Saturday, October 17, 2026

Back to today

Semtech Analyst Day Review

Semtech raised Q3 guidance and targets $3.2 billion of fiscal 2030 revenue, excluding upside from its AI data-center optical and copper interconnect businesses.

From X

@kevin__mak

Kevin Mak on X

$ASTS So many questions about ASTS (please don't reply to unrelated threads to get my attention, just DM me). I have no position in the company. My comments from 3+ quarters ago is that I wanted to see "more metal in space". My concern from 5+ quarters ago was "how do they go from producing 1 satellite in 6 months, to 6 satellites per month, that's a really hard scaling problem". I think Starlink screwed up with their Swarm acquisition and trying to force that tech to work, it put a 18+ month delay on them. My hope was that ASTS would capitalize on that, and it generally appears that they've had scaling issues that prevented that from happening. That isn't really their fault, "space is hard" and "mass production is different from prototypes". I think money isn't a problem for them, they have so much cash (they were smart to take advantage of their high stock price). The problem is execution is hard even if you have lots of cash. Strategically they're in a good place, the MNO's definitely want/need them to work to compete w/ Starlink. But the MNO's are powerless, they're awful at execution (they're only good at increasing your monthly bill!). The BO failure was a really big problem. SpaceX (Starlink) had very little leverage on ASTS before. If they slowroll/deny F9 launches, they just push ASTS towards their competitor (BO). Two competitors (BO and ASTS) become stronger. But since BO was offline, it makes SpaceX the de facto monopolist to ASTS' launch. That gives them a ton of power in this situation and I imagine (but have no way to prove it), they would flex that competitive pressure on the company. That's not illegal anti-competitive behavior, that's just "pressure". It's a tricky set of problems that face the company and the stock price reflects that. I don't have a strong view in either direction of whether things get better or worse from here. But my initial hopes/thesis were steadily eroded by the execution issues (and valuation), hence my eventual exit from my long position. I don't think I'm saying anything thoughtful or what people don't already know/experience. But worth putting it out there because I've received _a lot_ of questions. Disclosure: No position in ASTS.

Is The Market Turning The Page?

CoreWeave’s debt and equity price action is framed as a wake-up call for investors amid a broader market discussion.

AppLovin Deep Dive

AppLovin rebuilt its ad model with AXON 2.0, lifting LTM revenue to about $7 billion and margins to 77% as Unity competition threatens…

Constellation: Stars Aligning?

Constellation Brands trades near $127 at roughly 11x next-twelve-month EV/EBIT, with recent business results offsetting concerns over…

October 2026 Random Ramblings

October 2026 market commentary covers SOLS’s cancelled merger, a hypothetical Starbucks-Chipotle deal, Russell 2000 weakness and AI…

Lennar, Part One: The Story

Lennar grew from a Miami builder into one of America’s two largest homebuilders, controlling land largely through options and land banks…

Lennar, Part Two: The Deep Dive

Lennar’s second audio program examines the homebuilder’s business for professional investors and housing analysts.

Insider activity September 2026

Asian insider buying rose 19% to US$2.4 billion across 930 September transactions, led by Grab CEO Anthony Tan’s US$30 million purchase…

AMADF · long

Amadeus It Group SA

Amadeus IT Group turns long after shares fell more than 20% since a November short call.

Vicor Update, Part Two

Vicor uses ITC exclusion-order cases to license power-module patents, with published royalty multipliers rising from 1.0x before filing to…

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 107

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

88 accounts

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.