Transcript
A (0:00)
What's up guys? On this episode of Full Signal, I'm sitting down with Adam Parker. He's the founder and CEO of Trivariate Research, which is one of the leading research shops on Wall Street. He was previously the chief US Equity strategist at Morgan Stanley. And in this conversation we get into specific stock picks in the semiconductor and AI trade. What he's watching, what he thinks is undervalued right now, and his most bullish, highest conviction calls for the year. I learned a ton in this conversation
B (0:27)
and I think you will too. Adam, it's great to see you. I really want to get into your views on what is happening with the AI fear driven sell off right now. We've seen software tank. A lot of semis are kind of going mixed right now. How are you thinking about this?
C (0:44)
You know, it's definitely one of the biggest investment controversies for US equity investors is how to time the data center overbuild. I think this past week there were a few nuggets for the bears. One is Nvidia's print, right? Big numbers, numbers come up, stock goes down. Really makes it hard for people to think that the valuation will expand really ever for the revenue beneficiaries. So if you want to own Nvidia, you're saying, I think the earnings and sales growth will offset multiple contraction. And that was kind of a big data point from the week. I think the second data point from the week that I focused on was hp. HP said that memory pricing is starting to hurt demand for boxes. So the way to think about that is if you sell $1,000 computer and memory is usually $150, if it's now 350, they would lose money. So they have to raise pricing, make it 1200 for the box and that's hurting demand. So not everything is inelastic at some level if boxes go up. So I thought that was kind of a Tuesday night last week data point that was a little bit cautious. The third thing that I think is a mark to market you can see every day on AI is SoftBank stock price. It's kind of telling you what open air is worth, you know, to those evaluating IT stocks down meaningfully. And then I'd say lastly, you know our core business, we talk to institutional investors all day and do meetings and whenever growth PMs tell me they want to look at free cash flow yield, I feel like I got to run for the hills. So you know, the software stuff we've been really negative on and I think it's because I, I think I know the earnings are going to miss. So I think if you were cautious on, on the AI stuff, the last week was a good week for your, your, you got a lot of data points supporting your view.
B (2:26)
What is your view on it?
C (2:28)
I like my North Star has been and remains, you know, semis over software. I think software, sure there'll be some good names that emerge, but they won't emerge until the revenue accelerates. You buy software companies when the revenue is accelerating. I think that what's happening now is all the analysts and the management teams and the private companies, they, they're saying, wait, this revenue is good. I'll call my big bank CTO and they'll say we're never going to cut us. Right? But that's not what's happening. First, the multiples contract, you've seen that. The second thing that happens is they miss on earnings and then eventually a couple years from now, they miss on sales. Why do I think they're going to miss on earnings? Because all of them are saying we're going to attach AI tools or agents that you're going to value and never get rid of us. And I don't see how they're going to attach all that without investing. Everyone else was investing in AI. Their capex goes up, the depreciation burden on cogs happens, their gross margins go down. If you look at the analyst estimates for the poster child software stocks now, Intuit, Adobe, Workday, Salesforce, the estimates have gross margins flat for the next few years. And I just think what'll happen is they'll have to invest, they'll miss on earnings. So do I want to own software companies that miss on earnings? No, I don't. So I'm very negative on that. I think semis, you're going to play the rotation within it. I think pretty clearly you're not going to get multiple expansion for the big, the big revenue beneficiaries. So I think you got to find either the industrials exposed stuff like ADI text in a microchip or you've got to find, you know, less cyclical parts of the business. So I probably will be selling the memory stuff too. Even though I think we're short for two more years and even though I think earnings are coming way up, I just think the multiple continues to contract for those stocks. So I'm selling on strength to fund maybe other parts of the chain. But I think Semis will be better than software for sure.
