Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
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Saturday, October 17, 2026

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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.

SMTC $16B
CV's Substack 4 clicks

From X

@convequity 2 clicks

Convequity on X

We think the gross margin gap between Cerebras ($CBRS) and NVIDIA ($NVDA) says little about which company delivers compute more cheaply. Cerebras reported a 14% gross margin in Q2 2026, against roughly 75% for NVIDIA. That is not a clean comparison, because Cerebras's commercial agreements include customer warrants. A customer warrant gives a buyer of Cerebras compute the right to buy Cerebras shares at an agreed price, adding potential equity upside to the compute it purchases. Cerebras records the value of these incentives over time as a reduction in revenue. Its cost of delivering the compute stays the same, so the full amount comes out of gross profit and its reported gross margin falls too. Add the warrants and a few other items back and Cerebras's Q2 margin was 41%, so the reported gap tells us little about what each company spends to deliver equivalent compute. Cerebras could challenge NVIDIA with attractive economics on selected workloads without matching every capability of NVIDIA's platform. In our view NVIDIA's stronger answer is Feynman reaching customers on schedule with the 3D-stacked SRAM we expect. Stacking more fast memory close to the compute would reduce the need to fetch data from slower external memory, helping NVIDIA narrow the architectural advantage behind Cerebras's fast inference. NVIDIA's adoption of Groq technology could ease some of this pressure, but we believe Groq's current architecture remains weaker than Cerebras's for low-latency inference. The longer Feynman takes to arrive at scale, the more time Cerebras has to win customers.
@convequity 3 clicks

Convequity on X

We see Nova ($NVMI) as a potential next-generation KLA ($KLAC), and we are backing it to take a larger share of semiconductor process-control spending. Its wins with leading chipmakers are strengthening that case. A leading global foundry has selected Nova’s materials-measurement tools for production of its next generation of transistors. Another chipmaker has adopted a different Nova platform for the same transition. These wins show Nova securing a place in the manufacturing processes behind more advanced chips. KLA’s broader process-control business has a strong emphasis on finding and analysing manufacturing defects. Nova is more concentrated on measuring chip dimensions, material composition and the chemistry used in production. KLA also competes in these areas, but they are more central to Nova’s business. These measurements help manufacturers understand whether each production step is delivering the intended result and where adjustments are needed. As logic chips and memory stacks become more complex, manufacturers need tighter control over the structures they build and the materials they use. Small variations can hurt performance or reduce the number of usable chips. We expect this to increase demand for Nova’s measurements and create more opportunities for its tools to become essential to production. In our view, the Western semiconductor supply chain badly needs new entrants. Equipment leaders $AMAT, $KLAC, $LRCX and Tokyo Electron, design-software vendors $SNPS, $CDNS and Siemens, and $TSM in manufacturing are too cautious and slow to match the pace of startups and highly driven Chinese challengers. Protecting existing products and the returns on past investments can make these incumbents reluctant to pursue technologies that threaten their established businesses.

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2026.42: Home At Last

Stratechery’s weekly bundle covers Apple HomeView and SpaceX’s cellular ambitions.

AAPL $5T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 3 clicks

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/16/2026)

Bumble agreed to a $1.3 billion take-private deal, while Netflix cut about 1,000 jobs and Meta discussed its Muse superintelligence models.

NFLX $511B
TSOH Investment Research 9 clicks

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.

CRWV $34B
WHAT ARE WE DOING? “Contrarians At The Gate” 51 clicks

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…

APP $88B
Speedwell Research 25 clicks
LLY · long

LILLY (ELI) & CO

Eli Lilly trades at 33 times this year’s earnings and 26 times next year’s, versus roughly 12 times for big pharma peers.

LLY $1.2T
Value Investors Club 1 click

Constellation: Stars Aligning?

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

STZ $22B
TSOH Investment Research 27 clicks

TSMC Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

TSMC reported excellent Q3 results, guided Q4 revenue growth higher and saw its shares slip despite strong AI-driven earnings momentum.

TSM $2.3T
Cestrian Capital Research 9 clicks

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