OUST. All held up very nicely over the week (aside from OUST).

I still believe these are all at nice levels today.

Let’s get into my ideas for this week👇

Lower Risk

There’s one theme very few are talking about, but it’s one I have mentioned quite consistently in my paid chat for the last two months….chemicals.

Chemicals sit at the intersection of the defensive macro and the offensive AI.

On the “safer” side, a lot of chemical demand is anchored to must-have end markets like autos, energy, defense, and infrastructure. That means volumes are tied to government spending, reshoring, and basic economic activity rather than just hype cycles. And then when you layer in the fact that many chemical prices are fairly well tied to oil and gas prices you have a theme that is quite nicely a more defensive play on the Middle East tensions.

At the same time, chemicals are a huge beneficiary of the AI buildout. Here’s a post I put out on X on March 2nd 2026 for example.

Every AI data center, and every chip fab is essentially a huge chemical consumer. They need specialty gases, advanced polymers, high purity solvents, coolants etc. So the big thematic is that as AI infrastructure scales, there’s a clear secular demand for chemistries that enable more servers, more chips, and more thermal management.

In other words, the chemicals industry is no longer just an “old economy” trade.

My favorite plays here are:

1. Celanese | CE: CE uses thermally conductive plastics (called CoolPoly) to replace metal as a coolant. It’s mainly used in data centers, 5G equipment, LED lighting, and high speed connectors where high power density and tighter packaging is needed. CE trade at 9x FCF for ~10% CAGR in FCF for the next 3 years.

2. Entegris | ENTG: ENTG sells the ultra-pure chemistries and materials that lets fabs run at scale. It’s the cleanest play on every incremental wafer and layer of complexity driving more contamination control, and more content per too. ENTG is far pricier than CE at 39x FCF but if there’s a continued chemicals bull market I see upside here as well.

Medium Risk

The Iran war has so far wiped out ~30% off the global mining industry’s value. I was an owner of Silvercorp Metals (SVM) which I full sold out off (see screenshot) a month ago for ~210% gain today.

Since then, we’ve seen even the big players like Rio Tinto (RIO) drop 12% over the month and Newmont (NEM) down 17% over the last month. SVM is down 18% as well.

Despite this selloff, critical minerals remain vital for defense and we’re seeing an ongoing supply deficit for many of these critical materials. Paid subs will know that I just opened up a position in a sub $1B scandium play just last week. I view scandium as potentially having the next copper like move.

From a broader thematic angle, if you’re bullish on the following themes:

• Power grid upgrade

• Robotics

• Defense

• AI infrastructure buildout

• Electrification

Then you have to be bullish on the mining industries which sits at the core of all of these themes. We have surging demand in pretty much all critical metals (some more than others) and quite a clear supply deficit. There’s no need to overcomplicate the result of this over a 5-10 year period.

Here’s the critical metals I am following most closely so far. I’m not going to give specific mining stocks in this free release as I’ll leave that for paid subs, but this list is a good start for you if you don’t want to become a paid sub:

• Copper

• Scandium

• Rhenium

• Hafnium

• Lithium

• Gallium

Higher Risk

Read more

I’m not sure how useful that has been as ultimately the narrative is changing hourly, and today has been no different. Futures opened very red, only for the market to open up green. At one point today the SPY was up +2% and then we closed +1%. Another green day amongst what is likely continued red days.

As much as today has seen some more positive narrative, I still am playing a very rules-based approach. We’re still below the 200 daily. We’re still below the 663 level. We’re still sitting on the sidelines as this chop continues.

It seems boring to do, but most people either:

• Get bored and overtrade in an environment where they have no edge.

• Get scared of a choppy market and chase defensive plays like oil which have already moved huge amounts.

Your best bet now is sitting on your hands until we have more clarity.

Personally, I feel good. I have a nice cash pile and I have nice long exposure. There’s absolutely no need for me to rush into any trade right now.

Here’s what I wrote last week. I spoke about ITRI, LEU, and MELI.

Before we get into my 3 ideas for the week, take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

I also want to give an example of one of the many tabs within my portfolio. Here’s the optics tab:

I created this back in December 2025 before LITE and AAOI had their massive runs. It gives you a list of all the stocks within the theme measured by revenue and growth rates relative to multiples and also combines that with where the stock is trading technically vs key MA’s.

As you can see, LITE, VIAV, CIEN, and MRVL are still currently showing as very bullish. Outside of CRDO which I currently own, I think MRVL is my next favorite.

Lower Risk

As paid subs know, I own two copper plays that I have been DCA’ing into for ~2 months now. COPX is one of them and TMQ is the other. TMQ is a far higher risk play, but COPX is a general play on the copper market.

COPX is now down ~23% from highs on January 30th 2026 because of a potential higher inflation number combined with weaker output and a stickier central bank policy. All of this is ultimately bad news for metals like copper which is considered less of a safe haven metal.

Zooming out, this move is purely macro driven. The supply-demand gap is still real and I will continue to DCA into copper plays.

Here’s a reminder of the structural copper bull case:

We still have what appears to be a huge demand running against a very real supply constraint. There are very few mines coming online and major copper discoveries have been pretty limited for a few years now. When you add on the fact that several large mines are fighting weaker quality and more complex operational challenges…the simple case is that the world is not prepared at all for the huge step up in demand that is coming.

“Copper is a pretty simple story…it takes about 12 years, greenfield, to produce copper, and you got EVs, the grid, data centers, and believe it or not munitions…we just think the supply-demand situation is incredible for the next five or six years.” - Stanley Druckenmiller

"Copper is the new oil…there’s no decarbonization without copper. There is a long term supply gap of 8.2 million tonnes by 2030, twice the size of the gap that triggered the bull market in copper in early 2000s.” - Goldman Sachs

Here’s comes a slightly more interesting angle to invest in the theme though, and one that I wouldn’t include in the “Lower Risk” sector but one that slides in perfectly below that copper piece.

Look how similar this chart looks to COPX.

This is MSCI Chile Index which moves quite in line with copper though has historically slightly lagged which could potentially lead to a play on copper and a nice catch up play as well. ECH has moved 28% in the last year whilst COPX has moved 76%.

Medium Risk

Last week I spoke about LEU for my neutral risk play. That one remains very high on my list to consider but I’m going to introduce a new name today… SANM.

SANM isn’t a very well-known stock, but the numbers and bottleneck they solve seem too good to ignore for me as EBITDA ramps up in FY26 post ZT Systems acquisition which should double SANM revenue in the next 2 years to reach ~$16B in FY27. That ultimately means SANM is trading at ~0.46x FY27 revenue whilst set to (inorganically) grow revenues by over 100% in 2 years.

That’s why the numbers make sense. Now let me explain the business.

SANM is a highly complex electronic manufacturing services (EMS) company that solves a lot of bottlenecks in today’s compute and power stack. The main bottleneck they solve is PCB boards. These are essentially the backbone of any electrical system.

It’s a flat insulating board (fiberglass + copper) that is where the chips, connectors, and all other components sit. As electronic systems have got more and more complex, there’s been fewer and fewer companies that are able to serve this bottleneck. SANM designed PCB boards with 60-80+ layers with high aspect ratios and they do so reliably at scale… and yet they trade at less than 0.5x NTM sales and less than 7.5x NTM EBITDA.

Here at $131 the technicals also look really nice right at the 200 daily and I think we see a move back up to ~$160 as long as the wider market holds up which isn’t clear right now.

Higher Risk

OUST is my higher risk play right now. Fundamentally, I think OUST is one of the better plays on the next 5-10 years of the physical AI megatheme.

Technically, we’re still sitting below the 200 daily, the 100 daily, and below the key $21.50 level so until we break those levels I think the risk is slightly higher.

You can see my OUST deep dive here:

Disclaimer: The Accuracy of Information and Investment Opinion

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Make Money, Make Time serves as a publisher of financial information and does not function as an investment advisor. Personalized or tailored investment advice is not offered. The information presented on this website does not cater to individual recipient needs.

Not Investment Advice

Company Name: Ouster

Ticker: OUST

Market Cap: $1.34B

Headquarters: San Francisco

Shares Outstanding: 62M

CEO: Angus Pacala

Revenue Growth: 52.5%

Introduction

The vast majority of my ideas stem from identifying megatrends, finding the quality companies within those themes, figuring out what is a fair valuation for that business, and then finding a nice technical entry for that position.

This is a perfect example of how I first initiated my position in OUST.

I dived into the basic numbers in my database for robotics, I then spent hours diving into the company and the valuation, and then I tracked price closely to find a nice first entry.

OUST is now sitting slightly below my initial $25 entry at $21. It’s now at a level where I feel extremely comfortable going bigger on the position.

Just like I did with LMND in the $30s, SOFI below $10, PLTR below $40, SVM below $3, ALB below $80, AMPX below $12… and so on.

The only difference with OUST currently is that it has yet to make its move.

Big picture, my view is that OUST is positioned perfectly in the middle of the robotics and automation megatheme. More specifically it’s in the sensory & perception subtheme of this basket. Here’s a snippet of my database which my paid subs have access to.

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As you can see other players in this niche (though not competitors to OUST) are AEVA, CGNX, INVZ, TEL, APH etc. My database tracks multiples, expected growth rates, and technicals like MA’s to give an initial recommendation of the stock and its valuation.

It screens out all of those positions that likely are too expensive, or with too slow growth right away for you allowing you to focus your time on those quality stocks.

For example, in the sensory and perception niche, the best names are OUST, HSAI, TEL, and APH.

Just within the robotics tab alone, we have +140 stocks broken down in subthemes within the wider theme.

Paid subs will know that I already have a position in OUST at $25 which makes it my biggest pure robotics play (if you exclude NVDA and GXO). I’m currently down 15% on the position but with the robotics megatheme likely to be a +10 year theme, I’m fully prepared to own this one for the next few years unless anything materially changes within the business.

In this Deep Dive, I’ll cover the following:

1. What OUST does

2. Recent financials

3. Opportunities

4. Valuation

5. Technicals

6. My take and plan

What does OUST do?

OUST is the largest Western LiDAR provider (Light Detection & Ranging). LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that measures distance by emitting short pulses of laser light at objects and calculating how long it takes for the reflected light to return. It then converts that time into precise 3D distance and position information.

It’s basically the eyes of a robot, or the eyes of machines that need to move autonomously.

OUST’s differentiation is that they’re a digital LiDAR company.

Traditional LiDAR is analog meaning you fire a laser, swipe it mechanically, capture returning photons, and then reconstruct a 3D point load with a lot of complexity. Each new product generation must mean a new optical design and a new assembly process.

Digital LiDAR on the other hand is the idea of putting the complexity of LiDAR technology onto a silicon chip. Key functions of the sensor (photon detection, timing, signal processing etc) all are implemented in custom semiconductor chips rather than bulky analog assemblies. Here’s why this matters:

• This allows OUST’s products to ride the Moore’s Law wave with performance. This means that OUST’s technology improves exponentially like other semiconductor products have done over the last 3-5 years.

• Digital LiDAR is also designed to follow the semiconductor cost curve, i.e. OUST can make smaller sensors that are more power efficient and have better performance.

I can’t write this Deep Dive without acknowledging LiDAR’s biggest bear… Elon Musk.

Here’s a summary of Musk’s argument:

• Cost: Musk says LiDAR adds an expensive and unnecessary sensor to vehicles when cameras can achieve autonomy at a fraction of the cost.

• Weather sensitivity: He claims LiDAR performance is poor in rain, fog, and snow so it’s not fundamentally robust.

• Power requirements: He claims LiDAR has far higher power requirements and system complexity.

An “unnecessary, expensive appendices.” - Elon Musk

Whether you agreed with Musk or not, the risk of LiDAR not fulfilling the expected forecasts has been mitigated quite a lot post 4th February 2026 OUST’s acquisition of StereoLabs - a leading AI vision and stereo-camera company.

OUST paid $35M in cash and 1.8M OUST shares (vesting over 4 years) for the company. I’ll dive into the expected numbers of this acquisition in the valuation section but fundamentally here’s why this acquisition will work so well.

Overnight, OUST went from a LiDAR company (with risks as Musk claims) to a LiDAR + camera + AI vision software company.

This repositions them as the leading Physical AI sensing and perception platform…rather than the leading LiDAR company. The market is still underappreciating this transition as the stock is flat since the news. This OUST stack now includes:

1. High performance digital LiDAR

2. Stereo cameras and depth cameras (ZED line)

3. AI compute and sensor-fusion middleware

4. Perception software and AI models that detect, classify, and track objects in 3D.

OUST can now sell a full perception layer to customers rather than selling LiDAR / sensors into someone else autonomy stack. Financially, it also allows OUST to work towards higher margin, recurring, software revenue on top of their hardware sales. Most one-off sales hardware companies struggle to ever get rewarded with strong multiples like recurring revenue software companies do.

“This acquisition builds on Ousters momentum and positions us as the foundational end-to-end sensing and perception platform for Physical AI.” - CEO Angus Pacala

If customers want more vision and less LiDAR, OUST can still participate. If customers decide they want more LiDAR and less vision, OUST can still participate.

Financials

Demand

• Q4 25 Revenue: $62M

  • $41M was product revenue and $21M royalties (primarily one-tme).

  • Product revenue growth was +36% YoY in Q4 and full year revenue growth was 52% YoY (or 32% excluding royalties).

• 2025 full units: 25,000 sensors shipped which is +48% YoY

Industrials was the largest contributor to revenue, followed by robotics and smart infrastructure.

Software is now on ~15% of sensors shipped which is a 120% increase in software attached sensors relative to last year.

Profitability

• Q4 GAAP Gross Margin: 60% with 20 pts from royalties which implies a 40% ex-royalty margin.

• Full year 2025 Gross Margin: 49% with 8 pts from royalties implying 41% ex-royalty.

• Full year OpEx: $157M (+9% YoY)

  • This increase relates to investment in the roadmap, StereoLabs costs, compliance etc).

• Q4 25 adjusted EBITDA: +$11M (mainly because of royalties). Full year Adj. EBITDA was negative $12M (vs negative $42M in FY24).

  • Analysts expect EBITDA profitability in FY28.

Guidance

• Q1 26 revenue guidance: $45-48M which includes ~7 weeks of StereoLabs contribution.

• Long term financial framework reiterated 30-50% annual revenue growth with 35-40% GAAP gross margins.

• Management expect growth and operating leverage to provide a “clear path” to positive operating FCF and profitability with “plenty of operating runway.”

Balance Sheet

• Q4 25 cash position: $211M (note this is pre StereoLabs)

  • StereoLabs acquisition led to a $35M cash outlay (plus stock)

• Debt: $0

Opportunities

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

OUST management have consistently said $70B is their TAM. This has been the case for the last 18 months or so. With OUST expected to do $220M in revenue in FY26, that means OUST has currently won 0.314% of the opportunity right now.

This kind of TAM reminds me of companies like LMND, PLTR, SOFI etc with almost unlimited growth ahead.

But here’s where it gets more interesting for me. All of this $70B commentary came pre StereoLabs acquisition. StereoLabs is a small business today, but it’s very meaningful in terms of the value add it offers.

The stereo-camera / 3D camera market that StereoLabs operates in is a $2.5B market but the software and perception layer that this acquisition adds probably puts the TAM far above $70B in the long term. I won’t put a forecast out there for what I think the TAM likely is as it’ll but no more than an educated guess, but I suspect it adds far more than just a few billion dollars to the market OUST can win.

More importantly, in the short term it should increase OUST’s share of the wallet within the existing $70B Physical AI stack.

Many investors still label OUST as a “auto LiDAR” play. Let’s dive into how far off this narrative is:

1. Industrial LiDAR is OUST’s biggest (or 2nd largest) segment today and management peg it at a $18-19B opportunity by 2030. This opportunity encompasses the heavy machinery plays like AGVs/AMRs in warehouses, ports, mining trucks, construction, and agricultural equipment (John Deere for example). Current industrial revenue is in the tens of millions range within the $169M 2025 revenue. This implies far below sub 1% penetration in a market that is set to move from R&D to production very quickly. I’ve said this about my bullishness on GXO, but this subtheme within Physical AI is very likely to be the niche that moves first. This is the theme that is in the most repeating and stable environment in a relatively constrained labour market. In agriculture, this is exaggerated even more.

2. Humanoids is OUSTs small, but emerging opportunity. OUST’s customers include Serve Robotics (SERV) for example but this will likely take a lot more time to materially affect the numbers. But if you’re aware of the forecasts someone like Elon Musk has put out for the humanoid market, then ignoring OUST’s potential here is naive. This is where OUST’s management team have been very intelligent. OUST could have easily been grouped into the AV and humanoid niche like many other LiDAR providers. The timeline on these subthemes is still very unclear and likely will be quite unclear for the next 2+ years or so. If that were the case, then I would understand OUST’s valuation here at $1.2B market cap a bit more, but OUST has industrial and smart infrastructure scaling quite rapidly now.

3. Smart infrastructure is OUST’s largest or second largest segment today with an estimated $19B TAM. This spans traffic management, security, spatial analytics for example. Gemini and BlueCity have been the most important contributors in this segment for OUST not only for material revenue today, but also because software attached bookings have more than doubled here. Contract developments for BlueCity and Gemini now exceed 1,200 sites worldwide. A lot of this opportunity depends on if LiDAR based detection becomes a standard for intersections, public spaces, and private campuses but if it does the TAM will likely be much larger than $19B. Ultimately, we’ve seen through Gemini and BlueCity that the market is looking for full stack solutions. Not many enterprises want pure components now since it becomes too complex to integrate everything. There’s already evidence in the software attached sales that OUST are strong here and it’s only the very early days.

4. Automotive is the other smallest revenue contributor (single digit percentage) today but a huge piece of the long-term value. Most of the reason this revenue is quite slim today is because programs are largely in pre-production even more so than in the other segments. Robotrucking is a multi-billion dollar ($70B+) opportunity itself with the LiDAR specific part of that likely well above $1B. For OUST today, it’s mainly small R&D and pilot revenue, but once autonomy on the roads becomes a lot more common, these small wins so far can flip into a huge amount of units sold.

I think it’s clear that OUST is a diversified and proven business so far, and it’s still in the very early innings. They’re selling into 150+ use case across four key verticals whilst LiDAR peers generate little revenue on negative margins in one or two segments max whilst they wait for one or two OEMs to ramp up.

For example:

• Hesai (China): Extremely concentrated in automotive and robotaxis. It’s essentially a one-theme bet on Chinese AV adoption.

• RoboSense (China): Extremely concentrated bet on robotics. Another one-theme bet.

• Innoviz (US): Extremely concentrated bet on automotive market.

There’s no other LiDAR player that is anywhere near as diversified, with such strong margins, that is investing into the entire Physical AI perception stack like OUST.

This mismatch between current revenue and segment specific TAM alone should give you a pretty good read on where OUST is likely to head. OUST is already embedded across those niches so the 2030 outlook is not whether there’s room for OUST to grow, or how much they have to win, but it’s how fast those deployments and those markets scale from R&D (hundreds and thousands of units) to full production (tens to hundreds of thousands of units).

Financials

• Growth Rates: OUST management has given us a reasonable way to look out to 2030. I’ll dive into this a lot more in the valuation section, but with 30-50% annual revenue growth we can quite easily hit $700M in revenue by 2030 (absolute base case), and much more likely we hit $850-$950M.

• Profitability: OUST management have consistently said that GAAP gross margin will be in the 35-40% range. You’ll note that Q4 25 gross margin came in higher but this was artificially boosted by high margin royalty revenue. This is why the market didn’t react a lot. Firstly, I think 35-40% is the absolute base case. There’s clear potential that post StereoLabs and the mix towards higher margin recurring revenue should create more upside than perhaps management are forecasting (publicly). In the near term though, my models are assume ~40% gross margins. The main reason 40% gross margin is likely for the next few years is because as customers go into volume production, unit prices from OUST will drop. It’s healthy/necessary to ensure that OUST win large unit contracts but it’s also a headwind for margins. It will be the main offset to cost controls and software integration which are margin expanders.

OUST management are clear they will happily trade some gross margin for a 10x increase in volume. As an investor, with a TAM the size of $70B, going after margins and profitability as a $1.2B company would be massively off-putting.

If the opportunity wasn’t so large, then sure, it’s arguably just as important to focus on profits as soon as possible, but OUST management know the space they’re trying to win. There’s no point sacrificing a huge ramp up in revenue for a few bps on gross margin today.

Edge AI Upside

If you look at exactly the roadmap that has happened with cameras you’ll note the first phase is always raw imaging, specs, resolution, low-light performance etc… just as LiDAR is today with range, points per second, and cleaner point clouds for example.

Now leaders like Hikvision, and i-PRO are shipping cameras with embedded NVDA chips that run AI models on the edge. This object classification is happening in the camera itself rather than on a backend server.

For OUST, the opportunity is to make LiDAR run the same playbook over the next few years and capture the huge value shift that will happen when intelligence moves into the sensor (i.e. at the Edge). If LiDAR follows the same camera-style evolution that we’ve seen, OUST’s digital LiDAR chip, and it’s full stack physical AI perception profile, will be a ginormous market.

NVDA Partnership

NVIDIA is becoming the de facto compute standard for robotics, automotive, and industrial AI – and Ouster is wiring itself directly into that ecosystem. When an OEM picks an NVIDIA platform like Jetson or Isaac, they effectively lock in a 3–5 year roadmap: they build and validate their perception and control stack around that compute, then roll it out across product lines. Ouster is doing the same thing on the sensing side. Customers choose Ouster’s digital LiDAR, perception software, and datasets, then spend years integrating, validating, and hardening that stack in parallel with NVIDIA’s platforms.

The result is that Ouster ends up embedded alongside NVIDIA in long‑lived deployments. Strategically, Ouster is making sure this scales horizontally: DRIVE and ADAS for autonomy, Jetson for edge robotics, Isaac and Omniverse for simulation and digital twins. As long as Ouster’s sensors are natively supported, well‑documented, and easy to use inside these NVIDIA toolchains, it can position itself as the default 3D sensing option for developers and OEMs who are already all‑in on NVIDIA. Being “the LiDAR that just works with NVIDIA” is a very attractive place to sit.

The economics for Ouster are straightforward. On the growth side, NVIDIA is plugged into almost every high‑growth segment of Physical AI – from warehouse robots and industrial arms to AMRs, drones, construction equipment, and autonomous vehicles – and Jensen is on record saying they’re working with essentially every robotics company they know. If Ouster consistently ships the LiDAR and perception stack that rides shotgun with Jetson and Isaac into those designs, it effectively surfs the same demand wave. On the retention side, every new application built on NVIDIA + Ouster increases the customer’s sunk cost in Ouster’s data formats, calibration, models, and integration code. You don’t casually rip out that sensor and swap it for a competitor without redoing years of engineering and validation.

Put differently: NVIDIA provides the gravitational pull on the compute side; Ouster supplies the LiDAR and 3D perception that click into that gravity well when depth sensing is required. If a developer standardized on NVIDIA can also standardize on Ouster with minimal friction, you get exactly what long‑duration investors want to see – more growth, more retention, and increasingly durable attachment of Ouster’s sensors and software to the winning Physical AI compute stack.

US Manufacturing

One underappreciated opportunity for OUST is how well it positioned itself to line up with the current US onshoring and secure supply chain. They’ve proactively shifted manufacturing outside of China and de-risked themselves here. Whilst Chinese leaders like Hesai and RoboSense will undoubtedly dominate the Chinese auto and robotics markets, Western OEM’s, defense primes, and infrastructure operators will be encouraged (in some cases obliged) to source from Western providers like OUST.

Valuation

Here’s where it all ultimately matters. There’s no point buying a quality business if the valuation doesn’t make sense.

For OUST it makes complete sense. Here’s why and here’s my 2030 prediction.

I’m looking at this valuation a few different ways.

1. Relative to LiDAR peers

2. Relative to perception/physical AI peers

3. Model through to 2030

Read more

It’s now week three of the war and I still can’t see much that evidences this is coming to an end. Just a few hours ago, Trump said he is considering putting boots on the ground to seize Iran’s Kharg Island. Here’s some more details on it:

• This will likely only happen if tankers remain stuck in the Persian Gulf.

• Kharg Island has 90% of Iran’s oil production.

• Trump is working to assemble a coalition of countries to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

All in all, it still appears that there’s tons of unknowns and it’s very difficult to gauge how close to the end we are.

One positive we have taken over the last few hours is BTC now up ~$74,000 again whilst oil prices are staying slightly below $100. It’s nothing to scream home about, but it could be a little positive to take into another volatile week. Maybe the worst is behind us.

It looks quite clear now we’re heading towards the 200 daily. The question now is just whether this is an October 2025 style pullback or a Feb-April 2025 style pullback.

Price action on the SPY looks pretty bad right now, but the macro reasons behind this could change in a day. On the QQQ, it looks like tech had it’s pullback and so far we’re holding structure here, but a break of this 595 and 200 daily MA here will be the key focus this week (again).

Before we get into my 3 ideas for the week, take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

I also want to give an example of one of the many tabs within my portfolio. Here’s the optics tab:

I created this back in December 2025 before LITE and AAOI had their massive runs. It gives you a list of all the stocks within the theme measured by revenue and growth rates relative to multiples and also combines that with where the stock is trading technically vs key MA’s.

As you can see, LITE, VIAV, CIEN, and MRVL are still currently showing as very bullish. Outside of CRDO which I currently own, I think MRVL is my next favorite.

The reason I give access to all this data (and this tab is one of 10+ right now) is because I know we all invest in different ways. I offer complete transparency to my portfolio and my watchlist but I also offer you this extra benefit.

Stock picks are everywhere now. Having access to a nice quick screen is just an added benefit.

Another positive I am trying to take from the market at the moment is that we are seeing some pockets of strength here and there. It’s not a complete market sell off.

• CRCL has moved +100% in a month.

• HIMS is now +44% in a month.

• BE is holding up ~530% over the last year.

• LWLG has moved +77% in the last week.

Here’s a snippet from the spreadsheet. It shows prices per theme over the last week.

It seems like the last week still has very weak sentiment, still lots of selling pressure, but the market seems to be holding up a bit better than I perhaps expected for the most part given this. I feel like we’re edging towards a market where buying this dip is going to be the right play, but I need far more confirmation that a gut feeling like that.

I will continue to watch price action across a few key names and indexes and as soon as I see a bit more strength, I will likely start deploying some of my cash pile (~16% of portfolio).

SKEW Index

This shows perceived risk has decreased slightly relative to last week. SKEW measures how deep out of the money puts are vs at the money options on the SPY. 137 is still on the higher end but it’s been +130 since April’s crash. Look at April’s bottom ~125. We’re nowhere near there but the perceived risk compared to 158 last week is another more positive sign to take.

We also have NVDA’s premier conference this week… NVDA GTC.

This tends to be the biggest AI conference of the year where all the leading minds come together to discuss the next wave of AI. Hopefully it acts as a little reminder to the market that we’re still in the very early days of this AI buildout.

Defensive/Lower Risk Idea

XLU & ITRI

I never like to “re-run” ideas in consecutive weeks, but doing so also shows my conviction in the theme. I’ve now chosen XLU (S&P 500 Utilities Sector ETF) as my more defensive play for 3 out of the last 4 weeks.

This is the 1 hour chart but you can see it’s so far held up very nicely despite wider market fear. That’s a nice sign. But XLU isn’t just a pick I like to manage volatility…it’s a pick I like to outperform for the next 2+ years and my individual pick on that is ITRI.

Paid subs will know that I’ve spoken about ITRI a lot recently but have only put a small starter position amount of money into the stock right now. This $90 level that I have charted out is extremely key to hold here.

ITRI builds the smart meters and grid-edge hardware and software that lets utilities turn an aged, and overloaded grid into a data-driven network. There’s no modernisation of the grid without ITRI. It also now trades near it’s all-time low PE as the market focuses on the other key players like ETN, PWR, and HUBB. I think ITRI is next to run.

“This isn’t an if. It’s inevitable… It’s the way our customers need to cope with the world around them and the complexity of the environment that they operate in.” - ITRI CEO

“With more than $1 billion of durable Outcomes backlog, rapidly growing annual recurring revenue and expanding solutions for critical customer problems, Itron is well positioned for the multiyear grid build‑out in the years ahead.” - ITRO CEO

This isn’t the time for an ITRI deep dive…it’s more of an introductory idea. If ITRI becomes a top 10 play for me, then I will most definitely do a deep dive on the business.

In the meantime, I have my OUST deep dive coming out in the next 24 hours.

Subscribe now

Neutral Risk

Last week I spoke about SOFI, HROW, and NBIS as my neutral risk ideas and I still think they’re arguably some of the best choices. I won’t repeat my narrative on them today but you can view it right here.

For today, I’ll discuss another idea to save repetition - LEU.

I personally have no position in LEU yet but it’s probably in my top 5 buys as soon as I start deploying cash. It remains still below the 200 and 100 daily MA’s but it has reclaimed the 21 daily.

People underestimate the importance of LEU. It’s effectively the missing middle of the Western nuclear value chain. It doesn’t mine uranium, but it enriches it, and it’s the only Western company that actively produces enriched uranium right now.

Most next gen reactors (SMR’s) which I am very bullish on through my position in NuScale (SMR) need enriched uranium between 5-20%. Most nuclear plants today use low-enriched uranium ~3%. Currently, the US relies heavily on Russia for enriched uranium but this isn’t sustainable at all in the nuclear cycle we’re entering.

LEU currently sits at $2.3B backlog and a multi-billion dollar enrichment expansion plan targeting commercial enriched uranium. Add on the fact that the government is committing $2.7B in domestic enrichment explicitly aimed at reducing dependency on Russia, and you have quite a clear long term bull case.

The next step is just figuring out if there’s value or not which is hard for a company like LEU.

Here’s the way I’m looking at this valuation at $209:

Mid case revenue estimates are ~$650M in revenue in FY28 with $121M in net income. I know the above chart gives $495 in revenue, but I think that’s a data issue and a clear anomaly. LEU currently trades at 59x NTM PE which sounds pricey but when you’re growing net income ~28%, with long-dated contracts, US government support, and a huge backlog it doesn’t seem too high.

FWIW, CEG has historically traded at ~30x NTM PE and I think LEU should trade at a higher multiple based on:

• CEG’s economics rely on power prices, capacity auctions, and regulatory decisions. It’s why we’ve seen a massive sell off in CEG lately.

• LEU sells the specialized fuel into a capacity constrained market where there’s very few (if any) alternatives. That is a moat that deserves a higher PE. LEU has more pricing power and less reliance on commodity prices.

So, if we conservatively give LUE a 35-40x PE multiple on $120M in net income you have ~$4.8B valuation in FY28 which is higher than today and in my opinion that is based on a very conservative PE multiple. Let’s see. I am still not an owner of LEU, but I likely will be quite soon.

Higher Risk

Last week I spoke about IRDM and OUST. OUST I currently own… IRDM I am hoping to own but it’s at a very key technical level that I am watching closely.

Today, I’m adding one more stock in there that I think is great value today.

Read more

The QQQ actually looks a little better than the SPY at the moment. It’s been more range bound and has held structure a bit more the last couple weeks, though it remains below the 100 daily and also ~2% from a break of the 200 daily.

Definitely something to track.

Before we get into my 3 ideas for the week, take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

I also want to give an example of one of the many tabs within my portfolio. Here’s the optics tab:

I created this back in December 2025 before LITE and AAOI had their massive runs. It gives you a list of all the stocks within the theme measured by revenue and growth rates relative to multiples and also combines that with where the stock is trading technically vs key MA’s.

As you can see, LITE, VIAV, CIEN, and MRVL are still currently showing as very bullish. Outside of CRDO which I currently own, I think MRVL is my next favorite.

The reason I give access to all this data (and this tab is one of 10+ right now) is because I know we all invest in different ways. I offer complete transparency to my portfolio and my watchlist but I also offer you this extra benefit.

Stock picks are everywhere now. Having access to a nice quick screen is just an added benefit.

Defensive Idea

XLU & ITRI

Two weeks ago, I spoke about XLU (S&P 500 Utilities Sector ETF) and some of the key players within this theme. Today, I’m reiterating this as a great long-term hold for the next 3-5 years and one to keep watching into this week.

XLU is a simple rate cut utilities trade combined with a bet on continued AI CapEx. XLU saw a 30% move in 1995, and another sizable gain in 1996 as well as a 26% gain in 2019 during the mid-cycle cut. I think 2026 and 2027 is very likely to be a repeat story and this is before talking about huge AI CapEx.

What is structurally new in 2026/2027 compared to 1995 and 2019 is the scale and urgency of data center and AI demand which is turning boring utility companies into huge bottlenecks that the AI cycle is reliant on. Global CapEx has been predicted to be upwards of $1.7T by 2030 which seems completely feasible given $600B is being spent in 2026 by the top 4 US hyperscalers alone. That’s why players like Goldman are predicting data center power demand to increase by ~165% by 2030.

All of this incremental demand has to flow through the utilities and merchant generators. Paid subs will know that I’m currently not an owner of XLU but I am an owner of a stock within the wider sector: ITRI.

ITRI builds the smart meters, and grid-edge hardware and software that lets utilities turn an aged, and overloaded grid into a data-driven network. It modernises the grid.

It’s also now layering AI and ML on top of its data driven network with partnerships with NVDA, MSFT, and AWS. If you want a safer play, I think the XLU ETF is always going to be safer…but if you want an individual name that offers a nice play on electrification, power grids, AI infrastructure demand, grid congestion, and a play that almost forces utilities to invest in them for modernisation, I think ITRI is that play.

And it trades at just 15x NTM PEwith a historic average between 2021 and 2023 of much higher. Technically, it’s also sitting at a really nice weekly zone as well.

Here’s the NTM PE for ITRI over the last 12 years from Tikr.

Nvidia | NVDA

NVDA’s valuation currently doesn’t make much sense to me and it’s one of the names I’d be more than happy to buy into today at 21.5x NTM PE (for reference the 5Y average is ~38x).

I still believe that the current valuation is missing the growth estimates and it makes it the cheapest Mag 7 stock to own today based on PEG.

As long as NVDA stays above this $170 level marked on the chart above, I’ll be more than happy to buy in more.

The difficult thing is here just deciding where we are in a wider cycle. If we’re set for a ~15-20% index drop from here, NVDA (along with a couple more) is probably one of the safer stocks to own based on multiples, beta, and overall safety. With that being said, the opportunity cost of adding to NVDA here vs many other high growth plays I have on my watchlist (or already in my portfolio) is difficult to gauge.

That’s a decision I’m going to have to make based on price action, geopolitical risk, and a few other factors. I suspect that decision will have to be made quite soon.

Neutral Risk

Three stocks to discuss here:

Nebius | NBIS

NBIS has chopped around for a while now on news from almost anything completely unrelated to NBIS.

• ORCL and OpenAI ending plans to expand Texas data center

• IREN share dilution

• IREN reporting earnings with no new hyperscaler deals

• Blue Owl not securing financing for a $4B data center project with CRWV

These are all firm specific issues and unrelated to NBIS. In fact at the Morgan Stanley conference earlier this week, CRO of NBIS said this:

“We’re now securing upfront payments from customers, up to and including, in some cases, customers paying 100% upfront.”

And don’t forget that is essentially 5 different companies all scaling very quickly. It’s far more than a neocloud. I don’t believe the sum of the parts valuation is priced in at all (just like for AMZN).

SoFi Technologies | SOFI

In the past week alone, the CEO of SOFI bought $1M worth of stock and they partnered with Mastercard (MA) to use SoFiUSD within the card network. Quite difficult to gauge the value add of this right now, but most definitely a material value add to the business.

On top of this, here’s a great quote from Noto (CEO):

“In Q1 our revenue growth is 35%… I would be incredibly disappointed if our first quarter was the fastest quarter of the year.”

Valuation wise, SOFI’s forecasts are incredibly good. They’re set to grow EPS at 61% in FY26, and 31% in FY27, and 27% in FY28, all whilst trading at a 31.3x NTM PE. This puts them at a PEG ~0.5x. For reference, I ran a screener on Tikr for stocks growing EPS at +60% with a PE below 35x. Here’s the results (excluding pharma/biotech/mining and with a market cap above $5B):

• SOFI (portfolio)

• WULF

• SANM (portfolio)

• IONQ

• NVDA (portfolio)

• SOLS

• AFRM

• SE

• RKT (portfolio)

• LUMN

• MU

• CRDO (portfolio)

• SNDK

Not a bad group of stocks there…

Harrow | HROW

The market seems to be forgetting that forecasts for HROW are $250M in Q4 FY27 revenue or it simply doesn’t believe management will make those numbers. I think that’s partly fair enough considering revised and lowered guidance this quarter, but management seem still on track for this milestone by Q4 2027. IF management hit this revenue milestone, then HROW at $36 is simply too cheap to ignore.

Quarterly revenues are quite lumpy for HROW, so I think $1B in revenue (based on $250M in Q4 FY27) probably is a little optimistic. Anyhow, I think assuming $900M in FY28 revenue is more than reasonable given this guidance.

On top of that, HROW have said margins will be expanding nicely over the next few years so I think the 31.8% analyst estimates for EBITDA margin (compared to 22.7% today) seem fair.

If we get, $900M in revenue in FY28 at 31.8% margins we have $286.2M in EBITDA in FY28 which would be a 66% CAGR. For that we currently have a 18x NTM EBITDA multiple.

If we assume a very conservative 25x multiple (when the market has proof that HROW is putting up those numbers), then 25x on $286M gives an EV of $7.2B which is 4.7x from today.

HROW is currently below the 200 daily but on the weekly still looks absolutely fine right at the 100MA.

Higher Risk (& A Couple of Plays on the Middle East Tensions)

Read more

Like a couple other stocks in the portfolio (LMND and SOFI), ZETA has been punished on some quite stellar results. I want to reiterate how strong this business is today and why I feel extremely confident owning this one for the foreseeable future.

For reference, here’s the first article I wrote on ZETA back in 25th July 2025.

Paid subscribers will know that ZETA is a top 6 position for me. My average cost is currently $16.52 so I’m currently just slightly in the green on the position.

Company Name: Zeta Global Holdings

Ticker: ZETA

Market Cap: $4.61B

Headquarters: New York

Shares Outstanding: 244M

CEO: David Steinberg

Revenue Growth: 25.4%

Outline

1. Introduction

2. Q4 Numbers

3. Opportunities

4. Valuation

5. Technicals

Introduction

Let’s start big picture.

Phase 1 of the AI trade has been very simple. More GPUs in more data centers as quickly as possible. The call was simply that model performance scaled roughly in line with computer so hyperscaler capex and the “picks and shovels” complex (NVDA, SMCI, memory, optics) would also be huge winners.

That trade has played out and it seems like that trade is still playing out. Whether we’re in the early innings of that trade or not, I’m not completely sure. I’m still very bullish on optics, interconnect, energy, and the power grid upgrade etc.

You can see my stock portfolio and basket of themes here.

Anyhow, over time inference is getting structurally cheaper and access to GPUs at some point will no longer be where the edge is.

The next phase, of which I think we’re in the early days, is about who knows how to best use cheap and abundant AI. As open source models catch up to frontier systems for many workloads, and hyperscalers squeeze economics at the model layer, the economics migrates upwards.

The next stage of value will accrue to the companies that can turn a generic model into a durable, high margin workflow. Those that can embed agents into the day-to-day tools.

That’s why the application layer is where a lot of my portfolio weighted towards. The real moats are going to be about:

1. Data

2. Products

3. Running these products cheaply enough that unit economics improves with scale

This is Agentic AI where systems do the work and those who do it best will be built on a layer of extremely valuable data. It’s why LMND is my biggest position. It’s why I remain bullish on PATH. It’s why ZETA is a big position.

That’s the big picture.

Now let’s talk ZETA.

ZETA sits perfectly in this AI application layer. ZETA sells an AI powered market cloud. Most big marketing firms today have a mess of system (a CDP, an ESP for email, separate tools for SMS, one media buying platform, and a stack of reporting tools for example). The inefficiency in this is that each has its own data model and none of them truly share data.

Zeta’s solution is Zeta Marketing Platform - a single environment where identity resolution, data enrichment, segmentation, orchestration, and media buying all sit on the same level and are all orchestrated by Athena (conversational AI that rides on top).

Think of how the process of marketing works today and you’ll start to see the vision for this $4B company.

Let’s say the Head of Marketing at company X wants to figure out which demographic to target this week and via which channel or which offer. A simple question.

Today that would involve:

• Data engineer pulling a cohort from a data warehouse.

• Marketing operations recreating those segments in an email or ad tool.

• Campaign managers launching experiments.

That’s an overly simplistic answer, but I hope you get the point. It’s also a process that will likely take 1+ weeks.

With ZETA all you have to do is ask Athena that question directly. Athena then orchestrates the entire operation to understand first-party data, work out models to score who is likely to convert, and identifies behavioral signals.

This only works because the core of ZETA is the data layer. The Zeta Identity Graph spans over 245 million U.S. adults which equates to trillions of real-time data points. This allows ZETA to take an anonymous website visitor and turn them into a real person with a known history, collapsing fragmented data into a single, persistent Unified Customer View. Once this identity is locked, the ZMP turns marketing into an automated flywheel where Athena can sense a customer’s intent and instantly optimize the entire marketing they see.

The real moat here is the data flywheel. Every new customer and use case makes the models better which improves outcomes and improves the return for customers (which is already at 6x). Economically, this data flywheel is obvious if you look at the number of +$1M customers as ROI becomes more clear to them. That’s why we’re seeing consistent beat and raise quarters.

It’s the numerical sign of an AI application business that is compounding extremely well. If management keep executing like they have been, then investors will continue to get a high recurring revenue mix, higher margins, and an application layer that is becoming the operating system for many Fortune 500 companies to deploy their marketing budgets.

Q4 Numbers

Demand:

• Q4 2025 revenue was $395M, up 25% YoY.

• FY25 revenue was $1.305B, up 30% YoY excluding Marigold.

  • Revenue CAGR FY22-FY25 was 30%.

• 16 consecutive quarters of +20% YoY revenue growth.

• Scaled customers (+$100k) up 14% to 602. Super-scaled customers (+$1M) up 24% to 184.

• Now serving 51 of the Fortuna 100.

“Net revenue retention hit a record high of 120% in 2025, up from 114% in 2024…Customers are spending more and new prospects are showing up faster, both signals of the same thing - that ZETA operating system is working, and working at scale.”

Profitability:

• Q4 2025 Adj. EBITDA was $95M, up 35% YoY.

• FY25 Adj. EBITDA was $279M, up 44% YoY.

  • Adj. EBITDA CAGR FY22-FY25 was 45%.

• FY25 FCF up 78% YoY with FCF margins at 12.6%.

Guidance:

• FY26 revenue guidance midpoint is $1.755B, implying 35% YoY growth.

• FY26 Adj. EBITDA guidance midpoint is $391M, up 40% YoY.

• FY26 FCF guidance is $231M.

• Guiding for positive net income in FY26.

• 2028 targets revenue at $2.3B (23% CAGR from 2024) and Adj. EBITDA at $573M (31% CGAR), with FCF at $371M (42% CAGR).

These guided numbers alone are very impressive. I’ll make sense of it all for you in the valuation section below.

But to paint the picture even more now…ZETA presented at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference just a couple days ago. Here’s a couple key snippets:

“To be clear, our 603 global enterprise clients spent $100 million in marketing last year.

Last year we had 1.3% of that wallet share, this put us to about $1.3B in revenue…our clients are growing about 10% a year. So you would say that grows to above 1.6-1.7% of wallet share.

Our long-term goal is to get to 10% of wallet share or build a $10B/year business with 30% operating margin and +75% of that into free cash flow.”

More on all this below in the valuation section. That’s the bulk of this article in terms of value.

Take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get all this for just $24 a month:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

Subscribe now

Opportunities

TAM

“MarTech” covers an entire stack - CRM, CDP, marketing automation, analytics, performance measurement, content management, and AdTech. The common problem across that stack is that data doesn’t talk to itself well enough. Each new channel or vendor adds another silo and another interface that very few companies can turn into a single coherent decision system.

The specific TAM for ZETA is hard to gauge… my assumption is that David Steinberg as per the quote above tags it about $100B today. Some estimates suggest the entire MarTech niche is $450B today with forecasts approach $1.3T by 2030 at ~20% CAGR.

If ZETA simply grows in line with the market holding share, that math alone gets you to ~$22.1B in revenue by 2032 assuming 1.7% wallet share of a $1.3T market. I think the $1.3T assumption here is probably overstated but it shows the size of the MarTech niche in general.

More realistically, with a little over $1.3B in revenue today against a market measured at +$100B, ZETA’s current share is only at 1.3%. If they can compound faster than the market and move the needle from 1.3% to 5% (modest improvement relative to long term goal), the revenue opportunity becomes extremely substantial.

Profitability

The trends in profitability are very clear.

Here’s the margin growth which revenue has CAGR’s at +30%. P.s. I use Tikr for most of my charting and estimates.

Management’s 2028 targets explicitly assume that EBITDA and FCF continues to grow faster than the top line which is exactly what you’d expect from a business with the characteristics of ZETA. Crucially, most of this growth is set to come from doing more with existing customers, not spending heavily on CAC. Super scaled customers now contribute close to 90% of revenue, up from 70% in 2020 and their ARPU is 17x the $100k-$1M cohort.

As these customers adopt more channels and more autonomous workflows, the contribution margin on incremental revenue should continue to improve quite impressively.

It’s the same playbook we’re seeing with LMND, SOFI, NU etc.

M&A

In 2025, ZETA acquired Marigold for $32.5M. Strategically this added 100+ large enterprise brands, deepened the footprint in loyalty and retention, and expanded ZETA’s EMEA presence.

We’ve so far seen 18 acquisitions in the last 18 years… and David Steinberg seems to suggest we’re on track for a 19th this year. I’m never normally a fan of M&A…I naturally prefer organic growth but when management teams successfully prove over and over again they are strong at M&A, there’s no argument against it.

Valuation

The important bit…ultimately what it’s all about.

I’m going to split this section up in to three:

1. Comparison against other Marketing public companies

2. Comparison against other AI Applications peers & high growth names

3. Assumptions and model moving forward through to 2030

Marketing Peer Group

Direct peers: ADBE, CRM, ORCL, HUBS, BRZE

Quite clearly compared to ZETA’s peer group, ZETA is in a league of their own in terms of revenue growth especially relative to multiples. From an EBITDA perspective, they’re growing far quicker than all aside from BRZE which is expected to grow EBITDA at 280.8% this year though they have an EBITDA multiple nearly 3x ZETA’s which I wouldn’t be comfortable buying with where the market is today. The BRZE EBITDA margin is also far below ZETA’s by about 19 bps.

High Growth Peer Group

To make this easier I ran a screen on Tikr for the below criteria:

• Revenue growth above 30%

• EBITDA growth above 40%

• Revenue multiple below 3x

• EBITDA multiple below 15x

Here’s the results:

I then filtered this list down further for companies with an EBITDA margin ABOVE 10% (ZETA sits at +20%). The list then becomes:

• AMCR

• DLO (portfolio)

• SIFY (Indian based information and communication technology company)

• PAYS

• OMC

• ZETA

This puts ZETA in a league of their own in terms of growth to valuation.

Let’s now look at everything we know and decipher a 2030 target for the stock.

Assumptions

Management’s 2028 targets are:

• $2.3B in revenue

• $573M in Adj. EBITDA

• $371M in FCF

Let’s focus on EBITDA to start.

If ZETA hit $573M in EBITDA by 2028, that implies a 31% CAGR from today. For most regular high growth stocks I’d anticipate a multiple ~0.5-0.8x the growth rate. For ZETA, that hasn’t been the case yet but I think the market will rerate accordingly.

If my assumption is correct, then we should get ~23x multiple on $573M in EBITDA which equates to an EV $13.32B (or 3x from today) by FY28.

Alternatively, we can focus on FCF where we’re looking at $371M by FY28 at a 42% CAGR and a 16% FCF margin. To 3x from here with $371M in FCF, it takes a 35.6x FCF multiple which at that CAGR is very reasonable.

For reference, a company like NET is growing FCF at 41% but trades at a 171x FCF multiple. SNPS is probably a better example at 41x for 45% FCF growth in FY26 (note that is FY26 growth and not a 3-year CAGR).

Both of those assumptions make it quite clear that a 3x is entirely possible in the next 2-3 years.

And this is also only looking out to 2028 with revenue at $2.3B. If you’re prepared to hold longer, and have trust in management and trust in the trends continuing at the rates they have done for the last 2-3 years, then this is a reminder that Steinbergs longer term goal is a $10B/year business at 30% operating margin.

This produces $3B a year in net income which is only slightly below the market cap today. I think the big next question is when could we assume $10B/year in revenue. My best guess ~2035 assuming a 18-20% CAGR from 2028 target of $2.3B. This could be much sooner though depending on M&A.

At $3B a year in operating profit, assuming net dilution of 3% (with active buybacks), I think we have ~300 million shares outstanding by 2035. $3B / 300 million is an EPS of $10. If they’re still clearly outgrowing peers by this time, then a 25x multiple I think is fair. I think the big question is more surrounding how the overall market deals with the AI revolution. For me, that’s the biggest bear case for my AI application layer stocks.

Maybe a 25x multiple is quite rare by that time, and a 15-20x multiple is more reasonable which puts the stock price in the $150-$200 range. All very reasonable.

Short term, 3x. Longer term, 10x.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: The Accuracy of Information and Investment Opinion

The content provided on this page by the publisher is not guaranteed to be accurate or comprehensive. All opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.

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Make Money, Make Time serves as a publisher of financial information and does not function as an investment advisor. Personalized or tailored investment advice is not offered. The information presented on this website does not cater to individual recipient needs.

Not Investment Advice

Here’s a note I sent to paid subs before the market opened this morning:

“Premarket is looking ugly (as expected). AVAV is up a lot. Pretty much all tech is down a lot 2-4% in pre market. My advice for long term investors:

Do not chase oil… do not chase defense names. These will move quickly but it’s very likely a good portion of the move has already happened.

Defense names like NOC are already +24% YTD. Oil names like OXY are +25% YTD. Can they move more and can you make money from them? Yes…but your margin of safety is likely not on the right side anymore. With regards to tech, we’ve already seen big pullbacks here. This is the sector I am watching the closest. This is the sector people are fearing now and chasing oil, defense etc.

My plan has not changed too much right now but I’ll be monitoring the news. The hard thing will be gauging how much longer this is likely to continue for. There’s every chance the script could be entirely different by next Monday and if that is the case chasing oil and defence likely won’t be your best plays.”

Ultimately, I don’t think many investors out there expected AVAV to finish down 17% whilst tech names like LMND, ZETA, and SOFI finished up 2-3%. But that’s why sitting back and waiting pays off.

The SPY still remains above the 100 daily, though structurally you can’t deny that it looks a bit weaker. Many individual names are now below the 200 daily so caution here is still being exercised though I’m still taking advantage of opportunities.

Before we get into my 3 ideas for the week, take a look at my March database and portfolio. You get:

• Portfolio (real monetary amounts with 100% transparency)

• Watchlist

• Theme tracker

• Valuation models

• 10+ themes with stocks per theme measured by valuation

• Daily notes in the paid chat

• 1 video chart review per week

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Here’s a snapshot of one of the tabs on my database. It shows the weekly price action of all the stocks per theme.

The themes running hot at the moment are:

Optics:

• AAOI +89%

• LITE +16%

• COHR +20%

Nuclear Power

• UUUU +11%

• LAR +12%

• NXE +7%

• NNE +13%

AI Applications

• ZETA +16%

• APP +14%

• PLTR +11%

• SOUN +10%

Here’s my 3 ideas to track for the rest of the week:

Since I waited till after close to release this, I wanted to take this opportunity to follow the 3 stocks in my portfolio that reported earnings after close today. This gives me a chance to dive into the earnings a bit, whilst offering my thoughts on them for this week. FWIW, I wouldn’t be including them in this article if I didn’t think there were opportunities right here.

Defensive Idea

HROW dropped 12.6% in the AH. Paid subs will know that HROW is a 3.4% position in my portfolio with an average cost of $38.70. This AH drop will wipe out a good portion of my current gains in the short term, but I still remain bullish on the name over the long run.

HROW crushed revenue but missed big on EPS and Adj. EBITDA. Most of all though they revised guidance downwards which tends to be the reason for the biggest moves in stocks. Revenue grew 33% YoY to $89.1M in the quarter which ends a very strong 2025 year of growth.

The other very positive factor is full year FCF reversed from negative $22.2M in FY24 to positive $43.9M in FY25.

Guidance came in very soft though. Management’s explanation is as follows:

“Over the past several years, our financial guidance framework has not always aligned as well as it should. As we have rapidly grown over the last 5 years with multiple product launches and re-launches, layered on top of inherent seasonality, forecasting has become more nuanced. Instead of our guidance meeting and beating, we have too often been in the “stress and miss” camp. This has not served our stockholders or us well. Therefore, we are providing guidance differently than in the past, perhaps with a more conservative approach (because several elements of our 2026 strategy are highly discounted in this model), but in any case, certainly with greater transparency and structure.”

I think even with this conservative guidance, HROW is set to grow Adj. EBITDA from $64M in FY25 to ~$100M (top end of guidance which I am taking because my assumption is they are sandbagging) which means I think we grow at ~36% (on the lower end). For 20x EBITDA, I still deem this very attractive.

Taking the long term perspective again, I think remembering management’s Q4 2027 target of $250M in revenue is key. Assuming EBITDA margins hit +40% by FY28, HROW is looking at $400M in EBITDA in FY28 (assuming $1B in revenue in FY28) which means we have ~80% CAGR from today which means an NTM EBITDA multiple of 20x today remains still very attractive.

Neutral Risk

CRDO released earnings AH in which they beat and raised yet the market sold off CRDO ~7%. The only couple of reasons I can understand this is:

1. CRDO is one of the few interconnect stocks below the 200 daily right now.

2. The market is massively rewarding “pure” optics plays like AAOI and LITE as opposed to CRDO which has huge demand right now.

CRDO beat on revenue which put them at 201.5% YoY gain. They also beat massively on EPS and raised guidance to $425-$435M in revenue for Q1 2026.

Being bearish on a company that is doing 201.5% YoY revenue growth with 51.3% net margins whilst trading at 20x NTM EBITDA and 27x NTM PE is very difficult. FWIW, I did a screener on Tikr where I screened for this +100% revenue growth and +300% EBITDA growth with EBITDA multiples below 25x and revenue multiples below 13x. Only SNDK returned but SNDK has far lower net income margins than CRDO.

On top of this, I think it’s important to understand CRDO away from the numbers as well.

Competitors are focusing purely on light (photonics) right now and rightly so. I’m assuming some of you have seen the forecasts AAOI put out so the market here is massive…but CRDO is dominating inside the rack with AEC’s as well as offering some nice exposure to optics as well. In short, CRDO essentially wins whether data travels via light or electricity… many people aren’t realizing this yet.

FWIW, I think the AAOI numbers are also mind-boggling, and I think this could quite easily have a MU/SNDK moment. Chasing it is risky, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on which I’ll follow closely with my paid subs.

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Higher Risk

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Behind the paywall below is the link for my March 2026 spreadsheet. In this article, I’m going to explain exactly how this portfolio and database works and how you can get value from it.

Firstly, it’s where I post all of my current holdings (with real monetary amounts), allocations, trades, buys, sells, adds, trims, and watchlists. It’s 100% transparent and all timestamped to the exact second.

But that’s just a small part of the total value add.

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Here’s how the database works:

Portfolio:

• My core portfolio including exact dollar amounts.

• My exposure broken up into themes. Here’s a snippet of the portfolio tab to show how I’m currently weighted.

Everything here is formula driven directly from Yahoo finance live prices. You get full access to my exact portfolio and monetary amounts at all times. I don’t hide anything unlike most people. I’m all for transparency.

Portfolio Valuations:

In this tab, I’ve broken down my portfolio using a nice quantitative approach measuring revenue and EBITDA expected growth rates vs current NTM multiples. It’s a nice way of screening out some stocks in my opinion and it’s a nice building block for a lot of the work I do… though of course a lot more analysis goes into it that that.

Watchlist:

I also share my exact watchlist with:

• Technical entries: Where the chart says the “risk/reward” is skewed in your favour.

• Fundamental Entry: Where I see a fair value price where the math actually makes sense.

Here’s a snippet so you can see what the watchlist looks like.

Here you have access to daily movements in my watchlist, entry price per technicals, entry price per fundamentals, and then ultimately whether I’m interested in the stock or not.

Any that I am interested in are communicated in the paid chat (I send 5-20 messages on a daily basis in that chat).

Theme Tracker:

This tab is still not complete but it will be very soon.

This tab collates all the stocks per theme and gives you the weekly price action on them to give you a very quick indication of what theme is running hot right now. No need to search each stock on your chosen website. You have access to all stocks, and all price movements per stock/theme right here.

I hope you’re starting to realize this service is far more than just a portfolio. It’s a full database allowing you to either follow my portfolio and stock picks, or use the data to validate your own picks.

You’ll see as at 1st March 2026, the optics/photonics theme is running very hot after AAOI’s 53% move in one day.

Specific Tabs Per Theme:

On my database I have a tab for each theme.

Current we have:

• Robotics

• Space

• Power Grid Upgrade

• Optics

• AI Applications

• Miners

• Cybersecurity

• Edge AI

Each tab has every stock in that theme broken down by revenue and EBITDA growth rates relative to its EBITDA multiple.

Here’s an example from the robotics tab:

This is just ~10% of the stocks in the robotics tab. Here’s what it gives you:

1. A list of all the stocks in the theme.

2. A way to track the daily price action of all the stocks within the theme.

3. A way to see if the growth rates to multiple makes sense (“Bullish Fundamentals” column).

4. A way to see if the technicals look attractive based on moving averages (“Bullish Technicals” column).

5. A way to see if both fundamentals and technicals make sense at the moment (“Overall?” column).

This tab updates itself automatically every minute.

Unusual Options

I’ll be adding in unusual options trades I see on a daily basis.

Other

There are a few other tabs in the spreadsheet as well (2025 buys and sells which are all timestamped) and a couple of valuation models. I will be adding valuation models for my biggest positions in here (PATH, ZETA, TMDX etc).

I’m going to put the paywall now below this and the link to the March database will be there.

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NVDA beat ✅

ZEAT beat ✅

SEI beat ✅

NU beat strong revenue beat (slight EPS miss) 🟠

ABCL beat ✅

TMDX beat ✅

The SPY remains above key moving averages again but we still haven’t made a new high so structurally we aren’t out of the woods yet. On the QQQ, we closed above the 100 daily MA, and the 8 and 21 MA’s which is bullish. I made some small buys today into two new plays, and an add to one play.

This puts our portfolio back in a nice position again post LMND’s big drop which wiped out some of my gains, and UPST’s drop post strong earnings. I’ve been extremely transparent with my positions (all disclosed on the spreadsheet live and in real time…not many others do this).

If you want real time updates from me throughout the week and access to my spreadsheet then consider becoming a paid subscriber. Definitely worth a try for a month and if you don’t like it you can cancel. I suspect you’ll find far more value in it than $24 a month though.

With it you get:

1. Access to my portfolio (with real monetary amounts)

2. Access to my spreadsheet. One of the most in-depth and helpful resources out there.

3. Access to the paid chat where I send ~5-20 messages per day.

4. Real time buy, add, trim, and sell alerts.

5. Weekly video recap.

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Here’s the contents for this 3-4 minute read:

• Recap of “Ideas for the Upcoming Week” released on Monday.

• Ideas for the Rest of the Week

• Big Themes to Watch this week

• My Portfolio so Far this Week

Recap of “Ideas for the Upcoming Week”

At the start of every week, I release my free article on ideas for the upcoming week. In this release, I touched on the power grid upgrade (XLU, ITRI, AES, FLNC, MYRG, and PLPC). There’s a key update on this theme in my portfolio today as paid subs know.

I also touched on EEM, NU, and DLO.

And finally, I touched on the uranium and nuclear market (LEU, and SMR).

Here’s where we are with all three so far this week after today’s close:

1. The power grid upgrade: I gave some key updates to paid subscribers today on XLU, and some of the individual stocks within this theme.

“The chips are going to be piling up and not be able to be turned on. Billions of dollars of the most advanced AI hardware ever built. Sitting dark. Not because the chips don’t work. But because there isn’t enough electricity to run them.” - Elon Musk

That’s why I decided to buy into ITRI today at $97.35 right at this key support level.

ITRI is the software and sensor layer of the power grid. They specialize in AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure). Currently, traditional grids operate on a model that collects sensor data, sends it to a cloud, the cloud makes a decision, and then sends a command back. ITRI analyzes the power flows locally and can make changes in a matter of milliseconds. It’s the Edge play of the power grid.

Power grids need modernizing, and ITRI is that play to modernize the power grid. I’ve currently only bought in with a small 1.04% position of my portfolio, but the longer we sit at this key support level, the better. With the market near highs, I find it risky to lump sum large amounts at the moment, hence why a lot of my previous buys have been small initial positions when I then build on at certain levels. I’ll follow the exact same playbook with ITRI.

Analyst estimates for ITRI in FY26 aren’t too impressive, but FY27 and beyond looks like we may head into a high growth period. ITRI currently trades at 1.9x sales, 12x EBITDA, and 16x PE which is a decent valuation for these growth prospects over the next couple of years. It’s also a nice position with lower multiples to add to today given the uncertainty over where the market is heading.

2. EEM: This chart below is courtesy of Otavio Costa on X.

We’ve seen secular bull markets in Brazilian equities in 2008-2010 and 2015-2020, and now it looks like we’re making a clear bottom as we potentially lean into a global rebalancing away from US based assets.

I remain bullish on the US markets, but I think having some exposure to LatAm and the emerging markets is a very good idea especially near all time highs. I’m personally heavily invested into NU, and have a nice growing position in DLO.

NU just reported earnings as I write this and the numbers continue to impress me. ARPAC just hit a record high, efficiency ratios just hit a record low, and growth in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia continues to surge.

NU is an elite company riding the digitalization wave across Brazil and LatAm, whilst also benefitting massively from macro Brazilian tailwinds.

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The most important thing though is that we are above the 100 daily on the SPY. Until that happens, we remain bullish…but cautious…just because price action isn’t convincing enough to tell me we’re going back to highs. We are still a nice distance away from price breaking the 100 daily, and we’re also a fairly far away from the 21 daily crossing over the 100 daily.

The only slightly worrying part to me is just that we’re only 2% off SPY highs and 5% of QQQ highs, yet some tech names have been destroyed. Cybersecurity names like CRWD and OKTA lost more than 8% in a single day on Friday for example. This is either extremely positive for some individual names that you hold that have been sold off more than 20-30% (LMND for example for me), or it suggests we’re just at the start of a much bigger pullback. My two cents is that it’s the former, but I don’t play a guessing game in this market.

I follow some strict rules that will work out over the long run. Simple as that.

Whatever happens with price action this week, it’s important to understand that bearish sentiment and illogical narratives are driving the market right now. At some point, we’ll look back on these moves as a big opportunity. With that being said, I think it’s also important to let price action dictate what you do. The market can stay bearish and illogical for a lot longer than we may think.

Here’s two examples of the illogical narrative over the last week:

1. Cybersecurity: Cyber names like CRWD, OKTA, and NET all sold off ~8% in a single session after Anthropic released a preview of their Claude Code Security. Claude Code Security is an application security tool that helps developers write better code. In cybersecurity, it helps developers find vulnerabilities…but these still need human verification. It does not replace a firewall. It does not have the data that cybersecurity firms have. It’s not even close to being a competitor. With that being said, a lot of cybersecurity names have been trading at incredibly rich valuations for the last two years…which is why I’ve not batted an eyelid at most cyber companies.

I think cyber is finally becoming an interesting space again at today’s valuations… though it’s still on the premium side…especially stocks like CRWD.

2. Lemonade: LMND sold off from $74 at market open to $57 today (right at the 200 daily) post some very strong earnings. I’m still not completely sure why LMND sold off post earnings, but my assumption is that it has again been grouped into this basket of stocks which AI is going to “inevitably destroy”. I think there’s a good number of stocks in the market right now which deserve to be down…but there’s also a very good number of stocks which have been sold off for no apparent reason. LMND is one of those. ZETA is another one. PATH I believe is another one (though I fully understand why this one has been sold off because Maestro is still in the very early days and there’s no concrete evidence yet showing that PATH has strong agentic AI capabilities).

Here’s a quote from David Steinberg, CEO of ZETA:

“The future is not AI versus enterprise software. It is AI operating with enterprise software.”

Before I get into the ideas for the week, I think a good way to explain my current mindset is this:

I’m nowhere near the mindset of trimming more than I have already trimmed. I trimmed a good portion of stocks that were up +100-200% a couple weeks ago like SVM, ONDS, and ALB. I also reduced my exposure to stocks that fell below the 200 daily MA or broke key structure like CRDO, OSCR, and UPST. However, I’m also nowhere near the mindset of being very long here.

Price action is uncertain. I know many of my subscribers want to get in an out of positions regularly…but sometimes the best thing you can do is simply wait. Wait until things are clearer. Wait until structure is formed and a trend is formed. That may take a week, a month, or a year. Who knows.

For those out there who like more data…check out this chart by Subu Trade (on X). It shows the put/call ratio 1 week average. We’re currently at the highest level since the SPY crashed last April. If you look at the history of these spikes, you can see that generally they’ve come near lows.

Most definitely not the be all and end all…but something to perhaps consider if you’re feeling extremely bearish.

Before we get into my 3 main ideas for the week… I’m just going to share a screenshot from my spreadsheet that paid subscribers have access to.

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You can access the spreadsheet here 👇

This tracks movements by sector on a daily basis. We’ve seen an extremely quick rotation, but most of the time themes that have momentum continue for months. That’s why I like to have a basket of stocks in each theme and track this on a daily basis.

The themes and stocks that are running quite hot over the last month:

Energy

• Texas Pacific Land | TPL | +52%

• Imperial Resources | IPRC | +60%

• Kosmos Energy | KOS | +43%

• Occidental Petroleum | OXY | +14%

• Devon Energy Corp | DVN | +10%

Solar

• Enphase Energy | ENPH | +35%

• Sunrun | RUN | +21%

• Shoals Technologies Group | SHLS | +15%

• T1 Energy | TE | -25% (one to watch)

Optics

• Lumentum Holdings | LITE | +87%

• Ciena | CIEN | +39%

• Coherent | COHR | +28%

Manufacturing

• Parker-Hannifin | PH | +10%

• Honeywell | HON | +13%

• Regal Rexnord | RRX | +41%

Power Grid Upgrade

• Sterling Infrastructure | STRL | +25%

• Quanta Services | PWR | +19%

• Hubbell | HUBB | +11%

• Eaton | ETN | +11%

• Itron | ITRI | +2.8%

Defensive Idea

Last week I spoke about AMZN as my more defensive idea so I just want to give a very quick update there.

So far, technicals on AMZN are looking strong. We just bounced off the $200 support level and had a nice jump on Friday back up to $210. It’s now my 4th largest position having just overtaken PATH.

You can see my portfolio here:

Today, my defensive play is going to be either XLU (S&P 500 Utilities Sector) or some of the key plays within this theme. If you want to play it slightly safer I think XLU is a great buy. If you want to bet on outsized returns through individual plays my favorites at today’s prices are:

• Itron | ITRI | $4.6B market cap

• The AES Corporation | AES | $11.75B market cap

• Fluence Energy | FLNC | $3.0B market cap

• MYR Group | MYRG | $4.4B market cap

• Preformed Line Products | PLPC | $1.29B market cap

I think all of these will be key beneficiaries of the power grid upgrade.

“Billions of dollars of the most advanced hardware. Sitting dark. Not because the chips won’t work. Because there’s not enough electricity to run on them.” - Elon Musk

ITRI:

P/E: 16.5x

AES:

P/E: 6.8x

FLNC:

EV/Sales: 0.65x

MYRG:

P/E: 32.7x

PLPC:

EV/EBITDA: 14.6x

All these stocks will get added to my watchlist along with the other big grid upgrade plays like PWR, ETN, and HUBB. I’ll be tracking price action on this theme quite closely over the next week.

Neutral Risk

We’ve seen a clear breakout in the emerging markets over the last month with EEM (Emerging Markets Index Fund) just breaking above 2009 and 2022 highs for the first time.

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LMND produced some of the best numbers I’ve seen, popped 13% in the pre-market, and then sold off all the way down to -6.2% on the day within the first 15 minutes of market open.

If that’s not a sign of the kind of market we are in today, then I don’t know what is.

Anyhow, let’s dive in. This is just another opportunity to buy into LMND if you are wanting to in my opinion.

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Introduction

As paid subs will know, my current cost basis on LMND is $39. My entire portfolio, watchlist, and themes I’m tracking are all visible in my spreadsheet.

You can access it via the link above. If you want to see what my spreadsheet has to offer, then have a look at this article.

I’ve put out multiple articles on LMND over the last year as well. Here they are linked 👇

I’m up over 60% on my position now (it was +110% at the January highs post announcement of TSLA FSD insurance), but we’re back down to September 2025 highs right at this $60-$62 key level. Personally, I’m not going to buy anymore at the moment (aside from my biweekly DCA’s) just because the bias on the SPY and QQQ is pretty uncertain right now.

I’m not completely sure why LMND sold off today post earnings. It’s likely the market is still grouping LMND together with the wider AI/tech world which is getting sold off. More specifically, the market is assuming that AI is going to commoditize insurance.

My take on this is that an AI model is only as good as the data it is trained on. It’s quite clear looking at the numbers for LMND and the trend we’re seeing in margins, and GLRs vs legacy players who aren’t built or trained with the same quality data. More importantly, if it is a “race to the bottom”, LMND is heading quickly towards having the lowest expense ratio in the entire industry. They’re years ahead of their competition in the space.

Nevertheless, in terms of position sizing this sell off is evidence that going too big on any one theme right now is not the smartest play. Although, the AI plays I have invested in I believe will be huge beneficiaries over the long term, the market is grouping them together and selling them off. It’s why UPST is down post great earnings…it’s why LMND sold off post great earnings… it’s why SOFI struggled to catch a bid post some of the best earnings they’ve produced.

It’s a tricky market to work yourself around right now…but that doesn’t change any thesis that has a solid 3–5-year time frame. What it should change though is your mindset today. People see dips and immediately think let’s load up without considering technicals and without considering where the indexes are. That’s better than panic selling (which many also do), but it’s still not the right mindset to have.

The QQQ is currently looking quite weak on the daily and the SPY is only just holding above the 100 daily as well. This calls for caution. It’s a completely unknown market today with ~54% of SPY stocks being overbought whilst 27% of the SPY is oversold. We’re seeing aggressive buying and selling at the same time and a very rapid rotation from growth to value.

Be aware, but don’t jump into high growth names blindly. That’s just my quick sidetrack away from LMND for a minute. I’ve seen many people online get wiped out by going far too heavy into certain plays or themes…even some with leverage. They seemed like geniuses over the last 2-3 years bull market but now it’s clear they’re not.

Having strict rules and being open to change your bias quickly is how we’re working our way through this market.

Back to LMND 👇

Materials

Here’s a link to the Q4 Shareholder Letter

Here’s a link to the Q4 Earnings Call

I view most of the earnings transcripts I read through Tikr. You can view Tikr here.

Numbers

Demand

• IFP YoY Growth Rate: 31% to $1.24B. This means IFP growth rate has increased for 9 consecutive quarters.

  • 78% of this IFP comes from homeowners and pet, with car now making up ~15% of IFP.

  • 53% revenue growth.

    

• Premium Per Customer: +7% YoY

  • Premium per customer is $2,021 for car and $247 and $804 for homeowners and pet respectively. Car is how LMND is set to 10x.

  • Just 2 quarters ago this premium per customer growth was 5.6% and now we’re at 7% and have still barely touched the surface with cross selling. FWIW, the US average for premium per customer is above $4,000 but LMND are at $414. That’s testament to the growth potential ahead for them as car continues to ramp up, but also the cost that LMND pass on to the customer.

• Total customers: 2,984,513 customers

Profitability

• Gross Profit Growth Rate: 73% YoY to $111 million.

• Adj. EBITDA: ($5 million).

  • LMND are heading very quickly towards Q4 Adj. EBITDA profitability.

• Cash Flow: $37M in Adj. FCF

Guidance

• Management reiterated Q4 positive Adj. EBITDA in 2026, with 2027 being the first full year of Adj. EBITDA profitability. Management first forecasted this timeline back in 2022 evidencing the predictability of their forecasts. For a small cap back in 2022, that’s incredible.

Opportunities

Profitability

2026 has always been the year that management have said they’ll reach their first Adj. EBITDA profitable quarter (with GAAP income profitability in 2027). This speed and stability towards EBITDA and net profitability is incredible whether you compare it to legacy insurance peers, or other high growth companies in different industries with similar market caps.

Let’s look at peers:

ALL’s operating margins have been extremely volatile YoY but have only increased 400 bps from FY21 to today. On the other hand, LMND which has been growing at multiples ahead of ALL have managed to consistently bring down operating margins from -182% in FY21 to -25% today. This stability is only going to continue with scale which means the net income potential for LMND in 2030 onwards is going to be incredibly large.

Being bearish on LMND from a profitability standpoint makes no sense. They’re a smaller cap, disruptive tech company that has been around for a decade. They’ve trended margins in the right direction with complete transparency for the last 5 years. It’s only a matter of time before these numbers turn positive.

Cross Selling

Cross selling remains the key opportunity for LMND. It’s one of the reasons to be so bullish on the company. If the LTV/CAC (Lifetime Value / Customer Acquisition Cost) can increase YoY, then you have an extremely scalable business model.

A 3:1 LTV/CAC ratio is considered an extremely good ratio for long term sustainable growth. Over the last two quarters, LMND has been above 4.0.

That’s testament mainly to more than half of car customers being existing users…i.e. coming in to car at an effectively $0 cost. Here’s why this is so key:

LMND’s current spending (mainly marketing spend) has a clear return on investment that is paying off predictably over time. It tells management that they can continue to safely lean into continued growth without damaging any future profitability. As I touch on in the earnings highlights, because LMND’s underwriting has been so strong recently, they’ve freed up some capital. All of this extra capital is being ploughed back into marketing, and also reinvestment into upgrading the platform and the way they cross-sell.

Car remains the huge growth engine for LMND. Pet and renters insurance are the slightly lower premium parts of the business so if LTV/CAC for these is still above 3x, imagine what the LTV/CAC ratio will be like when car is fully scaling.

Management said that by 2027, LMND’s car product will be available to the “overwhelming majority of the US population.” If you think of the timelines here, 2027 is going to be the year where LMND hit GAAP profitability and where car begins to start fully scaling. That’s two huge tailwinds for numbers of the company, but also the narrative of the company.

This is when bull cases will start to really materialize.

Europe

Europe remains a huge opportunity for LMND, though it’s still quite immaterial as a percentage of the total business right now bring in less than 5% of the IFP. It’s worth noting here that pricing, underwriting, and regulations are very different in Europe to the US. As LMND’s footprint continues to increase in Europe (IFP grew 150% YoY in the region), then the rate of AI model improvements will increase too.

Earnings Call Highlights

The Core LMND Bull Argument:

“Traditional insurers treat tech as a cost center, not their core. They rely on third-party vendors that are themselves built on legacy systems. It’s very hard for an organization like that to compete with a full-stack tech-first company.”

This is the core LMND bull case and the numbers/trends back this up completely. LMND have a structural advantage vs incumbents.

The TSLA FSD Integration:

“By integrating directly with the car’s onboard computer, we can tell which mode that car is in at any given moment…autonomously driven miles using Tesla’s FSD are priced at about 50% of the premium of the equivalent human-driven mile.”

LMND is plugging into the car’s hardware giving them a huge data advantage. The main AI bear argument is about commoditization. The moat going forward with AI is all about the quality of data. Those companies with the best data will win (hence why ZETA is also a key position for me).

But it’s not just about the data. Legacy plays like Geico or State Farm won’t have the cost efficiencies to be able to profitably offer packages for 50% below human driving rate.

Adj. EBITDA and Forward Guidance:

“Yes. So from an EBITDA, maybe two questions in there perhaps. From an EBITDA perspective, we do expect Q4 this year, '26 to be fully positive as well as the full year of '27, which would be the first full year of EBITDA positivity. While we've not indicated growth rates beyond '26, we have been consistent in our communication that a 30% plus growth rate is our goal and an accelerating growth rate each quarter is also our goal. And so I would expect that ambition to continue into '27 and beyond given the immense size of the market that we're in and the markets that we can potentially be in.”

I’d love if management gave a slightly firmer forecast on forward looking guidance, but we haven’t really had anything new just yet. Timothy did say he expects 30% plus IFP growth and QoQ acceleration to continue throughout FY26, into FY27, and beyond.

I haven’t incorporated that into my model yet to be conservative, but if LMND can continue acceleration for another 9 quarters into FY28, then this will be incredible.

Some confidence that we can take from this narrative though is that management have so far been very good at forecasting. They’ve said Adj. EBITDA profitability will happen in FY26 for ~3.5 years now.

Marketing Efficiency:

“So you saw a couple of things happening really coming together in Q4. Certainly, the underwriting or loss ratio side of the business came in very nicely. But from a growth perspective, which is really the core of the focus right now, which is how do we grow effectively? How do we maintain an LTV to CAC that we are comfortable with, number one, and excited about improving over time, number two. And how do we lean into that over time.”

This is extremely bullish.

LMND’s priority is growth at the moment. They know that underwriting and loss ratios will continue to come down over time and Q4 evidenced that in full force.

They freed up a little more capital in Q4 because of underwriting results which is all being ploughed back into additional growth because they’re so confident in maintaining an LTV/CAC ratio of +3x.

“We like what we're seeing in January and February to date. And so that guidance reflects real optimism about being able to spend more, significantly more in '26 than in '25. That's a continuing trend and to potentially see that growth rate accelerate.”

I think this is just a clear reminder that LMND remains a sub $5B company with extremely high growth rates and extremely efficient cost control. I don’t think there’s enough sub $10B company growing +30% YoY (revenue is actually much more than this) with such strong profitability trends.

If there is, let me know.

Updated Valuation

I’ll be updating my valuation model in my spreadsheet the next 24 hours post releasing this article. Here’s what my assumptions will comprise of and here’s how I still reach a 730% increase over the next decade. FWIW, I currently have ~$21,000 invested into LMND with an average cost of $39.41.

Based on this, I’m betting on that $21k turning into over a quarter of a million…and I hope that will be only 10-15% of my portfolio by then.

IFP came in a $1.273B which is a 31% growth rate. If we assume a conservative growth rate of 25% CAGR over a 10-year period, LMND will hit $11.6B IFP by 2035. That is a fairly high growth rate, but for a company that is currently still increasing their growth rate every quarter for the last 9 quarters, it seems like a realistic average over a 10-year period.

LMND’s gross loss ratio came in at 52% today. If we’re very conservative with new products and new geographies (car is currently at 70% and Europe is currently at 70%), a fair GLR by 2035 will in the region of 65%-70%. That would give gross profit in 2035 of ~$4.06B.

My model then assumes an operating margin of ~11-16% by 2035. Remember we should be positive Adj. EBITDA by Q4 26 and positive net by 2028. If we assume the bottom end of my 11-16% range, we will have $1.27B in operating profit ($11.6B IFP * 11%). At the upper end this would be, $1.856B in operating profit.

That’s then giving ~38% growth in operating profit which as per today’s multiples should result in a PE multiple of ~30x. $1.27B * 30x multiple gives a company worth $38.1B (on the upper end this would be $55.68B…again based on fairly conservative multiples).

Then from there it’s a simple share dilution. I assume 1.5% share dilution per year which would result in 81.2M shares.

$38.1B / 81.2M shares = $469 share price.

$55.68B / 81.2M shares = $685 share price.

I hope these conservative numbers give you a good idea of where LMND’s stock (currently at $61.59) is heading over the next decade,

This is completely unrelated to LMND, but just a couple quick thoughts on the trajectory of the market for the next decade. Historically, PE multiples have averaged ~16x-20x for the SPY. Is AI a margin expander or a margin compressor?

Margin expander:

• The cost to serve is going to head down massively. This is the LMND bull case. If a company can grew revenues by 20% whilst reducing expenses, the business will trade like a software company. If every company can become “software like”, then every stock should be given a software like multiple.

• AI will give predictability. Predictability over supply chains, consumer trends, credit defaults… everything. If AI reduces the volatility of earnings, the risk of owning stock drops. When risk goes down, equity risk premium goes down, which forces the P/E up.

• AI will cause a huge amount of reinvestment. If costs continue to shrink and reinvestment goes down, companies will use cash to buy back shares at huge rates. This creates a scarcity of shares, driving up share prices.

Margin compressor:

• If AI allows a tiny startup to replicate complex enterprises with human talent as a moat for a fraction of the cost, the multiples stocks trade at will be nowhere near as high. Investors pay lower multiples with weaker moats because of the fear a company may get disrupted in year 7 onwards for example.

Just a little note jotting to finish my article. Let me know if you have any interesting opinion on this. I assumed a 30x PE multiple in my model so far in 2035, and that just got me to write the above.

Let me know your thoughts.

Leave a comment

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: The Accuracy of Information and Investment Opinion

The content provided on this page by the publisher is not guaranteed to be accurate or comprehensive. All opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.

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Make Money, Make Time serves as a publisher of financial information and does not function as an investment advisor. Personalized or tailored investment advice is not offered. The information presented on this website does not cater to individual recipient needs.

Not Investment Advice

Still, that is emotion talking and I don’t invest based on feelings and emotion. I invest based on rules and strategy as that is how you outperform in the long run. The big news last week was the megacap stocks getting sold off more than I’ve seen in a long time…especially relative to the rest of the market. AMZN dropped below $200, MSFT extended its gains down, and GOOGL is sitting just above $300.

On the other side of the market, materials have done quite well recently as has oil. That in itself never feels you with confidence that tech is about to start another leg up but let’s see. My rules rely on the SPY breaking the 100 daily and that hasn’t happened just yet. Until then I remain with a bullish bias.

With that being said, I have cut some losses and taken some cash off the table over the last 2 weeks to secure some big gains. For example, I sold out of ONDS at 173%, ALB at 119%, SVM at 238%, and SES at 41%. I also took trims on OSCR (-18%), CRDO (-24%), UPST pre-earnings (-33%) and fully sold out of HIMS (-46%).

1. Access to my portfolio (with real monetary amounts)

2. Access to my spreadsheet and theme tracker. Currently there’s about 250 stocks on there but I’m adding new ones every week as I work my way through the themes I’m most bullish on.

3. Access to my paid chat where I send 5-20 messages per day.

4. Real time buy, add, trim, and sell alerts.

Give it a go. I suspect you’ll find it far more valuable than $24 a month.

Defensive

Last week I spoke about AMZN as my defensive play, and this week I’m sticking by that. There’s absolutely no change to my thesis and if the SPY breaks the 100 daily I’ll lean more into this position than I already am, especially so if we drop to this $187 level which is a key weekly level.

As a reminder, the main reason AMZN sold off so sharply was because of the surprise to the CapEx budget which came in $55M above estimates. This posed the question on how certain returns are and how much FCF is to be affected in the future.

My take is this:

AMZN operates like a small cap with an infinite amount of capital to invest. In the near term, that’s offering them a potential future goldmine. FCF is/will be affected but the arguments I am seeing online suggest AMZN’s CapEx in FY26 of $200B cannot support 24% AWS growth vs peers like MSFT who have $120B in CapEx for 39% growth.

When have we ever compared current year CapEx to current revenue growth rates?

Revenue growth as a result of this $200B in CapEx is 2-4 years away. It’s a 2-4 year buildout. If AMZN is spending $200B in CapEx in FY26, it’s because they see a tidal wave of demand coming.

Neutral Risk

I touched on SOFI last week as a neutral risk play…and I think that still provides an incredible opportunity at $19.60.

For today, I want to focus on NBIS who reported some of their strongest ever earnings on Feb 12th.

“Everything we build, we sell. We are in the very early days of one of the biggest industrial and technological revolutions in history. And Nebius is quickly becoming the AI cloud provider of choice.”

On the $7B-$9B ARR Target:

“Our 2026 ARR target is not dependent on any new mega-deals. As we bring on our planned additional capacity…we are very confident in our ability to deliver.”

Let me remind you that Q4 ended with ARR at $1.25B so FY26 ARR of midpoint $8B means we’re set to see 540% growth in ARR for 3.1x FY26 ARR. I think it’s simple to say that as long the wider tech market holds up, NBIS is going to be a clear outperformer for the next year.

Higher Risk

Read more

Since then, it’s been all about the AI infrastructure build out. Power, memory, optics, interconnect, grid upgrade etc. But ultimately, the end goal of this is to get AI into the real world and on to the Edge. The Edge simply means the move away from the Cloud towards devices (smart phones, smart homes, drones, robotics, AVs etc). It’s ultimately how all of this buildout gets monetized.

It’s originally been all about scale and centralized power on the Cloud. However, the clear downside of this is latency…i.e. the time it takes for data to be received from the end device, sent to the network to Cloud, and back to the device. That creates an unnecessary waiting period and unnecessary power usage. It’s now about immediate processing and immediate response without relying on this critical latency bottleneck.

Here’s some key points on the necessity of the Edge:

• 75% of all data is created at the Edge. Sending this data back to the Cloud is completely inefficient.

• 40.6B IoT devices are likely to be sold by 2034. The amount of data generated from these localized devices will be huge and the need to avoid the network inefficiencies will be even larger.

• Energy and resources required by the Cloud is unsustainable. Edge lowers the energy use and cost, and increases the end value add.

This transition seems inevitable and price action over the last couple weeks in quite a volatile market has backed that thesis up nicely. SYNA is up 11% in the last 2 weeks, NXPI is up 8.5%, all whilst other high beta plays have struggled.

Looking forward, I think Edge is the fastest growing segment of the AI wave now with a 37% CAGR. Relative to the robotics market which is set to grow at 20% CAGR and the overall AI industry is set to grow at 28%…Edge’s 37% forecasts become very attractive.

In this article, I’m going to breakdown the current key players within this theme just like I’ve done with robotics and optics.

From here, I add all these stocks to my spreadsheet which paid subs have access to. This spreadsheet uses a few criteria to decipher whether I should be bullish or bearish on the stock, and from there I decide whether it’s worth diving deeper into or not.

If you want real time updates from me throughout the week and access to my spreadsheet, then consider becoming a paid subscriber. Definitely worth a try for a month and if you don’t like it you can cancel. I suspect you’ll find far more value in it than $24 a month though.

With it you get:

1. Access to my portfolio (with real monetary amounts)

2. Access to my spreadsheet. One of the most in-depth and helpful resources out there.

3. Access to the paid chat where I send ~5-20 messages per day.

4. Real time buy, add, trim, and sell alerts.

5. Weekly video recap.

Here’s the contents for this article:

• Edge AI Semiconductors IP and Design Providers

  • Stocks to Invest In

• Edge AI Processors (The Chips)

  • Stocks to Invest In

• The Chip Builders

  • Stocks to Invest In

• Memory

  • Stocks to Invest In

• Networking and Connectivity Enablers

  • Stocks to Invest In

• Edge AI Infrastructure and System Integrators

  • Stocks to Invest In

Edge AI Semiconductor IP and Design Providers:

These companies create the "blueprints" and specialized technology that allow devices to run AI. Instead of manufacturing the chips themselves, they own and license their IP - the high level architectural designs that allow engineers to build the end result. The business model is very high margin and scalable, though likely not as high growth as some others mentioned in this article.

Since Edge AI is so focused on power to performance ratio…as is everything but even more so in Edge… these providers focus on micro-efficiencies, always-on sensing, and security at the root.

IP & Design Provider Stocks to Invest In:

• ARM

• AIP

• SNPS

• CDNS

• CEVA

• RMBS

In this article, I’m not expanding on each company I list. Many of them are either big names you’ve likely heard of or are not pure Edge AI plays. I have tried to spend the most time on names you may not have heard of in the SMID cap range.

Arteris | AIP

Description:

AIP is a less well-known name at only $600M market cap, but they’re set to be a leader in Edge AI. They provide Network-on-Chip (NoC) interconnect IP - think of it like the digital plumbing for a big network of chips. They license this IP to over 300 major customers like NXPI and STM.

Recent results have been very strong with Annual Contract Value increasing 28%. They also recently acquired Cycuity, which adds $7M in revenue and creates a cybersecurity edge for them.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 22.3%

• Gross Margin: 90.2%

• Operating Margin: -47%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 6.8x

• NTM Price/FCF: 94.9x

Synopsys | SNPS

Description:

SNPS is a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) software (basically a duopoly with CDNS below), semiconductor IP, and software integrity solutions. About 30% of revenue comes from IP whilst the rest comes from EDA software making this a stable, predictable revenue stream. Companies like NVDA pay an annual fee to SNPS (and CDNS), regardless of how many chips are sold in the end. That makes these businesses robust, but of course the IP licensing division of the business fluctuates more.

They provide the AI powered design tools (like Synopsys.ai) that companies need to figure out the balance between powerful chips and energy efficient chips. They then sell this energy efficient IP which is essentially small designs specifically to run on low-power edge devices like smart cameras and wearables.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 15.1%

• Gross Profit Margins: 81.4%

• Operating Margins: 13.0%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 9.8x

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 21.6x

• NTM P/E: 30.3x

Cadence Design Systems | CDNS

Description:

CDNS acts as the other half of this duopoly with SNPS that controls the semiconductor design supply chain. They also provide EDA software - complex simulators and drafts that engineers then rely on to create the chips.

CDNS dominate specifically in the “sensory” side of Edge AI with their Tensilica chips which process audio (voice assistants), vision (drones), and radar (cars) instantly on the device. This is where their strength lies vs SNPS.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 13.5%

• Gross Margins: 85.5%

• Operating Margins: 31.9%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 14.1x

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 29.2x

• NTM P/E: 38.9x

CEVA | CEVA

Description:

CEVA predominantly sells the IP for specific functions (mostly wireless connectivity and smart sensing). This makes them a critical Edge AI play because it’s their technology that is being used in many drones, or wireless devices.

SensePro is CEVA’s DSP (Digital Signal Processor) used in many autonomous devices and it’s one of the key growth areas for CEVA at the moment. Autonomous devices (AV’s for example) receive a lot of raw data from visual data (what object is in front of them), range data (where an object is), and motion data (inertial measurements). Cleaning this data has always been a challenge and always required separate chips for separate senses. SensePro understands video, radar, LiDAR, and other data within the same chip.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 9.8%

• Gross Margins: 87.2%

• Operating Margins: -10.1%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 3.8x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 13.0%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 26.2x

• FY26 Expected EBITDA Growth: 63.3%

• NTM P/E: 38.4x

Edge AI Processors (The Chips)

These design the specialized processors, MCUs, SoCs with built in accelerators (NPUs, TPUs) for direct on device execution. They prioritize real time processing, low latency, and efficiency for applications like autonomous drones or smart cameras.

This is where a few of the pure plays I like are based. Massive cloud GPU’s are all about raw power but these chips are judged by Tera-Operations Per Second - the ability to perform millions of operations quickly whilst using little battery power.

Chips Stocks to Invest In:

• AMBA

• LSCC

• SYNA

• MCHP

• QCOM

• STM

There are a few stocks here that aren’t as well-known so I’ll be diving into them.

Ambarella | AMBA

Description:

AMBA provides the “visual” for edge devices, designing Systems on Chip (SOCs) that allow cameras to record video and understand it in real time. They have CVflow architecture that is designed to run object detection or terrain mapping at very low power. They currently have a core focus within security cameras, but are attempting to carve out more share in automotive vehicles, industrial robotics, and wearables.

Since management see the Edge AI demand, they’ve now transitioned so that 80% of revenue comes from Edge AI. AMBA was previously predominantly in the automotive sector, but today they’re winning share in autonomous drones, and other areas of Physical AI. AMBA’s stock has been held down because of Western OEM’s…but if AMBA can make this strategic pivot to the next generation of robotics and agentic devices I think this stock has massive potential.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 25.8%

• Gross Margins: 59.6%

• Operating Margins: -23.9%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 6.1x

• Expected FY26 Revenue Growth: 36.6%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 39.4x

• Expected FY26 EBITDA Growth: 531%

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation | LSCC

Description:

LSCC is the leader in the niche of low power Field Programmable Gate Arrays. Most chips are programmed and “set in stone” during manufacturing. LSCC’s are reprogrammable after they leave the factory which makes them a critical enabler for Edge AI as companies can update their hardware to run the latest AI models without physically replacing any device.

Whilst not a 100% pure play on Edge, Edge AI is probably the catalyst driving a big portion of their stock price right now. Just like AMBA, they’re making a strategic pivot to robotics, humanoids, and autonomous vehicles. More specifically, they’re focused on applications that run under 1 watt and recently won a contract for an industrial robot in Japan. AMBA is working mainly under 2 watt, so there could be a bit of potential for LSCC to dominate this niche of Edge AI.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 2.7%

• Gross Margins: 68.2%

• Operating Margins: 2.9%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 19.0x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 33.1%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 52.3x

• FY26 Expected EBITDA Growth: 38.7%

• NTM P/E: 62.4x

Synaptics | SYNA

Description:

SYNA is quickly transitioning from a legacy PC interface company to a leader in Edge AI. They are designing the Astra platform which essentially allows devices to see, hear, and understand users locally as they specialize in the “senses” of the AI world. This allows smart home hubs, industrial appliances, and wearables to process complex content without the need to send data to the cloud.

The growth side of the business is the Core IoT division which is surging right now (53% YoY). Most interestingly for me, on the recent earnings report, SYNA mentioned a “major humanoid client”.

“We are now sampling silicon for pilot builds of humanoid at a major customer that’s leading the marketplace to deliver pilots this year and go into production next year. This is on the backs of our touch sensory controllers and our bridge solutions that help transport high bandwidth data effectively in the humanoid.”

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: 12.0%

• Gross Margins: 43.1%

• Operating Margins: -6.2%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 3.2x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 10.6%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 15.1x

• FY26 Expected EBITDA Growth: 18.0%

• NTM P/E: 18.9x

Microchip Technology Incorporated | MCHP

Description:

MCHP designs chips that run lightweight AI models on devices with minimal battery power, such as a factory sensor detecting a motor vibration. The vast majority of its revenue comes from standard chips to the industrial and automotive sectors but Edge is becoming a bigger piece of the pie.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: -42.3%

• Gross Margins: 55.4%

• Operating Margins: 6.3%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 8.7x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 6.0%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 23.8x

• FY26 Expected EBITDA Growth: 18.5%

• NTM P/E: 32.3x

STMicroelectronics | STM

Description:

STM is the European giant of IoT. In Edge, they are rapidly integrating Neural Processing Units (NPUs) directly into flagship STM products to allow everyday devices to perform more complex tasks.

This means STM gives you:

1. Stability

2. Exposure outside of the US markets

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: -11.1%

• Gross Margins: 33.9%

• Operating Margins: 4.5%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 2.1x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 11.7%

• NTM EV/EBITDA: 8.7x

• FY26 Expected EBITDA Growth: 26.2%

• NTM P/E: 28.8x

The Chip Builders

These are the picks and shovels plays of which most of them you will have heard of already. They provide the heavy machinery and manufacturing technology needed to physically build out this AI revolution…both on the Cloud and on the Edge.

Here’s the list of stocks. I could make this is a lot more in depth but for conciseness I decided to keep it brief. For completeness however, I wanted to include these names though as they’re still absolutely vital for the journey to the edge.

Chip Builder Stocks to Invest In:

• ASML

• LRCX

• TER

• AMKR

• AEIS

• AMAT

• NVMI

• CLS

Of this list, AMKR is probably the stock here most associated with the Edge. Although inefficient, chips in the Cloud can get away with being slightly larger and hotter. On the Edge, this isn’t feasible.

AMKR focuses on Systems-in-Package. They take multiple components (processors, sensors, memory etc) and put them together in the most efficient way. They’re the ones “miniaturizing” the technology so that we have low latency, cool, and fast chips within our devices.

AMKR is essentially the next step in “Moore’s Law”. Transistors are getting smaller but the rate of this happening is slowing down. To get more power for AI, vertical packaging (known as 3D Packaging) is becoming the necessity.

Memory

Similar to above, this isn’t pure Edge. Rather it’s simply the foundation of AI. Nevertheless, Edge AI is likely to create even bigger demand for MU and SNDK.

Micron Technology | MU

As AI moves from data centers to the Edge, MU is set to be the key beneficiary. RAM has historically only needed to be large enough to hold a few open apps. However, running generative AI models locally on the Edge requires holding huge amounts of active memory at all times. Devices with standard 6GB or 8GB or RAM cannot function as “AI devices” meaning next generation devices must need 12GB-16GB of RAM.

For MU, this means they have a multiplier effect. Even if the amount of end “AI devices” stays flat, the memory needed on each devices is increasing 2-3x. But it’s not just the amount of memory. MU sell LPDDR5X which is a high-performance, premium product designed to feed data to AI processors at much faster speeds than typical RAM. A multiplied amount of more memory and better memory puts MU as a stock to benefit over the long run as AI heads to the Edge.

Networking and Connectivity Enablers

These firms provide the infrastructure for seamless data transmission between edge devices and networks, including optical components, switches, and connectors. In edge AI, low-latency connectivity is key for distributed systems, such as 5G/6G integration or photonics to handle massive data flows without bottlenecks.

• CSCO

• AVGO

• ANET

• GLW

• CIEN

• LITE

• APH

Amphenol (APH) currently shows up as “Very Bullish” on my spreadsheet.

Edge AI Infrastructure and Systems Integrators

This sub-theme covers companies building complete edge computing platforms, servers, and supporting infrastructure like cooling/power. They integrate hardware for deployable edge AI solutions in enterprise, industrial, or rugged settings, focusing on scalability and resilience beyond just chips. This remains a huge bottleneck today in Cloud, so I suspect the opportunities here on the Edge will be quite substantial.

• HON

• DELL

• HPE

• NVDA

• VRT

• OSS

One Stop Systems | OSS

Description:

OSS builds ruggedized, high performance computing platforms that can survive heat, shock, and vibration making them perfect for the Edge. They operate mainly with tanks, fighter jets, and autonomous mining equipment making them more of a pure play Edge AI hardware company.

Along with being a pure Edge AI play, OSS is also a critical military contractor. They’ve recently:

• Secured a $5M urgent order for 61 Rugged Data Units for aircraft during Venezuelan tensions.

• Delivered specialized edge computers for maritime environments used by SEAL teams.

Numbers:

• Revenue Growth: -10.2%

• Gross Margins: 29.0%

• Operating Margins: -10.5%

Valuation:

• NTM EV/Revenue: 6.2x

• FY26 Expected Revenue Growth: 19.8%

• NTM P/FCF: 37.9x

I hope you enjoyed this article. If there’s any feedback or additional information that you think would be necessary, please do reach out to me and let me know or leave a comment below.

Leave a comment

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: The Accuracy of Information and Investment Opinion

The content provided on this page by the publisher is not guaranteed to be accurate or comprehensive. All opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.

Publisher’s Role and Limitations

Make Money, Make Time serves as a publisher of financial information and does not function as an investment advisor. Personalized or tailored investment advice is not offered. The information presented on this website does not cater to individual recipient needs.

Not Investment Advice

HOOD is down 11%, UPST is down 14% (on some fairly strong earnings. I actually trimmed 50% of my UPST position yesterday before earnings because post PGY I wasn’t confident UPST would do enough to keep a volatile market from punishing it), and U is down 26% on a slight revenue miss.

Nevertheless, the SPY, for the time being seems ok.

The QQQ on the other hand is in a very tricky position right below the 100 daily. If we stay below here, I’d be quite cautious with buys. I’d feel uncomfortable buying stocks where MA’s are way below the current prices, and I’d feel uncomfortable buying stocks with high multiples (+10x sales, or +30x PE for example).

If you want real time updates from me throughout the week and access to my spreadsheet then consider becoming a paid subscriber. Definitely worth a try for a month and if you don’t like it you can cancel. I suspect you’ll find far more value in it than $24 a month though.

With it you get:

1. Access to my portfolio (with real monetary amounts)

2. Access to my spreadsheet. One of the most in-depth and helpful resources out there.

3. Access to the paid chat where I send ~5-20 messages per day.

4. Real time buy, add, trim, and sell alerts.

5. Weekly video recap.

Here’s the contents for this 3-4 minute read:

• Recap of “Ideas for the Upcoming Week” released on Monday.

• Ideas for the Rest of the Week

• Big Themes to Watch this week

• My Portfolio so Far this Week

Recap of “Ideas for the Upcoming Week”

At the start of every week, I release my free article on ideas for the upcoming week. In this release, I touched on AMZN, SOFI, and S.

Here’s where we are with all three so far this week:

Read more

If you look at the QQQ, it’s a very different story. We completely broke structure and fell below the 100 daily. The QQQ still in the short term remains in a definite down trend. We’re lower than Jan 21st low and lower than the 100 daily. I think there’s a good chance on the QQQ we could hit this 612 level around the 100 daily and then retrace back downwards from there. That’s probably my best guess.

What happens to the SPY from there is likely a drop below the 100 daily.

Back to the SPY… but this time on the weekly. We bounced off the 21 daily on Friday. That 21 weekly MA is pretty much around the same level as the 100 daily MA meaning that 678 level is absolutely key to whether I have a bullish or bearish bias going forward. Until we break that level, I’d say we’re still in a bullish market…though it doesn’t necessarily feel like it.

With my paid service you get:

1. Access to my portfolio (with real monetary amounts)

2. Access to my spreadsheet and theme tracker. Currently there’s about 250 stocks on there but I’m adding new ones every week as I work my way through the themes I’m most bullish on.

3. Access to my paid chat where I send 5-20 messages per day.

4. Real time buy, add, trim, and sell alerts.

Give it a go. I suspect you’ll find it far more valuable than $24 a month.

Defensive

AMZN dropped massively post Q4 earnings because of huge CapEx spend. There are two main schools of thought here.

Bears argue AMZN are needing to spend huge amounts in CapEx just to maintain growth and that a “forever CapEx cycle” is going to be the reason FCF always stays low.

Bulls argue that this $200B CapEx is warranted and will pay huge dividends in the future when they focus on maximizing shareholder value. This is exactly the side I sit on. Just 3-6 months ago, huge CapEx was rewarded by the market. It was essentially a race to secure compute scarcity and for those that had the capital to spend, it ultimately was securing their dominance for years to come. Just a few months later in a slightly risk-off period, the market has started really questioning these numbers.

Here’s a quote from UBS analysts which I mostly agree with:

“Similar to its megacap Internet peers, Amazon provided 2026 CapEx guidance well ahead of expectations at ~$200B (vs UBSe $150B and cons $146B). As its methodology for AWS demand forecast likely has not changed (and still functioning well), our base case forecast now contemplates that segment growth rate in 2026 should double to 38% vs 2025’s 19%, while Performance Obligations/backlog should also correspondingly ramp to ~$400B by year end.

If this level of capital intensity holds into 2027, growth should maintain in the mid-30% level to essentially double the segment revenue and Operating Profit in two years. 2027E GAAP EPS should reach ~$14 and AMZN shares are hence trading at ~14x – which is a significant discount relative to its megacap peers, despite a superior EPS growth profile (41% 2-year CAGR to 2027E).”

AMZN dropped down to $200 for a brief period on Friday before bouncing back up to $210. I’m a happy buyer anywhere between $186 and $212 and I’ll likely be leaning into this position more over time.

Neutral Risk

If you haven’t seen it yet, SOFI’s CEO Anthony Noto did a 50 minute interview with Future Investing. Here’s a link to it (full credit to Tannor for organizing that).

I think it was one of the most bullish SOFI interviews I’ve ever watched and it gives me a lot of confidence (along with Q4 earnings) to keep holding my position that I have an average cost of $8 in. Anthony Noto was an open book in the interview which is always nice to see from CEO’s.

“In Q1, our revenue growth is 35%…I would be incredibly disappointed if our first quarter was the fastest quarter of the year.” - Anthony Noto

Most recent earnings came in with FY25 revenue at 38% YoY, EBITDA at 60% YoY, and net income at $0.39 EPS, up 2.1x. Noto also discussed their crypto and blockchain push with SoFi USD stablecoin, SoFi pay (cross-border payment on blockchain, and crypto trading.

They also guided for $1.6B in EBITDA in FY26 which is just over 51% growth from FY25. That means we’re trading at 16.5x 2026 EBITDA for 51% growth. That’s incredibly good.

It gets better though - management guided to an EPS CAGR of 38-42% through to 2028. For that growth, SOFI currently have a multiple of 34x whilst peers like HOOD have a multiple of 32x though they’re growing EPS at 1/3rd of the growth rate that SOFI is (though with better margins).

I’ve been fairly reluctant to add to SOFI above $25 especially with my cost basis of $8, but I think here at $21 SOFI is finally fairly cheap again and I’d consider building out my position slightly more than it is now.

Higher Risk

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