- INTC is positioned near a major AI infrastructure boom: hyperscalers are spending hundreds of billions and server-CPU demand is accelerating, but Intel lacks capacity to capture it fully.
- Despite the semiconductor boom, 2026 revenue is projected at $63B versus nearly $79B in 2021; PC pressure and billions in foundry losses compound the shortfall.
- Management expects meaningful supply improvement only in the second half of 2027 and does not expect positive free cash flow next year.
- The author sold most of the position and is watching from the sidelines, but may revisit if manufacturing capacity, foundry economics, and free cash flow improve.
Investment pitches
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82 76 - Google’s advertising revenue missed expectations at $82.01B versus roughly $83.5B; search growth slowed from 17% to 12%, while AI Mode monetizes below traditional search.
- Meta’s AI improves an existing discovery-driven ad model through recommendations, targeting, creative and conversion: advertising revenue grew 26%, with impressions up 10% and prices up 14%.
- The author sees Meta benefiting if AI shifts budgets away from search, especially in consumer brands, e-commerce and product discovery. Google remains strong in cloud and AI infrastructure, but its path is less clear.
63 - The technology sector trades at 19.0x forward earnings versus 25.3x over five years and 23.0x over ten, roughly a 25% five-year discount.
- AI infrastructure spending remains strong across memory, photonics, networking, semiconductors, and power while companies report solid earnings and longer-term customer commitments.
- A return to the 10-year average multiple implies about 21% upside if earnings estimates hold; the author favors established beneficiaries, not every technology stock.
70 - Neocloud economics require scale, billions in capital, GPUs, power, and financing; tighter debt markets could eliminate smaller operators.
- NBIS has over $40B in long-term customer commitments, Microsoft and Meta relationships, contracted power, and a new $3.5B Citi facility.
- CRWV has roughly $104B of Q2 revenue backlog and $25B of additional net commitments, though its debt and aggressive spending remain serious risks.
- IREN’s power-connected site pipeline, Microsoft and NVIDIA contracts, customer prepayments, and GPU financing could support survival; the author expects consolidation to benefit all three but acknowledges continued sector-wide selling.
66 - After the 15.5% selloff, BofA and Deutsche reiterated BUY ratings with $140 and $150 targets; the author attributes the decline to financing fears, not business deterioration.
- Contracted backlog rose from roughly $26B in Q1 2025 to over $104B in Q2 2026, while BofA raised 2027/28 revenue-growth estimates to 105%/63%.
- Capacity is the bottleneck: BofA sees 1.4–1.5 GW annual additions in 2027–28, 8 GW by 2030, and revenue per megawatt rising from $10M to $14M by end-2028.
- Debt remains the key risk: bond yields near 15% could raise financing costs, pressure margins, and slow expansion, despite intact customer relationships and strong AI-infrastructure demand.
65 - The author's $100 AI-infrastructure map allocates roughly $50 to semiconductors, $20 to power, $15 to networking, and $15 to cooling and physical data-center infrastructure.
- Memory is a key focus: accelerators require HBM and supporting servers need conventional DRAM; larger models and rising inference demand could increase requirements where capacity and bandwidth constrain GPU utilization.
- Power infrastructure and optical networking gain importance as data centers need grid connections, transformers, distribution equipment, and faster 800G/1.6T links for growing GPU-cluster data flows.
- The author is screening for markets where demand exceeds supply, alternatives are limited, and growth converts into revenue and earnings; the thesis remains thematic across several sectors.
74 - KOSPI has fallen over 12% in five sessions as roughly $39B of Samsung and SK Hynix buyback support fades, exposing the market to foreign selling.
- Restrictions on single-stock leveraged ETFs remove retail buying pressure, while profit-taking, higher oil prices, and geopolitical uncertainty accelerate deleveraging after the semiconductor rally.
- CXMT’s 4F² progress could pressure future DRAM pricing, but the key question is competitive production at scale; HSBC still projects DRAM undersupply through 2028.
- The author remains bullish long term on Samsung, SK Hynix, and MU, viewing the selloff as liquidity and risk reduction rather than deteriorating memory demand.