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Saturday, October 24, 2026

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Tower Semiconductor Deep Dive

Tower Semiconductor’s low-loss photonics chips halve lasers in 1.6T optical modules, supporting a $680 million annualized photonics run rate and customer wafer prepayments through 2027.

TSEM $19B
CV's Substack 7 clicks

From X

@convequity 7 clicks

Convequity on X

Networking, not compute, now decides custom AI chip wins, and in our view that is Broadcom's ($AVGO) edge. As GPUs become more like specialized AI processors, matrix compute looks much the same everywhere. At 224G high-speed chip connections (SerDes), only Nvidia ($NVDA) and Broadcom can do it. If you want a custom chip, you go to Broadcom. That is why we avoid Marvell ($MRVL). A cheaper design partner is not necessarily cheaper overall: weaker connections and networking compound costs after deployment, resulting in higher total system costs. The bottleneck is moving from the switch to the optics. Lasers and optical signal-processing chips are short, and Broadcom can bundle priority optical supply with its custom chips, even for customers running Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia's lack of optical know-how is becoming its biggest disadvantage, and we expect Broadcom to take more share from it for years to come.
@convequity 3 clicks

Convequity on X

$CRWV 5-year CDS hit a record ~1,195bp on 15 Oct and the whole neocloud group sold off with it. Our ABBX tracker suggests the market is pricing contagion into the wrong names. The balance sheet first. At 30 June CoreWeave had $35.6B of debt against $5.5B of cash, and its ~$33B market cap now sits below its debt. $4.4B falls due in the rest of 2026 and $6.2B in 2027, mostly loan amortisation; no bond matures before 2030. Its 9.625% notes sold at par in June now yield ~14.9%. Add $16.3B of lease liabilities and $35.5B of leases not yet started. CoreWeave's Q2 operating cash flow: Net loss: −$0.63B + Depreciation & amortisation: +$1.39B + Stock-based comp: +$0.17B + Other non-cash items: +$0.28B − Working capital (payables, receivables, prepaids): −$1.32B + Customer prepayments: +$0.79B = Operating cash flow: $0.68B The core business makes cash, but working capital ate it. Without the prepayments OCF was −$0.11B. That OCF is already after ~$0.44B of cash interest, equal to 65% of it, and capex ran 9.5x OCF. Funding is where the group splits. CoreWeave builds with borrowed money: GPU-backed loans, 8.5–9.75% bonds and vendor credit, with ~$9.8B of H1 equipment supplier-financed outside the cash-flow statement. Prepayments covered 12% of its Q2 capex. $NBIS builds with convertibles (~$9B this year) and prepayments that covered 21% of Q2 capex; at 30 June it held $8.5B of debt against $8.0B of cash. $IREN builds with equity, a $3B 1% convertible and prepayments that covered 87% of its latest quarter's capex; net debt is ~$1.7B and cash interest equalled ~1% of OCF. The exposure that matters is its landlords. CoreWeave is ~77% of $CORZ revenue, the tenant at Galaxy's Helios campus and leases 400MW from $APLD. Yet since 2 Oct Core Scientific is down 17%, while Microsoft-anchored IREN is down 34% and Nebius 30%. Our view: the risk is CoreWeave's debt-funded build, not the neocloud model. If CoreWeave stumbles, the hit lands on the landlords that depend on its rent. Nebius and IREN share the model, not the funding.
@ParadisLabs 1 click

Paradis on X

For AI/Semis stocks, it feels like every earnings season becomes signficantly more important than the last. This time is the same, but for different reasons which has led to market chopiness: - Macro instability (Iran, oil, yields, inflation) - Midterms - $CRWV credit stress - AI ROI concerns via frontier lab ARR's (& pending hyperscaler earnings on top). Today: $SPCX Wed: $META, $TXN, $LRCX Thu: $BE, $WDC, $NOK Let's see if good EPS will be enough to turnaround sentiment.

Investor Letters

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Margin Call

Petrobras’s Morpho-1 well revived hopes that Brazil’s Equatorial Margin can become a major new oil frontier after hydrocarbons were…

PBR $96B
Doomberg 7 clicks

Our Views on CoreWeave

CoreWeave's financial statements point to a business model familiar to the authors after a closer review of the AI infrastructure company.

CRWV $34B
WHAT ARE WE DOING? “Contrarians At The Gate” 11 clicks

Capital Wars

CoreWeave’s $35 billion to $39 billion 2026 spending plan relies on debt as unsecured yields reach 15%, making its GPU cloud expansion a…

CRWV $34B
Net Interest 8 clicks
TCEHY · long

Tencent Holdings LTD

Tencent, valued near $500 billion, is a long idea built on its Chinese gaming, social-network and advertising franchises.

TCEHY $449B
Value Investors Club

Putting bear cases to rest

Medpace authorized $1 billion of buybacks through 2028 after Q3 revenue rose 8.5% to $716 million; service revenue grew roughly 12% as…

MEDP $18B
Best Anchor Stocks 12 clicks

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