# Research run 2026-08-25T02:54 UTC ## Market summary Asia is trading cautiously but not panicking on Tuesday morning: the Nikkei is flat at ~65,510, the Hang Seng is off 0.2% at ~25,480, the ASX 200 is up 0.5% on Woodside and Coles results, while the Kospi is the outlier, down ~2% at ~6,560 as SK hynix falls 4.5% after its union rejected a wage deal and chip names de-risk ahead of Nvidia. Wall Street closed lower on Monday (S&P 500 -0.3% to 7,653, Nasdaq -0.8% to 25,980) with semis and Sandisk (-6.5%) leading the decline as Iran headlines and rising Broadcom credit-risk chatter weighed; overnight US futures are flat (S&P e-mini ~7,670, Nasdaq 100 +0.1%). For our list the near-term events are Siemens Energy's supervisory board meeting today on a possible break-up (no announcement yet as of Asia morning), July PCE inflation on Wednesday, Nvidia's print after Wednesday's close (consensus EPS ~$2.10; read-through for SK hynix, Astera, Teradyne, Broadcom), Marvell on Thursday, and Powell at Jackson Hole on Friday, with the Bank of Korea also meeting this week. ## Holdings - AMZN: hold - AXOS: hold - BABA: watch - ENPH: watch - FIGR: hold - GOOGL: add - LDI: trim - META: hold - MRVL: hold - MU: hold - NFLX: add - NVDA: hold - OPENAI: hold - RKT: hold - STRIPE: hold - TSM: add ## Watchlist changes - AVGO:US accumulate/high -> accumulate/medium ## Watchlist - ALAB:US Astera Labs - accumulate (medium) - Astera Labs sells the connectivity silicon (PCIe/CXL retimers, Scorpio fabric switches, Ethernet) that ties GPUs and XPUs together inside AI racks; Q2 2026 revenue was $392M (+104% YoY, +27% QoQ) with eight straight EPS beats, and Scorpio switches become the largest product line in Q3, a quarter early. Shares are ~45% below their 52-week high, offering exposure to scale-up networking, the fastest-growing layer of AI infrastructure. - AVGO:US Broadcom - accumulate (medium) - Broadcom is the leading custom AI accelerator (XPU) and AI networking supplier to hyperscalers, guiding Q3 FY26 AI semiconductor revenue to ~$16B (>200% YoY) and total revenue to $29.4B (+84%), with a stated path to >$100B of AI revenue in 2027. The stock is ~23% below its June high after the July semiconductor selloff, giving a better entry into a franchise with multi-year committed custom-silicon programs plus a sticky VMware software annuity. - SKHY:US SK hynix - accumulate (medium) - SK hynix supplies more than half of the world's HBM and just posted record Q2 2026 results: revenue KRW 79.3T (+257% YoY) and operating income KRW 60.5T (+557% YoY) at a 76% operating margin, with HBM4 mass shipments ramping in H2. On Aug 19 it accelerated a KRW 40T buyback-and-cancel program (24.07M shares, 3.3% of the count, executed over ~3 months from Aug 20) and lifted its shareholder-return target to over 50% of FCF, backed by ~KRW 69T of net cash; it is also weighing a first Japanese memory fab (Miyagi), and the July 2026 Nasdaq ADR broadens the investor base. - 3750:HK CATL - buy (high) - CATL is the world's largest battery maker (~40% global EV battery share) and the clear leader in grid storage: H1 2026 revenue rose 55% to RMB 277B and net profit 42% to RMB 43.3B, with energy storage revenue up 88% to RMB 53B (nearly 20% of sales) as global storage deployments surge. It raised ~$5B in Hong Kong in April, announced a large buyback in July, Moody's moved its A3 outlook to positive in August, and on Aug 25 it agreed to pay RMB 2.56B (~$370M) for a 24.9% stake in Qiyuan Green Power, China's largest heavy-truck battery-swapping operator (1,600+ stations in 208 cities), making CATL the largest shareholder and the dominant player in commercial-vehicle swapping. The stock is little changed at ~HK$632 (-1% on Aug 25), ~20% below its 52-week high, with scale, cost and chemistry (sodium-ion, LFP) advantages competitors cannot match. - BE:US Bloom Energy - accumulate (medium) - Bloom's solid-oxide fuel cells have become a mainstream on-site power solution for AI data centers that cannot wait years for grid interconnects: Q2 2026 revenue jumped 166% to $1.07B with a 33% gross margin, and full-year guidance was raised to $3.9-4.2B revenue and $800-900M non-GAAP operating income. A 2.8 GW Oracle agreement and the Nebius Vineland win show the customer base broadening to hyperscalers and neoclouds, and the stock is ~40% off its 52-week high. - ENR:DE Siemens Energy - accumulate (medium) - Siemens Energy is Europe's answer to GE Vernova: gas turbines, grid technologies (transformers, HVDC, switchgear) and wind. Fiscal Q3 2026 (June quarter) orders hit a record EUR 17.9B (book-to-bill 1.57), revenue grew 18.5% comparable to EUR 11.4B, profit before special items more than tripled to EUR 1.62B, pre-tax free cash flow rose to EUR 2.3B and the order backlog reached EUR 162B, with the Grid Technologies backlog alone at a record EUR 51B on transformer demand from US data centers; FY26 guidance was confirmed toward the upper end of the 10-12% margin range and Siemens Gamesa posted its first positive quarter in 15. Bloomberg reported on Aug 24 that the company has engaged Goldman Sachs to sell a stake in the steam-turbine business, the first concrete portfolio move ahead of today's supervisory board meeting on a possible spin-off, and the CEO said the data-center power boom will last. Shares fell 3.0% to EUR 148.74 on Aug 24 as the EUR 1B buyback concluded, ~23% below the 52-week high. - GEV:US GE Vernova - accumulate (high) - GE Vernova is the key bottleneck supplier of gas turbines and grid equipment for the AI power buildout: Q2 2026 orders rose 88% organically to $24.2B, total backlog is ~$176B, the gas turbine backlog reached 116 GW (targeting 125 GW under contract by year-end), and H1 free cash flow of $5.1B already exceeded all of 2025. Capacity is being scaled from 20 GW/yr today to 24 GW in 2028 and 30 GW in 2030 with pricing power rising; the stock is ~21% below its 52-week high after a Q2 EPS miss. - HOOD:US Robinhood Markets - accumulate (medium) - Robinhood posted record Q2 2026 revenue of $1.31B (+32% YoY) with a 57% adjusted EBITDA margin and $573M net income, while Gold subscribers hit 4.8M and margin, credit card and banking balances all set records. It is compounding into a full-stack retail financial platform (brokerage, crypto, banking, prediction markets, tokenization via Rothera/WonderFi), and the Clarity Act plus the crypto rally are near-term tailwinds; shares are ~30% off their 52-week high. - MELI:US MercadoLibre - accumulate (medium) - MercadoLibre is Latin America's dominant e-commerce, logistics and fintech platform. Q2 2026 revenue grew 49.8% to $10.17B, its fastest growth in four years and 30th straight quarter above 30%, unique active buyers rose to 89M (+18M YoY), the Mercado Pago credit book grew 75% to $16.4B with a deliberate shift to lower-risk borrowers, and adjusted EPS of $9.19 beat consensus. The stock fell to ~$1,813 after the print on margin compression and has recovered to ~$1,948, still ~24% below its 52-week high, giving an entry into a non-US Internet compounder with a logistics-plus-payments moat comparable to Sea's. - NET:US Cloudflare - buy (high) - Cloudflare's growth is re-accelerating on AI: Q2 2026 revenue rose 36% to $696M, dollar-based net retention improved 6 points to 120%, large customers grew 27% to 4,698, and full-year guidance was lifted to $2.86-2.87B. Its global edge network is the natural control point for agentic and bot traffic (non-human traffic now >50%), and Workers/AI inference give it a second growth engine beyond security and CDN. - SE:US Sea Limited - buy (high) - Sea grew Q2 2026 revenue 48% to $7.8B with all three engines firing: Shopee GMV +28% to $38.3B (ad revenue +70%, eight straight quarters of sequential growth), Monee fintech revenue +59% with an $11.1B loan book (+62%) at 1.0% NPLs, and Garena gaming still growing. The stock is ~40% below its 52-week high at ~$116 while consensus targets sit near $155, an unusual growth-at-a-discount setup for a Southeast Asian platform with a widening logistics and payments moat. - SPOT:US Spotify Technology - accumulate (medium) - Spotify crossed 300M Premium subscribers in Q2 2026 (MAU +12% to 777M) with revenue +14% to EUR 4.8B, a record 33.4% gross margin and EUR 655M operating income, and just added $1.5B to its buyback. Pricing power, audiobooks/video podcasts and AI features (Personal Podcasts) plus the Reserved ticketing product extend the monetization runway on a subscriber base no rival can match. - 6861:JP Keyence Corp - buy (high) - Keyence is the picks-and-shovels supplier of machine vision, sensors and measurement systems for factory automation and the emerging humanoid/robotics supply chain; fiscal Q1 (June 2026 quarter) sales rose 33% to JPY 347B and net income 51% to JPY 139B, with overseas sales +39% (Asia +50%, Americas +31%). Operating margins above 50%, a 95% equity ratio and a direct-sales model with no factories give it one of the most durable moats in industrial tech; shares hit an all-time high in mid-August and have since pulled back ~7% to ~JPY 80,900 (flat on Aug 25 morning, no company news overnight) with the global tech selloff, a better entry. - ASML:US ASML Holding - buy (high) - ASML is the sole supplier of EUV lithography and raised 2026 guidance for the second time to EUR 43-45B of sales at a 54-56% gross margin after a Q2 beat (EUR 9.3B sales, EUR 2.9B net income). Management says EUV capacity for 2027 is essentially fully booked with significant 2028 orders already in hand while it adds ~30% EUV capacity in 2027, giving rare multi-year revenue visibility in semicap. - TER:US Teradyne - accumulate (medium) - Teradyne is the leading supplier of automated test equipment for AI compute and HBM silicon and, via Universal Robots and MiR, the largest Western pure-play in collaborative and mobile robots. Q2 2026 revenue more than doubled to $1.33B (+104% YoY) with gross margin up to 59.8%, operating income up nearly 5x to $441M and EPS of $2.38 vs $0.49 a year ago, while robotics grew 33% to ~$100M; AI-related demand is now roughly 70% of revenue. Shares are ~25% below their 52-week high after the semis selloff, adding physical-AI and semi-test exposure the list lacks. ## New news (8) - 2026-08-24 [positive] MRVL: Wells Fargo raises Marvell target to $310 ahead of Thursday's fiscal Q2 report - After Monday's close Wells Fargo lifted its Marvell price target to $310 (consensus ~$256) citing custom AI silicon demand; the stock is up ~170% YTD into the Aug 27 print, where consensus is ~$2.71B revenue and $0.93 EPS and options imply a ~12% move. <https://www.tipranks.com/news/marvell-stock-mrvl-wells-fargo-raises-price-target-to-310-ahead-of-q2-earnings> - 2026-08-24 [neutral] NVDA: Nvidia trades at ~24x forward earnings into Aug 26 print; JPMorgan notes guidance beats have averaged 4% but shares fell after each - Yahoo Finance flags that Nvidia's forward P/E has compressed to ~24x (vs ~21x for the S&P 500) after seven straight down days; JPMorgan's Harlan Sur says revenue guidance beat consensus by an average 4% over the past four quarters yet the stock typically slid 3-5% in the following weeks, so a bigger catalyst (China, Rubin, share retention vs custom ASICs) is needed for a re-rating. <https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/nvidias-valuation-looks-surprisingly-cheap-heading-into-earnings-could-it-be-an-issue-for-the-stock-191738544.html> - 2026-08-24 [neutral] NVDA: Bloomberg: Nvidia's ~90% accelerator share faces hyperscaler ASICs, AMD and 150+ startups as market heads toward $1.4T - Bloomberg's pre-earnings look at the competitive landscape: Nvidia is expected to post ~$92B quarterly revenue at ~75% gross margin, but Amazon (Jassy: 'quite excited' about Trainium), AMD ($6.7B data-center revenue last quarter), Huawei in China and 150+ chip startups are all chasing an AI accelerator market projected at $1.4T by 2030; one CEO quoted says nobody is a real competitor until they reach a tenth of Nvidia's revenue. <https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-trillion-dollar-chip-market-120003930.html> - 2026-08-24 [neutral] NFLX: Netflix reshuffles advertising leadership; VP of ads product Jon Whitticom departs - Business Insider obtained an internal memo from Netflix's ads chief announcing a reorganization of the advertising division, with Jon Whitticom, who joined in 2023 to build the ads product, leaving; the ad tier is a key leg of the bull case, so execution continuity is worth monitoring. <https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-shakes-up-advertising-leadership-read-memo-2026-8> - 2026-08-24 [neutral] GOOGL: Google plans to move all Pixel phone, watch and earbud manufacturing out of China by 2027 - Per a Nikkei Asia report picked up by Fox Business on Aug 24, Google will shift all Pixel hardware production to Vietnam and India starting in 2027, extending the Pixel 11 Vietnam model; Pixel shipments (12M last year) are planned to grow 8-10% this year, and the move reduces tariff exposure relative to Apple. <https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/google-plans-move-all-pixel-manufacturing-out-china-2027> - 2026-08-24 [positive] AMZN: Amazon's 'Project Tetromino' envisions AI-automated delivery stations processing packages 2.5x faster - A Business Insider report on an internal planning document says Amazon is designing next-generation delivery stations that use AI and robotics to sort and stage packages at roughly 2.5 times current throughput, with a pilot facility targeted for 2028; Amazon said the project is early-stage and disputed the document's timeline and financial projections. <https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2026/amazon-envisions-next-generation-automated-stations-to-process-packages-2-5-times-faster/> - 2026-08-24 [neutral] OPENAI: Altman concedes he overestimated the speed of AI disruption, now sees AGI by end of 2028 - On the Founders podcast (aired Aug 23), Sam Altman said he 'was wrong about a few things' on speed because 'the economy just has so much inertia', that he expected more AI-native software startups by now, and that by end-2028 most of humanity's intellectual capacity could reside in data centers; a tempered adoption narrative from OpenAI's CEO as it pushes agents. <https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/sam-altman-concedes-overestimated-ai-213000863.html> - 2026-08-25 [neutral] TSM: Nikkei exclusive: TSMC supplier Nichias to build plant in Taiwan for critical chipmaking 'tubes' - Japan's Nichias, with Gold Stone Development, will build a Taiwan plant for special plastic components used in chip fabrication to avoid the supply disruptions that hampered TSMC's expansions in recent years; a small supply-chain localization step. TSMC shares slipped 0.4% to NT$2,365 in early Tuesday trade as the Taiex opened lower. <https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/exclusive-tsmc-supplier-nichias-to-build-key-chipmaking-tubes-in-taiwan> ## Notes First scheduled loop run (6h cron). Delta pass on holdings/loves news and Asia-hours watchlist names; added the AI bubble bellwether indicator set.
Nothing here is financial advice. Holdings and opinions are my own; the "agent" sections are written by an automated research skill and may be wrong. Built 2026-10-18 22:56 UTC.