Sunday, November 15, 2026

@partners_road Oct 25 9 clicks

RiverRoadPartners on X

@JamesTrvdes Micron’s CFO is just one of many who question how “real” the LTA backstop is. I asked him about this specifically at a dinner & his reply was straightforward & direct: “In a memory downturn, to enforce LTA’s, we’d have to sue our customers…we’re not suing our customers.” $MU

@convequity Oct 25 1 click

Convequity on X

Guess what is a more severe bottleneck than HBM? Grid transformers, switchgear and EPC, and electrical steel, both severity 94, are more severe than HBM at 93. Those numbers come from our AI Infrastructure Bottleneck Map, an AI infrastructure supply chain map. Severity runs from 0 to 100 and measures how hard a node constrains new AI capacity in 2026 to 2028. It measures scarcity, not the size of the market. On each company we score return potential and risk, each from 1 to 10 over the same 2026 to 2028 window. Return potential is the upside still left in the company. Risk is company risk, and 10 is the riskiest. The goal is to identify the companies with high remaining return potential and relatively lower risk. Not investment advice. The five most severe nodes, and what each one is: Grid transformers, switchgear and EPC, severity 94 Medium- and high-voltage equipment, grid interconnect, and the construction services that install them. The backlog runs multiple years, and the constraint is forming through 2028. • $HTHIF Hitachi, Ltd. Return potential 6.2. Risk 1. This is the lowest risk on the list, the return potential is still high, and the grid business sits inside Hitachi rather than in a separate listing. • $POWL Powell Industries. Return potential 7.5. Risk 3.2. This is the highest return potential on the list, the risk is still moderate, and Powell sells the medium- and high-voltage equipment on this node. • $600089.SS TBEA Co., Ltd. Return potential 6.5. Risk 6.1. Return potential is high and risk is high, and TBEA builds high-voltage transformers in China. Electrical steel, severity 94 The core steel inside transformers. Supply is tight, and this constraint is also forming through 2028. • $5401.T Nippon Steel. Return potential 6.4. Risk 3.2. High return potential with relatively lower risk, from a major mill for the electrical steel that goes into transformer cores. • $005490.KS POSCO Holdings. Return potential 6. Risk 3.8. This is the holding company rather than a separate steel listing, POSCO is a major electrical-steel mill, and the return potential is lower than Nippon Steel's with higher risk. • $CLF Cleveland-Cliffs. Return potential 6.5. Risk 4.2. Return potential is high, the risk is higher than Nippon Steel's, and Cleveland-Cliffs is the only US producer of grain-oriented electrical steel, the steel in transformer cores. HBM, severity 93 High-bandwidth memory stacks, which constrain accelerator performance. Supply is extremely tight and the vendors are few. • $005930.KS Samsung Electronics. Return potential 6.5. Risk 3.5. High return potential with relatively lower risk, from one of the three companies that make HBM. • $000660.KS SK hynix. Return potential 6.5. Risk 4. SK hynix is the second of the three HBM makers, with the same return potential as Samsung and higher risk. • $MU Micron Technology. Return potential 6.5. Risk 5. Micron is the third HBM maker, with the same return potential and the highest risk of the three. Gas turbines and on-site generation, severity 88 The turbines that make prime and backup power on site, and the hot-section parts those turbines need. This is the next power constraint forming in the 2026 to 2028 window, and this node has two listed names, not three. • $HWM Howmet Aerospace. Return potential 6. Risk 2.3. High return potential with relatively lower risk, and Howmet makes the castings that large turbines wait on. • $603308.SS Anhui Yingliu Electromechanical. Return potential 7.2. Risk 7.8. Return potential is high and risk is high, and Anhui Yingliu makes castings for industrial gas turbines in China. Leading-edge foundry capacity, severity 86 Manufacturing capacity at 7 nanometers and tighter. The map calls this the main AI hardware bottleneck. • $TSM TSMC. Return potential 6.2. Risk 3.8. The scarce capacity on this node is the capacity TSMC already runs. • $INTC Intel Corporation. Return potential 7.4. Risk 6.8. Return potential is high and risk is high, and the foundry work sits inside Intel with no separate foundry listing. • $0981.HK SMIC. Return potential 6.2. Risk 6.8. SMIC, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation on the Hong Kong line, is the third listed foundry on this node, with a higher risk than TSMC.

@convequity Oct 25 1 click

Convequity on X

@hunterguo101 That's the concerning part. OpenAI + $AVGO are showing then can do 1st gen custom asic quickly in both tape out, volume deployment, and scaling production quite flawlessly while previous consensus is it takes at least 3 generations each taking 18mos+ to finish.

@aleabitoreddit Oct 25 1 click

Serenity on X

Few things: - $SIVE is targeting T1 hyperscaler deployments for pluggables, CPO, NPO. Not quite sure what you mean by Tier 2. They have direct engagements with hyperscalers but currently are more upstream by qualifying with companies like Ayar, $JBL, $GFS, O-Net that eventually likely ends up -> $AMZN / $MSFT for example. On financing: - Colo players like $CIFR still need $1B+ of financing for their sites. - Neoclouds like $CRWV need billions of financing to buy GPUs. Higher rates + less support for financing makes it more challenging for these players. $SIVE already raised 700M SEK for their buildout and largely rely on external foundries, so they don't have financing constraints. There's pressure on players that need currently need financing for capex, but markets group up everyone in AI sector indiscriminately. The second nuance is whether or not this effects the end customers in terms of demand. I'd argue optical sector is insulated, even if overall AI capex from hyperscalers decreases, I see optical content still rising and aggregate demand rising. And this is especially the case with new incoming players going through their first qual cycles.

@aleabitoreddit Oct 25 1 click

Serenity on X

$AXTI still the chokepoint of the entire optical buildout + demand for InP substrates will grow a lot. They have LTA supply agreements to $LITE / $COHR and probably ends up #1 vs. Sumitomo Electric. The main thing I'm watching is if they can pull a $SNDK style price hike. So far from some channel checks: - Q2 2026: 50-60% increase - Q3 2026: 10% increase - Q4 2026: 10%+ hike But from Coherent's SEC offering... it does look like there's a ceiling to how high % prices can go, which makes that case less likely. We'll see how it plays out

@aleabitoreddit Oct 25 4 clicks

Serenity on X

$NVDA Jensen Huang on photonics: adding scale-up to optical domain, “is going to be, well, 15x” to aggregate volume. Relating to $LITE, $COHR, and laser companies.. “I'm fairly certain the amount of optics that we need in the future will be several orders of magnitude” Huang added. We’re already in a CW laser bottleneck, but given the time/rate for capacity expansion, I definitely don’t see it meeting the scale Jensen envisions… Your leading merchant suppliers focusing new capacity toward UHP CPO lasers might also unintentionally make shortages around lower end ranges more severe… Since even if you don’t reallocate capacity (which Coherent implied they’d do to maximize margins), the demand for lower end ranges increase too as pluggable demand grows. Anyway, you’re gonna need a lot of lasers and given low BOM cost… this might trigger some fun game theory allocation wars + price hikes for supply

@Mr_Neutral_Man Oct 24 7 clicks

Mr Neutral Man aka "Howard Marks of REITs” on X

@Notorious_B0b My take on Elon is that I won’t short him and I won’t go long I’ve occasionally buy puts in $TSLA and gotten zeros or multibaggers I try not to lose my mind with Elon’s company